Breaking news: Ben Gvir Ascended the Temple Mount yesterday and Guess What – Nothing HappenedBy David Israel and Biden’s Supreme Court Pick Is A Racist Attack On The Constitution By Daniel Greenfield and Akko on March 9, 2022 and Memory Jokes and When Jews Wearing Masks On Purim Were Arrested Under The ‘Anti-Mask Law’ By Saul Jay Singer and The Portion of Tazria this Shabbat when we take out three Torahs from the Ark
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
Ben Gvir Ascended the Temple Mount and Guess What – Nothing Happened
MK Itamar Ben Gvir ascended the Temple Mount morning accompanied by police, March 31, 2022.
Otzma Yehudit Chairman MK Itamar Ben Gvir ascended the Temple Mount Thursday morning accompanied by police. Meanwhile, the police kept all the other Jews waiting at the entrance until Ben Gvir was done. There was great fear of a Hamas attempt to disrupt the visit with violence.
On Wednesday night, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum issued a warning to Ben Gvir "against approaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque," the group's PC name for what Muslims have named for centuries "Bait al-Maqdis," literally "The Temple." Barhoum also warned: "We place responsibility on the Zionist occupation for the impact and consequences of this dangerous, provocative move."
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They care so much.
In response to a question from News 12, MK Ben Gvir said that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did not try to prevent him from ascending. "I am the landlord of the State of Israel," the MK told the cameras. To qualify: he didn't mean that he, alone, was the landlord (Ba'al Ha'Bait) – all the Jews are.
Walking around the holiest Jewish site in the world, Ben Gvir sent a quaint message to the Hamas spokesman: "I suggest you shut your mouth."
"Throughout the night, the Hamas spokesman was threatening me that I was their target so I won't go up to the Temple Mount," he said, adding, "I don't understand why the Hamas spokesman is not eliminated in a targeted assassination. He is a terrorist like all the other terrorists and you don't deal with terrorists in weakness and submission, like adding Waqf terrorists and restricting the number of Jews who can go up to the mountain. We need to stop this because weakness and submission invite terrorism."
The waqf, which is an agency of the Jordanian Crown, will be getting more operative to follow Jews around the Temple Mount to make sure they don't make a blessing on an apple or, God forbid, whisper a verse of Tehilim.
He also noted that the past week's bloody terrorist attacks in Be'er Sheva, Hadera, and Bnei Brak, where 11 Israelis had been murdered, took place well before his ascent to the Temple Mount. He also pointed to the fact that since he had planted his office in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood (a.k.a. Sheikh Jarrah) in eastern Jerusalem some six weeks ago, the Arab violence there has been quelled (mostly because the cops were forced to show to prevent yet another Ben Gvir-focused riot).
Ben Gvir reiterated: "I went up to the Temple Mount this morning to pray and send a message: we must not fold and submit to the threats of the terrorists who want to kill us all. This is our country. The Temple Mount is the most important and sacred place for the people of Israel and we will never give it up."
There was some Arab reaction to Ben Gvir's defiant morning visit. Nour Odeh tweeted: "Ahead of Ramadan, the hyper racist, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians advocate MK Ben Gvir storms Al Aqsa with army protection. Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces raid Jenin, kill a 17-year-old & a 23-year-old, injure 5 others. Occupation is relentless terrorism."
I've always wondered why right-wing politicians must be described by mainstream media as "extreme-right." But "hyper racist" and "Ethnic cleansing advocate" take the slandering several notches higher. The thing is, MK Ben Gvir has done more to expose the truth about both the Arab and Jewish mainstream than even his idol, the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. For one thing, while Kahane was expelled from Israeli politics by right-wing politicians who saw him as a threat at the polls, Ben Gvir has made his way into the right-wing mainstream. Not only is he going to survive, but he and his partners in Religious Zionism are on the way to becoming one of the top four Knesset factions after the next election.
Also, throughout the TV coverage of the last three major attacks, Ben Gvir was on hand each time, as were his followers. Won't it be the sweetest revenge if he is made Minister of Internal Security someday in the not-too-distant future? I'd pay to watch that.
