be this

 

RABBI PINCHAS HIRSCHPRUNG - Chassidic Torah giant

kotzkblog

 

notes from a chat

The line that Judaism is 100% proven by evidence is not true. We can say that the lack of certainty is an expression of Divine concealment.

A framework of yiddishkite that Hashem is a loving father is quite different from the you are mechuyav kiruv god. 

jews without mitzvos

 

Who was the rudest celebrity you’ve met?

Before college I was a flight attendant for Continental Airlines out of Newark, NJ for 4 years and I had my share of VIP passengers. But the distinction of rudest celebrity (or in this case celebrities) was The Beastie Boys from Newark to London.

Upon boarding they were all on their phones and I was greeting passengers as they boarded and one of them threw their coat into my arms, didn't say a word, Never made eye contact and went to his seat.

I was working coach but the first class flight attendants remarked that they were needy but unappreciative and at times rude to the point of making one of my colleagues upset to the point of needing consoling.

Kinda ruined the Beastie Boys for me.

The Beastie Boys were an American hip hop and rap rock group formed in New York City in 1981.[1] They were composed of Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums).

Diamond was born in New York City^[3] to Harold Diamond, an art dealer, and Hester (née Klein) Diamond,

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Yauch was an only child. His father Noel was an architect,^[4] and his mother Frances was a social worker.^[5][6][7][8] Yauch's mother was Jewish and his father Catholic, but he had a non-religious upbringing^[6] in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn.^[9

Jews without mitzvos

https://www.quora.com/Which-celebrities-turned-into-jerks-after-becoming-famous

Which celebrities turned into jerks after becoming famous?

Here’s an interesting candidate…

Kirk Douglas. He broke into Hollywood after World War II, and had this exchange with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper after his movie “Champion” (seen above) made a splash:

Hedda: Now that you’ve got a big hit, you’ve become a real son of a bitch.

Kirk: You’re wrong, Hedda. I was always a son of a bitch. You just never noticed before.

Mr. Douglas was born angry. Or at least, that’s what he says …

There was an awful lot of rage churning around inside me, rage that I was afraid to reveal because there was so much more of it, and so much stronger, in my father.

Kirk Douglas’s father was a tough, illiterate, Russian-Jewish immigrant who was distant from his kids. Kirk D., well aware of his family’s meager resources, worked a series of menial jobs to support himself in college. The anger he felt toward his situation, his father, and society at large manifested itself in different ways. 

After college, Kirk went on to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he (unsurprisingly?) bore a grudge against his acting instructor for never casting him as an owl in an acting exercise. But his anger and focused drive carried him a long way. After brief work on Broadway, he made his way to Hollywood, where co-star Robert Mitchum (no slouch in the “difficult” department) found him over-bearing on the set of Out of the Past. And Jane Greer, Past’s femme fatale, had a few issues:

Douglas and Jane Greer

Kirk Douglas … bruised my arms grabbing me. And my face was roundly slapped. How he did Champion without maiming his partner is a miracle. …

By 1950 Douglas was a front-rank movie star. He started his own production company, top-lined blockbusters in various genres, philandered robustly on two wives. Along the way he acknowledged:

I’m probably the most disliked actor in Hollywood. And I feel pretty good about it. Because that’s me, I was born aggressive, and I guess I’ll die aggressive.

Few of his peers would have disagreed. As Kirk’s longtime co-star Burt Lancaster noted at a tribute to Douglas at the Academy of the Dramatic Arts:

Kirk would be the first person to tell you he’s a very difficult man. And I would be the second.

Whatever sins you pile on Kirk Douglas, pretending to be someone he wasn’t couldn’t be considered one of them.

what about me?

 

NY or Israel

When you enter the frum world you will mostly likely be pushed to live in New York or Israel. Why is that? It's largely because the frum world has come to devalue mitzvos and to focus nearly exclusively on Torah study. I'll explain what I mean. Note, I'm talking about the Haredi world. I'll discuss the Modern Orthodox world in a bit.

