Diversity and change are overrated

Today, most of us talk about diversity as it's the best thing since sliced bread. The academic community is particularly fixated on this. There's a diversity to human beings, that we each have our own personalities, and that should be honored. But this worship of cultural diversity - I don't know. I think it confuses people. Maybe it works well for college professors so they can write articles about it. But for the rest of us, it's problematic. I'll suggest this, cultural diversity hinders personal expression because you get so afraid of offending people that you have to hide yourself. Of course, we should be respectful to others. But I don't know if we should be getting so mixed up in everybody's business.

Same with all this change. We are changing too much in my opinion. After a while, a person can't even keep up with himself. I'm not happy about all the change.

10 Reasons the Stones are better than the Beatles

10 Reasons the Stones are better than the Beatles

1) The Stones rock. The Beatles were pop artists. The Beatles made great music but it's not rock. Other than the cover to Twist and Shout, do they have a single good rock song? Can you dance to anything of theirs? When Don McLean ranted about music dying he shouldn't have brought the Stones against the firing squad. The Beatles and Dylan were the problem. Strawberry Fields is pretty cool but it doesn't get my ass out of the seats. Brown Sugar and Jumpin Jack Flash sure as hell do. The Stones tapped into the power of rock and went places that the Beatles never ventured.

2) Song writing. Yeah, I said it. The Stones were better song writers. Lennon, like Springsteen was a lyricist. The Stones, like the protégé of sorts John Mellencamp wrote songs where words and music come together. Is Come Together even a song? What about A Day in the Life? Gimmie Shelter sure is. Sympathy for the Devil. You Can't Always Get What You Want. These are songs. When you aren't sure what you love more the words or music, then you have a song. When just reciting the words is good enough, it ain't a song. And there's more wisdom in Stones songs. Can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes... You know the rest. Much more useful in life than All you need is love, love.

3) Instrumental ability. I keep seeing Harrison's name on lists of great guitarists, but I get the feeling he'd be the first to admit that's bogus. And he was the best instrumentalist in the band. Ringo was sloppy early on and became somebody who could keep a beat eventually. But really, the Beatles were all about singing. There's very few memorable licks. How about the gradual raising of volume on the guitar strum to Eight Days A Week. Wow man. But the Stones, they kick ass. I mean Gimme Shelter is as good as anything anywhere. How about the licks in Satisfaction? Classic, like You Really Got Me. According to Rolling Stone mag. Keith Richards produced more great riffs than anybody in the history of rock. I'm not into rankings but they rank him fourth, behind who? Hendrix, Clapton, and Page. No Beatle touches that.

4) Longevity. The Beatles due to McCartney being annoying and Lennon being an a-hole burned out in 6 years. The Stones, despite whatever their feuding, kept the family intact. It's been 60 years and they have been with us the whole way. They never abandoned us.

5) Live shows. I'm not entertained by screaming girls. And the Beatle live show, if you can call it that, ceased to be in 66. The Stones are one of the great live bands. They put on a show, props and all. Jagger is the second most charismatic front man in rock history, second only to Freddie Mercury, and a close second. Lennon mocked the gay routine as Lennon mocks everyone. More on that in a minute. I'd rather see Jagger's rooster dance than Lennon taking a crap on stage any day. And I don't think Jagger's moves were gay. Campy maybe but not gay. He was strutting too much for gay.

6) Ian Stewart and Pete Best. When it was decided Ian Stewart didn't have the right image, they made him road manager and sometime contributor. They didn't totally torch him as the lowlife Beatles did to Pete  Best. The Stones had the bad boy image but they are nicer guys.

7) Rock Hall Speech - I don't care much for rock halls of fame but as long as you are up there, thank your manger, thank your dead mates. The Stones did. The Beatles didn't even mention George Martin. Now nobody thanked the fans, amazingly. So f all of you.

8) Love songs. The Stones had few thank God. Love songs are stupid. They set us up for pain. As Jagger once said, love songs talk about something that never really happens. The only Stones love song that I can even think of is Angie, which really isn't a love song, it's a lament and a tale of ache. Not a crush, not a fantasy, but real life. It blows away Michelle Ma Belle.

