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... and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.
Previous post: A new high for journalism
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So, are you a sort of Israeli PUA? How viable is that lifestyle here?
OK, here’s another question.
You’ve expressed sympathies for monarchism in the past.
Looking at Jewish history, we have two examples of monarchic rule – the revered biblical Davidic kingdom of Judah, and the oft-overlooked* Hasmonean Judea.
So, what sort of monarchism did you have in mind, and how would it compare to those two examples?
*I’m of the opinion that the annals of the Maccabim are ignored to our detriment. For example, their policy of conversion of non-Jews, which would seem bizarre to modern Jews, but could conceivably have been a useful tool for the reborn Israel.
In the vein of IHTG’s question, constitutional monarchy (as with the U.K. and its former colonies) or absolute monarchy (like those of old): which do you prefer?
I’m going to write about this in a longer post. In a word, absolute.
Different topic: didja hear, Lilo and an Israeli chick who just finished her military service?
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/07/05/2010-07-05_tongues_wag_as_lilo_cozies_up_with_female_israeli_soldier.html
I hadn’t heard that. Nor did I have any idea who “Lilo” was until I read that article… I guess I’m a little out of touch. I know who Lindsay Lohan is, in some vague sense, and I know she’s out there as a celebrity, but I don’t think I’ve seen any of her movies.
Eilat Anschel looks cute. She can do way better than this Lohan strumpet.
An interesting story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/21/arab-guilty-rape-consensual-sex-jew
“Rape by deception”, gotta love it. A new variant on “date rape” (“Damn, I wish I hadn’t gotten drunk and had sex with that guy; now I’m going to blame him and absolve myself completely of any responsibility).
Blogger Vox Day rightly points out the inegalitarianism of the sentiments behind the ruling:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/07/rape-ex-post-facto.html
There’s something we’re missing here. I can’t be the only person to have read this story and realized that we aren’t getting all the facts.
First of all, Israeli Jews can identify Arabs with shockingly high accuracy. It’s not a racial thing, since there are plenty of darker Jews and lighter Arabs, and the facial features are the same, but you can look in someone’s eyes and know – if you weren’t able to tell first from the clothing, the haircut or the accent. I assumed I’d never acquire this skill, since I didn’t grow up here, but I was able to do it 99% of the time after living in Israel for just one year.
Second, it says that the Jewish woman and the Arab man met and had sex in their first encounter. And then: “When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.” But how did she find out that he’s an Arab? Who would have told her?
And how would the police have found him to arrest him? The article says that he’s “from East Jerusalem.” If she told the police he lived in an Arab neighborhood, she’d have known he was an Arab.
So yeah, something doesn’t add up… I would not be surprised at all if either the girl or the boy were already known to the police. Maybe she’s mentally retarded and this guy really did take advantage of her, but for some reason they didn’t want to prosecute him for that, or couldn’t.
Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser!
Genius,
Are you familiar with the writings of Uri “THIS IS SPARTA” Milstein?
I once read a chunk of Milstein’s book about Rabin. It impressed me as being largely factual but also having that right-wing paranoia about it. Books like that are better written as critical biographies, not hatchet jobs.
A good friend of mine also pestered me to read another of Milstein’s books that criticized the military for sucking in every way, and only winning wars because they managed to fight against armies that sucked even worse. But I didn’t need to read it, because I know so many people who’ve done military service at all levels – from “shlav bet” (for new immigrants) and food delivery to education, lab scientists in the air force, lawyers, intelligence, hesder yeshivot of various stripes, the nahal haredi gdud, dog handling, regular infantry, navy, field intel, border police, commandos – and when you get any two of them together, stories of the army’s dysfunction spews from their mouths like an avalanche. I’ve also unfortunately dealt with the military in my own life and I found the soldiers of the IDF to be pathetic cowards whose training was mostly ideological. I also went through the draft process myself, wanted to get drafted but never was, so clearly there is a lot going wrong.
