122011

Well, it wasn't "brave Muslim warriors."  Apparently, it was just five Muslim girls on her soccer team, who had been mocking and belittling her for some time, but only felt they needed to dry gulch the girl when she stood up for herself, like Belgium wasn't a Muslim country, under Shari'a, and nonMuslims still had some actual rights.

Wow.  Been since September.

11/23

Amazingly, this is only being noticed in Jewish media. In Belgium, 5 Moroccan teens beat a 13-year old Jewish girl, screaming Dirty Jew & Go Back To Your Country. Yes, 5 five 5 BRAVE MUSLIM WARRIORS dry gulched a single Jewish girl, 5 immigrants told a native to leave. Are we getting this yet? Anyone remember a few years back when 5 Afghanis threw rocks through an NYC laundromat's plate glass window at a pregnant Hasidic woman? Did anyone else notice the Jewish woman sliced open in Flatbush a week ago (11/15) by someone who jumped into an escape van after the murder?

11/29  

Jordan radicalizing. Egypt's military council warning it will not accept an election that threatens the military's privileges. Lebanon shot four katyushas into the galil overnight. Oh, then there are Pakistan and Iran. How deep a hole should I dig?

Soooo.... Isfahan nuclear plant blows up... And BooBoo Nuttenyahoo seems to think that the PLO should be buried in baksheesh for NOT calling death and destruction down on its "peace partner" after its failed end run around statehood at the UN... And a NJ guy was just arrested in Cali for concluding a custody visit by ejecting his two year old daughter off a bridge IN HER CHILD SAFETY SEAT... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, finally I understand Sigd. It celebrates the reacceptance of the Torah under Ezra haSofer. Sort of a reverse Tisha b'Av. It was actually last Shabbat (the 29th of, as CCTV put it "Chesh-wan"), but happy Sigd anyway!

12/2  

Did TARP and TOO BIG TO FAIL make you angry? No? Hear about the $7.7 TRILLION the Fed apparently secretly gave to banks at 0.01% so they could buy federal reserve notes at about 3%... yes, the fed gave the banks free money it didn't have... in the trillions... and then the same banks lent that money back, making billions. What is the sound of 330 million people puking?

PotUS has adopted a new campaign catchphrase: "Change Is". In the name of Sweet Fanny Adams and all that is good and holy, could you spare it, guy? That's the best you could do? Compare to FDR, who DIDN'T say, "Fear Isn't", JFK who didn't say, "Go Do Something", LBJ's Great Society at least painted a picture. Really? Two lousy words that say NOTHING? Change is what? Good? Bad? Coming? Necessary? Full of cheese?

Hizb'allah is blaming their recent work accident on Zahal. Too bad it's probably not true. Katyushas into Israel FROM Lebanon OUGHT to be answered. But the most likely chain of events involve someone misreading the persian translation of the Chinese directions on a box of detonators.

12/3

The Newt is making the standard noises about moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem again. Understand: It will NEVER happen. Besides the facts that it would be expensive (& we are trillions past broke), & that there is no really suitable place for it, & that it would piss off every country from France to Malaysia, once done it could NEVER BE USED AS A CAMPAIGN PROMISE AGAIN. Think of this as one more cynical attempt at manipulating us to focus ANYWHERE but on what a jerk he really is. The Qimoy and Matsu of 2011, version 1.1.

Just saw a great bit of slang. I've been using terms like Yechupetz and Yennemsville and ’in the middle of great, vast, freaking nowhere’, but apparently "Sof haOlam, Smolah" סוף העולם, שמאלה means the same thing.

Look at the news from Egypt. The electoral news. The Moslem Brotherhood, which is moderate like cheesecake is low calorie, will likely get a majority, and a MORE extreme party will likely get another 10-15%. A 60-70% coalition of the people who have been blowing up the natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan about once a month. Hooray for the democratic fallout of the Arab Spring.

Our Buddy Leon Panetta wants Israel to make some unilateral concessions, the only unilateral moves the Arabs find acceptable, to lure the Arabs back to the negotiating tables, where Israel can be more conveniently pressured to make further concessions to the Arabs for the sake of a peace that includes constant bombardment BY the Arabs. He says Israel needs this. Actually, he is confused. PotUS needs something he can point to and call a success before the election, and he doesn't care who pays for it, or how badly it explodes, as long as the explosion comes after he gets that 2nd term, and it isn't right next to him. And the alternative is a guy named Newt. No, Potter fans, not "Scamander".