9) The look. Stones cool. Beatles, either stiff or pretentious.

10) Mental health. Lennon was a lunatic and he was a nasty egomaniac. Jagger and Richards are very smart, much funnier, and much more diplomatic. Lennon's psychosis really wears on a person.

I give the Beatles the nod only on vocal ability. Lennon had the strongest voice of any of them. But Jagger is the best singer with the best phrasing and emphasis.

Verdict -- Stones all the way

Let's do it this way, let's take the RS mag top 500 songs. Beatles have 23, Stones 14. Look at the list:

Hey Jude by The Beatles

Yesterday by The Beatles

I Want To Hold Your Hand by The Beatles

Let It Be by The Beatles

In My Life by The Beatles

A Day In The Life by The Beatles

Help! by The Beatles

She Loves You by The Beatles

Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) by The Beatles

While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles

Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles

A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles

Please Please Me by The Beatles

Come Together by The Beatles

Something by The Beatles

Can't Buy Me Love by The Beatles

With A Little Help From My Friends by The Beatles

All You Need Is Love by The Beatles

Ticket To Ride by The Beatles

Penny Lane by The Beatles

Rain by The Beatles

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones

Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones

Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones

You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones

Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones

Jumpin' Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones

Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones

Street Fighting Man by The Rolling Stones

Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones

Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones

Tumbling Dice by The Rolling Stones

Beast Of Burden by The Rolling Stones

Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones

Miss You by The Rolling Stones

Is there a single rocker on the Beatles list? Maybe I Saw Her Standing. Many of the songs are sing a long but not powerful. All You Need Is Love is pablum. Compare to Can't Always Get... reality, wise. When you put them side by side, the Beatles look weak. They have nothing as powerful as Gimmie Shelter or Street Fighting Man.

Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll [edit]

Hall of Fame museum curator James Henke, along with "the museum's curatorial staff and numerous rock critics and music experts", created an unordered list of "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".^[27][28] The list is part of a permanent exhibit at the museum, and was envisioned as part of the museum from its opening in 1995.^[29] It contains songs recorded from the 1920s through the 1990s. The Beatles with seven songs was the most represented on the 500–song list. The oldest song on the list is "Wabash Cannonball", written circa 1882 and credited to J. A. Roff. Since then, however, an additional 155 songs have been added, and the list is now simply referred to as "The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll." The most recent songs on the list are Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade," both released in 2006.^[30] The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are the most represented on the 655–song list, with eight songs each.

Artists with four or more songs[edit]

• 8 The Beatles
• 8 The Rolling Stones
• 7 Elvis Presley
• 5 The Beach Boys
• 5 Chuck Berry
• 5 Bob Dylan
• 5 Led Zeppelin
• 5 Bruce Springsteen

Political language

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”

― George Orwell

Wow watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjH8iib-pXU

Go Easy on the BT

What's meant by the posuk: בְּלֵ֣ב נָ֖בוֹן תָּנ֣וּחַ חָכְמָ֑ה . (Proverbs 14:33)

בְּלֵ֣ב נָ֖בוֹן in the heart of an understanding man

תָּנ֣וּחַ חָכְמָ֑ה wisdom is at rest. It rests. 

Wisdom rests in the heart of an understanding man. "וּבְקֶ֥רֶב כְּ֜סִילִ֗ים תִּוָּדֵֽעַ." But in the midst of fools, the wisdom becomes known. 

What does that mean? Wisdom in the heart of understanding people rests. It's in repose. But in the heart of fools, wisdom becomes known. What does that mean? 

Explains. בְּלֵ֣ב נָ֖בוֹן תָּנ֣וּחַ חָכְמָ֑ה

In the heart of understanding man, wisdom rests. Zeh talmid chocham ben talmid chocham. It's a man who is learned in the Torah and his father also was a talmid chocham. So the son is not excited. He's accustomed to Torah. He's not conceited about it. There's nothing so exceptional about it. He was born in that house. That's the atmosphere he breathed since he was a child. So the chochmah reposes in his heart. 

