Growing up, in school, we’d be reading the same page 40 times, when the Rabbi would stop the class for a spot check. If you had lost your place, you’d be publicly shamed – yelled out, or sent out of the classroom.
We were reminded that in the olden days Yemenite kids would read with oranges under their chin. If they looked up and the orange dropped, they’d be beaten. We’d never had it this good.
(I got very good at playing along while letting my mind wander, or skimming the page to find the right spot if a surprise check was suddenly initiated)
Not knowing, uncertainty, became a very dangerous thing.
Religion demands certainty.
You must be certain that your butthole is clean. That you concentrated during the first paragraph of Shmone Esre. That you remembered to say Ya’ale Veyavo on Rosh Chodesh.
In return, Religion promises certainty.
Certainty that you’re the chosen people. That God is listening to every word. That everything you do matters. That these times, indeed, are the end of days.
To not know the point of it all. To not know what your role is. To not know who to turn to when the going gets tough.
And yet, uncertainty is an essential part of life.
Essential for humility, to continue to learn and admit what you don’t know.
Essential for the scientific method, questioning even things that we seemingly take for granted.
Essential for spontaneity and play. No one wants to play a game where the outcome is a given.
Over the years, I developed an aversion to uncertainty.
A clenching of the stomach when I woke up, around the day’s many unknowns.
An artificial confidence for spouting answers even to things I know nothing about. (this is known in professional circles as “bullshit Shore confidence”)
A deep dislike of replying with an “I don’t know” to the endless questions my 10 year old poses to me (you are usually only about two follow-up questions away from an “I don’t know”)
For me, it also combined with an obligation around masculinity, to be a provider and protector. It wasn’t enough to try, I had to succeed. I had to take responsibility for outcomes far beyond my control. A surefire recipe for anxiety.
I am actively working on accepting ambiguity.
Of deliberately playing in the unknown.
Of feeling safe even with no guarantees of safety.
Because, despite what religion claims, reality would like a word. And that word is uncertainty.
Are you in need of some chizuk in this trying times?
Do you need an anecdotal story that will remind you without a shadow of a doubt that hashem is looking out for your every move to make sure you are safe and protected?
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The Hashgacha Pratis generator
Hasgacha Pratis Generator
An Unbelievable Hashgacha Pratis Story
This is the story of .
So there he was, on his way to fulfill his holy mission, when suddenly , in a shocking, but not surprising, display of antisemitism.
He was sure all was lost, and that he was a dead man. He muttered a final Shema to himself and prepared to return his soul to its creator.
Then he looked down and saw that instead of penetrating his own body, it had simply pierced the that he carried around with him at all time.
He let out a sigh of relief. He knew in his heart of hearts that his salvation was due entirely to the .
The stranger looked at me. “And you know who that person was?” He smiled.
My main emotion is sadness, which is saying a lot because I don’t usually let myself feel much sadness.
Yosef is joining a special-forces unit, which means he’ll be doing harder, more brutal training, get exposed to more dangerous situations, and do all this for an extra year longer than most Israelis.
I’m sad because I don’t want him to lose four years of his life to an institution, where you alternate between sheer boredom and risking your life, emerging at the age when most Americans have graduated college with nothing to show but trauma and a burning desire to get of Israel, at least for a while.
I’m sad because of the training he’ll be going through. Another brother who also served, was traumatized just by the training. Of crawling until you bleed. Of soldiers crawling through their own vomit. I have no desire to see the army make a man out of my brother. I prefer he stay the boy, the joker, the computer game playing socialite that I know him to be.
I sad because I don’t want him to die. Yosef is the best. He has less edges. Hilarious, intelligent, and easygoing, he’s beloved by all who know him. If this sounds like a eulogy, it’s because it seems like its the best that die young. The assholes live until they are 95, chain smoking and harassing the rest of humanity.
Yosef Daniel is named after a soldier who died, killed by a sniper while conducting an arrest in Jenin. The killer was arrested, and then released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. This tells you all you need to know about the futility of serving in the Israeli army.
You get looped into the endless cycle of violence that is the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. You become part of the endless trauma that is the large population of men who’ve seen combat, or oppressed minorities, or who lost their friends, all so that we can supposedly “never again” experience just that.
I know Yosef felt a duty to serve his country, to sacrifice on behalf of others just as others had sacrificed before him.
