By Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen, of Congregation Beth El of Manhattan ©2022

Former Principal of Chalutzim Day School 1984 to 1988

Former Teacher in Chalutzim Day School 1980 to 1988

In 1986, Chalutzim Day School of Philadelphia – the first and largest full time “Messianic Jewish” private school in the world, was going to graduate its first high school class out into college. 

The school had started in 1977 in two basement rooms in Overbrook Park, a western suburban Philadelphia neighborhood right next door to “The Main Line.” By 1986, it had over fifty students, five full time faculty, and a dozen part time faculty, including cooperative programs with local accredited high schools, and a Principal: me. One of our first two graduates had been admitted to an honors program at a prestigious local university: the next year, our one lone graduate would be admitted to an Ivy League college. 

It was an occasion. As I was the main high school teacher and chief onsite administrator of the school, and I had come from a prep school background, it seemed de rigueur that our School’s first graduating Senior Class have a graduation class ring. So, I designed one and had it executed by ArtCarved: “the” graduation ring company at the time.

Our two graduates received their rings, and I got one for myself to mark the occasion. Our first high school graduation. 

My ring was stolen from my rented room in Yohanna Chernoff’s home a few years later, it turns out, by a fellow member of my Philly congregation who had a gambling problem; and I found out later, he had hocked the 18 karat gold ring for gambling money. On my 40th birthday in 1995, my wife, Debi, arranged to have an identical ring made for me as a gift. I have been wearing the reissued ring ever since. 

Chalutzim School in which I served for eight years as a teacher and the last four years concurrently as its Principal – and its host congregation Beth Yeshua in which I served for nearly fifteen years as a musician, teacher, and group leader: have both totally erased me from all memory and mention. So much so, that when Chalutzim Academy had its 30th anniversary celebration, my name was not mentioned even once. I know this from appalled former students who attended the event. A parent of one of the students, when visiting the school during the early 2000s, remarked to me, “You pretty much built that school, and there is nothing in the building to show you ever existed.”

Why?

My wife and I became “whistleblowers.”

We discovered one of the synagogue’s elders – Joe Finkelstein, who is now living in Arad, Israel   had been embezzling music ministry funds from albums in which I was a major investor and co owner, and he had also been committing a malicious and horrific slander spree against me and my wife to cover for his thieving, and for whatever other sick things were going on in his soul. 

Finkelstein had been caught “red handed.” He did not come honorably forward: he had initially mocked the very idea he could be held accountable, and was dragged to accountability, trying to lie his way out the whole way. If he had the “King David” reaction to Nathan proclaiming, “You are the criminal in this story!”    there would be a glimmer of redemptive hope to Finkelstein; but all he did was try to lie and blame shift, and when it became apparent there was no way to succeed at doing so, he folded and just asked how to get free of the situation.

There was copious documentation and were multiple witnesses to all Finkelstein’s criminal and anti ethical deeds. He tried to lie his way out for several hours, but could not. He even tried one very heinous “set up” to make me, as his victim, look bad: but it backfired on him, as members of Kol Simcha came forward and testified to Finkelstein’s full awareness of his own evildoing as demonstrated to them moments before he committed his act of emotional torture on the Cohens: Finkelstein’s crime of literal “sadism.” This act of Finkelstein was a direct abuse of office and abuse of the trusts of Kol Simcha as its director, and of the main stage of the annual international MJAA “Messiah Conference” as a tool for his own sick act of harm: it defiled the holiest of sites in the entire Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) and Beth Yeshua religious calendar year: the main stage at “The Conference” during a worship service with around a thousand or more Believers gathered from all over the world. It was this act of sadism, and all the false witness Finkelstein committed to achieve it, that most fully demonstrated how truly sick Finkelstein was in mind, soul, and spirit. 

As part of a very gracious deal offered to him so he could go on after such a moral morass, Finkelstein wrote out a full confession, signed in attestation as truthful and accurate by the his fellow elder Joel Chernoff, brother of the rabbi of Beth Yeshua, David Chernoff. [See link here for Confession Document]

Finkelstein’s confession not only detailed his misdeeds, but stated directly I had done nothing wrong to deserve such treatment by the obviously deeply unhealthy Finkelstein. It affirmed my standing as a rabbi – the highest ethical standard in the Scriptures – and that I “certainly served nobly and well” my entire 13 year tenure in the music group Kol Simcha that Finkelstein had led, and I had been to Finkelstein, “above all, a faithful friend.”

