Year: 2018

Against ‘Folk Scholarship’

Acronym Ending Letters

In Hebrew, we find regular letters –

אבג…כלמנ

And then there are Ending Letters, like these –

ךםן…ףץ

When writing Hebrew acronyms which employ last letters like Mem, Chaf, Nun, etc., which form should the final letter take?

Some acronyms simply use Middle Letters –

ה”מ, ש”מ, עאכו”כ, נפק”מ

Many others have Ending Letters, like these –

תנ”ך, רמב”ן, עכו”ם, רמב”ם

So, what is the rule? When is the last letter an “Ending Letter”, and when is it not?

Of course, one could just follow one’s “intuition” (as in: “When does one add the connective ‘Es’?”). This ‘folk scholarship’ seems to substitute for formal knowledge of many literary Torah fields, unfortunately.

As I see it, there are two options:

  1. Nouns or concepts get finalized letters, phrases, however common, do not.
  2. The more commonly used acronyms get finalized letters, while all others do not.

I do not own a huge list of acronyms to verify either theory.

I may have a way to gain better clarity. Perhaps one of our readers can check out Arabic or Greek. These languages, too, possess final forms for some letters in their alphabet. What is their standard operating procedure for initialisms/acronyms?

Have something to say? Write to Avraham Rivkas: CommentTorah@gmail.com

‘Please, Don’t Drive a School Bus Blindfolded!’

The Improbable Prose of Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Robert P. Murphy
Robert P. Murphy
As I get older and more cynical, I tend to look down on the latest “hot” idea or person. Sure, teenage pop stars and the novelist Dan Brown are talented, but they’re not nearly as extraordinary as their popular status would suggest. Every once in a while, though, something impresses me despite such cynicism. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, for example, lives up to the hype surrounding him. Libertarians—especially those versed in Austrian economics—will find Taleb well worth reading.

Taleb is the author of the international bestseller Fooled By Randomness and the blockbuster The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The books largely overlap, but the second (the focus of the present article) is less liable to misunderstanding, probably because of confusion among readers of the first.

The black swan is a metaphor for the limits of our knowledge and, perhaps more important, our unfounded confidence in our knowledge. The metaphor draws on the familiar notion that before discovering counterexamples in Australia, people in the Old World would have been certain that all swans were white. To be more precise, Taleb lists three attributes of the black swan event his book addresses:

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Both of Taleb’s books are filled with “fun facts,” just as Malcolm Gladwell fills his own (bestselling) work. Yet the difference is that Gladwell—in such romps as The Tipping Point and Outliers—never has much of a coherent theory for which his amazing anecdotes are relevant.

Taleb, on the contrary, tells us his thesis up front, then draws on his vast knowledge to illustrate his points. One of his central claims is that people place too much confidence in their estimates. Taleb stresses that the issue is not how smart or how dumb people are. “We certainly know a lot, but we have a built-in tendency to think that we know a little bit more than we actually do, enough of that little bit to occasionally get into serious trouble.”

Taleb strings together sentences of surprising profundity while packing his prose with interesting statistics and stories. When reading The Black Swan, I had to stop noting every “interesting” paragraph in the margins, lest I fill them up.

The book’s prologue alone is an interesting essay, containing such standalone gems as the following:

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it”; “We do not spontaneously learn that we don’t learn that we don’t learn. . . . Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to not learn rules) we don’t seem to be good at getting”; “Who gets rewarded, the central banker who avoids a recession or the one who comes to ‘correct’ his predecessors’ faults and happens to be there during some economic recovery?

Taleb openly despises those in “suits”—very often mainstream economists or students of finance—who make predictions without bothering to study the record of their previous forecasts. Taleb declares, “Anyone who causes harm by forecasting should be treated as either a fool or a liar. Some forecasters cause more damage to society than criminals. Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded.”