I looked up “THIS IS SPARTA” and got to a movie called 300. I’ve never seen it. So I don’t get the connection.
Haha, you’re quite sheltered.
Setting the movie aside, Milstein is famous on certain Israeli online forums for claiming that Israel should become the new Sparta.
The IDF’s problems might be endemic to a organization staffed primarily by a constantly shifting roster of 19 year olds.
What are these forums? I’m not sure I’d want to be the new Sparta. Is his case for it a restatement of Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall”?
The IDF’s problems might be endemic to a organization staffed primarily by a constantly shifting roster of 19 year olds, but they also might be endemic to an organization staffed primarily by a constantly shifting roster of Jews, or to being the only military in the world that drafts girls.
faz.co.il, for instance.
Here’s his “Sparta Now!” article: http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/003-D-681-00.html?tag=13-48-24
Your thoughts on this article: http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/friday-supplement/endgame-1.302128
My feeling is that the settlers with their sense of community and extremely high birthrates find it easier to imagine surviving in a multi-ethnic society along with Arabs, in a sort of mini-Austro-Hungary, with themselves as the Austrians.
For the rest of us, it could turn out more like Lebanon, with us as the Maronites…
Was your mother a gentile, or at least a convert?
Was your mother a gentile, or at least a convert?
No. All of my ancestors (that I know about from my childhood interest in genealogy) were Jewish. One of my mother’s father’s female ancestors was a Sephardi Jew from London, but the entire rest of my maternal grandfather’s family is descended from German Jews (early Reform) and were in America for a comparatively long time (~150 years). They had some fascinating all-American 19th century experiences like hog farming in central New Jersey, traveling prophylactic salesman in Ohio, and owning one of the very first department stores – until it burnt down (they didn’t believe in insurance).
My mother’s mother’s family are all from the Russian empire. My mother’s mother’s mother, who only died a few years ago, was born near Minsk and came to the United States with her own mother (in the cemetery once I was shown my Bubbie’s bubbie’s grave) and five sisters when she was a teenager, during the Russian Civil War. My mother’s mother’s father was also born in the former Pale of Settlement, but he came to the United States as a very young child and he died when I was in elementary school, so I never got to know him well.
On my father’s side, his mother died young and I don’t know anything about her, but my father’s father’s father came to the United States from Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Poland, in the early 20th century. We are Levi’im and even have a family tradition of knowing our specific clan, so at least the presumption is of having been exclusively and uniformly Jewish all the way back, since before “Jewish” had any meaning.
What do you mean by “clan”? Descent from a famous rabbi or חכם?
No, I mean descent from one of Levi’s sons.
Didn’t know such traditions existed. Thank you for schooling this lowly son of Yehuda.
Sure. Plenty of families also have traditions of descent from King David (mostly through Rashi). I know the Rapaports are one, and there’s another one from Syria that’s supposed to have a strong claim.
Ah yes, I have heard of the Abravanel family’s supposed descent from David.
I asked about your mother’s family since I assume that most people argue political points from self-interest and not from principle.
If I remember correctly a lot of the Russian Jews that have immigrated to Israel have brought Slavic brides with them instead of Jewish ones. Given time these immigrants may seek to have the definition of Jewishness changed not out of respect for what the Bible says but out of self-interest and the desire to legitimize the decisions they have made as a group out of purel secular concerns.
I asked about your mother’s family since I assume that most people argue political points from self-interest and not from principle.
People appear to vote against their economic interests all the time. They do it because economic interests are not their only interests. Other people vote against their social interests all the time, and they do it because social interests are not their only interests. I’m not sure what my interest would be. Should I seek to restrict “Jewishness” to the smallest group possible? Or should I seek to expand it so as to attract a wider net with higher quality immigrants?
If I remember correctly a lot of the Russian Jews that have immigrated to Israel have brought Slavic brides with them instead of Jewish ones. Given time these immigrants may seek to have the definition of Jewishness changed not out of respect for what the Bible says but out of self-interest and the desire to legitimize the decisions they have made as a group out of purel secular concerns.