V Palestine tweeted: "The fascist Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir breaks into Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque under heavy protection from the Israeli police."
Yes, "Fascist," that's another adjective the media use to describe right-wing politicians with whom they can't conduct a grownup dialog. But it's safe to say that in the majority of Israeli-Jewish society, following the past harrowing week of cruel and mostly calculated terrorism, "there's nobody here but us fascists."
With Miriam finally off of work we recreate the Acco-Nehariya trip of the previous week with a visit to the Ramhal synagogue and visited the center, a walk around the walls of Akko, and a stay in Naharyia.
The beauty of Israel 03.09-03.10 2022
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto.
The Portion of Tazria this Shabbat when we take out three Torahs from the Ark
The portion of Tazria deals with ritual purity and impurity, beginning with the sacrifice which a woman must bring at the end of her period of impurity following childbirth and including the determination of the Kohen (priest) as to the manifestation of "tzaraat".
Just as in last week's portion of Shemini we learned about a mathematical connection to the portion, we find a similar connection in this week's portion. And here too this connection helps the sofer (scribe) in his exacting work.
In our portion the letter "gimel" in the word "vehitgalach" (Leviticus 13;33) is written larger than usual. The rabbis explain (Tractate Kidushin 30) that this signifies the midpoint of the Torah in terms of verses.
The Torah consists of 5,845 verses. The verse that is the actual midpoint is found in Leviticus 8;8. The verse that the Talmud refers to is 160 verses later!! How are we to understand the discrepancy?
It appears the rabbis were referring to the verse in our portion as to the midpoint of the Torah not in terms of number of verses but rather in terms of large letters!
There are nine verses in the Torah which contain large letters; the fifth one is in our portion. With four preceding it and four following it, this is indeed the midpoint of the Torah with regards to large letters.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TERRIBLE MEMORY JOKES OF THE WEEK
So a 1024MB Memory Card walks into a bar...The Memory Card spots a piano, sits down at it, and starts playing some incredible music. After a number of songs, mostly original, the Memory Card gets up and the bar goes wild with cheers and applause. The bar owner was incredibly impressed and runs up to the Memory Card and says, "Buddy, you were INCREDIBLE! If you come back tomorrow, I'll split the night's till with you!"
"No can do..." says the Memory Card. "I'm limited to one gig!"
Shaindy was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband Yankel. Suddenly, Yankel burst into the kitchen. 'Careful,' he said,
'CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my gosh! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my gosh! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful. CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!'
Shaindy stared at him. "What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"
Yankel calmly replied, "I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving."
If alcohol can damage your short-term memory……Imagine the damage alcohol can do
What did the forgetful skydiver say when he jumped out of the plane. Aw chute!
An old couple was realizing they were losing their memory. They decided they would go to a doctor to see about the problem The doctor said "Well, there isn't very much I can do, but you could try one thing."
"What's that?" They said
"You could try writing everything down, so if you ever forgot something, you would have a reference."
The old couple took this into consideration, though the old man was skeptical.One day, the couple was sitting on their front porch. The old man said to his wife, "You know, I feel like some ice cream. I'm going to go get some."
"Get me some too." The woman said. "Vanilla with chocolate sprinkles."
The man headed in, but the old woman called him before he could fully enter the house and said "Wait, don't you think you should do what our doctor said and write this down?"
"Bah, I'll be fine!" he said
15 minutes later the man returned to his wife with a plate of salad and eggs.
"Ugh!" the woman said. "I can't believe this! I told you to write this down but you refused!"
"What did I forget?" He said
The woman, angrily, yelled to his face"You forgot the toast!"
Berel comes to the doctor lamenting that he is forgetting things. "Yesterday I even forgot where I live, doctor, I got lost. And the day before, I came home from the synagogue and I forgot that I even went there. And a day before, I want to play golf and I forgot about that too…"Oy doctor, what should I do?" the man cried.
"Pay me now," the doctor said.
Jewish proverb: "A Jewish wife will forgive and forget, but she'll never forget what she forgave."
