Hyehudi.org

To be blunt, Nittel Nacht (today almost universally ignored) is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.

First and foremost, not learning Torah that night is mentioned offhand by (or true of) true scholars and Achronim, including the Mekor Chaim and Chavos Yair (according to Wikipedia), not just Chassidim who sought to ex post facto “justify” Nittel. Their pop-mystical “explanations” shed mostly darkness (not much better than apostate informants’ reports about Jews eating lots of garlic and avoiding the restroom on Nittel — although maybe there is something to that as well).

We cannot attribute the whole matter to ignorance. So… Why no Torah?!

Worse, who permits actively playing games on a specific day for no reason?! (I recall the Poskim only criticize card-playing\gambling on Purim or Chanukah.)

Why not use the time constructively some other way (although some did use the time in kosher ways)? And what did Chatzos have to do with anything?

And why the different dates? The Goyish calendar\s bear no significance or truth or line up with True Time. (Reminds me of the ever-moving target of the Israeli state’s “Independence Day” by the Chief Rabbinate…)

Chasam Sofer (קובץ תשובות סימן ל”א): 

ממנהג העולם שאוסרים גם תשמיש וסוגרים שערי טבילה כי לדעתי מנהג שטות הוא ויש למחות ביד הנוהגים כן.

But how did this ever arise?

Now, the common explanation is that by forbidding Jews from studying Torah in the Beis Medrash, the Jews would be less visible, and not in their usual habitat, thereby escaping marauding mobs of revelers who had just heard sermons against “[Their-deity]-Killers“. And most Jews didn’t own their own Torah books, so they simply didn’t learn Torah at all.

So it is said.

Problem is, Nittel Nacht was “observed” for many centuries, presumably even when and where there was no such risk. And by Torah scholars, who should know better. And Nittel continued well after the popularization of the printing press. Nor was Tefillah Betzibbur suspended, Corona-style, so why is staying in the Beis Medrash any worse?

Some hypothesize Jews wished to “avoid experiencing any pleasure” at this time. This notion, at least, needs no rebuttal…

Other reasons given appear contrived or forced.

Here is Hyehudi’s unproven, unexamined theory, based on little research:

Nittel Nacht was a time for either family bonding or staying out of sight (or both).

Mima nafshach:

• If it was physically dangerous, best stay home, without a chavrusa.
• And if there was a religious danger of one’s children or oneself becoming jealous of the non-Jews’ hollelus, indecencies and inglories, good food and song, best to stay home, keep everyone home, and employ distractions (but without copying them!). (And saying the unexpurgated Aleinu and reading “Toldos Yeshu” adds a nice touch.)

Similar to what we wrote about Shabbos meals, sometimes ביטולה של תורה זהו קיומה!

(This explanation of avoiding jealousy has the added advantage of being somewhat embarrassing to concede. Which is why you won’t find it anywhere else [unless it’s just false]…)

Proof even Jews could stumble in improper joy, Yevamos 63b:

גזרו על ג’ מפני ג’ גזרו על הבשר מפני המתנות גזרו על המרחצאות מפני הטבילה קא מחטטי שכבי מפני ששמחים ביום אידם.

Needless to add, the custom became corrupted with the passage of time, as the Chasam Sofer says generally elsewhere (and regarding this, too). Especially by some Chassidim who don’t know when to stop.

My dear readers, what do you think?

Moses Returns

by Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau

There once was a public debate in Ottawa, Canada between the Israeli ambassador to Canada, the late Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Herzog, and the famous historian Professor Arnold Toynbee. Dr. Toynbee insisted that Israel is not truly a nation, and does not deserve a state. The Jews, he claimed, are a religious sect with a mission to guide mankind in monotheism, morals and ethics in the Diaspora, but are not a nation. Permit me to use an imaginary voyage to develop a point made by Dr. Herzog.

An Olympic aircraft lands at Athens airport, and a customs official asks an elderly passenger the purpose of his visit.

“I’m Socrates, and I’ve come back to see my hometown.” The excited official tries to converse with him; they both speak Greek but have no common language, so they call a translator.

Socrates asks, “Can I see the Acropolis?”

“Sorry, it’s in ruins.”

“The Temple of Zeus?”

“There’s no Temple of Zeus here. We have a Greek Orthodox Church, but it’s Christian. We have no Neptune, no Mars, no Aphrodite, no Helen. Only Christianity.”

There’s no Temple of Zeus here. We have a Greek Orthodox Church, but it’s Christian. We have no Neptune, no Mars, no Aphrodite, no Helen. Only Christianity

“How many countries are under Greece?”

“None. Greece is a small country in NATO.”

“What do we excel in? The Marathon? The Olympics? Philosophy?”

“Sorry, Sir, none of the above. The only thing we have in common with the Greece of Aristotle or Plato is geography.”

An Alitalia flight stops at the Fiumicino airport near Rome, and an old fellow deplanes. A customs official approaches him.

“Your name, please?”

“Julius Caesar. Veni, vidi vici.”

“May I help you?”

Caesar doesn’t understand the question. Latin and today’s Italian are not the same.

“Will you please take me to the Temple of Jupiter?”

“Who is Jupiter? We have the Vatican here.”

“What is a Vatican?”

“It’s a church. Catholic. This Pope‘s from Germany. His predecessor was from Poland. Not Italian. No Jupiter.”

“What’s on in the Colosseum today?”

Same religion. Same language. Same homeland. Same commandments. Same faith. If this is not a nation, what is?

“Sorry, it’s in ruins.”

“Gallia still belongs to Roma?”

“No. France is Chirac. Rome is Parodi. Yesterday Berlusconi.”

“What countries do we control? Abyssinia? Angola?”

