Friday, September 13, 2019
Corchito in Monte Hermoso beach
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
The marrying kind
The grandson of the Chief of the Toldot Abraham Itzhak congregation married the granddaughter of the Head of the Lelow Hassidic group. Toldot Abraham Itzhak is based on Jerusalem and grew out of the old Hungarian Yishuv of Jerusalem, while the Lelow Hassidim follow the old Rebbe from that Silesian (Polish/Prussian) village.
The old Hungarian Yishuv in Jerusalem was no more than a small extremely poor synagogue of old people who moved in the 17 and 18th centuries from Hungary to pray, die and be buried in the holy land of Jerusalem. Apparently, some married here and had issue. They subsisted from alms that were divided among themselves. The division of the alms was a permanent focus of strife, and there is a vast literature of letter in Hebrew and Yiddish accusing each other of laxness and sinfulness, and don't give to him but sent money to me. It is astonishing that from that community of poison-pen letters-writing pious beggars grew out the current dynamic (pic) group.
Lelow is a small village (population 2100) on the Bialka river. The Nazis killed almost all the Jews of the place, but the few that survived the Holocaust are rebuilding the community. I presume they are now more numerous than ever. Once a year they visit the tomb of the founding rebbe, to the astonishment of the native Poles of the village. They had not seen a Jew in ages. Once a Gur Hassid told me about his visit to the Polish village of Gur, where his sect was founded. He could not believe that such remote, muddy, small village out in nowhere could have been the cradle of their current community. But that is the power of the compound interest equation.
The old Hungarian Yishuv in Jerusalem was no more than a small extremely poor synagogue of old people who moved in the 17 and 18th centuries from Hungary to pray, die and be buried in the holy land of Jerusalem. Apparently, some married here and had issue. They subsisted from alms that were divided among themselves. The division of the alms was a permanent focus of strife, and there is a vast literature of letter in Hebrew and Yiddish accusing each other of laxness and sinfulness, and don't give to him but sent money to me. It is astonishing that from that community of poison-pen letters-writing pious beggars grew out the current dynamic (pic) group.
Lelow is a small village (population 2100) on the Bialka river. The Nazis killed almost all the Jews of the place, but the few that survived the Holocaust are rebuilding the community. I presume they are now more numerous than ever. Once a year they visit the tomb of the founding rebbe, to the astonishment of the native Poles of the village. They had not seen a Jew in ages. Once a Gur Hassid told me about his visit to the Polish village of Gur, where his sect was founded. He could not believe that such remote, muddy, small village out in nowhere could have been the cradle of their current community. But that is the power of the compound interest equation.
Israel Without Ashkenazim
Following Prof. Jamal's attack on European Zionists, lets imagine what would happen if the one and half million Ashkenazim leave Israel to Europe and America. They can easily do it, today even Sudan (!) invites the Jews to come back and settle in that country.
I don't want to bring up South Rhodesia as an example what could happen here. Thirty years after the English left, the richest country of Africa became a "failed state" with no electricity nor food.
Should European Jews leave Israel, "Oriental" Jews surely would not because they have nowhere to go, and probably also the Russian/Ukrainian non-Jewish population would stay. Oriental Jews are harder ("more primitive") than we are and would immediately impose a Middle Eastern style clerical-military dictatorship. The Islamic clerics associated with the Jewish theocrats would accuse Prof. Jamal of slandering Allah and he would never heard about again. Ethiopian Jews would implement the Bible mandates, and you know what it says about what to do with conquered females and subject tribes. The Russians are the best (probably better than Germans) fighters and they would coalesce in military formations and go sacking Arab villages here and there. Northern Europeans just love fighting. Like the Vikings, they would sail down the Red Sea and sack the wealthy coastal Saudi towns. Without steady inflow of Israeli subsidies, the King of Jordan shall not be able to pay the salaries of his Bedouin army and the country would fall into chaos. The High Priest in Jerusalem would declare that Edom is ours and always was, and so it will be.
Decadent, depopulated, impotent West would protest and do nothing, as does nothing when Third World peoples commit their policies, like the Indonesian army taking over Papua New Guinea, or Burmese military exterminating the natives. No one expects anything different from them. Arab and Persian dictatorships would easily accommodate fellow clerical/military regimes, that is, a poor oppressed Israel would stop exciting their envy and hate like we do.
I don't want to bring up South Rhodesia as an example what could happen here. Thirty years after the English left, the richest country of Africa became a "failed state" with no electricity nor food.
Should European Jews leave Israel, "Oriental" Jews surely would not because they have nowhere to go, and probably also the Russian/Ukrainian non-Jewish population would stay. Oriental Jews are harder ("more primitive") than we are and would immediately impose a Middle Eastern style clerical-military dictatorship. The Islamic clerics associated with the Jewish theocrats would accuse Prof. Jamal of slandering Allah and he would never heard about again. Ethiopian Jews would implement the Bible mandates, and you know what it says about what to do with conquered females and subject tribes. The Russians are the best (probably better than Germans) fighters and they would coalesce in military formations and go sacking Arab villages here and there. Northern Europeans just love fighting. Like the Vikings, they would sail down the Red Sea and sack the wealthy coastal Saudi towns. Without steady inflow of Israeli subsidies, the King of Jordan shall not be able to pay the salaries of his Bedouin army and the country would fall into chaos. The High Priest in Jerusalem would declare that Edom is ours and always was, and so it will be.
