Yhosephus wrote that in the original "about" section, and how about a Chanukkah destruction, during the very 7fatcow week in parshas miketz? In all seriousness I plan to take down 7fatcow.com in the coming days. Any protests and disagreements can be voiced in the comments section. I guess this post is a vote, but the voting populace is like AWOL
H'moon hotel leap
By Liz Sadler and Kirsten Fleming, New York Post
A newlywed groom on his honeymoon yesterday plunged to his death from a Brooklyn hotel in an apparent suicide — as his bride slept, unaware of the tragedy, sources said.
Motty Borger, 24, died at Lutheran Medical Center after the seven-story plunge from The Avenue Plaza Hotel in Borough Park — just two days after marrying his love, Mali, in a lavish ceremony, according two sources.
Borger's bride was sleeping in the room when her husband, who worked with his videographer dad, opened a window, stepped onto the balcony and jumped at 6:45 a.m.
Mali didn't know what had happened until she was awakened by the hotel concierge.
Friends were shocked at the young man's death, saying there was no sign at Borger's wedding in Williamsburg on Tuesday that he'd try to end his life.
"He sang, he danced, he was the happiest kid on the planet," said a friend who was at the wedding among 500 pals and loved ones.
"The guy was super energetic," said another reveler.
The couple shared a meal of boiled salmon Wednesday night in a postwedding celebration and seemed to be in good spirits.
"They were both happy," said a waiter.
"They were laughing, talking about what they should order."
Detectives were poring over security video, including a clip that shows an agitated Borger in an elevator with his wife.
A police source described Borger as "emotionally disturbed."
The apparent suicide stunned family members who just 48 hours earlier were celebrating the young couple's union.
"The guy was so full of life," a friend said. "He was so happy to marry her."
Friends said they couldn't believe Borger would want to kill himself or that there could have been any marital strife.
"She's a nice, sweet girl," a friend said of the bride. "They have money, so that wasn't a problem
For a while, i've preferred quietly bowing out to dramatic public announcements, not wanting to endlessly retire like an aging rock band. But now, a solid three years into the exciting creation and invitation of theis forum into being, i'm stepping down formally, from any inolvement with 7fatcow, unconvinced that it exists at all.
No bitterness. Dissapointment would imply expectations, and all my hopes and expectations for this blog where satisfied right away, constantly, along with all my concerns and suspicions, re: the inevitably difficult nature of True Expression and Engagement. That was understood from the beginning to be OK. Sometimes, when you talk with people, a lot of bullshit comes out as cushion for any insight and genuine heart-of-self that might be revealed, and that condition was understood from the beginning: along with the genius in our wider community of not-quite-ex/not-quite-ohs is a multitude of protective layer of ego and dogma; of noise and principle, of assumption and of flawed language, furious at the implication that it must be probed to be understood. That's OK, as much as any of the troublesome nature of our world is to be called OK, it's part of who we have been, and how we have expressed.
All that said, it's boring now, because maybe we've gone as far as any of us wanted to go. One of our founding members has moved beyond interest in the conversation here, as a funner life beckoned where the wit was expresseable and the company close enough that trying to blog in a noise filled room of cheesy links and ironically repressive vulgarity became uncompelling, especially once the Twitter and Facebook Status update was given unto us, to let the impulse sound more immediately, without need for context, or consensus. And so, the chance to say just a few things here was all he needed.
Another founding member has tried to give up so many times, and the clamor of each dramtic farewell, combined with the unelaborated links and occasional disavowels of entire identities for fear of Who May Be Listening, and Who May Be Judged along with him, often prevented the depth of his insight from being expressed. He erased all his posts, psuedonym after psudonym, and tried to convince somebody that he was somebody, and not actually somebody. And in that noise, his genius is silenced, and a certain unconfrontational decadence tried to grow around him; alas, woe unto those who think their sacrifices will provide security, money, or love.
