Imagine A World Without Global Warming

Arctic August: NYC Sets Record For Coldest Day
High Of 59 Degrees Ties Chilliest August High Set In 1911

"This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.
In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911.Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.

immanent eschaton, however takes this as just another sign of the impending ice age.

Its Like 2004 All Over Again

Hurricane Dean devastates before downgrade

Breaking News!

CHAVRUSA TUMULT AT BMG

B"H there have been no casualties, sources say.

Not Too Bright

From the Guardian online:

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week.

But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.

This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.

The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

Reuters has admitted that it took the images from Russian state television channel RTR and wrongly captioned them as file footage originating from the Arctic.

Oddly enough, this story did not appear in Reuters Oddly Enough!

gil incites violence

i think gil student needs to be strongly condemned by the MO community for his incitement to violence recently. while it is true that he does claim he is not being literal, we cannot be sure someone won't act before reading his parenthetical addendum.

is bush pulling a clinton?

as a president's tenure approaches its close, what better time to look for a more positive place in the history books than by selling out israel? perhaps by funding the moderate wing of al queida. or arranging for a peace conference between moderate so-called militants and their western "victims".

OpinionJournal.com

I wound up chatting at a reception a couple years ago with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about his love of opera and his taste in popular culture. It turned out he was a huge fan of Fox's anti-terrorist drama "24," and he convinced me to watch it for the first time.Well, little did I know just how much of a fan Justice Scalia is of the fast-paced show. The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reports he positively gushed about the Fox series recently at a conference on homeland security in the Canadian capital of Ottawa that was attended by an international panel of judges. Mr. Scalia couldn't refrain from commenting after Canadian federal Judge Richard Mosley opined: "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra, 'What would Jack Bauer do?'"As viewers know, Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a federal agent known for roughing up suspected terrorists who are holding out on important information."Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles!" Mr. Scalia interjected. "He saved hundreds of thousands of lives!" Indeed, Mr. Scalia was just warming up. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him?" he asked rhetorically. "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so!"Other panelists promptly challenged the American jurist, arguing that some prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges could be innocent. "I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia replied. After the panel broke up, he continued to wax enthusiastically about his favorite show.If I were the producers of "24" I would immediately invite Mr. Scalia to make a guest appearance on the series. Judicial decorum would probably prevent him from doing so, but who wouldn't want to see the highly expressive Mr. Scalia in the role of a judge presiding over the trial of an accused terrorist? -- John Fund

Roger Kimball On The Dangerous Book for Boys; also John Podhoretz On The Yiddish Policemen's Union (yulis links)

Minhagei Kalbisov

Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman:

Some sefarim relate a story involving a meeting between the Nefesh Chayah, R. Yehoshua of Kutno, and the Avnei Nezer, in which the [Avnei Nezer] quoted a ruling in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov. This ruling, based on a comment of Tosafot, was that if one began to pray before the latest time for davening, the prayer is acceptable, even if the prayer continues after the time has passed. R. Yehoshua of Kutno responded that he had heard this as well, but did not know where the Tosafot was. The Avnei Nezer thought for a moment, and then replied that he knew where it was: Berakhot 7a.

That Tosafot (s.v. Sh’ilmalei) comments on the gemara’s statement that Bilaam was able to discern G-d’s very brief moment of anger and use that opportunity to curse the Jews. If , however, the moment was so brief, how much could he have said in that time? The Tosafot offer two answers, the second being that if he started his curse at that moment, it would not have mattered had the remaining words taken beyond that time to complete. Thus, explained the Avnei Nezer, since Chazal tell us that the “measurement of good is greater than the measurement of disaster”, if a curse is effective under such circumstance, prayer certainly is. [The Kogaglover Rav (Resp. Eretz Zvi, I, 121, and II, p. 171), who was a student of the Avnei Nezer, quotes this idea as well, but attributes it not to him but to the Yid haKodesh of Psischa, and uses it to consider the question of Purim meals that start on Purim but continue into the next day. Resp. Dovev Meisharim, III, 11, also alludes to this point in the Purim Seudah context.]

The Responsa Minchat Yitzchak (IV, 48) questioned the veracity of this story, noting that its conclusion is contradicted by the poskim (See Shulchan Arukh O.C. 124:2, Magen Avraham, 4; and 232:2, Magen Avraham, 2, and 89:4 ). However, after considering some possible support for this idea in other contexts, he concludes that the logic is effective in allowing a prayer to be considered with the community, as long as it began with the community

Perhaps this can explain the longstanding Kalbisover minhag of missing z'man tefilah by approximately two minutes, which has become a point of mockery for the scoffers who do not understand why they cannot just start two minutes earlier, or else much later. In truth, this minhag is based wish to simultaneously demonstrate support for the Ba'al Shem Tov's position and for the hasidic tradition of missing the z'man. Were they to start just before the z'man, that would indicate either: that they disagree with the Ba'al Shem Tov and consider finishing after the z'man to be like missing the z'man; or, that they agree with the Ba'al Shem Tov but disregard hasidic tradition. However, by missing the z'man by two minutes they show that they indeed careful to follow tradition, and that they are in agreement with the Ba'al Shem Tov's position.

