Murder With A Judicial Stamp Of Approval

The legality of starving Terri Schiavo to death has been certified by federal courts as well as the court in Florida. So what is all the fuss about? The law is the law!

That is exactly the problem. This particular Florida law, which considers a feeding tube as a life prolonging procedure, is a rotten law. The rabbis tell us that all of the wicked behavior of Sodom's inhabitants was anchored in Sodom's local statutes. Florida, by adopting such an evil law, has become today's Sodom.

It is interesting to note that Florida's legislature adopted this law only recently. This I learned from "The Title of Liberty" blog's timeline of the Schiavo affair:

April 6, 1999 - House Bill 2131 was introduced in the legislature by the Florida Elder Affairs & Long-Term Care Committee to amend Section 765 (Civil Rights) of the Florida Statutes. two weeks later, the legislature Committee on Judiciary recommended that House Bill 2131 should also change the Section 765.101 legal definition of life prolonging procedures to add: "INCLUDING ARTIFICIALLY PROVIDED SUSTENANCE AND HYDRATION, WHICH SUSTAINS, RESTORES, OR SUPPLANTS A SPONTANEOUS VITAL FUNCTION".

Oct 1, 1999 - Senate Bill 2228 (formerly HB2131) becomes law changing Section 765.101 of the Florida Statutes to include the above.

Jan 24, 2000 - Trial begins to decided whether to remove Terri's feeding tube.

Feb 11, 2000 - Judge Greer orders that Terri's feeding tube can be removed.

("The Title of Liberty" blog's post deals with issues of alleged impropriety and corruption in the Terri Schiavo case. If half of what is written there is true, not only is the law problematic, but those charged with upholding the law are also problematic. While this is certainly an important issue, in this post I'm dealing with the law itself from a Jewish point of view.)

As a Jew, I cannot accept the definition of Florida's Legislature. I have already quoted several times the excellent article on the aish hatorah web site explaining that providing one with sustenance is not a "life prolonging procedure." Florida's legislators have unwittingly permitted a murder to transpire in their state as far as Judaism is concerned.

Davening Mistakes

I thought that I would compile a list of mistakes that I've heard people make in davening. Here are few that come to mind:

1) The Praises of India: Hodu - means "praise!" when the second syllable is accented. Unfortunately, many put the accent on the first syllable. Then the word means "India"!

2) Praise vs. Splendor: When returning the Torah scroll to Aron HaKodesh I've often heard people say "Hodu (shuruk instead of Cholam) Al Eretz VeShamayim" (meaning "praise about the heaven and the earth") instead of "Hodo Al Eretz VeShamayim"(His splendor is upon the heaven and the earth).

3) Uber Chochoms: In the third "yehi ratzon" after the Torah reading on Monday and Thursday I've heard "lekayem banu Chochmei( as if there is a kamatz katan under the chet) Yisrael" instead of "Chachmei Yisrael". You got to be a real uber chochom to turn a patach into a kamatz katan.

4) The Grammar "Experts": This one is really weird: Shabbat morning in the kedusha of shacharit: "Kadavar Heamur(as if there is a segol under the hey) instead of "Kadavar Ha'amur."

If anybody out there knows of any other common errors, leave a comment. Maybe I'll learn about a mistake that I make. Thanks.

Sharon Rewards Supporters: Three New Ministers, Five Deputies

Arutz Sheva reports:

In a move described as "base corruption" by his opponents, Prime Minister Sharon has decided to appoint three new Cabinet Ministers and five new Deputy Ministers from among his loyal supporters.

I do not remember any Israeli politician giving payola so openly. It is my opinion that Sharon knows the Israeli MSM will not vigorously pursue such corruption as long as the expulsion disengagement policy continues.

Anti-Disengagement Bloggers Unite!

Israpundit is setting up a ring to unite all of the bloggers and web masters who are against disengagement. If you are interested in either active or passive participation in this informal ring, please contact Joseph Alexander Norland at israpundit@yahoo.com.

