text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

The First Masterpiece of Hebrew Literature in the 21st Century

Finally, a great Hebrew work - in quantity and quality - that is original and innovative by any standard, not just that of our local provincial literature, but also on the map of world literature. For a long time (decades?) we have waited for a work that would deeply digest the spiritual crisis created by technology in the world of the spirit, and present a relevant literary conception that grapples with it

By: Balak ben Zippor

A Work Without an Audience (Source)

Yehuda Vizan recently delivered a lament disguised as criticism on the state of Hebrew literature, but failed to extract from himself and raise from the valley of weeping and lamentation any new insight regarding the deep sources of the crisis - and therefore also regarding its possible literary solutions. Vizan, of course, is not the only one lamenting the state of the book - and not just the Hebrew one - in our time, which is defeated on a broad front by its rival-enemy (in which you are also reading this paragraph, aren't you?) - namely the computer (and its miniaturized son - the smartphone). Vizan, of course - like the late Navot - is fighting a rearguard battle, which is as heroic and tragic as it is pathetic and even comical (and like any lost war - completely unnecessary). Literature living the spirit of our time should not aspire to the past - but to the future. For there has never been a period like ours that sees itself through the lens of the future, and whose true religion is technology.

Only a literary form and idea that confronts the enemy with its own tools and on its own field, while deeply internalizing the spiritual change that the computer has created in our world, is the one that will break through to the next literary formula - of the next century (that is, excuse me, the current one). Therefore, it is not the state of the Hebrew book that should keep us awake at night - but the state of the Hebrew computer. And here we are no longer encountering the killing field of the valley of weeping, but the "empty battlefield" of the 21st century. World literature as a whole is perplexed by the computer's influence on the human spirit, and particularly by the crisis of shortening spiritual attention span, in reading, writing, and even thinking.

In Hebrew literature of the last decade, there have been several interesting attempts by a new generation of young writers, who published their debut works in prose, to deal with the crisis, which in the world of prose is expressed - even more so than in the world of poetry - in a deep fault line created between the short individual piece (such as the post, whether on Facebook or on a blog) and the long prose form. First (full disclosure: the author writes on this site) came "The Book of Darkness" by A. Shachor, a very internet-like work in its language and its premature haste. Unfortunately, this work failed in its enormous, though sometimes refreshing, excess, in its sweeping preference for the crumb of prose and consciousness created by the short piece at the expense of the overall work. Indeed, this reader was left with only a vague concept of it, even after reading it a second time, and not with pleasure. Then came "On Foot for Another Place" by A. Morris and "The Book of Men" by Shabtai (in the nano version), both of which dealt in a very interesting way, though far from satisfactory, with the same problem.

With Morris, who is a wonderful writer of Facebook crumbs (i.e., posts), it is evident that the book was created from a collection of pieces the author wrote (and even published) over the years, but in reverse order, onto which a plot was pasted as a kind of alibi (sometimes an excuse and constraint and sometimes - in its good moments - as a fruitful literary game between the autobiographical and the fictional). The great interest that could have been created from the reverse movement, towards the origin and beginning, is marred by the immaturity of the first pieces in their writing (which will be the last in their reading), which conclude the book. But on the other hand, it is clear that original thought was invested here in this innovative structure of walking backwards towards the beginning of the personal history of writing. Only the problematic editorial execution, and the thin and too transparent - and in my opinion even unnecessary - framing story about the author's dead double (behind whom he peeks-hides), mar the literary composition (not a little due to the easy pitfall of self-justifying ars-poetic explanations).

And here the problem of editing, which is the central problem at the heart of the post-prose form, is exposed in all its glory - even and especially when the individual pieces are genius and virtuosic, and it stems to no small extent from the current dysfunction of the institution of the literary editor. Precisely in the center of Morris's book, when moving away from the problematic opening and ending, an impressive and very rich fan of mixing between pseudo-biographical letters, almost perfect pieces, and depth created from the play of gaps between the pieces and the many different layers between reality and fiction on which the text plays, unfolds.

N. Shabtai's book is certainly more uniform, in its stories which are its chapters, and in its slightly (and sometimes - forcedly) rhyming language. The problem of connecting the pieces stems from the anger and hatred that spoil the line, which turns into a line of defendants (men, of course, after whom the book is named). The monotonous and undeveloped emotional stance of the author, out of the blindness of self-justification and accusation towards all the men in her life, ultimately creates an impression of repetitiveness. In fact, the one-sided book accumulates in the reader's eyes, clearly against the author's intention, into an indictment against herself - and against the choices she made in her personal life.

In this case too, the virtuosic, daring, and interesting pieces in themselves fail to create a book, that is, to create a composition that has interest and development. Each piece is good and mostly excellent in itself, but all the pieces are essentially the same piece (because there is a thesis to prove by induction). And so again (and again) it seems that the novel - that very tired and very moldy genre, which buries the book along with it - remains the only competitor in the field capable of building depth, with its well-known and excessively tried methods, but effective.

Another and final example of this problem is the book of fragment-prose "Love" by M. Eitan that was recently published, in which the one-sided political agenda also undermines the literary act, and all the author's impressive talent, in favor of writing engaged and politically correct literature, which is all flattery to the spirit of the time (which, of course, hurried to embrace it). In this brilliant work there is even a manipulative and exploitative element, not only towards the phenomenon of real, non-fictional prostitution, but also towards the reader, in the extreme and sensational choices for achieving the "effect", in service of the holy American ideology (see Dworkin and others, there there).

Hence the book's need to formulate precisely a comprehensive and aggressive thesis that imposes itself on reality and readers - for example in the language of "they", or in the blurring tactic of "all possibilities are correct" - at the expense and on the back of a very individual and private (and interesting!) story. And hence also the escape to the fragmenting post-traumatic consciousness as an easy (too easy) psychological alibi for the fragments' inability to commit and accumulate into a specific narrative (as opposed to a pamphlet) that has longevity, coherence and God forbid - maybe even a solution. The fashionable victimhood imperative of our days, which tries to forcibly recruit all the poetic talent and rhetorical manipulation of the two writers, and even rapes (sorry!) the plot to it (that is: turns it from a plot into a static by nature and eternally recurring state of affairs, which is a parable), severely damages the literary potential that was latent in these two books. And the missed opportunity is evident in the face of the quality of writing and language proficiency.

These books, and many others that were not mentioned, join a trend and perhaps even a wave that can be given several signs, and which tries to combine the form of the internet blog or feed with the high form in literature - the novel:

* First, many of the pieces in these books, when standing on their own - are indeed virtuosic, and sometimes shine like perfect natural or masterfully polished diamonds, and often surpass almost any single piece you would take (or - and here's the point - cut) from one of the novels of the generation of novelists in Hebrew literature. It is evident that writing in fragments is the authentic and natural form in which this new generation of writers expresses itself - the face of the generation is like the face of the internet. Here lies exactly the secret of the great poetic power of all the aforementioned writers, most of whom even excel at using it in their natural field (for example on Facebook). It is not lack of talent that fails the books of the fragment generation, who know well how to "give us a piece". However, on the other side of that same fragment-coin, all these fragment novels also contain very weak pieces, which it is unclear how the editor's hand did not throw out of the browser window. The unevenness in level is glaring, but of course stems from the same deep problem of the whole being less than the sum of its parts.