Finkelstein’s several year crime spree came to light at exactly the same time his rabbi, David Chernoff, had been telling the whole world that “God’s Spirit just keeps on affirming” Joe Finkelstein should be the next assistant rabbi in Beth Yeshua.

David Chernoff was now “out there” in public with his array of statements about God’s Spirit confirming Finkelstein for elevation into the rabbinate (1Tim 3 level “overseer” standing) … when the Scriptures say a man who has been on a 5 year spree of thefts, slanders (harmful untruths) and breaches of fidelity to his lower office should NOT under ANY circumstances be raised into the highest echelon of spiritual ratification: the rabbinate.

David Chernoff’s solution to the above embarrassing dilemma was not, as it should have been, to thank God for revealing an unqualified candidate before he was installed.

Chernoff appeared to have decided that if he used the singular influence he had inherited from his late father, Marty Chernoff, to kill off Finkelstein’s victims’ social and vocational standing in Beth Yeshua and the MJAA/IAMCS, then everyone Chernoff really cared about could go their merry way once Bruce and Debi Cohen were socially and vocationally dead in Chernoff’s sphere.

So, David Chernoff’s solution to Finkelstein’s crime spree was create a new, fantasy version of the Finkelstein Affair in which Finkelstein (the witnessed, on paper self confessed perp) was somehow the good guy, and Finkelstein’s victims (me and my wife) were the villains. 

Chernoff had the evil or insanity or both to tell me to my face in August 1998 in regard to the Finkelstein Affair, “You want to know ‘the truth,’ Bruce? You did it all to yourself.” So, Joe Finkelstein having for several years stolen, lied, lied more, slandered, broke contracts, and even done acts of what could only be called “sadism” – while I was accused of nothing, and affirmed as “above all, a faithful friend” who had “certainly served nobly and well …” –– that all distilled down for David Chernoff  into me having somehow done it all to myself.

Cue music from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

I mean truly, a psychopathological situation. What is that old saying?

“Sociopaths are never, in their own view, the villain in any scenario: they are always either the hero, the victim, or both.”

Most alarmingly, as if to say to the whole world, “Joe did nothing seriously wrong,” David Chernoff not only went right ahead and ordained Joe Finkelstein into an office for which he was Biblically directly disqualified; Chernoff instantly made Finkelstein, a recently discovered financial criminal, the Finance Officer of the MJAA’s rabbinical association, the I.A.M.C.S. The evil and madness of this situation hardly needs explanation. Who would make a recently caught and convicted rapist the dean of a girl’s boarding school? I mean – really, folks.

So – why do I keep wearing my Chalutzim ring?

Isn’t it a symbol of terrible betrayal and abandonment?

Well   yes, it is.

But it symbolizes other, more important things as well.

Firstly, it symbolizes my eight years in the school as a teacher and administrator. I don’t want to allow a liar and apparent sociopath like David Chernoff deprive me of the beautiful array of memories and relationship experiences I had during my eight years in Chalutzim Day School: now named,  “Chalutzim Academy.” Several of my students stayed in touch across the years and even tapped me for counsel into their adult years: I performed the wedding of one of my students after I had become a Rabbi, and officiated at her daughter’s naming ceremony in Jerusalem. I am still in relationship with former students to the present day, and I’ll be damned if I am going to let a pathological liar like David Chernoff take that away, just to preserve his own ego about his mistake elevating Finkelstein (whom Chernoff knew to be a disastrous failure as a father and  leader before he chose him to be a reliable “yes man” in his congregation and in the MJAA/IAMCS as soon as Chernoff could place him in the Exec Committees of those associations).

Secondly, my wife devoted great energy and love into finding the jeweler in Philadelphia who had manufactured my original design for the Chalutzim ring, and got him to reproduce it exactly from my original sketch and spec sheet, which he still had on file when she found him. Her devoted act of love in recovering my stolen treasure for me is as much a part of what I cherish as the school history the ring betokens.

Thirdly – this ring is the only remaining, consistently viewed evidence of the blood, sweat, and tears of my first post-college decade of work: the fruit of not only my own labors in my education, but the three generations of Cohens/Canareks and Garfields/Garfinkels who preceded me. I’ll be damned if I am going to let a low-life like David Chernoff or his crew erase four Jewish generations of dedicated efforts by my forebears to allow me the education and opportunities they afforded me.

