רבי עקיבא איגר בענין מיעוט שמחת עולם הזה

בהגהות הגאון רע”א לשו”ע או”ח ריש סימן קע”ה ציטט את דברי ספר כד הקמח בביאור ברכת הטוב והמטיב בסעודה, והעתקתי אותם לכאן מהמקור (שהוא שונה מעט):

ומפני שחייב אדם למעט בשמחת העולם הזה תקנו החכמים לברך על שנוי יין הטוב והמטיב שהרי במקום שמשנים היינות אין ספק שיש שם ריבוי שמחה, וכדי למעט השמחה ההיא תקנו לזה ברכת הטוב והמטיב שהיא ברכת האבל והיא שתקנו אותה ביבנה על הרוגי ביתר

 

What’s Wrong With the Brisker Derech?

When you use your intuition, honed by previous, intense study of Torah sources to sense the truth, you have a far better chance. ‘Scientific’ faux-precision of obscure categories is unhelpful in the humanities and Gemara study works the same way.

Yes, exactly the same way.

Here’s a brilliant quote from Carveth Read to this point:

It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.

 

Barring Rabin From Israel

I begin with a quote from Moshe Feiglin (emphasis mine):

I didn’t really want to write about what is happening in Israel’s south. What can I say? “I told you so?” There is nothing taking place now that I have not warned about in tens of articles. What good will come out of writing the same things again? Why should anybody listen now? What can I write? Blame Begin who surrendered the Sinai desert? Rabin and Peres who surrendered Gaza and injected Arafat’s army of terrorists into its streets and alleys? Sharon who destroyed (excuse me, “disengaged” from) Gush Katif?

I hear the “experts” on the radio. The broadcasters are not interviewing those people who tried to warn us. Instead, they interview the ‘synagogue managers’, those people who held senior positions and those who cooperated with the liars. They will go to great lengths to preserve the lie and the mentality that defends it.

“Feiglin! Tell me what we can do!” a senior worker in the Ashkelon municipality shouted to me after a Grad missile landed in her yard.

“First of all, change all the names of the streets, plazas and boulevards here back from ‘Rabin’ to their original names,” I answered her and she, totally shocked, turned around and walked away, not integrating what I had just said to her.

Remember Rabin. It is impossible to get through to a public that is captive to a misconception. From at least the time of Oslo, the Nation of Israel is captive. Instead of freeing itself from the Oslo mentality and the name Rabin that symbolizes it, they changed the names of the Katyusha missiles. Rabin promised they wouldn’t fly from Gaza into Israel. They do, but never fear. In the north, where Rabin never promised we would not be hit by Katyushas, we are still attacked by Katyushas. But in the south, where he scoffed at the thought, we are attacked by Grads.

Personally, I believe in bottom-up solutions a lot more. So I suggest this: pronounce these streets with a soft “V” sound; Ravin, not Rabin. You know, as in the Amora’im Ravin and Ravin bar Rav Ada?

The real solution is to privatize all roads and streets and thoroughfares and let their Jewish owners name them, but until then, let’s defy the state’s secular religion and wipe out the names of our enemies.

Make THEM Build a Wall!

The current rhetoric of the group known as “Israeli Charedi writers” is that of walls, crenellation, forts, etc. DIY ghetto walls, to keep the barbarians out (Jew or otherwise). By the way, my own, unproven, impression is that this imagery’s usage has increased ever since the lower-level secular writers started pointing this out (like Rabbi Yehoshua Inbal’s Golem historiography theory here).

Jews presently ought to have the kind of confidence in the justice of their cause that drives our enemies to build walls. Go on the offensive. Make not the religious unashamed to do good but the anti-religious ashamed to do bad.

To see the same idea put in rabbinic Hebrew, see this recent post.