Author George Gilder Speaks In Los Angeles About ‘The Israel Test’

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

The Wednesday Morning Club hosts George Gilder Sept. 10. I have as much interest in seeing George Gilder speak as anybody in the world. He’s a giant. His book "Sexual Suicide" convinced me to get married.

Wait, I’m channeling Dennis Prager. I’ve never married.

Well, if I do marry, I want George Gilder to be my best man.

From the WMC:

George Gilder’s bestselling books have sold more than two million copies worldwide. In Wealth and Poverty, one of the most influential books of our time, Gilder made the moral case for capitalist creativity. With The Spirit of Enterprise, Microcosm, Telecosm, and Life After Television, Gilder achieved renown as a stunningly accurate prophet of the direction of technology development and enterprise, including Israel’s world beating contributions.

A contributing editor to Forbes magazine, Gilder has produced the annual Gilder/Forbes Telecosm Conference since 1997, offering leading edge forecasts and analysis from the top technology firms and research centers around the world. Gilder also heads Gilder Technology Associates, a venture capital fund focusing on breakthrough technologies. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan presented Gilder the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. Gilder is a contributing editor to Forbes and writes frequently for national publications including The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Review, and The American Spectator.

Israel is the crucial battlefield for Capitalism and Freedom in our time.

George Gilder’s global best-seller Wealth and Poverty made the moral case for capitalism. Now Gilder makes the case for Israel, portraying a conflict of barbarism and envy against civilization and creativity.

Gilder reveals Israel as a leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world’s paramount example of the blessings of freedom.

Hatred of Israel, like anti-Semitism through history, arises from resentment of Jewish success. Rooted in a Marxist zero-sum-game theory of economics, this vision has fueled the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler, Arafat, Osama, and history’s other notorious haters.

Faced with a contest between murderous regimes sustained by envy and Nazi ideology, and a free, prosperous, and capitalist, Israel-whose side are you on?

Registration: $75.00: Contact Stephanie Knudson at (818) 849-3470 x209 or e-mail [email protected]

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Is Bnai David-Judea Isolated?

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

It’s on the most modern (left-wing a la R. Avi Weiss) wing of Orthodox Judaism. It led the way with women’s prayer groups and showing the documentary Trembling Before God. It had a woman (Reb Mimi Feigelson) lead kiddish for the entire congregation one Shabbos morning. I suspect that Bnai David‘s head rabbi Yosef Kanefsky would like to see female rabbis and women getting aliyot (but such a move right now would split the congregation).

So does this isolate Bnai David?

I know rabbis who won’t set foot in there after its renovation a few years ago made the place completely egalitarian, with equal seating for men and women (in their separate sections).

But Bnai David is hard to isolate when it is the second(?) biggest Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles. It has more than 300 member families. It is reputed to have the best children’s programming of any shul in the neighborhood. It’s filled with young people. It’s only going to get bigger. It has two young rabbis. It’s on a strong growth curve.

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Women Protest In Tel Aviv

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

From YNET:

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Whooooops!

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

I was sending torried emails today to a woman who’d just given me her email address over the phone. But I misspelled the address and got back this reply from a name I did not recognize: "Call you "Daddy"? Haha…right. I’m curious, how did you find me??"

So I Google this woman’s name and find out she’s a high school student correspondent for Tiger Beat.

Oy, the shame!

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Gran Blogerino

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

I’m working on a script about a crusty veteran of internet flame wars who must confront his hung immigrant neighbors and confront his prejudices about gay sex. When the family’s teen son Tao tries to steal Luke’s van, the Moral Leader soon assumes the unlikely role of guardian angel to young Tao and his brother, who are vulnerable to disturbing gang influences in this intimate drama.

From the director of Shaving Ryan’s Privates.

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Why Do People Keep Calling ‘Kundalini Yoga’ The Sex Yoga?

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

It is very trying for the Moral Leader to keep dealing with dirty minds.

"Kundalini" has nothing to do with sex. It is about balancing the body, mind and spirit. It is about attaching yourself to God. It’s about stretching and groovy tunes and hot babes. It’s not about sex. It has nothing to do with sex. I sit in the back at yoga and I never think about sex, not even when most of the women are wearing spandex and doing provocative poses and heavy breathing.

Since I’ve been practicing celibate pose, I’ve been celibate. This stuff really works, baruch HaShem.

PS. I asked my yoga teacher about this. He said it’s because of two reasons. One, the word "kundalini" sounds sexual even though it refers to the spine. Two, Kundalini Yoga teaches white tantra. That involves no sex but when most people hear the word "tantra" they immediately think of sex.

White tantra is just chanting and meditating. Red tantra is sex. Black tantra is about putting curses on people. Kundalini Yoga does not offer courses in red tantra or black tantra, but I do!

