העורך Editor

Waiting for Mashiach in Galus

We brought Yitchak Fuchs’ “Boro Park” song here before.

Find the song background on Mishpacha here.

An excerpt from the article:

Reb Yitzchak wrote the song during his own personal “exile.” “I lived in Boro Park for six years. How could I not sing a song about it?” he asks. “I came to Boro Park during a rough time in my own life and I found so many brothers there so much Jewish warmth. They say that galus unites Jews — how true. I was amazed when I heard so much Yiddish rolling glibly off the tongues of youngsters not just old men. I sang about Boro Park as I viewed it — and as an Israeli filled with longing for Eretz Yisrael.

“At the beginning of the song a listener might think I’m encouraging other Jews to leave Eretz Yisrael for America chas v’shalom ” Fuchs continues. “But later you can hear that the call ‘Come to Boro Park’ is to Mashiach to come redeem all those waiting. Because really Boro Park could be anywhere: London Lakewood or even Yerushalayim or Bnei Brak. It’s just another place where our Jewish brothers are waiting. If only Hashem would send Mashiach already…”

On Calling Rabbi Shalom Cohen the ‘Kohen Gadol’

Honorific inflation is one thing. Using this empty expression for the Meshech Chochma or Chafetz Chaim, fine. But living in the land of Israel under Jewish autonomy today this is yet another cognitive step away from the Temple.

Pesachim 113a:

אמר ליה רב לרב כהנא הפוך בנבילתא ולא תיפוך במילי פשוט נבילתא בשוקא ושקיל אגרא ולא תימא כהנא אנא וגברא רבא אנא וסניא בי מלתא…

Unless they mean we should be donating money, גדלהו משל אחיו…

(As for R’ Shalom Cohen himself, see here.)

So, How Many Silent Mussar Periods Will It Take to Cancel the Whole Thing?

“Rav Avigdor Miller – His Life And His Revolution” by Rabbi Yaakov Y. Hamburger (p. 190):

Rabbi Miller encouraged his talmidim to learn mussar loudly and enthusiastically, as was the accepted practice in the European yeshivos. Once, when it was too quiet during mussar seder, he joked, “We’re now observing fifteen minutes of silence in honor of the late Reb Yisrael Salanter.”

FALSE DICHOTOMY: Authoritarian Functionalism vs. Authoritarian Intentionalism

Politicians and wonks do not have their “hearts in the right place”!

Clark’s Law: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is functionally indistinguishable from malice.”

(I can’t find the true source.)
OK, but we must differentiate a one-time case from constant, invariant results across domains, geography, and time.
How many “inadvertent” creations of terrorist groups, “mistaken” wars”, faulty assumptions, “failed socialism”, the cycle of crime, etc. etc. do we need to see the truth of things? “Pesik reisha velo yamus?!“
Actually, the arbitrary assumption of the mantle to decide matters for other, independent adults is itself to actively seek out harm, whether because of explicit malice or implicit criminal disregard for results. (Understand this better via this short video presentation.)
Psychologist Dr. Alfred Adler said it is often easier to determine man’s inner state of mind by observing the ex-post result of his choices, assuming the results were, in fact, intentional, and working back from there. [source needed]

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

(Milton Friedman)
But authoritarians aren’t charitably minded loons, rather, their intentions, too are awful! Does anyone think even politicians are too foolish to understand simple, Friedmanite logic?
I said something similar in the past here:

Modern “gun control” indeed thins the herd by enabling private murderers. This “disproportionately” harms the poor, who cannot afford armed guards, and are often government wealth-redistribution net “beneficiaries”. This helps lower socialism’s immense costs, same as abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, family planning, etc.

This is too painful to elaborate much.