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What Galus Jews Need To Hear

The Most Dangerous Thing

   by Reb Gutman Locks

     A nice guy came up to me at the Kotel. He smiled and told me that he receives my emails (posts). I asked him where he lives. He said, “Five Towns.”

     I told him the most dangerous thing in the world for him was his children intermarrying, that some 85% of the non-religious boys in America intermarry!

     He nodded his head, agreeing with me.

     I told him, “There are two ways to teach Torah. I shook my finger at him and made a stern face, “Or,” I held my hands, palms up, in front of me, and I slowly raised them a little while looking up at the sky.

     “If you have to be stern with your children’s Torah education, and not spiritual, the chances are they are going to run away from it as soon as they can!”

     Torah life should be joyful, or it is not being lived right.

From MPaths, here.

ראשי השלטון, דמית עלי כאריא ארבא! – משה פייגלין

דמם יידרש מידכם!

Dec 17, 2023

אין לנו ברירה אלא להצמיח מנהיגות מסוג אחר לגמרי!
תרמו עכשיו להמשך העשייה!
https://lp.vp4.me/tbbs

לכל התוכן העדכונים והחדשות הצטרפו אליי לטלגרם:
https://t.me/m_feiglin

לאתר התוכן “ישראל מחר”:
https://israeltomorrow.co.il/

מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

The New Campus of Israel’s State Library

A Visit to the National Library of Israel

Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Creative Commons license

Many were anticipating the gala, grand opening of the new campus of the National Library of Israel, but with the current “matsav” (situation), it’s been kind of a “soft” opening, with a limit on how many people can be in the library for security reasons. We joined one of the daily tours of the facility, and the word “cool” came to mind throughout the tour.

As you can see from the photograph, the building is supposed to look like an open book. You don’t really get that close up, but it’s still an interesting shape. It is also a “green” building, so several aspects are mindful of the environment, including the landscaping. Our tour guide pointed out that while across the street (to the right in the photo), the Knesset building is heavily fenced, the library has no gate or fence, so everyone has access.

To preserve the quiet of the library, the tour guide had a microphone, and all the tour participants had head sets connected to the tour guide’s output, so she could speak quietly and everyone could hear what she was saying. The building is built from Jerusalem Stone, a light-colored limestone. Even though it is called “Jerusalem Stone,” the limestone for the building was quarried in Mitzpe Ramon, about 115 miles south in the Negev.

As part of the green concept, there is a huge skylight above the main reading rooms:

Besides the main reading room, there are several rooms for special collections and exhibits. There are offices, a synagogue and a prayer room.

Continue reading…

From Life Is Like a Library, here.

How Yaakov Answered Reuven…

Response to Nonsense

Posted by: Gil Student in From The Hashkafah Files, Magazine Dec 18, 14

 

The book of Mishlei (Prov. 26:4-5) offers directly contradictory advice on responding to fools:

Do not respond to a fool’s folly in kind lest you too be considered his equal. Respond to a fool’s folly in kind lest he consider himself wise.

So what should we do, respond or not? The Gemara (Shabbos 30b) distinguishes between a discussion of Torah, in which you should respond to prevent mistaken explanations from spreading, to a discussion of mundane things, which you should let go. Commentators explain differently. The Living Nach summarizes the explanations:

Do not respond to a fool’s folly in kind. This verse, unlike the next, discusses how to behave in the face of provocation (Rashi), such as when one is being cursed by a fool (Ibn Ezra). Respond…in kind. This verse describes how to react to a person who is attempting to lead one astray (Rashi); or, to a person who has misconstrued a Torah principle (Metzudoth).

Another explanation emerges from a perplexing midrash about Reuven and Ya’akov’s interaction. Ya’akov, distressed by the possibility of losing his son Binyamin, refuses to allow the brothers to take him to Egypt despite the demand by the powerful Egyptian leader (Yosef). Reuven offers collateral to ensure Binyamin’s return (Gen. 42:37):

Kill my two sons if I do not bring him back. Give him to me and I will return him to you.