The problem is more complex than just Jewish men with non-Jewish women. If it were as clear cut as that, someone might have come up with a solution by now. There are many layers to it, but the basic few are that:
Even if any two of the above hadn’t happened, we’d still be facing a crisis. I’m not sure how we can solve it, but I know that keeping the current insane barriers to conversion is the wrong way, and adopting the Reform approach (anyone descended from any Jew is a Jew, and anyone who wants to be a Jew can automatically become one) is also definitely the wrong way. It also doesn’t help that the Torah explicitly mandates patrilineal descent; that is the system to which I’d like to return.
I thought that you were arguing for patrilineal descent because you might not meet the normal halachic requirements to be a Jew, and as such were seeking to legitimize the way you may have been born. To put it even more simply I thought you might have a Jewish father and a gentile mother and as such were arguing for patrilinealism from self-interest. And yes, I am aware that most people have multiple types of self-interest.
I am firm believer in what I can see, ass opposed to what is supposed to happen in the Torah (or Talmud) and I think that practical circumstances will force a return to patrilinealism in Israel and possibly bring an end to male conversion as well. Personally I would love to be one of you, but that would require another talk for another day if it is even possible.
Genius, what do you think of Shasnik rabbi Chaim Amsalem?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133563
This is the first time I’ve heard of him. I think his proposal has a lot of merit, but it’s missing a couple important points.
The first is that a convert to Judaism should have to renounce all other religions and their practices, specially the Christianity that some Russian-speaking Israelis absorbed in their long sojourn. I would be מחמיר on this point and make them commit to avoiding churches and the Sylvester trees that they seem to love so much. We owe it to converts to be clear with them about what they’re leaving behind.
Another thing is that conversion to Judaism should be facilitated and should be made more attractive, but a convert should be turned away if he appears to want to convert for some material gain, or if evidence is brought forward that he stands to gain materially by becoming a Jew. Because these people are already Israelis, much of the potential gain is diminished, and because they’re serving in the military, I’d say the clear burden and even danger might outweigh whatever potential gain there is, but it does need to be addressed. Prospective converts should also be turned away if they express an unwillingness to keep any mandatory Jewish laws. The point doesn’t have to be belabored – they don’t even have to be taught all the laws, just some of the majors ones and some of the minor ones – but if a convert says in the process that he’s not going to do x, that disqualifies him in the rabbinic tradition.
Finally, I don’t see anything in the article about what kind of education these prospective converts would get, at least to bring them up to the standard of average Israelis who grew up here and know what a sukkah is. I love to tease some of the girls I date that they can’t complete the sentence that begins with שמע ישראל, but with these people it’s not a joke – they really wouldn’t recognize it. From my friends who went to the IDF Ulpan, many of the Russian-speakers serving in the Israeli military have never actually been to Jerusalem – until the army takes them – so they need do need to find these things out.
Oh my! “המשחק”
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3936832,00.html
Haha. I’ve actually never read the book – I heard it’s not so much a primer in Game, and more his personal account in the community. I’ve also had no formal instruction in any of the specific Game schools. In some ways this helps me – I have fairly strong natural Game, and my strategy in the past year has been to remove my internal obstacles to using what I’ve already got, while just picking a few areas where I can improve and working on those. But in other ways this harms me – any routine that I use that’s mentioned in the book is now counterproductive and makes me look like a complete tool. So I’ll have to read now it, if just to prevent a return to relying on my average looks and foreign accent. I think I’ll also invest in my future my immersing myself in one of the schools – probably NLP, since it has the most application outside of pickups, and because it’s the most ambiguously unidentifiable as a pickup strategy.
Bill Clinton being politically incorrect about the (Israeli) Jews:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/21/bill_clinton_russian_immigrants_and_settlers_obstacles_to_mideast_peace
For such a smart man, Clinton’s analysis is really unsophisticated.