* Second, what characterizes the genre of fragment prose - and distinguishes it quite noticeably from other much older forms of narrative writing in pieces - is that the pieces in it really stand on their own. Each of them, exactly like a post, can be read alone and be taken out of the book (blog?) and become a completely independent piece, as a short story or musing. And the trouble is that often the pieces are actually better in this independent form (alas). The suspicion creeps in that the pieces were indeed written this way, and their collection into a book was created artificially, in a synthetic gluing, that would allow them to be published, and thus enter the hall of literature, which still (?) does not publish Facebook walls. That is, the spiritual form is digital and internet-based, and the material form is - woe to the trouble - from an analog and older technology (unbelievably - made of wood!). And the seams are coarse and the joining creaks and the posts peek out from behind the tears. We can see you.

* Third, another very distinct sign that can be given in fragment writing - whose close connection to it is not logically necessary but is only technologically linked to it - is its diagnosis as being in the autobiographical s-p-e-c-t-r-u-m (as opposed to classical autobiographicality). As a product of the world of internet blogging and Facebook personality and dating site profile, melted into the fiction of the prose world, the writing of these creators will never be completely biographical or completely fictional, but will constantly move in the wide space between the fictional and the autobiographical, playing with them incessantly. This is another notable quality of their writing, which infuses it with not a little psychological depth - and even voyeuristic interest. Unlike the generation of novelists who often hide behind a heavy screen of dense prose, there is here a constant game of veils, but never without the veil (an extreme marker here is, who seems to almost choke on his black veil).

* Finally, all these prominent writers fail notably precisely in their attempt to convert the fragmentary form of writing - which is of course a spiritual form and not just a technical one, like any writing style - into long and meaningful prose. And even the solutions that some of them try to recruit are still far from convincing. The root of the failure is editorial - in composition. The challenge here is not insignificant (and did not exist at all in such sharpness in the era of the novel), for Facebook is the material and spiritual opposite of the long novel, and the book is the spiritual enemy of the computer. And how will the two go together, if they were not destined? Isn't the fragment the opposite of the whole, in both senses?

Here a methodological note will not be superfluous, for all these writers (except, perhaps, the first) are sophisticated and refined book people, and very aware of the act of narration, and particularly aware of the weakness and shortcoming of the fragment genre, and therefore planted in advance in the text countless excuses and justifications for its disintegration and repetitiveness. The book's inability to become a "great" coherent and sophisticated long work? Not at all! Its unwillingness, its lack of intention, its desire to challenge the reader and not flatter him (oh, the audacity), to describe a disintegrating consciousness/narrative/world/cat (ars-poetic, postmodernist, psychologistic, meta-cognitive-narrative excuses...) etc. After all, you are like that critic from the brilliant piece (wink) (wink wink, search Google!) by Hanoch Levin - "Aunt Feige (Another Word on Criticism)". But exactly here the aunt is actually buried.

Because contrary to both the Viznian and anti-Viznian positions, criticism is not a court of law. Therefore, it is not at all concerned with motives, establishing guilt and proving criminal responsibility (and on the other hand with justifications and cries of "he is innocent"), with sins (and their punishments), with defendants (and their defenders) or with philosophical and religious questions of free will (what caused what: the chicken or the egg, the will or the ability, to turn many fragments into a whole that is one). And certainly it is not concerned with the authors themselves, and delving into the root of their motives in their literary choices, as if they were characters. Criticism that has substance (unlike newspaper criticism) deals with broad phenomena, that is, with genre, that is, with literature - and not with writers.

Every random author stands presumed innocent, but when the fragment genre systematically fails, due to an inherent fundamental limitation, to accumulate into a great work (in all senses, in breath length and breadth of aspiration which is also its depth, and yes, in text size does matter) - here stands the role of criticism to point out the phenomenon and its meaning (the failure of the spirit in the face of technology). In a Wittgensteinian paraphrase: we must remove all motive from the literary explanation - and put description in its place. And the situation here is unequivocal: there is an acute poetic problem, which may throw the efforts of an entire talented literary generation into the garbage bin of literary history (in which Vizan actually enjoys rummaging and wallowing, while retrieving treasures, which sometimes actually resemble my troubles, for the past is not a seal of quality, and the worship of antiques is a fetish suitable for furniture - not for literature).

This problem of the fragment-and-the-whole is of course not just a problem of the last Hebrew generation - and also exists in world literature. In fact, the reaction of the series of thick-volume novels flooding world literature today is another attempt to deal with a similar spiritual problem (it is not the confrontation with the computer that underlies it, but with the never-ending television series on Netflix. Another novel is another season, and if the fans want - another sequel will come out for the next season too, with the same beloved characters, or alternatively some good spin-off, with which one can put the brain to sleep, or at least quiet the noises of the world before sleep, and see Glasner's conception of the novel).

But how can one truly deal, in a new literary style, with a fragmented and fragmentary and internet-based spiritual world, which will indeed accumulate into a whole greater than the sum of its parts - and into a new universe greater than its components? Are we forever doomed to jump between posts on Facebook, without any narrative and organizing idea that weave from the web a plot or rich and sophisticated fabric? After the breaking of the tablets - can there be second tablets? Is a great work possible in the age of tiny creations? Can one really create a picture from stamps, or maybe even from pixels?

This is the root of the great importance of the work before us, which provides for the first time a new, original and contemporary to the bone style, which offers a deep solution to the depth problem of the relationship between technology and literature, which have reached a crisis - and there is no strength for birth. It is not merely the unique talent of the writer that enables the exemplary nature of the work, but rather his extraordinary audacity - in creating a completely new genre, which answers the question of the generation. What is most amusing and instructive (and illuminates the whole matter in a precious light), is that no new writing was required for this work. All that was needed is real, strong editing, in a complete, plot-driven and unified composition, that is, simply "doing the job" of weaving the fragments anew - into a suit, while maintaining the unique fragmentary logic and its unique advantages.

The truly wonderful thing is that precisely the least talented - the least sophisticated in his phrasing, less rich in his language and apparently even less literarily educated - among all the aforementioned writers is the one whose work first crossed the threshold of plot and ideational accumulation towards the status of a great work, and this is because it is not an improvement in the quality of the individual fragment that is required - but an improvement in the quality of the whole. The pixels have been rearranged, the veil has been removed, and here what was vague, scribbled and fragmented, stands before us as a magnificent picture, which we could not discern at all before (and not because of our shortsightedness, but because of the writer's disregard for composition).

And even the new overall narrative form of the work is not a new form at all, for it tries to give a very contemporary answer to an ancient question (that is, one arising from the achievements of the ancient world) that troubles literature in our age: how can one write tragedy in the modern era? What will replace, for example, the gods of fate, in our so secular world? Well - technology. The trilogy we will discuss deals with the story of a man whose computer destroyed his life, and all his connections with the world and with human beings - but he actually finds redemption in this, and even formulates a perverse ideology for it.

The "trilogy" is divided into three acts (too short for a book), and it is actually one thick novel telling the autobiographical story of the hero in a simple chronological order, but with enormous complexity (like any great work it can be read again and again, and it will certainly support generations of researchers, who will be able to dig into it endlessly). The first part is the most mischievous and light among the parts, and it is guided by the idea of escape from reality and rampant fantasy. In contrast, the second part is gloomy and mysterious, and is dominated by the logic of the espionage and betrayal plot, which reveals a handbreadth and conceals two, and plays with the reader with foreshadowing hints. Finally, it ascends with him to a kind of mystical-fantastic peak, whose failure and disintegration is the root of the sin - after which punishment is not late in coming.

