Yesterday, my kid was standing behind someone she used to work with in the supermarket. He used to be a construction supervisor. Then, his son, a soldier in the IDF, was killed on October 7th. He got so discombobulated emotionally, a month later he was let go from his job, because he just couldn’t do […]
Cognitive dissonance
I'll be honest: it's hard to write at the moment.
I have a lot of conflicting stuff going on inside myself at the moment, plus the enormous uncertainty of where is all this going, and how does it turn around, tachlis - I have started a few…
Napoleon’s Sanhedrin
Before we dive in to the next tranche of ‘real Jewish history’, let’s just do a recap of where we’ve got to, so far, in this series of masons and maskilim.
Josef II, the ‘enlightened dictator’ of Vienna, was the brother of Marie…
Coping strategies
The last couple of days, I've been feeling unusually 'stressed out'.
We could blame 'the war', 'the matzav', 'the weather' - but that's been going on for almost four months, already.
And the type of stress I've been feeling the last two…
More Masons, Maskilim – and Mozart
I went back to the Rav’s comments about the ‘benevolent despot’ and lover of Eva Frank, Josef II of Austria.
(Read that HERE.)
When I started to take a closer look at the Jewish maskilim who were in Josef II's circle, helping him to…
Miracles at the Baba Sali
Shavua Tov!
Some more interesting info from the Rav about the 'near miss' at the Baba Sali's hiloula, two weeks ago.
Translated from the Shivivei Or Newsletter 44.
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Shiur given over Monday night, 7 Shvat, Parshat Bo (January…
‘Friendly fire’, and a bit more light in the darkness
In Israel, it's an 'open secret' that something very bad happened this week, that led to the deaths of so many soldiers when those buildings collapsed.
By 'very bad', it's understood 'very corrupt and something stinks to high heaven'.
They…