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Remembering Sidney Zion

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

Jason Maoz writes:

Sidney Zion, who died earlier this month at age 75, didn’t start out to be a writer, and he might never have become one if not for the 1962-63 newspaper strike – the longest in the city’s history and one that affected all the local dailies.

In December 1962, Zion was a 29-year-old New Jersey lawyer. That month, he contributed a piece to a parody edition of the New York Post. The faux newspaper, called the New York Pest, sold well at otherwise empty newsstands.

The article mimicked the style of legendary columnist Murray Kempton, and Post publisher Dorothy Schiff, far from being offended, offered Zion a job at the real paper.

Zion would spend the rest of his life as a journalist – first as a reporter with the Post and then The New York Times, and later as a prolific freelance contributor to a wide array of publications and a columnist for the New York Post and the New York Daily News.

Too much the iconoclast to pigeonhole politically, Zion nevertheless was a man whose instincts inclined leftward on most issues. But – and here is the great anomaly – on the Middle East he was virtually alone among secular journalists in proclaiming a historical narrative that was long the purview of Revisionist Zionists and anathema to mainstream Jewish liberals – namely, that it was the Irgun that blew the British out of Palestine while Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency worked with the occupiers.

"Leave it to my Jews," Zion wrote upon the election of Menachem Begin in 1977. "They make a revolution and twenty-nine years later the leader of the revolution comes to power. First the collaborators, then the revolutionaries. The Hebrews don’t just learn it backwards, they do it backwards…."

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Another Article About Shidduch Dating

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

Oy, how it hurts my neshama to think about all the pointless sex going on out there. Won’t people ever learn that mind-blowing orgasms with a rapid succession of attractive partners is not the way to achieve lasting happiness?

From The Jewish Press:

In the secular dating system, young people meet and date for fun. Nearly everyone is a potential partner and everywhere – college, workplace, vacation, a bus ride – a potential meeting spot. In this system, if people like each other, they choose to spend more and more time together. Eventually, they may decide to marry. Whatever its flaws, it allows for many opportunities to meet a potential mate. It also allows commitment to evolve naturally from a long-term relationship.

Shidduch dating blends these two approaches. Many in our community are uncomfortable with arranged marriages, believing that young people should have the freedom to choose their own spouse. At the same time, we fear that too much freedom will lead to unacceptable results, from bad choices to frivolous and immodest behavior to intermarriage.

So we’ve developed a hybrid: shidduch dating. In this system, couples are expected to date – to learn about each other, develop some level of feelings, and then exercise their right to choose. But they exercise these rights and freedoms within the strictures of the shidduch system: the type of person they may meet, the places they may go, the clothing they may wear, the length of their relationship and many other factors are strictly controlled by social norms.

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Jewish Press Limps Along

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

From The Jerusalem Post:

Mark Joffe, executive editor and publisher for the Jewish Telegraph Agency, painted a bleaker picture.

His organization services more than 90 client Jewish newspapers, and some have either folded, switched from a weekly to a monthly format or have changed ownership. He said the industry presented a mixed picture, as some newspapers have struggled while others have persevered.

Joffe said one of the most telling signs of the industry’s health was the American Jewish Press Association’s annual convention in June. Attendance was down more than 50 percent compared to the previous year, which Joffe said was an indictment on the Jewish press’ financial constraints.

I don’t see the problem. Just use Google Adsense. Heck, it’s only 11 am and I’ve already made 92c today.

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What Makes The Rabbinical Council Of California The Most Powerful Orthodox Institution In Town?

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

It’s the killer combination of Rabbi Gershon Bess — the savviest politician among the traditional Orthodox rabbinate in Los Angeles — and Rabbi Avrohom Union, a nasty street fighter who administers the RCC.

In my mind, being skilled at politics and being skilled at street fighting are not bad things. They are dangerous weapons to use for good and for evil. The RCC does good and ill. I’m not sure if it does more of one than the other.

Discuss these lofty issues on my live cam where all the gedolim rejoice.

As an ex put it to me: "You are unbelievably crude, so rude to so many people, you don’t care about how you look, and worst of all, you’re religious."

When you enter my chat room, please remember to say the correct bracha for meeting a sage.

When you type a question to me in my chat room, remember that I am likely to be occupied with either Torah study or fact-checking or Alexander Technique, so I may not be able to answer you right away. Would you march on up to Rabbi Bess and expect an answer right away? No, I thought not. So please show some respect to the Moral Leader.

It is not necessary to stand up when I enter the chat room, though it is always appreciated.

I know you’re probably saying, "Chanele, he’s off his meds again, come look!" Please know that I consider these sentiments hurtful and non-inclusive.

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