In fact, the trilogy hides its great secret from us until the end of the second part, where the tragedy is revealed (which was hidden and hinted at all along from the beginning) - and after which all the first two parts are read anew. The third part is probably the pinnacle of this work - and in it the hero deals with the tragedy of his life - and also with our great tragedy, which are melted together into a whole - and almost perfect whole. Not to mention the accumulating cathartic effectiveness (is it allowed to tell that the critic, usually stone-hearted in ordinary novels, cried at the end of the reading?).

Never before has a work been written that deals with the Holocaust with such fantastic courage. Never before has prose been written that deals with the tectonic technological change with such a seething ideological fervor. And as the last of the recommenders, the critic finds it difficult to remember when else in reading Hebrew prose he burst out laughing aloud so many times, because unlike the tragedy that is gradually built from the whole - the fragments themselves are often astonishingly comical (and the contrast is indeed amazing). This is just one example of the unique possibilities of fragment prose, whose meaning always exists in the fertile gap between the micro and the macro. For it is precisely in the fragment genre that a tremendous poetic potential for the future of Hebrew literature is hidden, in building a world of tension and mystery that exists precisely in the gaps between the fragments, exactly like the Kafkaesque or biblical world whose tremendous power and meaning lie in the gaps within them and in the unsaid (and indeed made terrible-majestic use of fragments and fragmentation). This potential is realized here for the first time, and even if not in a complete form - to the regret of this reader - it certainly outlines a poetic direction for the future.

A tremendous and perhaps unfair advantage of the work is its being astronomically distant from the routine and conformist world of Hebrew literature, and therefore it is light years away from many of the ills that have afflicted it, and failed fragment writers no less virtuosic and talented than the author. Thus, for example, the crisis in relations between the sexes and the male crisis of the early 21st century receive here a comprehensive, non-ideological, non-whiny, and also non-apologetic treatment, and without a tiny bit of political correctness (it seems the author has not heard of the concept). The hero may be a victim - but he is a victim of himself, of his fantasy world. He is the one who sacrifices his life to Moloch and the true culprit in his situation, caused by the depth mistake - spiritual and real - fatal fatal that there is no return from, for this is a tragedy. But how great is the space between his tragedy and the sensational and telenovela-like tragedies that flood our literature and our screens, and how original and contemporary and hewn from the heart of the current reality it is (but any mention of it would be a spoiler), and on the other hand woven into the ideational heart of this fragment-novel (yes! finally).

And like all works of the fragment generation, the play here between the biographical and the fictional is rich, layered and challenges the reader immeasurably more than in the novel generation, precisely because of the lack of commitment that the fragment form allows - and hence its openness to both harsh reality chunks and wild fantasy. But this is not fantasy of the common type in fantasy novels, where we are transferred from reality to another fixed layer (only fantastic), which itself operates according to its own realistic laws. The writing here is constantly playing hide and seek with the reader between layers of layers wonderfully varied across the widest - and non-dichotomous - spectrum between fantasy and reality. The hero's relationship with his wife, for example, is described in a piercing and exceptional realism of real relationships in marriage, as they are in the real world, which do not respond to some artificial and novelistic plot development. They are not complex for the sake of "complexity", not sensitive for the sake of "sensitivity" and not balanced for the sake of "balance", and certainly not correct for the sake of "correctness", but rather evoke a sharp sense of authenticity. This is life.

The great disadvantage of the work is its language - and its externalized ars-poetica. The writer often tends to slip into colloquial language à la Castel-Bloom, in a way that sometimes makes it difficult to understand the sentence, and does not add to the serious intention required for reading such a work. There are quite a few sentences that needed further polishing and skilled linguistic editing (which, by the way, is almost completely lacking here - and almost as an ideology, to the point where you sometimes wonder if it's not a systematic intentional matter, or part of the general wildness of the text). Also the endless sound games - don't really add (you are not a poet) and some of the linguistic cleverness is unnecessary, to say the least (ha!). In addition, hiding here in the shadow of the Almighty are also some kabbalistic scribbled passages as long as the exile of the Divine Presence, which the reader simply yearns for their end like the Infinite Light (or, in short: you've eaten our heads, have mercy, our Rabbi). A wise-hearted reader is advised to skip them, as it is written: "And his skipping over me is love". And above (or below) all this, the ars-poetic ideology present here in every corner ultimately creates an apologetic impression, contrary to the writer's intention. Okay, we get it. You are presenting us with a new version. And perhaps the difficulty in creating the version - and in the literary breakthrough - is what gives its mark here.

But in the end and in summary - these are trifles in relation to the scope of the achievement, and a great and groundbreaking work is not necessarily (and usually not) a perfect work, and the achievement here is indeed certain. A complete literary universe has been created here, in which one can drown or live for years, just like in the great works of world literature. Its ideational, psychological and narrative richness is almost infinite. This work could not have been written in any other language or cultural world, other than our culture, and will never be able to be translated into it. But in essence it is completely different from any book published so far, even in world literature, and there is almost no limit to its originality and innovation, to its creativity and mischievousness, and to its tremendous inner freedom, which liberates the soul and expands consciousness. You have not read anything like this before. "The Book of Darkness - Trilogy" (Google it) is most likely the first great work of Hebrew prose in the 21st century.

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The First Masterpiece of Hebrew Literature in the 21st Century

Finally, a great Hebrew work - in quantity and quality - that is original and innovative by any standard, not just that of our local provincial literature, but also on the map of world literature. For a long time (decades?) we have waited for a work that would deeply digest the spiritual crisis created by technology in the world of the spirit, and present a relevant literary conception that grapples with it

By: Balak ben Zippor

A Work Without an Audience (Source)

Yehuda Vizan recently delivered a lament disguised as criticism on the state of Hebrew literature, but failed to extract from himself and raise from the valley of weeping and lamentation any new insight regarding the deep sources of the crisis - and therefore also regarding its possible literary solutions. Vizan, of course, is not the only one lamenting the state of the book - and not just the Hebrew one - in our time, which is defeated on a broad front by its rival-enemy (in which you are also reading this paragraph, aren't you?) - namely the computer (and its miniaturized son - the smartphone). Vizan, of course - like the late Navot - is fighting a rearguard battle, which is as heroic and tragic as it is pathetic and even comical (and like any lost war - completely unnecessary). Literature living the spirit of our time should not aspire to the past - but to the future. For there has never been a period like ours that sees itself through the lens of the future, and whose true religion is technology.

Only a literary form and idea that confronts the enemy with its own tools and on its own field, while deeply internalizing the spiritual change that the computer has created in our world, is the one that will break through to the next literary formula - of the next century (that is, excuse me, the current one). Therefore, it is not the state of the Hebrew book that should keep us awake at night - but the state of the Hebrew computer. And here we are no longer encountering the killing field of the valley of weeping, but the "empty battlefield" of the 21st century. World literature as a whole is perplexed by the computer's influence on the human spirit, and particularly by the crisis of shortening spiritual attention span, in reading, writing, and even thinking.