I'm not just talking about Litvacks. I watched a few interviews recently of Chassidic men who left Judaism. As they talked about their childhoods, each one reflected on how they were good boys which meant they learned (i.e. studied) well, were masmidim (diligent students), and were knowledgeable in all aspects of Torah. The latter point is not true as their education was narrow and focused mostly on Talmudic pilpul and a bit of Chumash, but that's a topic for another day. The topic for now is that Judaism to them was defined as study. It's no wonder that they left mitzvos as the importance of mitzvos was not stressed to them.

So what's the connection to living in New York and Israel? Those places by far have the most yeshivas, so they present a SUPERFICIAL allure for those who value study. You see yeshiva building after yeshiva building and assume this must be a good place for study. New York has the added advantage of being a place with financial opportunities, or at least people who talk about money all day long, and Torah study requires money. Israel has the advantage of having the "air that makes one wise," or at least is thought of that way.

But are New York and Israel the best for study? They have more yeshivas but it's not as if each yeshiva has a specialty that will help you to get a broad education if you spend time at each. Quite to the contrary, they mimic one another. They all focus on Talmudic pilpul of yeshivishe mesechtas and all study the same mesechta each zman (semester). They don't join together to create a group enthusiasm. Quite to the contrary, they compete for students, donors, and instructors. They don't pool their funds and build a big central library. Each has its own library with nearly identical collections. Most men associate with one shul and one yeshiva for their entire lives and never or rarely step foot in another. How does it help you to be around 20 yeshivas and 100 shuls whose doors you never enter? What advantage is there to studying in New York or Israel? 

I argue that other than the superficial appeal of seeing lots of yeshiva buildings, there are many disadvantages. The biggest of them is that you'll have less time for study there. Housing in New York and Israel is expensive. Starting at $800,000, the housing is so pricey that, unless you are rich, you'll need to work 50 to 60 hours a week to pay for it and for the expensive tuition that pays for the expensive houses of the yeshiva staff. You'll also need time to recover from the more stressful jobs and life in general that are characteristic of NY and Israel. The most important thing for your Torah study is studying. If you have less time for it in NY and Israel, then you are better off living where you have more time for it.

So even according to the view that "nothing else matters" but study, NY and Israel are not best for study. But there is something that matters even more than study, or at least as much. I'm talking about mitzvos. Shlomo said, "The sum of the matter: fear Hashem and keep the commandments. That is the sum of the man." (Koheles 13:12) It's amazing that I can be looked at almost like a heretic for quoting Koheles and emphasizing the importance of mitzvos. That's how far we have fallen. At Sinai, we said "we will do and we will hear." The Sfas Emes says that this shows the primacy of mitzvos! Of course, study is a mitzvah, and you need study to know what mitzvos to do. But mitzvos are essential.

Are New York and Israel good for mitzvos? Well, it's harder to do many of the mitzvos there. Hospitality to guests is harder because of the lack of space, particularly in Israel. Chesed is harder because people are less friendly and tend to compete with each other. In Israel, they wage war with one another. Honesty is business dealings is harder because of the financial pressures and corruption, particularly in Israel. Contemplating Hashem is harder because of the emotional stress and work pressures as well as the constant talk about money in New York and internecine strife, politics, and war in Israel.  

And then there's middos. If you look at the works of the Rishonim they talk extensively about middos. NY and Israel are middos deficient places. Maybe you want to live in a place with more Jews, but that's not going to help you if those places are middos deficient.

There's no rule in the Torah that you must always live around the most Jews. Many of the tzadickim of the prior generations came from small shtetls that had little contact with other shtetls. I'm talking about gadolim like Rabbis Moshe Feinstein, Yaakov Kamenetsky, Aharon Kotler, Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, and Joseph Soloveitchik and Admorim like those of Satmar, Lubavitch, Tosh, and Rivnitz, and many others. They all came from small villages!

Now what about the Modern Orthodox? Well there, obviously the pressure is to move to Israel, even though it might be harder to observe the mitzvos there, as explained, particularly with the requirement of military servitude. Most Modern Orthodox olim go down in mitzvah observance in Israel in part because the Dati Leumi world is antagonistic to the Haredi world whereas in chutz they are positively influenced by them. 

And then there are other factors, such as what culture you are used to, where family and friends live, what weather you are used to, what nature you like to be around, etc.

Thus, people who value mitzvos and who look deeper into the matter of study will not necessarily direct you to live in NY or Israel. 

