Liel Leibovitz, "The Supreme Court Emerges as a Microcosm of America"
David Shasha
Liel Leibovitz vs. the Pope: Trump May Be Dead, But Trumpism is Alive at Tikvah Tablet
We must never underestimate the cheeseburger-eater Liel Leibovitz’s devotion to Frumkeit:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/supreme-court-decision-covid-jews-cuomo
The complete article follows this note.
He is head over heels that the Trump SCOTUS is now, contrary to the wishes of its haggard leader, officially the court of COVID death:
First, and briefly, the victors. The five majority justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and new member Amy Coney Barrett—dispensed with the notion that the observant Jews and Catholics who petitioned the court were somehow insufficiently zealous in guarding their communities against the pandemic or responsible somehow for its spread. “Not only is there no evidence that the applicants have contributed to the spread of COVID–19,” they wrote, “but there are many other less restrictive rules that could be adopted to minimize the risk to those attending religious services.”
Indeed, there is absolutely no evidence that the “applicants have contributed to the spread of COVID-19”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/LstFOI-6HoE/m/0h2UBhfjAQAJ
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/coronavirus-churches-outbreaks.html
We must be imagining it!
And the Haredi Jews are still at it, as we learned recently when details of a Satmar mega-wedding were reported:
Just subscribe to the Vos Iz Neias newsletter to keep up with all the sad and painful death notices that come with frightening regularity each and every day:
But it has become clear that Tikvah Tablet is on the side of the Haredi spreaders, and against the government officials trying to keep us safe:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/i8ZF-UUVpUg/m/EMmGrAQwAwAJ
My personal favorite was Shaul Magid’s pseudo-intellectual “magical” Idel-drivel, which neatly functioned as Haredi apologia:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/sYB6T6CxX7Q/m/0qrowqyVAAAJ
Even Bari Weiss, when she was still employed at The New York Times, was militantly defending the debased Haredim against De Blasio, Enemy of the Jews:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/uFhuGVvR9Ko/m/qGoRJZBGAwAJ
It was an inspirational COVID moment of nihilistic Jewish Intersectionality that put religion firmly above country; as if religion is meant to put our bodily health in danger.
Although, as we recently learned, the Pope himself vigorously disagrees on this very point:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/pope-francis-covid.html
The Trumpists should listen to what he is saying, though they probably won’t:
With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.
Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.
In the stirring conclusion of the article the Pope gives us an excellent articulation of Religious Humanism and its noble values.
His wise words are deeply resonant for those of us who still believe that religion and humanity are not antithetical terms:
God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.
The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being.
To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.
But, as we have learned, this is not the Newhouse Tikvah Tablet way with the WUHAN Virus:
She even brought on a crank named Norman Doidge to support the Trump COVID Talking Points:
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/norman-doidge
And got Rabbi Richard Hidary to write a “Talmudic” piece on “Tractate Coronavirus,” which gave us the “plague” trope yet again:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/SnVmRWO5JpM/m/AFYcLcKKBgAJ
Newhouse most certainly has her writers lined up like so many ducks in a murderous row.
Leibovitz, a proudly non-observant Jew with strong Straussian Neo-Con tendencies, is all in with the attacks on Cuomo:
“The Governor,” wrote Justice Gorsuch, “has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers ‘essential.’ And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”
Gorsuch, the anti-Merrick Garland, is perfectly “logical”:
Gorsuch's logic isn't hard to follow: If I am, at the moment, free to amble into the wine shop on the corner, chat amiably with Damien behind the counter about the Mets and the latest shipment of Bandols, and take as much time as I’d like fondling Montsants, I should be able to dive into the comparably sized shtiebl two blocks down and pray Mincha. To argue that I may not, Gorsuch concluded, “is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.”
Amen!
And the First Amendment, the majority justices remind us, matters. “It is time,” concluded Gorsuch, “past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.” Amen.