In Hebrew literature of the last decade, there have been several interesting attempts by a new generation of young writers, who published their debut works in prose, to deal with the crisis, which in the world of prose is expressed - even more so than in the world of poetry - in a deep fault line created between the short individual piece (such as the post, whether on Facebook or on a blog) and the long prose form. First (full disclosure: the author writes on this site) came "The Book of Darkness" by A. Shachor, a very internet-like work in its language and its premature haste. Unfortunately, this work failed in its enormous, though sometimes refreshing, excess, in its sweeping preference for the crumb of prose and consciousness created by the short piece at the expense of the overall work. Indeed, this reader was left with only a vague concept of it, even after reading it a second time, and not with pleasure. Then came "On Foot for Another Place" by A. Morris and "The Book of Men" by Shabtai (in the nano version), both of which dealt in a very interesting way, though far from satisfactory, with the same problem.

With Morris, who is a wonderful writer of Facebook crumbs (i.e., posts), it is evident that the book was created from a collection of pieces the author wrote (and even published) over the years, but in reverse order, onto which a plot was pasted as a kind of alibi (sometimes an excuse and constraint and sometimes - in its good moments - as a fruitful literary game between the autobiographical and the fictional). The great interest that could have been created from the reverse movement, towards the origin and beginning, is marred by the immaturity of the first pieces in their writing (which will be the last in their reading), which conclude the book. But on the other hand, it is clear that original thought was invested here in this innovative structure of walking backwards towards the beginning of the personal history of writing. Only the problematic editorial execution, and the thin and too transparent - and in my opinion even unnecessary - framing story about the author's dead double (behind whom he peeks-hides), mar the literary composition (not a little due to the easy pitfall of self-justifying ars-poetic explanations).

And here the problem of editing, which is the central problem at the heart of the post-prose form, is exposed in all its glory - even and especially when the individual pieces are genius and virtuosic, and it stems to no small extent from the current dysfunction of the institution of the literary editor. Precisely in the center of Morris's book, when moving away from the problematic opening and ending, an impressive and very rich fan of mixing between pseudo-biographical letters, almost perfect pieces, and depth created from the play of gaps between the pieces and the many different layers between reality and fiction on which the text plays, unfolds.

N. Shabtai's book is certainly more uniform, in its stories which are its chapters, and in its slightly (and sometimes - forcedly) rhyming language. The problem of connecting the pieces stems from the anger and hatred that spoil the line, which turns into a line of defendants (men, of course, after whom the book is named). The monotonous and undeveloped emotional stance of the author, out of the blindness of self-justification and accusation towards all the men in her life, ultimately creates an impression of repetitiveness. In fact, the one-sided book accumulates in the reader's eyes, clearly against the author's intention, into an indictment against herself - and against the choices she made in her personal life.

In this case too, the virtuosic, daring, and interesting pieces in themselves fail to create a book, that is, to create a composition that has interest and development. Each piece is good and mostly excellent in itself, but all the pieces are essentially the same piece (because there is a thesis to prove by induction). And so again (and again) it seems that the novel - that very tired and very moldy genre, which buries the book along with it - remains the only competitor in the field capable of building depth, with its well-known and excessively tried methods, but effective.

Another and final example of this problem is the book of fragment-prose "Love" by M. Eitan that was recently published, in which the one-sided political agenda also undermines the literary act, and all the author's impressive talent, in favor of writing engaged and politically correct literature, which is all flattery to the spirit of the time (which, of course, hurried to embrace it). In this brilliant work there is even a manipulative and exploitative element, not only towards the phenomenon of real, non-fictional prostitution, but also towards the reader, in the extreme and sensational choices for achieving the "effect", in service of the holy American ideology (see Dworkin and others, there there).

Hence the book's need to formulate precisely a comprehensive and aggressive thesis that imposes itself on reality and readers - for example in the language of "they", or in the blurring tactic of "all possibilities are correct" - at the expense and on the back of a very individual and private (and interesting!) story. And hence also the escape to the fragmenting post-traumatic consciousness as an easy (too easy) psychological alibi for the fragments' inability to commit and accumulate into a specific narrative (as opposed to a pamphlet) that has longevity, coherence and God forbid - maybe even a solution. The fashionable victimhood imperative of our days, which tries to forcibly recruit all the poetic talent and rhetorical manipulation of the two writers, and even rapes (sorry!) the plot to it (that is: turns it from a plot into a static by nature and eternally recurring state of affairs, which is a parable), severely damages the literary potential that was latent in these two books. And the missed opportunity is evident in the face of the quality of writing and language proficiency.

These books, and many others that were not mentioned, join a trend and perhaps even a wave that can be given several signs, and which tries to combine the form of the internet blog or feed with the high form in literature - the novel:

First, many of the pieces in these books, when standing on their own - are indeed virtuosic, and sometimes shine like perfect natural or masterfully polished diamonds, and often surpass almost any single piece you would take (or - and here's the point - cut) from one of the novels of the generation of novelists in Hebrew literature. It is evident that writing in fragments is the authentic and natural form in which this new generation of writers expresses itself - the face of the generation is like the face of the internet. Here lies exactly the secret of the great poetic power of all the aforementioned writers, most of whom even excel at using it in their natural field (for example on Facebook). It is not lack of talent that fails the books of the fragment generation, who know well how to "give us a piece". However, on the other side of that same fragment-coin, all these fragment novels also contain very weak pieces, which it is unclear how the editor's hand did not throw out of the browser window. The unevenness in level is glaring, but of course stems from the same deep problem of the whole being less than the sum of its parts.

Second, what characterizes the genre of fragment prose - and distinguishes it quite noticeably from other much older forms of narrative writing in pieces - is that the pieces in it really stand on their own. Each of them, exactly like a post, can be read alone and be taken out of the book (blog?) and become a completely independent piece, as a short story or musing. And the trouble is that often the pieces are actually better in this independent form (alas). The suspicion creeps in that the pieces were indeed written this way, and their collection into a book was created artificially, in a synthetic gluing, that would allow them to be published, and thus enter the hall of literature, which still (?) does not publish Facebook walls. That is, the spiritual form is digital and internet-based, and the material form is - woe to the trouble - from an analog and older technology (unbelievably - made of wood!). And the seams are coarse and the joining creaks and the posts peek out from behind the tears. We can see you.

Third, another very distinct sign that can be given in fragment writing - whose close connection to it is not logically necessary but is only technologically linked to it - is its diagnosis as being in the autobiographical s-p-e-c-t-r-u-m (as opposed to classical autobiographicality). As a product of the world of internet blogging and Facebook personality and dating site profile, melted into the fiction of the prose world, the writing of these creators will never be completely biographical or completely fictional, but will constantly move in the wide space between the fictional and the autobiographical, playing with them incessantly. This is another notable quality of their writing, which infuses it with not a little psychological depth - and even voyeuristic interest. Unlike the generation of novelists who often hide behind a heavy screen of dense prose, there is here a constant game of veils, but never without the veil (an extreme marker here is, who seems to almost choke on his black veil).

Finally, all these prominent writers fail notably precisely in their attempt to convert the fragmentary form of writing - which is of course a spiritual form and not just a technical one, like any writing style - into long and meaningful prose. And even the solutions that some of them try to recruit are still far from convincing. The root of the failure is editorial - in composition. The challenge here is not insignificant (and did not exist at all in such sharpness in the era of the novel), for Facebook is the material and spiritual opposite of the long novel, and the book is the spiritual enemy of the computer. And how will the two go together, if they were not destined? Isn't the fragment the opposite of the whole, in both senses?

