Open Thread

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.

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.

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.

No, I mean descent from one of Levi’s sons.

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.

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.

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.