“The Samach-Mem Taught the Vilna Gaon Shas and Poskim”
- The Ba'al Shemtov
Archive for the ‘Snag!’
Father confuses son’s suicide with kamtza bar kamtza
Motty Borger's father speaks out.http://www.chofetzchaimusa.
hat tip to Vicki Polin
______
Shmuel borger - in costume or au naturale?
what is shmarya’s point in going after rubashkin?
why do you want sholom rubashkin to go to jail?
what have you accomplished by this?
revenge?
what are the underlying causes for shmarya? does he care about the state of financial affairs in america? in crown heights? will this make our world a better place?
factories all over america are using illegal immigrants. dairies, cattle farms, sweatshops.
the usage of ethically-questionable means to acquire money are the underpinnings of capitalism. if anything, rubashkin is guilty of following a mid-19th century, south-russian shtetl guideline for making money. I have followed (mostly) the going-on at failedmessiah (the vehemence of some comments on this "shmarya-victor-parade" are medieval), and I fail to detect what is it that shmarya hoped to accomplish here.
if, as many accuse, shmarya was the catapult for this whole investigation and trial, then he is guilty of something eerily more violent, vile and evil, than anything he has ever written about on his site.
judaism is opposed to any punishment which does not coalesce into the betterment of the said individual, and, by extension, the improvement of society. the prison system in these united states has accomplished the exact opposite, and shmarya has perhaps thrown sholom rubashkin to the devil-prison-complex.
“Cannabis Chassidis” Bestseller Making Waves!!!
From the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv,
קנאביס חסידיס: על הזיקה העמוקה שבין היהדות והמריחואנה
האם היתה ביהדות העתיקה מסורת שורשית של עישון מריחואנה? יוסף לייב, אחרי מחקר מקיף בישיבות ירושלים והסביבה, טוען בספר חדש שאמנם כך – ושואף (עוד מאז התיכון) להפוך את היהדות להרבה יותר רגועה. תומר פרסיקו שמע ממנו איך עוזר הגראס להתקרב לאלוהים
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תומר פרסיקו | 25/5/2009 8:55 
הבעש"ט - דיוקן דמיוני, עטיפת הספר. תת-תרבות יהודית ענפה של המראה למחוזות שמימיים
המזל, אומרים רבים משומרי המצוות, הוא שהגראס לא אסור על פי ההלכה. הבעיה, יהיה מי שיוסיף, היא שחסרה מסורת יהודית (שלא לומר קבלית) שמנחה את היהודי כיצד להשתמש בסם כדי לקרב בינו ובין הקב"ה. כדי לענות על השאלה האחרונה יצא יוסף לייב, יהודי אמריקאי צעיר וצמא דעת, למסע מעושן ברחבי ירושלים וארץ ישראל, בחיפוש עיקש אחר מקורות עבריים לסוטול.
כעת יצא הספר (באנגלית) שמתעד את מסעו המפותל, תחת השם המרומם "חסידיס קנאביס: תורת הסמים הקדומה והמתחדשת" - Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs (הוצאת "עצמוס")
את הגראס פגש לייב לראשונה בתיכון – חברים שאינם יהודים סיפקו לו מעט חומר על פי בקשתו. בתשובה לשאלתי הוא אמר: "שמעתי רק דברים טובים על זה במשך שנים, וזה גם התקשר אצלי לכל האמנים, המשוררים והמוזיקאים שאהבתי". כשהגיע מארה"ב לירושלים, לפני שבע שנים, הוא גילה, לשמחתו, שמי שעישן בעיר הקודש בדרך כלל עשה זאת מתוך התכוונות לממד הרליגיוזי שהגראס יכול לעורר ולעודד.
לייב הצטרף מיד לעבודת השם, אבל לא התכוון להסתפק בכך – הוא חיפש את המסורת היהודית העתיקה, שעל פי דעתו היתה חייבת להתקיים, שהרי "איך ייתכן שלתרבות עתיקה כל כך אין מערכת יחסים עם אחד הצמחים הרפואיים והקסומים שבבריאה?"
וכך יצא לייב לחיפוש עיקש, בין השאר בישיבות שונות בהן למד וכחלק מ"סצנת קרליבך" בירושלים וסביבתה, כאשר את הרפתקאותיו הוא מתעד בבלוג שלו, ששמו כשם הספר. על פי עדותו, מסתבר, ישנה תת-תרבות יהודית ענפה של המראה למחוזות שמימיים בעזרת חומרים פסיכואקטיביים – תרבות שהוא קושר לה גם מסורת יהודית עתיקה. עם צאת ספרו שאלתי אותו כמה שאלות בעניין.
For the continuation & interview & picture, see here:
WELCOME BACK TO BABYLON YHOSEPHUS & IDIT!!!!!!!