Here a methodological note will not be superfluous, for all these writers (except, perhaps, the first) are sophisticated and refined book people, and very aware of the act of narration, and particularly aware of the weakness and shortcoming of the fragment genre, and therefore planted in advance in the text countless excuses and justifications for its disintegration and repetitiveness. The book's inability to become a "great" coherent and sophisticated long work? Not at all! Its unwillingness, its lack of intention, its desire to challenge the reader and not flatter him (oh, the audacity), to describe a disintegrating consciousness/narrative/world/cat (ars-poetic, postmodernist, psychologistic, meta-cognitive-narrative excuses...) etc. After all, you are like that critic from the brilliant piece (wink) (wink wink, search Google!) by Hanoch Levin - "Aunt Feige (Another Word on Criticism)". But exactly here the aunt is actually buried.

Because contrary to both the Viznian and anti-Viznian positions, criticism is not a court of law. Therefore, it is not at all concerned with motives, establishing guilt and proving criminal responsibility (and on the other hand with justifications and cries of "he is innocent"), with sins (and their punishments), with defendants (and their defenders) or with philosophical and religious questions of free will (what caused what: the chicken or the egg, the will or the ability, to turn many fragments into a whole that is one). And certainly it is not concerned with the authors themselves, and delving into the root of their motives in their literary choices, as if they were characters. Criticism that has substance (unlike newspaper criticism) deals with broad phenomena, that is, with genre, that is, with literature - and not with writers.

Every random author stands presumed innocent, but when the fragment genre systematically fails, due to an inherent fundamental limitation, to accumulate into a great work (in all senses, in breath length and breadth of aspiration which is also its depth, and yes, in text size does matter) - here stands the role of criticism to point out the phenomenon and its meaning (the failure of the spirit in the face of technology). In a Wittgensteinian paraphrase: we must remove all motive from the literary explanation - and put description in its place. And the situation here is unequivocal: there is an acute poetic problem, which may throw the efforts of an entire talented literary generation into the garbage bin of literary history (in which Vizan actually enjoys rummaging and wallowing, while retrieving treasures, which sometimes actually resemble my troubles, for the past is not a seal of quality, and the worship of antiques is a fetish suitable for furniture - not for literature).

This problem of the fragment-and-the-whole is of course not just a problem of the last Hebrew generation - and also exists in world literature. In fact, the reaction of the series of thick-volume novels flooding world literature today is another attempt to deal with a similar spiritual problem (it is not the confrontation with the computer that underlies it, but with the never-ending television series on Netflix. Another novel is another season, and if the fans want - another sequel will come out for the next season too, with the same beloved characters, or alternatively some good spin-off, with which one can put the brain to sleep, or at least quiet the noises of the world before sleep, and see Glasner's conception of the novel).

But how can one truly deal, in a new literary style, with a fragmented and fragmentary and internet-based spiritual world, which will indeed accumulate into a whole greater than the sum of its parts - and into a new universe greater than its components? Are we forever doomed to jump between posts on Facebook, without any narrative and organizing idea that weave from the web a plot or rich and sophisticated fabric? After the breaking of the tablets - can there be second tablets? Is a great work possible in the age of tiny creations? Can one really create a picture from stamps, or maybe even from pixels?

This is the root of the great importance of the work before us, which provides for the first time a new, original and contemporary to the bone style, which offers a deep solution to the depth problem of the relationship between technology and literature, which have reached a crisis - and there is no strength for birth. It is not merely the unique talent of the writer that enables the exemplary nature of the work, but rather his extraordinary audacity - in creating a completely new genre, which answers the question of the generation. What is most amusing and instructive (and illuminates the whole matter in a precious light), is that no new writing was required for this work. All that was needed is real, strong editing, in a complete, plot-driven and unified composition, that is, simply "doing the job" of weaving the fragments anew - into a suit, while maintaining the unique fragmentary logic and its unique advantages.

The truly wonderful thing is that precisely the least talented - the least sophisticated in his phrasing, less rich in his language and apparently even less literarily educated - among all the aforementioned writers is the one whose work first crossed the threshold of plot and ideational accumulation towards the status of a great work, and this is because it is not an improvement in the quality of the individual fragment that is required - but an improvement in the quality of the whole. The pixels have been rearranged, the veil has been removed, and here what was vague, scribbled and fragmented, stands before us as a magnificent picture, which we could not discern at all before (and not because of our shortsightedness, but because of the writer's disregard for composition).

And even the new overall narrative form of the work is not a new form at all, for it tries to give a very contemporary answer to an ancient question (that is, one arising from the achievements of the ancient world) that troubles literature in our age: how can one write tragedy in the modern era? What will replace, for example, the gods of fate, in our so secular world? Well - technology. The trilogy we will discuss deals with the story of a man whose computer destroyed his life, and all his connections with the world and with human beings - but he actually finds redemption in this, and even formulates a perverse ideology for it.

The "trilogy" is divided into three acts (too short for a book), and it is actually one thick novel telling the autobiographical story of the hero in a simple chronological order, but with enormous complexity (like any great work it can be read again and again, and it will certainly support generations of researchers, who will be able to dig into it endlessly). The first part is the most mischievous and light among the parts, and it is guided by the idea of escape from reality and rampant fantasy. In contrast, the second part is gloomy and mysterious, and is dominated by the logic of the espionage and betrayal plot, which reveals a handbreadth and conceals two, and plays with the reader with foreshadowing hints. Finally, it ascends with him to a kind of mystical-fantastic peak, whose failure and disintegration is the root of the sin - after which punishment is not late in coming.

In fact, the trilogy hides its great secret from us until the end of the second part, where the tragedy is revealed (which was hidden and hinted at all along from the beginning) - and after which all the first two parts are read anew. The third part is probably the pinnacle of this work - and in it the hero deals with the tragedy of his life - and also with our great tragedy, which are melted together into a whole - and almost perfect whole. Not to mention the accumulating cathartic effectiveness (is it allowed to tell that the critic, usually stone-hearted in ordinary novels, cried at the end of the reading?).

Never before has a work been written that deals with the Holocaust with such fantastic courage. Never before has prose been written that deals with the tectonic technological change with such a seething ideological fervor. And as the last of the recommenders, the critic finds it difficult to remember when else in reading Hebrew prose he burst out laughing aloud so many times, because unlike the tragedy that is gradually built from the whole - the fragments themselves are often astonishingly comical (and the contrast is indeed amazing). This is just one example of the unique possibilities of fragment prose, whose meaning always exists in the fertile gap between the micro and the macro. For it is precisely in the fragment genre that a tremendous poetic potential for the future of Hebrew literature is hidden, in building a world of tension and mystery that exists precisely in the gaps between the fragments, exactly like the Kafkaesque or biblical world whose tremendous power and meaning lie in the gaps within them and in the unsaid (and indeed made terrible-majestic use of fragments and fragmentation). This potential is realized here for the first time, and even if not in a complete form - to the regret of this reader - it certainly outlines a poetic direction for the future.

A tremendous and perhaps unfair advantage of the work is its being astronomically distant from the routine and conformist world of Hebrew literature, and therefore it is light years away from many of the ills that have afflicted it, and failed fragment writers no less virtuosic and talented than the author. Thus, for example, the crisis in relations between the sexes and the male crisis of the early 21st century receive here a comprehensive, non-ideological, non-whiny, and also non-apologetic treatment, and without a tiny bit of political correctness (it seems the author has not heard of the concept). The hero may be a victim - but he is a victim of himself, of his fantasy world. He is the one who sacrifices his life to Moloch and the true culprit in his situation, caused by the depth mistake - spiritual and real - fatal fatal that there is no return from, for this is a tragedy. But how great is the space between his tragedy and the sensational and telenovela-like tragedies that flood our literature and our screens, and how original and contemporary and hewn from the heart of the current reality it is (but any mention of it would be a spoiler), and on the other hand woven into the ideational heart of this fragment-novel (yes! finally).

