Year: 2025

Quoting the Jewish Virtual Library on the assimilated Judah Benjamin (1811 – 1884):

While Judah Benjamin preferred such obscurity, his prominence as a Jew assured that he would come under harsh scrutiny, both during and after his life. For example, on the floor of the Senate, Ben Wade of Ohio charged Benjamin with being an “Israelite in Egyptian clothing.” With characteristic eloquence, Benjamin replied, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”

Perhaps the best-known posthumous caricature of Benjamin appears in the epic poem John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Describing him as a “dark prince,” Benet depicts Judah Benjamin as “other” in Confederate inner circles:

Judah P. Benjamin, the dapper Jew,
Seal-sleek, black-eyed, lawyer and epicure,
Able, well-hated, face alive with life,
Looked round the council-chamber with the slight
Perpetual smile he held before himself
continually like a silk-ribbed fan.
. . . [His] quick, shrewd fluid mind
Weighed Gentiles in an old balance . . .
The eyes stared, searching.
“I am a Jew. What am I doing here?”

My favorite Torah dictionary (if it can be called that) is “Erchei Hakodesh” by Rabbi Avraham Nachman Simcha Weitzhandler.

Find it on Otzar Vachochma here.

From the blurb:

ערכי הקודש והם ערכים וענינים נפלאים נאמנים ונחמדים בנויים ומיוסדים על ערכי ומשפטי לשון הקודש והמסתעף ממנה

ממקור קדוש יהלכון מזוקקים שבעתיים מדברי חז”ל חכמי הגמרא ראשונים ואחרונים הנערכים לכל שוחרי משפט דת ודין תורתנו הקדושה

Here’s a partial image:

(Jastrow (available online on Sefaria and other places) is strictly limited to Chazal.)

What’s so great about it is that each entry simply copies some original source (Rashi, Radak, gemara, Medrash, etc.) referring to the term in question or uses the Malbim and similar works which are hard to read in the original, all this as opposed to the painful paraphrasing in the secular dictionaries (and not always done accurately, since their authors are generally (though not always) Torah ignoramuses, or worse).

Of course, Erchei Hakodesh omits “modern Hebrew” words or new definitions for older words since it’s about “Lashon Hakodesh”, unlike secular dictionaries which place the modern usage first, and the “rarer”, rabbinic/Talmudic one later in the list, if at all. And while it may be strange to see full quotations, and some of it may occasionally be unneeded, it’s ultimately a “Derech aruka shehi ketzara”. Sometimes Erchei Hakodesh will have several consecutive entries for the same word, each giving a different insight (not necessarily contradictory). The work is thought through; he wisely won’t quote some famous Rashi if it doesn’t give the full picture, but find some Ibn Ezra on Tehillim which does.

And it’s not “scientific”.

It has things you wouldn’t expect, but upon reflection, well… like this:

On the downside, there are three overlapping volumes. The alphabetical order is imperfect (the first letter of each word is kept in order, but the alphabetical order with the following letters is inconsistent – Think Shem Hagedolim).

Sure, it takes getting used to, and you may have to search a lot more, but it has no competitors I know of for its unique model.

We just saw this with our eyes. Let’s not forget.

Excerpt from Bretigne’s Substack:

… Any information that went against the official narrative on Covid-19 was suppressed. Most egregiously, and with deadly consequences: Information on existing, effective, treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, IV vitamin C, and vitamin D were suppressed. Some – probably very large – number of people undoubtedly died because of this.

Once a “vaccine” was in development, any criticism of that vaccine was suppressed. After its release, this remained the case, even as the reports of adverse events began rolling in. (As an aside, here is a really important discovery regarding the under-reporting factor for VAERS.) And it is still the case, even as excess deaths worldwide have skyrocketed following the introduction of the vaccine. How many of these deaths are the direct result of the vaccine? How many lives might have been saved had there been free and open discussion of the risks of the vaccine? We will never know with certainty, but the number is obviously not zero, and very likely in the millions.

