How Ethics of the Fathers Restored my Sanity

How Ethics of the Fathers Restored my Sanity

I’ve had an interesting past few months with the new vaccine obsessions. Till a year ago, I’ve gone my merry way, choosing to mostly hold back on the childhood vaccines. A couple of my children had and still suffer from a vaccine that we felt compelled to give, so no one bothered me about my decisions.

When the measles scare began, living nightmares abounded. Mothers wondering if they should pull their babies out of my daycare, and the ensuing arguments, schools notifying their unvaccinated children that they were no longer welcome there, a few rabbis announcing on Facebook they’re expelling certain congregants for the greater good, my children being kicked out of a special international competition for which they’d been preparing for half a year on the day before their flight, and the ones that should have protected them endorsing that move instead of defending the young students. Though I was only directly affected by some of these, seeing other people endure mistreatment is sometimes harder because one feels helpless. At least when it’s you, you can lobby, write letters, feel like you are doing something to help yourself.

I am putting my whole discussion about vaccines and measles at the end of this article at the P.P.S. so that if you don’t want to read it you can just ignore that part!

Because actually, vaccines is not the point of this blog entry. My point is I was stressed. Very stressed. With my own children going through this, with my friends’ children going through this, with the hatred and fear expressed when my children all got chicken pox recently (don’t worry, we stayed at home, safe and secure!), and with the very sad stories of people claiming to do what G-d wants by bodily throwing others out of their places of worship because they dared to disagree with the director’s medical opinion. (I do understand the fear of catching the measles, but statistically you are no more likely to catch the measles from an unvaccinated individual who doesn’t have the measles than from a vaccinated individual who doesn’t have the measles.)

So… what did I do with my stress? Well, it was Shabbat, our day of rest. I read the customary chapter of the Ethics of our Fathers that we read at this time of year. And it all just spoke to me! It soothed me, balanced me and held me tight in a world toppling over by a storm.

Here are some of the words that stuck out:

“Which path should one take? What is honorable for himself and also to other people.” My personal lesson: Be pleasant, don’t fight. Be true to myself, but also pleasant at the same time.

“Beware of those in power because they befriend a person only for their own need but will not stand by a person in their hour of need.” (This helps me in my conviction to protect my children, because although authorities push me to vaccinate, not a single one of them will assume responsibility if there is any side effect. We would be the ones grasping for air, with no acknowledgement at all that vaccines caused it!)

“Don’t separate from the community and their needs.” This doesn’t have to mean to follow the crowd, it can mean, feel for them, and don’t abandon them!

“Don’t trust in yourself till the day you die.” My lesson: be humble and open minded about this!

“In a place where there are no leaders, try to become one!”

“Hillel said to a floating skull: ‘Because you drowned others, you were drowned. And those who drowned you will also be drowned.’” This reminds me not to join the evil and mean side of the battle. Like in the previous saying, try to be a decent person even if others aren’t!

“Go and seek a good path in which a person should stick to …Rabbi Elazar says: a good heart…” Be gracious and kind. A good heart includes everything! I can stop judging and I can trust this will all blow over. I can realize people have a lot on their plates and don’t have the time to really think this through. Also, it’s so hard for people to break from their belief systems, even if flawed.

“…the path to distance oneself from is… a bad heart.” Yes! Thinking badly about others, even if I’m right, is just so bad for everyone! Especially myself! And… I wasn’t born to fight! This is draining the life force out of me!

“A bad eye, and fulfilling evil temptations, and hating people… destroy a person from this world.”

“All your deeds should be for the sake of Heaven.”

“Don’t pray out of habit, make it a heartfelt plea.”

“Know what to answer to an apostate, to one who mocks belief in G-d.”

“You don’t have to finish the work but you’re not free to stop trying.”

In other words, be a good person! (I’m talking to myself!) Don’t judge, be kind and generous even if they are wrong. Be humble and know the answers, and don’t give up trying to help others. Realize the last verse of the chapter—“Know the righteous receive their reward in the World to come.” We are only asked to do our best! And our efforts for a higher cause will not go unnoticed.