And around that, behind that, so much genius was expressed. Zoroastro/IslamoYid's and Atgate231's Scholarship, Class and Humor, Shitalpin's withering and ultimately humanist hot/cold sarcasm-masking-authenticity, Hashemsucksdick's marriage of post-religious concience and artistry, Mohammed's strange and shocking form of concience, Anivaho's Mercurial genius to let words permute into sublime association (even as any conceit towards divine synchronicty was despaired of) Yalhak's Majestic magnimamity and wholeness of vision/purity of impurity of perspective (along with the lucid clarity of Yesod, Aisav, and the other maaminim he brought) and the writers we never even really identified, who bought so much class, genius, and perfect kvetchery to the conversation (who was Hiavrom anyway? he was brilliant! I hope he's OK.)
All the Neo-Nazis who stopped by to let us now what was going on, all the feminists and fetishists, all the excited Chabadskers, all the grieving relatives– so much got circulated, and maybe so little was heard, who knows? who knows. Who knows how much we ever hear from each other that we weren't ready to chap. But I feel like a lot of rare expression and relative taboo was aired here, and i'm really proud of that. As proud as one can be of something that one just let happen.
All the martyrs and all the victims; all the heroes and all the wimps. All the Faggotry and all the ugly, ugly Charedi shock-porn. All the piety and simple faith. Everything but the bullshit, and the noise, and the hiding of ourselves inside of our conceptions. It really has been a great ride, and I can only pray that some of this survivesinto the annals ofHistory, the story of how the Jewish Problem was, if only for a moment, touched upon, if not successfully adressed, from within, rather than just from without. God bless you all, to move on, and see how easy it is just to start up a crazy fucking conversation in this great, wide future of accessible interests, may we one day merit to see it to it's end.
Shana Tov, and i'll see you at the Jubilee
Yoseph Leib,
AKA Yhosephus,
AKA the guy that fucked your sister, back when she was still cute.
FEUDALISM
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you a glass of milk.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.
FASCISM
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM
You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
PERESTROIKA
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the "free" market.
CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
CAPITALISM
You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.
PURE ANARCHY
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
OLYMPICS-ISM
You have two cows, one American, one Chinese. With the help of trilling violins and state-of-the-art montage photography, John Tesh narrates the moving tale of how the American cow overcame the agony of growing up in a suburb with (gasp) divorced parents, then mentions in passing that the Chinese cow was beaten every day by a tyrannical farmer and watched its parents butchered before its eyes. The American cow wins the competition, severely spraining an udder in a gritty performance, and gets a multi-million dollar contract to endorse Wheaties. The Chinese cow is led out of the arena and shot by Chinese government officials, though no one ever hears about it. McDonald's buys the meat and serves it hot and fast at its Beijing restaurant.
I was going to write a poem while walking on Eastern Parkway but chanced upon a Psalm when I suddenly found myself outside the Rebbe's room.Forget the poem, David's way better…
PSALM 88
1 1 A song; a psalm of the Korahites. For the leader; according to Mahalath. For singing; a maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 2 LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence. 3 Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 4 2 For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. 5 I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength. 6 My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care. 7 You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss. 8 Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Selah 9 Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; 10 my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to you. 11 3 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise you? Selah 12 Is your love proclaimed in the grave, your fidelity in the tomb? 13 Are your marvels declared in the darkness, your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? 14 But I cry out to you, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 15 Why do you reject me, LORD? Why hide your face from me? 16 I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer your terrible blows. 17 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have reduced me to silence. 18 All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me. 19 Because of you companions shun me; my only friend is darkness.
View through open gate shows empty expanse of former camp
The photograph above shows the entrance into the former Buchenwald concentration camp through the iron gate of the gatehouse. This was one of several entrances. The sign on the gate can only be read from the inside. Unlike other Nazi concentration camps which had "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes Freedom) over the entrance gate, the sign over the Buchenwald gate reads "Jedem Das Seine" which means "To Each His Own" or "Everyone gets what he Deserves."
now i cannot help but think that every insect that gets incinerated in my zapper is exactly like the jews in the camps. the fact that i take great joy in every electrifying snap only enforces the holocaust scenario. now, my first instinct was to create a little sign that said arbeit macht frei but i felt that the promise of work was a lie and though the nazis never intended freedom for the inmates their culture was so jingoistic that somehow it had meaning to them. they probably told similar things to the soldiers they sent to the eastern front. so i thought this buchenwald epithet would be appropriate but i find that worldview so patently false i can't do it. in my limited judeo-german i could go with "scheisse passeirt" - shit happens.