“None. Italy is a NATO state.

“What are we number one in?”

“Car production, maybe.”

“Car?”

“Cars are robotic chariots without horses.”

At Ben Gurion airport, a customs officer welcomes an elderly man with a white beard: “Shalom Aleichem!”

The man answers, “Aleichem Shalom. My name is Moshe.”

“Really? I’m also Moshe! I was born in Tbilisi, Georgia.”

“And I was born in Egypt.”

“Did you visit Israel before?”

“Unfortunately never.”

“So it’s not your homeland.”

“This is my homeland. I personally know of the Divine promise. Are you Jewish?”

“Of course I’m Jewish. Ani Mosheke m’Gruzia.”

“I’d like to sightsee, but I didn’t take along Tefillin. Do you perhaps know where I can get tefillin?”

“Tefillin? I’ll give you mine.”

“You have tefillin?”

“Of course I have tefillin. I davened Shacharis an hour ago.”

“You also have a tallis with tzitzis?”

“Of course!”

“Do you have a quiet place for me to pray?”

“Sure! We have shuls here in the terminal. Sefard and Ashkenaz.”

“And what Nusach is your Torah scroll?”

“Nusach???!!! We all have the same Torah, each word carefully transcribed back to Moshe Rabenu!”

Same religion. Same language. Same homeland. Same commandments. Same faith. If this is not a nation, what is?

From Ask Moses, here.

Great excerpts from an October 2010 article by Gary North:

When a pride of lions is waiting patiently in the tall grass for zebras, some zebras are going to get eaten. When we think “bureaucrats,” we should think “lions.” We are zebras.

There will be losses. But the lions are getting old. They don’t run as fast these days. Zebras are multiplying. Think “China.” Think “Russia.” Then think back to Mao and Stalin. If those two concentration camps could collapse without armed resistance or a lost war, don’t tell me about the inevitability of tyranny.

Lincoln Steffens visited the Soviet Union in 1921 and returned to say, “I have been over into the future, and it works.” No, it didn’t. Neither do the mini-despotisms of the various Keynesian utopias. Their employees will not receive those pensions after all.

…

Assume that you are Big Brother. You can monitor anyone. You can find out what he owns, what he earns, where he lives, where he works, what credit cards he uses. You have a database on him. Any information that your database lacks can be bought from private database companies.

If you can monitor anyone, you can target anyone. You can bankrupt almost anyone. Just bring a lawsuit against him. His legal bills will bust him. He knows this. He will capitulate. Money talks.

Do you want to set a legal precedent? Target someone with limited financial resources and no connections.

Scholars and journalists who are committed to a defense of individual liberty have collected databases of horror stories on coercive yet legal government invasions of privacy. For every documented story, there are untold numbers of similar stories that never reached the media.

…

The Madoff case is classic. All that government regulation, so little awareness! The reports got filed on time. The SEC was tipped off to chicanery. Yet nothing was done. Why not?

Mises told us why not. The government does not know how to price anything rationally. It cannot determine which cases are worth pursuing and which are not. There are no official guidelines that provide insight.

Here is the operational rule. Bureaucrats pursue those cases that justify their continuing employment. This goal includes the survival of their bureaucracies.

Civil Service laws protect most Federal employees. Bureaucratic immunity from budget cuts protects the bureaucracies. So, bureaucrats pick the easy targets in the same way that lions pick zebras: the young, the old, and the sick.

I once read an article about a jet fighter ace in the Korean War. He revealed his secret of success. He would rapidly survey a squadron of MIG-15s, looking for a plane that looked a little wobbly. If he spotted one, he knew the pilot was inexperienced. He went after that plane.

This strategy can make you an ace. It will not win wars. The Korean War ended in a cease-fire. It is still officially going on.

…

To run a really successful tyranny, the leaders must have increasing wealth as well as more reliable data. They need wealth to hire the programmers, the data collectors, and the police. Computer costs keep falling, but they fall much faster in the private sector (microcomputers) than the government sector (mainframes).

The government’s computer systems are not integrated. Not even the Internal Revenue Service has a seamless system. (The two greatest lies in computer marketing are these: “seamless transfer of data” and “user-friendly.”)

Yes, governments have access to ever-growing quantities of data. But the public has far greater access to low-cost information that it uses to increase the overall complexity of society. The task of monitoring what is going on becomes ever-more utopian. The government is always falling behind, for the reasons Hayek described. The greater the complexity of society, the less able the State is to monitor it, assess it, and use the data to control it.

…

The successful bureaucrat advances up the chain of command by not making a big mistake. The essence of bureaucracy is risk-avoidance. It is slow. It is self-consciously slow. It is defensive. It is always looking up regulations. Its answer to every request is “no.” Why? Because you can retreat from “no” to “yes” if you have to, and no one gets upset. You cannot avoid trouble by moving from “yes” to “no.”

…

The ability of the Establishment to maintain its power is dependent on its being able to buy off the voters and co-opt the newly elected representatives. The failure of the economy reduces the Establishment’s ability to hold onto power.

The police State is going bankrupt. It has issued more promises to voters and more promises to pay investors in Treasury debt than it can possibly fulfill. When it goes belly-up, as the USSR did, and as Red China did, the Keynesian system will be exposed as the little man behind the curtain — with a badge, a gun, and a printing press.

A determined herd of zebras can outrun any pride of lions. Eventually, lions will be too weak to run.

Zebras don’t need to kick lions to death. They merely need to run fast.

…

The little men behind the various curtains are getting exposed on YouTube. There is nothing they can do about this.

Familiarity breeds contempt. It can’t happen fast enough for me.

Read the rest on LRC here…

(I made similar points in an article here.)