Leibovitz’s paean to the religious radicals on the court is a true PILPUL which refuses to accept that not only are regulations against super-spreader indoor religious events valid means of helping to prevent infection, but that the ability to open businesses under certain conditions is not an infringement on religious freedom.
Religious events, like indoor concerts and other closed spaces where people are in close proximity, are definitely causes of spread:
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-super-spreader-events-reveal-gatherings-to-avoid-2020-5
But the Religious Right wants special treatment, and the ability to spread the death as they please.
Just as their God wants!
It is indeed pathetic that Chief Justice Roberts is once again the voice of reason in a group of primitive juristic barbarians:
“Numerical capacity limits of 10 and 25 people, depending on the applicable zone, do seem unduly restrictive,” he wrote, acknowledging the argument of the religious groups. “And it may well be that such restrictions violate the Free Exercise Clause. It is not necessary, however, for us to rule on that serious and difficult question at this time.”
Leibovitz trashes him anyway:
All this muddle-mindedness took Roberts two paragraphs. Then, it was on to what really mattered: calling his colleagues to task for criticizing him by offering a long, tedious, and semantic breakdown of one relatively minor point. In 2020, sadly, it is not surprising to find a liberal assign more weight to wording than to ideas, but to see the chief justice offer nothing by way of an actual legal stance was dispiriting.
And he sums it up with a truly Trumpist Lysol flourish:
And so, here we are, America: Jews practicing Judaism are cheering on a decision that curbs the unconstitutional and anti-religious petty tyranny of a governor, a decision made possible in large part thanks to a justice, Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by a president many of their co-religionists spent the past four years calling a Nazi.
The Whore of Trump triumphant!
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/U7W2Ah4W4nc/m/lpjPYz5QAwAJ
We are all “People of Praise”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/rot8QAXSvMo/m/VNl3ngo1BwAJ
From this vantage point it is hard to tell the difference between Leibovitz and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fomWxZTWdq0/m/PIk-NtmmAwAJ
It is truly some “Red Hot Catholic Love”!
https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Hot_Catholic_Love
And I am sure that we have not seen the last of the Barrett Bordello Bullying.
She is surely “making her mark”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/us/supreme-court-barrett-gun-rights.html
Our Supreme Court now has its rapists, pornographers, and whores – all dedicated to Jesus.
Maybe it is truly the New Vatican:
Where is Ratzinger when you need him?
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/pope-benedicts-legacy-marred-sex-abuse-scandal/story?id=18466726
While Trump may be dead, Alana Newhouse and her decrepit minions are working hard to keep his nihilistic legacy alive.
David Shasha
The Supreme Court Emerges as a Microcosm of America
By: Liel Leibovitz
Supreme Court decisions rarely make for page turners, but the one handed down last night, siding with Jewish and Catholic groups opposing the draconian restrictions placed on religious services by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is an exception. In just 33 pages, the highest court in the land gave us a thrilling study in how the two tribes that compete for dominance in our ravaged America approach the world.
First, and briefly, the victors. The five majority justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and new member Amy Coney Barrett—dispensed with the notion that the observant Jews and Catholics who petitioned the court were somehow insufficiently zealous in guarding their communities against the pandemic or responsible somehow for its spread. “Not only is there no evidence that the applicants have contributed to the spread of COVID–19,” they wrote, “but there are many other less restrictive rules that could be adopted to minimize the risk to those attending religious services.”
With that, they turned their attention to Cuomo, whose actions, they found, fell far short of sensible.
“The Governor,” wrote Justice Gorsuch, “has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers ‘essential.’ And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”
Gorsuch's logic isn't hard to follow: If I am, at the moment, free to amble into the wine shop on the corner, chat amiably with Damien behind the counter about the Mets and the latest shipment of Bandols, and take as much time as I’d like fondling Montsants, I should be able to dive into the comparably sized shtiebl two blocks down and pray Mincha. To argue that I may not, Gorsuch concluded, “is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.”
And the First Amendment, the majority justices remind us, matters. “It is time,” concluded Gorsuch, “past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.” Amen.