The Independent has an article on journalist Gideon Levy:
http://tinyurl.com/gidlevy
What do you think of him, what he writes, and the Independent article?
Gideon Levy’s story about his father is interesting.
I wonder how many of Israel’s radical left are descended from such “failed olim”. Jews who came to Israel but never really became Israeli.
Gideon Levy only knows how to write one story, and he’s been writing that story over and over again, week after week, in Haaretz for as long as anyone can remember. There are progressives and radicals out there who are tolerable and even engaging; Gideon Levy is not only not one of them, but he embarrasses them and he’s even a joke among Israel-haters, none of whom can be bothered to read a word that he writes.
I should also add that the New York Times, a paper comparable in some ways to Haaretz, would never give a column to Gideon Levy’s American equivalent. Actually there could be no American equivalent to Gideon Levy, because Americans expect criticism of America to be more nuanced and balanced than what Levy does. And when the criticism can’t be leveled in a nuanced and balanced way, they just tune out.
I think the paragraphs about Levy’s father in the article are a red herring that’s meant to grasp at some logical explanation for Levy’s own lunatic and fanatic Jew-hatred. Come on, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel, every single one of who was traumatized and many of whom had been in the camps, narrowly avoiding extermination not once but many times. Many of these people had actually seen their families tortured and exterminated. They all had difficulty finding any sort of “normal” life after that. Levy fils can not be explained by Levy père‘s Aliyah.
Moreover, I am a yekke immigrant and I know exactly what it’s like to feel at once Israeli and not-Israeli. It is weird and unsettling to come here from a civilized place. I’ve discussed these feelings and this experience endlessly with other first- and second-generation Israelis. We all have complex views about Israel and Israeli society; Levy’s are not complex at all. To me and everyone I know, Israel is good and bad in many different ways; to Levy, Israel is just bad in every way.
So basically, there are no women who read your blog, right?
Huh. I guess there’s at least one now. Nice to meet you, Tally.
Genius – modern conditions… what of them? Don’t they tend to make mixed monarchy, monarchy which is checked by other institutions, look a lot better for our time than absolute monarchy? For example, modern powers of propaganda and coercion are greatly enhanced now, compared to pre-modern times. Therefore, the consequences of a monarch’s running amok would seem to be more severe in modern times. A certain horrendous monarch/dictator came to power in Germany last century by rather democratic means (hence was not a proper king), and unfortunately survived many assassination efforts, which could be considered the final ‘check and balance’ on monarchic power, and which were the undoing of some of the bad emperors condemned by Tacitus. But it is also the case that Marcus Aurelius, widely considered one of the best Emperors, allowed one of the bad emperors to immediately succeed him. This latter emperor was legitimate, not some democratically-elected demagogue, yet he was bad.
Worse, it lately came to my notice that European monarchs were often crowned by primogeniture in pre-industrial times, that is, the first-born son was crowned. That astonishes me totally. Most monarchists would probably agree that relatively few Britons or Israelis are fit to be king, today or at any time – under 10% of the population, perhaps well under, or surely under 30% at best. Well, obviously if a king has a more-or-less unusual degree of kingliness – a composite trait which might involve IQ, conscientiousness, firmness in acting, moral sensitivity, and so on – then most of his sons will regress to the mean, whatever mix of genetic and environmental determinants is at work. The lucky combination of genetic variables and environmental variables is not easily repeated. And so on- regression continues down the generations. In a few generations one would tend to have a mediocre king, or, by chance, even a sub-mediocre one (though in the past he may have had a relatively high IQ, compared to peasants, just by virtue of eating sufficient nutritious food). Therefore, primogeniture, despite its ability I assume to obviate certain power struggles over the succession, is a total disaster compared to selecting the best of the sons to crown as king. Or better yet, selecting the best of the sons that a king has with more than one woman, since in that case there could be far more sons to choose from and the one chosen would then be that much better. Or perhaps an elected monarch would be best of all; he could be elected by a college of aristocrats, though in a sense this only postpones the problem, since we need to decide how membership in this college is determined. Whatever they do to pick the cardinals (or whoever it is that elects the Pope), might be a good method to ponder.