So, I wear it still.

For my wife, Debi. For  my students Rachel, Marika, Keri, Ari, Oona, Jamie, Jeremy, Erik, Rachel, Becca, Karen and all the lower grades I didn’t teach directly, but supervised; and for my fellow faculty Linda, Dinky, Sharon, Caren, Cathy, Lynn, my assistant teachers Candy, Mindy, and Kathy and the many others who served during my tenure. 

To paraphrase Forest Gump: “Low life is as low life does.”

From David Chernoff, not honorable acceptance of a mistake which God graciously warned him about in time to prevent: no, instead a heinous cover up by raining harm upon innocent victims: a whistleblower attack, just like the lowest of criminals do to witnesses for the prosecution.

Kill the witness(es), and (accountability for) the crime evaporates.

David Chernoff’s and Joe Finkelstein’s and every other accomplice in their Watergate/Dreyfus style coverup is this: “All liars go into the lake of fire prepared for God’s Adversary and his minions.” (Revelation 21:8)

All means all.

My Chalutzim ring, stolen and then recovered, reminds me of the truth of these matters, as established in due process, documented  and confessed by the criminal himself, witnessed in attestation by David Chernoff’s brother, Joel.

So   I wear it still.

As for “The Perps” in these matters? The Chernoffs, Finkelstein, Jamie Cowen, Russ Resnick, Elliot Klayman, Judah Hungerman, Bob Cohen, and all the perps in this matter face burning through all eternity, unless they truly repent.

May God visit them all with “the repentance that leads to life.”

But that would require that they (a) confess, (b) commit never to repeat their sins (c) pay the price in restitution of harms done, and punitive/community protective steps (like stepping down or out of office).

I don’t know of anyone who believes the Chernoffs and other perps in this matter possess either the genuine spirituality or the humility to take the steps that would lead them to eternal life.

So   in late 2022, as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote in Cats Cradle, “and so it goes.”

The photograph of my hand with my Chalutzim ring on it was taken today, 14 October 2022: the same day I wrote this blog entry. I wear my Chalutzim ring still – even today.

Bruce L. Cohen

New York City • Sukkot 2022/5783

Fear Of Public Shame-Bombing Is Allowing Interest-Group Politics to Ruin Our Democratic Processes

With all the present furor over Judge Ketanji Jackson’s nomination for the US Supreme Court, it seems to me the real main point of the matter is being entirely overlooked in public discourse. 

Presidential-Candidate Joe Biden’s campaign promise “My first nominee to the Supreme Court will be a Black woman,” and his delivery of that campaign promise when actually President, were both literally against the law; as follows:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

United States Code Vol. 42 §2000e Pub. L. 88-352 SEC. 2000e-2. [Section 703]

(a) Employer practices

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer –

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

White and Asian (and Indian and First-American and Inuit and Philippine, and Polynesian)  are “colors” and/or “national origins.” Male is a sex (gender). Those colors and that gender were were excluded from hiring consideration, purely on the basis of their color and gender. Candidate, then President Biden, directly stated so when promising, and when nominating.

President Biden broke the law when making this nomination: Jackson’s candidacy is now too tainted with illegality and political interests to be healthy going forward: it needs to be withdrawn.

Whether or not Judge Jackson might make a good SCOTUS Justice is no longer possible to evaluate dispassionately: she was openly chosen specifically because of her gender and race. We can never know if she is the “best” candidate available now for the job, because so many other possibly-better candidates (per acumen, experience, demonstrated judgement, and character) were preemptively erased from consideration with the twin broad-brushes of gender and race directly illegal, per US Law.

The main reason no one in law or government will say so in public now appears to be because of fear of being “cancelled” – meaning, shame-bombed in public outside due process by use of poorly regulated mass-media. Cries of “racism” and “Jim Crow” are already present, for those merely probing the appropriateness of the candidate: which is the specific job of Congress.

However, citing the law, plainly written on the page in the United State Code (of Laws) is not racism: it is lawfulness. 

Its opposite – lawlessness – would be our highest elected official, our President, nominating someone for the highest legal authority in the land, the Supreme Court, in ways that directly break the law. That would be ethically and governmentally oxymoronic to the point of insanity.

The madness needs to stop.

Candidate Biden made a promise pleasing to his base to get elected. He is keeping it, at least in part, to retain that base for the coming Midterm and next Presidential elections. It was a politically driven choice that broke the law.

