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The Ramban writes in this weeks parsha (Gen. 18:19) that God's providence in the world is only over general principles (nature), but is absent from a life of an individual in its details. God controls change of seasons, perhaps earthquakes, but life of a particular man is the realm of neccesity haunted by coincidence.(Ramban uses this word, –coincidence!) Ramban further develops this idea in his commentary on Job (36,7), where his language is even more radical. Same concept is echoed in Rabbeinu Bechaye elswhere in Chumash and by the Rambam in Moyre nevoychim (3:19). Rambam in Moyreh says that the divine providence is not distributed equally among all people, rather it depends on the level of one's intellectual sublimation, the greater it is, the more God watches over that person. That's different from the Ramban, who seems to believe that the Divine Providence is dependent on the level of comandemet performance, it has to do with schar veoynesh. Anyway, thesse differences, as well as the disticnction these Rishonim make between a tzaddik and an average person in the context of God Providence is not so important. What is very striking, however, how all of them happily admit God's withdrawal from the affairs of this world. What is even more striking that this sort of talk completely disappeared in later generations to be replaced by the concept of Divine omnipresence, so when we get to Besh't and the Gra"h the idea that God controls every movement of every blade of grass becomes a central theme and foundation of faith. Further, as time moves on and, arguably, the suffering of the Jews, both collective and individual, worsens, the ideas of Gods full control become more and more strongly underlined. I wonder whether this later tendency arises from theological sophistication that cannot bear the idea of imperfection, such as coinidence, in Gods Creation, or whether it's an expression of intellectual vulgarity that allows justification of human suffering with one stroke of a pen?

There is a wide discrepancy between the historical (Flavius and others) accounts of חורבן בית שני and the story chaza"l tell us in gemoroh gittin. Did chazal not know history, or perhaps historical accuracy was never their intention? Did Rebi purposely omit any mention of the rebellion against the Romans out of fear of Roman censorship? Atzor kan Choshvim has a very interesting thread about this. Well balanced and documented discussion, good scholarship:

cow tip to atagate231 - here for full article

"The Limited Circle Is Pure"
Franz Kafka versus the novel by Zadie Smith

Kafka is the novel's bad conscience. His work demonstrates a purity of intention, a precision of language, and a level of metaphysical commitment that the novel partially comprehends but is unable to replicate without, in the process, ceasing to be a novel at all. Consequently, Kafka makes novelists nervous. He doesn't seem to write like the rest of us. Either he is too good for the novel or the novel is not quite good enough for him–whichever it is, his imitators are very few.

Now, why is that? Where are Kafka's descendants? Only a handful–Borges, W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard–have successfully "channeled" the Kafkaesque in any meaningful way. The result has been queer. His influence seems to cause a mutation in the recipient, metamorphosing the novel into something closer to a meditation, a fantastical historiography, an essay, a parable. What is it about Kafka's lessons for the novel that cannot be contained within the novel in the form as we have come to know it? How does Kafka lead novelists away from the novel?

Clearly, the intentions of most novels are not Kafka's intentions. The American writer Wallace Stegner tells us that "if fiction isn't people it is nothing," and this is a usefully succinct version of the novel's story about itself, as a form. By this account, the novel's achievement is to offer us so many "splinters" of consciousness, so many intimate portraits of people. The complexity and the psychological depth of these portraits–Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, Madame Bovary, Herzog, Holden Caulfield, and on and on–perform a service of variousness. Singularly, they are that interior communication with human otherness that Aristotle thought essential to our ethical development. Collectively, as "Literature," they are the description of a struggle against those more dogmatic and therefore deceitful versions of self generated by church, by state, by ourselves at our weakest, and now by our rapacious televisions.

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in response to a  comment by blogger Leah Kleim:

"7fatcow use to be funny, interesting, serious, and amusing. Now it’s pretty much turned into Chulent. A bunch of oisgefucked stoners driveling in poetry and kabbola when they quit there meds or smoked too much happy grass.
What have they got to lose ? more hits ?"

An Opinion on the Question of Pornography

There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-borne weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.

Nothing's sacred for those who think.
Calling things brazenly by name,
risqué analyses, salacious syntheses,
frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts,
the filthy fingering of touchy subjects,
discussion in heat–it's music to their ears.

In broad daylight or under cover of night
they form circles, triangles, or pairs.
The partners' age or sex is unimportant.
Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed.
Friend leads friend astray.
Degenerate daughters corrupt their fathers.
A brother pimps for his little sister.

