קונטרס החיסו”ן וואקסינ”ן
Reprinted with permission.
העורך Editor
תורת כהנים: והחזקת בו – אך לא להביאו *עי”ז* לתרבות רעה
ספרא בהר ריש פרשתא ה’:
והחזקת בו… יכול אפילו אתה מפסידו לתרבות רעה תלמוד לומר עמך.
ולא כפירוש חפץ חיים שם:
אתה מפסידו לתרבות רעה: פי’ אם מטה ידו מפני תרבות רעה שיש בו, שהוא שוכר הזונות ומשחק בקוביא ומפסיד ממונו. ת”ל עמך: בדומה לך.
ואף לא כפי’ הרב מלבי”ם:
ומה שכתב “ומטה ידו עמך” פירשו שמלת “עמך” פורט רק אם הוא עמך ושוה לך בדרכי ה’, לא אם יוצא לתרבות רעה ועל ידי שתחזיק בו תחזק ביד מריעים.
אלא כפי’ הרש”ר שם:
יכול אפילו אתה מפסידו לתרבות רעה [שעל ידי ההחזקה החוזרת ונשנית אתה מוריד אותו למצב של עצלות ובטלה], תלמוד לומר ׳עמך׳ ״ [מבחינה לשונית מוסב ״עמך״ גם על ״והחזקת בו״: ״והחזקת בו עמך״] – סייע בידו לתפוס את מקומו לצדך (״עמך״) כמפרנס את ביתו באופן פעיל ועצמאי; תמוך בו באופן שיישאר ״עמך״ גם מהבחינה המוסרית.
וכן פירש ר’ הלל.
וכן פי’ בקרבן אהרן.
Have a Good Winter (Hopefully Not the Nuclear Kind)!
A friend accused me of belonging to מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה מן הנביאים וניתנה לשוטים ולתינוקות for saying something about current events.
But it’s about seeing what is in front of our noses right now, not in the future.
As we wrote once before:
All justified, true predictions rely on seeing glimmers of upcoming trends in the present. This is true for technical analysis and strategic analysis, in seismology and meteorology (hopefully), in Austrian economics, and also in various forms of fortune telling (on the majority Jewish view these can be authentic).
As the homily goes on the present-tense language in the mishna (Avos 2:9): הרואה את הנולד, what was already born.
Fools, by contrast, cannot understand (or mentally evade understanding) even the past (cf. Zhou Enlai’s “too early to say”), perhaps even the long-past past.
Redefining ‘Good Faith Error’…
Excerpt from Tom Woods (complete with book recommendations):
…
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had a bit to say about the nature of the Soviet regime, I might add, but something tells me this person would consider Solzhenitsyn, rather than his captors, to be the evil one.)
They just wanted to improve conditions for the working class, you see. Sure, they went about it the wrong way, but their motives were pure.
Do you detect a slight — slight, I say — naivete there?
The Bolshevik Revolution gave rise almost instantly to a one-party state with suppression of dissent, summary executions, concentration camps (with some 70,000 inmates by the time of Lenin’s death in early 1924), a concerted state campaign against religion, terror against the countryside — and on and on.
Not to mention a secret police sixteen times as large as anything the tsar had ever built.
And that’s not to mention the far worse atrocities that came later.
Hey, Ukrainians, we’re carrying out collectivization in a way that’s bound to starve millions of you to death, but honey, don’t you dare forget that our hearts are in the right place. Smooch!
Read Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest, and see what was done to those people.
Not to mention all the other communist “experiments” in other places, including Pol Pot.
Anti-Zionist Kettle Logic
You know the joke:
“Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’
The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.'”
The anti-Zionist says the Medinah is a “Merida Nora’ah” against Malchus Shamayim, and if only it didn’t exist, Amen. And it keeps on going year after year after year, Heaven save us.
And besides, he adds a beat later, it’s all a Purim shpiel, anyway. Medinah my foot!
The so-called “state” depends for its very survival upon American governmental foreign aid. And the Arab violence and Iranian threat make a mockery of its claim to provide a safe haven to Jews worldwide.
“What kind of Medinah is that, anyway?!” he hotly demands.
Hehe…