Decadent, depopulated, impotent West would protest and do nothing, as does nothing when Third World peoples commit their policies, like the Indonesian army taking over Papua New Guinea, or Burmese military exterminating the natives. No one expects anything different from them. Arab and Persian dictatorships would easily accommodate fellow clerical/military regimes, that is, a poor oppressed Israel would stop exciting their envy and hate like we do.
Ignorant Palestinian Professor fights Zionist Ghosts and Academic Rivals
I received an academic paper by Professor Amal Jamal from the University of Tel Aviv titled "Unveiling …". Having read several academic papers criticizing Zionism from the Settler-Colonialist perspective, I am surprised (and I should not be) that they deal only with past European Zionist debates and publications and ignore the vast and far more important literature on Zionism in Jewish religious circles. I have never seen any quotation of the vast Zionist literature in the Jewish communities of the Islamic countries, before they were dispersed. European Zionism died with the Jews of Europe, and at least half of the "settler colonists" combatted by Tel Aviv University Professor Dr. Jamal are not White Europeans but brownish refugees from the Islam. For them and also for the important religious sector, the legitimacy of Israel does not follow from the writings of secular European Zionist leaders, but from the belief in the promise written in the Bible. I should add that many of them would not even recognize Jamal's post-Emancipation secular leaders as Jews. It may be surprising to Prof. Jamal and his Western colleges to discover that Jews keep the Shabbat and eat only kosher food. From the Roman times till the Emancipation the concept of secular, non-religious Jews was unknown.
I mean that these academics are discussing things that have been long abandoned and are irrelevant to Zionism 2019. The leading and most dynamic sector of the "settler" movement today are the religious youth, and they totally ignore the old post-Emancipation Zionism of Poland and the Galut, and follow the rabbinical leaders of the Jerusalem yeshivot. These religious leaders are extremely influential in the government, and their representatives will hold key ministries in the next government. While Prof. Jamal discusses what, say, proto-communist Moses Hess wrote in Germany two hundred years ago, he is totally ignorant of the ideological debates of the Jewish religious universe. Jamal's condemnation of assimilated European Zionists' thesis is irrelevant for contemporary leaders like Smotrich, who represents the "colonial settlers" that Jamal tries to debate and oppose. Jamal is fighting ghosts and the actual settlers. And he lives here and meets them every day.
(I have a correction to make: Jamal does not fight dead White Jews, he fights his living rivals in the academy, the dominant post-Zionist professors. Once I realized it, it was all too obvious. He is not very talented at it, and twice or thrice falls into vulgar anti-Semitic conspiracy accusations, like "hidden" motives of Zionism).
(I am intrigued by the concept of "settler colonialism". They had to invent this new label since they discovered that colonialism is done by colonialist country, and Zionism is an orphan without a mother country. So the settlers are, all by themselves and without being the emissaries of a colonial power, colonialists. All this bizarre definitions are to show that the Palestinians have no agency, they are innocent victims, and not, never, God-forbid, that there may be something wrong with them. That idea would be unconceivable, destructive of their self-image and their mental sanity.)
(I have a correction to make: Jamal does not fight dead White Jews, he fights his living rivals in the academy, the dominant post-Zionist professors. Once I realized it, it was all too obvious. He is not very talented at it, and twice or thrice falls into vulgar anti-Semitic conspiracy accusations, like "hidden" motives of Zionism).
(I am intrigued by the concept of "settler colonialism". They had to invent this new label since they discovered that colonialism is done by colonialist country, and Zionism is an orphan without a mother country. So the settlers are, all by themselves and without being the emissaries of a colonial power, colonialists. All this bizarre definitions are to show that the Palestinians have no agency, they are innocent victims, and not, never, God-forbid, that there may be something wrong with them. That idea would be unconceivable, destructive of their self-image and their mental sanity.)
Jamal et al ignore the whole universe of that created the ideology that the settlers are implementing. Jamal has no access to the ferocious debates maintained by the different yeshiva heads which contain the sole relevant thinking in the settler sector. Even if he should read a few of the numerous brochures and books of the Jerusalem literature, he would feel absolutely foreign and incomprehensible all that arguing about God's mandates and later comments, and could not find believable that there is an actual connection between those exotic elucubrations and actual moving to Samaria. In conclusion, it is possible that the people that understands the "settler colonialists" are the ayatollahs of Iran (pic), who do think in religious terms. They could maintain an equal-to-equal debate with contemporary Zionism.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Adoniyahu, the Chief Minister
A 2,600-year-old seal inscribed with the name of "Adenyahu Asher Al HaBayit," meaning apparently "Adenyahu by Appointment of the House," was uncovered in dirt excavated in 2013 near the Western Wall. The owner of the seal was a high functionary of the Court of King Solomon. I think that the meaning of "Of the House" is something like "Adoniyahu from the Government".
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