העורך Editor

My 3-Step Program for Ending a Government Program

  1. Cut the spending.
  2. Decriminalize competition
  3. Cut the taxes that fund it.

All three, and in that order.

Until their budget is cut, nothing will change, so that’s first priority. Then, as day follows night, you get the Washington Monument Syndrome. To deal with the extortion, all competing goods and services must be decriminalized. Lastly, cut taxes, so more money is left in private hands (to show the state was never needed for the operation in the first place).

Am I missing anything?

החזון איש על בגדים ארוכים

קובץ אגרות חזון איש חלק א’ סימן קצ”ו:

ראוי לעשות חלוקא דרבנן, ואמרו כי היכי דמשתמע מילי, ועוד החשיבו את המאני, שבת קי”ג ב’.

כבר הכרת? לא נורא.

Poverty Removes Self-Confidence

As a continuation to all the articles harping on the importance of avoiding poverty…

Rambam Hilchos De’os 6:10:

חייב אדם להזהר ביתומים ואלמנות מפני שנפשן שפלה למאד ורוחם נמוכה אף על פי שהן בעלי ממון אפילו אלמנתו של מלך ויתומיו מוזהרים אנו עליהן שנאמר כל אלמנה ויתום לא תענון

Even though they have money…

And the Weakest Excuse of Them All…

The Charedi excuse for everything bad happening under their watch, by their own admission, is: we are a tiny electoral group with minimal political pull. Yet this is not the case.
Charedi parties are, in one way, the most powerful of all parties. This is obvious, but it’s alway easier to quote someone who already pointed it out than to write it myself. Here’s Moshe Feiglin with his gift for the excruciating truth:
It is important to remember that while the Arabs will not enter a rightist coalition, the hareidim are certainly willing to enter a leftist coalition and have done so in the past.
…

The hareidi parties do not participate in the Zionist endeavor and the Religious Zionists tend to scorn them. But they have many more mandates than the NRP. The Religious Zionists, more numerous and higher quality, looked on for an entire generation as Israeli society turned its back on them, stopped taking their needs and opinions into account, ignored their great contribution to the state and cozied up to the sectoral politics of its hareidi competitors.

The NRP’s message is not sectoral; it appeals to the general public. But its political tool is sectoral. The Religious Zionist nationalist/rightist ideology prevents it from skipping between Right and Left, as the hareidi parties do. This built-in political glitch leaves them empty-handed on both ends. They don’t really enjoy the privilege of turning to the general public, for this privilege is reserved for those parties that truly are not sectoral. On the other hand, they don’t enjoy the bargaining advantage of sectoral politics. After all, the Jewish Home party will never endorse Sheli Yechimovitz as its candidate for prime minister.

Needless to add, the Charedi Knesset members hardly, if ever, act on their own accord. Who pulls their strings? מאן מלכי רבנן…

Thank God, more and more Charedim refuse to vote for Gimmel, Shas, etc., and all the evils they enable!

For a nice, long critique of Charedi politics, see my essay here.

What Is the Ba’al Deity?

I learned of the following Yerushalmi from Rabbi Hirsch’s commentary on the Torah (Balak), Avoda Zara 3:6 (p. 22a):

דמר רבי יוסי בי רבי בון רב חמא בר גוריון בשם רב בעל ראש גוייה הוה וכאפון הוה ומה טעם וישימו להם בעל ברית לאלהים.

This is not the same as “בעל זבוב” of Melachim, Wikipedia notwithstanding.