An hour before Shabbat, my friend sent me an unconfirmed report that the Rav was in intensive care in Hadassah. According to the newswire she follows on Telegram, the story is that the Rav had been stabbed, somehow, but wasn’t saying who had hurt him. == The Rav was definitely in Hadassah over Shabbat, at […]

Jewish sources on Edom and Esav

I am reposting this from 5 years ago. I actually reposted this two years ago, when I had more Trumptards trying to tell me he was the Moshiach she be Esav....whatever. It's very interesting to keep going back to the authentic Jewish sources,…

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. ===== Shiur given over Monday night, 7 Shvat, Parshat Bo (January…