Of perhaps most interest to the Austrian reader, Taleb champions Friedrich Hayek and mocks Paul Samuelson (who died in December). In a section titled, “They Still Ignore Hayek,” Taleb lauds the Austrian focus on the pretense of knowledge. Yet of Samuelson, the epitome of the neoclassical mainstream, Taleb issues harsh judgment indeed:

In orthodox economics, rationality became a straitjacket. Platonified economists ignored the fact that people might prefer to do something other than maximize their economic interests. This led to mathematical techniques such as “maximization,” or “optimization,” on which Paul Samuelson built much of his work. . . . I would not be the first to say that this optimization set back social science by reducing it from the intellectual and reflective discipline that it was becoming to an attempt at an “exact science.” By “exact science,” I mean a second-rate engineering problem for those who want to pretend that they are in the physics department—so-called physics envy. In other words, an intellectual fraud.

Coming from a philosopher (or an academic Austrian economist, for that matter), such criticism would not mean much to the so-called experts in various fields. Yet Taleb’s criticisms come with a harsh sting, for he is a respected contributor to the field of quantitative finance; Taleb (and a coauthor), for example, offered a more intuitive derivation of the Black-Scholes formula for option pricing.

Continue reading…

From FEE, here.

Sorry for Harping On This (NOT!): John McCain Was a Murderer!

Lies Cannot Hide the Dark Side of Reality

By 

September 1, 2018

John McCain died Saturday, August 25, 2018. As expected, he is being lauded as a great American hero, is being called a special man, and being praised for his exemplary service to his country. More accolades are forthcoming, and the praise for this man coming out of Washington DC and its complicit media is rather sickening. In many cases, it is coming from the mouths of very suspect and evil political players. This is reprehensible.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but the truth is what matters the most. That is why it is of such great importance for all of us. Hiding from reality is not only shirking responsibility but can be very harmful to what is right and just.

So who was John McCain? Most know the McCain portrayed by the media; that of a war hero shot down in Vietnam only to become a POW in an unpopular war. In fact, that war was nothing more than brutal murder affected against innocent people. Most of his life revolved around this persona, that of his suggested misfortune, of a hero protecting his country, and of bravery in the face of torture and solitary confinement. This false picture of McCain put him in the limelight, helped him in business, and propelled him into a powerful political position for life. None of this was warranted. As I see it, he was a maniacal warmonger with an ego to match.

I am not attempting to analyze the life of John McCain here in these few words or go into any detailed accounting of his crimes, but only to unmask the false caricature of him portrayed by most of the media pundits. There is ample time now to expose the real John McCain, and to shed light on the dishonest eulogizing and glorification of this man so rampant in the news today.

McCain was a POW, and deserved that fate in my opinion. Unlike those young men forced into war by conscription, McCain voluntarily chose to murder the Vietnamese from high in the skies where he was not forced to see the heinous nature of his actions. For his efforts, he was shot down, captured, and held as a prisoner. There is much speculation about his time during capture, but we may never know the truth concerning all that happened while a prisoner. But what happened after his release is much more telling than his so-called heroism as a POW.

There is an enormous amount of evidence that McCain used his political power to hide the fact that prisoners held in Vietnam after the war did not exist. In other words, he purposely abandoned them. He gutted legislation meant to help prisoners, and he made ineffective the “Truth Bill” which would have made transparent the plight of missing prisoners of war. He did this by drafting his own bill, the  “McCain Bill,” which created a bureaucratic wall that blocked most documents that could have been released. Why would he do this? What was he attempting to hide? What was his motive?

John McCain had a checkered history of corruption, lying, and scandal. Regardless of his transgressions, he seemed always to escape mostly unscathed. Consider the Savings and Loan debacle and its consequences for so many. McCain was the most blameworthy of the Keating Five in my opinion, but he used his POW status and the media to not only get out of harm’s way, but to save his political career in the process. These are not the actions of an honest man.