It's like Making of a Godol Online! BTW, rumor has it YU fired Perl, by all accounts their most popular teacher, probably because he was popular. But then maybe they didn't like the attacks on the Soloveichiks.

The Pressing Issues We Face

Pardon the pun. But seriously, I think it's about time somebody has brought attention to this issue.
Judge Who Seeks Millions for Lost Pants Has His (Emotional) Day in Court

The "willful and malicious conduct" Pearson described consisted of this: In 2005, Pearson was starting his new job as a judge and therefore needed to start wearing suits again after a couple of years of unemployment. He brought five suits in for alterations because he'd put on 20 pounds and needed to have the pants let out. Four suits came back fine. One came back without the pants. Pearson says the Chung family -- Korean immigrants who came here from the charcoal factories of Seoul in 1992 and now own three cleaners, including the one a short walk from Pearson's place in the Fort Lincoln section of Northeast -- had no intention of living up to the sign in their shop that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed." Therefore, Pearson said, he had no choice but to take on "the awesome responsibility" of suing the Chungs on behalf of every resident of the District of Columbia...

Pearson presented a series of witnesses who told of unhappy experiences at Custom. Their satisfaction, they said, was hardly guaranteed. But every one of Pearson's witnesses told the defense that in fact, they would have been entirely satisfied if they had been given credit for free cleaning or compensation in the amount of the value of their damaged or lost garment. Most of the witnesses said they'd generally had good experiences at Custom, and not one of Pearson's witnesses said anything about deserving millions of dollars. Witnesses depicted Soo Chung, the mom in the Mom and Pop operation, as someone who was pleasant and professional -- until a dispute arose, at which point she told several of the customers that it was they who had brought in damaged goods, not the shop that had caused any problem with an article of clothing. Grace Hewell, a retired congressional staffer, said Jin Chung, Soo's husband, "chased me out of the store" when she complained that her suit pants "looked like they had been washed" and no longer fit properly. "At 89, I'm not ready to be chased," she said. "But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews." After questioning eight witnesses, Pearson spent two hours telling his own story, but as he came to the part about when Soo Chung finally told him she had found the missing pants, the tale of the $10.50 alteration that went awry proved to be too much. "These are not my pants," Pearson recalled telling Chung when she handed him a pair of gray pants with cuffs. "I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs." "And she said, 'These are your pants.' " Pearson paused. He struggled to breathe deeply. He could not continue. Pearson blurted a request for a break, stood up, turned around and walked out of the courtroom, tears dripping from his full and reddened eyes. When he returned, he called that moment when Chung offered him the wrong pants "a Twilight Zone experience," and again, he welled up and had to halt the proceedings.

The Democratic Party: Hezb No Allah?

Good article at the Spectator about religion in politics:

The dirty little secret of Democrat party politics is that secularists fill a role very similar to the one occupied by evangelicals on the Republican side. They are becoming a reliable voting bloc. There is a far larger religion gap than there is a gender gap, but only the latter has been extensively covered. Christian fundamentalism is frequently emphasized, but secularism is completely missed. It has only been in the most recent election cycle (2006) that the "God gap" has received significant attention and then it was to emphasize that religious voters were coming back to the Democratic party. Coverage has typically been short on attention to secularists, focusing instead on the movement of religious voters.Political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce have pointed out that one never hears about how the Democrats "have shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics." Nevertheless, when you see evolution suddenly become a persistent issue in presidential debates, something very much like that shoring up is happening. Markers are being set out. "Stay away from this wicked person, my son. He has inadequate respect for the marriage of molecules and random chance."

Anonymous: Take Back NP Quick!

From a review of Andrew Ferguson's new book:

I admire both of these books, but apparently in my admiration I can be viewed as an oddity, at least by New York Post columnist John Podhoretz., who has written about the Ferguson book. In a column of tortured praise for it, Podhoretz notes that "writers don't really root for each other. Usually they root against each other." Well, many of us writers have long been in awe of Podhoretz's essential smallness. Here he reveals himself as so cemented in it that he psychologically projects smallness on the rest of us. Acknowledging that Ferguson has written a fine book, Podhoretz confides, "The dark secret is that I would have been happy to think Land of Lincoln wasn't very good." It takes a person of colossal narcissism to make such an admission in public, but I thank him for it. The ass has given me another good day.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Mysterious. (agav, read JP's article for yourself, the praise is not at all tortured.) There does seem to be some basis for these charges. According to what appears to be a left wing conspiracy website, Rightweb, "In New York Magazine, Hannah Rosin described Podhoretz as a difficult boss who has "inherited his father's literary narcissism, but without the ideological vigor" (New York, January 5, 1998).
However, it is odd to here this criticism coming from a prominent conservative who as recently as June 19, 2006, had this to say: "John Podhoretz is also a seasoned journalist and editor. When he lived in Washington he edited a style page for the Washington Times that gave the Washington Post's style page a run for its money. He could do so because he has a formidable knowledge of politics, political history, and popular culture. " I wonder what happened since.

The best episode yet of "WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM" Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart discussing religion. (Plot spoiler: Beinart attends an orthodox synagogue)

Great article by Taranto about college degrees.

Giuliani '08?

