Month: May 2026 – י״ב בסיון תשפ״ו

How Humor Helps Havanah

Humor and Learning Torah

Monday, March 24, 2014
When we began this website, many people were drawn here by divrei Torah, but then they were put off by the humor.  Since they could only recognize serious divrei Torah when they’re bound in a black book, they never came back.  Others were drawn by the name Havolim, looking for letizanus, for jokes, and were put off by the serious divrei Torah.  What can I do.  The Beis Halevi first printed his teshuvos together with his divrei torah on the parsha, but in the later editions he separated them into two volumes, saying that the audience that was interested in the one was totally uninterested in the other.  Lehavdil, I’ve done something similar, and have begun posting the serious Divrei Torah on my other site, Beis Vaad.But the truth is that there is no contradiction between humor and learning Gemara.

Stimulating the mind through humor is mentioned in the Gemara (Shabbos 30b) where it says that before he would begin the shiur, Rabba would say something that would make the students smile, and then his tone and demeanor would change, the mood in the room would shift from light-hearted to an extremely tense focus, and he would begin the shiur, expecting absolute attention, unforgiving of even the smallest lapse.

כי הא דרבה מקמי דפתח להו לרבנן אמר מילתא דבדיחותא ובדחי רבנן לסוף יתיב באימתא ופתח בשמעתא

Rashi says that one should begin with something comedic, and the rabbis/students would laugh, and their minds would open from the happiness.

 ובדחי רבנן. נפתח לבם מחמת השמחה

I don’t think most people realize how wise and effective this method is.  It sounds, to some, like just another quaint story in the Gemara.  So for us, the modern thinkers, who don’t believe anything if it’s anecdotal, here are some interesting studies.

A 1976 study by the late professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, Avner Ziv, (the author of the entry on Humor in the Encyclopedia Judaica) found that those who listened to a comedy album before taking a creativity test scored 20% better than a control group that had not heard the routine.

From Havolim, here.

Question For ‘Eretz HaKodesh’ Supporters: They’re Helping Block Har Habayis To Jews!

As “Beyadenu” argues in detail, the proposed Kotel law is (also) a sneaky trick by the Noam party (methinks נעם is an acronym for נגד עבודת המקדש) to criminalize Jewish entry to the Temple Mount, by putting it under the jurisdiction of the Rabanut. The Rabanut that already has a sign saying Jews can’t go up…

From the news (in what looks like a PR piece they ordered):

Our voters brought us into the WZO, and it was that representation that gave us the ability to walk into the Knesset and speak on their behalf. Standing before the Constitution Committee, we made a historic declaration: This is what American Jews actually want. This is what Diaspora Jewry wants…

Rabbi Nechemya Malinowitz, a member of the leadership of Eretz HaKodesh…

For the first time in an official capacity, the authentic voice of American Orthodox Jewry was heard in the halls of the Knesset, standing firm to protect the kedusha of the Kotel for generations to come.

I like my own proposal to the Reform a lot more: “Let’s Make a Deal; You Get the Wall, We Get the Mount!”

Comparing Somaliland and Aza

Here’s an instructive article by Murray Rothbard (here’s a PDF, since LRC never seems to fix their broken links):

Download (PDF, 371KB)

Rothabrd is discussing the origin story of Somaliland.

Lesson (retroactively vindicated by events): Foreign aid dependency and “humanitarian” intervention can be crippling, and make everything worse. See: southern Somalia. Aza is not succeeding either…

Somaliland had none of the “charity”, so they grew up organically, despite the war.

Funnily enough, in theory, libertarians ought to be very happy about a new secession, a new state. The more states the merrier; the weaker each one becomes over earth’s limited resources, the more localism and subsidiarity, the more liberty and self-determination. And that logic is applied to Aza’s “fight for liberty”.

In practice, however, the cheering for Somaliland is quite muted (probably due to the Israeli connection and worries about new neocon schemes, shades of the hatred for J. Milei*).

Libertarians are forever kvetching about American weapons going to destroy Aza, but not about the USG aid going to Aza. And I don’t see even the tiniest mention of their own theory. Somaliland was actually on the receiving end of the US-backed Barre regime…

* Note: I think Milei is a phony in practice, but those who disagree should have been giddy by their lights about a supposed Rothbardian winning elections, putting Austrian theory into practice, etc. etc.