It needs to be walked back.

The sole legally-permissible qualification-set for appointment to the US Supreme Court is a supremely excellent record as a jurist, accompanied by a supremely excellent and persistent level of demonstrated character and wisdom in keeping with the legal profession’s standards.

I am not a professional jurist, nor an elected US Representative – so I am not qualified to decide if Judge Jackson is a good choice for The US Supreme Court; and most voices I have heard speaking on the issue are not qualified to do so, either.

However, per USC Title VII, a candidate’s gender, race, or religion are illegal as considerations when choosing a candidate. Illegal. That is clear.

What would the reaction have been if Candidate Biden had promised in 2019, “We’ve had quite enough White and Black Christians in American government: my first Appointee to the US Supreme Court is going to be an Asian or Indian/Pakistani Buddhist, Hindu or Sikh.”

The outcry would reach the heavens.

The outcry would be, “Title VII makes religion, color, or national origin illegal as considerations!” 

That outcry would be correct.

It is time for the President and the Congress to keep their oaths of office.

So says this one citizen.

i24News Israeli Network Shows Unbiased Journalism Is Still Possible. Their motto: “Stories without commentary or arguments, presented expertly by excellent journalists.”

The American journalism profession seems to be in ruins.

There is very little reportage now: there is event-exploitation to advance a political faction’s agenda; and journalists who have dubbed themselves “experts” speak individually or on panels, tell viewers immediately what the news means, and what they should think or feel. Journalists freely tell the viewers what they – the reporters – think.

What a reporter thinks has never been, in journalism, something an audience should hear, except in carefully-labeled editorial segments, offered in extremely limited quantity. Albert Brook’s brilliant 1980s satire, Broadcast News, about the oncoming showbiz-driven news industry replacing classic reporting, shows a new “spokesmodel-type” News Anchor (a great-looking, great-sounding guy who barely understands the news he is reporting) telling an audience while forced momentarily to ad lib during a crisis, “I think we’re all ok.” Hearing this, the Chief Editor in the production booth mutters to himself, “Who the #$%& cares what you think?”

However – now in America, we are living in a 50/50 divided nation.
The Left tunes into CNN for their news; and The Right goes to Fox.
Their call-letters may as well be WDNC and WRNC.
There is no more news: there is faction-support and agenda advancement. News events are carefully spun to advantage the agenda of “The Side.”

The Left says the Right (mostly not-of-color Majority Supported) Wing is alleged to be greedy and evil, and only wants to preserve undeserved wealth and “white privilege” at the expense of equally-deserving people who have not as much – even if those people are illegally in The United States. At the bedrock of these politics is simple desire for enough stuff for oneself and one’s loved ones or “crew.” The desire is understandable, which is why among the “inalienable rights” the US Declaration of Independence assigns to citizens is “the pursuit of happiness.” Not happiness, itself – but an even-playing field for pursuit of (effort to obtain) happiness. Many minorities are unhappy with the size of their slice of the financial pie at present, which they allege is conspiratorially maintained unjustly small in contrast to the size others have: they called the possessions others than themselves have, “privilege.” This “white privilege” must be erased, and be replaced with an even distribution. This is deemed a righteous crusade.

The Right says the Left Wing (having adopted a role as Of-Color Minorities Advocate), is coming for instant affluence (happiness itself, in the form of affluence, without the “pursuit” obtain it), which they say they deserve right now, Those who “have it” now (often as the result of multiple generations of work starting from the bottom up) should be compelled by taxation to give away to them serious percentages of the fruits of often multigenerational labor, to be redistributed by the government to people who have not worked across generations, as previous waves of immigrants did to earn what they have. BLM Co-Founder Patrice Cullers said it overtly on CNN a few years back, when asked by a Caucasian reporter what the solution is to the race problem in America. She replied instantly, “You all gotta give away some of what you’ve got to us.”  This is, to the Right, a typical “transfer of wealth” socialism that has historically been typically accompanied by the heads of affluent people being marched through the streets held aloft on pitchforks. The Right is afraid, and calls what they are doing, protecting American values.

Each side seems to hate the other.
Each side’s news organ seems bent on convincing their viewers The Other Side is pure evil.

And on “The News” in America – these tropes are nearly all you hear all day and all night.

Then – i24News surfaces with the motto, “Stories without commentary or arguments, presented expertly by excellent journalists.”