And, again, I think limitations on his power are probably necessary, in the modern world at least. Republican Rome was kind of a decent model – at least, it was far less democratic than even the early American Constitutional regime. I am not necessarily averse to a college of aristocrats being empowered to remove the king – but this would require a supermajority in the region of 75%. Even the masses, perhaps, should be able to remove the king, or even shake up the membership of the aristocratic college, with an 85% majority. I think Republican Rome had some features comparable to that, but it’s been a while since I read Polybius’ essay.
The trouble is, you or I cannot assign power by philosophizing that it is for the best. Power is assigned on an ongoing basis, hourly, and revocable at any time, by the military – at least in the case where the civil leaders can no longer organize control over the military in order to make it assign power in the way the civil regime desires. In order for the rights of various bodies in a mixed monarchy to be politically ‘sacralized’, so that it is hard for civil or military leaders to start altering the fundamental nature of the mixed monarchic regime, the bodies in question have to be used to exercising some kind of power that has some sort of significance. Perhaps some sort of power over certain areas of statutory law. That way, everyone will be used to seeing their rights, or the rights of the aristocratic college, respected – and will be inimical to a change in the traditional distribution of rights.
I even wonder whether without primogeniture, the ancien regime could have turned out better in Europe, and the 20th century disasters, and the present ongoing dangers to Western Civilization, might have been muted to some degree or even totally avoided. It’s an amazing thought to have. But I’m not sure exactly when primogeniture was practiced where; it’s not trivial to get that off google. One has to have the ‘where and when’ in order to speculate on whether primogeniture and regression to the mean affected matters in the crucial two or three centuries prior to 1789 and 1776.
Many European countries, though their monarchies are now ceremonial, have lately turned to a form of primogeniture which allows women to take the throne. This was practiced much earlier in, eg, Britain, as we see with the Queen Elizabeths I and II. Of course, this doesn’t make all that much difference when it comes to regression to the mean, but it certainly makes some difference (though having women on the throne might have some bad effects, in other areas).
Tel-Aviv, city of cougars: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3972884,00.html
The Carmel bus victims are a good cross-section of the Israeli “salt-of-the-earth prole” class.
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1201867.html
Probably not one single non-immigrant Ashkenazi Jew among them. These are the people who fall by the wayside in the struggle between Tel Aviv leftists and West Bank settlers. It makes me sad.
I’ve noticed that you link to a Karaite site. Is there any particular story behind that?
Use of Hebrew as a SWPL/hipster phenomenon: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4013751,00.html
@IHTG There is a salt-of-the-earth type in Israel, but you’ll mostly see them with big kippot on a sunny, windy hill in Shomron. The people who died in the fire were not salt-of-the-earth. They were mostly men training to be prison guards. I assume that means they were underqualified to be either police officers or career military officers. In my limited experience with this population, I’ve been shocked by their brutality, susceptibility to propaganda, boorishness and general inhumanity. It’s terrible that they died, but I have a hard time thinking of them as victims.
I’ve noticed that you link to a Karaite site. Is there any particular story behind that?
@IHTG Just that I find the Karaite explanation of the origins of the “Oral Law” to be convincing and that I often find myself using a Karaite-inspired approach to questions about Jewish theology and practice.
Genius: what do you think about recent and current goings-on in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya? What do you make of it; what does it portend, if anything?
Israel doesn’t need foreign aid, Israel needs Wal-Mart!
Totally stupid and irrelevant though, but I thought I would leave it behind as to show that I still keep tabs on your blog.
Cheers.
Arggh. Thought, not though.
I need to look over my posts for errors instead of just impulsively commenting.
Indeed, Mark, where is Genius?
Maybe he went nuts and finally joined an ultra-orthodox group.
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