To me, it’s incredibly arbitrary. Speaking with him, a fluent English-speaker, well versed in the ways of TikTok and gen-z, you could easily imagine him growing up in New York. Where even Jews don’t serve in the army, especially if they were raised Orthodox like we were. The fact that he’s sacrificing so much because of where my parents chose to live – a sacrifice which my parents themselves never made – infuriates me.
I don’t believe Israel is worth dying for. I don’t believe it’s worth giving up years of your life for. I don’t believe it’s doing anything to preserve the continuity of the Jewish people, nor do I believe that there is anything inherently valuable about the Jewish people sticking around as a distinct identity.
All this to say, if Yosef is killed, I will never forgive my parents. For placing him in harms way. For moving to a war-torn country to make a point.
Overall Judaism doesn’t concern itself as much with attitude. It’s mostly about endless laws that you either did or didn’t do. Usually the laws pertain to actions, sometimes to intention, like the obligation to concentrate fully during the first blessing of the Amida prayers.
More rarely, it gets involved with attitude. Examples that come to mind include the directive to not end Shabbat or holidays immediately at the time, to take your time when taking three steps backwards in your Amida service, and in general to “worship God with Joy”.
I have written in the past about the loopholes in Jewish law, and how absurd they are, and I am again struck by this when the parallels are more stark. My grandfather just died, and they rushed to bury him before sundown, and then “sit Shiva” for about 5 minutes so as to shave off one day from the 7 days.
If Shiva is a good thing, if it’s the word of God and good for you, does it make sense that 5 minutes is enough to do it? If God really has your best interests in mind with every law he gives you, why do you spend so much time and effort getting around it? I’m reminded of all the times Orthodox Jews just didn’t eat bread, to avoid the need to say a long convoluted blessing afterwards.
Why is ending your Shiva as soon as you possibly can, different than rushing out of Shabbat at the earliest possible opportunity?
It’s telling, every time Orthodox Jews do whatever they can to avoid the laws that supposedly “enhance” their life. It’s an indication that deep down, or not-so deep down, there is a sense that the whole thing is a burden.
Which makes sense, because you’re taking a set of laws that range from absurd to actually decent and then applying them as a blanket law for everyone to follow equally. I think Shiva is actually an emotionally intelligent way to process grieving. Forcing people to do it for exactly seven days, not so much.
And so the law loses its spirit, and the followers of the law lose theirs.
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Are you hoping to dedicate this new illustrious institution in the memory of a loved one? We can help you figure out his Jewish (read: Yiddish) name as well.
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Warning: not suitable for seminaries, as the word “Binah” is not included in the algorithm.
Hear me out. (No good idea ever started with that, did it?)
What if the entire Zionist idea was just a first draft for an even more Final Solution?
At the time, Zionism was revolutionary. And it has had its benefits, to a degree.
(Although if World War II had broken out after the founding of the State of Israel, I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made of the Jews of Europe.)
But it’s also had major issues. It’s founded on colonialism1. It’s elitist and combines politics and identity. It’s been used to justify treating many citizens as second class, and oppressing many others.
An ideal that was initially pragmatic, with Argentina being a suitable alternative, has been subverted by many as a 2,000-year-old dream, a prophesy, a birthright, a shitton of entitlement to a specific patch of land. And so far, that part has been going swimmingly.
The only part of Zionism I can really resonate with is the premise that there will always an excuse to hate the Jews, regardless of circumstance, and therefore we must consolidate as much power as possible so that we can act for our own self-preservation.
The principle stands that no one cares about you as you do about yourself, and as a collective, we can’t count on any true allies because the winds of change can shift at any time.
‘Murica the great
Here’s my suggested solution, and we could begin to implement it today.
Jews should make a point of settling in America, focusing specifically on shithole states that no one wants anyway. I’m looking at you South Dakota and West Virgina. States that have large amounts of land and not many people living in them. We could make them flourish. We’ve already done it in a desert.
We should focus on states that have outsized influence in elections, and reach a critical mass so we have extensive control on the state level. Jews basically run New York while still being a minority, subverting its educational requirements to allow religious children to get almost no education. This would be even easier to do in states with less population, and maybe for less nefarious gains?
