BEING ERASED • “Before Jealousy, Who Can Stand?” (Prov. 27:4)

A Sound File of this essay being read aloud by Apple’s “Samantha” voice can be found at this link.

“Gentlemen, I do not propose to allow myself to be buried until I am actually dead.” – Noah Webster

“Bruce, the only ‘professional’ things about Kol Simcha are your songwriting and piano-playing.” – Joel Chernoff of LAMB (Said during 1990s, when Bruce Cohen was still in Kol Simcha.)

“Everybody knew that the burning force behind this group (Kol Simcha)  was Bruce (Cohen).” – Messianic Jewish Worship Leader, Jerusalem (2005)

“We (Kol Simcha) are asking Joe, ‘when can Bruce come back to lead some rehearsals?’ and, ‘Will he compose any new music for us?’” – Kol Simcha Member, confiding the state of Kol Simcha after Bruce Cohen left the group in 1990.

A colleague’s website from Israel today drew my attention to the YouTube page of “Yossi Bar Negev” aka, “Joe Finkelstein – the former leader of the music group Kol Simcha in which I served from 1978 to 1990.

What I have written here embarks from that serendipitous encounter today with his YouTube channel. With Finkelstein having been caught in, and having confessed to, having done terrible and criminal harms to me, my family, and my workin the early-to-mid-1990s (see his confession document here) ––– it turns out, in 2022, he is still doing those harms. And so …

I model what I write here on the approach King David modeled for us in 1Samuel 26:16-19. When a jealousy-driven madman was doing him relentless harm, and enlisting the sympathy of others with lies, King David stood up with evidence of King Saul’s criminality and proclaimed aloud his royal father-in-law’s guilt openly, in the presence of the entire army serving Saul. I attempt to do the same here regarding the harms Joe Finkelstein has relentlessly been visiting on me since the day I caught his hand in the cookie jar – and held him accountable for it.

It is high time that I – as psychologists call it – “name the frame.”

On or via Joe Finkelstein’s “Yossi Bar-Negev” YouTube channel and its CCM Music daughter-links is available every Kol Simcha album in existence … except one.

The missing album is Dawning Of A New Day – on which the name, “Bruce Cohen” is everywhere: with my having composed 6 of the 10 songs on it, co-produced it, arranged most of it, executive produced it, and played piano on 9 of 10 tracks.

It is for the sole reason of my ubiquitous presence in the sound and the credits – that album has been erased from Kol Simcha’s discography by Joe Finkelstein and his Philadelphian cadre under the Chernoff family and their crew who covered-up for him when a long streak of criminal misconduct by Finkelstein came into the open.

Even now – some 23 years on – I still get hit in the present with the continuation of a decades-long pattern of theft and dishonesty and violence by an unrepentant criminal, Joe Finkelstein – and his political cronies who covered and still cover up for him.

The graphic below is concrete evidence of the extremes of harm-doing, dishonesty, and sinning to which jealousy, and fear of facing one’s own limitations, seem to have driven Joe Finkelstein. “Driven” is not to say Joe is any kind of victim: his choices are entirely his own responsibility.

What you see below are the digital song information files from the most recent CD of the 1988 Dawning Of A New Day album by Kol Simcha. 

There are six indisputable instances of felony copyright theft, with malicious intent to erase my name –– as I will explain below.

The same reason this album is currently (May 2022) missing from the Yossi Bar Negev YouTube Channel with all the other Kol Simcha albums, seems to have also been the reason Joe Finkelstein broke the law, committing six literal felonies for each of which the penalty is up to 5 years in prison and $250,000 fine. Finkelstein, in the Dawning album’s digital files on CD and Internet, stole credit for writing the lyrics and music for entirely Bruce Cohen-originated songs, and gave entirely false credit to himself and the entire group, Kol Simcha, as if my songs were all “ensemble” products of the whole group’s work and creativity. They were not. That “ensemble” impression is an absolute lie.

I should note, I composed most of my many Kol Simcha songs while holding down a full time job as a private-school teacher/chief-administrator and teaching leader in my local congregation; and I often worked in the “wee hours” of the night while my Kol Simcha comrades were soundly sleeping in their beds. My music creation was a passion-and-vision-driven labor of love, and it did not matter to me it had to be crammed into whatever time I could find in an already packed schedule of service.

