Watched digital animals: Part I: Greek for Dummies

Moving right along, I watched the new Ohad/Yossi Green music video, and while it's very touching, with all the pictures and whatnot, the song is not very good. As in, it shouldn't be going on anyone's CD anytime soon. I appreciate the thought behind it, and I was moved by it too, but really, it's not ready for primetime. Truth be told, it's better than what I was expecting, a sappy love-song to Shluchim.

The reason I bring this up is because I think there's been a little bit of overkill here. Reading that Asher Federman (my old counsellor!) is building a new Chabad House in the Virgin Islands is absolutely amazing. Reading yet another memorial on shmais? Not so much. Listen, I appreciate people's need to express themselves, but does every single person have to? There's a new mivtza going through Lubavitch, that all the Rebbe's Torah should be learned by the Shloshim. That is a great thing. We should focus on these positive outcomes. Yes, there is a need for memorial, but at the end of the day, what are they going to accomplish? If people would devote their energies to making new peulos instead of writing about the past, a lot more would be accomplished. Obviously.

Speaking of that, Chanukah is coming up, and once again it's time to dust off Al Hanisim '29, which is, as faithful readers of this blog will recall, one of my top five favorite maamarim. There are two main points of this maamar. The first is an explanation of the war between the assimilated Jew peoples and the faithful-to-their-father-in-heaven peoples. What was the root of their argument? The Greekifieds refused to accept the existence of G-d. Simple, no? You would think that things would've change in the last two thousand plus years, but I suppose that wise King Solomon was correct when he asserted that, "There is nothing new under the sun." The Greeks asserted the primacy of reason, as does our culture. If they didn't understand it, well, obviously it couldn't exist. And even the particularly enlightened ones, who acknowledged that reason is not the be all and end all of human existence, refused to accept a higher power. Why? Presumably because they were having too much fun attending toga parties.

So what is the way to fight this invidious form of human behaviour? There's only one way: with Mesiras Nefesh. And that doesn't mean giving your life up either. It can also mean deciding to say Tehillim after Davening instead of running to breakfast and getting runny egg yolk from sunny side up eggs all over your freshly laundered shirt. Which happened anyway, as it turned out, but I suppose that's one of the reasons for sweaters.

And why should we fight the good fight? Well, chiefly because we should. I mean, what else are you going to spend your life doing exactly? Transferring little green pieces of paper around an around 'till they get dizzy? What's the sense in that? At the end of the day, does it leave you feeling fulfilled? All the rich people claim that it doesn't, but obviously they've been doing the wrong thing with their money. They should have been giving it to me. I'm not sure of that would make them feel fulfilled, but it wouldn't hurt to experiment, right?