My uncle Chaim is getting older, and he's having trouble with his memory. So he went to his doctor, and he started taking these pills to help his memory. "Hey Uncle Chaim," I said, "what are those memory pills you're taking called?"
"Ahhhh...um....hmmm" he took a second,
"Hmmmm...hold on let me think ermmmm.....it's....daisy? No that's not it....it's petunia? No..no, let me remember...."
"Well is it like....Tulip?" I suggested?
"No, no. That's not it...some type of flower I think"
"Is it rose?" I asked,
"Yes, Rose! That's it!" He exclaimed. Then he leaned his head towards the doorway and called my aunt...."Hey Rose! What's the name of those new memory pills?"
Harold a nice young Jewish Doctor can't find a job in a hospital in the US, so he opens his own clinic and puts a sign outside reading 'GET TREATMENT FOR $20 - IF NOT CURED GET BACK $100.'An American lawyer thinks this is a great opportunity to earn $100 and goes to the clinic.
Lawyer: "I have lost my sense of taste."
Harold: "Nurse, bring medicine from box No. 14 and put 3 drops in patient's mouth."
Lawyer: "Ugh. this is kerosene."
Harold "Congrats, your sense of taste is restored. Give me my $20."
The annoyed lawyer goes back after a few days to try to recover his money. Lawyer: "I have lost my memory. I can't remember anything."
Harold: "Nurse, bring medicine from box no. 14 and put 3 drops in his mouth."
Lawyer (annoyed): "This is kerosene. You gave this to me last time for restoring my taste."
Harold:: "Congrats. You got your memory back. Give me $20."
The fuming lawyer pays him, then comes back a week later determined to get back $100.
Lawyer: "My eyesight has become very weak I cannot see at all."
Harold:: "Well, I don't have any medicine for that, so take this $100."
Lawyer (staring at the note): "But this is $20, not $100!"
Harold: "Congrats, your eyesight is restored. Give me $20"
Biden's Supreme Court Pick Is A Racist Attack On The Constitution
When Biden announced that he would only consider black women for the Supreme Court, the vast majority of Americans rejected racial gatekeeping for the highest court in the land, 76% of Americans wanted him to consider all candidates regardless of their race and gender. Less than a quarter of the country wanted Biden to limit the nomination by race and gender. Even 54% of Democrats rejected Biden's identity politics quotas and only 28% of non-whites were on board with his pledge to reject all other potential nominees based solely on their skin color.
After Biden's announcement that he had chosen Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee, the majority of Americans continue to reject Biden's racial determinism for the Supreme Court.
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When asked to respond to a leading question by a Washington Post/ABC News poll as to whether, "having a black woman as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court would be a good thing for the country, a bad thing for the country, or would make no difference?", the majority, or 48%, correctly concluded that it would make no difference. 45%, a number largely made up of the 78% of Democrats, insisted that somehow Jackson's race would transform the country.
The majority of Americans know better.
The boring truth about Ketanji Brown Jackson is that, like so many other judges, she's just another Harvard grad, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and raised by a prominent attorney. Much like Hollywood trying to make the same old movies and shows exciting by recasting the characters as black, Jackson is the same old judicial activist in a new color.
Biden, who had twice blocked and filibustered the nomination of Judge Janice Rogers, a well-qualified black female judge nominated by the Bush administration, over her pro-Constitution views, and his political and media allies who are even now waging a concerted war against Justice Clarence Thomas, the only currently serving black justice whose nomination they had tried to block, are cynically tokenizing Jackson's nomination as a shining new beacon of racial progress. As if having a black female justice will accomplish something historic that having multiple black male justices and female justices of other races had failed to achieve.
We do know why Biden picked Jackson and it wasn't because of her gender or race. While Biden will no doubt enjoy occasionally leaning in to sniff her hair as he shows her around, the real litmus test wasn't to be found in her skin color or in an examination of her chromosomes.
Biden picked Jackson for the same reason that he fought to keep Judge Janice Rogers off the Court of Appeals which would potentially have put her on a pathway to the Supreme Court.
As legal scholar Jonathan Turley notes, leftists wanted a nominee "willing to expand the meaning of the Constitution without constitutional amendments".
