העורך Editor

Mishpacha Mag implies this doesn’t sound outlandish, of course. As do others.

But did Trump bring the Temple service one iota closer? No, his “Deal” worsens things in several ways.

And Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of so-called “Israel” is supposed to be a good thing?! Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish tribes, not the state!

The current regime does not represent the Jewish people one bit, its sworn enemy (it brandishes Davidic regalia much as the Chazir parades its cloven hoof). The farce truly owns nothing of our land; what right might it have over קרית דוד חנה, Gevald?! The state has nothing in common with even the kingdom of Efrayim – הם המליכו ולא ממני, let alone the priestly Hasmoneans, whose initial rule Rambam famously hails.

(This should not detract from our gratitude to Hashem for granting us political autonomy. But a democratic parliament should never have displaced Godly anarchy.)

Whatever the definition of Corona\British\Nazi-era “Essential Worker”, surely in the democratic model of government, “zero-price-good” politicians aren’t it.

Isn’t the whole idea behind democracy, that you can forever have continuity of government (ugh), even if you had less than a minyan left in the whole continent since the suits mystically represent the majority\Deep State? אין ציבור מת and all.

In a democracy, “Aaaaaaanyone can become Chief Gangster (read: President)”, right? So, what’s the official propaganda excuse behind providing cheap, interchangeable screws with such expensive personal security details at the tax slaves’ expense? If one screw goes, get another one from the “Birgiya” (Hebrew for screw cabinet). Doesn’t even need to be the same size. (Think Sharon>Olmert.)

Continuing in the same vein, why are assassinations\expirations of ministers (like Rechavam Ze’evi) or prime ministers (like Yitzchak Rabin) ever noticed let alone commemorated, excuse my blasphemy?!

Don’t know why assassins even bother. Just promote his vice. Vice gets shot, too? Now promote his vice (To be clear, by “vice” I mean the position-holder and not the habit…). What, the whole fungible chain of command was busted? No problemo! No gridlock, even. Surely there are protocols for such glorious occasions?

(“Jew murders Jew” is hardly the main point about Rabin, because even the “holy” mortar firing upon the Altalena, was um, well…)

Even kings, chosen for supposedly unique qualifications, can be swapped out: Zecharyahu, then Shalum (whom I don’t grasp why the Malbim Hoshea 8:4 praises), then Menachem ben Gadi. If you stayed away from the “Reshut” and had anything better to do than follow the stupid Mikveh news at the time, you might never even notice a change.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

And why aren’t all Knesset members injected with the dangerously under-tested Corona vaccination post-haste, instead of frontline doctors, who might actually know something useful?

And why, when the state of Israel controlled only West Jerusalem, did anyone, except the pols themselves, think the Knesset should be moved to Tel Aviv so as not to be “too close” to the border?

“A government of laws and not of men.”

Why, oh why, oh why?!

Maybe one of our readers can offer us dropouts a civics class to illuminate this puzzle.

P.S., Do politicians get personal Divine Providence, or just Hashgacha for the “species”, like their simian relatives?

פרסומי ניסא

By Murray Rothbard, of course.

A short excerpt:

In the early years of Reagan rule, the press busily checked out Reagan’s beloved anecdotes, and found that almost every one of them was full of holes. But Reagan never veered from his course. Why? God knows there are plenty of correct stories about welfare cheats that he could have clasped to his bosom; why stick to false ones? Evidently, the reason is that Reagan cares little about reality; he lives in his own Hollywood fantasy world, a world of myth, a world in which it is always Morning in America, a world where The Flag is always flying, but where Welfare Cheats mar the contentment of the Land of Oz. So who cares if the actual story is wrong? Let it stand, like a Hollywood story, as a surrogate for the welfare cheats whom everyone knows do exist.

The degree to which Reagan is out of touch with reality was best demonstrated in his concentration camp story. This was not simply a slip of the tongue, a Bushian confusion of December with September. When the Premier of Israel visited Reagan at the White House, the President went on and on for three quarters of an hour explaining why he was pro-Jewish: it was because, being in the Signal Corps in World War II, he visited Buchenwald shortly after the Nazi defeat and helped to take films of that camp. Reagan repeated this story the following day to an Israeli ambassador. But the truth was 180-degrees different; Reagan was not in Europe; he never saw a concentration camp; he spent the entire war in the safety of Hollywood, making films for the armed forces.

Well, what are we to make of this incident? This little saga stayed in the back pages of the press. By that point the media had realized that virtually nothing – no fact, no dark deed – could ever stick to the Teflon President. (Iran-Contra shook things up a bit, but in a few months even that was forgotten.)

There are only two ways to interpret the concentration camp story. Perhaps Reagan engaged in a bald-faced lie. But why? What would he have to gain? Especially after the lie was found out, as it soon would be. The only other way to explain this incident, and a far more plausible one, is that Ronnie lacks the capacity to distinguish fantasy from reality. He would, at least in retrospect, have liked to be filming at Buchenwald. Certainly, it made a better story than the facts. But what are we to call a man who cannot distinguish fantasy from reality?

It is surely frightening to think that the most powerful position in the world has been held for eight years by a man who cannot tell fact from fancy. Even more frightening is the defection of the media, who early lost heart and played the role of a submissive receptacle for photo opportunities and press-release handouts. One reason for this defection was the discovery of Reagan’s Teflon nature. Another likely reason was that journalists who were too feisty and independent would be deprived of their precious access to the Presidential plane or to inside scoops or leaks from the White House. And a third reason was probably the desire not to dwell on the vital and hair-raising fact that the President of the United States, “the leader of the free world” and all that jazz, is nothing more than a demented half-wit.

Find the rest of it here…

Quoting Rabbi R.C. Klein’s Word column:

The Vilna Gaon (to Proverbs 2:2-3, 2:6) differentiates between binah and tevunah by explaining that tevunah refers to the “reflection” that qualifies one’s chochmah or binah. The Vilna Gaon in Chemdah Genuzah (to Proverbs 1:1) writes that binah refers to understanding something on one’s own terms, while tevunah refers to understanding something so thoroughly that one can explain it to others (see also Zohar, Vayakhel 201a). Rabbi Shlomo Brevda (1931-2013) points out in Leil Shimurim (p. 26) that this latter source runs counter to the aphorism often cited in the “Yeshiva World” in the name of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk (1853-1918): “A deficiency in being able to explain something is a sign of a deficiency in one’s actual understanding.”