More On the Issue of Daat Emet

When we are engaged in a struggle we tend to think along the lines that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unfortunately, reality is much more complicated and the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend and he might be even worse enenmy then the one we struggle with. One has always to examine what are his goals and what are the goals of the two others in the equation.
If we take UOJ's struggle against the Haredi establishment we find that his goal is basically to correct and fix some evil growths that appeared and coruppted the Haredi society. UOJ does not want to destroy this society. He shares its core beliefs and way of life, he aches because of its aches and ills and he wants to save it. He described himself once as a plummer who is ready to deal with the "drek" for the good of all society.
Recently and unwittingly he recruited as a support for his arguments some article from the circles of Daat Emet. The problem is, in my opinion, that one may not seperate the message from the messanger. In a message in Hebrew, I challenged UOJ to go to the 'hofesh' website and read what is in it, all of it. I said that if after reading that he will still be willing to use any material from these people, even if that material is the absolute truth, then I will not bother him anymore. I would withdraw in saness, because the whole reliability of UOJ will be in question ever after.

BTW, this is not an exact translation of the Hebrew message although it repeats some of the same ideas. And, to the person who reacted to my Hebrew post, please understand, my language is Hebrew and it is easier for me to write in that language when something importnat is to be said. I do not think that those who do not know Hebrew are dummies and I was hurt by the implication.

Why am I So Much Against the Liberals?

Why am I so much against the liberals? What is so wrong in their asserted desire to share the wealth, to make the government responsible for health care and welfare and so on?
I was brought up in a nationalistic home. An environment that valued the individual's proper behavior as a representative of the nation and its perceived respected status. Also we valued the individual's intellectual and creative abilities and achievements. I was exposed to the socialistic ideas, after all they ruled the place. There was a strange discrepancy between the customary animosity towards the communist Soviet Union and the admiration towards same Soviet Union that was perceived when reading old socialist children magazines (my uncle was a socialist and as a child I spent many summers in his farm reading those volumes of old socialist children magazines.)
But all these were only the backdrop for the real introduction to the various philosophies and “isms” during my adolescence and early adulthood. I tried to read the Communist Manifesto; it bored me with its pompous language and clear illogic. I tried to read ‘Narcis und Goldmond’ by Herman Hesse and did not even bother to finish the second chapter, rejecting the boredom and stupidity of the implied philosophy. Did not like any of the existentialists, Kant, Spinoza or any other of the famous philosophers. I naturally abominated Plato and so on.
But independently of these famous philosophers and their promoters, I discovered two people who I believe were the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Both of them are not famous, not considered to be philosophers, and did not write any of the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. Their works are much simpler, easier to understand and relevant to reality. Yet they are neglected by most, down looked upon. But they were the carriers of the truth.
These two British philosophers were B. H. Liddell-Hart and C. Northcote Parkinson.
From Liddell-Hart I learned two things, well, not exactly learned, but was encouraged to emphasize. The first thing is obviously Strategy. No I am not good in that in my personal life and would not try to take the place of any general. But I recognize the need to develop strategy and meta-strategy, the need to attack where you are the least expected; the need to truly understand the foes and so on. But the most important thing is the absolute need to adhere with the truth. There is no value that is greater then the truth and the honesty that come with it. And this truth and honesty goes with C. Northcote Parkinson.
Those that heard about him, usually heard about his first law: "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." The implications of this law are deep and far reaching, yet this law is not taught in any university or college. No MBA program even mentions this law in passing. This law has been driven to oblivion. The reason to that phenomenon is the unholy agreement between the super rich and the liberals to oppress and enslave the rest of society. All this is not obvious from reading the chapter about that law or even when one notice that this law is being ignored. It becomes much more obvious by reading Parkinson much more neglected masterpiece “The Law and the Profit” in which he explain in depth his second law “Expenditure rises to meet income.” Here, Parkinson describes the modern welfare state and its exorbitant expenditure, made possible by oppressing the middle class by taxing it to death and by mortgaging the future by converting private (and eventually public [as is the case in New Jersey]) capital to spending money and spending the money on all those entitlement programs meant for people who vote for those programs but do not pay for them.
Make no mistake, the super rich liberals say that they are in favor of more taxes but they have the means to avoid them; the rest of us don’t!