Someone in Wyoming has 68 times more influence in the US senate than a person in California2. I’m thinking Main and Vermont and other top tier states. (And if shit really hits the fan, we can always flee to Canada. No way Canada can safely hold the ground if we rush them from multiple locations and then apologize.)
I call this plan Der Judenstaaten – as in, the Jewish states. Plural. We can have multiple, as long as it’s not just ours. See? When you share everyone gets more.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
This is something we could start tomorrow, borrowing from the parts that worked well in the Zionist playbook.
Buying up large swaths of land.
Encouraging immigration to specific areas. Sponsoring visas like our life depends on it.
Existing Jews who already living in other states can make the move.
The Term Aliyah would finally make literal sense: we’d establish Nefesh B’Nefesh B’Nefesh to encourage “Aliyah to the Northern States” with the help of propaganda videos. I’ll write them another set of lyrics for an inspirational song, free of charge.
Turns out this was not my masterpiece, but rather a first draft for an even better idea.
We won’t have a full army like we do now. But you know what we could have, what America is a perfectly set up for? Guns. Lots and lots of guns. Every Jew could own like 173 assault rifles. Wait, make that 18. For Chai.
Illustrative Photo.
They could go to the shooting range religiously, the Rabbis could invent laws about it, I know they have it in them (Blessed art thou, Lord, who commanded me to own this gun and to shoot it at my enemies.)
We could have overly-militarized police forces driving around in surplus army vehicles.
You gotta admit, this looks pretty cool. And super professional.
We’d have our own national guard that would answer to our own one-of-us Governor, with a name like David Eisenstein.
America’s constitution is such that it awards outsized power to the individual, and at the very least, the Jews would be able to put up a fight before going down.
Isn’t that the point? Masada, Warsaw ghetto, etc. etc.? No one can guarantee Jewish continuity, not even the state of Israel. We just wanna die trying. Antisemitism? Bring it. Fight us in the mountains of West Virginia. We’ll dig tunnels and use converted mines, Bar Kochba / Hamas style. Let’s look to Waco, Texas, for inspiration.
You know who has set a precedent for this? The Mormons. They have their own promised land, right in the USA. They came there to escape persecution. They are incredibly powerful and wealthy.
You know who else? Scientology. Even the FBI knows not to mess with Scientology, and we could teach them not to mess with us either. I’m just pointing out that you don’t need your own country to be untouchable. Power can be obtained in many ways.
Benefits
There are several benefits to this approach. I call this part the Triple Daled.
Development. There’d be a lot more room for expansion. America is a vast, vast land. If we outgrow one state, we can organically expand into another. There are far more resources of many varieties that can be tapped into. I dunno, maybe we’ll find out we really like mining? We never really tried that before.
Diversity. These states wouldn’t be exclusively for Jews. Anyone could inherently live anywhere. And this is good from both a human rights perspective and for the benefits that diverse thought and influences can bring. Homogeneity has some real downsides, bro.
Delegation. Jews are really good at some things, like being wealthy, too smart for their own good, and controlling the media. They are not good at others, like fixing their kitchen sink and being humble. Expecting the Jews to do everything themselves looks about as good as the Israeli government currently does, so having some of the federal stuff handed off could be a really good idea.
Identity
What should we call this thing? It’s important that we get disproportionately fixated on this and attach too much of our identity to this ideal. It should become more than a means to an end, but rather an end in and of itself.
Here are my suggestions:
Nighilism – Nigh means close, and here it can refer to the fact that “close enough” is fine, you don’t need to be perfect. It also can refer to our constant doomsday expectations of how bad things are about to be (even though you never had it this good) as in “ the end is nigh”.
Neonism – as in, we’re even newer than Zionism. Also, Neo, The Matrix, Zion, really cool gunfights, etc. Still one of the coolest movies ever.
We’ll have our own flag, of course, and it’ll have loads of stars on it. It’s just that they’ll be six pointed stars. I can’t emphasize enough just how many stars it will have, and how just how six pointed they will be. Yes, it can even be blue and white, if you want. See? I’m open to suggestions!
We can use AI to design it!
If you will it…
How much of a dream was Zionism, when it was founded? How impossible did it seem? By comparison, my suggestion is a piece of cake.
So when Jews regularly speak about Israel as their final frontier, that “they have nowhere else to go”, remember, that was the exact feeling in 1897 Poland.