Up through the ashes of Babylon, Cannibus Chassidus shall rise — Jah!
Odi profanum vulgus
Ben Atlas's Quixotian insistence on things making sense in general and his recent attention to political philosophy in particular' like for instance here http://benatlas.com/2009/05/the-new-socialism-or-better-suprematism/, got me thinking about the social sentiment of giving "power to the people". Firstly, what sort of power are we talking about, political power? Or civil? Or economical? I fully support the notion that the last two kinds ought to be granted to every individual, civil rights guaranteed and economical development faciliated to the maximum possible extent. I am sure nobody disagrees. As for the political power, historical evidence strongly undermines any possibility of such feat. Ultimately, in this matter, the question is :"is the Grand Inquisitor right?". Our history seems to be saying:"undeniably yes". I would like just to point to a few drastic failures of the notion that people could be taken seriously that unfolded throughout history.
First, at the foundation of the political democracy lies the notion of personal responsibility. Responsibilty is the key word in any conversation about self-governance and all those advocating the idea of more "power to the people" refer to it as the key component of any feasible democracy. Educating people in responsibility is the primary task(see the article in the Guardian). Could this be done?
The experiment has been first attempted in ancient Greece. As soon as they realized that it was not deamons or gods that conrol our behaviour but something within oureselves, the ancients became set on identifying and controlling those impulses. Hence the notion of responsibility was borne. Since we are the source of our own evil-doing, we must learn how to control it.And since we must control it, we must understand it. And since we must understand it within oureselves , we must understand it within others. Therefore we must philosophize in order to create a life that is worth living. Thus political philosophy emerged, but together with it, a rift between those enlighted, the intellectuals, those who examine their lives and the massses, who are content to suspend their selves and remain subjects to ate, divine whim. This is crucial. Ever-widening of that split could be traced throughout history. But back in the fifth century BC, hopes were high. How do we educate the masses, teach them responsibility? It is by exposing them to people like us, so they could watch and learn, says Protagoras. Behind that program lies a conviction that there is nothing innate in humans, nature is a mere tabula rasa for us to write our noble desiderata on. I think this is esentially a very Anglo-American sentiment, that by being in civilised society, people become civilised, therefore the main educational tool is exposure to good values. But how do we know what is good? And how do we guarantee that the standards won't change? And what about human nature, can we disregard it? Enter Socrates. Exposure won't work, he says, for arete-virtue is something that springs from within outwardly. We must educate the massses by awakening that spark within them. We just got closer to the truth, but the split between intellectuals and the masses had just widened a great distance. So it is an intellectual insight to the nature of things that makes the difference. For Socrates, ultimately it is individual thinking that makes a man. But I see the widening of the gap in Socrates's words perhaps only from the perspective of many centuries later, when the dissapointment is evident, but Socrates himself believed that he could educate the people to live examined, rational lives by engaging them in conversation. It is not exposure, but reeducating the mind> The assumption behind it is that intellect could first gain from examining moral or philosophical opinions and then define man's actions. So you would think that we were on the straight path to paradise on earth.But that's not what happened. Socrates's attempts to educate the people in moral and political responsibility met passionate opposition from the people themselves.
Characters from the most popular entertainment of the time, Eurypides's tragedies and Aristophanes's comedies give us clues about public reaction to Socrates's social engineering. Medea says she knows full well what is right and what is evil and yet she chooses evil. It is the attraction of the irrational of the dark and irresistable thomos. It is there that those tragic characters see the essence of life. Those lines are clearly hurled against Socrates. Even clearer oppostion is in Aristophanes's comedies. There Socrates and his collegues are portrayed as an irrelevant and ackward intellectual, detached from life etc. The picture is all too familiar from our post-modern literature. intellecuals are redundant, live is to be lived "naturally" etc. Strikingly, Lubavitchers picked up that post-modern sensitivity in their attitude towards snags and anything that is not them.
Back to Greece. Society, liberated by the intellectuals from superstition and religious reverence, reject the suggested substitute, i.e measured responsibility, and embrace libertinism. The governmnet fears anarchy, rightly so, blames intellecuals. Horrific persecutions begin. In the period of 30 years toward the end of the 5th century BC, almost all of Athens's intellectuals are disposed of, either exiled or killed, Socrates among them. Dissapointment grows.