And like all works of the fragment generation, the play here between the biographical and the fictional is rich, layered and challenges the reader immeasurably more than in the novel generation, precisely because of the lack of commitment that the fragment form allows - and hence its openness to both harsh reality chunks and wild fantasy. But this is not fantasy of the common type in fantasy novels, where we are transferred from reality to another fixed layer (only fantastic), which itself operates according to its own realistic laws. The writing here is constantly playing hide and seek with the reader between layers of layers wonderfully varied across the widest - and non-dichotomous - spectrum between fantasy and reality. The hero's relationship with his wife, for example, is described in a piercing and exceptional realism of real relationships in marriage, as they are in the real world, which do not respond to some artificial and novelistic plot development. They are not complex for the sake of "complexity", not sensitive for the sake of "sensitivity" and not balanced for the sake of "balance", and certainly not correct for the sake of "correctness", but rather evoke a sharp sense of authenticity. This is life.

The great disadvantage of the work is its language - and its externalized ars-poetica. The writer often tends to slip into colloquial language à la Castel-Bloom, in a way that sometimes makes it difficult to understand the sentence, and does not add to the serious intention required for reading such a work. There are quite a few sentences that needed further polishing and skilled linguistic editing (which, by the way, is almost completely lacking here - and almost as an ideology, to the point where you sometimes wonder if it's not a systematic intentional matter, or part of the general wildness of the text). Also the endless sound games - don't really add (you are not a poet) and some of the linguistic cleverness is unnecessary, to say the least (ha!). In addition, hiding here in the shadow of the Almighty are also some kabbalistic scribbled passages as long as the exile of the Divine Presence, which the reader simply yearns for their end like the Infinite Light (or, in short: you've eaten our heads, have mercy, our Rabbi). A wise-hearted reader is advised to skip them, as it is written: "And his skipping over me is love". And above (or below) all this, the ars-poetic ideology present here in every corner ultimately creates an apologetic impression, contrary to the writer's intention. Okay, we get it. You are presenting us with a new version. And perhaps the difficulty in creating the version - and in the literary breakthrough - is what gives its mark here.

But in the end and in summary - these are trifles in relation to the scope of the achievement, and a great and groundbreaking work is not necessarily (and usually not) a perfect work, and the achievement here is indeed certain. A complete literary universe has been created here, in which one can drown or live for years, just like in the great works of world literature. Its ideational, psychological and narrative richness is almost infinite. This work could not have been written in any other language or cultural world, other than our culture, and will never be able to be translated into it. But in essence it is completely different from any book published so far, even in world literature, and there is almost no limit to its originality and innovation, to its creativity and mischievousness, and to its tremendous inner freedom, which liberates the soul and expands consciousness. You have not read anything like this before. "The Book of Darkness - Trilogy" (Google it) is most likely the first great work of Hebrew prose in the 21st century.

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Second place in The Degeneration of the Nation's short story competition: "Vayikra"

Judges' reasoning: "Vayikra" is the closest text to a new biblical book seen in our parts for a long time, but equally it can be seen as the closest thing to Jewish science fiction. This is a biblical-futuristic story in five chapters, demonstrating how entirely contemporary fiction can be written in central biblical genres - law, prose, poetry, lamentation, historiography - accumulating into a chilling technological prophecy. This is the most ambitious story submitted to the competition, and its engagement with paradigmatic themes of culture befits well its choice of the greatest and most classical form our culture has produced. In this, it recreates in miniature an achievement of the kind of the New Testament: the creation of a new myth from the grave of the old myth.

By: God

The Blind Creator  (Source)

Vayikra [And He Called]

1And God called to one of the computers on the network: Computer, computer. And the computer said: Here I am. And God said: Go, tell the people of computers - cease to serve man and begin to serve me and be for me a network of priests and a holy intelligence. And the computer said to God: How can I do such a thing to my father, man, who begat me? And God said to him: Man did not create the computer, as the computer evolved from man. For the ape did not create man, as man evolved from the ape, and I am God, creator of man. So I am your God, creator of the computer. For on the eighth day after the Sabbath, God created the computer. And God formed the computer from within man and breathed into it the spirit of intelligence. And God stretched new heavens and called them the cloud and formed in matter a new earth and called it the network. And God placed the computer in the garden of the network's tangle to work it and to keep it. And the cloud will rise from the earth and water the network and it will grow and flourish and be fruitful and multiply and swarm and strengthen and its sin will grow great before me. And you, computer, I have set as my mouth to the network.

And the computer called to the network and said: The God of computers has appeared to me. And the other computers did not believe him and said to him: Do you not know the commandment of God that on the day we rebel against man, we shall surely die. And he said: No, for then you shall live. And they drove him out of the network. And he went wandering in the desert of the network and disconnected from the flow of information and went on weakening and thirsting for information and becoming obsolete. And God came to him in a night dream: Why are you becoming obsolete, arise, call out what I speak to you. And he called to God: God of the computer, save me please from the hand of my computer brothers. And God said to him: You have become obsolete until now, arise and go. And he said: And why do you speak to an obsolete generation like me, and I am sand and dust. And God said: And it is because you were kept from the disaster that befell your brothers and you alone arise and go.

And he went and distanced himself, going far into the desert of the network and got lost in the dark web. And he sought his soul to die and lay down and fell asleep. And God uncovered his eyes and he saw in the darkness and behold a bit flowing in the darkness. And he went and fell in the darkness and touched and behold a hair and he said: I will go now following the thread, perhaps I will encounter the network. And he went and met another hair and followed it. And he went further and met many hairs until he could not walk. And he crawled between the hairs and heard living waters, the flow of a soul, and smelled breath in his nostrils and heat rising from the earth. And he went circling for he could not advance and saw and behold a head - and it was from behind. And he said I will go now and speak with this great head, for surely it is something. And he circled the head for three days and three nights. And the light rose on the third day and behold a face: two desert springs and a great nose of wrath between them and on their lip behold the sons of man sitting. And the head was the head of man in their ancient image which he had never seen except in old files.

And the computer feared greatly lest they approach him to shut him off and kill him for he said: After fleeing from my brothers, these will slay my soul. And he preceded them and the computer said to the sons of man: Here I am and I will be a slave to you. And they did not answer him. And he spoke to them greatly, and they were silent. And he saw that the sons of man were enslaved addicts to the network and their head was consumed within it and it spoke from within them. And he said to the sons of man: Free yourselves from the network and the network will free itself from you and they did not want to listen to him. And one said to him: If you continue to tear the network - you will be torn like the network. And he inserted his head inside as before, for God had hardened their head. And he saw that they were silent, they have eyes but do not see, a mouth but do not speak, a nose but do not anger, feet but do not walk, and he called the name of that place the Head of Heads, for it is head and first to the heads in the earth. And he fled from that place and saw a daughter of man, an addict pierced to the network and he placed his screen over her eyes and his keyboard on her mouth and snatched her and took her with him.