From The New Republic's Thomas B. Edsall:

...Texas does not rank among the top five states in donations for either Mitt Romney or McCain, and no Texas metropolitan area is a major source of cash for their bids. By contrast, for Giuliani, Texas ranks third--behind New York and California--while Dallas and Houston place second and fourth on his list of top donor cities.

Another element of the Reagan tradition to which Giuliani can lay claim--and that bolsters his chance of winning the nomination--is his appeal to white, working-class voters: the Reagan Democrats who became the angry white men of the 1990s. Their switch to the GOP fractured the class basis of the New Deal coalition, and they have been crucial to every Republican presidential victory since 1968. These are Giuliani's people. He is pro-cop, anti-Sharpton, the mayor whose meritocratic streak led him to end the open admissions policy at the City University of New York. He stood in a flat-bed truck in front of City Hall in 1992 and told 10,000 beer-drinking cops that a proposed civilian review board was "bullshit" designed "to protect David Dinkins's political ass." He famously lectured a mother whose son had been killed in a hail of police bullets, "Maybe you should ask yourself some questions about the way he was brought up and the things that happened to him"--rhetoric that harkened back to George Wallace's insistence that the government stop "coddling" criminals because they "didn't have enough asparagus as a child." Giuliani was the tough guy who restored order to a city verging on chaos by breaking the back of the liberal interest groups that had once dominated local politics; and many white, lower- and middle-income voters in the outer boroughs loved him for it. They, more than any other factor, are the reason he was twice elected mayor of one of the country's most Democratic cities. And their hero now uses the same tough rhetoric that he once used to talk about criminals to talk about terrorists.

Giuliani's brand of conservatism also speaks to the Republican longing for managerial competence--something that has been woefully lacking under Bush. The statistics from Giuliani's tenure in New York suggest that he knows how to get results: Under his leadership, the city's murder rate fell by 63 percent; overall crime declined by 52 percent; vehicle thefts dropped by 71 percent; the number of children in foster care fell by 34 percent; the welfare case load declined by 59 percent; unemployment dropped by 40 percent; construction permits rose by 51 percent; and personal income rose by 53 percent. Of course, Giuliani's role in improving life for New Yorkers has almost certainly been overstated--most of all by Giuliani himself. The city's drop in crime was part of a national trend that actually began under Dinkins, and the economic boom of the '90s didn't hurt, either. What's more, Giuliani's managerial diligence is inseparable from his authoritarian streak, perhaps the least appealing aspect of his persona. Still, deserved or not, Giuliani's reputation as a skilled manager has been a very real asset in his campaign so far, allowing him to criticize Bush credibly on Iraq--the issue that, more than any other, symbolizes this administration's managerial shortcomings. "Here's what I would change," Giuliani told Larry King when asked how he would have handled the assault on Iraq. "Do it with more troops, maybe 100,000, 150,000 more." Giuliani harkens back to a time when Republicans were perceived as more competent, sober administrators than Democrats--and he affirms the nagging suspicion of many rank-and-file conservatives that Iraq could have been a stunning success if only George W. Bush weren't such a buffoon.

ut perhaps the most striking way in which Giuliani captures the mood of contemporary Republican politics has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with strategy. Both Reagan and Bush were masters of polarization. They calculated that it would be better to win by one vote, with a clear policy mandate, than to try to bring along a less committed 60 percent of the electorate with an appeal to consensus and compromise. In 2004, this strategy became clearer than ever, as Republicans sought to capitalize on deepening chasms between left and right. Deliberate polarization may or may not prove an effective strategy in the 2008 general election, but it is deeply attractive to conservative GOP primary voters whose antipathy to liberalism is intense.

Giuliani's entire career has been built on a willingness to polarize. Consider the vote totals in different neighborhoods in 1993, when he ousted Dinkins, New York's first black mayor. The election was close--Giuliani won by fewer than 50,000 votes--but the overall tally masked bitter partisan and racial divides. In heavily minority Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, Dinkins won by margins of 38 to one. Meanwhile, Giuliani carried predominantly white Staten Island's South Shore by twelve to one, Howard Beach and Ozone Park by five to one, and Bensonhurst by eight to one. And, once he took office, Giuliani only seemed to grow more eager to stoke divisions through repeated head-on collisions with icons of the left, welfare-rights organizations, and the aclu. Indeed, if there is one hallmark of Giuliani's career as a prosecutor and mayor, it is his compulsion to fight without restraint--whether the enemy is the mafia, the education establishment, or his estranged second wife.

Giuliani is now pursuing the same strategy of sowing division, only this time on a national level. To hear him tell it, the election will pit weak-kneed Democrats against hard-line Republicans. "I listen a little to the Democrats, and, if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," he recently told an audience in New Hampshire. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our preSeptember 11 attitude of defense."

There is good reason to believe this rhetoric will win over a portion of GOP voters. As Rick Perlstein has pointed out in The New Republic, at a moment when conservatism is philosophically adrift--among other problems, it is currently tethered to an unsuccessful war, one whose premises may not have been all that conservative in the first place--the single thing that truly unites and energizes conservatives is a raw animosity toward liberals. With so many Republican policies having failed over the past six years, contemporary conservatism is less interested in policy and more defined by style. Nothing characterizes that style quite as well as bashing liberals. And Giuliani knows how to bash liberals. Neither McCain nor Romney nor even Newt Gingrich can match Rudy's record in confronting the ideological enemies on conservatism's Most Wanted list. It is in this climate that the tendency to say and do impolitic things--a characteristic that might ordinarily be seen as a drawback for a candidate--has become perhaps Rudy's greatest strength.