The choice had come down to Judge J. Michelle Childs, who had the backing of not only Democrats, but some Republicans, and of Senator Manchin, because she is a moderate, and Ketanji Brown Jackson who has a history of constitutional violations and abusive power grabs.
Demand Justice, the radical leftist Soros group, which had boasted of "bullying" Justice Breyer off the bench, had ordered Biden to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson instead of Childs.
Biden met with both Childs and Jackson and what he truly wanted to know was whether they would be loyal to the Constitution, or to him, and to the radical leftists standing behind him who want to transform America by perverting the Constitution into a mandate for unlimited power.
As Turley again notes, "Biden stressed that his nominee must follow a 'living constitution' approach, including a broad view of 'unenumerated rights.' When asked if she supported such an approach, Childs answered "no." Jackson, in contrast, has been far more obscure and conflicted in her response."
When it comes to Supreme Court nominees, anything other than a "no" is really a "yes".
Will a Justice Jackson change the Supreme Court and the country? Yes, but not because of her race. Race is the least interesting thing about Jackson and yet it's what we will hear the most about because it is a convenient distraction from her radical and secretive judicial philosophy.
With little in the way of written materials and responses to big picture constitutional questions that have her playing dumb, Jackson is an anti-constitutional trojan horse flying the false flag of identity politics. As if nominating a Harvard grad who happens to be a black woman, as opposed to a white man, is some sort of great step forward for the wretched of the earth.
Biden is not using his court nomination, which his Soros backers at Demand Justice secured by, in their own words, "bullying" a liberal Jewish justice off the Supreme Court, to uphold identity politics. He has militantly opposed at least one black female justice, and was able to choose between two black female judges, nominating the one that fits a radical leftist agenda.
Biden clearly doesn't believe his own rhetoric about the Supreme Court being in dire need of a black female judge. The only ones dumb enough to believe it are MSNBC viewers who gobble up the black nationalist ravings of Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates and cheer Black Lives Matter mobs as they burn down cities every time a drug dealer gets rightfully shot by police.
But identity politics covers up a multitude of sins. Just ask Black Lives Matter, which was able to operate a $60 million fund on terms that would have seen a neighborhood bodega shut down in minutes. Even white Antifa rioters were able to terrorize Portland for a year because they claimed to be attacking police officers and federal officials in the name of racial justice.
Biden has mastered the art of deflecting criticism of his corruption and incompetence by using black women as human shields. It began with Kamala Harris, who was grossly unready to serve in the White House, but whose nomination made a ticket headed by an old white hack seem transformational and whose continued presence makes it all but impossible to remove or bypass Biden from an office that he is equally unfit to occupy on ethical and moral grounds.
The only reason Biden picked Jackson is because he believes that she will be loyal to him, not to the Constitution and to her oath of office. He also expects to sweep away any objections to her radicalism by having his media accuse critics of racism and sexism. And once Jackson taints the Supreme Court with her corrupt presence on the bench, any opposition to her views by the rest of that body, including by Justice Thomas, will also be denounced as sexist racism.
Or occasionally racist sexism, just to shake things up.
Much like Justice Sotomayor, the original "Wise Latina", whose gender and Southern European ancestry somehow endowed her with a wisdom that transcended her poor legal reasoning, Jackson's "lived experience" will be used to claim that she possesses insights on account of the combination of her gender and race that we ought to submit to in place of the actual law.
The good news is that Americans aren't buying it. Polls show that the people are rejecting the racial determinism that is being used to trade away our rights for racial privileges. As the Supreme Court prepares to consider the unconstitutional racial discrimination of affirmative action, most Americans have once again come to believe in a color-blind legal system.
Americans know that what really matters isn't gender or race, it's equal rights under the law.
Biden's selection process and his nomination have been an insult to the very idea of equal rights. Even if he installs his insult on the Supreme Court, it will never change the Constitution.
{Reposted from the author's blog}
When Jews Wearing Masks On Purim Were Arrested Under The 'Anti-Mask Law'
The Daily Graphic engraving depicting the Hebrew Purim Ball at Terrace Garden Theatre in New York on March 13, 1873.