They prefer the fruits
from the forbidden tree of knowledge
to the pink buttocks found in glossy magazines–
all that ultimately simple-hearted smut.
The books they relish have no pictures.
What variety they have lies in certain phrases
msrked with a thumbnail or a crayon.

It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.

During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that's steamy is the tea.
People sit on their chairs and move their lips.
Everyone crosses only his own legs
so that one foot is resting on the floor
while the other dangles freely in midair.
Only now and then does somebody get up,
go to the window,
and through a crack in the curtains
take a peep out at the street.

W.Szymborska

Wondrous Moment

The wondrous moment of our meeting . . .
I well remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear. 

In hopeless ennui surrounding
The worldly bustle, to my ear
For long your tender voice kept sounding,
For long in dreams came features dear.
Time passed. Unruly storms confounded
Old dreams, and I from year to year
Forgot how tender you had sounded,
Your heavenly features once so dear.
My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet-
Dull fence around, dark vault above-
Devoid of God and uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.

Sleep from my soul began retreating,
And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

 In ecstasy the heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive;
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting
The fire, and tears, and love alive.

Alexander Pushkin 

"The greatest good of man is to discourse daily about virtue."
-Plato

"Whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
-St. Paul *

R’Reuven Agushewitz writes: “You ask: and where is religion? Is justice, then, not demanded in the name of religion? And hasn’t religion had more of an influence on the masses than philosophy?

True. You forget,however that religion by itself demanded justice in the name of philosophical principle. Justice is, in fact, one of “the things which, even if they were not written, they should in any case be written” (yoma 67b). (…) As far as justice is concerned just as is the case of many other principles of morality, religion merely endorsed the demands of philosophy – better said, the demand of religion’s own philosophical element. Because the truth is that religion is, more than any thing else, also philosophy. Its telos is to come into contact with the highest principle of Being. There is no real distinction between true religion and full-fledged(folshtendiger) philosophy. The elemnt of faith in religion is only to make the philosophy more available (laychter tzum hand) just as tin is commingled with gold in order that the gold be more easily handled. Faith without philosophy is pure tin.”

Those words were written in the thirties by a man who has experienced the dark subterranean “murk and ooze” of political passion taking over his world. Communist terror and Polish nationalism. What is behind his words? Mistrust for sentimental passionate intensity, longing for order. One senses similar feelings reading the “Secret Agent” by joseph Conrad. Written around 1905 by another immigrant from a dearkly passionate part of Europe, the novel is full of fear that the thin crust of civilization will crack any minute under the weight of angry, irrational and passionate mob. Similar fears are expressed by Marcus Aurelius and othe educated pagans of his time. Seeing Christians willingly jumping into fires of death out of sheer passion for their newly-aquired convictions, they trembled. Yesterday those people were barbarians, today they’re Christians, they believe both with the same intensity, what’s next? To the educated pagans their faith was logismos-reasoned conviction, while that of early Christians pistis-blind faith. Pistis was despicable to pagans, praised by St.Paul. The Empire was trembling, soon to be overrun by barbaric hordes. Pagans sought a way to improve and sublimate human fate by homoiosis-assimilation to God-a moral exercise of hisdabkus bemidoysov shel HKBH, Christians sought relief in Extasis-experience of abdication of the self to God. Pagans saw the commandment of the Torah as an obvious banality, Christians were convinced that their God invented morality. Origen admitted all this, but remarked that while Platonisms was for the educated individuals, Christianity was for the masses. And so the masses were abandoned to religion. And what do we get? The Grand Inquisitor from brothers Karamazov. Give peple happiness and they’ll gladly give up freedom, give them extasis, they’ll forgo responsibility. Credo quia absurdum lead directly to inquisition. Renaissance and then Enlightenment made monumental efforts to restore man his dignity. Kant calls the fact that we must accept the existence of great eternal truths outside of ourselves a SCANDAl. It’s scandal of the human mind that it can not prove the existence of God. Of course those movements failed, just contemplate their Quixotian appeal.

And so the religion triumphed, but it was still the religion of St. Paul, St.Augustine, William Blake and Besht. One more heore: the pagans complained that the Christians didn’t care about the welfare of the Empire, their concerns were local, parochial, concentrated on their particular communities. And that’s another contrast between people like Agushewitz and people like Sh.R Hirsh. So after allthe critique of the Enlightenment could it not be said that Rambam, Ramad, R’Y.salanter, agushewitz loved Klala Yisroel a broader, greater love than Sh.R Hirsh, Shadal, Besht, who could not see beyond their Gemeine?