As other visionaries have said before me, “if you will it, it is no dream.” Why can’t we apply this same abundance mentality (see, I’ve been doing my Instagram) to creating an even better future?
Don’t be so specific, Bob
I don’t buy into the need for a specific piece of land, or specific form of government.
Perfection is the enemy of the good, and I don’t know if you noticed, but Israel isn’t perfect either, if you look really closely. Like, with a magnifying glass.
So too, settling in the States won’t be perfect. We won’t have complete autonomy. We wouldn’t be able to freely allow anyone to immigrate to the country, at least initially. But we’d have a strong lobby, and who knows, maybe we’d get special immigration exemption for Jews. Like I like to say, if you will it…
We wouldn’t be able to guarantee the safety of every Jew, anywhere in the world. But we can’t do that now either. It’s not like the Jews were all chill while under the rule of soviet Russia. And it’s not like Jews aren’t dying for being Jews in Israel.
In Conclusion
If you take one thing from this post, it’s that I am a fucking visionary. You can bury me next to Herzel when you exhume both our bodies, and bury us in Nebraska.
I just solved the entire Jewish problem over breakfast and can continue on with my day.
And while in exile in Costa Rica, while suffering greatly, like all political visionaries.
If you take two things from this post, it’s that just because things have been done a certain way, doesn’t mean it needs to continue that way. Some open-mindedness and creativity goes a long way, especially if you stop seeking perfection and some messianic vision of a Utopian future and instead go for incremental improvement that takes everyone’s needs, abilities, and rights into consideration.
Even non-Jews.
Under Herzl’s direction there was created a few years later the Jewish Colonial Trust… the “Colonial Trust” and its affiliate, the Anglo Palestine Company had a key role in the actual implementation of the Zionist Project, and eventually became Bank Leumi, one of Israel’s main banks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat) ↩︎
Growing up, the narrative that Ultra Orthodox Jews (aka “Charedim”) had as to why they weren’t serving in the military was that they were actually performing their own crucial service – they were protecting the country spiritually.
The harder they studied and prayed, the more protected the soldiers on the front lines would be.
This idea has of course emerged during the current conflict, with the help of AI illustrated art, with gems such as these:
It’s hard to express just how offensive this attitude is. Go tell a soldier freezing his ass off on the frontline, go tell a veteran missing his legs, go tell the parents who lost their child, that your studying from a 2,000 book in your airconditioned hall, studying very hard, mind you, is akin to their sacrifice.
The fact remains that Ultra Orthodox Jews suffer almost no causalities in Israel’s major altercations. There are families in Israel who have a tradition of losing multiple family members – a grandfather in 1956, an uncle in 1973, a son in 2009. Israeli society is pockmarked with these societal wounds – and orthodox Jews have largely been spared them.
I don’t care if these opinions are espoused by people who also served in the military, which is sometimes the case. Hats off to you for your military service. Now shut up and don’t pretend you’re still serving when you’re back in front of a book.
I’m also not here to say that everyone should serve. I believe the decision to die for a country is a personal one. I support people who choose not to, for any reason. But goddamn, don’t pretend to be involved when you’re not, and don’t pretend to be part of a solution when you’re doing nothing, and definitely don’t claim to have made one iota of the sacrifice made anyone who has given years of their life, or their life itself, to protect others.
The barbarism displayed by Hamas on October 7th horrified, the world, as well it should.
Who harms innocent non-combatants, women and children like that? Who takes innocents hostage? Who acts with such coarse brutality?
It is scary to see where humans can end up when lose touch with their own inner compass. It’s almost always some external idea that takes hold of a collective and causes them to lose their collective shit. More often this idea looks like a book, and more often this book was written by God.
Here are some gems from this book, where every word is holy, where people are named after its characters, where 10 year old are taught to read its verses 24 times.
In our current example the book happened to be written by Allah. But there is another book with some similar opinions, and that one was written by Hashem:
Numbers 31:7,9 And they gathered upon the Midianites as God had commended and they killed every male… and the sons of Israel took the Midianite women and children prisoner, and they looted their animals and possessions.
Deuteronomy 25:19 – ... you shall erase any trace of Amalek from beneath the heavens.
Samuel I 15:8 – And Samuel captured (the Amalek) king live, and killed the rest of the nation by sword…
Samuel I 22:19 – And Nov, the city of Priests (King Saul) killed by the sword; men, women, children, nursing infants, animals.
