Mar 13, 2020
What can your rabbi possibly add to all the Niagara-like cascade of conversation on coronavirus? I’m not a doctor, so what can I possibly say that would meaningfully add to the diarrhea-like deluge of drivel clogging the Internet. Well, let’s really creep into the core of corona, using not only education and intelligence but also wisdom. Let’s dive to the depths of the disease. What does the Golden Calf of the Book of Exodus have to do with corona? Let’s start with the difference between education, intelligence and wisdom. When you think intelligence, think the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder of 1924. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke about shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. What he meant was that if you were in that theater, you were in far more danger of being trampled to death than by being incinerated. What is driving the current fear, panic, & hysteria about Corona? Who exactly is yelling “Fire!” and why? Remember the fear and panic about Y2K in November 1999? None of the terrors actually materialized. Remember the hysteria about the swine flu “pandemic” in 2009 and the Ebola hysteria in 2014? No? Oh, that’s right, there wasn’t any! Know why? Because the name of the president at the time started with an “O” not a “T”. Talking of O, remember his war on “for-profit” universities? Socialism spurns education for profit and all else for profit. Even medicine. Especially medicine must be governmental. Which brings us all the way back to the corona crisis.