Year: 2020

חתול אחד נחמד ישב על המרבד – לבד

במדבר (ט”ו ל”ח):

דבר אל בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם ועשו להם ציצת על כנפי בגדיהם לדרתם ונתנו על ציצת הכנף פתיל תכלת.

תרגום אונקלוס:

מַלֵּל עִם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְתֵימַר לְהוֹן וְיַעְבְּדוּן לְהוֹן כְּרוּסְפְּדִין עַל כַּנְפֵי כְסוּתְהוֹן לְדָרֵיהוֹן וְיִתְּנוּן עַל כְּרוּסְפְּדָא דְכַנְפָא חוּטָא דִתְכֶלְתָּא.

מסופר על הגאון הרב אברהם גניחובסקי זצ”ל שעלה לאוטובוס והתישבה לידו אשה פרוצה. בחכמתו, הוא פנה אליה ממרום גילו בלחישה: “סליחה, אבל יש לי כרוספדין!“

הגברת, שהבינה כי המדובר במחלה מדבקת וכיו”ב, עברה חיש מהרה למקו”א, והרב גניחובסקי נותר לישב בשלוה…

Higher Ed: What Each Cynical Party Extracts From Others

Ep. 1462 The Moral Mess of Higher Education

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Phil Magness discusses his new book (with Jason Brennan) about the problems with higher education. They aren’t talking about ideological conformity, bad as that is. They are discussing other problems, just as deep and pervasive.

For example, most academic marketing and advertising is semi-fraudulent. To justify their own pay raises and higher budgets, administrators hire expensive and unnecessary staff. Faculty exploit students for tuition dollars through gen-ed requirements. Students hardly learn anything and cheating is pervasive. At every level, academics disguise their pursuit of self-interest with high-falutin’ moral language.

Book Discussed

Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education

Listener Website Mentioned

BryceOfSomeTrades.com

From Tom Woods, here.

‘Lost Causes Are the Only Ones Worth Fighting For’ – Chananya Weissman Elaborates…

Why Should We Bother?

I’m human. Sometimes I get frustrated when it seems that no one is even listening, and my motivation to keep trying starts to sink. What’s the point of sitting down and writing another article? It’s hard work, I get more flak than appreciation, this isn’t my job, and I don’t get paid to write. I don’t need to do this.

Even the pats on the back do little to recharge my batteries. Since I don’t really care if people don’t like what I have to say, it’s only fair that I shouldn’t care very much if they do. My goal is to actually make a difference, and you don’t accomplish that by telling people what they already know or what they want to hear. You do that by pushing uncomfortable buttons. When you push those buttons, most people will push back.

If I wanted to be popular, I would stick to safe themes, like “let’s come together in times of crisis”, “drive safely to reduce traffic accidents”, or “don’t forget your child in the car”. If I wanted to be REALLY popular, I would write articles for secular audiences criticizing the Orthodox community, and I would write articles for Orthodox audiences encouraging secular Jews to return to their roots. I do just the opposite. I tell the Orthodox world to take responsibility for its own problems instead of looking for scapegoats and to put Torah principles before social expectations. I tell secular Jews to stop embracing their enemies and hating their own, and to return to an authentic Jewish lifestyle.

As a result, I’ve managed to unite secular and Orthodox Jews – a very rare feat – in disliking me. Even worse, it’s very rare to receive evidence that I’ve actually managed to get through to someone who didn’t previously agree with me, that I moved the needle ever so slightly in the right direction. I have no interest in preaching to the choir; I want to make a difference. If I’m not making a difference, why bother? If you can’t change anyone’s mind, why keep trying? Who needs the tzorus? Why continue to care?

Thankfully, this doesn’t faze me as much as it used to. Over the years I’ve learned to reinforce my motivation to keep trucking along, no matter what, and I’d like to share what I’ve learned to help you do the same. I know I’m not the only one fighting the good fight and trying to accomplish what seems impossible. We need to keep at it, even if it seems like no one is listening, it’s a waste of time, and we’d be better off not bothering.

Here’s what I remind myself when the yetzer hara (sometimes disguised as other people) tells me to stop trying to change the world.

1. Even if you don’t get through to anyone, ever, you still have to try. The Gemara relates that during the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash, there were elders who kept the entire Torah. Initially they were to be spared from the punishment, but they were prosecuted in Heaven for failing to rebuke the public, and marked for death. The angel Gavriel tried to defend them. He said that he knew with certainly that the people would have rejected their rebuke. Hashem replied as follows: “If that was revealed to you, was it revealed to them?” (Shabbos 55A)

It may indeed be true that you will not get through to a single person. Depressing as that may be, it does not absolve you from trying. Even if you can’t save anyone else, at least by trying you are saving yourself, and your conscience can be clear.

2. Your efforts might bear fruit in ways you will never know about. I used to remind myself of this when I taught kids who came from homes with weak to no levels of halachic observance. It is unreasonable to expect them to change dramatically before your eyes, even if you are the most passionate and dedicated teacher. At the same time, it is self-defeating to believe that your efforts have no impact simply because you see no concrete evidence. You may well be planting seeds that will only blossom many years later, and you might never find out about it in this world.