So beware of this pressure to move to New York or Israel. Rav SR Hirsch says that the carrying handles of the Aron were permanent unlike those of the shulchan and other implements. This teaches that Torah can be observed and studied anywhere. You do not need to be in NY or Israel. And if living in those places makes it harder to observe the mitzvos, to contemplate Hashem, and to work on your middos, then don't live there.

happy with one's lot

 

"What I did when my son left the Hasidic community"

 

goyish kop?

 Those goyim, so dumb, goyish kop, not smart like us.

The flight deck of Concorde

cruel switch

 They trash your life and pressure you to replace it all with Judaism, but a Judaism devoid of spirituality or sense. 

You know who you are

 

advice to new bts from a chess grandmaster

 

In a room with concrete walls

Imagine that you find yourself in a room with walls of concrete. It's like a bomb shelter in Israel. Before you is a concrete wall, but it has no door or window. On it is written, "Nothing else matters but study." You think to yourself, but that can't be. The Talmud itself talks all about mitzvos. You turn to the right looking for a door, but there is no door, only a wall with no door or window. On that wall is written, "We have the mesorah. We have all the gadolim." You think to yourself, but that can't be. I know so many scholars from other groups. So you turn right again looking for another door. You are now 180 degrees from the position in which you started. On that wall is written, "You are not allowed to think." You silence your mind as ordered, but a posuk forces its way into your consciousness. It is from Solomon the King. You whisper it, "The sum of the matter is to fear G-d and observe the commandments." You turn to the fourth wall. On it is written, "We listen only to the leaders of our generation."

You have faced all four walls now. There appears to be no exit. You fall to the concrete floor and cry to yourself. Then you cry out to G-d. An opening appears on the floor. You climb through it disappearing into a tunnel that takes you through the four worlds, through the sefirot. You pass angels. You enter ether.

Suddenly, you are back in the room where the walls explode and shatter. Around the rubble are Jews of old, the Rebbes of Chabad, Rav Nachman of Breslov, the Imrei Emes, Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chasidei Ashkenaz, Sephardic Rishonim, Sadia Gaon, Yehuda HaNasi, Rabbi Akiva, Hillel, Shammai, Ezra, and Solomon the King. Solomon is smiling. He says to you, "the sum of the matter is to fear Hashem and observe His commandments."

You look to your right and see tefillin on a table. You roll up your sleeve and get to work. 

Moshe Idel

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Idel

Moshe Idel (Hebrew: משה אידל; born January 19, 1947) is a Romanian-born Israeli historian and philosopher of Jewish mysticism. He is Emeritus Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

He points out that the kabbalists were in a battle with the Rambam to expand Judaism from pure philosophical thought. 

Jews without mitzvos

 

\

Arthur Fried exposes himself to 12 year old Shirley Temple while Louis B. Mayer does the same to S. Temple's mother

Shame on France

 France gathered 400 Muslim scholars and decapitated them with machetes; during the occupation of Chad in 1917. 

When France entered the Algerian city of Laghouat in 1852, it killed two-thirds of its population and burned them alive in a single night. 

Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 nuclear tests in Algeria, resulting in an unspecified number of casualties, between 27,000 and 100,000. The effects persist to this day. 

When France left Algeria in 1962, they had left more mines than the entire Algerian population of that time: 11 million mines. 

France occupied Algeria for 132 years. The French exterminated one million Muslims in the first 7 years after their arrival and 1.5 million in the last 7 years before their departure. 

French historian Jacques Gorky estimated that the total number of people killed by France in Algeria, from its arrival in 1830 to its departure in 1962, was 10 million Muslims. That is French historian not Arab. 

France occupied Tunisia for 75 years, Algeria 132 years, Morocco 44 years and Mauritania 60 years. 

When France entered Egypt during its famous campaign, French soldiers entered mosques on horseback and raped women in front of their families. They drank alcohol in the mosques and turned part into stables for their horses. 

Note, I didn't verify every detail of this account, but I have seen alarming data on French atrocities in North Afria. 

 

bravery

 In the early morning of September 5, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked while on the ground in Karachi by four armed Palestinian terrorists.

Amid the sudden panic and confusion, 22-year-old senior flight attendant Neerja Bhanot acted with remarkable composure. Without drawing attention, she managed to alert the cockpit by discreetly punching in the hijack code. Thanks to her quick thinking, the pilots escaped through the overhead hatch, ensuring the aircraft remained grounded and preventing the hijackers from using it as a deadly weapon in the sky.