My devoted late-night composing schedule was especially true in the mid-1980s, when Joe Finkelstein had a nervous breakdown, and I was, in loyalty-driven support of Finkelstein, at all hours of the day and night feverishly creating and then on Tuesday evenings rehearsing Kol Simcha’s members in new songs to keep them from being boredom-driven to leave the group. Finkelstein was barely functional during his breakdown, and was giving no leadership whatsoever to the group, nor was he creating any new arrangements for the group to perform.

Beth Yeshua’s then-Rabbi Martin Chernoff, was deeply concerned for Finkelstein’s survival of a season of personal domestic and vocational disasters that were entirely Finkelstein’s own fault. He was the only elder on Beth Yeshua’s board who was not a “boss” of his own business: he made a try to become a boss by with an unwise investment in a gym business he had no skills to run (“David Health & Fitness”), and jeopardized his retirement funds by so doing; and his family had fallen into a state so unhealthy every voice in his life was pleading with him get professional counseling – which he refused. This is not hearsay: I was in the room with his then-rabbi and elders when the tried and failed to move Joe to get the help he needed. Martin Chernoff told me directly, “Bruce, I am worried Joe can’t handle all this pressure he is not used to. It might give him a heart-attack.” Chernoff asked me if I would be willing with others to give to a fund to help Joe’s failing business survive, which I did. And, I “carried” Joe with Kol Simcha and Chalutzim Day School for a very serious period of time – but this was a great unspoken secret in Philadelphia. No one could mention Finkelstein’s collapse, or my energetic support for him. It was a taboo subject.

WHY NOT “FORGIVE & FORGET?”

People ask me, why don’t you just forget about it and “move on?”

The answer is simple: whenever I do, it washes back up again on the shores of my life, unsought.

As “it” did on 16 May 2022.

I am still being erased.

I wonder if anyone who is not a creative artist can fathom the pain and harm coming from having one’s highly-regarded work-output of over a decade erased – especially, just to prop a criminal’s ego and cover up for his misdeeds.

The Ephesians 4:32 exhortation to us as Believers to “forgive one another as God has, in Messiah, forgiven us” is often misapplied in Two-Testament faith communities to mean, “Just forgive everyone of everything.” The above Scripture points to how God has ‘forgiven us in Messiah’ as the model of our mandate. NO ONE WHO DOES NOT REPENT HAS ANY FORGIVENESS BEFORE GOD “IN MESSIAH.” (Acts 2:38)

Joe Finkelstein has not repented of anything – especially the root causes of what he confessed in 1995 in print (see link here) and verbally to the entire group Kol Simcha when he was caught in his several-year swath of sinning against me by theft and slander and abuse of his office as an Elder in Philadelphia’s Beth Yeshua congregation.

UNREPENTED PAST SINS KEEP DOING HARM IN THE PRESENT

Joe Finkelstein is still erasing an album into which I put some $12,000 of my own savings at a time when I was only earning $20,000 a year as a religious school teacher & administrator; into creation of which I poured countless hours of work outside and inside the recording studio, and more hours and days rehearsing the group in, and “touring” the music, performing with Kol Simcha all over the USA, and from Canada to Israel. Just, erased. 

Any sane soul would ask, “Why?”

WHY JOE DID WHAT HE DID – AND IS STILL DOING

While he had a good ear for vocal harmonizing, Joe was not a music or arts professional, as I was. He was, in fact a low-level industrial chemist by profession. I was a performing artist and writer, by profession and by training in the highest echelons of the American college and theater systems. Joe seemed to have gotten ego-drunk on the place my trained chops earned Kol Simcha, and somehow to have convinced himself it was all coming from him and his leadership of the group. Then I left – and nothing of what I brought remained – and everyone seeing it, and soon complaining about it – and the people in Kol Simcha asking for my return.

Joe’s personality just seemed to have shattered under the weight of the truth.

I was and am being erased. 12 years of my life. Ten-thousands of my invested dollars.

12 years is the same amount of time that took me from Kindergarten to College.

12 years is the same amount of time that took me from my 1st birthday to my Bar Mitzvah.

12 years is 3x the amount of time I spent in Prep School – and again, 3x the time I spent in College.

12 years is the length of time from my congregation’s 1993 planting til my eldest son’s 2005 Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem.

“JUST LET GOD BE YOUR JUSTIFIER”

Believing colleagues often demand of me, “Just forget about it!”

John DeLaughter, who prosecuted Medgar Ever’s murder thirty years after the fact, said very well why dealing out unmet justice is necessary: “There is no time limit on justice.” In addition, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” I say, “Amen.” This is all the more true when an unrepentant harm-doer has not made restitution for his harms done; and is still doing them and/or profiting off them.