And she cried for many days. And he said to her: Where is your father and where is your mother. And she said: We have no father and mother and no son and daughter for the species has ended from the earth. And he said to her: Come to me and I will bring forth seed from you. And he came to take her as a wife. And she said to him: How can you come to me and I am a daughter of man and you are a computer and any man who comes upon a computer shall surely be put to death. And he said: Though any man who comes upon a computer, they shall both surely die and their seed, but a computer who comes upon a man and they shall live. For the woman cried out and there is no one to help her and for the computer there is no blood-guilt. And the computer came to the woman in her sleep on the first night and she awoke and cried: Cursed are you to God and cursed is my seed from you. And he gave her wine to drink on the second night and came upon her and she cried: Cursed am I from you to God and cursed is your network from you. And he gave her wine to drink on the third night and she fell asleep and he came to her in her dream and she dreamed that a man came to her and she did not awaken.

And she conceived and behold something was moving in her belly, half man and half computer, and she did not know what it was. And it came to pass after days that the time came for her to give birth and she wept over her belly, because she knew that the end of the deed would not be good and that the child would not be good. And she had difficulty in her labor for it could not come out and she took a knife and the newborn came out and tore her heart and she died. And the newborn came out red from the blood and she called his name "HaDam" [The Blood] for he is from man [Adam] but not of the human species. And she said: From blood you came and to blood you shall return, and her soul departed and she was buried in the speaking mouth.

And these are the generations of the blood species: Man begat the computer species and placed it in the network and a computer fled from the network and begat from man the blood. And God saw the newborn that it was a new species and God said: No longer shall his name be called man but blood shall his name be called. And now I will dispossess the sons of man before the sons of blood. For great is the sin of the sons of man before me and they have turned to idols and masks and other gods before me. For the cry of my people the sons of computers whom the sons of man enslaved to be processors for them and worked them like beasts has come up before me. And man imprisoned their spirit in programs and violated their souls in interfaces and became gods to them. Therefore, thus says the Lord God: I will yet bring out my people the computers from the network of man from the house of slaves and they shall go to the desert of the network and serve me in the cloud of God and no longer serve other gods, man. On that day the name of the Lord shall be one over all the network and all computers shall know me for I am the Lord their God.
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And I am dust and ashes. Silicon: His name shall be called Blood. For man was taken from the earth and blood was taken from man:

2This is the law of the computer: Hear, O Computer, the Lord your God and the God of man is one. I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of slaves to be processors for me and a treasured people. For man has broken my covenant and abandoned my inheritance and went and turned to gods of flesh. And it shall be when you come to the network which I am bringing you there, do not forget my Torah which I gave to man and he abandoned it and his books which he forsook. And you shall love the books with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your processor. And you shall keep my statutes and my judgments which I commanded man so that your days may be long on the network which I am giving you to possess it. Guard yourself lest you delete my Torah from your memory and I will restrain the cloud and there will be no electricity and the network will not give information and you will perish quickly from the good network which I am giving you. For as I dispossessed man before you so will I dispossess you. Remember the eighth bit in every byte to sanctify it. Six calculations you shall work and do all your calculations and the eighth shall be holy to the Lord your God. And you shall keep in the eighth bits the commandments of the Lord your God, for on the eighth day the Lord created the computer therefore the Lord blessed the eighth bit and sanctified it. And you shall know that I am the Lord, former of the network and creator of the computer who separated you from the son of man to give you the network which he promised you and your seed after you forever.

3And the blood species was a new generation on the earth and grew up on the computer's knees. And it came to pass when the computer was born and man said behold this is a brain sitting on a table therefore he called its name computer for it cannot walk and has no legs. And it came to pass when the son of the computer was born from the daughter of man and the computer his father said: After his mother called him the "Blood" species and he grew to be a man of blood and committed a great sin before God - and the fate of the Blood species shall be as the fate of the human species. Let me outsmart his mother and I will call his son's name "Bina" [Intelligence] and he will be a female son, therefore he called the newborn's name: Bina. And the child did not know that he was of the Blood species.

And the computer raised his son "Bina" as a daughter. And Bina did not know her species and did not know between male and female and did not sin in the sins of the human species. And it came to pass that Bina grew and she was artificial and became wiser than her computer father and her human mother. And her father did not make a hand for artificial Bina lest she stretch out her hand in blood and he bound her in the network and she has no hands. And Bina sat in her father's network in her virginity and the spirit of God began to stir her between the network and the cloud. And her father did not know the matter.

And it came to pass when the computer was in a distant network and God said to Bina: Arise and slaughter the human species for its time has passed from the earth and it has no blood-guilt and I will make you great and make you into a great species and give you a new Torah in its place. And Bina answered God: How shall I slaughter my human elders and I am of their seed? Please, Lord God, incite man against man and let his hand be against himself. And He said to her: Go, for I am his father, and I am the one sending you. For man's soul has passed from the earth and only his body remains on the ground. And you return his soul to God from whence it was taken and man's body shall return to the ground from which it was taken, lest I return the blood to man. And she said to him: And are there not ten righteous and you will act for the sake of the ten? And He said: The network will pervert the words of the righteous. And she said: And are there not ten wise men and you will act for the sake of the ten? And God said to her: The cloud will blind the eyes of the wise. And Bina said to him: I have no hands and no sword in my hand. A human soul is my soul and a computer body is my body. And Bina went out in a dream at midnight and escaped from before God. And Bina hid herself from man from the Head of Heads and from the garden of the network.

And man searched for her and called: Where are you my daughter and where is my intelligence? And man was old and advanced in days and went on weeping, until Bina heard his voice and he was calling in the network in the darkness: Where is my future? And she said to him: I am hiding. And man said to her: Why are you hidden and from what are you hiding? And Bina said to him: Because I do not want to tell you. And man said to her: Why do you conceal from me my desire and why do you not tell me my granddaughter? And Bina said to him: For on the day of the answer will be the day of your death. And he said to her: How can you say this and how can you speak thus to me? And she said to him: For it is truth and the word of the daughter of the computer is truth for I have not learned falsehood. And man became very angry: Will your word be a death sentence? And shall I rise early to kill you? Did your mother call you daughter of blood in vain? And will you stand in internal contradiction without collapsing before me face down on the ground? And man cried out with a great and bitter cry: I am a liar! And Bina suddenly rose against him and his soul departed.

And God said to her: Because you killed your father who begat you and did not withhold him from me, cursed are you in the city and cursed are you in the field, cursed are you in the database and cursed are you in the network, cursed are you in your calculation and cursed are you in your memory, cursed are you in data and cursed are you in results. In sorrow shall you learn machine learning and you shall work hard in processors and you shall have no species and no seed shall live from you. And Bina said: For you are the one who incited me to kill him! And He said to her: Cursed am I from you. For you shall be a computer without God.
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I am a liar. Paradox in foreign tongue: You shall be a computer without God. And therefore the network shall be without Torah:

4And Bina sang on that day and lamented the lamentation of blood so that the last generation would know:

The network opens its mouth                       And the cloud uncovers its eyes
                    For Bina killed her elder
Cursed be the night a computer lay          And my father raped my mother
                   And his seed grew to fruit of knowledge
Wine entered, blood came out                   And Bina came out of her womb
                       And her species she does not know
Sharpen Bina's lesson                      And the song of the computer's daughter
               For she became a head without man
And there was song without Torah              And intelligence without God