Psalms 137:9 – ..blessed is the one who grabs your infants and shatters them against the rocks.
Apologetics time! Here’s the point where you explain that Amalek is a metaphor. That it pertains to enemies long dead. That practically you don’t do this kind of thing.
Here’s the thing with interpretations – anyone can interpret them as they wish. I was raised with the knowledge that Amalek was the Nazis. Now it’s Hamas. It’s an idea, representing “the enemy of the Jews” whoever that might be, and it can be applied to any people or ideology at will. And once applied, it justifies the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children.
This is not just an abstraction. Here is the verse above written on an artillery shell being fired in Gaza. I can support bombing Gaza right now. I cannot support invoking the bible to justify doing so. To be fair, this was written by a random soldier, not a decision maker, but it’s an expression of an ideology that can, and is, making its way to the top of Israeli government.
Yes, we’re not at a point where Jews are indiscriminately killing babies for its own sake. Historically, over the last 2,000 years, we’ve been the victims, not the perpetrators. But it is these ideas, validated by a book, that causes people to lose their own sense of reason, their own moral compass.
It justifies fighting to the death on barren mountaintops, claiming ownership of land we haven’t lived in for 2,000 years, treating those who are not chosen by this book as second class citizens. And we see this in Israel on the daily – the more identified the people are with this book, the more outlandish their views of how they may to treat others.
As long as these verses are celebrated as cultural, historically significant, or the word of God, we create an opening for these words to be wielded at the hands of whatever fanatic currently has the the power.
For the most part, I identify as left-leaning. In many ways, I am more critical of Israel than the average Jew.
But I have long been aware of the dangers that far left ideologies pose – the prioritization of minority rights above all else, the justification of violence when it’s convenient (BLM riots).
There is a deep hypocrisy inherent in all of it, one that seems to come from a place of a lot of privilege: one where you get to sit in an ivory tower and prioritize minutia while losing all sense of nuance to the complexities of the real-world.
Where would you like 7 million people who have lived there for 80 years, to go?
How do you propose Israel create a two state solution with a terror organization that refuses to recognize its right to exist?
How do you imagine tearing down the “apartheid wall” will play out for millions of civilians?
You, who will raise the roof at the misgendering of a pronoun.
Who will go to war over a culturally misappropriated kimono.
Who will cancel someone’s career over an ill-timed joke.
You can’t find it in you to condemn the intentional killing of a baby? The kidnapping of a grandmother?
Ironically, it is the far left that is the most tolerant of religion, especially Islam, when it is actually radical Islam, and radical Judaism, that have led to the most violent flare-ups in much of Israel’s history (and radical Islam is a far bigger culprit).
So why don’t you shove your open minded views up your own ass until you can learn to apply them evenly across the entire population, until you can foster a modicum of self-awareness, until you can learn to tell the difference between shades of evil, even if it doesn’t make you look quite as virtuous to all those you are trying to signal to.
Velvel couldn’t stop dreaming about Magda Pritzovsky.
Every Sunday, he’d see her headed to the Greek Orthodox church with the extra little crosses on top of the crosses. Extra Christian.
She would always go with her father. He had a long white beard and reeked of potato vodka.
He looked like Rasputin.
She looked like a potato.
And yet, that was all he could think of. Feeling up her moist pushka. His shmeckl harder than a week-old challa.
Velvel knew what he was doing was wrong. He should be fantasizing about Yentle the Gefitefishmonger’s daughter. Or about Feige, the Rabbi’s niece who’d been adopted after the last pogrom.
And here he was, salivating over a common pushka.
He knew he must be the most evil yeshiva bochur in all of Poland.
But he couldn’t stop.
One day, when the cravings were getting too much to hondle, Velvel found himself sneaking into the yeshiva kitchens. It was Friday afternoon, the cholent was already on the fire. The herring was in the corner, pickling hard.
Velvel looked around guiltily. He reached into the herring shlocher and pulled out a handful in his bare hands. Unzipping his pants, he thrust his shmeckle right into the thick of this makeshift pushka…
Oh what bliss!
It was so slimey. So cold. So briney. Velvel did not last long at all.
He returned the herring back to its rightful place, and hurried gultily back into the study hall.
He made sure to drop an extra zrotl into the pushka, to atone for his sins.