Over the next 17 tense hours, Neerja displayed unwavering bravery. When the terrorists began seeking out American passengers, she quietly gathered and hid their passports — slipping them under seats, tossing them down chutes, and even flushing some away. Her efforts disrupted the hijackers’ plans and likely spared dozens of lives. Throughout the ordeal, she stayed calm, offering strength to the terrified passengers and working tirelessly to shield the vulnerable.

In the final moments of the standoff, as violence erupted and bullets flew, Neerja chose courage over safety once more. She opened an emergency exit, guiding passengers out of harm’s way. As gunfire raged, she used her own body to shield three children, sacrificing her life so others could live. Neerja Bhanot was just 22 when she died, but her selfless actions saved more than 350 people. She was posthumously awarded India’s highest peacetime honor, and her legacy endures as a symbol of fearless compassion in the face of unimaginable danger.

kramer talks to bt in yeshiva

 Here Kramer describes a broken down man but he's describing what they do to you in yeshiva.

A-bomb

Throughout my childhood I heard that if the US hadn't dropped the A-bomb on Japan, 100s of 1000s of troops would have died conquering Japan. (I'm not sure why the US had to conquer Japan but that's another story.)

But it turns out many distinguished military people deemed the dropping of the bomb unnecessary.

Who Opposed Nuking Japan? “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” —Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower “In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’ The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude.” —Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.” —Herbert Hoover “[T]he Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945 … up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; … [I]f such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs.” —Herber Hoover “I told [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.” —Herbert Hoover “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” —Norman Cousins “General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. He wants time to think the thing out, so he has postponed the trip to some future date to be decided later.” —Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants…MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off…” —Richard Nixon “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss. And that suggestion of giving a warning of the atomic bomb was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted. In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.” —Under Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bird “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” —General “Hap” Arnold “[Gen.] Arnold’s view was that the dropping of the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary. He said he knew the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision, and Arnold did not feel it was the military’s job to question them. … [Arnold’s view was]: when the question comes up of whether we use the atomic bomb or not, my view is that the Air Force will not oppose the use of the bomb, and they will deliver it effectively if the Commander-in-Chief decides to use it. But it is not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the necessity of a land invasion.” —General Ira Eaker, Deputy Commander of U.S. Army Air Forces “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” — Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” Adm. Nimitz “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons … The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” —Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman “Truman told me it was agreed they would use it, after military men’s statements that it would save many, many American lives, by shortening the war, only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time.” —Adm. Leahy “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. … The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.” — Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command “[LeMay said] if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” —Robert MacNamara “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” — Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. “I concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945. Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands scheduled for 1 November 1945 would have been necessary.” —Paul Nitze, director and then Vice Chairman of the Strategic Bombing Survey “[E]ven without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” —U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946 “Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia. Washington decided it was time to use the A-bomb. I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.” —Ellis Zacharias Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.” —Brigadier General Carter Clarke, the Military Intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors “The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. —Carter Clarke “I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used… the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal… was that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo… Would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation… It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world.” —Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss “In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the retention of the dynasty had been issued in May 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the Japanese government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clear cut decision. If surrender could have been brought about in May 1945, or even in June, or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the Pacific war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.” —Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew And for what it’s worth, then-Army Chief George Marshall wanted only to hit military facilities with it, not cities. “It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.” —Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind “This doctrine of progress is a most interesting instance of the blind and foolish confidence of Americans in the God Progress. … Thus far, apparently, it has been progress toward annihilation, an end to be accomplished, perhaps, by the improved atomic bomb? We have dealt more death and destruction in the space of ten years than the men of the Middle Ages, with their Devil, were able to accomplish in a thousand.” —Russell Kirk “The atomic bomb was a final blow to the code of humanity. I cannot help thinking that we will suffer retribution for this. For a long time to come I believe my chief interest is going to be the restoration of civilization, of the distinctions that make life intelligible.” —Richard Weaver, author of Ideas Have Consequences

Hear this Modern Orthodox women and BTs

 New Living Translation

Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”

