Year: 2017

Meir Kahane Praising Arabs

I LOVE ARABS

April 25, 1986

I love Arabs.  I really do.  They are so much more honest than the Jews I so often meet, they are so much more normal.  Consider two examples of Arabs I love.

The first is Knesset member Muhamad Miari of the pro-PLO Progressive List.  Miari is the very epitome of all that the liberal, humanist, democratic, co-existentialist egalitarians of the Jewish faith boast of.  A well-mannered, polite, intellectual (he is a graduate of the Hebrew University) citizen of Israel, he rose on October 15, 1985 in the Knesset of Israel to declare:

The State of Israel is not the state of the Jewish people but rather of the citizens who live there as citizens of the State of Israel.  I said it, we say it and we will continue to struggle for this.

And yet another Israeli Arab, poet, intellectual, writer, Anton Shamas, publishes a column in the leftist, self-hating Kol Ka’Ir (a local Jerusalem weekly controlled by the newspaper Ha’Aretz) on September 13, 1985, and writes:  “A Jewish state, by its very definition, carries with it the seed of disaster, namely the collapse of democracy.”

Continue reading…

From Barbara Ginsberg, here.

מבוא המלך

בס”ד

“ויאמר אלהם הוציאוה אל מבית השדרות וגו'”, (דברי הימים ב’ כ”ג י”ד). מפרש רש”י “השדרות – מקום מבוא המלך מביתו לבית ה'”.

ואומר אני לשון שדרה, החוט המקשר בין המלך לבוראו, שכשם שכשיש נתק בחוליות שבשדרת הגוף, אין האדם יכול לעמוד, כך הוא כשהקשר בין המלך לקב”ה אינו איתן, עם ישראל אינו יכול להתקיים.

ד”א, מארמית לשון שילוח, שהמלך נשלח לבית המקדש בשליחותו של מקום.

ד”א לשון סדר, שמסדרות קבוצות הבתים ומחלקות רחובות העיר כתיקנן. ובמלכים ב’ י”א פס’ ח’ וט”ו לפי מצודת דוד נ”ל שהכוונה לסידור מערכת השומרים לאורכן.

Human Religious Weakness Is a Fact of Life

The Mishna uses the following parable for this world (Avos 2:15):

.רבי טרפון אומר, היום קצר והמלאכה מרבה, והפועלים עצלים, והשכר הרבה, ובעל הבית דוחק

Rabbi Tarfon would say: The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master is pressing. (Translation.)

Now, some Jews wonder, gritting their teeth, why the workers are lazy. Ach, if only they could force-feed Mussar to everyone… But there is nothing strange about this.

Take the worldly equivalent. There, too, the workday is short and the work long. This is because all resources are scarce, and time, too, is a resource. And while salaries can be impressive, there is an inherent Marxian “contradiction” between the worker and the “capitalist” employer. The employee gets a check, not the fruit of his “alienated” labor, so his motivation is necessarily weaker (פוק חזי כמה בטלני איכא בשוקא)…

And yet, even without the fantasy “Marxist man”, whaddya know? Bridges are built and software sold. Could things be better? No. There must forever be hires and HRs. (Why? ‘Tzei ulemad’.)