The Nicole Factor

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

#WednedsayWhyNot: just a little request if you’re thinking about holiday gift ideas

Monday, November 23, 2020

Commentary: A 7,000 Wedding Attendance and Piku’ach Nefesh—Plus the Constitiution

Recently, a Haredi sect known as the Satmarim committed a chillul HaShem. They also violated a perfectly-Constitutional ordinance. Of course, the past Anti Semitism of Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York did and does not help mattersⁱ—in other words, the Satmarim and other critics, whether rightly or wrongly, couched his criticism of the 7,000-attendee wedding as Anti Semitism.

Regardless of Governor Cuomo‘s motives, he is absolutely correct in this case. When there is a state of emergency declared, everybody needs to follow the regulations that do not specifically go against the constitution. There is nowhere in the Torah that says that 7,000 people must be at a wedding for it to be a valid wedding ceremony, the State of New York is therefore not violating others’ First Amendment rights. In fact, Torah requires that only two or three faithful and truthful witnesses are needed to establish any matter; so, that the Satmarim did not have their rights violated in any way is obvious on that count alone. Besides, they violated the principle of piku’ach nefesh—which both the mitzvot of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self and choosing life cover.

Seeing that to be the case, then, any law-abiding judge would rule, “Your own Scriptures require no more than three witnesses to establish a matter. The Constitution, meanwhile, talks about providing ‘for the general welfare’, and you have a related principle known as ‘piku’ach nefesh’—or the ‘sake of the soul’. Because of this, I hereby rule that the State of New York neither prohibited your free exercise of religion, nor infringed on your right to peacefully assemble, nor denied nor disparaged your rights in any other way—and this is notwithstanding the governor’s alleged motives based on his past conduct.”

ⁱNeither has his current Anti Semitism:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Well, if Governor Cuomo wanted to confirm that his motives for decrying the Satmari wedding were partially or entirely Anti Semitic, he confirmed it 😕. <a href="https://t.co/ink4CJMlNO">https://t.co/ink4CJMlNO</a></p>— N.V. Mara Czarnecki (@Nickidewbear) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nickidewbear/status/1331007442340212740?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 23, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>