Last call?

"This must be Thursday," said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

--Arthur Dent

Don't let Lubavs be disenfranchised again!

Dear Everyone,

Two bochurim from MyYeshiva - Nissin Weissman and Tzemi Zimmerman - are finalists in the local Federation Tzedakah art contest.

Take time to vote for them!!!

http://jewishminnesota.org/page.aspx?id=208568

Good luck!

Yours Truly,
Michoel Rose
www.Myyeshiva.org

(PS from TRS-there's a reason the good L-rd created Opera-vote early, vote often!)

Nizkarim

There's a dvar Torah about this past week's Haftora (Vayera) that I've thought about every single year since I first heard it in 2004. Originally blogged on October 27, 2007 (read some cute comments there), here it is (slightly edited):

When I was a young child, back in YOEC, I heard something so good that I still remember it. The Rosh (Our fearless leader) gives a speech every Shabbos, and four years ago yesterday was no exception. The Haftora for Parshas Vayera deals with the Shunamite woman who Elisha first promises a child and then brings back to life. The child I mean. Sephardim only read the Haftora half-way, up to the point where she (the woman) tells her husband not to worry about the dead kiddie. Ashkenazim read the whole thing, up until the actual resurrection. Lubavitch normally follows the Sephardim rite, but for this Haftora we read according to the Ashkenazic version. Why? Hold on a second, you'll soon find out. See, Sephardim are big believers. In fact, they'll believe anything you tell them (how do you think I got that bridge off my hands?) which is a beautiful thing. On the other hand, Ashkenazim are a bunch of skeptical Apikorsim. So, obviously, Chabad wants to believe. But in this Haftora, we follow the Ashkenazim, because it deals with redemption, and when it comes to redemption, we don't want just to be told that it's all going to be good, we want to see the redemption.

Isn't that beautiful? I certainly thought so.

Kadesh<>Shur

Avimelech says to G-d, "Even if it is righteous, would you slay it? Perhaps this is your practice, to destroy the peoples for no reason. So did you do to the generation of the flood and to the generation of the disunion. I say too that you slew them for nothing, just as you say that you will slay me."

What the heck was the dude thinking, trying to shtech G-d? Like, "Oh, I'm going to win a logical argument with G-d, now he's not gonna do anything to me." Hello, this is G-d we're talking about, he invented logic! And even if he somehow loses, he's still gonna kill you. Will that make you feel better about how things went, that before you died you proved your point? Yasher Koach.

The Jew

Background: The following essay was published in Der Angriff, 21 January 1929. Goebbels founded the newspaper in Berlin in 1927 shortly after taking over as the party's leader there. This article is a typical attack on the Jews.

The source: "Der Jude," Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 322-324.

The Jew

by Joseph Goebbels

Everything is discussed openly in Germany, and every German claims the right to have an opinion on any and all questions. One is Catholic, the other Protestant, one an employee, the other an employer, a capitalist, a socialist, a democrat, an aristocrat. There is nothing dishonorable about choosing one side or the other of a question. Discussions happen in public, and where matters are unclear or confused one settles it by argument and counter argument. But there is one problem that is not discussed publicly, one that it is delicate even to mention: the Jewish question. It is taboo in our republic.

The Jew is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a scoundrel, parasite, swindler, profiteer, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him a Jew and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: "I've been found out."

One cannot defend himself against the Jew. He attacks with lightning speed from his position of safety and uses his abilities to crush any attempt at defense.

Quickly he turns the attacker's charges back on him, and the attacker becomes the liar, the troublemaker, the terrorist. Nothing could be more mistaken than to defend oneself. That is just what the Jew wants. He can invent a new lie every day for the enemy to respond to, and the result is that the enemy spends so much time defending himself that he has no time to do what the Jew really fears: to attack. The accused has become the accuser, and loudly he shoves the accuser into the dock. So it always was in the past when a person or a movement fought the Jew. That is what would happen to us as well were we not fully aware of his nature, and if we lacked the courage to draw the following radical conclusions:

1. One cannot fight the Jew by positive means. He is a negative, and this negative must be erased from the German system, or he will forever corrupt it.

2. One cannot discuss the Jewish question with the Jews. One can hardly prove to a person that one has the duty to render him harmless.

3. One cannot allow the Jew the same means one would give an honest opponent, for he is no honorable opponent. He will use generosity and nobility only to trap his enemy.

4. The Jew has nothing to say about German questions. He is a foreigner, an alien, who only enjoys the rights of a guest, rights that he always abuses.

5. The so-called religious morality of the Jews is no morality at all, rather an encouragement to betrayal. Therefore, they have no claim to protection from the state.

6. The Jew is not smarter than we are, rather only cleverer and craftier. His system cannot be defeated economically — he follows entirely different moral principles than we do. It can only be broken through political means.

7. A Jew cannot insult a German. Jewish slanders are but badges of honor for a German opponent of the Jews.

8. The more a German person or a German movement opposes the Jew, the more valuable it is. If someone is attacked by the Jews, that is a sure sign of his virtue. He who is not persecuted by the Jews, or who is praised by them, is useless and dangerous.