The Intellectual Roots of American Conservatism

Due to popular demand, this article has been republished here.

Maharal on Study of Hokhma

(מנחות ס״ד:) באותה שעה אמרו וכו׳ וארור מי שמלמד בנו חכמת יונית...

ארור מי שמלמד בנו חכמת יונית וכו׳. פי׳ 'חכמת יונית' היינו חכמת הטבע, וכל חכמות הטבע הם בכלל חכמת יונית כל אשר הוא חוץ מן התורה, אע״ג שמצוה לחשוב תקופות ומזלות, כי דבר זה צריך לקבוע שנים וחדשים, ועוד שתקופות ומזלות הוא מוחש ומורגש, עליו נאמר (ישעי׳ ה׳) "ואת (עמוד פה) פעל ה׳ לא הביטו", ולכך אינו נכנס בכלל חכמת יונית, רק שרואה מהלך המזלות שמש וירח, אבל חוזה כוכבים על זה אמרו במדרש רבות: (דב״ר פ״ח) שמואל אמר: 'אין התורה מצויה באצטרלוגין.' אמרו ליה: 'מר, לא אצטרלגין את?' אמר להם: 'לא הייתי מביט בם אלא בשעה שנפנתי מן התורה, בשעה שהייתי נפנה לבית הכסא.' ע״כ, הרי לך דאפילו חוזה כוכבים אסור, ואין מותר רק חשוב תקופות ומזלות שיביט פועל השם. אבל שאר החכמות אסור ללמוד אם לא ע״י התורה, ועל זה אמרו: הפוך בה והפוך בה דכולה בה, שהכל יוצא מן התורה, ובענין זה יש ללמוד אותם, אבל בעצמם מבלי שיצא מן התורה אסור ללמוד חכמת יונית, כך יראה והוא נכון. ומכ״ש שיש דברים באלו חכמות שהם קוצים גמורים והם דברי סרה על ה׳ ועל תורתו, ומזה לא דברו חכמים, רק דברו מן הדברים אשר אינם מגיעים אל האמונה כמו ספר הטבע וספר חוש ומוחש וספר אותות עליונות וכיוצא בהם אלו דברי׳ נקראו חכמת יונית.

נתיב התורה פרק יד

(נתיבות עולם א עמוד נו)

ולכך אמרו במדרש: (איכה רבה פ״ב) אם יאמר לך אדם יש חכמה בגוים תאמין שנאמר "והאבדתי חכמה מאדום", אבל אם יאמר לך יש תורה בגוים אל תאמין שנאמר "מלכה ושריה בגוים אין תורה", כי אין חכמי האומות ראוים אל שכל האלהי הנבדל שהיא התורה. וכך הם דברי הרמב״ם ז״ל בחבורו כי מה שאמרו חכמי האומות במה שהוא תחת גלגל הירח יש לשמוע להם כי היו חכמים בעולם הטבעי, אבל מה שאמרו במה שהוא למעלה מן גלגל הירח שזהו מה שאחר הטבע אין לשמוע להם, כי היו חכמים בעולם הטבעי אבל למעלה מן הטבע וחכמה זאת חכמת אלהית אין לשמוע להם.

ומה שאמרו שחכמת הטבע נקראת חכמה גמורה, שהרי אין מחלק בין חכמת ישראל ובין חכמת האומות, רק כי לישראל נתן חכמה מפיו וכמו שאמרו 'אשר חלק מחכמתו ליראיו', ואצל חכמת האומות 'אשר חלק מחכמתו לבשר ודם' אבל שם 'חכמה' עליה רק שאין חכמתן חכמה אלהית נבדלת מן הגשמי לגמרי. ואם כן מזה נראה כי יש ללמוד חכמת האומות, כי למה (עמוד ס) לא ילמד החכמה שהיא מן השם יתברך, שהרי חכמת האומות גם כן מן השם יתברך שהרי נתן להם מחכמתו יתברך. ואין סברא לומר כי אף שהחכמה היא חכמה גמורה, מכל מקום אין לו לסור מן התורה כדכתיב "והגית בו יומם ולילה", ויש להביא ראיה אל סברא זאת ממסכת מנחות: (צ״ט:) שאל בן דמא בן אחותו של רבי ישמעאל: כגון אני שלמדתי כל התורה כולה מהו שאלמד חכמת יונית? קרא עליו המקרא הזה "לא ימוש ספר התורה הזה מפיך" צא ובדוק איזה היא שעה שלא מן היום ולא מן הלילה ולמוד בה חכמת יונית, ואם כן מוכח דחכמת יונית אסורה ללמוד מפני שכתוב "והגית בה יומם ולילה". אבל נראה דחכמת יונית דהתם איירי חכמה שאין לה שייכות אל התורה כלל, כמו חכמה שהיא במליצה או משל, וחכמה זאת אין לה שייכות כלל אל התורה וכתיב (יהושע א׳) "והגית בו יומם ולילה". אבל החכמות לעמוד על המציאות וסדר העולם, בודאי מותר ללמוד. והכי מוכח דפירוש 'חכמת יונית' היינו מליצה ולשון, דבפרק מרובה (ב״ק פ״ב:) אמרינן: באותה שעה אמרו ארור האיש שיגדל חזרים וארור האדם שילמד את בנו חכמת יונים, של בית ר״ג התירו להם לספר בחכמת יונית מפני שקרובים למלכות, ומדאמר 'לספר' שמע מינה שהוא שייך אל הלשון. ומפני כי דבר זה אין בו תועלת להבין חכמת התורה, ולכך אסרוה. אבל דברי חכמה אינו אסור כי החכמה הזאת היא כמו סולם לעלות בה אל חכמת התורה. ועוד כי למה היו קוראין אותו 'חכמת יונית', אם היא לעמוד על המציאות שהוא בעולם, הלא החכמה הזאת היא חכמת כל אדם?

