chain

 “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

- Rosa Luxemborg

Joseph Campbell

 “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” 

                           - Joseph Campbell

Why are you still crying?

Beware of Darkness (2014 Remaster) - YouTube 

Written By: George Harrison
It's time we start smiling 
What else should we do? 
With only this short time 
I'm gonna be here with you 
And the tales you have taught me 
From the things that you saw 
Makes me want out your heart, please, please 
From behind that locked door 

And if ever my love goes 
If I'm rich or I'm poor 
Come and let out my heart, please, please 
From behind that locked door

Written By: George Harrison

Life destruction through yeshivish math

Here's their math:

All of this world is not worth one second of the next world +

One word of Torah is worth all of your mitzvahs

= Throw your entire life in the garbage can, all your feelings, all your possible accomplishments so you can learn one more word of Torah.

Of course the logic is faulty, because you have mitzvahs to do, many of which are in the mind and heart and if your brain is shot you can't do them, can't even do Torah study. So what they do is shame you for that and try to hide away the mitzvos. 

If I could do it all over again

If I could do it all over again, I would not go on blind dates unless I knew that the shadchan did her homework. There were too many times that I drove 2 hours to see the woman, spent $100 on dinner, labored to be the perfect gentleman but got rejected for things that could have been ascertained with a little research or because she rejects everyone. I would opt instead for singles events. That way if my nose isn’t right or she only wants a man who wears a black hat or she doesn’t want a man who wears a black hat, she’d figured that out after a one-minute conversation rather than after I spent an entire Sunday trying to entertain her. 

If I could do it all over again, I would not use a shidduch resume. If Orthodox Jewish dating isn’t already a load of degradation, the shidduch resume adds another 10 pounds onto it. You can’t summarize a person on a page of paper. And if you could, what happens if he changes a little, if he grows? Regardless, the typical resume today doesn’t even try. You are equal to your references evidently and where your brother goes to yeshiva. It’s about everything but you. 

If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t worry as much about religious standards. The most important thing is not how or if she’ll cover her hair, it’s not about whether he has a chavrusah every night. It’s about getting along. Are you compatible? Do you like this person’s energy, mind, emotions, humor? Do you think you could stand being in his or her presence day and night for the next 50 years? Is this a caring person? Is he or she a decent human being? Not, does he read your mind on the date and figure out exactly what you need or want every second. But in general, is he trying to be a decent person. Is she trying? 

If I could do it all over again, I would not take dates to restaurants. You can’t get to know a person at a restaurant. Truth is, you need to be in each other’s homes to really see what they are like. Halacha complicates that some, but we complicate even more with our rigidity. 

If I could do it all over again, I would only marry a woman who makes a picnic for us. Dating is so one-way, the man does everything. How do you figure out if a woman is selfish when all of them just take and take and take on every single date. There has to be giving in both directions or you don’t develop a relationship. 

Everything I’m proposing here is the opposite of frum dating. We claim to be so superior to the outside world in all matters, especially in courtship. We are lying to ourselves.

contrast

 I went to two vorts tonight. The first was yeshivish, half-American, agudah type. You walk in and pass women who are lingering in the doorway. They are not immodest, but they are not the pinnacle of modesty either in dress or deportment. They were expensive clothes. The men are all in short coats. The young men don't look so happy. I get this sense of disappointment that they are not a gadol sort of thing. Some of the men are latzy, some overserious. I stay a while. It doesn't feel so religious to me. I feel nothing. Feels kind of dead. 

Then I went to a Yerushalmi vort. Lots of NK guys. It was like a cloud was lifted from the room. Long coats, long payus. No women in site. Nobody passing through the mechitza as happened in the other place. There was a mekubal, there was a Brisker rabbi. They were very impressive. There was a happiness to the people. They were talking with each other. Reminded me of Rabbi Miller's comments about Jews in the old country, how they were happy people. I felt as if I was dealing with people who cared about the entire religion. I could breathe and I felt religious there. I felt, so these are Jews. 

It's hard to find this experience in America. There are special people in various places, but not such a concentration usually. The materialism overwhelms the best of us. 

a tie

  Rosh Yeshiva calls the yeshiva together to lecture them about an important matter. What is it? That everyone must wear a tie. He says that klal yisroel, even the sefardim, has taken on the custom of the tie, so unless your community is chassidish - in which case you must obey their customs - you must wear a tie.

Let's examine this nonsense. Most of klal  yisroel is not torah observant and doesn't wear ties. So if we are talking about frum jews, well, the MOs largely don't wear ties either, especially in israel. sefardim don't wear ties either. i was in a sefardic shul this week, half the guys had t-shirts. 

Does he mean the rabbis of the sefardim and the modern who have been bashed around by the Manalist rabbis? well the senior sefardim wear sefardic garb. and the rabbis are not klal yisroel anyway.

And this idea of doing what klal yisroel does. Does that apply to nonsense like a tie, which is the most goyish of clothing items anyway. A tie has no function. So is wearing one even allowed? It's unccomfortable too. It's largely just imitating a style.

so this guy is a ry and he has no idea how the world works, he just wants obedience and he makes you feel as if you are obligated to be obedient to him

Prepare to be surprised

 "Know that the position that Divine Providence has placed you in and the abilities you have been given must be utilized to the utmost in serving God. And unless you know with certainty that a given path is not for you, you have no right to leave it. Serve God by knowing Him in all your ways." Lubavitcher Rebbe, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrKD7m9wXpY

Prepare to be surprised: The Rebbe's INCREDIBLE advice to a student dealing with regret

Decision making

 Good living requires good decision making. That entails gathering facts and ideas, envisioning consequences and outcomes, getting in touch with one's feelings about the choices, consulting one's instincts, hearing from experienced and sensible people and weighing it all out so that one can make not the perfect choice but the one that makes the most sense all things considered.