Just because you don’t receive positive reinforcement doesn’t mean you aren’t making a positive difference. In fact, your efforts are all the more noble precisely because you persist without your batteries being constantly charged.

Another way your efforts can bear fruit is by strengthening other people who agree with you but feel marginalized. This was my mission when I started EndTheMadness nearly two decades ago – not to change the minds of those who are violently opposed to my ideas, but to educate the ignorant and strengthen those who agreed with me but felt trapped in a system that wasn’t working for them.

Maybe you won’t be the one to directly inspire the change. But maybe you will inspire someone else to speak up because you did, and the change will ultimately happen because of the spark you ignited. You might not get the credit you deserve, but this too makes your efforts all the more noble, and no less important.

3. It’s not your responsibility to finish the job, but you’re not free to absolve yourself from it (Avos 2:16). In all aspects of life – all of them – the results are not in our hands.

Jews are always in the minority, and clear-thinking, Torah-true Jews are a tiny minority within the minority. It is entirely impossible according to nature of the world for us to win the ideological wars being waged all around us.

Don’t let that discourage you, though; that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

If we were more numerous and powerful than our adversaries, it would mean little for us to be victorious. It would certainly not demonstrate that we are on God’s side. No, we are supposed to be outnumbered, with the game fixed against us, where victory is a natural impossibility. When we ultimately are victorious – and we will be – it will be unmistakable that God fought for us as we fought for Him.

We have to remind ourselves that just as God granted victory to the few over the many in physical battles in the times of Chanuka and many other occasions, so He will grant victory to the few over the many in the ideological battles that we must fight. It is not our responsibility to calculate the likelihood of success before raising our voice. That is a trap of the yetzer hara for us to give up and surrender – and his only hope to defeat us.

It is God’s job to win the battle for us, in the time that He sees fit. It is our job to continue to show up for battle, to never surrender.

4. A Jew who really believes that God runs the world, and who really believes that every word of the Torah is true, never loses his hope. Sometimes, in spite of everything, you really will reach people and witness a change. But you can only do that if you keep trying. What a shame it would be to put in a massive effort and then stop right before the finish line, simply because you didn’t know it was just one more step forward.

Maybe all my efforts to this point didn’t influence a single Jew to leave galus. Maybe all my efforts to this point didn’t bring about the various other changes I’ve tried to achieve. But one thing you can bank on is that I’m not going to stop trying. If you’ve been fighting the good fight as well, I hope you won’t stop either.

One last push, and we might just get there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rabbi Chananya Weissman is the founder of EndTheMadness and the author of seven books, including “Go Up Like a Wall” and “How to Not Get Married: Break these rules and you have a chance”. Many of his writings are available at www.chananyaweissman.com. He is also the director and producer of a documentary on the shidduch world, Single Jewish Male, and The Shidduch Chronicles, available on YouTube. He can be contacted at admin@endthemadness.org.

תיקוני עירובין גליון 247# – ומצגת חוויתית

השבוע הכינו לכם הפתעה לשתף אתכם בחויה מהשטח – מצגת עם הסבר על התקנת עמודי עירוב מהתקנת עשרות עמודים שהותקנו ע”י מוקד העירוב בשבוע האחרון

להורדה חינם, ללא תשלום, לחץ על הקישור הזה.

כמו כן ניתן לרכוש את המצגת שהופקה בשנה שעברה הכוללת הסבר מקיף על הלכות עירובין המצויים בזמנינו עם עשרות תמונות מהשטח מחולקת לשלש חלקים

א. דיני ארבע רשויות רשות הרבים, רשות היחיד, כרמלית, מקום פטור, כולל השיטות ברחובות הערים בזמנינו.

ב. עשיית עירוב חצרות ושכירת רשות מגוי ומומר

ג. הדגמה של עמודים ולחיים, חוטים שהתגלו מהצד, עמודים עקומים, חוט שוקע או מתנדנד, ועוד – הידיעות הנחוצות במיוחד עכשיו בעידן הקורונה לעשיית עירוב בחצר של הבית

במחיר מיוחד 10 ₪ בלבד לכל המשפחה

להורדה לחץ כאן:

https://thmin.ravpage.co.il/HEREV

(אם אינך יכול לפתוח, שלח בקשת מייל לכתובת המכון a532534735@gmail.com)

גליון שאלות הלכתיות המתחדשות מדי שבוע בבדיקת העירובים השכונתיים

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Reprinted with permission.

Whales and Elephants Face Extinction, So Why Not COWS?!

Tragedy of the Commons and Species Extinction

By 

October 22, 2013

According to Barbara Amiel, “a rapacious Asian demand for ivory is creating such terrible killing fields that elephants face extinction by poaching.” She writes this bit of economic illiteracy in Maclean’s Magazine (October 7, 2013, pp. 12-13). Before probing the reasons why this is so totally wrong, here is a bit of background. Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black (and ex-wife of  George Jonas, another semi- demi- quasi-libertarian with whom I have also tangled in these pages) is a sort of Canadian equivalent of Ann Coulter: brilliant, beautiful, a gifted writer, conservative, vaguely libertarian on a few issues. Maclean’s Magazine is a rough equivalent of Time Magazine in the U.S.

