‘Sea-Palestinians’

I mean, aside from the regular “occupied” Philistines singing “From the river to the sea“.

Here’s pseudo-Rashi on Divrei Hayamim (I 1:12):

פתרוסים, פתרוסי ים כסלוחים כסלוחי ים פלשתים פלשתי ים כפתורים כפתורי ים לפיכך כתוב בשני יודי”ן לדרוש וכן כולם.

They squat along part of “Yam Pelishtim”…

And they’re originally Egyptian fellahin and work-migrants. May we soon see the fulfillment of the verse:

ויושע ד’ ביום ההוא את ישראל מיד מצרים וירא ישראל את מצרים מת על שפת הים. וירא ישראל את היד הגדלה אשר עשה ד’ במצרים וייראו העם את ד’ ויאמינו בד’ ובמשה עבדו.

‘Ain Ta’am Baratzon’: An Argumentative Quiz

A friend of mine obstinately denied the truth of the truism ‘Ain Ta’am Baratzon\Laratzon’ (as explained here). It must mean something else instead, something very abstract, he insisted — as in the Tzemach Tzedek (quoted in the above link).

He kept “explaining” that one can ascend to the sefirah of “Tiferes” from a temptress, per the Baal Shem Tov, and that praxis leads ממילא to understanding. As the song goes, “Mitzvos are beautiful, Mitzvos are fine. I love mitzvos, I do them all the time…”

At length, I determined to hand him a quick “quiz” of sorts. I scribbled this out and handed it to him. Worked!

Here’s the actual list of questions that won me the argument (lightly edited while typing):

  1. What does the phrase in fact mean (e.g., as in Malbim on Daniel 2:3 or Tehillim 44:4)?
  2. What ever does “אויף א תאוה איז קיין קשה ניט” mean as a common expression?
  3. Do you agree with the Is\Ought problem?
  4. Praxis leads to understanding? So what?! לא יחפוץ כסיל בתבונה כי אם בהתגלות לבו.
  5. Can’t one descend from Tiferes to an impure shiktza, too?
  6. If mitzvos are about rewards in this world or the next, what about Lishma? And if keeping the mitzvos is smart, reasonable, and “Good” (with The Capital “G”, of course!), how come reward is not Nahama Dekisufa?
  7. If keeping the Torah is plain “eminently reasonable”, how come you’re smarter than Yeravam, Bilam, Kayin, Achaz, Amon (both in Sanhedrin 103b), Acher, and such like? What do you know that they, nebbech, do not?

How the ‘Jewish’ State Treats Pioneers Willingly Spilling Out Their Blood for the Nation

From the news yesterday (thanks to the tip from Chananya W.):

Security forces pull Jewish children from their beds, force them to watch their families’ homes destroyed, before declaring Givat Or Nachman a closed military zone.

Large numbers of police and Civil Administration forces on Tuesday night raided Givat Or Nachman in the Binyamin Region Binyamin, near the town of Adei Ad, demolishing the homes of three families, as welll as other residential buildings where young men slept.

The destruction was carried out without warning, and the families’ children were pulled out of their beds and forced to watch their homes’ demolition. Arab workers were brought to the site to assist in the demolition and evacuation of equipment.

Some of the families requested to remove possessions from their homes, but were refused. Their kitchen utensils and furniture were damaged in the demolition, they said. In addition to destroying the buildings themselves, the bulldozers also destroyed the solar power system that operated on the hill. Parallel to this, Judea and Samaria Division commander Brigadier General Yaki Dolf issued an order declaring Or Nachman a closed military zone for a period of one month.

This is the third demolition that the defense establishment carried out this week in the Shilo bloc area.

On Tuesday, a vineyard containing hundreds of trees belonging to a Shiloh resident was uprooted.

Twice over the past week, a Jewish settlement in the Shilo Valley was destroyed – after terrorists from the nearby Arab village of Turmus Aya fired towards the Jewish town several times over the past few weeks.

Amichai Savir, a resident of the hill who was evacuated together with his wife and young son, related, “The destruction tonight was brutal and fundamentally inhuman. Beyond their attempt to get us to leave the hill, they had a clear goal of traumatizing the families themselves, including the children. I regret to inform them that the destruction will not only not achieve its goal, but will cause the pioneer families here to cling to the land even more stubbornly.”

Read the rest here…