Tag: jews

Hearing vs Reading the Bible

David Porush4 Comments

The play between orality and literacy in Jethro

When did the Israelites become literate?

If you piece the clues together, the Torah tells us pretty clearly that Moses received the alphabet from God on Sinai.  It happens during the same sequence of revelations that begin with the burning bush and the revelation of God’s Name during their first encounter. God tells Moses to return to Egypt and instruct the elders of Israel in “the signs” or “ the letters” that God shows him.  Moses quails at his assignment.

But don’t worry, God reassures him, “If they don’t heed the voice of the first sign, they will listen to the voice of the last sign.”

The Aleph Tav
The first and last signs in Hebrew.

The first and last signs might refer to the silent conjuror’s tricks that God has just shown Moses:  a rod turns into a snake and Moses’ hand turns leprous and back again.

But more sensibly, the “voice of the signs” refers to  the core breakthrough that made the phonetic alphabet a monumentally disruptive invention: signs, instead of being pictures for words as in hieroglyphics, are instructions for the voice to make sounds, like musical notes. The first and last symbols refer to the aleph and the tav, the beginning, the whole of this new invention.  God is telling Moses: show the Israelites back in Egypt this new explosive technology, these letters, and with them you shall set them free. Continue reading “Hearing vs Reading the Bible” →

One century on Rav Kook Street, yearning for Klal Yisroel

David Porush1 Comment
“People mistakenly believe that peace in the world means that everyone will share common viewpoints and think the same way. True peace, however, comes precisely through the proliferation of divergent views. When all of the various angles and sides of an issue are exposed, and we are able to clarify how each one has its place — that is true peace. The Hebrew word shalom means both ‘peace’ and ‘completeness.’ We will only attain complete knowledge when we are able to accommodate all views — even those that appear contradictory – as partial perceptions of the whole truth. Like an interlocking puzzle, together they present a complete picture.”      – Rav Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, Ein Eyah

3983304098My grandfather was born in Jerusalem in 1899. He was the eldest son of a religious Zionist family. When he moved to Brooklyn in the 1920s, he lost the black attire and strict orthodoxy of his family, but not his Zionism, and we grew up in love with Israel. This summer, my brother and sister decided on a whim that the three of us would go together, sans spouses or children. It would be the most time we spent together since 1969.

    We AirBnb’ed our digs and found a sleek condo in a new building on Rechov HaRav Kook, just a few steps from Jaffa and Ben Yehuda Streets, the heart of the modern Jerusalem. At the time, I remember thinking there was something auspicious about it, since our great-grandfather was Rav Kook’s assistant.

Continue reading “One century on Rav Kook Street, yearning for Klal Yisroel” →

Who will be better for the Jews, Clinton or Trump?

David Porush1 Comment

(I wrote this Sept 12, but it was too hot and drove my friends nuts and made my enemies spew intolerable amounts of hatemail, so I protected it behind a password.  I outed it today because there continues to be a lot of crazy hysteria about the Trump Presidential transition team coming from the sore-losing and fearful left. This is not the sort of resistance that will defend us against Trump’s rising tide. Trump’s deeper pull stems from deeper currents. The usual noise in the mediasphere, slapstick attack and panic, empty reassurances and rational defenses and denials, didn’t help avert his rise to power and won’t stop its inevitability now.

I believe this prediction is as true today as it was two years ago. I don’t think Trump has an ideology other than Trump. He is not an anti-Semite or philo-Semite. He is not anti- or pro-Muslim or -Hispanic or -birth-control or anything else. He stands for nothing but his own self-regarding gaze in this postmodern panopticon of buzz and power. Since I am the only person in the world who opposed Trump and explained that his win was inevitable and also why (in my Trumposaurus Rex Acts 1, 2, and 3 in March, May and July of 2016) this one may be right, too. – DP

trillaryThe Trillary (Photo: Imgur)

Based on my 99.6% success in predicting the path of Trump so far, my pals have asked me to weigh in on the subject most on their minds (after the question of whether Trump can really win, to which I answer, as I have since February, “Yup.”)

That is, Who is gonna be better for the Jews, Clinton or Trump?

Well, if you’re seeking the definitive answer, you’ve come to the right place. I won’t keep you waiting.

It’s BOTH.

Clinton might be better for the Jews in America in the short-term but much worse for Israel and thus Jews in the long term.

Trump might be better for Israel, but probably much worse for the Jews in America.

To the extent you believe the fate of Jews is entwined – mystically, sociologically, historically, whatever – with the fate of Israel, you can weigh this in getting the right answer and making your final choice. I think the real question is, Who is gonna be worse for the Jews, Clinton or Trump? 

Clinton bad for Jews

Clinton is gonna be bad for Israel. She is most likely to do nothing to derail the crooked, inconceivably awful, deceptive, delusional, insanely bad, bad, bad not-good atrocity of the Iran nuclear deal, in which President Barry “Bags O’Baksheesh” Obama gave murderous Iranian ayatollahs a pathway to the Bomb plus $150 billion above the table and $1.3 billion (as of today) in unmarked foreign bills on a night flight to Tehran below the table. With the money, Iran will continue to prosecute its promise to wipe out Israel. It will continue to sponsor terror attacks on Jews in the Diaspora directly and through its Shi’a terror proxies like Hizbullah, to show that Israel can’t protect Jews around the world and just because they hate Jews anyway. When they get their Shiite Terror Bomb in ten years or so, they will diminish Israel geopolitically. The Very Bad Iran Nuclear Deal, along with miserable calls in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine, has already diminished the U.S. on the world stage.