Decision making is hindered by neurosis, laziness, prejudice, excessive fear, and fanaticism. Fanatics don't make good decisions. They just repeat their decrees.

Let's say you have a 30 year old baal teshuvah bachelor who has no money, no way of earning a living, and no family support. He wants to get a job. He doesn't enjoy Torah learning very much anyway as the yeshivas he attended didn't teach him very well, didn't have an educational methodology for beginners. They just opened to daf beis and broke his teeth on it. He needs to get married, but the women he is meeting want a guy with a way of earning a living, which is reasonable. Should you tell him to stay in yeshiva? That's fanaticism. It's an acting out of this idea that the answer to every question of life is to study Torah in  yeshiva. I have seen this happen to people. 

In the yeshiva world, it's hard to make good decisions because all of the components of decision making are stifled. They don't gather facts. They don't care about instincts. They operate from fear. They don't balance out factors. They just yell. 

I know a guy who has post traumatic stress disorder. He had a rough life and New York was killing him. He found himself in Los Angeles where he was able to mellow out considerably. He thought of staying there, but first, as he was told to do a 1000 times, consulted with a rav who told him "You must always stay away from tumah, and Los Angeles is tuma par excellence."

Now is that measured decision making? It's a prejudice from a New York frum Jew that the only place you can live in the world is New York, a place with plenty of its own tumah. This guy's mental state wasn't considered. And the hashgacha pratis that he brought him to Los Angeles under unusual circumstances wasn't considered. All that happened was that a loud mouth blasted his prejudices and ignorance all over this poor bochur's face.

I can cite you a 100 more examples of failure to attempt good decision making in the yeshiva world. Fanatics don't make decision, they fanaticize. 

What's odd about this?

 Shapell’s Student Spotlight: From Berkely to Jerusalem - YouTube

He's been frum how long? You think he'd talk about keeping Shabbos or some other mitzvah. Why only Gemara learning?

Be careful who you trust with your life

 Titanic submersible lost control, starting spinning in prior dive (nypost.com)

A former pilot of the ill-fated Titan submersible lost control of the vessel during a previous dive — causing the sub to start spinning in circles as terrified passengers were stuck on board for hours.

Footage taken inside the submersible shows the vehicle spinning out of control, leading pilot Scott Griffith to say, “We have a problem,” as the five-person crew dove 12,500 feet below sea level.

The crew was 300 meters from the Titanic’s ruins when the Titan’s thrusters began to malfunction, the clip from the 2022 BBC documentary revealed.

“There’s something wrong with my thrusters. I’m thrusting and nothing is happening,” Griffith can be heard saying, according to the Mirror.

The BBC’s documentary is not available for viewing within the US.

One of the Titan’s thrusters had allegedly been mounted improperly, causing one to propel the sub in one direction while the other pushed it in the opposite direction and ultimately making the Titan spin in circles.

The documentary revealed terrified crew members had to wait for hours while OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush worked to fix the issue from the mother ship.

“You know what I was thinking, we’re not going to make it,” passenger Reneta Rojas told the BBC. “We’re literally 300m (600 feet) from the Titanic, and although we are already in the debris field, we can’t go anywhere but go in circles.”

Footage showed an anxious Rojas putting her head in her hands as the crew worked to reprogram the video game control that managed the vessel’s movement.

“We were just so happy we had figured out how to move forward,” Rojas said. “We started clapping inside the submersible and saying ‘Yes we can go.'”

life of terror

  "It's a harsh environment because everything is fear driven, so you are living in a constant state of fear and you are taught that God exists only to be feared and you are always afraid of punishment and always afraid of doing something wrong." Deborah Feldman

Unorthodox: Deborah Feldman's escape from Brooklyn to Berlin | DW Interview - YouTube, 4:53

I notice in shiduchim, the women were always terrified. That was the dating, not getting to know someone but being terrified of who they were dating. Well if you practice the religion based on fear you'll be terrified. 

And I became terrified, of my car breaking down, of losing money in an investment, of shiduchim, of marriage. 

Of course, I was terrified. The entire religion was based on terror of a vengeful God. 

poor decision making

 Much of the Orthodox world today is synthetic, the yeshiva world in particular. They operate from a single directive - do Brisker analysis on a few pages of Gemara. Everything else is scorned. But we are physical creatures and need doctors, farmers, accountants, and taxi drivers. Since Charedi yeshiva boys are directed away from that, services of those people need to be purchased. That requires money. So a second directive emerges from the prime directive: donate your money or fundraise. And to get people to give their money requires guilt, or really fear. So we have a triad - gemara, gelt, and guilt. It's simple and consistent.

Life requires decision making. And sound decision making requires balancing of facts, feelings, yearnings, and perspectives. Fanatics don't engage in sound decision making, they just make declarations of dogma. And that results in poor decision making. 

When I was in yeshiva, anytime I ever talked to rabbis about what to do it was always stay in yeshiva. Once I left, it was always live near a yeshiva, and if I already did, it was never to move. So I was in New York, which I couldn't afford, but all ideas about moving even to towns with a yeshiva were squashed because it wasn't New York. 

And if I left New York and went to a town that had yeshiva parts and Modern parts, the yeshiva people would always tell me to live in the yeshivish part. Is that what was best for me? I don't deal well with the anti-goyim talk, the life is only for study part, the mockery of every secular activity. No matter, you have to be yeshivish. The answer was always coming from the dogma.