Ten years later

I was reading R. Adin Steinsaltz' comments regarding what happened ten years ago.  I have great respect for him as a scholar.  I think he is a great man.

September 11, 2001, I was working out at Gold's Gym on Muddy Branch Road.  My daughter was in preschool at a local synagogue.  My wife was taking a Metro train under the Pentagon.  Suddenly everyone was watching tv rather than exercising.  Then there was a scream from the kiddie room.  There was a very nice Afghan woman running the place.  She had fled her homeland with four kids after her husband was killed forhis apparently intolerable western habits, like shaving and letting his wife go around without a hijab.  Her daughter, at the time a Marine corporal, worked at the Pentagon.  Fortunately, but frighteningly at the time, she had gotten a day off, and left her phone off the hook so she could sleep in.  Her mother, who couldn't contact her, was of course frantic.  I spent two hours comforting her, worried as I was myself.  At the time, one could not contact anyone on the Metro with a cell phone, you see.  I hugged both my daughter and my wife a little tighter than they might have liked that day.

I have not thought that America was different, in the sense of invulnerable.  I have followed the news since, as a small child, I watched Peter Jennings, and Ted Koppel cover Viet Nam in bush jackets.  I paid attention.

I had expected 9/11, or something very much like it, and said so, and was repeatedly described as insane, paranoid, alarmist.  I had anticipated such an event since the 1976 Entebbe rescue, and again when the Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" (I have friends who are, or were, "Palestinians", Jews born in Eretz Yisrael under the British mandate, so called specifically to deny them those "legitimate national aspirations" that Arabs use the term to assert for themselves.) asserted their level of civilization with the suicide bombing Intifada in 1987, and twice as much after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.  It must be understood that Muslims essentially feel they are entitled to harm kaffir (US), and are entitled by the natural functioning of the universe to succeed in attacking kaffir.  If they attack us, and FAIL, they feel entitled and obligated to seek REVENGE for our not being harmed as much as they had hoped.  When the towers did not fall, and we imprisoned some of the people responsible, I knew they, or their fellows would try again.

Today, we see that organizations are still sending people to strike the West in the teeth, but that individuals also spontaneously decide to do the same.  Al Qaeda apparently sent a cell of either American or American documented terrorists to carbomb either New York or Washington over the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and G-d willing we got the real guys, not the distraction. Recall, though, that a Muslim IT-guy decided to car bomb Times Square not all that long ago because his career wasn't what he'd hoped.  

We are heading into a time where we need a prophet more than a scholar, a time when Glen Beck will be seen retroactively as the voice of sanity.  I'm not calling him a prophet.  All I mean is, we don't seem to ever actually learn from our mistakes and act on that knowledge.  In 2001, the EMS people had the same problems at the towers they had in 1993.  Last Thursday, there was a huge blackout across Arizona, California, and parts of Mexico caused by a cascade resulting from the replacement of a single component, a capacitor in a voltage controlling unit.  Similar outages have occurred over the last twenty years.  The question always asked is not what do we need to do, but why didn't the systems in place work. We need to shift to the active voice.

051211 Lag B'Omer

Lag B'Omer, the 33rd day counting from Pesach (Yitsiat Mitzrayim, Leaving Egypt) to Shavuot (Matan Torah, Receiving the Torah) is coming up May 22. The Rabbis tell us it is the day the plague among R. Akiva's students lifted, leaving 24,000 dead for lack of midot. This doesn't explain the bonfires or the bows and arrows. Historians tell us the "plague" was a couple of Roman legions. Lag B'Omer commemorates the Bar Kochva rebellion, 132-135 ce, which established the last independent Jewish state in Eretz Israel for 1,813 years. The bonfires were for the dead. The Romans were real good at making inconvenient people dead. It was the third Jewish war against Roman suzerainty (67-70 ce, Masada, 115-117 ce, Kitos). Nobody rebelled against Romans like us.

Random Torah Thoughts

PaLaG. PaRaD. BaDaL. QaDaSh. ChaLaQ. ChaTzaH. Why do we need 6 verbs for "separate"? QaDaSh means set aside for a particular, holy, purpose. BaDaL seems to mean a dichotomous division. ChaTzaH, which means to bisect, as an arrow (Chetz) does a bow (Qeshet). ChaLaQ, which seems to mean divided evenly in more than two parts. PaLaG appears to indicate a natural division, as in Palgei Mayim. But I'm still trying to figure out why we need PaRaD, what specific shade of meaning it represents.