Watching i24News is like drinking purified water after years of being forced to drink water polluted with bitter-tasting Red or Blue dye.

For the first time in years, I felt like I was again watching Walter Cronkite, or Huntley/Brinkley. News being reported by journalists; not political indoctrination or Jerry Springer-style cockfighting with people shouting each other down in mid-speech.

I say again, the self-appointed New Priesthood of journalists, who present themselves as “experts” rather than interviewing genuine advance degree-holding or highly-experienced experts as they used to do, is using their bully pulpit to enfranchise themselves into niches of influence, advance their agendas, and subdue their adversaries, proffering as support their own opinions or those of fellow-journalists, who they introduce to audiences as “joining us to provide expert commentary.”

Social Media giants are joining the fray with editing/suppression of stories all the way to-cancel-culture removals of people, and even whole platforms, not aligned with their agendas.

The Left, fresh from electoral victories and President Trump’s massive January 6th miscalculation, is alleging 70 million Rightists who voted for Trump are as directly connected to the mere dozens to hundreds who abandoned an entirely peaceful protest by 10,000s in Washington, to invade the Capitol building and start The Capitol Riot. There seems to be a serious effort in progress to entirely disenfranchise the Right as having any remaining legitimacy in any corner of the political world.  Statements from Left influencers like Prep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) demanding “lists be made of anyone who ever supported Donald Trump” are not helping quell Right nightmares about political purges headed the Right’s way.

The Right, still sore over the Left Press’s total suppression of any reportage of the FBI’s in-progress Hunter Biden investigation for influence-peddling in collusion with his father Joe and other partners until after the election, is crying out, “Censorship! Leftist-Socialist jihad coming our way! Time to suit up! Socialists are coming for us and our stuff!”

Civility seems gone.

The Right says the Left has gone entitlement-absolutist and insane.

The Left says the Right has gone totally greed-protective and evil.

And on “The News” – these tropes are nearly all you hear all day and all night.

Then, there is i24News is leading the way by example.
They are peacefully showing genuine journalism is still possible.

The Newspeople are not “the story.” The story is the story. The Newspeople are to report news: not teach the masses their own opinions. The words, “I think” and “I feel” – now business-as-usual for telejournalists – words unspoken by Murrow or Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley or Peter Jennings, except in brief, non-routine editorials for extreme circumstances – are not spoken during i24News.

As I’ve been typing an edit of this article, I have had i24News playing in the background, and in the 45 minutes I have been listening, I have not once heard a single reporter say even once, “I think” in any form, nor have there been any dueling commentators shouting each other down and hurling their talking points at each other to score with the audience. Just news stories. Think of it! Just news – and occasionally, genuine experts or involved leaders being interviewed when their output is relevant. My soul is going, ahhhhh with relief.

The reporter is not the story: only the story is the story. The reporters are not telling you what they think: they are reporting what they have seen, or heard, or have confirmed through an eye-witness or interviewed expert happened.

Hallelujah – a word from the language of the nation hosting i24News
Here is Israel being a true “light to the nations.”

Here is hoping the American nation’s journalism profession sees the light, and comes out of agenda-propulsion mode, to recover the holy, necessary, and profoundly ethics-bound vocation of properly functioning journalism.

As the old prayer goes, “May it be speedily, and in our days.”

Bruce Louis Cohen
13 January 2021

How The 2021 Post-Election Quarrel Can Be Evaporated

By Bruce L. Cohen, 6 January 2021 • Opinion

It could all be so simple.

It’s the bombast that has to go. Both Parties need to stop yelling and start providing.

Evidence any side has for any gripe needs to be provided in open, unbiased due process.

That is quite literally all that is needed.

Republicans cry, “Fraud!”

Democrats yell as often as possible in mass-media, “There is no evidence.”

Republicans are shouting back, “There is evidence: we cite it, and you won’t publish it! You just keep saying on CNN “none exists.”

Democrats scream, “But there is none! We say so! And Trump won’t concede because he’s insane!”

Republicans counter with, “Stacy Abrams lost in Georgia for Governor years ago, and she has still not conceded that election! Where’s the objective standard, right for all Parties in all seasons?

Democrats deflect with, “That’s changing the subject!”

Republican FoxNews adds more fuel to the fire with, “The Hunter & Joe Biden Influence-Peddling Evidence and Scandal was kept out of the news by a left-leaning media conspiracy!”