This is a strange offer because Ya’akov is Reuven’s father, and hence the grandfather of Reuven’s two sons. Why would he ever kill his own grandsons? Commentaries like Ibn Ezra and Seforno try to salvage a coherent argument by suggesting that Reuven was merely swearing that he would bring back Binyamin. However, the Midrash Rabbah (Bereishis Rabbah 91:9) takes Reuven’s offer at face value and calls him a “foolish firstborn” (bekhor shoteh).

Part of the ambiguity is due to Ya’akov’s response to this offer. He simply reiterates his opposition (Gen. 42:38):

My son will not go down with you because his brother is dead and only he is left. If harm falls on him on the way you travel then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

The verses themselves are perplexing but the midrash’s continuation is even harder to decipher. The midrash describes R. Tarfon’s unique method of interaction (Bereishis Rabbah, ibid.):

When someone would say something proper [smart] to R. Tarfon, he would say, “Kaftor va-ferach.” When someone would say nonsense to him, he would say, “My son will not go down with you.”

The response of “kaftor va-ferach” is understandable. They are the beautiful ornaments of the menorah and their names strike a response of astonishment. But what is the response of “My son will not go down with you”?

Rashi and some other commentators explain that “my son” (beni) is intended as a play on the word “binah,” understanding. R. Tarfon is saying that he disagrees. This is a bit of a stretch. R. Zev Wolf Einhorn suggests that R. Tarfon would use the terminology of “son” when discussing halakhah, perhaps as a form of endearment. Here, he is merely gently telling a student or colleague that he cannot agree.

R. Tzvi Pesach Frank (Peninei Rabbeinu Tzvi Pesach Al Ha-Torah, Gen. 42:38) quotes the following explanation from R. Mordechai Sender Kopstein of Radin, in the name of R. Kopstein’s father. What was Ya’akov’s response to Reuven’s outrageous offer? He ignored it. He simply reiterated his original objection and essentially pretended he did not hear Reuven’s foolish (as per the above midrash) suggestion.

Continue reading…

From Torah Musings, here.

Periclean Athens Was a Massive Welfare State

Periclean Athens Was a Welfare State

Gary North – October 21, 2015

Periclean Athens was a massive welfare state. Scholars of the era have long known this. The public is never told, however.

The state built huge public works projects, organized public assistance, offered pensions to the disabled, subsidized bread purchases, established price controls on bread, imposed export controls, established free theater programs for the poor, and regulated corn merchants [G. Glotz, The Greek City and Its Institutions (New York: Barnes & Noble, [1929] 1969), pp. 131-32.]

The “bread and circuses” political religion of Athens ended in an enforced inter-city alliance, war with Sparta, defeat, tyranny, and finally the loss to Macedon. That is the fate of all bread and circus religions.

Athens worshipped politics with all its being, on a scale barely understood by most historians. It was understood by Glotz:

Five hundred citizens were to sit in the Boule for a whole year. The heliasts, whose functions were originally confined to hearing appeals against awards made by the magistrates, were now to judge in first instance and without appeal the increasingly numerous cases in which citizens of Athens and the confederate towns were involved: they formed a body of six thousand members of which half on an average were in session every working day. There were ten thousand officials within the country or outside, five hundred wardens of arsenals, etc. Thus public affairs did not merely demand the intermittent presence of all the citizens of the Assembly; they required besides the constant exertions of more than a third of them [Glotz, p. 126].

Consider this: one-third of all the estimated 35,000 to 44,000 resident male citizens of Athens in the year 431 B.C. were in State service. [Alfred E. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1915), p. 172.] At least 20,000 were “eating public bread,” meaning that they were either on the payroll or on the dole [Zimmern, pp. 172-73].

This is not the standard textbook view of classical Greece.

From Ron Paul Curriculum, here.