As I said above – the harms done and still being done do not forget about me, even into the present.

Passively allow myself be buried while I am still alive?

Passively watch my life and work erased?

Paul ridiculed such abuse-tolerating choices in 2Corinthians 11:20 ––– and Noah Webster said beautifully, “Gentlemen, I do not proposed to allow myself to be buried until I am actually dead.”

Beyond this, the core criminals in these matters are, appallingly, still posturing themselves as “spiritual leaders” and have the gall to stand on stages calling people to “get right with God” while they, themselves, do criminal and unethical deeds as “standard operating procedure.” (See Lamentations 4:12, Zephaniah 3:3-4, Ezekiel 22:26)

People advise me, “Just do nothing, and let God bring justice.”

Well – it’s been approaching 30 years. Why no justice?

Well-meaning, but Scripture-misunderstanding Believers tend to ignore that in Scripture, God reserves only “vengeance” (נקם) for Himself. “Justice” (משפט) God makes our responsibility, and commands us, “Speak up for justice for the orphan and the widow.” (Those without a champion.) The community of faith has mandate from God to “do” justice (Micah 6:8); not just admire it. Rectification of harms done unjustly to other human beings is a job God firmly placed into our human hands. (Deut. 19:19)

Regarding Finkelstein’s horrific deception and theft ––– almost all of Kol Simcha have never written a song in their lives, and none of any who did write a few songs ever obtained the level of standing mine did; songs The Messianic Times newspaper’s Music Section reviewed my songs as having become “… standards, sung everywhere there is Messianic Judaism. If you have been in Messianic Judaism for any length of time, you know these songs. They helped create the entire genre we now call, ‘Messianic.’” (Just click the above Messianic Times link to read the review.)

When Kol Simcha’s quality cratered ––– the clarity that fact brought into the light seemed to drive Joe Finkelstein literally insane.

It was as King Saul reacted when he heard the mobs in the streets singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten-thousands.” Having their ‘junior’ partner’s talents recognized as more seminal and contributory than their own … it drove both men murder-mad.

King Saul spent a jealousy-driven decade trying to kill his son-in-law.

Joe Finkelstein and his Chernoff cover-up crew in Philadelphia have for 23 years now been attempting to render me “dead” for all intents and purposes: invisible and non-existent, past and present; mostly to cover up for Finkelstein’s and their own anti-ethical and criminal misconduct directed at harming and marginalizing me outside due process, allowing Finkelstein to continue in “business as usual” and even be raised into higher office by David Chernoff (Finkelstein’s crimes coming to light just as Chernoff was announcing his elevation into the rabbinate), despite Finkelstein being directly Biblically disqualified from holding any office (Ex. 18:21, 1Tim. 3) – and for David & Joel Chernoff to avoid accounting for their sprees of sinful and/or criminal misconduct covering up for Finkelstein. Bruce & Debi Cohen had to be “disappeared.”

Perhaps the most appalling disregard for Biblical standards in the cover-up occurred when David Chernoff, as lead influencer in the MJAA’s clergy organization, the IAMCS, put Joe Finkelstein up for … wait for it … Treasurer … of the Rabbi’s organization right after Finkelstein had been discovered in – and tried to lie his way out of – several years of theft and horrific and harmful dishonesty, totally disqualifying of Finkelstein for ordinal standing (deacon, elder, or overseer). Chernoff not only ordained him into the rabbinate, but made him an officer among Rabbis! This was a clear effort by Chernoff to cover up Finklestein’s unrepented crimes by piling honors and affirmations over top of them.

That is why “Dawning Of A New Day” is not on the ‘Yossi Bar Negev’ YouTube channel or any of the links embarking from it. 

The name “Bruce Cohen” is ALL OVER that missing album, just as my MY CREATIVE OUTPUT AND INFLUENCE is IN nearly every moment of it. And the next album KS did without me … well … stunk. That is not some kind of pride of mine speaking. It was the reaction I ran into everywhere to KS’s next album after I left: an artistic (and moral) nightmare called, Let God Arise.

When Let God Arise was released (on which Joe deliberately broke his contract (he later confessed) having excluded me with deception and evasion from being in the studio when my songs were being recorded – which was the one specific condition on which I allowed him to use 4 of my songs on that 3rd album) … the result was an album so terribly lower in quality than Dawning that the head of another music ministry approached me after the 3rd album’s release, and asked me, “Bruce, what on earth happened to that new (Kol Simcha) album? It’s terrible!” My reply was simply, “I was not in the studio for a single minute of any session: it was just Joe using my songs (under contract conditions Finkelstein deliberately broke, as he later confessed).”