From "The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin" [aka "Derech haMalchut"] by David Assaf (Stanford U.P. 2002), notes to Ch. 4, p. 361 n. 16 — paraphrasing from "Der Rebbi von Sadagora" by Arnold Hilberg, printed in "Die Gartenlaube," Leipzig 1870, no. 28, p. 473:
"Hilberg […] recounts that when visitng his followers in nearby towns, Rabbi Israel always went to the local bathhouse, and that a heretic approached him there one day and aggresively attacked Hasidism. Shocked by the man's audacity, the zaddik ordered him thrown into the boiling water, which was immediately done. The heretic was then pushed with pitchforks into the furnace until he was cremated. Rabbi Israel, who witnessed the murder, returned to Ruzhin the same day."
'Tis spring after all….
"I was just thinking and wondering if, despite what Christ tells us in the twenty-second verse of the fifth chapter of St.Matthew, we are ever permitted to make use of the forbidden weapon"
- "And what is the forbidden weapon?" I asked him.
"Whoever shall call his brother "Fool!" sshall be liable to the fires of Gehenna. You see what a terrible sentence that is. It doesn"t say whoever calls him assassin, or thief, or bandit, or swindler, or coward, or whoreson, orcuckold, or liberal; no, it says, whosoever shall call him a "fool". That, then, is the foribdden weapon. Everything can be questioned except the intelligence , wit and judgment of other people. When a man takes it into his head to have aspirations, to presume to some special knowledge or talent, it's even more complicated. There have been popes who, because they considered themselves great Latinists, would rather have been condemned as heretics than as poor Latinists guilty of solecisms. And there are weighty cardinals who take greater pride in the purity of their literary style than in being good Christians, and for them orthodoxy is no more than a consequence of literary purity. The forbidden weapon! Just consider the comedy of politics: the participants accuse one another of the ugliest crimes, they charge each other covertly with grave offences, but they are always careful to call each other eloquent, clever, well-intentioned, talented….For, "Whosoever shall call his brother a fool, shall be liable to the fires of Gehenna."
The above is fragment from a short story called "The Madness of Doctor Montarco" by a Spanish author Miguel De Unamuno, who also wrote a book called "The Tragic Sense of Life". You can read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Unamuno
These words are spoken by a man by the name of Doctor Montarco, who is slowly going insane, for no apparent reason, but most probably from too much thinking.
Indeed, Christianity is often said to have placed impossibly great demands on humanity. The unberable "blackmail of transcendence". I find this one to be one of the highest demands, to avoid the forbidden weapon. It feels wrong and hurts deeply to be called a fool, but it is also so very temting to strike with the very same weapon. Not always to attack, but to protect ourselves from the environment. Am I expected to take a stand and formulate an opinion about everything that I encounter? But that's maddening. Musn't I dismiss blatant stupidity as such to stay sane? But what if it comes from my friends. Can I tell them that they speaking foolishness?
Luckily,we Jews, don't put the prohibition against the forbidden weapon on our list.
i think it's a big mistake even the little bit we learn chumash and even kriyas hatorah, that nobody pays attention to, is not worth the risk.
the first thing that brought me to this realization, in light of so many people mistakenly holding up what rivka karasik did as bravery, that one could point to the bible, Genesis XII, 1:
And G-d said to Abraham Get you from your land and from your birthplace and from the house of your father…
now we all know that was because his family were heathens, now that we are torah jews the exact opposite is true: STAY AS CLOSE TO YOUR FAMILY AS POSSIBLE.
and there are many other such examples such as abraham's inexplicable pleading for sodom and gemorah, the whole thing is too painful for me even to discuss, ribono shel oylem they weren't even yidn why did he care.
I suggest we just learn the portions that pertain to halochoh and of course korbonos to be ready for moshiach and the mindnumbingly boring building of the mishkan (which is especially important in forming young minds).
i know we're a people of tradition and this will be met with much resistance but with nebekh all the at-risk kids i think it's eys laasos. i am hoping i can get people who are on the front lines like peysach krohn and avi shafran and pesach lerner (if he wasn't indicted for molestation) to bring this to our gedolim.
ani hakoton,
shitalphin
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