Gil I am not persuaded that Israeli soldiers are Nazis. There is so much that separates your average soldier from an actual Nazi, just as there is so much that differentiates the Israeli state’s pointless military occupation of the West Bank and patchwork of anti-Palestinian policies, from the mobilization of an entire civilization for the express … Read more
The people of Hungary have given us a breath of fresh air and reminded us all that This Too Shall Pass. They suffered for over a decade under an incompetent, criminal, failure of a politician, and then they aligned together and kicked him out. Soon by us.
I’m hopeful. Yeah I’m watching the clock waiting for the missiles to start coming again – waiting for the big barrage of remaining missiles, recovered missiles, manufactured missiles, while we sit here like ducks in our unfit shelters and an interceptor stockpile that is nearly all gone – but for the first time in over … Read more
Went down the rabbit hole today researching alllllll the links in the chain from the expulsion from Spain in 1492 to the establishment of the state of #Israel in 1948. I won’t go into all the details in this post – this needs to be a book – but here’s the upshot: This is not … Read more
Don’t ask me about the ceasefire (it’s BS and prepare for the possibility it won’t last). Don’t ask me about the war (it’s BS and prepare for the possibility it will get worse). Ask me about Rambam and Arizal. Sinai and Zion. Distant worlds and other dimensions. Ask me about science and philosophy. Physics, biology, … Read more
Hot Take 🔥🔥🔥 The event that catalyzed the dawn of modernity in general, and of modern Zionism in particular, was the expulsion of the Jewish people from Spain in 1492.
4 Categories of Disagreement with the Orthodox Street(Believe it or not the great rabbis of the past actually got most of the following right imho) A) Issues where the settled law simply does not support the popular post-Talmudic position B) Issues where applying settled ritual law to modern life is unclear and the popular approach … Read more
“Love the Lord your God with your entire mind, personality, and capability” is no small thing, yet crucially, the road of this love is meant to be easy. We are to be lenient and accommodating in matters dealing with God. God gets nothing from our arduous effort, and if our arduous effort is directed towards … Read more
Can you prove the Creator exists? Here’s a modern update to Rambam’s argument for the existence of God… Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, we make the following eleven claims: 1′. The physical, observable universe has a finite history. 2′. The physical universe is governed by laws (that we can express in math!) that … Read more
A thought on Kashruth: “FWIW the judges on the national court extended the basic concept of not cooking a goat in its mother’s milk, which inverts the view of the surrounding culture on what is valuable and effective, to include any (kasher) animal and any (kasher) animal’s milk. What started in a specific historically-conditioned situation, … Read more