Rambam, Hilchos Ishus, 15:17

17It is an obligation for a man to admonish42 his wife.Our Sages declared:43 “A man will not admonish his wife unless a spirit of purity enters his being.” Nevertheless, he should not admonish her more than necessary.44 A man should never compel his wife to engage in maritalrelations against her will. Instead, relations should be with her agreement, preceded by conversation and a spirit of joy.45

18Similarly, our Sages commanded a woman to conduct herself modestly at home, not to proliferate levity or frivolity before her husband, not to request intimacy verbally,46 nor to speak about this matter. She should not deny her husband intimacy to cause him anguish, so that he should increase his love for her. Instead, she should oblige him whenever he desires. She should keep her distance from his relatives and the members of his household so that he will not be provoked by jealousy and should avoid scandalous situations - indeed, any trace of scandal.47

19Similarly, our Sages commanded that a man honor his wife more than his own person, and love her as he loves his own person. If he has financial resources, he should offer her benefits in accordance with his resources. He should not cast a superfluous measure of fear over her. He should talk with her gently, being neither sad nor angry.

20And similarly, they commanded a woman to honor her husband exceedingly and to be in awe of him. She should carry out all her deeds according to his directives, considering him to be an officer or a king. She should follow the desires of his heart and shun everything that he disdains. This is the custom of holy and pure Jewish women and men in their marriages. And these ways will make their marriage pleasant and praiseworthy.

Jews without mitzvos

 Joseph Brooks (born Joseph Kaplan;^[1] March 11, 1938 – May 22, 2011),^[2] was an American songwriter, composer and filmmaker. He was a successful author of commercial jingles during the 1960’s, before pivoting to a filmmaking career. His 1977 romantic drama You Light Up My Life, which he wrote, directed, produced, and scored; spawned the hit song of the same name, earning Brooks an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award.

In June 2009, Brooks was arrested on charges of raping or sexually assaulting 11 women lured to his East Side apartment from 2005 to 2008. His assistant, Shawni Lucier, was charged with helping him.

"She picked the victims, set up travel arrangements, and reassured them", said Lisa Friel, chief of the district attorney's sex crimes unit. At times, she said, Lucier also reassured mothers worried about sending their daughters alone to New York on flights Brooks paid for. And, she said, Lucier was sometimes present in the apartment when the women arrived, but left before the assaults.^[24] At least four of the women accused Brooks of sexual assault. He allegedly lured the women to his apartment to audition for movie roles.^[25] According to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the women responded to a notice Brooks had posted on Craigslist seeking attractive women to star in movie roles, and flew to New York from Pacific Coast states or Florida, usually at Brooks's expense.

Brooks was indicted on June 23, 2009. He was to be tried in the state Supreme Court for Manhattan (a trial-level court) on 91 counts of rape, sexual abuse, criminal sexual act, assault, and other charges. In December 2009, prosecutors said they would ask the grand jury to consider adding even more charges, in part because "additional victims" had come forward.^[26] Brooks died by suicide on May 22, 2011, before he could be tried.^[2]

Three days after Brooks's death, Lucier pleaded guilty to 10 counts of criminal facilitation.^[27]

On May 22, 2011, Brooks was found dead in his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with a plastic bag over his head near a hose attached to a helium tank. A suicide note was nearby.^[36] According to a law enforcement source, Brooks wrote in the note that he would be exonerated of the charges against him, but complained about his failing health and a woman he claimed had abused him and taken his money.^[32]

intelligence or courage?

 

Kabbalah or Litvishism

 The Litvaks will tell you to stay away from Kabbalah at least until you're 40, by which time you have repressed the interest. The reason supposedly is that it will destabilize you. I say Litvishism is far more destabilizing. When they tell you to stay in Kollel forever, to delay marriage, to study only Lomdus, to hate the world, to hate yourself, that study is worth all your mitzvos, to not go a moment without study, to obey your dumb rav, that will destabilize you. They are projecting.

chizuk

 "Life is too short to sit anywhere except where you're supposed to be. And if you're sitting at a table where you don't feel like you're being fed, even in you're bringing a plate of food, you politely just leave."

You leave

"Life is too short to sit anywhere except where you're supposed to be. And if you're sitting at a table where you don't feel like you're being fed, even in you're bringing a plate of food, you politely just leave."