1/ This thread is an attempt to capture some of the week's discussions about Q*non and how to handle the cult followers and the danger they embody

(Side note, I plan to ask the Trumpites I know who're still clinging to their hate, "How's Q?" so they can confront the association)

1/ I'm just reflecting about how many leaders from the Modern Orthodox community passed away in 2020. The list is an overwhelming pantheon of pivotal, unique, and creative rabbis. I'm stunned by the enormity of the loss.

2/ Right at the end of the year, the 9th of Tevet, we lost Rav Henkin z'l, probably the most prominent & compassionate Dati-Leumi posek we had! It's rare to have a highly superior halakhist with unimpeachable standards who is also wise &

3/ Another Dec. loss: Rav Schwartz z'l of Chicago, another towering posek who took brave & indominable positions that understood modern society while having complete, airtight respect for tradition.

In my work in medical halakha, he was a crucial

4/ In Nov. we lost Rabbi Dr. Sacks z'l! His paramount leadership wasn't in halakha but in theology. He was able to navigate the secular & traditional worlds at the highest level; a rare rabbi whose philosophical work was universally recognized as

5/ In Aug. we lost Rav Steinsaltz z'l! I'm - accurately - running out of superlatives; please understand this thread is not overstated. Steinsaltz is a nearly irreplaceable, unique figure in modern Jewish

1/ Another observation the #Literalist fallacy I see about how much Trump (ym'sh) has planned all of the chaos & violence. My overarching point will be that society is structured & that means there's an inherent pattern to effects no matter the 'intelligence' behind the causes

2/ The virus should teach us this. #Literalists claim it was made in a lab because they see a killing-machine that carves its way through society and they must apply individual force & cause to the effectiveness of the biological organism

3/ #Literalists see only the tree, not the forest, so they think every effect stands alone, and thus has individual cause. This is the root fallacy of 'intelligent design'

its what led my ancestors to presume every disease is caused by a demon. Nature becomes personified.

4/ [Note, I'm not a deist, I believe in an active, caring God - the God of the Exodus, not just Genesis - but, ironically, in our hidden-faced age I can only see God's presence in the anomalies of nature (miracles), when it skips a pattern, and not from it's surface efficiency.]

5/ So nature looks intelligent, but that's another irony: we only see overt nature when it works. A dysfunctional organism, an inefficient virus, won't replicate to a degree that we'll experience & perceive it, especially as a culture

1/ Many people remark that we wouldn't have survived 4 more years of Trump (ym'sh) - and I agree - but this was a 40 year project of destroying the democratic form of US gov., starting with Reagan, and accelerated from Gingrich.

DJT was to almost the final hammer blow.

2/ Both Roosevelts changed the function of the government from preserving the entrenched power to an instrument to help people survive & thrive

TR was a Progressive, tore down the monopolies, established public health etc. When he left the party, the GOP became what it is today

3/ Wilson took up TR's platform (TR helped by splitting the 1912 vote) and when the GOP won in 1920, they actively tried to undermine the entire new project of what America would do for its

4/ Of course 12 years of retrograde regressive GOP destroyed the economy and led to a worldwide depression which aided the rise of totalitarianism around the world. 1920/1929 and 2020 share so many characteristics

But FDR, thank God, was able to pull us from the brink

5/ For the next 40 years FDR's vision of the government being the support and protector of its citizenry culminated in LBJ's Great Society, finally bringing many of the gifts to the oppressed engine that drove America's prosperity: African-Americans