Back to the elephants, of which Amiel is very fond; she also states: “The magnificent and highly intelligent elephant has always been treated abominably. Today helicopter gunships shoot them down in Africa and hack off heads for ivory tusks, leaving baby elephants orphaned.” Maclean’s Magazine (September 13, 2013). Why is her first statement entirely nonsensical, and her second, in that context, misleading at best? This is because the demand for ivory has nothing whatsoever to do with poaching. There is a “rapacious” demand for pork, too, on the part of “Asians,” and everyone else for that matter, and yet the pig does not face “extinction by poaching” or from any other source. The same is true for steaks and cows, wings and chickens, etc. There is also “a rapacious Asian demand for” things like cement for building, wood for chopsticks, steel for ships, etc., etc. And, yet, miraculously, there is no shortage, let alone total disappearance of, any of these things.

No, if we want to ferret out the source of the plight of the elephant, we must look elsewhere. Where oh where? I will give Amiel one hint: this difficulty stems from an institution that has played havoc with more, far more, than merely the elephant. Yes, that is it: the government. And how, pray tell, has statism caused grief in this particular case? It is simple. By not allowing private ownership in these creatures (and the same applies to the tiger, the rhino, the whale, and every other species in danger of extinction) the “public sector” has unleashed the tragedy of the commons on mankind, and with it the endangerment of all species that are not allowed to be owned privately.

What you may well ask is the tragedy of the commons? When a resource such as an endangered species is unowned, in the vernacular owned “in common” by all of mankind, namely by no one, incentives to preserve it are greatly attenuated. If hunter A leaves an elephant alone today that he might have harvested, someone else, B, comes along and grabs it up. So A kills it right away, with no thought for the morrow.  He will even slaughter a pregnant elephant, the hope for the future of this species. If these creatures were privately owned, they would of course still be hunted, in much the same way as other barnyard animals are culled, but there would be a stiff price attached to any such occurrence. Old male elephants would be the cheapest, of course. And if a hunter for some reason wanted to shoot a pregnant elephant, this too could probably be arranged; but it would costs a (human) arm and a leg. These funds of course would be used to preserve the basis of the earnings of the elephant owner.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of this phenomenon is the contrasting fates of the cow and the buffalo. The former was always privately owned, and never came within a million miles of extinction. The latter for many years was in the commons, so people had little incentive to refrain from hunting it today. They would not have it tomorrow if they did not. In contrast, the cost of butchering a cow today is precisely that bovine tomorrow, so ranchers act economically with regard to that breed. It is movies such as Dances with Wolves that misconstrue this, and blame the near extinction of the buffalo on the white man.

Do I need to amend this claim that “rapacious” demand is irrelevant to poaching? Could not a critic object to the analysis offered above on the ground that no one would poach anything that was not valuable? That is, if ivory lost its value, no one would poach it? No. Of course, no one would steal something that had no value at all. But, if a thing had no value at all, it would not be considered an economic good. So, yes, no one steals air, or worthless rocks, because they are not economic goods. But, when there are prohibitions placed on any economic goods, in effect a price control of zero on them, then there will be incentives unleashed to reward just that kind of behavior. For example, no one, nowadays, at least in the U.S., steals carrots (I ignore minor pilfering or shoplifting in making this statement). But suppose that government in its infinite wisdom declared a price ceiling of zero on carrots (they could only be given away, not sold), or, worse, banned them outright. Then, the black market price of these vegetables would rise above present carrot prices, and there would be far greater incentives to steal them than at present.

Let me consider one other objection to the tragedy of the commons thesis offered above. This one is not at all hypothetical, but actually served as the basis for the bestowing of the Nobel Prize in economics on Elinor Ostrom. This political scientist, the first woman to win this Award, was also economically illiterate. She explicitly rejected the tragedy of the commons thesis, one of the most powerful in all of economics. In her book she offered numerous cases which supposedly ran counter to that insight, ranging from water in California to grazing pastures in the Alps, to fishing in the Far East. But none of these cases were really “commons.” They were all something very different, partnerships. Take the library of a large law firm of several hundred partners. There is no tragedy of the commons here, to be sure. The books, or in the modern era, electronic compilations, are not mistreated, abused, lost. These resources are there for all the members of the law firm to utilize. There is no analogy to the tragedy of the commons that afflicts the elephant and other such species. But the point is, there is no “commons” here, either. If you are I, gentle reader, were to attempt to make use of the law firms’ resources (or grazing lands in Switzerland, or water in California), we might be able to do so, but only with the permission of the real owners of the enterprise, and probably not even then. For a blistering attack on this author for making this very elementary mistake, see Block, Walter E. 2011. Review essay of Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the commons: . Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; in Libertarian Papers, Vol. 3, Art. 21.

From LRC, here.