Seeing the Light

Sasha Troufanov was 27 when he was kidnapped on Oct. 7 from his parents’ home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. After his release 498 days later, he spoke at the Palm Beach Synagogue about his life before Oct. 7. “One of the things I realized I had done wrong was that I wasn’t open to believing in God,” he said.

“My life had been pretty good; I had a good job, a good salary, a great girlfriend, everything I had ever wanted, but I hadn’t been happy at all. I was always planning ahead; I didn’t focus on doing right in the present. October 7 made me realize I can’t control what’s ahead; I can only control what I do in the present.”

On February 16, 2025, he put on tefillin for the first time in his life. “Doing a mitzvah, making a blessing before eating, kissing a mezuzah, or praying is a chance to feel gratitude and say ‘Thank you’ for what God has given you,” he said.

Pic.: Sasha thanking Putin for help in his release.

εὐαγγέλιον

Hamas leadership says it has lost all contact with the 150 terrorists trapped in underground tunnels in Rafah, Gaza, fearing that they have died of starvation.

These are the people who captured and enslaved, and assassinated our 18-year-old girl-soldiers.

Blanket Deleverage

NVidia in free fall - without any reason except that it has been rising steadily for a long time. Strong earnings unnerved the market, a sign that people are very nervous and will react unreasonably.

"The selloff appears to be largely positioning-driven, with recent outperforming names taking the worst of the move," said Jon Withaar, senior portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management in Singapore.

There was no obvious trigger for the pullback, but it began with an unexpectedly negative reaction to strong financial results at Silicon Valley data and artificial intelligence firm Palantir Technologies. Pic.: Coffee Commerce, Pictet Collection.

Mr Herbert Hoover (1932): Now is the time to buy

 Just around the corner,
there's a rainbow in the sky,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
and let's have another piece of pie.

Gaza now

 https://x.com/i/status/1985243190937444826

This is an explosion of a main tunnel in Gaza. See the smoke emerging from ten or more outlets at the same time. 

Tehran water outlook

 

Tehran's 10 million inhabitants consume 3 MCM (million cubic meters) of water a day, and the reserves in the main dams contain 14 MCM. The probabilities of rain in November are nil.

Tehran loses nearly a third of its water through broken pipes. So much water has been pumped from aquifers that parts of Tehran are sinking by more than 10 inches per year. The Ministry of Energy is drilling 250 deep wells to extract groundwater beneath Tehran, but this water may be contaminated by wastewater (Dr Elisha Kaly taught me that there is no drinking water under cities).. 

Water access in Tehran is unequal; wealthier northern districts have better infrastructure and a more consistent supply, while southern districts experience frequent water rationing. The situation cannot be solved by rationing; instead, a plan is in place to evacuate approximately one-third of Tehran's population.  This is genuinely alarming for a capital city and virtually without precedent.

A political change will not improve the outlook. Claude estimates that desperation will not motivate them to start a war. Iran's current president Pezeshkian has publicly acknowledged the crisis, even offering 100 million tomans (about $1 million) to anyone who could solve it. Honi HaMeagel may have some ideas.

Pic.: Amir Kabir Dam. See the regular water level mark.

Macabre Casus belli

 
Israel is demanding the return of all the hostages, and at this point, the issue is a couple of bodies that the enemy, after two years of destruction, is unable to localize. Our war chiefs are quoted as threatening to restart the war. Why are decomposed cadavers so important for the Jews?

I am reading about Cecil Roth's History of the Jews in Venice. The University of Padua claimed bodies for its lessons of anatomy, and the Jewish community paid for being excluded. Sometimes, cemeteries were robbed or bodies were snatched during funerals. 

I never understood the cult of the dead. The champions were the Ancient Egyptians, who erected mountains of stone blocks to store embalmed bodies and their cats. We may have caught this משוגאַס from them, or the Ancient Greeks, whose battles never ended till they recovered their fallen companions. But no, every human society always treated its dead with ceremony, hoping vaguely for resurrection here or in Hades.  Or revenge if they were mistreated.