אבל קשה הא דאמר במדרש: (דברים רבה פ״ח) "לא בשמים היא" אמר שמואל: אין התורה מצוייה באצטרלוגין שאומנתם בשמים. אמרו ליה: והלא אצטרלוגין אתה וגדול בתורה? אמר להו: לא הייתי מביט באצטרלוגיא אלא בשעה שהייתי פנוי מן התורה בשעה שהייתי נכנס לבית המים. עד כאן. ואם כן לא הותרו לאדם ללמוד החכמות אלא בשעה שהוא פנוי מן התורה ואי אפשר לו לעסוק בתורה כלל. והטעם כי כבר אמרנו ההפרש שיש בין התורה ובין שאר החכמות, כי התורה היא חכמה אלהית לגמרי שהוא משפט השם יתברך וכמו שהארכנו למעלה. ומאחר שהתורה היא משפט אלהית, ולא תמצא מעלה זאת בשמים, כי השמים הם גשמיים, וכל אשר בני האדם עוסקים בהם אין החכמה הזאת חכמה אלהית נבדלת, ולכך לא תמצא התורה במי שכל חכמתו הוא בשמים, במה שאין החכמה הזאת חכמה אלהית. ולפי זה אף שאר חכמות כמו חכמת הטבע שהם מעיינים במציאת עולם הזה הגשמי אסורים.

אבל בפרק הישן: (סוכה כ״ח ע״א) אמרו על רבי יוחנן בן זכאי שלא הניח מקרא משנה תלמוד אגדות וכו׳ עד תקופות גמטריאות שיחת מלאכי השרת שיחת שדים ושיחת דקלים וכו׳, ואם כן כל אלו מותר ללמדם ומצוה ללמדם. ומה שאמר: 'לא הייתי מביט בה אלא בשעה שהייתי נפנה לבית המים', יש לפרש כי חכמה זאת חכמת חוזה בכוכבים אשר חכמה זאת אינו לעמוד על מציאת עולם מסדר שלו, אבל חכמת מהלך הכוכבים והמזלות בודאי מחוייב ללמוד.

וראיה לזה בפרק כלל גדול: (שבת ע״ה ע״ב) אמר ר׳ שמעון בן פזי אמר ר׳ יהושע בן לוי משום בר קפרא: כל היודע לחשוב בתקופות ומזלות ואינו חושב עליו הכתוב אומר "ואת פועל ה׳ לא יביטו ומעשה ידיו לא ראו". אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני: מנין שמצוה לחשוב תקופות ומזלות? שנאמר "כי היא חכמתכם ובינתכם לעיני כל העמים" איזה חכמה שהיא לעיני כל העמים הוי אומר זה החושב תקופות ומזלות. עד כאן.

ורצו בזה כי תקופות ומזלות אשר הם בשמים פעל ה׳, ונקראו השמים מעשה ידיו שנאמר (תהלים ח׳) "כי אראה שמיך מעשה אצבעותיך". וזה כי מן השמים יכול האדם להכיר מהם מעלת הפועל אשר פעל אותם ועל גודל כחו ועל חכמתו, כאשר מתבונן במהלך שלהם ובסדר שלהם ולכך האדם מחויב עליו לדעת ולהכיר את בוראו.

ומה שאמר "כי היא חכמתכם לעיני כל העמים", מפני כי האומות הם שרוצים להתחכם בחכמה הזאת ביותר והיו מתחכמים בזה בחכמה עצומה מאוד מאוד, כאשר ידוע ותמיד באו אחרים אחריהם ובטלו טרחם אשר טרחו ועמדו עליהם. וכמו שבא אחד שהיה נקרא בעל תכונה חדשה, אשר נתן ציור אחר וכל אשר הבינו הראשונים אשר לפניהם ונתנו הראשונים ציור ומהלך לכוכבים ומזלות ולגרמים השמים סתר את כלם ונתן ציור חכמה חדשה רק (עמוד סא) שהוא עצמו כתב כי עדיין לא יוכל ליישב את הכל. וכאשר ישראל חושבים תקופות ומזלות ונותנים טוב טעם ודעת, כי דבר זה שהיה מחלוקת ביניהם בזמן אשר מסבב השמש גלגלה והירח גלגלה לא השוו דעתם, כי איך יהיו משוים את דעתם כי כל אחד התחכם מדעתו ושכלו ואיך אפשר לעמוד על הרגעים ועל השעות שמסבב כל גלגל וגלגל, אבל חכמי ישראל שהיה הדבר מקובל בידם מפי משה מסיני שמסר לו השם יתברך הוא בלבד אפשר לו לדעת האמת. וכך הוא כי הדבר שהוא בידינו מקובל לנו במהלך החמה והלבנה אומרים על זה שהוא יותר נכון ויותר מקובל, ומכל שכן כאשר היו חכמי ישראל הראשונים שהיו יודעים כל הדברים על אמתתם כפי מה שקבלו מפי הנבואה מפי משה. ולכך על זה נאמר "כי היא חכמתם ובינתם לעיני כל העמים". ומזה נלמוד כי כל דבר שהוא לעמוד על מהות העולם יש לאדם ללמוד, ומחויב הוא בזה כי הכל מעשה השם הוא ויש לעמוד עליהם ולהכיר על ידי זה בוראו.