CNN & MSNBC retort, “Getting back to how crazy the President is for not conceding …”

Fox parry-thrusts with, “Hunter Biden’s partner came forward and filed and affidavit under oath, just like Ramsey Davis came forward during the Chicago Seven trial, that Hunter took pay for play over and over again, and Joe Biden was involved and aware.

CNN reacts, “That’s not evidence,” and refuses to investigate.

The Right deals back, “See! Evasion of journalistic responsibility for one Party’s benefit!”

The Left answers, “There have been hearings, and the ballots have not been proven invalid!”

The Right rejoins, “The envelopes that should have been affixed to the ballots were thrown out, so there is no way now to differentiate an on-time or valid-address ballot from a late or fake one!

President Trump returns to the central fray, “There is massive fraud, and we have shown the evidence, but you won’t report on it to the American People!”

The Left counters, “There is NO evidence.”

And on, and on, and on the name-calling melée goes.

President Trump’s “Save The Country” Speech given at 12 noon today (6 January 2021) is a good example of the sheer waste of time and resources, and insult to rule-of-law, the shouting-match approach is. The President showered a crowed with allegation after allegation of specific frauds he was charging in specific locations at specific times. Those charges should have been provided to the appropriate judicial, administrative, and/or or law enforcement entities set by law in our Government.

At the exact same time, Vice President Michael Pence was issuing a statement that after rigorous study of our Constitution and history, it is clear that for the Vice President of one party to use his position as President of the Senate to void Electoral College votes would “run counter to the entire Constitution and history of our country, whose Founders dreaded abuse of power by interested parties. The Presidency belongs to The American People – and their duly-elected representatives should be the ones to sort out the nature of any given Presidential election.” Bravo, Mr. Vice-President, for discharging your duty in line with your Oath of Office.

Enough of the back-and-forth. Here is a simple pair of steps toward solution.

CNN needs to hire and assign Right-Leaning journalists to the Hunter/Joe Biden Influence-Peddling story, either to support or debunk it with clear investigative reporting according to the standards of the journalistic profession.

FoxNews needs to exhort the President and his Party to present their evidence as to Election Fraud or Biden Corruption in open hearings to the People Of The United States (via tv-broadcast Congressional hearings) – contrary to the game run by Congressman Adam Schiff (D – Calif), who in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, kept claiming he had clear, objective, incontrovertible evidence he had seen with his own eyes … but never presented it, and ended up being shown clearly to have lied about its existence … 

In sum: the Right Side Fraud Claimers need to put up or shut up.

And, the Biden Influence Scam evaders on the Left need to summon the journalistic integrity to do their jobs without passion or prejudice, so the American People can see clearly if the Hunter/Joe Biden Pay-For-Play story is real, or mere diversion.

It could be so simple.

However – one thing should easily be common value ground for both Parties. “The Big Lie’ Technique pioneered by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels – “tell a lie so loudly, so brazenly, and so often that people simply stop resisting it and accept it as true” – should not be adopted into the business-as-usual playbook of any American political party.

One citizen’s thoughts, who has spent his four-decade vocational life as a culler of meanings and truths from abstruse documents and complex situations.

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

6 January 2021

Raising Whining To An Art Form

And Trampling The Constitution At The Same Time

I have been silent for some time about the present political atmosphere in the United States during the pre-election frenzy – but the recent actions of The Left after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg have risen to a new low (sic): mass violation of the oaths of office of public officials having sworn to “preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States.”

Before I proceed, let me say I am “Pro-Choice” with sane medical and ethical limits. I am a Moderate, with views peppered with aspects of both Conservatism and Liberalism: call me a “Liberative” American. I don’t fit into any specific box on a category list. So, I am not writing this because I favor the current Administration, or its Opponents.

The politicians presently working the American public with sentiment-based appeals to postpone selection of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s successor to the Supreme Court bench, such as Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chuck Shumer, are making statements that the President has “sunk to a new low, not respecting the dying wish of a great American woman.”

No American elected official, or high Appointee of such an official, gets to pick his or her own successor. That is how dynasty is created, which is why the Founders and Framers did not allot such a power to anyone. The Constitution of the United States reserves that right for The People of The United States, who make the choice during elections.

In sum, the US Constitution provides that a Supreme Court Justice is appointed by The President, and the Senate is to advise and consent. An approved Justice serves a term for life or retirement at his or her own discretion. 

Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life ended a few days ago. Her term ended when she passed away. What are the two Democratic Party arguments the current President and Senate should not appoint her successor until after the coming Election?

1. The President and Senate are too close to an election that might replace them, to make such an important choice.
2. Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s alleged dying wish was that she would not be replaced until after the coming election.

Both arguments are short work to nullify.

Firstly, there is nothing in the Constitution saying a President and Senate should stop thinking of themselves as President and Senate at some arbitrary barrier point on the timeline before a Presidential election. The line of thought is purely self-serving rationalizing in defiance of the direct prescriptions of The Constitution.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter was in a flurry of fully presidential action until mere minutes before Ronald Reagan took the Oath of Office; and Carter was a one-term lame duck at the time! Talk about “lack of mandate!” Carter was acting to rescue the lives of the hostages held for 444 days in Iran. He was fully Presidential until 12:01 on Inauguration Day for Ronald Reagan.

Senator Schumer said as recently as 21 September, “This President and Senate have no right to fill the vacancy.” This is nothing more than a lie.

It is, according to the Constitution, their duty to fill the vacancy. Not merely their right – their duty. They took oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution of The United States.”

Secondly, to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s alleged dying wish – “alleged” because we only know of it through the reportage of her one granddaughter’s testimony that Ginsberg said it.

Imagine President Trump being stricken by Covid 19 and dying mere days before the election: and being alleged by Ivanka to have said just before dying, “My most fervent wish is that Mitch McConnell would succeed me as President.” 

The President does not have the Constitutional right to pick, or even influence the choice of, his successor: that right belongs to The People of The United States, who picked his successor during the last election: the successor is the Vice-President of The United States; and if there is an election, the successor is whoever The People of The United States elect.

Justice Ginsberg is a great loss to The Left. That is no joke.

Yet – she does not get to pick her successor; and there is no ethical mandate to follow her wish; and there is the solid anti-dynastic concern of the Framers to countervail such a dying statement, if it was, indeed, spoken.

However, there are fully Constitutional remedies available to the Left: the Senate (presently Republican) advises and consents to the presently Republican President’s choice ––– but, The House of Representatives sets the number of Justices on the Supreme Court.

If Joe Biden wins the coming election, The House can increase the number of Justices from nine to eleven –– and Biden can then appoint two liberal lions to replace Ginsberg.

The real fear among the Democrats is that if the coming election ends up before The Supreme Court as did the Bush v. Gore election – a Republican majority on The Court bodes ill for Democratic hopes of victory. This seems the real reason for the Democratic sentiment-barrage, more so than fears of loss of Roe v. Wade.

I would say to the Democrats – who represent a goodly number of my own platform ideals: please stop acting like low-life schoolyard kids in a “snap-fight” – and start acting like educated, rational adults seeking to enfranchise crucial ideas that might literally have the fate of the human race in embedded in them?

We can continue to labor for “a more perfect Union” ––– without resorting to maudlin appeals to sentiment in defiance of the direct prescriptions of our Constitution – or whining.

Please –no more of the whining from people presently out of power.

If you want to be in power in the United States, you simply need to figure out how to get your side elected by The People of The United States.

We, The People, are right here. We will vote. Convince us.

To get a majority of our votes for sound reasons, you must convince us your ideas are better than those of your political opponents. It is as simple as that.

I emphasize “political” opponents, because we are all on the same side: the American side. I echo the dying wish of the recently passed Senator John McCain, who pleaded for both houses of our Congress to “return to the normal order of business” – in which both Parties call the people of the Other Party, “my fellow Patriots across the aisle” and “my Learned Opponents.”

In the Two Testaments of the Bible – the “spirit of confusion” is when people on the same side fight each other instead of their true enemies. And the New Testament delivers the caution, “Take care that you not bite and devour each other, lest you fully consume each other.” If every Democrat and every Republican destroys their counterparts – no functional version of America may survive.

Let us not forget: The United States of America’s constitutional republic is still “the last, best (governmental) hope of humankind.”

Bruce Louis Cohen

22 September 2020

New York City

Is CoronaVirus The Earth’s Biosphere Rising To Protect Itself?

The map above from Space.Com offers a staggering Climate policy related idea. China’s pollution footprint has, within mere weeks, dropped to “Green New Deal” level advocated change: and CoronaVirus is the cause.