No one in Congress was more committed to war than John McCain. His position concerning war and killing was constant throughout his life.  His dedication to war was beyond that of most brutal dictators, but his position as a U.S. Senator allowed him to be praised here at home for behavior that would be condemned anywhere else in the world. Hypocrisy at this level is disturbing to say the least.

So who can forget the frivolous nature of his call for war when he laughingly sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? That kind of outburst by McCain should not have been surprising, given that he was the consummate warmonger. He promoted aggressive war over his lifetime in countries including Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Kuwait, Libya, and Mali, among many others, and of course supported the war in Vietnam where he slaughtered innocents without remorse.

John McCain was no war hero, he was a war criminal. He was never a savior of “American values”, nor was he compassionate in life or politics. He had a violent temper, he was unmoving in his taste for killing, and he was corrupt. If the timing of this criticism seems harsh, so be it. The truth should not be foreign to us, especially now.

Lauding an unscrupulous politician upon his death, even as a simple matter of “respect,” is a deceitful practice clouded in lies. Without truth, more deceit follows, and more lies become evident. Honesty is the only proper way forward, so all should know the real John McCain.

אל תשלט בנו יצר הרע!

ישי ריבו – אחת ולתמיד | Ishay Ribo – Ahat Uletamid

Published on Feb 13, 2018
מוזמנים להצביע לנו במצעד הישראלי של גלגלצ: https://glz.co.il/גלגלצ/מצעדים/המצעד-…

לכל ההופעות הקרובות: http://digitalshow.co.il/lp/

••
26.7 חמישי-טו׳ באב
אמפי עומר
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27.7 שישי צהריים -טו׳ באב
היכל אומניות הבמה-הרצליה
••
10.8 שישי צהריים
היכל התרבות-פתח תקווה
••
30.8 חמישי
אמפי שוני-בינימינה

מתוך האלבום ״שטח אפור״ שהגיע למעמד פלטינה!
לרכישת האלבום הפיזי/דיגיטלי עם משלוח עד הבית!
כולל אקורדים|הקדשה אישית
http://tic.li/pgmeGg7
••
לרכישת האלבום בiTunes
https://apple.co/2L0klWx

להורדת שיר בהמתנה ללקוחות פלאפון:
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להורדת שיר בהמתנה ללקוחות פרטנר:
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להורדת שיר בהמתנה ללקוחות הוט מובייל:
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להאזנה ב Deezer:
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להאזנה ב Spotify:
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להורדה/האזנה מ Itunes ו Apple Music:
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מילים ולחן:ישי ריבו
עיבודים והפקה מוזיקלית: מאור שושן וישי ריבו

שוב הרגע הזה , אני אתה ויצרי
אין לי פנים להפנות יותר , גם לא תירוצים
והלכתי לאיבוד בתוך שוק הומה אדם
עמוק בתוך זוטו של ים
אבל אני יודע שלא תתייאש ממני לעולם

שוב נסתי מפניך כמו אדיוט ברחתי להרים
בניתי מסביבי חומות מגדלים חדרי חדרים
והאמת , אני בוש ונכלם
אין דבר שמפניך נעלם
מלך חי וקיים

פזמון:
ואני רוצה לעשות רצונך כרצונך
באמת ובתמים ,אחת ולתמיד
בלי מסכים בלי מסכות בלי לרצות לרצות
באמת ובתמים ,אחת ולתמיד

שוב הרגע הזה , אני ליבי ובשרי
אין לי מילים להגיד יותר גם לא חרוזים
הנה פרטתי את עצמי בפניך לפרוטות
מדבר גבוהה גבוהה , אבל עושה מעט מאוד

וחזרתי לסורי , ושגיתי באומרי
ששוב לא אחטא ואשוב ,לא אחטא ואשוב
ואיל שהוא סיפקת בידי שוב..