The legal and ethical question of mandatory masking has become one of the great controversies of our day. This is the remarkable story of how a nineteenth-century New York law making public masking illegal led to the arrest of Jews celebrating Purim for wearing Purim masks en route to a Purim Ball in 1868.
A February 10, 1895, New York Timesretrospective describes how Purim was celebrated in the city before the Civil War – which turns out to be not all that different from how we celebrate it today – and, in particular, reports on the origins of the Purim Association of the City of New York (1862-1902):
Prior to the founding of this society, it was a general custom in Hebrew circles in the city to keep open house on Purim Day, and the young people made merry by disguising themselves in all sorts of comical costumes and visiting their friends so attired.
The Purim festival … is looked upon as a sort of carnival day, and even at the present many east side Jews commemorate it by donning all sorts of outlandish masks and dresses. It was this custom that gave the impetus to this little coterie of ten to make this holiday the time for a grand masquerade ball, and from the very start, these affairs became a social event of the season …
Portrait of Myer Samuel Isaacs, founder of "the Purim Association."
This unusual Purim story begins with real estate lawyer, judge, and philanthropist Myer Samuel Isaacs (1841-1904), a Jew deeply committed to both Jewish communal work and to the municipal affairs of New York City. He founded the Hebrew Free School Association, the United Hebrew Charities, the Montefiore Home, and the Hebrew Technical Institute; served as the first president of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and as a member of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; and advocated for the rights of Jews in Eretz Yisrael, Europe, Turkey, and Morocco. He also established Seward Park on the Lower East Side of New York and was a personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt.
However, it was as publisher and co-editor of The Jewish Messenger that he ran an editorial in the paper's January 13, 1860, edition urging that "Purim should be selected as the occasion of a good fancy dress ball, the proceeds to be donated to charity." This idea, based upon the traditional Purim ritual of matanot la'evyonim (giving gifts to the poor), stimulated the founding of the Purim Association, which Myer served as its first president. The purpose of the Purim Association may perhaps best be summarized by the March 15, 1883, Purim Gazette issued years later by the Association:
Annually the Purim Association invokes the aid of the citizens of New York on behalf of some well-deserving charity, and the financial success of the Purim balls furnishes the best proof that the appeals are not in vain. The ever-ready response of the people testified to the deep interest of the community in maintaining all institutions which alleviate suffering and improve the condition of the needy and deserving poor.
On March 17, 1862, in the midst of the raging Civil War, a group of nine or ten (reports vary) wealthy Jewish young men conducted the first Purim Ball, which was held at Irving Hall on Shushan Purim. Over 1,300 tickets at $5.00 each were sold, with the proceeds split between the Jews' Hospital and the Hebrew Benevolent Society. As the celebrants were about to attend the midnight Purim banquet, news came that Union troops had captured New Orleans and that Jefferson Davis had been killed, and the crowd responded with great cheers and the playing of martial music. [Although the Union did take New Orleans, reports of Davis's death were premature, and the Confederate president actually died in 1889 in, of all places, New Orleans.]
Soon after the first ball, which set the standard for those that followed, the group decided to form an organization that would provide social entertainments for charitable purposes. Though the Association was founded by Jews, people of all faiths were invited by its members to attend the balls.
The second ball held at the Academy of Music in 1863 clearly manifested the Association's aspiration to adapt Judaism to American values, as it featured red, white and blue streamers, patriotic music, and a gas-lit sign flashing "Merry Purim." Successive balls were extravagantly decorated and the costumes, though originally mostly of Purim and other Jewish characters, soon spanned the spectrum of American culture. In a March 23, 1864, review of the third Purim ball, titled "Purim: Grand Fancy Dress Ball Brilliancy at the Academy of Music; Our Jewish Citizens in their Glory," the New York Times reported:
… The hall was crowded with a most brilliant assemblage, who entered into the enjoyments of the occasion with a zest seldom equaled; the costumes were very rich and beautiful; the diamonds worn by the ladies magnificent, and in brilliancy almost rivaled the bright eyes of their owners. Among the best of the characters represented were those of Mrs. Partington, Lucretia Borgia, Penobscot Squaw, Chippewa Chief, Joan of Arc, several beauties of the Court of Charles H., the Duke of Buckingham, Faust, a Priest, and several Jewish maidens. Merriment reigned supreme within the hall …
Successive balls were held in notable venues, including the Metropolitan Opera House, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Music Hall, and the Pikes Opera House, which the Association inaugurated at its March 9, 1868, ball (Purim that year fell on Shabbat, March 7). The annual Purim balls proved to be a smashing success and, as news spread about this exceptional opportunity to enjoy a masquerade, each ball increased in attendance and ticket price and became a social recreational highlight for both Jews and non-Jews.