FOCUS: Bigotry and the Murder of Terri Schiavo

This is a must read. (Hat tip to Power Line.) Here's an excerpt:

Besides being disabled, Schiavo and I have something important in common, that is, someone attempted to terminate my life by removing my endotracheal tube during resuscitation in my first hour of life. This was a quality-of-life decision: I was simply taking too long to breathe on my own, and the person who pulled the tube believed I would be severely disabled if I lived, since lack of oxygen causes cerebral palsy. (I was saved by my family doctor inserting another tube as quickly as possible.) The point of this is not that I ended up at Harvard and Schiavo did not, as some people would undoubtedly conclude. The point is that society already believes to some degree that it is acceptable to murder disabled people.

Cosmic X Goes To A Demonstration

I did something yesterday that I haven't done for a while: I went to a demonstration. It was the 36-hour anti-disengagement demonstration that was being held near the Knesset. During the 1980's and the 1990's I went to a lot of demonstrations. I think that the first demonstration that I went to was to protest the infamous Ahmed Jibril deal in 1985 where the Israeli government released 1500 terrorists from jail in return for three soldiers that had been captured in Lebanon. This was Israel's first capitulation to Arab extortion, a foolish mistake that cost the Jewish people many lives. Many of the released terrorists returned to terror, initiating the first "intifada." I was also active in many of the demonstrations against the Oslo agreements. Since then, I have given up on demonstrations. I saw that the politicians that had orated at these demonstrations (Netanyahu, Sharon, etc.) later continued the same insane policies that they had spoken out against. The voice of Roger Daltrey singing, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" echoed in my mind.

I walked to the demonstration after work. The weather was nice. On the way I took note of one of the signs that winter is almost over: Wild barley stalks had sprouted up on the unpaved areas on the sides of the streets. I wanted to get to the demonstration by shortest path possible, which would have led me past the Prime Minister's office. Nothing doing! The police were out in numbers making sure that nobody could get near that area. (Here they were, I thought to myself, Israel's men and women in blue. Here were our policemen, those who work so hard to thwart terrorist attacks. Are these very policemen soon to play the role of Nazi storm troopers, throwing Jews out of their legally owned homes in order to make sure that the Gaza Strip is judenrein?) I had no choice but to go where the police would let me. This considerably lengthened the distance that I had to walk.

Finally I arrived at the demonstration. There they were, all of those fine people who had sacrificed so much to settle the land. Many of the youth had brought guitars and were strumming away. On the podium Chezki Sofer played a few Carlebach tunes. He sounded a lot like Carlebach, even taking a breath in the middle of a phrase just like R' Shlomo used to: "David Melech, (breath) Melech Yisrael, David Melech, Melech Yisrael..." Then, as is usual at demonstrations, I met an old friend. We've been friends since we were students at the Beit El Yeshiva many years ago. He still lives in Beit El. In 1982, he was in Yamit when the Begin government destroyed that settlement. We found a place to sit and started chatting. "I'm so upset, I can't believe that Sharon is doing this," he said. We talked about our families. Suddenly he looked at all of the youth and said, "You know, when they destroyed Yamit these kids weren't even born. I'm getting old."

I thought about the settlers that were being betrayed by the Israeli Government. I thought of others who were betrayed the Israeli Government: Jonathan Pollard, the soldiers of the South Lebanese Army, Arab collaborators from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who were abandoned and murdered by the Palestinian Authority. The list goes on and on. I thought of my son who is almost old enough to be drafted. Suddenly I heard the Roger Daltrey's voice again echoing in my brain: "We won't get fooled again!"

Two More Schiavo Related Posts At Cross-Currents

Although the Terri Schiavo case is beyond our control, I feel that it is important that Torah Jewry make its voice heard. That's why I am happy to see two more posts at Cross-Currents dealing with the Schiavo case. See Terri Schiavo: My Dispute With Prof. Broyde and Death Watch.

Galileeblog in Gush Katif

Galileeblog has a post up about his visit in Gush Katif:

How could an orange shirt be so threatening? It is threatening because there is a fear of being found out in a big lie about who the people of Gush Katif really are. That fear is a road map for us to follow, revealing a serious weak spot that Sharon needs to protect – a place where pressure, if applied continuously and forcefully will leave him alone with his “plan” and the Jews of Gush Katif free of him and his evil decree. The more the truth is revealed and known about these good people and the more the demonization of them is debunked, the harder it will be to implement a tyrannical expulsion.

