R Chaim's last miracle (until the posthumous ones begin)

This one is making the rounds today.  If you want to honor R Chaim, I recommend learning something from one of his books.  Please wait until after the shivah before tossing a rock into Yanky Kanievsky's window. 

Three Days Before His Passing, Rav Chaim ZT”L Did Something Unusual

[COMMUNICATED]

News spread quickly last Friday afternoon that the Gadol HaDor, Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l, had passed away from a major heart attack. Just three days before his passing, however, the Rav was in the news:

For several years now, Rav Kanievsky has been the face & voice of most of Vaad HaRabbanim’s charity campaigns. Thousands of people rely on help from Vaad HaRabbanim to cover their most basic needs. Last week, Rav Kanievsky revived an ancient tradition: The writing of a kamia.

Rav Kanievsky created a limited number of copies of a handwritten letter originally composed by Rav Yeshaya of Kerestir, a rabbi whose students experienced “miracles beyond the limits of nature.” A limited amount of those who donate to Vaad HaRabbanim’s fund (link removed) will receive their ‘kamia,’ as a symbol of protection and success.

The demand for the kamia has shot up since Rav Kanievsky’s passing as this was the last charity campaign the Rav zt”l was involved in, after decades of lending his support.

Frum Charity

I just saw an ad with the title, "I want to win this war. With your help, I can live".  It's all over the sort of sites for people too frum to use the Internet but are here anyway.  It begins "Right now, we’re all feeling what it is to watch war unfold—the fear, the uncertainty, the anxiety. Never knowing what tomorrow or even the next hours will bring…"

Well if you are living in a future where WW III did not break out, you may have forgotten the Russian attack on Ukraine of 2022.  This link will probably remind you of the details, assuming the Internet and Wikipedia survived.  But back to the ad.  If you were reading it during the invasion, you were intended to think this was an appeal from someone trying to escape the war zone.  And who wouldn't have clicked on an ad with a boring title like "Six Year Old Child Needs Liver Transplant" because you can only care about the One Biggest Problem.

Now this child didn't write any of that, nor the glurge at the site that the ad links to, where some adult wrote "In the last month, I heard lots of whispers about my “condition dee-tee-ree-or-ating. I don’t know exactly what it means, but I’ve been feeling really sick lately"  I hope that he recovers, and by the time he's old enough to not be allowed on the Internet himself, all copes of the ad, the fundraising site, and the videos have been scrubbed.  To that end, I'm not linking to any of them.

One Biggest Problem is also why, IMUHO, the anti-vaxxers are upset about the invasion of Ukraine, they don't want anything distracting the public from their favorite conspiracy theory.

For more on Frum fundraising campaigns, see Nathan Slifkin's How I Helped Yanky Kanievsky Buy His Luxury Home 

The Evil Eye and the law firm

 There are ads that run on Haredi websites, with titles like "Remote Removal of Ayin Harah: Now 178 Yeshuos! 52 Verified By Law Firm!".  "Ayin Harah" is Hebrew for Evil Eye, and "Yeshuos" means "salvations, e.g. Evil Eye removed with success (how does one know?  I suppose by whatever problem going away, possibly by the placebo effect).

But what is a law firm doing in this story?  Is The Evil Eye a legal matter?  Is a Devil's Advocate involved?  Is this an updated version of "The Devil and Daniel Webster"?

How do they verify the claims of success?  The ad claims 

ALL(!) the emails published on his website (until 03/9/20) confirming his accurate reading of the lead, AND the emails people have sent him about the yeshuos they had after the procedure- ARE VERIFIED to be 100% genuine by an independent law firm!

But if you read the letter, it says that emails were sent by satisfied customers, and the law firm does "state unequivocally" that between certain dates, there are "indeed genuine emails from clients" and others "are 100% accurate quotes from emails".  How the law firm verified even this is not made clear, but it turns out that rather than verifying that someone's ill-fortunes improved, all they do is verify that someone sent an email saying so. 

The service offered by this ad "involves pouring molten lead into a pot of water (with various other ingredients)".  Success is not guaranteed.  But you have to pay first, because the Evil Eye, very conveniently, " is known to return if payment is not made."  Amulets are also available, which "protect not only from ayin horah- but "from ALL HARM" and have been  "tried and tested a thousand times".  The Evil Eye guy uses them himself, he "used to regularly become ill after doing the procedure of pouring the lead until he started to wear this". 

Prices: $130 for Evil Eye removal, $140 for an amulet (plus $10 for shipping).  

For more information about this alleged magical cure, see the Wikipedia article on Molybdomancy  The website being advertised is here.