The earth, itself, may be shouting a violent and effective “Amen” to Greta Thunberg’s mantra, “Business as usual is no longer moral.”

In Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone, covering the Ebola Zaire outbreak that made a path from the remote Kitoum Cave in Kinshasa, Zaire to Reston, Virginia, where it was literally one wall away from becoming a pandemic in the USA –– Preston closed his book with what seemed a whimsically poetic epilogue.

Preston said it seemed to him when humankind invades too deeply into the earth’s body, the earth hits back with a response not unlike the human body releasing antibodies to attack the invaders.

Greta Thunberg and “The Green New Dealers” have been shouting that massive and immediate change is the only choice that would leave a reasonably habitable earth behind. In response, the major political parties are choosing business-favoring candidates for the economy’s sake on the Right – and either moderates on the Left, or multi-front radicals who want to change every trait of the Western capitalist economy, and climate change is the proverbial tree lost in the forest of change-everything-now tirades.

CoronaVirus has, in a very focused way, forced the very kind of air-pollution change at the needed rate of implementation, to which human desire for “business-as-usual” has been the biggest obstacle. 

Coincidence?

My bailiwick is Biblical exposition. I cannot help but think of where the text of the New Testament records Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth speaking of the distant human future with this observation: “Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved.” (NT Mark 13:20) We also see in Genesis a bargain between the patriarch Abraham and God, in which Abraham wrangles a promise from God that “if there are ten decent people found in two vast cities (Sodom and Gemorrah), I will spare everyone.”

It seems perhaps there may be enough decent – but politically powerless – people, so that some kind of dread champion is rising on their behalf to rescue the many from the greed of the few.

I would not want this view to diminish in any way the pain felt by the loss of any individual lives to this new pathogen. This essay’s focus is to highlight the recent, incredibly accelerated rate of change in China, in stark contrast to the kind of attitude Greta Thunberg has been facing mere weeks ago.

We see the same mañana attitude expressed in an earlier era’s events in Biblical text where King Hezekiah reacts to the prophet Isaiah’s forecast of long-term disaster for Israel resulting from the King’s policies with the following self-serving conclusion: “Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good, because” he thought, “at least there will be peace and truth in my days.”

Politicians in their 70s will not be facing the consequences of the industrial pollution decisions of today: their children and grandchildren will. Greta Thunberg will.

And now – the earth herself seems to be shutting down their self-serving, short-sighted “business-as-usual” preservative approach to climate change.

China’s industrial juggernaut has been decked by a perfectly-aimed punch, and is on the ground: business as usual is as impossible for them as it was impossible for Sonny Liston to rise from the blow Muhammed Ali landed on his jaw.

(Above graphic from: Space.Com)

Tourism (made possible by travel via fossil-fuel driven air and land vehicles) is contracting to minuscule percentages of mere months ago.

Business, itself, in-person gatherings are being reduced to absolute necessity, and virtualized or cancelled and done via digital means: the resulting decrease in fossil-fuel based travel of all kinds is beyond immediate calculation.

Hand washing and basic sterile habits are becoming an obsession everywhere in the world.

And more.

In other words – virtually everything The New Green Deal would have wanted to accomplish in China, and possible around the industrialized world, is being compelled by the earth, herself, to be done NOW – not later, and not incrementally: now.

Coincidence?

I remember thinking when reading Preston’s Hot Zone, that his epilogue, while seeming too poetic to be real – had something pulsing underneath it that rang, somehow, more true than mere rhapsodic rumination to give a non-fiction book a good closing cadence.

CoronaVirus may be whatever Higher Power in which you may believe – whether Deity, or some kind of embedded self-preservation engram – rising up and saying to humankind, “The earth is not here ‘for’ you. You are only part of its community: and your intelligence does not entitle your short-sighted greed to poison it for all its other tenants.”

The thing about viruses is – they are immune to political sophistry and economics arguments.

And – when they vote – the ballot they cast is devastating to the human status quo. They simply don’t care.

In a dreadful irony, the meaning of CoronaVirus’s unspoken voice seems to say: “This is good for me (the virus) now: and I simply don’t care that what is good for me makes something horrible happen to you.” The fact this horrible thing happening to us might actually save the entire biosphere from extinction due to our activities makes for a fascinating karmic contemplation – and, this author hopes, an effective cautionary tale to prevent the future from merely reiterating the past, once the crisis has passed.

Bruce Louis Cohen 4 March 2020