אמנם עדיין צריך עיון שהרי אסור ללמוד מרב שאינו הגון כמו שהתבאר למעלה אצל ר״מ שלמד תורה מאחר. וגם זה אין ראייה דשם אמר כשהוא לומד מפיו ויש לו התקרבות וחבור אל הרב שמקבל ממנו שאינו הגון ולכך אסור, אבל מן החבורים שחברו אין שייך זה. מכל מקום צריך עיון ללמוד בחבורים שלהם אשר הם דברים נגד תורת משה רבינו עליו השלום בחדוש העולם ובידיעות השם יתברך ובהשארת הנפש ועולם הבא אם יש לעיין בהם, כי אולי יש לחוש כי נופת תטופנה שפתי זרה שמדברים דברים לפי שכלם לא מן הקבלה כלל רק לפי חקירתם. ויש לחוש באולי יהיה המעיין נמשך אחר דבריהם וראייתם, כמו שמצינו בני אדם שהיו נמשכים אחריהם, כאשר רואים לפחיתת שכל האדם אשר שכל האדם קצר להשיג הדבר על אמיתתו. אך אמנם אם דעתו כמו שאמרו: (אבות פ״ב) ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס, ואם לא ידע דבריהם איך ידע להשיב על דבריהם ואם כן צריך לדעת דבריהם, ודבר זה בודאי מותר אם כוונתו ללמוד דבריהם כדי שידע להשיב לאפיקורס, כי דבר זה אזהרה רבה ויתירה כמו שאמרו 'ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס' ומנו זה עם דברים גדולים שמזה תראה כי נחשב זה דבר גדול ביותר. ולענין זה מותר ולא נחוש שיהיה נמשך אחר דעתם אם תחלת כוונתו לסתור דבריהם כאשר דברו נגד התורה ודעת חכמים, אך לעשות דבר זה להביא דבריהם לפרש בהם דברי תורה ולהם אין חלק וזכרון בתורת משה והרי "שם רשעים ירקב".

ובפרק חלק: (סנהדרין ק״ו:) "גם אל יתצך לנצח" דלא לומר הלכה בשם דואג, ואיך אמרו דברים מפי אלו אשר לא האמינו בתורת משה כלל. ולא מצאנו דבר זה בתלמוד להזכיר את אחד להביא ממנו שום דבר חכמה את אשר לא היה לו חלק בתורת משה. ומקרוב זה שנתפשטו חבורים אלו ונמשך דעות בני אדם אחר דבריהם להתחכם גם כן בדברים שמגיעים לעקרי האמונה, כאשר טבע האדם נכסף לחקור אחר זה, ובשביל זה היו קצתם יוצאים מן עיקר האמונה בכמה דברים. ואיך אפשר דבר זה שיעמוד האדם על דברים אלו בחקירתו שההשגה בדברים כמו אלו רחוק מן האדם, ואף דבר שהוא אתנו והוא למראית עינינו אין האדם עומד עליהם, ואיך דברים כמו אלו. בודאי אם הדבר שנמצא בדבריהם הוא פירוש וחזוק אל הדברים שנמצאו בדברי חכמינו דבר זה ראוי לקבל, אבל אם אין הדבר הזה חוזק אל האמונה שנמצא בדברי חכמים והוא כנגד מה שנמצא בתורה אף בדבר מה, חס ושלום שיהיה מקבל אף דבר קטן. ובפרט ההשגה בו יתברך שזאת ההשגה נבדלת מבני אדם וכמו שפרשנו למעלה במה שאמר הכתוב "אם תבקשנה ככסף" וגו׳ "אז תבין יראת ה׳", כי אין לעמוד על ההשגה שהיא בו יתברך כי אם בטורח גדול, ולפיכך אין להשגיח בדבריהם כי לא ידעו ולא יבינו בזה. והתבאר לך שאל יסמוך האדם על דבריהם מה שהוא כנגד תורתנו או כנגד דברי חכמים, כי כאשר תשכיל ותעיין בדברי חכמים תמצא בו בכל מקום שידעו דבר שיצאו חכמי האומות מן האמונה השיבו על דבריהם וטעותם עד שאין מקום לדבריהם.

