I'm finding Making of a Godol a lot of fun, gonna share some screenshots of stuff I found interesting. Here's a 12 year old Rogatchover Gaon when they tried to take his favorite toy away Here's R Chaim Brisker doing what I can only describe as "trolling the Rogatchover"

People tend to assume that just because the lesson they took from the Holocaust was man's inhumanity to man and the danger of fascism, that is also what Jews took out of it, when the "lesson" many Jews got was more "you cannot trust any of these so-called good people" Everybody loves to hear the stories of Righteous Gentiles because you're like "I would have been a righteous gentile! I would have saved Jews!"....but statistically speaking, no, you wouldn't have

the insane bullying of a guy who just posted a picture of himself smiling and saying he's proud to be Jewish, under the guise of "anti-zionism" is really telling of how toxic everything is right now Here's what it seems like to me: Since the end of the Holocaust there's been a consensus among the world of "let's not do anything like that again, that was pretty awful". So people understood that antisemitism was bad and that was pretty much agreed upon

This makes me furious for the obvious reasons, but also because this is a matter of Jewish law.

https://twitter.com/sock_dem/status/1730330690808652176

Because every single bit of the body must be buried, (to the point that even the sponges used for cleanup are buried), and the cars in question are so full of blood and ashes and remains that its *impossible to get them out* the unprecedented decision was made to bury cars

This week's parsha is where we learn that God created humanity in God's Image. This is the absolute foundation of Judaism, Jewish Law, Jewish Philosophy.... All of it. And what that means is that every single human being is created by God for a purpose that is beyond our comprehension, that each human being has infinite value, that each human being is a unique and irreplaceable creation of God

It's interesting watching the same things that happened to the office of kohen gadol in the second commonwealth happen to the chief rabbinate in the third. Corruption, nepotism, manipulation of religious authority for political ends, etc Chazal's views of the office of the Kohen Gadol were not positive. Recall stories of esrog pelting, pouring wine on feet, loyalty oaths.... There's a lot of suspicion

If my statements the past couple of days on frum LGBTQ Jews went past the thin boundary between passion and fury, I have not intended to hurt anyone, and I apologize if that was the case. That said, I am passionate bordering on furious about this issue because I see many people in the halakhically observant community who want to be a kanoi on behalf of exclusion. Perhaps there is a need for such people in the grand balance of things. Perhaps.

I have absolutely no patience for the type of rabbi who goes "actually when the torah says to have empathy, technically speaking it is only referring to people who are perfect and have never done any issurim whatsoever. Just saying. Just trying to add nuance" Cut the crap. You're talking about LGBTQ people, and you're talking about how superior you are to the unwashed masses who deign to try and be nice people without having looked through Sefaria to find a source absolving them of the need to be a human being

I don't have pronouns in bio because, much like God, I transcend all binaries including gender but I will roll my eyes at you if you refer to me as "she" and I'm comfortable presenting as male and not making a big deal about it. So whatever. This comparison started bad and then got worse. I apologize.

Buried in the replies to that tweet attacking two Orthodox women getting married is news of some very interesting developments. I don't think this person has really thought through the implications of ten percent of her grade in Beis Yaakov (!) being LGBT, because I really don't think you can claim they were brainwashed and groomed by their liberal teaches

I have a hypothesis that the history of halakha/Torah learning is also a history of pedagogy but I do not have the time or means to do the necessary work to prove it In other words, Torah learning and by extension halakha have been shaped by the need for teachers to convey vast amounts of material in a way that is engaging and promotes retention

Any real attempt to come up with a framework of an approach for Modern Orthodoxy going forward has to involve Rav Tzadok and it's genuinely insane we've done without until now. There's obviously a whole bunch of people doing this already, which is how I know about it. But I'm telling you, the people who learn Rav Tzadok are the people who know what's up.

Things that triggered me over Shabbos: this article from Cook's Illustrated. No mention of the Jews! Despite the fact that the city was *majority* Jewish for centuries!
Now it's built out of Jewish graves. Literally.

Nothing inspires pearl clutching among the Modern Orthodox Rabbinate like any opinion slightly critical of Israel. So many pearls being clutched as we speak. Just diving into a bucket of pearls and grabbing whole handfuls of pearls Waving around their handfuls of pearls going "hey guys! Look how many pearls I have! No, I got more pearls than you!"

Ah yes, Tanach, famously diasporic with no national aspirations Anti Zionists stop saying stupid things that assume a Judaism you wish existed challenge

I think what might be interesting is using the academic study of orality in the transmission of the Mishnah and Talmud Bavli for pedagogical purposes. For hundreds, even thousands of years this stuff was taught primarily orally.
This wasn't just "the guy with the best memory memorizes all the mishnah" it seems clear that there was methods behind this to make this workable.

Where do I even begin with this nonsense

https://twitter.com/daneasterman/status/1653872621375614978

"the Zionists are trying to hide the fact that Judaeo-Arabic exists and that's why no one's ever heard of the Rambam or Yehuda HaLevi"

We have arrived to a point that people will applaud someone for murdering someone in cold blood in broad daylight because they are that contemptuous of the people our society has failed. It's getting bleak out here It is truly terrifying for me how society seems to be trending towards resources held by fewer and fewer people, pushing more and more people into poverty, and building higher walls and using more and more violence to protect their stuff from the masses

Just tracked down an anecdote about R. Akiva Eiger that I needed for the previous thread, and it's in an article that is just *breathtakingly* bad Like, this is a good question! Right?
But his answer is not "we should do everything possible to mitigate this" it's "let's use mysticism to essentialize the genders to justify this"

Well then.
(Seen on Facebook) biblio.co.nz/book/basketbal…
A joke from a 1958 newspaper, apparently

Last year I said that people should really consider translating "the four sons" as "the four children" because we shouldn't be implying girls aren't part of Judaism simply because Hebrew lacks a gender neutral plural pronoun and people got super mad at me, but I'll say it again I don't really think there's any compelling reason to insist on translating it as "sons" unless you're committed to the idea that girls don't matter, and the pushback I get on this is frankly puzzling