So, Shimshon Weissman has come up with a fantastic ‘tool’.

You can  basically run any Hebrew text through his Claude-built pipeline, Ars Astronimica, and it will give you an English translation that is readable and pretty darned accurate.

(Of course, no 100% guarantee with this stuff, but that’s also often true with human translations too, especially where there is a wide margin to ‘interpret’ things.)

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Me personally?

All the Rav translations I do here, I do them myself, but use machines to help me with the odd word or phrase I don’t understand.

I notice the difference – my translations have some ‘soul’, still, the machine translations have a knack of sounding ‘perfect’, but don’t penetrate the reader at all.

In my experience.

It’s useful for getting the gist, for understanding the material, but for the Rav, there is so much more going on with his writings, than that.

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However, for translating books like this – I think it’s very, very useful.

It’s literally opening up whole new vistas to millions of people, who beforehand couldn’t access the material or knowledge, as it was locked away in some old script that was impossible to read.

So, kudos to Shimshon!

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He kindly translated the original Hebrew Volume I of ‘The Man of the Walls’ memoir about R Chaim Yosef Sonnenfeld, which the Rav has been quoting a lot from, recently.

I am sticking it here, as a PDF download.

The Man on the Walls Vol. I – Ars Astronimica

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I haven’t read most of it myself, yet, I am planning to print if off, and do that properly beginning Shabbat, BH.

I know there is an Artscroll English ‘version’ of the book – it will very interesting, to compare how they differ. At some point.

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In the meantime, I am doing my best to stay out of pointless machloket about whether Moshiach can come back from the dead…

If you’re a xtian, or have those tendencies hidden away within yourself, you believe he can.

That’s the bottom line.

There’s a whole discussion in the Gemara about it, and bottom line: moshiach CANNOT come back from the dead, and if he could, he would be King David.

Warping Jewish sources to justify eschatological beliefs is something xtians – and those with latent xtian beliefs – just love to do.

Me?

I’m staying out of it.

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I’m also staying out of the machloket about blocking roads.

Although, I personally disagree with doing things like that, whatever cause a person espouses.

It’s interesting, that the leaders of the Kaplan protests, and the leaders of Peleg Yerushalayim are literally first degree family.

Hamavin, yavin.

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The last thing to tell you, is that my friend was telling me how dati soldiers are being expected to sit in panzer vehicles with female soldiers, and it’s causing enormous suffering.

You sit in those things 24 hours a day, close quarters, even go to the bathroom in them, in combat situations when going outside can get you killed.

The Dati Leumi rabbonim recently released some terrible stories of what is going on, including one where a group of dati soldiers got given a female paramedic, to sit in their panzer with them.

One of the men started a physical relationship with the paramedic, and the rest of the unit was forced to endure them going at it, night after night, unable to flee.

It’s impossible to really describe the spiritual degradation this causes to ANYONE, religious or not, Jewish or not.

But, especially when there are individuals who are sensitive to the issue, and much more aware of the damage it does – it’s nothing less than spiritual torture.

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Baruch Hashem, even not-religious wives of not-religious soldiers are starting to wake up, and complain that the army shouldn’t be forcing their husbands into close quarters with young women in a state of undress.

They shouldn’t be forced to sleep next to women, with no choice in the matter – and also, vice-versa.

There is also never any discussion about the potential for this to lead to sexual abuse of the women soldiers themselves, but for sure, this is a knife that cuts both ways.

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This is not a ‘religious’ issue – that just sharpens it.

It’s an issue of whether operationally, a soldier in a combat role should be preoccupied with members of the other sex, while in dangerous situations.

Those guys in the tank – how ‘ready to repel enemies’ do you think they were, while trying to block out the totally degrading display going on, literally less than a foot away?

This is not how you run an army, fullstop.

And BH, even the not religious, even the ‘anti religious’, are starting to wake up to that, too.

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But generally, I am staying out of all this machloket.

God is making things clearer and clearer, for anyone who really wants to see.

If for anyone who doesn’t – don’t waste your breath.

They’ll stay ‘convinced’ of their own lies, right up to the bitter end.