So – with this link, I here direct you to my “greatest hits” album on iTunes” FALL UPON US NOW” by Bruce Cohen, where you can hear the difference between my and Finkelstein’s studio work.  

The first 10 songs are from my “Kol Simcha” era. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 are from “Dawning.” Tracks 4,7, 8, and 9 are from “Let God Arise.”  In the “Dawning” tracks, you can hear my piano at the core of the music, and my studio-producing all over it.

In “Let God Arise” tracks, all you hear instrumentals an entirely artificial orchestra of Joe Finkelstein’s creation; and Finkelstein plays no musical instrument. I compose, arrange, and play several musical instruments at professional level. So affirmed composer Joel Chernoff in the professional music duo, LAMB: “Bruce, the only ‘professional’ things about Kol Simcha are your songwriting and piano-playing.” When Joel was President of the IMJA, and wrote a letter recommending me for a post as an Editor of the IMJA’s quarterly Messianic Jewish Life Magazine (see letter at link here), he wrote, “Bruce Cohen is an accomplished and popular Messianic songwriter” as one of my qualifications for such a high post of service. Other religious websites affirmed these views. See their links here: MessianicMusic.Com and the UK’s “CrossRhythms.“

If you go on my website to this link for a Live album of KS performances, you can hear Kol Simcha‘s actual vocal quality, and my piano-playing’s place in the group’s performing presence.

At a testimonial birthday party held for me in Jerusalem at the King David Hotel in 2005, a Jerusalem worship leader rose to speak of my career impact. He said,

“Kol Simcha use to play for hours at the summer Messianic conferences, and the Spirit of God was just so powerful and present whenever they did; and everybody knew that the burning force behind this group (Kol Simcha) was Bruce (Cohen).”

Everybody knew … but nobody said. Saying it out loud was verboten. 

However – when I left Kol Simcha in 1990, and the group’s quality sank like a stone, the self-inflating false impression Finkelstein had been propping for years was impossible for Finkelstein to maintain.

When I was no longer in rehearsals, performances, or the music studio ––– His plagiaristic façade was exposed. This, I believe, is what psychologists call, “Narcissistic Collapse.” The false stories one has been telling oneself fall apart, leaving the deceiver visible in his or her actual form. After I left Kol Simcha, it shortly became clear where Kol Simcha’s recording, composing, and performing quality was actually coming from; and where it was most definitely not.

This truth having surface seemed to, like the song about King David’s impact did to King Saul, drive Joe mad. (See 1Samuel 18:7-8)

Having erased my name from my songs on our CD’s digital files, and replaced it with his group’s name Finkelstein was committing a kind of creative-arts theft and murder.

• There is no telling how many $10,000’s of dollars my family has been cost by my music and my musical presence being buried alive.
• There is no telling how much pain and suffering (and lost creative product from it) has gone with the experience.
• There is no quantifying what it means for a creative artist’s trail of credit for his output to be wiped from history. (See a graphic representing some of my 40 years of product contributions, alone, below: this excludes institution-building and service portfolio.

I experienced one example of this toxic ripple-effect of this “erasure” when, in 2000, I was the keynote speaker for South Africa’s National Messianic Jewish “Millennium” Conference at the University Of Cape Town in August 2000.

A leading rabbinic colleague in South Africa told me, “Bruce, I was just recently surprised to find out you wrote so many of those great worship songs by Kol Simcha we’ve been using here in South Africa!” I asked him, since my credits are in the CD’s digital song files, how he could be so surprised. He was not quite sure. So, on a hunch, I dug up my own copies of the CDs and looked at the digital credit files for each song: on “Dawning Of A New Day,” my name had been erased and replaced with “Kol Simcha.” On “Let God Arise,” the files said “B. cohen.” (with small “c”) There was a Chernoff close-associate named “Bob Cohen,” and Finkelstein appeared to be trying with plausible deniability to make it seem “Bob” Cohen – not Bruce Cohen – was the author of those 4 Cohen songs on Let God Arise. The man was so sick with whatever was driving him, he could literally not bring himself to write my name into the credit files of songs for which I was the sole lyricist and composer.

Finkelstein’s entire trail in this is deeply, deeply sick, hateful, and dishonest.

