Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Israeli Civil War?                                                                            Kill them all! says Rabbi Neventzal The Orthodox Rabbi of old Jerusalem told Israeli radio that anyone intending to give over parts of Israeli land falls under the halachic category of din rodef - someone who endangers life  - and thus can be killed if necessary in order to stop him. "The nation is divided into two, and each side sees the other as persecutor. As long as the government's laws don't contradict the laws of the Torah, then those laws are legitimate. But if those laws go against the Torah, then they are not legitimate. Din Rodef is issued against anyone who endangers Jews," Neventzal said on Israel Radio. "If I have to stand trial for what I said, I have no problem with that," Neventzal added He should stand trial, That kind of rhetoric is exactly what led to the assassination of Yitzak Rabin in 1995. Jews killing Jews is expressly forbidden in the Torah and in rabbinical teachings. This kind of thing highlights an issue that affects diasporah Jews far more than those in Israel. The issue is the Orthodox control of religious ministries and schools in Israel. If you're married in the United States, or any other country for that matter, by a rabbi who is ANYTHING other than Orthodox, then if you immigrate to Israel you have to get re-married in an Orthodox ceremony in order to be considered married by the State of Israel! The same goes for virtually every other area of Jewish religious life, the Orthodox control it. They get money for their schools and the students of the Yeshivas are exempt from military service! So basically they get to sit around on their asses all day studying the Torah, sucking off the tit of the government, and everyone else pays for it, and they can completely avoid military service in the Israeli Defense Forces through a religious exemption. I've no issue with the Orthodox, they can remain true to their brand of Judaism as long as they want, it's not my business. But I do have an issue with them controlling all aspects of religious life in Israel as well as some of them using dangerous rhetoric like the rabbi above. The vast majority of Jews in the United States are non-Orthodox Jews. We're the largest community of Jews in the world, including Israel, and we have to sit and be dictated to by these black-hat wearing extremists? I don't think so. 12:08:34 PM    Comment on my obvious brilliance []

Oblivion - David Foster Wallace Everyone is raving about this book. From Salon to the New York Times it has received fabulous reviews everywhere. Let me give my opinion on this tome, which I recently purchased at an airport bookshop in Denver. It sucks. I knew I was going to have a problem with Wallace's book of short stories when I noticed that he allows a single paragraph to go on for a total of 4 PAGES (p. 28-31). Thus begins the drudgery that is the first story in the series, a piece called Mister Squishy. A boring, repetitive and highly technical logjam about a focus group in a downtown office building, interspersed with trite and unimaginative thoughts from both those being studied and those doing the studying, this story went on and on until I thought about creating a disturbance on my flight so the plane would be forced to land early and I could get off and buy another book. The next piece was even worse. In Foster's world there is no hope. Everything is corrupt, rank, dangerous and full of poison. After finishing the first two stories I felt like slitting my wrists, and not just so I wouldn't be forced to read the next. This collection of short stories is a classic example of why literature like this wins prizes but fails to sell to anyone except those of us in the educated elite. It's extremely difficult to read ("As any decent small-set univariable probability distribution would predict, not all members of the target Focus Group were attending closely to the facilitator's explanation of Mister Squishy and Team Y hoped to achieve by leaving the Focus Group alone very shortly in camera to compare the results of their Individual Response Profiles and speak openly amongst themselves and attempt to come as close as possible to a unanimous univocal Group Response Data Summary of the product along sixteen different radial Preference and Satisfaction axes.") and furthermore is extremely depressing. Like a visit from hated relatives or neighbors, this book and the stories within seem to go on and on and on without end. A classic case of the Emperor's New Clothes. The cover is nice but what's inside is putrid and rotten and bears no further discussion. 10:17:18 AM    Comment on my obvious brilliance []

I got a call Monday from a Silicon Valley-based maker of handheld devices, including mobile phones and PDAs, and  then yesterday did a phone interview with the recruiter. Tomorrow I have a series of interviews at the company's location, which is a bit of a commute from San Francisco. Still, it sounds like a cool position and one that I am uniquely qualified for. I'll spend today studying their product lineup and details of where the company's going. Wish me luck. 8:26:09 AM    Comment on my obvious brilliance []

© Copyright 2004 Shane Hensinger.

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