Read the rest here.

Taanit Esther and Taanit Terri

Today is fast day, Taanit Esther. Although the fast is less than one complete day, the hunger pangs can clearly be felt. I wonder, what is Terri Schiavo going through after being denied nutrition since last Friday?!

Update: Chana Meira also makes a Purim-Terri connection.

A Great Post For Purim

Check out Diamond in the Rough.

Anti-Expulsion Protests Continue

Anti-expulsion activists have once again captured the country's attention, blocking main intersections with varied degrees of success and bringing traffic to a halt on main roads across Israel.

Calev Ben-David Doesn't Get It

Calev Ben-David demonstrates that he doesn't understand the true Jewish postition regarding Terri Schavio in his article Snap Judgment: The Jewish right to die:

This is not to argue for any kind of "Jewish" position regarding the Schiavo affair, even if she herself were Jewish. Quite the opposite: Since the whole question of what Terri Schiavo's own desires were (or are) regarding her current condition is still in dispute, it is impossible to draw any general conclusions from this tangled and heart-wrenching case.

Despite that, Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for the national Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel, publicly called on Michael Schiavo last week to "recognize that what a court may consider legal can still constitute a grave violation of a higher law," and asked him to "please allow your wife to continue to live... None of us can claim to know what constitutes a meaningful existence, and all of us have a responsibility to preserve even severely compromised human life."

Whatever Shafran or Agudath Israel's motivation for making such a statement, it's entirely inappropriate in this context. Of course individual Jews, be it in America, Israel or elsewhere, are perfectly free to decide for themselves, without reference to Jewish or any other religious sources, their own position regarding passive euthanasia. But partisan voices on either side of this debate have no right to distort traditional Jewish teachings on this subject in order to argue their side of this matter.

Now that we've read Ben-David's uninformed journalist's rant, let's read a true scholarly opinion from Dr. Daniel Eisenberg:

THE CASE OF TERRI SCHIAVO

Let us take the example of Terri Schiavo. She is not brain dead nor is she terminally ill. She is brain damaged and remains in what appears to be a persistent vegetative state. All of her bodily functions are essentially normal, but she lacks the ability to "meaningfully" interact with the outside world (although her parents claim that she does minimally respond to their presence and to outside stimuli).

Her impairment is cognitive and Judaism does not recognize any less of a right to treatment for one cognitively impaired than one mentally astute.

It is a denial of the Jewish ideal of the fundamental value of life that drives the forces that wish to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. While Judaism does recognize quality of life in certain circumstances (such as the incurable terminally ill patient in intractable pain mentioned above), the Torah does not sanction euthanasia in any situation. To remove the feeding tube from a patient whose only impairment is cognitive is simply murder.

We must ask ourselves when we view images of cognitively impaired patients such as Terri Schiavo whether the pain that we feel is Terri's or whether it is our own. While we may suffer watching movies of the severely brain damaged, it is our own thoughts of the horror of a life without cognition that drives us to project that pain onto the victim who may not be suffering at all.

Calev Ben-David should take his own advice with regards to "distorting traditional Jewish teachings on this subject."

Update: Yitzchok Adlerstein at Cross-Currents weighs in on "Rabbi" Calev's remarks:

(Agudah called it correctly, and issued a public appeal to Michael Schaivo to spare his wife’s life. For this, they have been accused of distorting “traditional Jewish teaching” by the world’s foremost authority on Jewish Law – the Jerusalem Post.)

The Unbelievable Horror

Life has become cheap in the good old U.S.A. A brain damaged woman is being starved to death under the auspices of the law:

TAMPA, Fla. Mar 22, 2005 — A federal judge on Tuesday refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, denying an emergency request from the brain-damaged woman's parents.

I do not have words to express my horror!

Terri Schiavo Is Being Starved To Death!

From BlogsforTerri:

A federal judge declined for now to order a feeding tube reinserted in Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years.