כלל העולה מדברינו כי יש לעיין בדבריהם שיוכל להשיב על דבריהם לשואל כמו שאמרו חכמים. ואם ימצא דבר הגון בדבריהם המחזיק האמונה יקבל, אך מה שנמצא בדבריהם, אף דבר קטון, שהוא כנגד אמונת ישראל או אשר נמצא בדברי חכמים, אף דבר קטון, חס ושלום (עמוד סב) לשמוע להם, אך יתבונן בשכלו להשיב על דבריהם כפי שכלו. ובזה יהיה זהיר וזריז בכל נפשו להעמיד דבר אמת, שלכך אבות העולם הראשונים צוו בגודל האזהרה: הוי שקוד ללמוד כדי שתשיב לאפיקורס וכמו שפרשנו שם, ובודאי אין זה נאמר רק על פילוסופי יון שהיו חוקרים מדעתם ומשכלם ושאלתם חקירת פילוסופי, ולכך אמר שיהיה שקוד דהיינו זריזות יתירה ועיון שכלי להשיב על דבריהם להעמיד דת אמת. ובזה יהיה שכרו עם הצדיקים בגן עדן. אמן כן יהי רצון. סליק.

Why Brian Lehrer Doesn't Have a TV Show

I'd hate to see Leonard Lopate.

The other half of the story

hirhurim has an excerpt of a marc shapiro quote; it is interesting to read the full context:

In your writings and speeches, you reveal many little known facts such as: 1) Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch asked Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman to remove his hat (thus leaving him bareheaded) when visiting him at his school so that the non-Jewish teachers shouldn’t think him disrespectful; 2) The Akeidas Yitzchak (15th century Spanish scholar) maintained that non-Jews need not observe the seven Noachide laws; 3) Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook called Tolstoy a “great man… who is full of holiness”; and 4) Rabbi Israel Moshe Hazzan (Sephardi sage, 1808-1862) wrote that one should incorporate church tunes into the davening since they lead to love of God. Why are things like these so unknown?

Because yeshivas today don’t teach Jewish philosophy or theology. They teach hashkafa and emunah, which is fine, but that’s more like indoctrination. And whereas people are very sophisticated when it comes to Talmud study and they’ll look at all the different shittos, when it comes to philosophical study of Judaism – its history, its ideas – they’re not sophisticated and they’re not interested.

This prevents us from being able to respond to ideological challenges. Just as we assume that someone who approaches halachic issues without having a firm grasp of responsa literature, Shas and poskim is not doing his job, the problem here is that many people who approach the non-halachic matters don’t really have any background. It’s a serious discipline, Jewish philosophy and theology – just as serious as halacha, but not taken so.

Notice how the answer has absolutely nothing to do with the question. the real answer is 4)why on earth should anybody know that r' israel moshe hazzan, an unheard of sephardi sage 1807- said to incorporate church tunes into davening. 3)why should anyone be surprised that r' tzvi yehuda said that tolstoy was great, 2) The question is why does Shapiro know this. And 1) everyone who read the latest issue of hakira already knows this. (and no one else does because it was censored, ayen sham b'hakirah.)

while the breakaway-blog-that-must-not-be-named did not succesfully link to a shul-island joke (or so we've heard), it did link to this one which we found amusing:

(#69) The witness
Abe, an elderly man, was in the witness box.
"How old are you?", asked the attorney.
"I am, kayn ahoreh, eightytwo."
"What did you say?"
"I said I am, kayn ahoreh, eightytwo years old."
"Please just give a simple answer to my question," said the attorney, "How old are you!?"
"Kayn ahoreh, eightytwo." replied Abe.
The judge then intervened, "If you don't want to be held in contempt of court, the witness will answer the question and only the question."
The defence counsel then got up and said to the judge, "Your Honour, may I ask the witness?" and turned towards Abe.
"Kayn ahoreh, how old are you?"
Abe replied, "Eightytwo."

who is yonoson rosenblum?

it has been noted by many that popular artscroll biographer, yonoson rosenblum, has never been seen together in the same room as political pundit/ chareidi apologist, jonathan rosenblum. now, after reading the latter's scathing critique of opportunistic sex-rabbi/ fellow JPost journalist, shmuley boteach, i realized another such anomaly: hershel brand and jonathan rosenblum have never been seen in the same room! (see third to last paragraph...)

scoop, don't eat the cheese

this just in: rumor has it that a young scholar from the OU is out to ban cheese as chametz sheavar alav hapesach, that rabbi belsky is considering the issue, and that rabbi schachter has already ruled to prohibit...

Jewish Accomplishment

Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, writing in Commentary Magazine:

To get a sense of the density of accomplishment these numbers represent, I will focus on 1870 onward, after legal emancipation had been achieved throughout Central and Western Europe. How does the actual number of significant figures compare to what would be expected given the Jewish proportion of the European and North American population? From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen times.

Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences continues to this day. My inventories end with 1950, but many other measures are available, of which the best known is the Nobel Prize. In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population. You do the math.

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What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested. (The widely repeated story that Jewish immigrants to this country in the early 20th century tested low on IQ is a canard.) Exactly how high has been difficult to pin down, because Jewish sub-samples in the available surveys are seldom perfectly representative. But it is currently accepted that the mean is somewhere in the range of 107 to 115, with 110 being a plausible compromise.