Open Letter to UOJ

UOJ
אני פונה אליך פעם נוספת בנושא נפתלי זליגמן. ראה, מאבקך נגד השחיתות בהנהגה ובחברה החרדית הוא מאבק בונה. קל לראות ממאמרים כמו זה על
UOJ IS THE ROTO ROOTER
שאתה חלק מן החברה ואוהב את כל חבריה. כל מה שאתה רוצה זה לתקן או בלשון בוטה יותר לנקות את הדרעק. נפתלי זליגמן לעומת זאת, בין אם הוא מר ידען או אחיו התאום או שאולי מר ידען הינו כינוי העט של מר זליגמן או להיפך; מר זליגמן מעונין להרוס ולקראת פורים אף אומר להשמיד ולאבד את החברה הזו. אני מוכן להציע לך אתגר אם אתה שולט בעברית. לך לאתר חפש וקרא מה שכתוב שם, כל מה שכתוב שם. אם אחרי זה לא תשתכנע שאין מה לקחת משם - אפילו אם דבר מה שנאמר שם הינו במקרה אמת מחלטת, כי אז אעזב את הנושא בצער רב ולא אטרידך שוב, אך דע כי לטוח הארוך, כל אמינותך מונחת על כף המאזנים

The Argument Goes On

I've just been present tonight in a lecture in the Shul, in which the honorable lecturer preached to the believers and showed them how all these wonders of nature cannot really be explained by evolution. And I thought to myself "would any of this lecture be enough to convince the person I've tried to answer in my previous post?" The answer is "for sure no" as the Hassid and Heretic himself explained so eloquently to another person who did not understand my post "ZA was just saying what I have been saying for a long time. In order to believe in something improvable you need to have pre-misconceptions, otherwise it doesn’t work. Once you ‘see the truth’, you can find plenty of proof to support it, it works for UFO junkies just as it does for Jehovah’s witnesses, (you would also agree with me,) so it must be true."
The conceptual mistake of both the lecturer tonight and the Hassid and Heretic is that each one of them comes from an improvable theory and is trying to instill that proverbial pre-misconception in their listeners. However, as true believers, both of them believe that theirs is the true conception while the other's is the pre-misconception. The pro-science crowd, who is now in the attack, dismisses anything that is not "scientific" even though it is in time, as improvable as the other side's arguments. The religious side could show very eloquently how stupid and shallow are their oponents, and believe me stupid and shallow they seem to be in their hubris, but their own arguments stay improvable as before.
I think that the key to this argument is the question whether "seeing the truth" (as the Hassid and Heretic put it) really equals to pre-misconception. But deeper than that, firstly, one has to believe that the other side, as "wrong" and misguided they seem to be, still they are as intelligent as his or her own side. If that belief does not exist than there is no place for dialogue. It is a war in which one has to fight in order either to convert the other or destroy it. Those who doubt the intelligence and wisdom of their opponents are in essence religious fanatics (regardless whether their religion is based on some deity or is deity-less and scientific) and while they may have not yet resorted to oppression and terrorism as some notable religions and deity-less religions have done, (Al-Qaeida comes to mind,) they could and would potentially do that as well.
Now, if we go back to "seeing the truth", starting from the agreement that both sides of the argument are populated by intelligent people; we must examine what have caused somebody to "see the truth" and what is that truth. If the other person is indeed wise, yet he or she holds on to a truth different that the one holds, then it is possible that we need to examine our own views.
Surprisingly, both religion (at least those that do not promote the sword as a conversion device and do not try to convert you post-humus) and science (in its sanity moments) agree that everything is in the eyes of the beholder. Religions call it Free Will while science speaks about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

About Daat Emet

This was first published as an answer to UOJ publishing a piece from a supporter of Daat Emet. I want to believe that UOJ was just not careful at this time:

UOJ
I do know neither Rabbi Segal nor Mr. Naftali Zeligman. I have never read Rabbi Segal's pamphlet and I probably cannot refute Mr. Zeligman's factual assertions nor could I refute the material in the Daat Emet pamphlets. Also, I am not a Haredi but a simple MO and I currently live in USA, so the activities of Daat Emet organization in Benai Brak do not really affect me. However, UOJ, unfortunately I am familiar with the Daat Emet organization, its ideology and its pamphlets.
You probably know the maxim that "Sheker, Ein Lo Raglaim" (a lie cannot stand). This DE organization is an ideological organization of fanatic Secularists (yeah, there is something like that). As such they behave like any other religious fanatics just that their religion is deity-less. They try to convert others to their religion. For now they may not do it by force (although they've tried - I'll relate to you my account of one such effort in the end of this piece.) But they may do it by instigation, agitation and beyond all propaganda. Now, relating to the aforementioned maxim, had their propaganda been a simple lie, it won’t stand. Their propaganda is done by brilliant minds and is Emet. Truth out of context, truth abused and twisted for their own purpose and agenda.
I am far from being a Hassid or Cabbalist. Usually I am as rationalist as it comes, but visiting Daat Emet’s site is an experience that I may not describe in any other terms but mystical. It is like visiting the Sitra Ahara and looking him in the eyes. I tried it once, not knowing where am I going and I was shocked. No, this is not the correct term, I was literally shaking… I cannot express it in words, I really can’t.
I will not use Rabbi Segal terminology about this people, but I understand him. He probably went through the same process as I did. He was trying to express in words something that cannot be described in words. He fell into the trap of answering these people and opened himself to Mr. Zeligman’s counter attack. I know, I tried to reason with these people and then I realized that I can’t and probably shouldn’t.

Now for the story I’d promised about using force against observant Jews. The villain was not directly associated with the DE organization (that did not exist at the time,) but a person that promoted and lead the fanatic Secularism in Israel throughout the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. This was a woman named Shulamit Aloni. I posses an election campaign pamphlet promoting her for reelection to the Knesset in 1981. In this pamphlet that woman brags about her activities in the previous session of the Knesset. One of the bills that she tried to pass was a bill that would make it legal in Israel – a decidedly Jewish state with a government controlled economics – to allow organizations that have to operate in the Shabbos to be able to discriminate against people who refuse to work in Shabbos. Now this would close immediately a big portion of the Israeli economics to observant Jews. Beyond that, the only thing that a government with a Secularist majority would have to do in order to force the hands of all observant Jews would be to declare more and more if not all the Israeli market as need to operate in Shabbos.

Please UOJ, double check what you are publishing. You should leave publishing such a questionable material to “The Failed Messiah”. He is good at that! But you should be more careful.

The Argument About Belief

An answer to A Hassid and a Heretic:

“It’s a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again”.
You see Shtreimel, both you and your opponents come to the argument from the wrong direction. Sure, if you had lost (or perhaps never had) your belief in that deity, not any food or potion in the world, nor any other voodoo practice, would ever restore your belief. Believing in Go-d, the true belief does not stem from food, nor does it stem from the desire to have 72 virgins (or whatever) in the next world. On the other hand, one may argue with you and bring logical and scientific proofs until his/her face turn blue and it won't move you an inch.
True belief is a process; it must start from the heart and go all the way to reasoning. It is decidedly, a point of view. True believer knows and acknowledges other points of view. Many time he understands, because of his/her unique point of view, the fallacies of those of the other point of views. But, especially when the believer is an intelligent being, he/she also knows that the other side is not capable of seeing those fallacies.
When two highly intelligent human beings, who may see and acknowledge the two sides of the issue, engage in such an argument that you have described, they would go in a different route which does not really fit a blog page, or at least I do not know how to make it fit.
I will just say that one may be educated on the belief that evolution is a science, as I was. And then, all of the sudden you have a revelation and you understand (but may not really explain) the true meaning of the verse "Ha-Shamyim Mesaprim Kvod Kel" and the belief in evolution crumbles into dust.

