A Jewish Guide to Female Independence

A non-Jewish woman once said:

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

It’s fine advice, but I would rephrase it, using the original iconoclastic “power couple”, primogenitors of the Hebrews.

Let’s imagine an archaic Middle Eastern city where not everyone is the same. Oh no, not at all. For instance, 80% of the residents wear open sandals, and the remainder closed sandals. Also, eighty percent prefer to worship the deity of light, and twenty percent the deity of the dark. (Speaking of deities, there is also rumor of a foreigner called Shem who rejects all deities in favor of this one, invisible God. But I speak only of the city’s inhabitants.)

Now, men and women are different, and it would be harmful to rebel against their own natures. So when giving over the above, timeless wisdom to the male youth, among them a man child named Avram son of Terach, a male teacher might give the following examples:

Avram, choose your own path. Wear closed sandals if they look better on you. Your personality may be Dark; don’t suppress it. Don’t conform to anyone else or you lose your soul. Perhaps even reject all deities for the God of Shem

And a female guide to the virginal womenfolk might say this:

Sarai, feisty girlish headstrongness will render you undesirable and most unhappy. In the large, you must learn to submit to your lawful guardians. But you may, and indeed must, decide whose courtship to accept. For example, don’t fear marrying a man who wears closed sandals. Don’t reject the man who worships the night deity off hand. Or even marry the man who rejects all idol worship! It’s your choice.

The end of the example (or: “poor historical novel”).

To preserve masculinity, one must be one’s own man. This can manifest in different footwear (amoral), or religion. In contradistinction, to preserve femininity, a woman must conform. But the choice of whom to conform to is her own. Should Sarai marry Avram or Besuel? Ought Leah await Esav or pray dearly for Yaacov? Etc.

So, the proper religious choice for both men and women is similar, yet subtly different.

אשרי הדור שהגדולים נשמעים לקטנים

לכבוד מרן, גדול הדור, רבי זכריה בן אבקולס

“העולם אומרים, אם צדיק עשה עוולה-אז הוא “אויס צדיק”

ואני אומר: הצדיק נשאר צדיק, אבל הוא עשה עוולה”

(חיי מוהרן)

מימיי תמהתי, מה טעם גילגל עליך רבי יוחנן את האישום  “ענוותנותו של רבי זכריה בן אבקולס החריבה את ביתנו, שרפה את היכלנו והגליתנו מארצנו”? הרי אינך יחידי בסיפור! העשיר שהלבין את פניו של בר קמצא וגירש אותו מהסעודה-כן בסדר? ובר קמצא עצמו שהלך ומסר מלשינות על כלל ישראל-כן בסדר? ו”רבנן דהוו תמן אשתיקו”-כן בסדר?

אז למה דווקא אתה? שמעתי הרבה תשובות, אבל אגיד לך מה דעתי הקטנה.

במדרש איכה ישנה גירסה אחרת לסיפור. במקום “הוו תמן רבנן ושתקי” – “הוה תמן רבי זכריה בן אבקולס ושתיק”.

זה משנה את כל התמונה. מרן.

עשית טעות אחת כאשר שתקת מול הלבנת הפנים של בר קמצא (מהרש”א טוען שהיית מקורב ל”אינשי דלא מעלי” של אותו דור. האם זה נכון?) ואז נותן לך השם ית’ הזדמנות לתקן את הטעות: קום והקרב את העגל בעל מום שהביא בר קמצא מהקיסר!

איי,זה לא מתאים ל”פרומקייט” שלך? נו,אז תצום אחר כך ארבעים יום, תעשה גלגולי שלג,תבקש מ”קופת העיר” שיתפללו עליך ארבעים יום בציונו הק’ של התנא קמא. ווטאבר.(“מאי תקנתיה? ליתיב תענית לתעניתיה”) אבל את הקרבן הזה אתה חייב להקריב!

לא הקרבת? כעת נכנסת לחיוב הלכתי לחסל את בר קמצא! “מוייסר”!

“ואם שלש אלה לא יעשה לה”-אז בוודאי ובוודאי נפל עליך כל התיק. מנהיגות פירושה,קודם כל,ליזום ולא רק לתת “ברקסים” על כל צעד ושעל. אם אתה אינך מסוגל להתמודד-זה בסדר, אבל אל תעצור ואל תפריע למי שכן מתמודד בדרכו שלו.

_  _  _

חייב אני להביא שתי דוגמאות, מרן, אם לא עבורך, לפחות עבור משב”קיך וגיחזיך היקרים.

1.במשך שנים רבות טרח ויגע הרב יעקב יוסף על נושא האפליות בסמינרים, לבד. אף רב ואף מרן לא עזר לו. מתי נזכרו לדבר איתו? רק אחרי הבגץ בעמנואל! וגם זה-לא ממש כדי לחסל את הנגע, אלא רק כדי שימשוך את העתירה. איפה הייתם עד אז?

2.ישנו משבר כלכלי בכוללים, זה לא סוד, וזה רק הולך ומעמיק. לצערי הרב-מגיעים מכיוונך מסרים של אי לגיטימציה למסלולי הכשרה מקצועית, שלילה של שירות צבאי לצרכי פרנסה, וכעת גם בזיונות בפועל:”חרדקים”! איזו אלטרנטיבה לפרנסה כן לגיטימית לדעתך, מרן?

_ _ _

כבודו, כמנהג חסידים אקנח בסיפור. קצר וחריף כלגימת וודקה.

(תזמורת! “ארבע בבות” פליז!)

כשהרב בעל ה”תניא” נלקח למאסר הידוע (ממנו השתחרר בי”ט כסלו) הוא שאל את אחד החסידים המסורים לו ביותר-ר’ שמואל מונקיס-“מה יהא בסופי?”