And the truth is it's a virtue. He is more rooted, more well-founded in Torah. A chocham ben chocham. The chochmah there is well grounded in him. But וּבְקֶ֥רֶב כְּ֜סִילִ֗ים תִּוָּדֵֽעַ, In the heart of fools, the chochmah is known. It means a fool, zeh talmid chocham ben am ha'aretz. His father is an am ha'aretz. But he became a talmid chocham. And the son is excited about Torah. And he talks about it all the time. Whatever he learned, even a little bit, he likes to advertise it. It's spectacular, still new to him. 

Now, there's a benefit here and a disadvantage. In the heart of the talmid chocham ben talmid chachom, we are more guaranteed that it will remain תָּנ֣וּחַ חָכְמָ֑ה because he's brought up that way. There's no other way of life except Torah. And therefore the Torah in his heart will always be in his heart. 

But if he's a baal teshuvah, let's say he came from a house where there was no Torah. Doesn't mean his father was a sinner. In those days you didn't have any sinners. But his father wasn't a talmid chocham. And he became a learner. So it's not so certain that it will remain with him. It could be sometimes in his life, chalilah, a tragedy that'll upset him, he might stop learning for learning is not the breath of his nostrils. He saw a house without learning.  So it could be he might reverse. 

That's why you have to be careful, the Sefer Chasidm says, when you are dealing with a son of irr-religious parents. Be careful with him because sometimes if you are too strict with him he might go back to the ways of his parents. Whereas the son of frum people you can be more strict with him because his model is his home. A frum home. 

So, a talmid chachom ben am haaretz in his heart, the chochmah doesn't rest. However, there's a disadvantage too. The talmid chocham ben chocham takes it for granted. Always saw it, always had it. Didn't know what it meant to be without it always talking and spreading the word. He has a fire in him.

 not sure of the which recording,maybe Keeping Calm, Tape # 692, 1:25:23

How does one look for good points in a parent that antagonizes him always?

How does one look for good points in a parent that antagonizes him always?

And the answer is, it depends. If the parent opposes the son's or the daughter's being observant, then don't bother looking for good points. A parent that's not a friend of Yiddishkite doesn't have any privilege of being a parent. And therefore although you have to beware of being too insolent to them, don't waste any time in looking for good points in them. We are talking about normal decent parents who are willing and eager that their son should walk in the ways of the Jewish nation. And for them that's the mitzvah of civud av v'aim.

R' Avigdor Miller, #497 Hodu, 1:06:53

The New Jew

I moved recently from a Dati Leumi (National Religious) neighborhood to a Charedi one. The move was necessary. When I came to Israel, I didn't know that the Modern Orthodox (ie. Dati Leumi) here are often far less religious than than the least observant ones in America. I saw women in baggy pants in Teaneck but mini-skirts? Also, while the American Modern Orthodox are very fixated on college and careers, in Israel it's all about the military. College I can pass off as secular wisdom, depending on what one studies, but all this military stuff is hard for me to absorb into my picture of Jewish life. All Israeli-Palestinian politics aside – and I don't see it as good guy verses bad guy – involvement in the military seems to me to harden young people but not in a good way. They look damaged to me. When I suggest this to Dati Leumi parents they as a rule take great umbrage and proclaim how proud they are of their children for their “military service.” They can be proud all day long. It doesn't mean the kid wasn't damaged. For the Dati Leumi my view is blasphemy, literally. But I see the worship of the military as blasphemy, literally. So that neighborhood wasn't a good fit for me.

The Charedi neighborhood is another world. Kids play outside together. The mothers sit outside watching them. Men hold sefarim as they walk to shul. Interactions with them are much more pleasant than with the typical Israeli. In the DL neighborhood, the streets are much emptier of children. I suppose they were home playing with electronic devices. I was very rarely permitted entry into a DL home but when for various reasons I did enter one, sure enough the children and the parents were on their devices. And that is certainly the case with teenagers and adults on the streets. Right arms seem to all have grown by the portion of the I-phone that sticks out from the hand.