Iran will nip at Israel’s heels in the hope of provoking a conventional war with Israel some time in 2026. With my incredible powers of super-prophesy I predict it will be on a Tuesday. They will quickly escalate rhetoric and provocations so they can rattle their nuclear sabers and the nerves of everyone in the world.

Heck. Who knows. Maybe the Ayatollahs are just fuck-nuts crazy enough with Jew-hatred and apocalyptic zealotry to drop the Big One.

Clinton good for the Jews?

On the other hand, Clinton’s brand of rational, left-of-center failed policies are soothing to the hereditary home-brewed religion of many American Jews: racial tolerance, investment in education, and social liberalism. Trouble is, it’ll be done the Clinton Way: you’re gonna have to pay to play, this time pouring trillions down the gullet of failed programs in ever-more-expensive health care, taxes, and education for your children, and trillions in  foreign debt to make trade friends with our sworn global enemies like China. When you wake up to find your wallet slimmer and your children’s future mortgaged – it will be a Tuesday – it will be too late. And no matter what Jews believe now, if Israel is weakened or destroyed, they will be put in jeopardy sooner or later as long as they continue to identify themselves as Jews.

Trump bad for Jews

Trump, well… who knows what Trump will do? He will do no more and no less than what any president would do. As long as that president is a fat, bullying, lying, self-absorbed, defensive, never-been-spanked eight-year-old with over-developed gonads and poor impulse control, who can’t believe his luck at having awoken in the body of a greedy, bloated, pathologically narcissistic billionaire in bed with a naked Melania.

I don’t believe Trump is anti-Semitic or has any plans whatsoever to hurt Jews. He’s almost mishpachah, with his kids’ entanglements and all. In fact, I don’t think Trump has any plans at all except to bask in the panoptic reflection of the entire world holding a mirror to his self-absorption. Why should he think or do much of anything, since he is already getting heroin-grade bumps to his one passion, hearing his name and seeing his image every minute of every hour of every day in every media outlet on TV or in print since at least last November?

Insofar as the sober adult part of Trump is interested in getting more money to build more pyramids to the glory of his name, he knows those hits promise the MORE FOR ME that comes with media attention, as he learned from his apprenticeship in reality on tv, no matter what the outcome in November (BTW, I predict it will be on a Tuesday). What a wet dream this has been for him!

But here’s the rub. His brand of demagoguery has throughout history been bad for Jews.

Lacking any rational plan or ideology or even what would pass as cognition at all, his authenticity and the boastful promises that spill from him are alluring to hopeful haters. Narcissists like Trump summon lizards. The lizard brain riding the body known as The Donald has sung to the awfullest and most ignorant instincts in us all. This doesn’t mean you’re awful or ignorant if you hear the lizard’s jungle drums. I know some fabulously rich, fabulously educated, and fabulously savvy folks who are going to vote for Trump because they can’t stand another minute of Clinton’s garden-variety venality or inauthenticity or lies, or can’t bear another minute of Obama’s failures  and betrayal of America and lies which they sense Clinton will continue, and they are willing to roll the dice.

On the other hand, if they start telling me they know what Trump is going to do, I call them liars. I’m the only super-prophet in town, and Trump’s policy paths are dark, dark, foreclosed even to my 20-20 future vision.

Trump good for the Jews?

Trump will be good for the Jews because he will, thank God, take away their pain at watching the failure and fecklessness of Obama and the Democratic Party.

Also, they will no longer have to answer the embarrassing question: “Without using the word ‘Trump’, name one thing Hillary Clinton has done that’s worked out for America or for you?”

On a personal note

All the red-faced screaming confrontations from friends and hate-mail I’ve received (discounting the run-of-the-mill Jew-hating ones) have been from Democrats who believe I’ve endorsed Trump. When I respond with saintly patience that though many months ago I described and explained the Trump phenomenon on a scientific basis with reference to the pathogenesis of resonant cybernetic feedback loops between public and private limbic regions of the cortex, I absolutely have never endorsed Donald Trump for President.

But the problem with my Democrat friends is they believe explaining is excusing. I explained Trump, therefore…

Their other problem is that I merrily attack Democrats like Obama, Kerry, and Clinton. They can’t bear it. This illustrates why Trump might very well win: Democrats are babies. They are so enraged by him (again, a flip side of The Lizard Brain Phenomenon I described), they cannot engage in any reasonable discourse that might admit that for all her rationality, Clinton is a woefully damaged, crooked, venal, compromised and possibly criminal politician who has done nothing right for the public good in light of which even reasonable people are looking for an alternative, even a bag of vanity like Trump. No, they say, only deplorable ignoramuses will vote for Trump.

Me, I’m waiting for Tuesdays to stop. I hate being right all the time.