9. The Jew evaluates German questions from the Jewish standpoint. As a result, the opposite of what he says must be true.

10. One must either affirm or reject anti-Semitism. He who defends the Jews harms his own people. One can only be a Jewish lackey or a Jewish opponent. Opposing the Jews is a matter of personal hygiene.

These principles give the anti-Jewish movement a chance of success. Only such a movement will be taken seriously by the Jews, only such a movement will be feared by them.

The fact that he shouts and complains about such a movement therefore is only a sign that it is right. We are therefore delighted that we are constantly attacked in the Jewish gazettes. They may shout about terror. We answer with Mussolini's familiar words: "Terror? Never! It is social hygiene. We take these individuals out of circulation just as a doctor does to a bacterium.



Page copyright © 1997 by Randall Bytwerk.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/angrif03.htm

Hashkafah? Ha!

Today's (yesterday's, whatever) chitas says, and I quote from the Sapirstein Rashi Chumash, "Any 'Gazing' (השקפה) that is mentioned in Scripture is for bad, i.e. indicates the detriment of that which is being gazed upon."

Got it?

Jewish Tweetup

Attention Tweeters and Bloggers, JewsNews.net and FrumSatire.net have teamed up to throw a Jewish Tweetup in NY at the 92Y in Tribeca on Wednesday night. IY"H le7 and I will be there, and there'll be free food (even kosher!), so it should be a wild party. Yup.

Plus, yours truly is featured (not so) prominently in this week's Haveil Havalim, live at Snoopy the Goon.

Minnesota Connections

I got a call from Benny Friedman on Friday inviting me to a CD release party/farbrengen on Motzei Shabbos (that would be the night that was). I accepted, and Motzei Shabbos (of the night that was) found me at Lubavitch Yeshiva Crown St. at my first ever CD release party. Woohoo! First of all, of course, the CD was playing very loudly, and it sounds great. Very catchy.

After a while of standing on the side feeling awkward I went over to a bochur who was doing the same thing. Turns out he's e's and Dowy's roommate, which is cute. We chatted a bit, doing some people watching. Everyone who's anyone in the under-30 music business was there, including Benny Taubenfeld (head of Sameach Music) Yitzy Spinner, Dovid Stein, Yisroel Werdyger, Shloime Taussig, Avi Newmark (the producer), Sruli Meyer, and a whole bunch of other people who I don't know. Eventually Benny took the mike, and with Mr. Benshimon (yes, I must admit, I don't know his first name) on the keyboard, started to sing beautifully. He sang some duets, including Chasoif with Yisroel Werdyger, which he prefaced with, "I hope you're all drunk by now, because we've kind of forgotten how this goes." Needless to say, it was really nice. The whole thing was really nice, except for the whole feeling super awkward for most of it.

I was thinking that I was very provincial, let loose with all these fancy people, totally out of my league. Then I realized that in reality, when I'm comfortable, I'm on top of the world (witness last week's Poetry Slam). If you had stuck many of the people in that room at the poetry slam, they also would have been really uncomfortable and awkward and various other things. So really, it's all about who you know at any given moment. Of course there are also those people who are blessed with a certain natural ability to make friends wherever they are. Put me at a shabbos table with someone and I'll be fairly friendly with 'em by the time the meal's over, but a big room? I'm impressed that I made one friend!

Anywho, in case you somehow missed it, here's Benny's video preview thingamajiggie:

The wild sandy yonder

As you've all probably guessed by now, I'm working hard spending most of my day on the computer, which isn't as interesting as it might seem. Heck, I'm even spending a lot of time on Facebook, which isn't as interesting as it might seem. Consequently I'm not quite as interested in spending time blogging as I once was back in the day, which is of course why it's so vitally important that I do blog. Right? Right.

Abraham our forefather went out from his homeland, at the age of 75, to the land where I will show you. What did he have to gain? Not a whole heck of a lot. How did he know he wasn't hallucinating? Did he have any proof that the voices he heard weren't some products of a fevered imagination? All right, so he survived the fiery cauldron that was Ur Kasdim. I don't know, maybe he had a fire-retardant suit or something? And where was he going anyway? He had no clue. For all he knew, he was gonna end up in the Payatas trash heap or something? How miserable would that be?

Point is, you can't trust the voices in your head. No, sorry, that's not the point. The point is that Abraham, at 75 years of age, showed some major gumption in leaving his homeland and setting out for who knows where. And his wife? What did she have to gain? I suppose she would have lost her hubbie, but it's not like he had even so much as looked at her before, so I don't suppose it would have been such a great loss.

I could write a nice little paragraph about the souls which they made in Haran, but after a little contemplation I realized that they're not worthy of such an honor. After all, they were all brainwashed. Perhaps something about their kids though. I bet they were a bunch of skeptical Lubavitch BBTs...

So there they went, riding into the sunset, setting off for a new life in the land they would be shown preparing to begin the epic story of the world's two great religions. Yup.

The best wedding picture ever