So throughout the move we had to deal with various workmen, most of which seem to be former IDF people. You can always tell by the aggressiveness with which they do everything. We had an appliance repairman who was supposed to look at our AC but first went to our circuit breaker and shut off all the lights in the house. He didn't say he was going to do this. He just did it, at night, as the people in my family were engaged in various activities that depended on the light. It was a little scary and dangerous. One person was on a step stool at the time.

One workman, an American oleh, who was Orthodox, made some comment about the Peleg demonstrations and mentioned that he was in the military. I started to probe him as I always try to do to learn more about the military. What was it like? Was it anti-religious? Did they try to brainwash you? (I only ask the latter questions of religious people.)

He told me, like many have, that the rough handling of basic training was very hard to take. Lots of screaming and demands to do ridiculously arduous physical tasks. It left him depressed. But he didn't feel that he was brainwashed against religion. He was in a non-religious unit but was able to be religious there for the most part. I didn't inquire as to his standards of kashrus or mixing with the opposite sex. The couldn't have been very high as it was a mixed unit. He talked about how he made a kiddush Hashem by studying Torah. Unfortunately, for many people today Torah study has become nearly the entirety of Torah observance.

Then he got to talking about Arabs. About how they all want to kill us, and they only understand violence, and that the Israeli military is so moral and drops leaflets before it bombs apartment buildings, and how Jews never kill anybody.

This got us arguing of course because I don't believe any of that stuff and nobody I have ever met uses facts to prove it, only assertions that seem to me entirely self-serving. For if that's all true, we have every right to be extremely tough with the Arabs. They are trying to kill us right?

And I realized, he was indeed brainwashed. It's not that he received 19^th century style attacks on the Talmud. The brainwashing is in being taught to be a killer. And this is what many gadolim have told us about Nationalism (Zionism). That the haskalah didn't succeed in pulling everyone from Judaism with its attacks on Judaism so Nationalism stepped in to create a new definition of a Jew. With Nationalism you don't have to become a communist or an Xtian, no you can still be a Jew, an even better Jew, one that isn't meek and golus-like.

And that's what I saw in this workman with the long beard. He was aggressive in his style. Our debate was not a debate. It was violence without fists, mostly on his part. He was ferocious. And I imagined how he acted as a soldier. He told me some of it. How Arabs had to learn to obey.

I see why Likud never really considers a state for Palestinians. The military is their avodah. And the Israeli military is all about aggressiveness, striking first, being sneaky, being bold. It's an entire personality type. It's the new Jew. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they had peace.

So they brainwash the soldiers to justify brutality. Every colonial force does this – from Columbus to the Nazis. So you can tell me that the military doesn't obstruct Shabbos observance or Torah study. There's more to Judaism than that. The Gemara in Makkos tells us that all mitzvos are built around faith in Hashem. That's the essence of the mitzvos and of the Jew. We are devoted to Hashem.

The Dati Leumi are dedicated to the army and the state that serves it. Shabbos observance comes along for the ride. The men who founded the state were rebels against Judaism. Bold people by nature. And since they stuck their state in the middle of Arab societies that don't want to be dominated by Westerners, they were able to cajole the rest of us into taking on their style in order to battle the Arabs. We are supposed to be a people of humility, modesty, and compassion. The army creates arrogance, immodesty, and hardheartedness. It is the anti-Jew. I'm not saying that every solder is a stone-faced killer. But I am saying that the army brings them down, makes them more that way than they normally would be. The leaders and the policies are cruel and the soldiers are terribly influenced by it as they carry out orders. Many try to retain their humanity but three years is a long time for a young person to hold up an undeveloped personality against a ferocious owner. And while you are in the military, it owns you. Nationalism doesn't convert the Jew to some other religion but rather converts the Jewish religion to something that we have no word for really - fascism comes closest. It certainly isn't Torah Judaism. I can see that in the difference between my old neighborhood and my new one.