Hyehudi.org

If you’re anything like me, you want to know the real history your teachers’ teachers kept from y’all.

So here is a great summary of a book discussing the good, the bad, the ugly and especially the surprising Halachic customs. Written with special interest in the Ezras Nashim experience of course. Did you know women would do Sandaka’us (I did)? Divorce was insufficiently stigmatized? About Zimun of women and men (I should really write about that topic sometime)? The reason Yibbum was first discouraged? And more.

A Minority Report for Israel’s Right

Like all other groups and individuals, the Arabs are both harmed unjustly and benefited unjustly by the Israeli state in various ways. We anyway ought to shrink the state! So why not let Arabs hear all about it and get some votes, too? We can promote a more peaceful situation with the Arabs based on the near-universal wish for justice, law and order, and free markets. Although we may not become personally close to non-Jews, which is why their wine and bread etc. were banned, we can certainly make alliances if we’re careful.

The article doesn’t go far enough. The point is larger and more sensible than politics, whether municipal or national (which is mostly a delusion). I cannot include excerpts because it’s too good; just read it all!

What the doctrine of balancing budgets over a period of many years really means is this: As long as our own party is in office, we will enhance our popularity by reckless spending. We do not want to annoy our friends by cutting down expenditure. We want the voters to feel happy under the artificial short-lived prosperity which the easy money policy and rich supply of additional money generate. Later, when our adversaries will be in office, the inevitable consequence of our expansionist policy, viz., depression, will appear. Then we shall blame them for the disaster and assail them for their failure to balance the budget properly.

It is very unlikely that the practice of deficit spending will be abandoned in the not too distant future. As a fiscal policy it is very convenient to inept governments. It is passionately advocated by hosts of pseudo‑economists. It is praised at the universities as the most beneficial expedient of “unorthodox,” really “progressive” and “anti‑fascist” methods of public finance. A radical change of ideologies would be required to restore the prestige of sound fiscal procedures, today decried as “orthodox” and “reactionary.”

Such an overthrow of an almost universally accepted doc trine is unlikely to occur as long as the living generation of professors and politicians has not passed away. The present writer, having for more than forty years uncompromisingly fought against all varieties of credit expansion and inflation, is forced sadly to admit that the prospects for a speedy return to sound management of monetary affairs are rather thin. A realistic evaluation of the state of public opinion, the doctrines taught at the universities and the mentality of politicians and pressure groups must show us that the inflationist tendencies will prevail for many years.

• Mises, Planning for Freedom, p. 87

Heh. One could probably do an entire series with that title. Nearly everything Jews once took seriously has become “Heter This” and “Heter That”. So sad. Anyway, the “Meis Mitzvah” I mean this time is this one: Each Jew must write a Sefer Torah.

A reminder from the Sha’ar Hatziyun 545:1 follows:

… ומשמע מדברי הב”י דנקט לדינא דאפילו הס”ת הוא שלו ותיקונו הוא לצורך עצמו דעי”ז יש לו ס”ת כשרה ג”כ אסור לתקן במועד ודלא כהרא”ה. ולא אבין הטעם דמ”ש מכתיבת מזוזה דמותר לכתוב לצורך עצמו שצריך לה במועד לכו”ע [היינו אפילו לדעת הטור שמחמיר בזה וכ”ש ליתר הפוסקים דס”ל דמותר אפילו בשביל אחר המועד כדי שיהא מזומן לו לקיים מצותו] והלא הכא ג”כ באם חסר בתוכה אות אחת אין לו מ”ע דכתיבת ס”ת