=jr050428 JOURNAL ENTRIES FROM 28 April '05 -- netzach sh'b CHESED N.B. These here is like personal journals comprising like draft materials, ill-considered, half-baked, unedited , not to trust, and in the long and short of it "th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame". So like, Caveat Tabbycat, and those who open others' drawers or letters ought not ruffle feathers or withers, Smithers. Though the preceeding don't apply to Letters_to_the_Editor's, especially them what I done submitted for hopefully unedited publication, Mason. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I have started to tell the truth occasionally. It is rather a peculiar sensation. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This year the Seder fell on Saturday night. I was at the Dan Hotel on Shabat. They made kiddish, and motzi over bread, in a seperate section, then went back to main section, rinsed out their mouth, and sat down to the main meal, with no bread nor matza on the table. At one point in the bread section I sat down with bread on a chair on a carpet, and a guy said, don't eat bread here, it might get on the carpet. That's right, it would be hard to get out all the crumbs. They should not have walked back into the main section to rinse out the mouth, because a man might have a few crumbs of bread in his beard. Nor is there a need to rinse out the mouth. This is not analogous to rinsing out the mouth after eating milk, before eating meat. With regard to chametz, the person is not tameh, the house is. As for rinsing and sptting out, I see no reason that one can't rinse and swallow. For one has not yet begun the main meal. If I eat a piece of bacon on my pizza, then I rinse and spit out, because I should not consume bacon. But not if what I eat is kosher. So I just had a final glace of grape juice, sluiced it about my mouth, and swallowed. Though for that matter there is no reason I could not have gone into the kosher_for_Pesach area with a mouthful of donut holes, as long as I did not spit one at the cat. Now as for pasteurized grape juoice, as I have noted elsewhere, I ain't sure that counts as wine. Like, wine should be living, analogous to mayim chaim, if it's grape juice it shuld have the potential of turning into wine. So if you crush grapes before Shabat, this is grape juice, but it's also haGeffen, because it can turn into wine -- and tends to do so within a day or so, as I noticed on Rodos. And on Shabat, can I take some grapes, put them in a cup, crush them, and call it haGeffen, deeming it kosher wine. It sure does seem like work, malaka, to me. Do I say a braka over non-kosher foods. How can I not. Am I to eat from the King's Table and not even say thank you. And over smoked ham, or over a lobster. I think not, for those are the creepy crawlies that people were never intended to eat. It's just that no-one but us Jews was listening, but the word at Sinai was intended for, and given to, all the peoples, it's just that we were the only people what took it. If I offer some bread on Shabat evening to goyim, must I ask that they wash their hands. I thought and did so, but someone said, no, it's asher kidishaNU V-Tyvan_NU al netilat yadayim, who laid it upon us Jews to wash our hands before eating bread. So the goyim are not obligated. I think I can defend this as a rabbinic/Torah distinction (oral law as distinct from written law) ---------------------------------------------------------------- This new CEO Pope, Mr. Ratzinger from Bavaria, got it wrong. Europe does not have 'Christian roots'; they were pig-eating blue- bellied pagans who bought into a Roman fad that never went away. ---------------------------------------------------------------- To save money, I stayed for Pesach across the street from the Glatt Kosher Dan Hotel in Lugano, in a Chinese Restaurant. I could have saved more money by bringing some of my Chinese breakfast to the Seder, but I couldn't do it, beause Lugano has no eruv. I could have worn the Dim Sun as earings, but I couldn't do it, because I couldn't remember how to tie the tzittzit. -------------------------------------------------------------- It's pretty clear that Iraq, like Vietnam, has been a lost cause from the start. --------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft is bound to lose out to open-source programs, because the latter, like DOS, enables problem-solving, customization, and innovation from the entire community of end-users, where secret-source programs are subject to hierarchic bureaucratic inertia and corporate myths. In fact, Windows is an unnecessary cover, a graphic interface for illiterates. Microsoft products are essentially a dumbing-down, which is no doubt helpful for run-of-the-mill office workers, but a frustrating nuisance for intellectuals. Personally, I find the word-processing program EinsteinWriter adequate for almost everything I want to do, and much faster and easier to use than Microsoft Word. One can easily show than a graphic-interface requires much more eye-hand co-ordination than the command format of DOS programs, eg EinseinWriter. That makes the former a nuisance for ordinary users, and a real problem for those with sub-optimal eye-hand co- ordination, in particular the ageing. For the ageing and handicapped, computer programs are a real breakthrough that enables them to continue to lead normal lives, at least in the context of virtual reality. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 28 Apr '05 (Wielawski, Health/Science) Writing on the removal of wisdom teeth, the writer notes in passing "the indiscriminate practice of yanking them as a preventive measure -- much as physicians handled tonsils 50 years ago." Well, I had my tonsils out in the 1940's about 60 years ago. I was young enough that I retained only a few images of it. One of them was that my father visited me in the hospital, which meant a lot to me. I suppose it was rather a trauma, I notice a certain feeling of dread now as I try to write of it. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Blair, despite his intelligence and essentially liberal nature -- a polar opposite to Bushie, a crafty mean little emotional retard -- has turned into an opportunistic turkeey who should lose to any credible opponent. Blair destroyed England's livestock and turned the country into an animal charnal house, for no significant reason of animal health, but merely to buttress Britain's position in the European livestock sector. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Alan Riding (IHT 28 Apr '05), reviewing Ridley's Scott's movie of the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187 C.E., speaks of "a rich spectacle of costumes, horses, swords and endless desert". But in fact Israel is a very small country, with one small desert, the Negev, some distants from the semi-arad highland of Jerusalem. Critics from the USA and Europe continually tell Israel what to do, without being aware even of its geography. The reviewer quotes Ridley Scott as remarking: "What really interested me was someting that seems to have disappeared from our vocabulary, which is the notion of grace and chivalry." One may find some chivalry, within their conception of the situation, in the conduct of the Palestinian people during the intifada; although much that is blatantly unchivalrous. Self- destruction does not attone for the deliberate murder and maiming of noncombatant elderly, women, and children by a suicide bomber. And much more chivalry is continually shown by the Israel armed forces, the uniformally negative image of Israel in foreign media, practically uncontested by Israel, notwithstanding. One might add that the ethos of USA armed forces includes a large measure of sadistic unchivalry; Rumsfeld and Gonzales are among those who exemplify that. ----------------------------------------------------------------- IHT 28 Apr '05 cartoon Calvin and Hobbes: "It's hard to know what's important in life -- We don't notice the small stuff and we're never prepared for the big stuff." "What about the stuff in betweeen." "That stuff's boring." "Let's hoppe bumbling along without a clue is important." ... Well, that could almost be a motto from John Austin's ordinary- language analysis -- eg when he writes, let us pay less attention to "the true and the beautiful" and more to the dainty and dumpy. --------------------------------------------------------------- The cat is on the mat but I don't believe it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Take 2 "Appropriation of sacred objects for personal use* -- this is siddhis -- especially using psychologic insight and psychic powers aggressively. I think much of psychobabble is power-games -- social one- upsmanship -- extending one's demands upon others from physical demands, or financial, to demands that others coddle one's feelings -- someting normally asked only of a spouse and received only from a lover. Well, much of the social order is subtle sorts of prostitution -- feigning an emotional regard -- it is taken for granted that ina restaurant the server not merely brings you food, but flatters you -- this is called "service" and enforced wwith low wages that require customer tips. And in the workplace too, especially of female secretaries toward their illiterate male supervisors. Israel is I reckon the best at disregarding this. Even Israel newsreaders , unlike thos on USA TV, do not pretend to ingratiate themselves with the viewer. Communist states replace servility with a sort of tyranny of uniformity. Facist states replace with it with an abnegation of the individual to the Totality. Islam calls for the abnegation of the individual to the Whole -- but