* the tzushtel of psukim is after Lev Shestov

" Blessed are these
for they will be gathered to the heart of the world,
               wrapped in the mantle of oblivion
 their destiny’s offering unuttered to the end."

Avraham ben Yitzchak

Yeshiva University Press and Ktav have just published a second book by Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz  ,called “Principles of Philosophy”. It is a remarkable moment in Jewish literacy for number of reasons. Firstly because it helps save from oblivion one of the greatest characters Am Yisroel has begot in the past century.  There are only three other persons in our recent history that possessed some of the very unique qualities that R’Reuven Augushewitz had, all of them were sidelined by history, but had a tremendous impact on many people in their time. Those three are R’Mordechai Shoshani, R’Shmuel Boruch Rabinkov and Avraham ben Yitzchak (Dr.Sonne). All of them shared the unique ability to positively inspire everyone who came in contact with them, they all profoundly changed many lives and had many talmidim. Monsieur Shoshani’s two most famous students were Emanuel levinas and Eli Wiesel, Shmuel Boruch Rabinkov had Erich Fromm and Avraham ben Yitzchak had Elias Canetti . We know about these gedolei oylom maunly from their famous disciples – it’s striking  how full of awe and reverence all those accounts are and how the talmidim   attribute   credit for  all of their achievements to their modest rebbes. You could find this stuff on the internet. Another  big tzad hashovoh is the incredible dachkus those people lived with. (except maybe for Dr. Sonne, also Dr. Sonne was different from the other thrtee because he  wasn’t a talmid chochom). Shoshani always looked ragged and slept rough, Sh.B. Rabinkov contended himself with only herring and tea when he lived in Berlin, Agushewitz gave whatever money he had to support his poor talmidim. They were never farbittered, studied day and night, always had time for their students whom their loved. In all the zichroynos from their students they always mention that anyone could come to them and always be given all the time was needed to speak about whatever they wanted.  Levinas writes   about Shoshani that he would tell people in Paris : “tell me subject you want to learn and I’ll teach you all about it” and that he had plenty to say about any subject.  Agushewitz, Rabinkov and Shoshani were all rizige talmidei chachomim, all educated in der altern heym, who lived in arba amos shel toyroh, yet their breytkeit in chochmoh was beyond measure. Noone knows where Shoshani was from exactly (according to one opinion, he was from the Ukraine), Rabinkov was a Lubavitcher, R’Reuven was atlmid of Slabodke. (It’s strange that Hillel Golberg does not  dedicate a chapter to Agushewitz in his book).

R’Reuven had no famous talmidim, therefore if not for Mark Steiner, who translated and published his work in English, he would have been hardly known to a broader Jewish audience. One of his books was published in Hebrew (he wrote in Yiddish) by Mosad Harav Kook in 1950 but didn’t score any wide readership. R’Reuven Agushewitz was born in 1897 inl Sislovitch, the shretl of vR’Aaron Kotler, with whom he learned in cheder under R’Reuven’s father who was melamed. He later learned in Mir and Slabodke. R’reuven wrote chiddushei toyre on gantz seder Moed, Noshim and Nezikin.  Onely one volume was ever published, it’s called Biurei Reuven on Bava Kamma and has haskamos from R’Aaron Kotler and Yoshev Ber Soloveitchik. In his haskomoh R’Aaron calls the mechaber odom godol bbetoyro ubechochmoh. R’Reuven was a socialist , as was Rabinkov and for some time was involved in workers movement, very far to the left. My understanding is that for a tekufoh he wasn’t frum and involved in Bund, but later came back to frumkeit and stayed with it ad sof yomov. Polish government persecuted him for his socialist activities and forced him to immigrate, first to Antwerp, where he was made a rosh yeshiva by rav Amiel, who was later a rav haroshi of tel Aviv, then to Paris and finally to new York. When the opportunity presented itself to immigrate to the US when he was in paris, R”reuven was reluctant because he was afraid he would not be able to adjust to the materialistic lifestyle of America, on the other hand he was repelled by the commujnist terror of Soviet Union. He decided for America when someone told him about the New York Public library, where after his arrival he spent years writing chisushei Toyroh and his philosophical work. (New York Public Library gave klal Yisroel many important works, Shavel wrote his perush on the Ramban al hatoyroh there).

His philosophical work is the second reason why thisd publication is important. “Faith and Heresy” published in English in 2006 is a critique of materialistic philosophies from Atomists to Bolsheviks.  The current publication “Principles of Philosphy”  is and attempt to present the importance of philosophy to Yiddish speaking readership. You’re probably laughing, but the work measures up to the highest standards in philosophical discourse. I can’t be maarich now, but I’ll try to supply some quotes later.