I've long said that 10 Shvatim (tribes) weren't "lost", that a) it was 9.5, (the Levi'im were in the North/Yisrael & the South/Yehudah), & b) the Shvatim weren't lost, the Tanakh tells us were they went, assimilated, intermarried, disappeared into the background demographic.  When the Bavlim conquered Yehudah, the new exiles found no Jews to greet them.  What did I miss?  Reuven, Gad, & 1/2 of Menasseh were living across the Yarden, & the Levi'im also had cities in Gilad.  It was actually either 9 (there ARE still Levi'im), or 9 2/3 (MOST of the Levi'im were lost) tribes.

Now that I have "reactivated" my original facebook account under my actual name, I am my own friend, and show up as other people's mutual friend. I feel like Lot, sort of, who was twice his own father in law.

Perfectly Possible Miracles

The shabbat before the 9th of Av is called Shabbat Hazon.  It is named for the first word of the haftarah, the first chapter of Isaiah, Chazon (vision) of Yishayahu/Isaiah.  The last Lubavitcher Rebbe, ztz"l, put it that we ought not to consider this shabbat a mournful day.  First of all, mourning is inappropriate for shabbat, and second he felt it should be a day of motivation towards a more positive future.  I wonder whether his idea might stem from a frequent Jewish practice.  We frequently diminish the joy of a positive occasion, removing a drop of wine as we recite each plague at the Pesach seder, there is a fast of the first born before Pesach and of Esther before Purim.  I am inclined to see the Rebbe's slant on Shabbat Chazon as seeking the same sort of balance by taking from the full cup of bitterness tisha b'av represents.

I learned an interesting lesson recently regarding Rashi's commentary.  When he says he is explaining according to the plain meaning of the text ("Pshat"), Rashi frequently seems to me to involve some imaginative story.  For example, he says at one point that Sarah was rewarded with renewed youth and breasts swollen with milk, and she suckled all the children that came to Isaac's weaning.  I took this to be fairly fanciful.  Does anyone else remember the Chinese policewoman during the last big earthquake there, who left her baby with her mom, and found nursing about a dozen babies, saving their lives by the way, was the most effective emergency aid she could render.  In other words, there's no reason Sarah couldn't have done the same.  Silly me.

Crippling Self-Interest

I don't know how many times I've started reading the Torah, and gotten up to Joseph  in Breishit or the Mishkan in Shmot before bogging down and starting over some time later.  For the first time since my daughter was born, this Summer I've read the Torah in the original up to Balak in Bamidbar.  

We've read bits of the parsha at many Shabbat breakfasts for years, and we've read Balak specifically several times.  Somehow, the stories of Sihon, the Amorite king of Cheshbon, and Og, the king of Bashan, which immediately precede it submerged in my mind.  Reading them first, suddenly Balak's desperation to acquire Bilam's services makes total sense.

Moshe sends messengers to Sihon, saying Israel has no interest in his lands or resources, will keep on the highway, but can we please cross his land?  The same message is sent to Og of Bashan.  The response in both cases is not only negative, but hostile.  Both gather all the force they can and come out to attack Israel.  Both of them and their forces are annihilated, leaving no remnant, not even the frequent "and I alone remain to tell thee" guy.  Their lands are conquered.

Now comes the Balak story.  Apparently, he intends to deny Israel passage (Couldn't they just go through the territory they just conquered?), and intends to fight us, or expects us to initiate hostilities with him.  He knows that Sihon and Og paid a hefty price for trusting to the valor of their soldiery.  He therefore turns to a prophet, not an Israelite one, but a prophet of the Israelite G-d.

Balak doesn't get that this G-d is not one of the concocted, carved Elilim.  When Bilam says he can only do what H" permits, Balak clearly interprets it as a negotiating position.  He sends a second delegation, larger and more impressive than the first, to fetch Bilam.  He asks, when Bilam arrives, why he didn't want to come, since Balak surely would reward him well, as if that was the only important consideration.  

Balak's "hired" prophet, however displays his integrity and indeed three times says the words H" puts in his mouth.  The first time, when Bilam, amid great pop and sacrificing, blesses Israel, Balak just won't give up, just can't get that there are nonmaterial considerations at play.  He takes Bilam up on a second hill, and a third, where Bilam utters words we say every morning to this day, "Mah tovu ohaleicha Yaakov", How good your tents are, Yaakov, your dwellings, Israel.

The inability or unwillingness to see any perspective but one's own self interest can be crippling.