The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.
And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.
This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Countryabandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.
Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?
Chaim Amalek emails: We are forever being told that
1. everyone is the same and
2. our diversity is our strength.
So if certain Americans rioted/looted in the wake of Katrina in New Orleans and others of their kinsmen looted in the wake of quakes in Haiti, then surely even worse must be taking place in ethnically pure Japan, and on an epic scale. But the media refuse to cover that part of the story.
Chaim Amalek emails: I know this no longer is Luke’s area, but there must be a market for shomer negia videos, in which women try to tempt men into touching them and the men steadfastly refuse, but are instead content to “shokel” as they study the teachings of their all-male rabbis. Luke could do a variant of this were he the enterprising sort. He could invite these ladies into his home, and ask them to tempt him whilst fully clothed and without initiating any direct physical contact.
The subculture of shomer negiah men and women merits further exploration.
Fred emails: It occurs to me that if you are a wannabe model, you probably seek publicity, and any publicity is good publicity. I wonder if Luke could host a program like “The View”, filled with hot models talking about Torah and Talmud? (Try to avoid the subject of modesty.) I’ll bet you’d get a cult following.
Khunrum emails: Clearly a female presence is needed on Torah Talk. For us goyishas Torah Talk is a crashing bore. I can’t see any Jews being overly enthusiastic about Torah Talk either. Why not bring in some, shall we say, “fallen” women. Sluts as it were. Women of easy virtue. Make it like Dr. Drew’s Rehab. Trollops come on the show and are saved by a combination of Rabb’s Torah and Luke’s Alexander. A one two punch to cleanse the soul and straighten the spine. btw I read a piece on NEWSER which suggested that Dr. Drew’s Rehab show should be canceled because so far not one guest has given up the sex, drugs and booze. One porn gal went back to the smut biz and made a movie mocking Dr. Drew. Last week a rock an’ roller OD’ d. Luke and Rabbs….. you can do better….
Monday, March 14, 2011 Radio Show
20110314 – 01 Disaster Japan
Prager H1: The earthquake on Friday in Japan is a tragedy of historic proportions on many levels… Dennis talks to William Tucker, author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey about the situation at Japan’s damaged nuclear power plant. This is an old style nuke plant and it appears to have held under the worst possible conditions. Of course, the NY Times raises the worst case scenario as if it’s imminent… A family – mother, father, two young children and a six-month-old infant — was slaughtered in Israel, brutally stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorists. There is a tsunami of Jew-hatred in the Arab world…
Monday, March 14, 2011 Radio Show
20110314 – 02 Meltdown
Prager H2: The real meltdown regarding Japan’s nuclear plants is in the media. Dennis talks to Jack Spencer, energy expert for the Heritage Foundation, about the danger presented by a possible meltdown… Congressman Keith Ellison broke down in tears at the Peter King hearings last week as he told the story of a maligned Muslim who turned out to be a 9/11 hero. But was his reporting of the story accurate? One should draw exactly the opposite lesson from this story that Ellison does, i.e., America quickly self corrects and celebrates its heroes, no matter what their religion or background. But to do that would be to contradict the Left’s vision, Ellison’s vision of this country.
Monday, March 14, 2011 Radio Show
20110314 – 03 Debt Supercycle
Prager H3: Dennis talks to John Mauldin, renowned financial expert and analyst. His free weekly e-newsletter, Thoughts from the Frontline, has over a million subscribers. His new book, already a best seller, is Endgame: The End of the Debt SuperCycle and How It Changes Everything… Dennis talks to Greg Beroza, Professor of Geophysics at Stanford about the geological repercussions of the Japan earthquake.
Police and FBI agents responded Sunday to reports of three men acting suspiciously on an Alaska Airlines flight inbound to Los Angeles but determined that the trio had been praying and posed no threat.
Several passengers reported their concerns to the flight crew after seeing what they thought were wires or other items being used by the men as the plane approached Los Angeles International Aiport at about 8:40 a.m., said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.
The men, described as Mexican nationals, were taken off the plane and interviewed and the objects were determined to be leather artifacts used for an orthodox prayer ritual, Eimiller said.
“There were some individuals who didn’t understand the nature of the activities and reported their concerns,” Eimiller said. “The men were cooperative and were released a short time later and there were no charges.”
* Leviticus is about getting close to God. Korban, the Hebrew word for offering, means to grow close. It’s not easy to get close to God. Leviticus is not easy.
* An offering can be disqualified as pigul if the person performing the blood service had improper thoughts (Artscroll). Oy, how many mitzvahs I would not get credit for if this edict were generally true, but it is not. It is not true for mitzvahs between man and man. But when it comes to man-God mitzvahs, what’s in your heart is vitally important.