And it wasn’t private companies doing the censoring. Again Bretigne:

Here’s El Gato Malo (who was banned from Twitter back in January of 2021, with no reason given) doing a very good job of explaining how the state and its cronies were able to strong-arm social-media companies into censoring speech on their platforms:

“Private companies should be free to make their own choices about speech, publication, amplification, etc. I really, truly believe this and that any other path or practice leads to greater mischief. It is always worse to have the state tell you what you can and cannot say and a free market will always route around the limitations created by individual actors within it. That’s what markets do. It’s as inevitable as sunrise.

“But what breaks this and forces behavior into unified channels of suppression is state intervention to ensure that markets are not free and in a world as webbed by bureaucratic stricture as ours, this intervention need not be direct. It may easily be indirect and this starts to look like state sponsored extortion.

“’nice FCC license you got there. be a shame if you lost it because you let our political opponents speak.’

“’nice section 230/antitrust exemption and/or tax planning you got there. be a shame if someone did away with it, broke you up, and audited you till the cows come home.’

“’boy, that sure was some nasty, anti-competitive market fixing you used against PARLER. but we’ll look the other way if you play ball.’”

See the rest here…

Quoting “Save the Hilltop Youth” (abridged, see within):

We imagine a scenario in which someone like Pollard, and others who are outside the system, organize to form a Jewish “government-in-(internal)-exile” (along the lines of the ‘shadow cabinets’ that exist in British-style parliaments), that includes people like Feiglin and rabbis from the Eida Chareidit, Rabbi Azriel Auerbach of the Peleg Yerushalmi, maybe Rav Amnon Yitzchak (who has consistently been on the right side of most issues) and others who recognize the anti-Jewish nature of the current zionist regime and openly foment for its replacement.

Were such a body to come into being, it might accomplish two things —

1. The general public could be brought to believe that an alternative to the current, corrupt zionist apparatus is achievable, and
2. When the state does begin to disintegrate — a development we foresee as both inevitable and near — a living body with an independent Jewish bent would be available to move us toward a Third Temple reality.

Until then, the entire raison d’être of this group would be to mock, chide and defame the existing system and its participants, to reveal its outright goyische character and to provoke, in turn, a vicious response from the establishment that would cement in people’s minds the existence of a genuine Jewish alternative.

Importantly, no member of this would-be government-in-(internal)-exile would be permitted to express himself via any existing Israeli media outlet. Those outlets would be banned from all events, rallies, speaking engagements, press releases, manifestos, position papers, critiques, etc. They would be frozen out absolutely from contact with the group.

Only an alternative set of media and scribes would be permitted to engage the new body, and only they would have access to its members. Foreign media would also be granted complete access.

This, of course, would require strong discipline. But it would be necessary to send a message — that no one cares anymore for “official” reportage on the zionist drama, replete with its swiftly unfolding, breathless, live, sideline-coverage of the length of Bibi’s prostate incision.

…

Because all that’s required, in the end, is a minority of Jews to believe that there exists a stark alternative that’s worth listening to… and revolutionary change then becomes possible.

This, of course, would necessitate people like Pollard and Feiglin tossing away their egos and overcoming any notion they might harbor of “leading the nation”.

Because we really don’t need leaders of that sort.

Nothing personal.

We just need a king.

See the rest here…

Hmmm, like when the Brits still persecuted us.

Who will make the phone calls?

לא בדקתי בפנים, וזה אתר חשוד בהחלט, אבל הכותבת היא נינה של הג”ר יששכר שלמה טייכטל הי”ד והיא מביאה מספרו הגדול על עניין “ההתמהמהות של יהדות הגולה לשוב לארץ ישראל וליישבה עוד מימי עזרא הסופר, ואת מה שיקרה באחרית הימים אם יהדות הגולה לא תעלה לחונן את עפר ארץ ישראל מתוך בחירה”.

הנה הלינק…