The Three Pillars of the Cover-up Culture

The current culture of cover-up is based on three pillars. I've said it before and will repeat it again and again because if we do not understand and shake the pillars of the culture, that evil culture will continue to spread its evilness on all of us.
The first pillar of the cover-up culture is the Issur Mesirah. We keep criminals who affect both the surrounding world and our own world, just so that we will not be Moser them to the gentiles. Firstly, I do not believe that the Issur Mesira is that encompassing that it would prevent us from giving away real criminals. We probably could consider them as people that the gentiles specified for specific (and probably justified) reasons. For such people there is no Issur. For those who believe that one is aloud to steal from a gentile or from the government, those probably have the Din of Rodef, because if their deeds become known then the gentiles and the government may come after all of us. And people who molest young boys, young girls or anybody else for that matter, they for sure have the Din of Rodef and since we may not punish them, the only viable solution is actually give them to the authorities.
But there is even deeper problem that we neglect to notice and this is the corrupting effect of having criminals in our midst. If they are successful, others may see them as heroes and follow their footsteps. Those who are with higher morale may not go for that but they may be desensitized to criminal acts and may not see the problem.
The second pillar of the cover-up culture is the Issur Loshon Ha-Ra. Think about it, the Chofetz Cahyim took a relatively minor and obscure Issur and elevated it to be the fourteenth Ikkar of Emunah, next to the old established thirteen Ikkarim of the Rambam. But this Issur is now abused. One may not come with real issues about somebody else since the Mekhubad Rabbi Listener would refuse to listen and obviously would refuse to act. Just take the story about R’ Yudel Shain finding that Shevach was supplying Treifos some eight years ago and R’ Braslauer refused to listen as an example. We took that Issur out of context and out of proportion and it is back firing.
The third and, in my opinion, the most serious pillar of that culture is R’ Shimon Schwab’s Issur of writing Jewish History, magnified by his recommendation to write inspiring stories with only good things about people of previous generations. There are several problems here. Firstly, who is to say what is good and inspiring and what is not. For example, is the fact that R’ Moshe Feinstein used to read a daily newspaper (*) a good one because in that way he kept himself informed or is it bad because how could he read such Schmutz? Another issue is the well known maxim (not known in the frummie world for obvious reasons) that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. If we do not read R’ Wasserman letter and we are not aware about his false ideas then how could we prevent repeating such deeds.
But the most serious offence of this notion is the desensitizing effect on society. We are so used to society mandated cover-up, that we do not even see how wrong it is. Think about it, R’ Schwab called for an organized campaign of cover-up and the only thing many of us do is to mock and laugh about the resulting C.I.S and Artscroll hagiography publication, better known as “The Life of the Saints Series.”
These three pillars must be cut out, smashed and destroyed “Im Hafetzey Hayim Anahnu”

(*) The source for that fact is in Rav Moshe's biography that is printed in the latest volume of Igros Moshe (published after his death by his grandchildren.)

If Moses Existed...

This was published in response to an article by some Israeli Archaeologist who dealt with the question of how many Luhoy did the non existing Moshe, carry.


Well, one slab of stone with the size described in the Torah is still 125 Kg according to this guy’s calculation (half of 250 Kg had it been two slabs.) And don’t forget we are taking about an eighty years old man!
All this article is BS as is the trend among Israeli Archaeologists. They all write BS and junk science!
To people like me, who believe in the Torah, then it does not matter whether it was one or two Luhot. However many, Moshe carried them in a miracolous way - and the text says two and means to all Hebrew speakers (except of junk scientists) two.
To people who do not believe then there are many obstacles such as: a) Moshe never existed, b) if he existed, he did not get any heavenly object, otherwise they would have to believe - this point is rather fundamental… but if we explain that somehow, then, c) the object or objects could not be that heavy, so it does not matter if it’s one or two - they would have to be much lighter… and so on - I am sure that the non-believer can come with more creative arguments from here to eternity.
Now, about the trend among Israeli junk science Archaeologists. One have just to read the latest crop of articles that is coming from that school of thought. The deny almost anything that the Bible says, based on non-evidence or the presumption that any other source that they may find is more reliable then the Bible. My pet peeve is an article that was published in the Biblical Archaeological Review several years ago. In it, the Israeli pseudo-scientist admits that the Bible and the Assyrian Royal Library (found in Nineweh) agree with each other to the T, except of that the library does not describe the siege on Yerushalaim and that there is a 5years siscrapency between two correlating events (that happened close to 2700 years ago - may be his interpretation or understanding of the timing is wrong?). This allow that Archaeologist to dismis the story in the Bible about a plague that killed most of the Assyrian army. He does not even bother to check the other possibility that there was a plague (regular occurance in armies that perform siege in the ancient times because of poor sanitation,) and that the Assyrian king would not like to admit a failure (ancient time cover-up.)
As I’d said, Israeli Archaeologists drove themselves into the corner of junk science and I would not give too much plausibility to anything they say.