The IQ mean for the American population is “normed” to be 100, with a standard deviation of 15. If the Jewish mean is 110, then the mathematics of the normal distribution says that the average Jew is at the 75th percentile. Underlying that mean in overall IQ is a consistent pattern on IQ subtests: Jews are only about average on the subtests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely high on subtests that measure verbal and reasoning skills.

A group’s mean intelligence is important in explaining outcomes such as mean educational attainment or mean income. The key indicator for predicting exceptional accomplishment (like winning a Nobel Prize) is the incidence of exceptional intelligence. Consider an IQ score of 140 or higher, denoting the level of intelligence that can permit people to excel in fields like theoretical physics and pure mathematics. If the mean Jewish IQ is 110 and the standard deviation is 15, then the proportion of Jews with IQ’s of 140 or higher is somewhere around six times the proportion of everyone else.

The imbalance continues to increase for still higher IQ’s. New York City’s public-school system used to administer a pencil-and-paper IQ test to its entire school population. In 1954, a psychologist used those test results to identify all 28 children in the New York public-school system with measured IQ’s of 170 or higher. Of those 28, 24 were Jews.

After considering a number of hypotheses to explain this phenomenon (most interesting of which is that the sociological impact of takanat Yehoshua ben Gamla, Murray comes to the following conclusion:

I offer the Babylonian captivity as a concrete mechanism whereby Jewish intelligence may have been elevated very early, but I am not wedded to it. Even without that mechanism, there is reason to think that selection for intelligence antedates the 1st century C.E.

From its very outset, apparently going back to the time of Moses, Judaism was intertwined with intellectual complexity. Jews were commanded by God to heed the law, which meant they had to learn the law. The law was so extensive and complicated that this process of learning and reviewing was never complete. Moreover, Jewish males were not free to pretend that they had learned the law, for fathers were commanded to teach the law to their children. It became obvious to all when fathers failed in their duty. No other religion made so many intellectual demands upon the whole body of its believers. Long before Joshua ben Gamla and the destruction of the Second Temple, the requirements for being a good Jew had provided incentives for the less intelligent to fall away.

Assessing the events of the 1st century C.E. thus poses a chicken-and-egg problem. By way of an analogy, consider written Chinese with its thousands of unique characters. On cognitive tests, today’s Chinese do especially well on visuo-spatial skills. It is possible, I suppose, that their high visuo-spatial skills have been fostered by having to learn written Chinese; but I find it much more plausible that only people who already possessed high visuo-spatial skills would ever devise such a ferociously difficult written language. Similarly, I suppose it is possible that the Jews’ high verbal skills were fostered, through secondary and tertiary effects, by the requirement that they be able to read and understand complicated texts after the 1st century C.E.; but I find it much more plausible that only people who already possessed high verbal skills would dream of installing such a demanding requirement.

This reasoning pushes me even farther into the realm of speculation. Insofar as I am suggesting that the Jews may have had some degree of unusual verbal skills going back to the time of Moses, I am naked before the evolutionary psychologists’ ultimate challenge. Why should one particular tribe at the time of Moses, living in the same environment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of the Middle East, have already evolved elevated intelligence when the others did not?

At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God’s chosen people.

An Earlier Ancestorial Eliyahu

A fascinating bit of family history, from a Tradition article re-posted on the Seforim blog:

Alas, we know precious little about R. Eliyahu (b. R. Aharon Yehudah) Ba’al Shem of Chelm (16th century).[1] In 1564, he joined a coalition of distinguished rabbis including R. Solomon Luria (the Maharshal, d. 1574) -- that permitted an agunah to remarry.[2] Most importantly, he was an ancestor of R. Yaakov Emden (d.1776), who preserved the following tradition about him:[3]

As an aside, I’ll mention here what I heard from my father’s holy mouth regarding the Golem created by his ancestor, the Gaon R. Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of blessed memory. When the Gaon saw that the Golem was growing larger and larger, he feared that the Golem would destroy the universe. He then removed the Holy Name that was embedded on his forehead, thus causing him to disintegrate and return to dust. Nonetheless, while he was engaged in extracting the Holy Name from him, the Golem injured him, scarring him on the face.[4]

[1] In general, see J. Günzig, Die Wundermänner in jüdischen Volk, Antwerpen, 1921, pp. 24-26; A. Brik, "רבי אליהו בעל שם זצ"ל מחעלם," Moriah 7 (1977), n. 6-7, 79-85; and M.D. Tzitzik, "מהר"ר אליהו בעל שם מחעלם," Yeshurun 17 (2006), 644-667.

שו"ת ב"ח החדשות, ס' ע"ז [2]

[3]

שו"ת שאילת יעב"ץ, ח"ב, ס' פ"ב. Cf. his בירת מגדל עוז, Altona, 1748, p. 259a; מטפחת ספרים, Altona, 1768, p. 45a; and מגילת ספר, ed. Kahana, Warsaw, 1896, p. 4. See also שו"ת חכם צבי, ס' צ"ג, and the references cited in שו"ת חכם צבי עם ליקוטי הערות, Jerusalem, 1998, vol. 1, p. 421 and in the periodical כפר חב"ד, number 351 (1988), p. 51.

[4] Some say Aron descends directly from the Golem.