Orthodox Judaism becoming more liberal than the Roman Catholic Church

The Jerusalem Post writes that a gay rabbinical student, rejected in New York, will be ordained in Jerusalem.  Interesting. I always thought that a rav had to be married.  

The Best Beer in China

When I was working in China,  I was proudly invited to drink the local German beer, produced by authentic Germans. Not German Germans but Chinese Germans. As forgotten by the West (but never by the Chinese), Tsingtao province used to be a German colony. In 1903 German settlers in Qingdao, Shandong province established brewery which is still operating. I am not a beer drinker so - to quote Shakespeare - it is all the same to me. 

My hosts were very aware of China's conquest, division, colonization, and Western settlers on their land. They had it always before their eyes when considering who they were and where they were on this jungle-planet. It was 1985 and they still were deathly afraid of Western foreigners.

With some reason. 

Working myself up

It is hot here. I cannot focus and work. My wife has forbidden the air conditioner, that anyway, was too weak for this historical canicula.

Why force myself to work? I am not starving and my daughters refuse  money. The only REAL reason to submit myself to discipline is that I had promised to deliver for tomorrow morning and I am ashamed of my recurring fake promises and saying sorry.

In fact, I have this ugly policy of deceiving my friends and clients and promise impossible deadlines exactly for that reason, to create a sense of crisis and force myself to work.

The system is not working as it used to.  I dont know what to do. How to manage myself. How to motivate my old bones. 

Sprite Zero

Yesterday at 10PM the street temperature in Kever Benjamin City: 41 C. Summer. The girls walk in short dresses made from "estampado" - Casual Printed Short Summer Dress, made of the cheapest textiles printed with vivid floral colors as was the fashion in Buenos Aires in the sixties - and they are showing their white, unblemished, long legs up to the underwear and above. I am a very old man and they are driving me crazy. I drink a 1.5 liter cold Sprite Zero and feel I need to have sex, like at fifteen. This water contains citric acid and no caffeine but must have a secret aphrodisiac ingredient. I work on Zadoc's house project, the submittal was approved but in fact, he intends to build three separate apartments, so he needs a second unsigned drawing for the contractor. Some money came in and sleep better.

This State of Israel is changing its official forms. No more "Name of the Mother" nor "Name of the Father". Now it is "First Parent" and "Second Parent". This is an extremely nationalistic race-aware country while at the same time, extremely egalitarian, liberal and homosexual-friendly. Hungary would like to be like us, Mussolini's Italy may have been somewhat like us. Mussolini was socialist and liberal, never hurt the Jews.

Poland refuses to restitute Jewish property

There is a bitter dispute about the restitution of formerly Jewish property in Poland. The Polish, as one man, are against giving back a zloty to the legal inheritors of Poland's 3 million strong Jewish community before WWII. While most of the Jews, like the Poles, were penniless and starving, much of the urban property and factories were owned by Jews.

The argument is that the Polish people was itself a victim of the Nazis, so the Jews should go and demand Hitler. While it is true that for the Nazis, the Poles were second class subhumans (the first class being the Jews) and they pitilessly decimated them, the Poles themselves were no friends of the local Jews. Let us not make moral judgments of peoples condemned to death and being exterminated as were the Poles and Ukrainians too. The expropriation of the Jews and their expulsion is a recurring theme in European history: France 1200, England 1300, Spain 1495, etc.

An interesting question is if the five years Nazi rule did reduce the average IQ of the Poles and Ukrainians. The SS Aktion groups had orders to kill all the Jews and all the local intelligentsia such as Communist commissars, priests, teachers, and potential leaders. The Soviets followed by killing the Polish officer class. Poles and Jews lost about the same absolute numbers. How many IQ points the Poles lost as a result of this selective extermination? Considering the difficulties faced by Poland and Ukraine to reach their pre-WWII economic and intellectual output, as compared with similar like  Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, that did not suffer the same policy, it makes sense to suspect that they lost some of their mojo. It does not make me happy, I feel their pain, their loss is a loss for all humanity. 

The Zen of Permitting

I accepted a permitting job of a Mikweh in Tel Aviv. Mikweh is a ritual bath. Females have to immerse themselves in holy mikweh water after menstruation and then are pure to serve their husbands. It was explained to me that the client was the son of the head of the religious council and the submittal is just a formality and will be approved with no observations. I asked for a low fee.

After submitting my plan and protocol, I was obliged to come to a meeting with the bureaucrat in charge of approving the permit. When I saw her, I recognized her immediately, she was Ronit, the green-eyed smiling monster that tortured me ten years ago with a similar job and I wrote a protest letter to her bosses. I realized immediately that she will never approve my permit. In the meeting, she described patiently (two hours) all the details she wants in the document to be submitted, I submissively wrote down her list of impossible desires.

I was so depressed that for a week I could not touch the project. My mind wandered around it, trying to find my balance and the feel of the problem. Like sumo wrestlers performing preparatory exercises waiting for the zen moment to arrive, my mind made rounds and rounds around the problem while never touching the file. When the zen moment comes, the two naked giants face each other and attack, and the actual contest is over in less than a minute. This morning I felt focused and strong enough to open the feared Mikwe file.

In ten minutes I knew what to do.  

They will never get us

I am reading about the Israeli demographic miracle:   “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied.” (Exodus 1:12)  It is a true miracle, a miracle of the human will. Yet no one seems to write about the Israeli economic miracle, which is no less miraculous. When I made aliyah to Israel, Israel had the image of a beggar and it was because it relied on annual assistance from the United States, reparation payments from Germany, and generous donations and remittances from American Jewry. Foreign exchange balance of Israel was permanently in deficit and respected experts advised us to pack and leave because the country was unsustainable. 

I had no interest in the macroeconomy and could not care less, but working closely with Benno Gitter, a very rich banker and President of Tel Aviv University, I realized he seriously worried about the unfeasibility of Israel's economy. This talented and good man sincerely dedicated his life to the economy of Israel. And he was not an optimist. Yet, miracles do happen in Israel, and now our GNP is at Europe's level or higher and the Bank of Israel is hoarding 100 billion dollar reserves. The country is growing at 5% per year, which ranks higher than all European countries and near the explosive Chinese phenomenon. 

The reason for the Israeli miracle, I think, is that each Israeli realizes that we have REAL enemies that are dreaming of cutting our necks, each one of us. This fact has a most sobering, disciplining effect on each Israeli and on the people as a collective. We do not have the luxury to build ideal net-zero water buildings, nor participate in self-harming suicidal protests like the yellow vests in Paris, or the MeToo in New York. We have experienced defeat and disaster, and we know that life is serious and the killer is really waiting for us around the corner.