Jews are customarily stringent in the standards for their Arba Minim. Since there are Rishonim who hold Aravos must be grown by the river to be kosher at all, why aren’t we zealous about this? Outside of Israel, it was often harder to obtain this kind of Aravos. Indeed, more and more Jews have begun to use only riverside Aravos. Sadly, they don’t last longer than the regular Aravos, so you still may need a few extra branches.
In the class recently re-posted here by Rabbi Bar Chaim (you downloaded it, surely?) the Rabbi states the Vilna Gaon would recite the verses of ‘Tashlich’ at home, but not go to bodies of water.
I humbly differ. The Gaon’s practice is known to us through the book Ma’aseh Rav #209 which states:
לא היה הולך לנהר או לבאר לומר תשליך.
But the meaning is he did nothing at nowhere.
This is because the words נהר או באר are a paraphrase of Kisvei Arizal, who Mishna Berurah (583:8) quotes saying this:
ובכתבים כתב נהר או באר וטוב שיהיה מחוץ לעיר.
Am I missing something?
Q:
What do politicians and toddlers have in common?
A:
Both occasionally achieve a good result by pure accident.
Both pretend this result was intentional.
And both accept the applause and rewards they receive for their own, prior actions.
The Men in Blue intend to block Jews from the Temple Mount on Rosh Hashana eve. Of course, they are too sneaky to come right out and say so in writing – so the courts won’t be roped in. Clever.
See the details here (Hebrew).
The farcical fawning flowery flattery for the late-to-be-late Shimon Peres reminds me of George Orwell’s example of language in service of obfuscation (Politics and the English Language):
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
I must reread that essay.