* Lev. 7:20 “His soul will be cut off.” Artscroll: Ramban stresses that the very mention of kares in the Torah demonstrates that there is eternal reward for the soul, not to mention 72 virgins (is there anything in Jewish text promising eternal sensual rewards for the righteous?). If there were not such an unimaginable degree of spiritual bliss awaiting the righteous soul after it leaves the body, there could be no such thing as kares after death.
* We really don’t know what it means when the Torah says, “His soul shall be cut off from his people.” It’s Torah-speak for “very bad.” It’s weird it does not say, “God will cut his soul off.” Instead, the person cuts himself off from his people. It beats an inquisition.
* I thought Jewish law mandated the slaughtering of animals with a sharp blade across the neck, yet in the sanctuary, the priests supposedly killed the chickens with a sharp fingernail. What’s up?
* Why aren’t we allowed to eat the animal fat in offerings? Because it has cholesterol?
For the romantic, he wrote, “everything dissolves into feeling; everything becomes mere mood; everything becomes subjective. … Fervently, the romantic enjoys the highest delight and the deepest pain day after day; he enjoys the most enchanting and the most sublime; he enjoys his wounds and the streaming blood of his heart. … Experiences with their many echoes and billows stand higher in his estimation than life with its tasks; for tasks always establish a bond with harsh reality. And from this he is in flight. He does not want to wrestle for his blessing, but to experience it, abandoning himself, devoid of will, to what spells salvation and bliss.” And again: “Everything, thinking and poetry, knowledge and illusion, all here and all above, flows together in a foaming poem, into a sacred music, into a great transfiguration, an apotheosis. In the end, the floods close over the soul, while all and nothing become one.”
* Torah is practical, even prosaic. You only bring offerings for unintentional sins, but that you are required to bring offerings for such sins shows that while these sins may be unintentional, you are still responsible. The Torah narrows the realm of the accidental. Think of that man in the Talmud who fell off a building and accidentally had relations with a woman below him. It may have been unintentional but he was still responsible. We must be very careful when we walk around on roofs that we don’t fall off and accidentally have relations with women.
That something is unintentional does not absolve you of moral responsibility. Try to come up with some inadvertent sin for which you have no culpability.
Most “car accidents” are not accidents, but ineptitudes and examples of incompetence. It’s not an accident when someone drives drunk. (Dennis Prager)
CHICAGO— As the religion professor delivers a lecture to his students at the Chicago Theological Seminary, a school official sits nearby with a tape recorder, a kind of word cop, in case the professor says anything sexually offensive.
The 63-year-old professor, Graydon Snyder, is being monitored after a sexual harassment ruling in a case that many scholars say illustrates the Orwellian consequences of stringent codes intended to enforce political and moral rectitude on campuses.
In a discussion of the role of intent in sin, Professor Snyder recited a story from the Talmud, the writings that make up Jewish civil and religious law, about a man who falls off a roof, lands on a woman and accidentally has intercourse with her. The Talmud says he is innocent of sin, since the act was unintentional.
A woman in the class was offended, not by the sexual theme but because she believed the story justified brutality toward women. She filed a complaint against Professor Snyder, an ordained minister who has used the Talmudic lesson in the classroom for more than 30 years.
* Rituals affect us. Charlton Heston was affected by playing Moses and Rafe Fine says he became a worse person playing the Nazi commandant in Schindler’s List.
* There are no generic sins of lust or pride or gluttony in Judaism. It’s prosaic. It depends on what you do. Sins are actions, not thoughts or orientations.
* A woman is as obligated to bring an offering as a man.
* This system depends upon a conscience. Atonement means you are responsible for your behavior. People have to know whether or not they have sinned for this system to operate. It’s not like a modesty committee comes around and tells people they’ve sinned and need to bring a sacrifice. This system will only work with God-fearing people and if they take it seriously, it will morally elevate them.
* The system distinguishes between sins of ignorance and inadvertence. There are different types of unintentional sins.
* The sacrificial system is like the 12-steps program of confessing sin, recognizing the need for a higher power, and taking steps to undo wrongdoing. You have to reconcile with God and man in both systems. (Milgrom, p. 274)
These are the original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
* From blogger Niciedo: In ancient Israel, this Yom HaKippurim — day of purifications — that begins tonight served a very specific purpose: cleansing the Temple for impurity. As Biblical scholar Jacob Milgrom has shown, moral offenses — sins against the commandments of God — were believed to create tum’ah, the mystical manifestation of death, the same way that dead bodies and dead animals and genital discharges did. If the Torah is a tree of life, violating its commandments whether intentionally or unintentionally cut away at the tree of life and brought about the manifestation of death. Unlike the impurity caused by a dead animal or menstruation, which remained confined to objects in space, the moral impurity created by sin was airborne. In ancient Israel, in the world of the book of Leviticus, this airborne miasma of impurity was collected in the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary as the dwelling place of God, the source of life and holiness, was the opposite charge of the death-caused impurity and attracted it like a lightning rod and stored the impurity like a capacitor.