The March 28, 1868 Spectator had this to say about the Purim Ball that year:
What a strange juxtaposition of ideas! – the festival of Purim celebrated by a masked ball, Vashti suggested by the beauty of an American merchant's daughter, Esther dressed as a Parisienne under Louis Quatorze, Mordechai in "pants" and a collar … it is 2,378 years that ceremonial has survived, it is 500 years older than Christianity, and in the newest capital on earth (i.e., New York City) amidst the newest of the conquering nations, it ends in a masquerade.
However, the 1868 Purim Ball became known for a different reason. Under the headline "Arrest of Masqueraders," a news article told the intriguing tale of New York Jews being arrested and incarcerated for celebrating Purim:
Yesterday being the Jewish Purim Festival, with a view of preventing any disturbances in the streets, Superintendent Kennedy issued a general order to "arrest all maskers in the streets." As very often happens, the order was very literally construed in some precincts and the result was that a large number of all sorts of strange costumes gave the cells of several Station-houses a picturesque appearance at an early hour last evening. It is the custom among those of the Hebrew faith to make visits on the Purim nights in fancy dress, and in observing this custom last evening they found themselves pounced upon by the Police and dragged from their carriages into a Station-house.
The matter created so great an alarm that an appeal was made to Inspector Walling at Police Headquarters by the friends of some of the incarcerated, and the Inspector at once sent out an order notifying the Captain that the order of the morning applied only to such persons as should be found walking the streets wearing masks and that they had no authority to interfere with any person riding, no matter in what kind of vehicles. This explanation released all of the imprisoned except several in the South Precinct House who were arrested walking in the streets in fancy dress and wearing masks. Those will be arrested this morning at the Essex Market Police Court.
The most of the arrests were made in the Ninth and Fourteenth Precincts and naturally created much indignation among the captured ones and their friends. During the entire evening, parties made their appearance at Police Headquarters, making energetic protests against the treatment their friends had received while engaged, as they said, in the observance of an annual custom of their faith, never before interfered with by the Police, and never having been productive of any disturbance whatsoever.
Portrait of John A. Kennedy who, as NYC police commissioner, ordered the arrest of Jews wearing Purim masks.
John Alexander Kennedy (1803-1873) was Superintendent of the New York City Police at the time, and George Washington Walling (1823-1891) was known for keeping order in New York City during the Civil War period and for cleaning out corruption on the police force. (Teddy Roosevelt later held that position 1895-1897.)
New York State's "Anti-Mask Law," § 240.35(4) of the New York Penal Law, was enacted in 1845 during the state's Anti-Rent era (1839-1865), when wheat prices fell, the soil became less productive, and many tenants were unable to pay their rent. Organizing against a de facto feudal system under which they were essentially indentured for life to a few plutocratic landowners, the tenant farmers formed bands of "Calico Indians" (their symbol of the Boston Tea Party); disguised themselves in calico gowns and leather masks; used force to thwart the landlords' efforts to serve farmers with process or to conduct distress sales; and used intimidation, including tarring and feathering. They were also responsible for several deaths.
Down-Rent War, Around 1845, a mural by Mary Earley.