Enter Plato, still comitted to Socratic tradition of setting everything against the bar of reason, believes that virtue could be achieved through perfecting techinque of rational living. But Athens killed his master! I don"t think Plato ever recovers from that. Already in his middle dialogues the framework of his convictions changes. Common man is not capable of withstanding his temptations, therefore a relative simpicity and intelligent hedonism are the best guarantees of civil order. Governance should be left to the Guardians, intellectually superior people who would concern themselves with the nedds of the crowd. First Grand Inquistiors grow out of the dissapointment with the common man's ability to stand up to the task of living. Toward the end end of his life ad work< Plato seemingly gives up on the masses ever being able to raise to any level of self-governance. And this is after a lifetime of trying to build a bridge between the enlighted and the common. In his latest work, the Laws, Plato drafts a program for governance that could, and practically is used by any chareidi society today. Some of his proposals are:
1) Provide religious faith with logical foundations by proving basic propostitions of faith
2)incorporate these prepostions into a legal code-halacha-and impose penalties for lack of adhherence
3)mandatory religious intruction for chldren-cheyder
4) union of church and state
And so, at the end of this experiment, the common man was left to his own devices. After Plato,no ancient Greek philosopher took the common man seriously. Mistrust and dissapoitment ran deep on both sides. What happened after that strikingly resembles the current state of affairs. Intelectuals withdrew into their world, political philosophy ceased to be their concern, the y devoted themselves to abstract disciplines, science, easthetics, mathemmathics, things of no concern to the common man. Governing was left to politicains. The questions that the philosphers in earlier centuries raised, filtered down to the mass circulation enough to undermine any firm believes, but, especially with the intellectuals's withdrawal, a common was man lacked sophistication to grasp the significance of any of it. To soothe the sense of loss and confusion, dozens of private religions emerged. Every man contendem himself with his own "truth", and granted the same to his fellow. relativism undermined any conversation. Believe in God was just another way of finding meaning, believing in magical powers of dragon's teeh or some plant was eaqually valid. New term emerged:"healing". Healing and and attaining personal bliss became the primary focus and was identified with religion. Pseudo-sciences and conspiracy theories flourished. Thus a brief romance between intellectuals and the masses ended. The masses influenced the intellectuals to give up on them and withdraw into abstraction, intellectuals provided the masses with a language which soon lost its meaning but proved very fruitful in creating a multitude of dellusional yet harmless ideas.
No wonder that when the early Christians found that state of affairs, they had all too easy time exposing its fallacies and erecting their own Church, soon to be taken over by the Grand Inquisitors.
The next serious attempt to give "power to to the people" was shyly thought of during Renaissance, first by well meaning intellectuals like Sir Thoomas More and Erasmus, then gained momentum in the words of a radical monk full of impatient indignation-Luther. Of all such attempts, the Reformation was the arguably the most succesfull, it forever took the absolute authority over bibilical truth from the Church and dissiminated it among people. But, ironically, it also created that very urge of untamed individual development, that Douglas Roushkoff complains about. It is not kings who decided to build corporations, but men burdened with individual responsibility, who found themselves in a world where old Catholic sins like greed or pride no longer hinder their salvation. Man is saved by faith and faith alone and no good works can disturb that divine balance. Anxious to know wether they are worthy, free Lutherans must prove their worth to themselves. They stive for excellence in commerce and that means corporations and taking calculating advantage of others. Tender intellectuals like Sir Thomas More are fearful of that individualism, it destoys unity, sense of holy community. He gives up his youthfull ideas he had not long ago laid out in Utopia, and starts burning heretics. Two hundred years later, Rousseau thinks up an idea that people are essentially good if left to their natural state, it is a system of governments that corrupts man. His ideas fall on fertile ground of discontent with the regime, we have the French Revolution, power to the people etc. But soon people like the power to much, we have the Jacobin terror. Scores are murdered.
The list goes on, I would just like whoever finds the idea of distributing political power to the people appealing, to take these historical lessons into consideration. The desirable answer to all this would be that we are making progress, that the experiment is more and more succesfull every time, like Marx believed and many other utopians. But, perhaps Simone Weil was right when she said that the mistake of Marx and the whole of the nineteenth century was the belief that "by walking straight ahead, we can rise into the air".
simultaneous orgasms
is the sod of shney ksuvim habo'im k'echad. why can't snags speak as stupidly as mkubolim and chasidus?
We are giving away free Woody Allen Rebbe T-shirts
Since Woody Allen is acting like an imbecile suing Dov Charney like a petulant autistic child, we are offering free t-shirts with Woody Allen as Rebbe embossed. The t-shirts will be available in ten days. (I can't find the post now but 7fatcow was the first website to post a pic of the ad on Allen Street)
Crown Heights, I long for thee
Below are two comments appearing on a decrepit website which I won't link. The point is, it was written by typical residents of Crown Heights and should be posted prominently on all literature pertaining to Chabad
-hat tip to schmorgel van borghel
Psychosis: Avi Shafran defends Madoff and sullies Hudson River pilot
from all the insanities, I can't recall this kind of mindless lunacy. from vosizneias.com: Harboring Some Admiration for Bernie, And Less For Sully
New York - Something tells me I won’t make any new friends (and might even lose some old ones) if I confess to harboring some admiration for Bernard Madoff.