And to this day, it still is. I ran into its ongoing disgusting footprint today, 16 May 2022.
Criminality – the gift that keeps on taking.

Since digital files are forever, all forward presence of my songs via Kol Simcha song-tracks will be with my name erased, and Kol Simcha’s/Finkelstein illegitimately and falsely replacing mine. My 13-year musical contribution to musical and religious history during my Kol Simcha years will be stolen. And I had originated a great deal of impactful inventions in the wider sphere of Two-Testament Jewish faith music as an art form during my Kol Simcha era:

• I was the first modern Messianic Jewish worship instrumentalist to keep playing once a song was over, using the themes to create a framework for extemporaneous worship by the congregation. This came from my Scripture study of worship: especially, the “higgai’yon” mentioned in Psalm 9:16, and “Selah” mentioned elsewhere.
• I was the first to compose a scored worship song with a repeating scored background against which a vocal soloist would “freestyle” in extemporaneous worship. (“Who Do You Know”)
• I was the first to create Broadway show-tune formats combined with broad choral harmonies and classical counterpoint (I got my inspiration from Beethoven’s 9th and Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man for this) for worship-group performances; and including composed spaces for original dances choreographers created for the specific original music.
• I was the first to compose a full classical-style a capella piece: a vocal fugue for SATB chorus. (“V’Ahavtah”)
• I was the first to compose and play worship music driven by high-velocity, percussive piano, as “‘collaborative’ (specifically vocals-supportive) piano.”

When Finkelstein confessed (<– see his witnessed confession link here) to his many jealousy-driven crimes against me (after trying for hours to lie his way out), and only giving up when so much evidence and eyewitness testimony made his lies impossible to continue) he wrote in his confession,

“You (Bruce) certainly always served (in Kol Simcha) nobly and well, and gave us most of our original music.”

But he did not stop there.

He said, “You (Bruce Cohen) have been, above all, a faithful friend.

That, my reader, is an understatement. And the truth of it makes Joe’s betraying harm-doing all the more a crime of “returning evil for good.”

I stood by him during his nervous breakdown when both his family and his career were tanking; and I worked myself to near exhaustion covering for his absence from Kol Simcha (as conductor) and Chalutzim Day School (as the acting principal leading parent-faculty meetings); and when his side-business, “David Health And Fitness” was failing, I gave (not loaned) him $1,000 dollars (1/20th of my entire annual income, when I was not a wealthy man, and he was, as a chemist for a large corporation, earning far more than I) to enable him and his family to survive his side-business’s failure.

For all this across 12 years of sacrificial service – I got a knife in the back from him, when people noticed what the real nature of my and Joe’s contributions in Kol Simcha were.

And approaching 30 years later, in 2022 he is still venally erasing me and my history from existence.

He is an entirely unrepentant sinner and criminal.

WHY WRITE THIS NOW (MAY 2022)?

Finkelstein migrated to the Arad, in the Israeli Negev.

And there, he has wormed his way into the leadership of a congregation in Arad, “Hasdey Yeshua,” despite his being totally disqualified from any position of leadership: and, per Scriptural law, as a proven perjurer, he is not even permitted to be a witness in any matter!

Yet, Hasdey Yeshua leaders will not even take my phone calls or respond to me when I asked to be heard about possible danger in their midst: an unrepentant criminal and harm-doer who turned on his most loyal longterm lieutenant.

I have a Scriptural obligation, if I see danger, to warn of it.

Joe Finkelstein wrote, “You (Bruce Cohen) have been, above all, a faithful friend.”

That statement is signed by Joel Chernoff as a witness in attestation of its truthfulness.

What does Scripture say is the fate of all who “return evil for good?” (Prov. 17:13) What does Scripture say is the eternal destination of “all (unrepentant) liars and cowards?” (Rev. 21:8)

This moral monstrosity is what has sneaked his way into a leadership position in the Messianic Jewish Movement in the Israeli desert.

I owe it to the Israeli Movement to “sound the alarm” when I see danger. (Ezekiel 33:6)

May God protect the Israeli Messianic Jewish Movement from more such harms by this still unrepentant criminal.

May the Spirit of God grant Joe Finkelstein and the Chernoffs “the repentance that leads to (eternal) life.” As it stands now, their having any present-tense or future connection to God and His Kingdom in any way seems by Scriptural standards to be, at the very least, highly in doubt. (Rev. 21:8, 1Cor. 6:9)

Bruce Louis Cohen

16 May 2022

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