Old Jewish Joke

There is an old joke about the Jewish atheist who is excited to meet the Great Heretic of Prague. He arrives at the great man’s house on a Friday night and is immediately told to shush while the Heretic lights Shabbat candles. Then they sit down for the Shabbat meal, during which the Heretic says the motzi over the bread and the kiddush over the wine.
The atheist visitor can’t take it anymore. “You’re the Great Heretic of Prague and you follow the Shabbat commandments!?”

“Of course,” says his host. “I’m a heretic, not a gentile.”

The joke is about the gap between Jewish belief and Jewish practice, and the old chestnut that belief in God is less important to a religious Jew than performing the mitzvot, the commandments. In truth, the most observant Jews tend to be the most God-fearing, but the joke celebrates a worldview that I only recently learned actually has a name: fictionalism.

Fictionalism, according to the philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz, means pretending to follow a set of beliefs in order to reap the benefits of a set of actions. In a recent New York Times essay, he asks why he continues to fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover when he doesn’t believe in God. The short answer, he writes, is this: “It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said; it keeps me connected to a community that I value.”

This reminds me of my Great-Aunt Ilush Grossman. She was a  most religious childless widow, what we call Jerusalem Haredi. Once I visited her and accepted one rotten chocolate-covered raisin while she was praying and smelling a silver incense holder. She must have felt my wonder because she made a pause and said "Why do I keep these things? Because my parents did so." She was over 90 and very alert. I am sure she did not "believe". I saw her days before she died, she had a terrible blackened face having fallen at night, and she was afraid of death but never mentioned any metaphysical thoughts. In fact, I suspect all my Belz Haredi family are unbelievers. 

Israel Economy is the Fastest Growing of All: 9.6% GNP growth YTD

 

It is amazing. We are prospering. Source: The Economist. 

Pic.: Edmond (Benjamin) Rothschild. Established the wine industry in Israel.

Is Donald Trump - Alien?

 

I just copy-pasted the photo of Trump, as it appeared in the papers. The color is incredible, no human has skin of this color. Is this man the Real Donald Trump? 

This reminds me to a quote in the Red Book of Mao. He wrote that he was glad that his enemies paint him black, the blacker the better, making it visible to everybody that he is different from those abominable exploiters. 

The Privileged

Palestinians from the LGBT community were granted free residence and work permits in Israel by the Committee for Foreign Workers, headed by MK Abtisam Maraana (behind the flag on the table), an Ethiopian Jewish immigrant. The lives of homosexuals in the Arab (and Muslim) countries are far from comfortable, but now a door has been opened to the Israeli hyper-liberal paradise. I am of the opinion best formulated by Vladimir Putin on the subject: Let them come but keep them far from the children. 

Victor Haar z"l An Obituary

My childhood friend Viky (Victor Adam Haar) was born in 1944 in the Budapest ghetto under German occupation. In 1957 his parents Zsigmond and Aliz emigrated to Argentina, with Viky and his sister. My parents found a job for Aliz in Laboratorios Szabo Hnos., Kessler and Cia. in Buenos Aires (the Szabo are our relatives) and we became good friends with Viky. He played the contrabajo (double bass) and built an electronic lab in his room, with an oscilloscope. He dropped from school and menaced his father with a gun, who sent him to a correctional institution. At 18 he bought a motorcycle and drove to Cordoba (800 km) and brought a criolla to Buenos Aires. My déclassé friend worked 20 hrs a day as a taxi driver and bought a small house in Pilar (or Caseros), a rural suburb, two hours colectivo ride from Buenos Aires. They had a boy Sergio and then twins (with cognitive issues). Viky worked in a factory, then started building and became a dollar millionaire. Her sister was killed at 15 in a traffic accident. He never drank nor did drugs, and saved money. He retired to Budapest with a woman of her Mother's age, then found a Colombian young woman. In the frontier, he had to legally marry her to bring her into Argentina, and days after arriving suffered CVI and died. Ana, suddenly a wealthy widow, described as "ignorant" by Sergio, brought in from Colombia her simpleton son. The sons, proudly, sent me a pic of Viky's tomb. To me, it seems like a public cemetery for indigents. I (and others) tried to channel him to a normal, middle-class Jewish life, but in vain. His son Sergio has two daughters by different women and runs some kind of "cultural" nightclub-cum-restaurant. Life goes on. 

Water

 

I went this morning to the Club to have a swim. The daughters were there with their children, which ignored me. Saw a few older Jews ... even fatter than me! It was not too hot. 

Credit Suisse looking for buyer

 

I am shocked that Credit Suisse has fallen into such hard times. In a sense, it deserves to be liquidated, because of the unpardonable action of destroying Holocaust victims' accounts. Antisemites, stealing depositors' money. Apart from that, it became a terribly managed institution, with a Senegalese manager and officials fighting each other. The old-time frozen Calvinist bankers have been substituted by the variegated chusma humanity. The American State Street Bank said they were not interested.