So, that's one side.
On the other, we have, first, Chief Justice Roberts.
“Numerical capacity limits of 10 and 25 people, depending on the applicable zone, do seem unduly restrictive,” he wrote, acknowledging the argument of the religious groups. “And it may well be that such restrictions violate the Free Exercise Clause. It is not necessary, however, for us to rule on that serious and difficult question at this time.”
Why shouldn’t the court intervene in the case of an irrational and unlawful government overreach that may, uh, violate the Constitution? Cementing his self-styled reputation as the Mensch on the Bench, Roberts seemed to care less for the principles at play and more for appearing as the paragon of totally reasonable, very moderate, way trustworthy insider. There really wasn’t a problem, he wrote, because Cuomo—facing heavy criticism—had already changed the rules and dialed down some of the strictest restrictions, and if he changed them again the Jews and the Catholics were welcome to once again embark on the pleasurable and monthslong path of appealing to the court anew. (Gorsuch had already dismissed this argument when he wrote that the court may not “discount the burden on the faithful who have lived for months under New York’s unconstitutional regime unable to attend religious services.”)
All this muddle-mindedness took Roberts two paragraphs. Then, it was on to what really mattered: calling his colleagues to task for criticizing him by offering a long, tedious, and semantic breakdown of one relatively minor point. In 2020, sadly, it is not surprising to find a liberal assign more weight to wording than to ideas, but to see the chief justice offer nothing by way of an actual legal stance was dispiriting.
Roberts was joined in dissent by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
“JUSTICE GORSUCH,” they wrote, “does not even try to square his examples with the conditions medical experts tell us facilitate the spread of COVID–19: large groups of people gathering, speaking, and singing in close proximity indoors for extended periods of time.”
Like Beetlejuice, these medical experts, once conjured, take utter and absolute precedence and dominance over any and all. Having been credentialed, they may, say, argue that because racism is also a pandemic, mass protests are fine while plain masses, the Catholic kind, aren’t. They override the Constitution, and it is a Supreme Court justice’s sacred duty to remind us that once an MD from Johns Hopkins cites an opinion, Messrs. Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, Madison, and Washington better listen. And how precisely might those same medical experts justify the notion that stores remain open and unfettered, permitting the same crowds to gather in similarly sized spaces?
Kagan and Sotomayor don’t answer. They don’t have to, for they’ve one more argument to present. It’s the one that ends all dissent in progressive circles these days, so forceful and unimpeachable is its logic. It is this: Donald Trump is evil.
“Just a few Terms ago,” wrote Kagan and Sotomayor, “this Court declined to apply heightened scrutiny to a Presidential Proclamation limiting immigration from Muslim-majority countries, even though President Trump had described the Proclamation as a ‘Muslim Ban,’ originally conceived of as a “‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.’” If the President’s statements did not show “that the challenged restrictions violate the ‘minimum requirement of neutrality’ to religion,”… it is hard to see how Governor Cuomo’s do.”
If you’re struggling to find any correlation between the two cases, don’t sweat it too much. The idea the two dissenting justices are promoting, put bluntly, is that because Orange Man Bad, we mustn’t worry too much about any infringements by other politicians, particularly handsome Democratic Emmy Award winners seriously considered as presidential candidates in 2024.
And so, here we are, America: Jews practicing Judaism are cheering on a decision that curbs the unconstitutional and anti-religious petty tyranny of a governor, a decision made possible in large part thanks to a justice, Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by a president many of their co-religionists spent the past four years calling a Nazi.
Even more disturbingly, though, today’s decision proves, if any further proof was needed, that the faithful are under attack. But it also showed that they’re newly capable of forming coalitions, however imperfect, with people who hold similar values; and that, in doing so, they’re emerging as our era’s chief defendants of America’s sacred ideals, first and foremost among them the freedom of religion. Their victory gives us all much for which to give thanks.
From Tablet magazine, November 26, 2020