ענה לו ר’ שמואל:”אם אתה באמת רבי, וכל מעשיך אך ורק לשם שמים, אתה תצא בשלום כמובן. אבל אם משהו אינו נקי אצלך-מגיע לך לשבת במאסר! להרבה יהודים קלקלת את התענוג מהעולם הזה!”

כבוד מרן שליט”א. בבקשה-אל תכעס עלי. הייתי שמח לומר לך את כל זה בארבע עיניים, אבל משב”קיך וגיחזיך –כבר מזמן לא נותנים לי להיכנס. אני סמוך ובטוח שהם עוד יעבירו לך את המסר, בשביל מה יש להם סמארטפונים ואינטרנט?

מתוך פורום בחדרי חרדים, כאן.

Socialism: Just the Facts

The Dirty Secrets of Socialism

(Or, The Purpose of Political Correctness)

Parents of college-age children are finally catching on to the cultural Marxist PC scam.  Cries of “insensitivity” every time a conservative or libertarian speaker appears anywhere near a college campus; “safe rooms” equipped with play dough, soft music, and videos of frolicking puppies; the endless accusations of “racist/sexist/homophobe” aimed at all non-leftists on campus; and widely-publicized episodes of vulgar, ignorant, x-rated, “students” screaming their heads off at conservative campus speakers have exposed the real purpose of political correctness:  censorship of any and all non-Marxist ideas. It’s not about fighting racism, sexism, etc.; it’s about censoring the ideas of freedom.

Today’s college students have been –and are being – trained to be intolerant, totalitarian-minded, communist thugs.  All for a mere 50 grand a year at even mediocre institutions of “higher education.”

This all began after the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s. Socialists never give up on their dream of ordering their fellow human beings around, plundering them with taxes, and enriching themselves in the process.  Very few of the twentieth-century socialist ideologues ever admitted that they were disastrously wrong, or apologized for providing aid and comfort to the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Castro.  Instead, they and their intellectual descendants have worked tirelessly to invent a virtual socialist reality – at least in the minds of America’s youth – while censoring all dissenting opinions.  Socialism’s dirty secrets must never be revealed to America’s youth, lest they revolt against the giant lying machine known as “higher education.”  (There are a few exceptions, of course, but most of academe is now dominated by the totalitarian, cultural Marxist Left).

What are socialism’s dirty secrets that must be kept from America’s youth?  Let’s examine a few of them:

  1. Socialism has always and everywhere been an economic disaster, and every honest scholar knows this. After seventy years of socialism, the Soviet economy was barely 5% of the U.S. economy, despite the false assertions of pro-socialist economists like Paul Samuelson, who wrote in the 1988 edition of his famous textbook that the Soviet economy would exceed the U.S. economy by the year 2000.
  2. You cannot fix socialism with smarter government planners or plans. Socialism cannot work because the rational economic calculation is impossible without private property, free-market prices, the profit-and-loss market feedback mechanism, and economic freedom in general.
  3. The ostensible goal of socialism – egalitarianism – is at war with human nature because all human beings are unique in thousands of different ways. The only kind of “equality” that socialism has ever created is equality of misery and poverty.
  4. Socialism generates far more societal inequality than economic freedom does. In all socialist societies the politically-connected elite live lives of luxury while nearly everyone else is equally impoverished.  In democratic socialist Venezuela today the economy has been ruined by socialism while the daughter of the late Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuelan socialism, is reportedly worth $4.5 billion.
  5. The worst kind of people – the most immoral, corrupt, cynical, uncaring, and brutal – rise to the top under socialism because socialism is all about forcing people to abandon their own plans for their own lives and complying with mandatory government plans instead. It is no accident, in other words, that socialism is associated with such violent thugs as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao.
  6. Fascism was just another variety of socialism. The word “Nazi” was an acronym for national socialism. The German socialists distinguished themselves from the Russian socialists by calling their variety of socialism “national” as opposed to “international.”
  7. It is a myth that Scandinavian socialism has been successful. Swedish capitalism was extremely successful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Swedes began living off of the fruits of capitalist prosperity by adopting a version of democratic socialism in the 1950s.  As a result, there was not a single net new job created there from 1955 to 1995.
  8. Nineteenth-century socialism was “government ownership of the means of production,” but it now includes the welfare state progressive income taxation and the strangulation of capitalism with regulation and taxation. The welfare state has destroyed the work ethic of millions; destroyed millions of families; caused a 400% increase in out-of-wedlock births in America since 1960; and transformed millions into lifelong beggars and wards of the state.
  9. Government-run healthcare systems – medical care socialism – is like all other government enterprises in that it operates with all the efficiency of the Post Office or Department of Motor Vehicles and all the compassion of the IRS. Anything as important as medical care should never be put in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
  10. The worse pollution problems on the planet for the past century or more have been in the socialist countries, as documented by books with titles like Ecocide in the USSR.  After the collapse of socialism the world learned that, in addition to being economic basket cases, socialist countries were also ecological cesspools.

These are but a few of the well-documented truths about socialism that are rarely, if ever, mentioned on college campuses.  They are among the main reasons why the cultural Marxists have erected so many instruments of ironclad censorship on college campuses.  They are why institutions like the Mises Institute – and all the scholars associated with it — are so reviled by them, for they provide their students – and anyone else – with a source of alternative economic education, an education based on sound economics and based in reality.  Mises wrote in Human Action of how the socialists of his day were at war with economics, for economic common sense threatened their totalitarian plans.  Today’s socialists hope to never even have to respond to sound economic arguments and facts at all by simply censoring them out of existence.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.