However, God’s presence could not long abide amidst impurity and that impurity needed to be removed. Just as the impurity from physical causes varied in degree — contact with a dead animal only required a bath in a mikveh, contact with a dead human required a seven-day purification with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer — the moral impurity had different strengthes. The impurity caused by an unintentional sin by an average individual would penetrate the courtyard of the Sanctuary and contaminate the Outer Altar — where the sacrifices were burned. This could be removed by the blood of a chattat or purification offering. The unintentional sins of a chieftain or king or the courts was more serious because of the national implications: it penetrated into the Holy Place and contaminated the golden altar where the incense was burned. There was a purification sacrifice for this, too, which was more elaborate and required blood smeared on the golden altar and spinkled on the curtain of the Holy of Holies. Blood was the detergent of choice because it was the symbol of life — and only life can conquer and purge away the stain of death.
* Religion prior to the Torah was not about moral elevation and how to get close to God. It was about manipulating the gods and demons to your own advantage. “The wisdom teachings of the ancient Near East were unanimous in advising witnesses not to testify.”
This Torah sacrificial system helps people racked by guilt relieve their burden. It presumes a society that takes God seriously.
Psychiatrist Stephen Marmer says that 40 years ago when he started practicing psychiatry, his patients’ biggest problem was guilt. Now it is narcissism.
* Four reasons for ancient sacrifices. (Milgrom, p. 440)
* Chapter eight. Aaron and his sons are consecrated as priests. It is important to mark significant transitions in life with rituals and ceremony. This is the beginning of formal worship in ancient Israel.
* If the altar was holy, then scumbags and murderers would want to hang out there to become sanctified. (Milgrom, p. 455)
Most people I know whine when they don’t like what a Google search reveals about them.
Then they either do nothing or they make stupid threats.
That’s for losers.
If you don’t like what the internet says about you, then flood it with positive messages. Tell your story. Promote your company. Reveal your vision. Give something to the world.
If a top Google search result for your name reveals something bad, then flood the net with good stuff.
You don’t need me to do this for you. You can blog. You can post videos and podcasts. You can make profiles on various social networking sites and tell the world about yourself instead of letting others define you. You can give the world original quality content with your name on it and you can promote yourself and your values.
And you can hire me to help you.
Luke Ford 264 S. La Cienega Blvd. #1417 BH, CA 90211 Fax: 310-388-0814 E-mail: [email protected]
I do Torah Talks with my friends on my live cam for people around the world. I videotape them and place them on my youtube channel (youtube.com/lukeisback) and my blog (Lukeford.net), but 90% of the time, I find myself conducting this erudite conversation with only my male friends. I want to liven things up on my channel and due to popular demand, I need to start studying Torah with hot Jewish women. We’ll sit around for an hour and discuss the parsha (weekly Torah portion) and share our conversation with the world. Feel free to bring a friend to join this discussion or just to watch.
FlashReport is a California version of the Drudge Report. As key votes are cast on the floor of the Legislature, Republicans are often spotted scanning the site to see how they’re being praised or pilloried. When those same lawmakers want the definitive voice on what constitutes a tax, they seek out not the Legislature’s lawyers but Coupal. Kobylt and Chiampou put a megaphone on the debate.
Adam Mendelsohn, a communications director for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said many a budget deal was unraveled by the attention of FlashReport. Republican leaders would take the outlines of a deal to their caucus members, who would leak the details to Fleischman. His followers would put pressure on the lawmakers to oppose the deal.
“We were literally racing against the FlashReport because once they engaged, you could watch Republicans start to fall off and get scared and get nervous,” Mendelsohn said. “You could literally watch the deal fall apart in a matter of an hour, two hours after he would post.”
Fleischman, who is also a paid political strategist and regional vice chairman of the California Republican Party, revels in his inside access. He notes that 37 of the 42 sitting GOP legislators have written for his site. And just about all of them feed him a steady diet of gossip on the sly.
“There’s really nothing that takes place inside a Republican Senate or Assembly caucus meeting that I don’t know about,” Fleischman said.
On Dennis Prager’s radio show today, Dennis said: “I define a close friend as someone to whom you open up. Someone to whom you can say anything.
“Whatever you hold back is a gulf. The only reason that people do not say everything is fear that saying it will alienate that person. There’s a lack of trust.
“What stops you from having such a friend?”
A caller named Richard said: “From a male point of view, holding back a bit keeps a person from being vulnerable. When they do open up, they feel like they are showing their cards on the poker table. That’s why guys hold back.”
“If you were to open up to a friend on politics and there was a doubt that that could get out and it could hurt your business…”
“It’s innately in our male genes to be defensive and protective and to keep ourselves well armed.”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
