Origins

My mother's grandfather. I don't know for sure if the younger man is his son or what. They were a very religious family.

The grandfather of my father was also very religious, but no picture remains.

The Bund

 
The shit-wipe New York Times is resurrecting the BUND, a Jewish anti-Zionist party in Russia and Poland that was totally wiped out in the Holocaust. It was a national-communist mass movement, based on the idea that Jews had lived for centuries in those lands and would continue to do so in the future. The problem was that non-Jewish communists rejected all contact with the Bund, and Joseph Stalin wrote a booklet on the correct Bolshevik nationality policy, dedicating many pages to the analysis of the Bund. When Lenin and his faction took over Russia, they erased the Bund as counter-revolutionary. But in Poland, it survived till the Nazi conquest, which ended all illusions of worker-class solidarity, of common ground with the host nation's workers against the invader.

History demonstrated that the sole viable solution to the Jewish masses in Poland was emigration. To Palestine of the Turkish Sultanate, to America, to South Africa, to Shanghai, to anywhere. Which about half did. The optimist, Bundist half, did not and was killed in situ. 

Now, the NYT is promoting the long-dead Bundist ideology.   

Tel Aviv Stocks Oscillating

 
TEVA and TOWER are heavy stocks in the local market, and, surprisingly, they are rising 5% one day and falling 5% the next day. Smaller stocks oscillate even more. Something is happening. 

The AI impurity

 The Szatmar Csodarabbi too is against AI. 

He delivered an emergency address broadcast live to all Satmar institutions around the world, harshly attacking artificial intelligence.

In his remarks, the Rebbe called on his hasidim to distance themselves from any device that enables access to AI - including "kosher" phones approved for use by haredim.

"On every phone in the home, even on a kosher phone, one can connect to this impurity in a single moment," he said. "There are many victims - young boys, girls, and even married yeshiva students. They are falling and descending directly into hell.

Hungarian hasidim were always the most fanatically obscurantist. They are persistently restricting knowledge. 300 years of rejecting change. 

Wiki: The obscurantist believes that religion serves the social control of the populace. To that effect, the obscurantist limits the publication, extension, and dissemination of knowledge, of evidence countering the common-belief status quo with which the nation is ruled—the local variety of “the necessary” Noble Lie concept introduced to political discourse by Plato, in 380 BC.

Beirut evacuating

The Golani Battalion is crossing the Zahrani River and advancing towards Beirut's Southern neighborhood. Katz said it clearly: If there is no quiet in Israel, there will be no quiet in Lebanon. The Ayatollah Jr., from the Persian Bazaar, threatens to stop bargaining. 

Magnifica Humanitas

 
The Pope's essay in response to Artificial Intelligence (aka Claude) is long and argues that we humans are unique and magnificent. We are god incarnate or something. He starts and ends with the image of Nehemiah, rebuilding Jerusalem while standing on guard. 

As we look to the future, I would like to recall the image of Nehemiah whom we chose as our companion and guide at the outset. Nehemiah heard the cry of a devastated city, brought that pain to prayer, discerned before God, asked for help, received permission to return, organized the work, confronted internal and external resistance and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem with the assistance of the people, brick by brick. 

Who is rebuilding Jerusalem if not we, Israeli Jews? For us, Jerusalem is a real thing, and I, personally, am involved in building its infrastructure. 

The Pope also debates the AI revolution and warns the Church about its potentially anti-human nature. Nice feelings, but we need AI for mere survival in this cruel world. We need more of it, much more of it. So we may meet next year in rebuilt Jerusalem.   

 P.D.: Satmar miracle rabbi also proclaimed the sinful nature of AI and forbade its use. What a coincidence.

In the Top Tier

Bibi's figure of $70,000 GNP per capita is a bit optimistic for now, but Israel is solidly in the upper tier of wealthy nations, ranked as an advanced, high-income economy, and the trend is clearly upward.

The currency, the shekel, is worth 25% more today than a year ago.  Buying Chinese goodies on AliExpress and Temu is very convenient. European vacations are accessible to everybody.

In my sleepless nights, I compare today to the country when I decided to stay in Israel. General Moshe Dayan, the one with the eye patch, was envious of another mini-country (Switzerland) with its million-strong militia. People still spoke of the fear of the last existential war with Egypt.  TAHAL, the company I worked for, operated exclusive grocery stores, where unavailable products (like eggs) were sold for the ration books we were given. I was amazed by middle-class people investing in land, surprised by their faith in Israel's stability and future. Foreign papers unanimously said Israel could not last.