The issue came to a head in 1839 when Stephen Van Rensselaer IV, the owner of a 375,000-acre estate in Albany County, demanded payment of back rent and sought to evict the farmers. When law enforcement officers tried to serve the delinquent farmers with legal process, they were assaulted by heavily armed bands, who robbed them of their legal papers, tarred and feathered them, and killed three people, including Under-sheriff Osman Steele, who was shot and killed on Moses Earle's farm on August 7, 1845. Steele was infamous for mocking the anti-renters and, when he rode up to Earle's farm to enforce the auction of Earle's livestock over his failure to pay $64 in back rent, he was met by a band of hundreds of tenants, shot in the gut; and died in agonizing pain a few hours later.
Copy of an 1845 photo of anti-renter disguises published in Delaware, New York.
The rebellion had to be quelled, order had to be restored, and law enforcement officials had to have a weapon to use in identifying criminal masked marauders. Accordingly, New York Governor Silas Wright – who was, not coincidentally, a pro-landowner conservative Democrat – urged the legislature to pass an anti-mask law, and the bill quickly passed both house of the legislature and was signed into law on January 28, 1845.
Although the anti-renters became publicly unpopular in the immediate wake of the murder of Under-sheriff Steele, they ultimately triumphed. Their supporters united to form a powerful and effective political force in the state and in the budding Republican party; Governor Wright was defeated in his reelection bid a year later in 1846, laws were enacted that broke up New York's feudal system, and the two protestors who were convicted and sentenced to death for Steele's murder were pardoned. More than 150 years later, and in accordance with a long tradition of naming K9 dogs after fallen officers, a drug-sniffing German shepherd was named Osman "Ozzie" Steele in 2013.
During the Civil War, the law was amended to exempt "any peaceable assemblage for any masquerade or fancy dress ball or entertainment" to permit landowners to hold the masquerade balls that they so loved. Thus, at the time of the 1868 Purim Ball, the Anti-Mask Law provided that:
A person is guilty of loitering when he … Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities.
Violators of the law could receive a six-month jail term. According to Superintendent Kennedy, the "masquerade or fancy dress ball or entertainment" exception apparently did not apply to Jews dressing up for Purim. However, it is interesting to note that Inspector Walling's understanding of the law seems to be correct; he released the Jewish arrestees who had been riding in vehicles (which are not "a public place") but kept those who had "been found walking the streets wearing masks" locked up.
Purim Association ticket to the March 10, 1887 Purim Ball at the Hebrew Technical Institute. Held a year after the 1886 anti-mask fiasco, no Jews were arrested.
New York enacted the most recent version of its anti-mask law in 1965 as a loitering crime "against the public order," which reduced the maximum punishment to 15 days in jail and was used primarily to halt Ku Klux Klan rallies. When the NYPD denied a rally permit to the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in September 1999 and threatened to invoke the Anti-Mask Law to arrest members who wore hoods at the demonstration, the group sued on First Amendment grounds and argued that the Law was unconstitutional.
Finally, in Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. Kerick, 356 F.3d 197 (2nd Cir. 2004), the United States Court of Appeals (one of the three judges on the appellate panel was future justice Sonia Sotomayor) upheld the constitutionality of the Anti-Mask Law. In ruling that the NYPD was justified in denying an outdoor rally permit to the organization, the court found that the law's history demonstrated that the statute was "indisputably aimed at deterring violence and facilitating the apprehension of wrongdoers" and that it "was not enacted to suppress any particular viewpoint."
Civil libertarians and others complained that the government was selectively enforcing the 150-plus year old law, particularly in 2011, when New York police officers arrested Occupy Wall Street protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, and charged them under the Anti-Mask Law. The law was finally repealed in the wake of Governor Cuomo's April 15, 2020, Executive Order 202.17, which mandated that all New Yorkers wear face masks in public to allegedly help stop the spread of Covid; the state legislature acted quickly and the law was repealed on May 28, 2020.
Now that mask-wearing is mandatory under law, an interesting question is whether Jews wearing masks on Purim this year that cover their entire faces satisfy the mandate. I would argue that it does – although I don't think it's a good idea to test this proposition by walking into a government building wearing a Purim mask! Wishing everyone a Chag Purim sameach, and may this be the last year that Covid is an issue in Purim celebrations.