U.S. District Judge James Whittemore, after hearing arguments for about two hours in Tampa, gave no indication of how soon he may act on a request by Schiavo's parents to order the tube inserted.

"I will not tell you when, how or how long it will take," Whittemore said.

Please Judge Wittemore, make the correct decision, and make it fast! Terri is being starved to death, and a lack of a quick decision on your part is a death sentence for her!

Israeli 8th Graders Hate Hypocrisy

Israeli students are letting Sharon know that his version of "democracy" is a joke:

Israel's 8th-graders are scheduled to take a special test tomorrow on selected concepts in Jewish tradition, Zionism and democracy. Many students will be "boycotting" the democracy section, however.

In an initiative originating in the Yesha community of Neriah, many students have studied the material intensively - but will refuse to answer questions relating to democracy. Instead, they plan to write, "With a distorted democracy like the current one, we feel that we are unable to answer these questions."

New Yeshiva for Both Hareidi and Religious-Zionist Students

This is an interesting idea:

Amidst all the talk and efforts to bridge gaps between religious and secular youth, several rabbis decided that the time had come to bring together national-religious and hareidi-religious youth.

But what about political differences?:

Politics takes up a very small part of their time. "I discussed a little with some of the hareidi guys what they would do in the future – learn Torah or go to work," said Yehuda Shapira of Kokhav HaShachar. "And one time, we had a small debate regarding the question of the Prayer for the Welfare of the State. Each of us brought sources backing up his opinion, and at the end, each of us understood the other one's thoughts better. We also realized that at a certain stage, there's no further point in arguing... By the way, these discussions take place calmly and pleasantly – as opposed to the yelling you can hear in our Talmud arguments in the study hall. In fact, it is exactly that enthusiasm for learning that attracted me to this yeshiva in the first place."

Read more at Arutz 7.

Ha'aretz Comes Out Against The "Envelope Pushers"

I came across an unusual statement in an editorial in Ha'aretz today:

The Gaza Strip should be closed to visitors now. Similarly, all those who engage in violence, who push the envelope, who are working day and night to reignite the intifada in order to disrupt the evacuation of settlements by keeping the army busy with other tasks, must be arrested without hesitation.

Ha'aretz's lunatic leftist bias causes them to say a lot of strange things, but what's wrong with pushing an envelope?

A quick look at the Hebrew version answered my question. The Hebrew phrase in question "mesigei hagvul" which means "the encroachers." The translator goofed!

All of you envelope pushers out there can relax. Ha'aretz isn't against you!

New Hope For Terri

"Even if a sharp sword is placed upon one's neck, one should not cease praying."

Bush Signs Terri's Bill Into Law

President Bush signed emergency legislation sent to him by Congress early Monday to allow Terri Schiavo's parents ask a federal judge to prolong their daughter's life, capping days of emotional debate over who should decide life and death.

"In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," Bush said in a statement after signing the bill.

Get Ready For Jerusalem's Triple Purim

This year we'll be celbrating three days of Purim in Jerusalem. This is called "Purim Meshulash"(triple Purim).

Here's a link that briefly mentions the laws of Purim Meshulash. This link deals with Purim Meshulash in more detail.

Pro-Expulsion Rally A Dismal Failure

The Jewish sages said that "a lie has no legs." Sooner or later a lie is exposed. Saturday night the government's claim that most of the public support disengagement was shown to be an outright lie. A rally supporting Sharon's expulsion policies drew only 10,000 participants, some of whom were tourists from abroad according to Ha'aretz:

The rally began with a march from Rabin Square to Dizengoff Square, where the dais was set up. Among the marchers were a large number of young people, including representatives of Habonim youth movement from Australia.

Here are a few links covering the rally:

Only 10,000 show up for pro-expulsion march

Disengagement Rally Boomerang

'Israel is leaving Gaza' (Notice how utterly inappropriate this ynet headline is! It is a political slogan and does not describe the event covered in the article!)

10,000 attend pro-disengagement rally in Tel Aviv

Dear reader: As you read the links above, please take note of the mental gymnastics the rally organizers use to explain the low turnout. A classic case of cognitive dissonance.