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
Shmarya writes,
Choshen Mishpat 163:1-3 gives a town's beit din the right to tax all residents to meet communal needs.Included in those communal needs are defensive fortifications, mikva(s), synagogue(s), and salaries for rabbis, teachers, and doctors.In other words, the community is specifically given the power to tax everyone to pay for healthcare.In the same way, halakha (Jewish law) forbids living in a town without a doctor.While this isn't the same thing as mandating socialized medicine, it does clearly establish a communal responsibility for healthcare, and halakha's mandate is far more in consonance with President Obama's vision for healthcare than it is with the Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh Republican version or, ironically, the Senator Joseph Lieberman version.
Tzemach wrote pertinently in an email,
The problem with Chulent is most people there need to move forward but
the framework is set up to pull people backwards. Instead of detox
from the Judaic indoctrination it is a comfortable opiate figuratively
and literally.I cant believe that in NY there is no place for cultural
deconstruction and reconstruction. Instead there is a regurgitation of
the same uninspired and gaseous matter. People need to take the past
to task instead of succumbing and resigning to it.
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.
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.
Anatomy of a Passing
Karen Carissimo
In the aura of fever around your bed,
our talk for a time was airy and easy
in the discourse of the living. Even then
I could see all your lovers rising from each
layer of sensate flesh, ghosts taken by
the virus as it sculpted an armature of a man
fighting his decline, sipping water, lying
prostrate, shrunk to a cusp of pelvic bone, a wan
expanse of skin, sharp dips into the hollows
of groin, cheek, buttock. Your shorn head
rested as you parsed words, your breath shallow
as you recited aloud from the holy book you read
while I continued my ministrations for the sad
mercy of your surrender. We touched hands
and lips, quiet in the knowledge we had
loved fully in the present, yet for you, a grand
afterlife existed, a searing light beyond this room,
and as the voices of men summoned you there,
you let me see your departure, a flight too soon
for my liking. You smiled, almost, for you were
no longer sick, your dark eyes in candlelight
emptied of ego, sunk into an abyss, your soul
a weight I failed to memorialize with my slight
faith. You knew I could no longer hold
the frail reeds of your arms paralyzed by pain,
so forgive me, dear one, that I felt near relief
as I covered your body latticed with veins
and did not cry out, practiced as I am in grief.
Karen Carissimo has poems forthcoming in North American Review, Atlanta Review, and Puerto del Sol. Her poetry has appeared in Cimarron Review, Nimrod International Journal, The Southern California Anthology, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other journals. She has published fiction in Green Mountains Review, and nonfiction in The San Francisco Chronicle. She is a recent graduate of the Masters of Professional Writing program at University of Southern California. She lives in San Francisco, California.
Who is a God like unto Thee?
This refers to the Holy One, Blessed is He, as a patient King[6] Who bears insult in a manner that is above human understanding. For behold, without doubt, there is nothing hidden from His providence. Furthermore, there is no moment when man is not nourished and does not exist by virtue of the divine power which flows down upon him. It follows that no man ever sins against God without the divine affluence pouring into him at that very moment, enabling him to exist and to move his limbs. Despite the fact that he uses it for sin, that power is not withheld from him in any way. But the Holy One, Blessed is He, bears this insult and continues to empower him to move his limbs even though he uses the power in that momeny for sin and perversity offending the Holy One, Blessed is He, who, nonetheless, suffer it. Nor must you say that He cannot withhold that good, God forfend, for it lies in His power in the moment it takes to say the word 'moment'[7] to wither the sinner's hand or foot, as he did to Jeroboam[8]. And yet though it lies in His power to arrest divine flow - and He might have said: 'If you sin against Me do so under your own power, not with Mine' - He does not, on this account, withold His goodness from man, bearing the insult, pouring out His power and bestowing of His goodness. This is to be insulted and bear the insult, beyond words. This is why the ministering angels[9] refer to the Holy One, Blessed is He, as 'the patient King.' And this is the meaning of the prophet's words: "Who is a God unto Thee?" He means: 'Thou, the good and merciful, art God, with the power to avenge and claim Thy debt, yet Thou art patient and bearest insult until man repents.' Behold this is a virtue man shoul make his own, namely, to be patient and allow himself to be insulted even to this extent and yet not refuse to bestow of his goodness to the recipients. -RaMaK
Russian document, printed in "Ruskayia Starinah," 1901, #5, by A. Mardar — brought by David Assaf in "Derech haMalchut" (J-m, 1997), p. 467 in Hebrew translation:
"On 13 December 1838, the governer of the Kiev provinces, Podoliyah Julian [aka General Dimitry Bibikuv — Assaf's note], sent the following document to the governers:
"'In one of the provinces under my rule, certain events occur frequently, the outcome of which is that Jews are found murdered in synagogues and small prayer-houses [i.e. shtiblakh, kloizen]. This crime is particularly heinous since it is executed in places intended for prayer and religious studies. This phenomenon is due to the independent adjudication by the Rabbinical court, which implements [this verdict of capital punishment & assassination] on the basis of their false teachings concerning eradicating informers who reveal their co-religionists' crimes. The greater the crime, the more the Jews concoct ways to hide the guilty ones [i.e. the murderers] and the true reasons that led to it. Despite all the intensive investigations, they succeed in covering it up, so much so that not only the identity of the guilty ones remains unknown for a lengthy time, but even the identity of the slain [victims are unknown].
"'In order to prevent this as much as possible, the governer [Bibikuv] presents to the governers [the following solution]: To obligate the Rabbis and Kahal [representative]s (and where there is no [Rabbi or Kahal] — other representatives from the communities), in the cities, towns and settlements where there are synagogues, to hire special supervisors to guard the keys to the synagogues and small prayer-houses, and to also provide guards [at the synagogues]. They [the governers] should [also] obtain from the police supervisors in writing their commitement to take responsibility for such possible events.'"
This seems to be a direct reaction to the authorities' frustration over the "Ushitz Case," whereby 2 mosrim were killed al pi da'as hakohol & even the Rizhiner himself [hemshech yovoy]. One was Yitzchok Oksman, and the other, Shmuel Svartzman. The former's body was found by fishermen in a river; the latter, whose body was never found, was "strangled while praying in the Ushits town synagogue; his body was dismembered and cremated in the bathhouse furnace" [i.e. the mikveh] ("The Regal Way" p. 110, "Derech haMalchut" p. 169)
According the historian Shaul Ginsburg, all the Jews in the region knew about the murders, including the victims' families, since it was practically commited in public; yet out of communal solidarity they all kept silent. (ibid.) Ginsburg also writes that "were the Dnieper able to speak, it could tell of many informers who were drowned in its waters by decision of the kahal in the Shklov region." (ibid. p. 105)
In fact, it seems that even after the abolition of the "Kahal" system in 1844, these "rub-outs" still occured. [Hemshech yovoy]
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."
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