An Original Mind At Beth Jacob

Rabbi Kalman Topp is giving a bunch of classes at Beth Jacob and he prepares original content for each one (just like the rabbis at Bnai David and the rabbi at YICC much of the time). Rabbi Topp is fluent in Hebrew and it is clear that he immerses himself in the sacred texts of the Jews.

He’s a primary text guy like the old fashioned rabbis. Marc Gafni, David Hartman in Jerusalem, Ari Kahn, Emmanuel Rackman, the top Talmud instructors at Yeshiva University, these are primary text guys. They deal principally in the primary texts of the Jewish tradition — Tanach, Talmud, commentaries.

Then there are the popularizers who seem to do most of their reading in English and then take the best of ideas they come across and put them into their own words. These are people like Joseph Telushkin, Dennis Prager, Norman Lamm, Steven Weil.

Primary text guys such as David Hartman tend to look down on popularizers such as Dennis Prager.

I place Rabbi Gershon Bess — the man behind the RCC — with the popularizers. Even though he immerses himself in primary text, he does all his publishing in English. I don’t believe he’s published a scholarly article in Hebrew. It seems weird to me that the most powerful Orthodox rabbi in Los Angeles, a charedi rabbi at that, does all his publishing in English.

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David Rubin Donated To Al Sharpton

David Rubin was the chair of the Yavneh Yeshiva school board. He also donated money to the notorious race-baiter and anti-Semite Al Sharpton:

White also asked Rubin to donate money to the 2004 presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton. Public disclosure of a contribution to Sharpton “would destroy me personally,” Rubin said, according to telephone transcripts from the Philadelphia trial. White suggested sending the money to White’s federal political action committee. On April 4, 2003, Rubin donated $5,000 to the PAC. The same day, the PAC wrote a $1,000 check to Sharpton.

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I Drive Through Santa Barbara IV

Full story:

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I Drive Through Santa Barbara III

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I Drive Through Santa Barbara II

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I Drive Through Santa Barbara

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Driving Through Big Sur II

From my Sunday road trip:

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Driving Through Big Sur

From my Sunday road trip:


D. emails: Don’t talk about your dad, mate! Listen up and listen good, Sunny Jim. You may think you’ve analyzed your dear old dad, but I’m here to tell you that, like everything else in your bloody life, you’re well off the fair-dinkum rails. This might play with that mentally disturbed woman with whom you’re driving, but let me tell you both that, as a son, you’re a fair-dinkum disappointment. A bloody sinker! I would have straightened you out right quick if it hadn’t been for your stepmum. My impulse was always to stake you to a termite mound, shove a cane toad in your gob, and then give you a fair-dinkum wallop in the chin with a cricket bat. Perhaps if I had done that, you wouldn’t have turned out to be the mewling, self-pitying, goldbricking fraud that you so obviously are. One of these days, I’ll dig out your lungs with a fair-dinkum garden trowel, mate. Don’t think I won’t.

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Hiking Through Big Sur National Park

From my Sunday road trip:

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‘Effortless Mastery’

I reflect on the book "Effortless Mastery" by Kenny Werner:

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