the Whole of Islam is the Divine Totality, not some human construct -- a state, or corporation. IBM used to be quite blatant in submerging the individual in the corporation -- they all wore black suits and ties, or some such. It is a human weakness -- "escape from freedom", in Erich Fromm's phrase. ------------------------------------------------------------ take 2 The fiarst day taht a landlord returns a security deposit will not be the day that Meshiach arrives, but the day that he is listed in teh Yellow Pages. -------------------------------------------------------------- Katmandu 2 After a news item on jpost.com In Katmandu or so they say the Seder truck went off a cliff with 3000 gefillte fish 2000 kosher wine 1000 challot miraculously the driver survived with only minor injuries being somewhat tipsy. Somewhere in the mountains of Nepal at the bottom of a cliff the Peoples' Maosist Rebels have had thanks to Chabad a most excellent early Seder. ----------------------------------------------------------- Re IHT 22 Apr '05 (Brooks) -- Sent Swisscom David Brooks makes little sense -- if Mary cuts her babe away, what right is lost to Jane? ------------------------------------------------------------- Sent JP via Swisscom To the extent that Israel under its present government abandons Zionsim, it may tend to lose support from foreign Jewish communities. ------------------------------------------------------------- Sent JP via Swisscom Sharon's plan to give away Gaza seems inexplicable, unless he is being blackmailed by the USA. --------------------------------------------------------------- A FEW MORE TAKE 2's ----------- Fragments written on a flat account: "A bohemian is one who will do withough the necessities in order to afford the luxuries." Kenneth Rexroth Well once agin I'm in disgrace; a POORBOY ought to keep his place They recognize me in the mountains I may yet add more honor than shame to the family name, though they who'd care may never know ------------------------------------------------------ a well-wrought phrase falls into place there's only one way it can go ------------------------------------------------------- The Hotel on the hill is closed today with no one home and no one in so I go down the hill again. The old Hotel in town is closed tomorrow so I can't stay there tonight either. (Olivone, 26 Apr '05) --------------------------------- "The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie"; Today's Swiss Alphotel breakfast is 2 little pats of butter 2 little cups cherry jelly (correction: one was strawberry) and 2 little glasses of orange juice elegantly served on a silver-looking tray with an imitation-linen paper napkin. Gevalt! To go up the mountain on this a sparrow would have to stop half-way. All of which I eat with gentlemanly restraint on my own vollkorn flatbrot this being Pesach. Leaving I take the placement to put new poems on and paper napkin for future poo-poo paper. I'd steal the Bible too but I'm posing as a gentleman this year. :You forgot to mention the refined sugar (subtitles after Oliphant) ------------------------------------------------------------- I guess one should see only the good in others, and overlook the bad, except for doctors (and us poets). ----------------------------------------------------------- I thought if I suffer they will see and rescue me but nobody takes heed. ----------------------------------------------------------- Halacha must be governed by common sense, as expressed in ordinary language usage. It now seems to be the lat refugue of the falliblism entrained by Hume's 'scientistic' (from opitcs) 'picture' (not 'theory') of knowlege The pessimistic presuppositi9n that if anything conceiveably could go wrong we must assume it may -- so as not to risk disappointment Well, that is the defensive posture of the emotional coward -- expect the worst so you don't suffer the hurt of disappointment. Whereas an Optimist assumes things will go well, even though with that expectation he risks being hurt. The watchword of the optimist is "It's good enough for Union". (Meaning, a labour union -- this is what one used to say in the USA, whenever someone wanted to do more on a job than was necessary.) This is the essence of Wittgenstein's later philosophy -- a very sophisticated development of common sense realism, exemplified by Moore (and someone, maybe Justus Buchler, once taught a course on Thomas Reid, Scotish common sense philosopher, at Columbia in 1963.) Eg Pesach cleaning. What we would normally deem obsessive is excused as being ultra-orthodox traditon, and deemeed a virtue. Andn with sninut, especially in summer. Dressing for comfort is not necessarily intentionally disrespect of the strictly observant communi9ty, nor intentinoal provocatino. and even an intentional enticement is not directed at all who may see