The third reason why this work is important is because it’s the best translation of a Yiddish work ever! Mark Steiner brings crucial phrases in yiddsih in brackets in the English text so you can get a sense of accuracy. The language of the original is extremely reich. Diversity and Unity are described as “Eyibiker vaisroytzetzu”, and he talks about “oyspshetl bedoychek” Democritus.  This book is one of the highest achievements of the amoledike heimishe velt . I’ll supply quotes from the book if anyone is interested.

The most commonplace critique of Marxism today is that the idea was noble but it didn’t  account for human nature, always weak, greedy, selfish, rebellious, always the same. It certainly is the oyifgeklerte bais medrash reid, to say that “Marx hut zich nisht gerechent mit human nature”. Underlying this critique is a conviction that human nature is unalterable, that people in all times and places want and fear same things. Ideologies come and go, but the only measure of historical progress is how we learn to give them less and less time of our consumptive day. Today is same as yesterday, tomorrow won’t surprise us.

What is striking here is not cynicism and reductionism that has dominated American (including heimishe) thinking for decades now and that was perhaps inevitable, but the very failure to recognize this inevitability. I mean the inability to recognize that we only think that way about Marxism, because   of the political disasters it caused in the past century. We lack historical imagination and this lack keeps us enslaved to nature.

The metaphysical core of Marxism was the desire to liberate man from just that enslavement, to free him from powers of nature masquerading as market capital. Once we would recognize the face of historical necessity, we could alter it by our will and action.Why was Marxism so incredibly tempting to so many great minds?  Because it attempted to invest History with meaning. No longer slaves but masters of our own destiny. Understanding historical necessity is the first step toward its conquest.

It is true that Marxism overestimates human nature, places too much responsibility on our minds. The  same could be said about the entire Enlightement and movements it inspired and if fact has been said, yet this didn't manage to entirely discourage the Promethean spirit within us.

After the Wall fell, we were faced with two choices in the Soviet Empire: Marxism and Americanism. I tried Americanism for some time and so far I find it very unfulfilling. Looking beyond the political disastrous reality of really existing socialism, I think that a serious consideration of Marxism as a philosophy, navigating around its doctrinal traps and perhaps giving Aufklarung another chance might give me some new hope.

Someone told me yesterday the following about R' Yochanan Zweig: "He asks great kashes but his terutzim are 99% nisht emes". The same person told me: "I got my mehalech from him, he's my rebbi muvhak in lernen"

Being let down by teachers supposed to be this great world-shattering experience. It killed Nietzsche, tortured Dostoyevsky.

The same person also told me: "Zweig was like a woman, he cried a lot".

It sent chills down my spine

At the beginning of our Western tradition is Plato’s assessment of this sublunar world as that of “necessity haunted by evil”. The richness, eloquence and coherence of Western discourse owes everything to the fact that already at the onset we experienced the violent rupture between the realm of value and that of reality. We noticed the gap between what is and what should be. We see nature as blind, indifferent, hostile to the human. It is against the blind forces of nature, its humiliation, cruelty, stupidity, absurdity that we assert our humanity. Outrage against the brutal game of  natura devorata and natura devorans has been at the center of our concern. In this lays our greatness. In books, poems, paintings, symphonies we make our weak voice to be heard in the “eternal silence of those infinite spaces”

Here are two such poems:

VIEW WITH A GRAIN OF SAND

We call it a grain of sand,

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.

It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it, it is no different from falling on anything else

with no assurance that it has finished falling

or that it is falling still.

The window has a wonderful view of the lake,

but the view doesn’t view itself.

It exists in this world

Colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,

and its shore exists shorelessly.

Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it, its only reason being

 that it blows

A second passes.

A second  second.

A third.

But they’re three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that’s just our simile.

The character is invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

W.Szymborska

MOST OF IT

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder–broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter–love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush—and that was all.

 Robert Frost

But that all was. Now apparently, the most read poet in America is Rumi. I see this is as an obvious sign of decline of our civilization. We resigned ourselves to the “intricacy of the present moment”. The human perished in the order of nature.

FATHER REASON

The universe is a form of divine law

Your reasonable father

When you feel ungrateful to him

The shapes of the world seem mean and ugly

Make peace with the father,

The elegant pattering and every experience

Will fill with immediacy

…………………………………………..

But father reason says,

No need to announce the future

This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire is satisfied

By the moment’s energy

Here in your hand