פזמון:

••
גיטרות :עמית יצחק
בס:שחם אוחנה
תופים :גלעד שמואלי
קאנון: אמיר אלייב
פסנתר וקלידים:דוד איכילביץ׳
תכנותים:מאור שושן
קולות :ישי ריבו,מאור שושן,אברם שלום
מתן ספנסר,עידן אוחיון,עמית יצחק,דוד איכלביץ,דקל דביר,יואב אוסטרייכר

תופים הוקלטו באולפני ברדו ע״י שי סיוון
פסנתר הוקלט ע״י דוד יעקובוביץ
באולפני סל הקול סטודיו
הקלטות נוספות באולפן של מאור שושן
מיקס : שי סיוון
מאסטרינג : ארן לביא
גראפיקה :אורית מילר
קליפ מילים: מתי שריקי

••
הופק ע״י ישי ריבו הפקה עצמית

להזמנת הופעות : יהודה קלמן
0544254444
‏yehuda.kalman@gmail.com
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ניהול מדיה: אביחי גרפי
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מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

Kabbalah Creep – The Case of Selichos

Selihoth Before Midnight

September 2, 2018
Yes. Simply put, selihoth are, by definition not governed by the rest of the halachoth that govern other prayer services because they were not legislated by our sages. In the medieval period, it was assumed that selihoth were said at the last part of the night, in the period before dawn that would be too early for the morning services, such that selihoth would lead in to shaharith, which was timed so that the amida, the silent devotion, would begin at sunrise. The Rishonim and decisors, including the Rif, the Rosh, the Tur, Maimonides, and the Beth Yosef and the Rema were familiar with this meritorious but always voluntary practice, and they also never believed that selhihoth had to be recited during a particular time, nor did they ever believe or write that there was a time of day when selihoth should not be recited.

Later, and on the influence of the Zohar, it was believed that the ideal time for selihoth (and other prayers, by the way) was the second half of the night. It was also believed that the first half of the night was for some reason not the best time for supplication. This practice was mentioned by the Magen Avraham, but it must be reiterated that it was foreign to those who lived before him and also not codified as law, for the above stated reason: it was a preference best on post-talmudic consideration. I am therefore at a a loss to understand the later halachic literature, foremost the position of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, who made the assertion that there was, therefore, some sort of problem, and possibly prohibition, or even danger, in reciting selihoth before midnight just because it was not the best time according to a mystical understanding. I am also not capable of explaining why, in a similar responsum, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who assumes the same halachic background as presented here, does not make the logical conclusion and state that there is absolutely no halachic problem with reciting the selihoth before midnight, instead giving a temporary emergency dispensation. I am therefore disappointed that in all of the subsequent literature that I have found, making the illogical jump from “not preferred” to “not allowed” seems to be the rule.

Be that as it may, many Jews are familiar with the practice of reciting selihoth before midnight. In their favor, I would like to point out that up until the modern era, no one had the necessary technology to know when exactly midnight was, and whenever you find reference to it in the literature, it means roughly midnight. When you have a night that is some eleven hours long, the sages would have considered three to eight hours after sunset to be “midnight.”

Also, in defense of  numerous congregations in Israel and the Diaspora, the neo-kabbalistic requirement that selihoth be said after midnight has, as a matter of fact, not been accepted as halacha, and the clear proof of this is the fact that they all host selihoth services that are well after dawn, and most often, after sunrise. According to the Kabbala, the time of divine favor is specifically the second half of the night, and the early morning, when it is already light out, is no longer that time. If a congregation is fine with having selihoth start ten minutes after sunrise, or hours thereafter, why should it mind having them 2 hours before exact midnight?

This issue is a good illustration of:

1. The inexplicable tendency of later rabbis to conflate “not done” with “prohibited,”and

2. Zealotry for preferred halachic positions. The early espousers of the preference for reciting selihoth before midnight specifically did not claim that other times were not fit for selihoth or that selihoth should not be recited at other times; it is only among the later generations that we find an insistence that the position must be followed.

Reprinted with permission from Avraham Ben Yehuda, here.