Thanks so much for listening!

Nechama Dina Smith

P.S. For anyone trying to destress from this (or from anything else!) take a delicious salt bath. You can try mine at https://www.peachesncreamherbals.com/product-page/relaxing-bath-salts with deeply relaxing lavender essential oil…

Or you can simply mix your own essential oil choices into Epsom or Himalayan salts or other mineral rich bases and just soak all your worries away in a nice hot 20 minute bath.

Best yet, pick up an Ethics of the Fathers and straighten out all your emotional troubles like I did mine!

P.P.S. For those toughies who can handle a vaccine discussion (don’t worry, I’m not always so tough), you can read my thoughts here:

The fear mongering , media attention and bully tactics that I experienced made me realize that something was very wrong here and strengthened my resolve to stand by my choices.

It baffles me that when 250,000 people in the U.S. die a year from medical errors, another 250,000 from antibiotic-resistant disease like sepsis, over 600,000 from cancer and 600,000 from heart disease, the entire nation is ganging up on the hugely harmless measles, where exactly 2 in the past 10 years died?

Why is this?

I know that millions (billions?) of dollars are spent on marketing vaccines, and in their instruction literature the speakers insist on using anxiety-provoking statements, because as even they put it, without that they won’t arouse the desire for customers to get vaccinated. Are we all such easy prey to their marketing?

Is it an escape from all the much more serious health problems that are going on?

Actually in my research I’ve learned that childhood diseases like chicken pox and measles have many health benefits, the basic one being that certain fetal toxins are released. In an ideal world, young children would suffer through them and then be immune for life, including pregnant mothers, thus protecting their babies through pregnancy and the first nine months of life. Especially in this country where sanitation and sewage and medication are now on a high level, there should be no worries if you properly care for these viruses. Even before vaccines, there was a death rate from measles of 400 to 500 a year in the whole country, and if you consider that every single person got the measles, the rate was less than one death per 10,000 cases. With proper nutrition, lots of vitamin A, and darkened rooms, the patients survived without fanfare. Anyone old enough to remember getting the measles tells me it was no big deal, everybody got it, and nobody was afraid of it. Now, with the vaccine, new problems have come up because mothers are no longer permanently immune so we now need to worry about their infants.

Why do people grab onto the mantra that vaccines are safe and effective and that vaccines don’t cause autism when the studies they quote are so fatally flawed? Just as an example, in the autism studies they only studied one vaccine: the MMR. And they only studied taking the MMR versus taking all the other vaccines besides the MMR. No single study has been done comparing completely unvaccinated people with vaccinated people! This should ring alarm bells in every single person’s brain! And there are so many personal stories you hear about where children developed their autistic symptoms after a vaccine. How can we ignore so much of what is going around us? The recent years of increases in autism directly rose according to the increase of the numbers of vaccines given! To the point that we are now living in a society where one in 36 children suffers from autism. That fact deserves much, much more attention than the vaccine companies are giving it. And that is besides for all the other myriad problems such as allergies, asthma, and childhood diabetes, the numbers of which are now unprecedented. (Their billions of dollars in profit may clue you in as to why they are not doing the proper research. Why would they want parents to stop using their vaccines?)

By continuing our intense recommended vaccine schedule we are possibly creating weaker and more vulnerable children. And then it’s a cycle, because we insist on everyone else vaccinating to protect those vulnerable children, who maybe wouldn’t be so vulnerable if we built up their immune systems instead of weakening them. They keep saying to give shots to protect the vulnerable, but if we prevented them from being vulnerable by not injecting them with toxins and feeding them disease-causing food coloring and hydrogenated fats and corn syrup, we won’t need to create more vulnerable people just to protect the other already vulnerable people.

I know I’m not citing any sources, but for sources you can read the book by J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic. I don’t see how anyone who reads that can still stick to their blind trust in the vaccine industry.

Take care of yourselves and your precious families, and… Have a wonderful day!!!