it it, nor directed uncondtinoally at those to whom it is directe.d When Cinderella goes in decoltee to the ballk it is only to arouse then manouever (not manipulate Mate) the Prince to propose marriage, not to cop a boff from the first passing Tom. This is "civilization and its discontents" (Freud) Hence the pejorative "son of a bitch" of a woman who yielded indiscariminantly to her heat (and in tact htat is biologic rather than social discrimination, without it the human race would have died out with George III -- the inbred Hanovers haveing carried social selectivity to evolutionary suicide.) As I once remarked, A Jewish woman can be modest in a string bikini. -------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- Met a chap yclept Patrick Gerlad Woods, aka Rryeh. bulododo@hotmail.com Said that he once shared a cave with PVK, whom he knew as Inayat, in about 1974, at Camp des Aigles, which he said was near Gstaad. And that he would tie PVK's shoelaces. He said that PVK once said to him, with tears in his eyes, "I started too late." Ge has managed computer systems. He said its ok to go to 16-bit sampling, in fact he said many of the simpler versions of Windows 2000 do not support 32-bit sampling. He said that if I cut out the hiss, I'll get a sharper recording. He said the way to do this is to get an Interface Dqualizer, a bit of software that one can get from eg shareware.com But apparently there's no program to cut out hiss, one must do it by ear, by pulling down the virtual lever that controls those frequencies, and then listing to see that they're out of there. He also said that one can create pseudo-stereo. He also said that there may be some problems with DLA, except for the Hewlett Packward pre-installed DLA -- He recommended NERO as an alternative for writing to DVD. ------------------------------------------------------------- PURAV -- On Pesach Only whole what matza is kosher. If he has no whole wheat matza, let him find vollkorn flatbrot without leavening nor malt. For they left in great haste, and had only 18 minutes to bake bread. That means -- from grain to plate. One does not grind grain before one is ready to bake -- -- as it is said (by me, at New Buffalo) --- the way to cook corn is -- make a fire, put on a pot of water to boil, then walk out to the field and pick the corn -- One person grinds the grain, the other makes the fire This is so the vitamins are not lost And one never makes flour beforehand, it might spoil (and that is the real meaning of shmura matza -- shmura is to safeguard health, safeguarding halacha is merely a mnemonic -- like saying that one should not pare one's fingernails for fear a pregnant woman might step on them -- where the real reason is -- other -- Especially the flour might spoil, if you grind it before you are ready to bake, in the moist heat of the Nile Valley As for white flour -- gimme a break Jake -- did the children of Israel, with all hell breaking loose , then separate out the husks to make white flour -- and do that all in 18 minutes -- The ultra-orthodox are right in ging to any stringency to reocver of the truth of our religion, but they go about it on the wrong way -- legalism instead of re-lived imaginative anthropology -- And that is what we tried to do with New Buffalo -- to recover and recreate and demonstrate that one could live in the old ways -- this is "hadesh yamenu k'kedem" -- PVK often invoked that phrase, albeit merely in the context of paying respects to Judaism at the Universal Worship by singing "Hashivenu" -- but for PVK, nothing was "merely" decorative nor merely a courtesy, everything was for real. So he must have had some intution of this. And indeed the Abode, which he conceived and created, is also "hadesh yamenu k'kedem" -- which must be why I felt at home there from the first snowy day I walked in for a R. Zalman seminar and saw the large wooden tables and fresh bread baking -- as a matter of fact, that was during Pesach -- for I remember R. Zalman drinking a shot of Slivowitz, and so for many years I thought, Slivowitz is what religious Jews must drink, and then for many years I thought, it is what one must drink during Pesach -- this is "reconstruction-ism", although the Reconstructinist movement did not actualize that inisght, but fell off it and became merely one more innovative offshoot of religious Judaism -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Add to promenade a__hole poem as motto: Bosho -- "horse poop on peony" --------------------------------------------------------------- I think someone hurt me. I've always thought if I can but see it and say it somoene will fix it. Cf. "if you will believe in your heart and say with your lips, you will be saved" (a motto of Christian evangelists that I recall from the early 1950s -- from the New Testament, maybe St. Paul ) ------------------------------------------------------------ "may I not be tested" (Siddur, morning prayers) The means, "no sneak quizes please" it means, may I only be tested if and when and on what I so choose -- may I have time to study and prepare and so pass the test in peace (Abraham was tested and failed, that's why he went to Beersheva. Only losers live in Beersheva.) Bob Dylan was right about the akeda, tha rabbi's were wrong -- that is, most of them, for some say, Heaven meant that Yitzak be offered up as a man, in consecration, not as roast meat, as an animal . So the proper response of Abraham should have been, "Tell it to the marines." You see, otherwise this is not "a leap of faith" -- Kierkegaard was rather a fool, and anyhow, having failed his own test -- which was to get married, even though he was a hunchback -- he had no right to evade his failure by writing interminable panagyrics to Abraham. Puran Blair is wrong and I am right. Puran said, "A Sufi loves to be shattered." I said back, though only in my mind, "A Hobbit HATES it." ( Someone said at Zenith, I know now who you are, you're the Dervish. I said back, Only part-time. ) What I say is, Take no tests you cannot pass. (I also say, walk into no meeting that you cannot dominate.) The Way of the Hobbit -- this is the path of peace. "Lech l_shalom" If Shams Tabriz threw my book down the well I'd throw him down after it, and tell him to bring it back up dry, and him dry too so he don't drip on the manuscript. The Indians used to say, in the morning, Talk good, that's the path of peace. ("And this is sufficient for those who know," as R. Hayim Heikel of Amdur says), If, as someone said to me, it is hard to accept love, it is hard to accept peace. I mean, peace is so dull one could tgo drazy watiing for the tympani in Tin-Pan Alley, Manny. So no wonder nobody pays any attention to angels; they never speak kup. I don't even remember I'd heard them until a day late, when I've already signed up in the Army. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Add to Rap lyricis: Sorry about that platitude if what you want was just a Black with Attitude. ------------------------------------------------------------ Genesis 23:15 (Chaye Sarah) "a (piece of ) land (worth) four hundred shekels (of) silver, what is that between me and thee" AeReTy ARB'a MeAoT SheQeL KeseF BeINI V_BeIN_Kh MaH HOA The Swiss say, You are one of us -- a rich gentleman. And then they they take all your money for bread, hot water, bed and a potty and say We see you are not one of us now so go home. ----------------------------------------------------------- Relativism is no more nor less than a legal principle -- that for fear of subjective bias, law and regulations must be applied in disregard of values and of particularities. That is, (in disregard of the fact)that values exist But in common sense law, and in the judicial phase, values and particulariteis are taken into account So a 'slippery slope0 exists only in princple, not in practice. Israel adjudication is particularly strong in this regard. USA adjudication is very weak in this regard, they tend to take lawas literalistically -- that is the basis of all thoee morally shocking politically correct decisions, and also the basis of that litigation culture, and for that matter, the basis of security screening, where the fact that someone is an Israeli, even a terror victim, is disregarded for fear that the screener must be accusted of partisanship. ------------------------------------------------------------- Sent JP via Swisscom: A movie of 'The Merchant of Venice' might properly begin with a silent lead_in depicting the rape on Shabat of Shylock's daughter by the Venetian 'hero' of the play. P.S.: "the quality of mercy is not (re)strained, it falleth as the gentle dew" -- Shakespeare's Portia stole that line from us, ostensibly to defend good Christian folks from th' "perfidious Yehudim". Jewish tradition associates dew with mercy. Cf. commentaries on the Pesach prayer for dew. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Sent JP A call to boycott Israeli acasdemics contradicts the categorial imperative of academica, ie intellectual freedom. ---------------------------------------------------------------- It seems that Bush Jr. is a puppet for a coaltion of groups that comprise the USA radical right, that Cheney is their on-sie manager, and that literalist Christians are the largest single block of Bushie Shareholders. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 29 Apr '05 (Buhler) M. Buhler writes: "Google has taken the lead among search engines thaks to the brilliant and simple idea of ranking pages by popularity rather than by keywords or category." That idea ain't brilliant, it's dumbdown. Anyone searching for information rather than amusement needs to promptly find relevant reliable material. A research gynacologist using Google would find nothing but porno. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know if priests shoudl get married, but the Pope should have. I guess Pope John Paul was -- the Vatican vigorously denies so, so it's probably true. He was a man -- maybe one of the few Popes who has been -- and that I think is why they so loved him, even if they disagreed with his politics. Ratzinger -- most likely he'll always be that -- sounds as humble as Humble George. How can someone be the Holy Father if he ain't been a real father. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Seems to me that if it's rainy season where you're at, you keep on saying 'wind and rain', not 'dew'. Sure, the Jewish Festivals are for remembering our holy land. So maybe you should say dew when the rainy season has ended in Israel, and until the next rainy season. But this takes us to, "pray for the welfare of the land where you are." So anyhow, there I am standing around in the Platka Martyron Evreon in the former Jewish Quarter of the Old Town of Rodos, and Mr. Cohen comes up to me and says, we really need rain to fill out the olives this season, lest the olive harvest be lost. So I'd like to help, but I check in my nice frum siddur, and it says, if you're huty l'Aretz, wait until December 4 to ask for rain, they ain't getting a darned drop from uw before then. Sorry Charlie. They shuld have thought of that before they burned down the Temple. What did they think we were doing on Sukkot, saving money on fans? ------------------------------------------------------------------ PURAV Halacha: One may not wear a kippa (except the old-fashioned type, that are large and cover the entire head ), for it is apparently a compromise with the customs of the goyim, and we are forbidden to compromise our religious practice under pressure from the goyim (although we may and do compromise it in deference to our own mishigas, both from the side of excessive stringency, and from the side of assimilationsit opportunism). So I says to Yel M'Sinai, a kippa ain't functdional. She says back, 613 mitzvot and assorted revelations and it ain't functional? For a kippa ain't a hat, and it ain't not. I don't keep off sun nor rain. The French-fried Frogs, and even some idiots in the USA, take the kippa as an attempt at proselytying. That it ain't. Last time we tried to proselytye we waged war on the Idumenas in the Negev, and what did it get us -- Herod the Great Homocidal Maniac. So now rabbinic tradition not merely does not enjoin against proselytying, it has, don't even take them if they ask, not unless they ask three times. And modern tradition says, and then if you do take them, it is only as candidates for conversion, who must first undergo a year of study of the laws of advanced sniut -- and then the ladies must get naked in a pool covered with ping-pong balls in front 3 old men. Nor do I think one may wear a necktie. Aryeh Naftali, or maybe it was Hatzkala, said R. Shlomo said: They put the gartel in the wrong place. I do not recall ever seeing R. Shlomo wearing a necktie. As the gartel symbollically relegates our private parts to the netherworld where they may when they must do the deed of darkness, so the necktie -- well, I want to say it puts your mind in a blind trust, but that won't do -- on the contrary, it seems to dismiss everything but the mind and lips -- it makes of a free man of heart and guts, an enslaved organic computer. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Americans, as the USA Yahoos call themselves, are masters of hypocricy; they will look you in the eye and shake your hand while lying full steam ahead. In my society, it is considered bad form to look anyone in the eye except one's closest friends, and then usually only momentarily. And so it was in classical Sparta, the young men were tuaght to walk about with their gaze turned down. WWe think of the Spartans and boors and the Athenians as the archetype of western culture; but maybe the Spartan culture was honest and clear (rather like the Polish people today), and the Athenian culture foppish. For so it seems from Plato. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 3 May '05 (Barboza) I think one must keep on open mind on the question of introducting genetically modified crops. Optimally, of course, one should raise and eat only natural, organically grown food. And it will take at least an epidemologic sutdy one life-cycle to determine that there are no long-term risks to consuming genetically modified foods -- eg an increased risk of cancer, or mutation. There is reason to suspect that consuming foods raised with synthetic fertilizer increases the risk of cancer, but this has not yet been shown with reasonable conclusiveness. -------------------------------------------------------------------