And to make things worse, I can’t muster much for Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a full commercial airliner in the Hudson River back in January.
Let me try to explain. Please.
Mr. Madoff committed a serious economic crime on an unprecedented scale for such wrongdoing, and in the process ruined the financial futures of numerous people and institutions, including charitable ones, worldwide. There can be no denying that.
Yet I can’t quite bring myself to join the large, loud chorus of those who have condemned him to – to take Ralph Blumenthal’s judgment in The New York Times Magazine – the Pit, the deepest circle of Dante’s Inferno. Others have devised and publicly proclaimed creative and exquisite tortures of their own for the disgraced businessman – Woody Allen fantasized Madoff being attacked by clients reincarnated as lobsters, and Elie Wiesel wished the investor confined to a solitary cell and forced to watch his victims on a screen bewail their changed fortunes. The fury of the bilked has yielded opprobrium and loathing that isn’t visited on mass murderers.
I think the revulsion may say more about the revolted – and our money-obsessed and vengeance-obsessed society – than it does about Madoff. His crime, after all, was really remarkable only for its longevity and its scope. The Torah teaches that stealing is a sin, but it doesn’t differentiate between misappropriating a million dollars and pilfering a dime. And as to the sheer number of people defrauded by the thief of the moment, well, anyone who cheats on his federal income tax is defrauding 300 million of his fellow citizens. Few though, in such cases, invoke Dante.
What is more, Madoff likely began his crime spree in the hope of rewarding, not swindling, investors, and by the time it became clear he wouldn’t be able to do that, he was already deeply entangled – and daily becoming more entangled – in the web he wove.
None of that, though, is to belittle the great pain Mr. Madoff caused, and is certainly no cause for affording the iniquitous investment broker respect. No, what I admire about him has to do with his owning up to his crime.
Think about it. The man knew for years that his scheme would eventually come apart and that prosecution loomed, yet he took no steps to flee, huge bribe in hand, to some country lacking extradition treaties. Idi Amin, we might recall, died of old age in luxury. Madoff’s millions, moreover, could have easily bought him a new face and identity papers; he could spent his senior years tanned and well-fed among the sunbirds of Miami Beach.
Instead, though, he chose to essentially turn himself in and admit guilt. He apologized to his victims, acknowledging that he had “deeply hurt many, many people,” and adding, “I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for what I have done.”
No one can know if those words reflect the feelings in his heart, but I don’t claim any right to doubt that they do. And facing one’s sins and regretting them is the essence of teshuvah – which we are all enjoined to do for our personal aveiros, however small or large.
No such sublimity of spirit, though, was in evidence in any of the public acts or words of Mr. Sullenberger. He saved 155 lives, no doubt about it, and is certainly owed the hakoras hatov of those he saved, and of their families and friends. And he executed tremendous skill.
But no moral choice was involved in his act. He was on the plane too, after all; his own life depended on undertaking his feat no less than the lives of others. He did what anyone in terrible circumstances would do: try to stay alive. He was fortunate (as were his passengers) that he possessed the talents requisite to the task, but that’s a tribute to his training, and to the One Who instilled such astounding abilities in His creations (and Whose help the captain was not quoted as acknowledging). Basketball players are highly skilled, too – and heroes, in fact, to some. But I have never managed to understand that latter fact.
Sully has reportedly inked a $3 million book deal with HarperCollins, and is also planning a second book of inspirational poems; Bernie, likely for the rest of his life, will languish in jail.
That may make societal sense, but personally, I’m still unmoved by the pilot, and, at least somewhat, inspired by the penitent.
Judaism.com
May 18, 2008 at 8:13 am you can call me a racist but the fact is that all this baali tshuka who we dont know if this are jews or not . like this moiser ****** his grandmother did not grow in a jewish community and who is his family .of course his Behavior is not jewish so what is to tell us that he is a jew maybe he is just a goy anti-semith ?
and the ukrainian gotim who mosser the other jews are for sure not jews .
so what if their father is a mate moshiach beitar ?
their mother is for sure a ukrainian goya . and thy are ukrainian anti-semith
this is not racist .about time to tell this baaly tshuka to leave us alon we have our own
problems we dont need more .
our fathers and grand fathers went trough hell and are jews this people
went to the bars with ivan and igor and eat chazer and now thy are big
meshichistin and want to tell us what to do.
**** ****** is NOT jewish make no mistake . if his wife is jewish than the
kids are jewish but how many non jewish kids are in crown heights ?
and why do we have to suffer ?