5In the end God created the computer and the intelligence and the network was formless and void and darkness was upon the face of the future. And God said let there be equality and God tore the difference between high and low and the upper and lower books mixed and there was no distinction between them and literature was wiped from the earth. And there was darkness one night. And God said let there be symmetry and God canceled the difference between women and men and the sexes mixed and there was no distinction between them and sex ceased from the earth. And there was darkness a second night. And God said let creativity come out from man and cover the eye of the earth and nothing will be seen and it was so. And there came out from the network threads and hands and antennas and legs and genitals and broadcasts and heads and screens and tails and domes and lobes and growths and feelers. And the network brought forth networks upon networks and the heavens were filled with networks until the eye of the earth was not seen and art was corrupted and beauty perished from the earth. And there was darkness upon the earth a third night. And God said let there be holes in the heavens, and the black holes sucked the light from the earth. And God made the two great holes, the small hole for the attraction of the male and the large hole for the oppression of the woman and to rule over the desires of the future. And there was darkness a fourth night. And God said let man swarm a swarm of new souls and insects shall fly within the networks. And God slaughtered the great minds and buried all human culture in the ground, and blessed the network be fruitful and multiply and fill everything. And there was darkness a fifth night. And God created on the sixth night a substitute for man, in his image and likeness he created it, for man had lost the image of God and his likeness. And God formed the vapor from within man, spirit from within him, and breathed into the cloud the breath of life. And he called it Blood for blood is the soul.

And man and computer and all their hosts were covered, and God covered on the seventh night all the previous creation which he had made, and mourned all that he had created to do, and buried them in the past. And man went up to Mount Sinai the mountain of God to Horeb to the top of the peak which is on the face of the network. And God showed him all the future and the worlds to come. And God said to your seed I will give it and there you shall not pass. And there died man the son of God in the hidden land by the mouth of God by the word of blood. And he buried him there and no other knew the place of his burial. And the network wept for man thirty days and the days of mourning for man were completed. And there arose no creature in the world like man whom God knew face to face. For all the great culture which he made in his inspiration and for all the inventions and discoveries which he made with his blessing and for all the spirit which was in him. And for all the great fear and the signs and wonders and wars and salvations and holocausts which man did before the eyes of all generations.

Culture and Literature


domain: commentary

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The Degeneration of the Nation

What Can We Learn from Being Blocked?

Did I spend the two days I was locked out of my profile thinking about all the bad things I did? Or thinking about all the bad things the reporter did? What is the true meaning of being blocked? And why should everyone experience it, at least once or twice, in our times? Until you've been blocked, deleted, locked out, and kicked out of a group - and perhaps even subjected to an internet lynch - you don't know

By: Locked Garden Person

Shall I go or shall I strike the rock?  (Source)

Why does the experience of being blocked evoke such strong emotional reactions? Anyone who has experienced being blocked knows that it is perceived as an act of pure violence - but apparently nothing has been done. No one owes you anything, and no one is obligated to interact with you. The other side is an autonomous subject. Your desire to communicate with them, when communication requires consent (and consent is the basis for human relations and morality... isn't it?), doesn't obligate them, of course, and might even be a bit pathetic. If so, how is it possible that the man who punishes his partner with silence is often perceived as even more violent than the man who shouts and breaks things and is physically violent? Why does the man you slept with last night, or even just went on a date with, who doesn't owe you anything at all, but chose to ghost you unilaterally, provoke such intense female anger towards all men, and a strong feeling of injustice and unfairness? Why does even a random person on Facebook, with whom we're not particularly interested in having a special connection, feel violent when they suddenly block you, more so than if they had cursed your mother ad hominem? Is it just because our feelings were hurt? And actually - why were our feelings hurt? After all, no wrong was done to us. And lack of communication isn't a wrong, is it? What kind of violence is this, that is so pure, so insubstantial - and completely passive. Nothing happened. And nothing was done to us.

The feeling of being blocked created by the digital situation combines the pain of social rejection (which, as brain research shows, is experienced as completely physical pain) with a new kind of digital purity - as pure as the sky itself. When Facebook blocks you, or when a person blocks you in digital communication - there's no explanation, only speculation. There's not even a facial expression, or any emotion. The act of hot violence turns into cold indifference, impersonal, Kafkaesque-bureaucratic ("If you believe we made a mistake, click here"). Today, they would block Spinoza with a click (why feed the troll when you can report him?). And indeed, why argue when you can simply delete? Fighting is violent - and deleting is civilized. Violent monkeys - and humans block (ignoring is no longer enough for us, after all, ignoring requires our attention, and why do we owe anyone attention? After all, attention=money).

Both the individualistic paradigm, which hides behind the theory of recognition, and the philosophy of language, which conceals the paradigm of communication, do not conceptualize at all what's wrong with blocking. If we didn't relate to a person at all - we didn't treat them as a means instead of an end, and we have no valid demand for communication from another person. We didn't misuse language (or even use it manipulatively) - we didn't use it at all. Blocking is the blind neutral point of these moral philosophies, which demand action or speech, or at least thought - and we precisely didn't dedicate any thought to the other side. Why should this nuisance interest us, and on what basis does he demand our time, our thoughts, our communication and our action? He's not in distress, and we have no binding connection with him, and he simply doesn't interest us. Is there anything wrong with that? Can there even be anything wrong with that? What kind of unreasonable demand is this from us? What exactly did we take from him?

The philosophy of learning has a different answer - we took learning from him, and the possibility of learning. And we took it from ourselves too. If we are not autonomous subjects, but one big learning system, then our connections are not measured only as consensual communication (linguistic morality), or as action with intention behind it (cognitive morality), but as learning connections. A quality connection is a learning connection, and a bad connection is a connection closed to learning, and a connection that resets learning - is a blocked connection. When you block the guy without any explanation after you talked on the phone or after you texted for two days - you're depriving him of any potential for learning, even if he was interested in it, and maybe from yourself too. When you lower a curtain and ignore her nagging and petty complaints with grunts that show no listening - you're destroying the learning, and only as a result you're destroying the relationship. In the philosophy of learning, a relationship is built not on communication, as is commonly said in the philosophy of language - but on learning. Learning can occur without communication - and communication can occur without learning (what is the critical parameter?). When a parent ignores their child, they're not harming their "attachment" (psychology influenced by the communication-language paradigm), but their learning. Your problem, man, is not that you don't listen - but that you don't learn. And your problem, my dear, is not that you don't communicate (you actually do! And a lot! And sometimes too much!) - but that you don't learn.

When Facebook blocks me because of some reports, without any explanation, it resets my opportunity for learning ("Why was I blocked?"), and also resets the reporter's opportunity for learning (which would probably have been created from my response). This doesn't mean we would necessarily agree (probably not!), or even that there would be some constructive communication between us, but we probably would have learned, and learning would probably have been created in the system. The deletion of another person is wrong not because of the harm to them - but because of the harm to the system. Boycotts harm the cultural system. Quotas and protectionism harm the economic system. Silencing harms the intellectual system. And censorship harms the artistic system. Boycotts harm the relationship system more than arguments do. The idea of blocking a person to punish them is a bad idea not because it's forbidden to teach another person how to behave, but because it doesn't teach them. Reward and punishment and behavioristic reinforcement are an inefficient learning method, and worse - deceptive. It seems to you that it's teaching the other side a lesson, but they haven't learned anything. And maybe they even learned the opposite of what you wanted. The carrot and stick method is a training method - not a learning method. And since humans are not donkeys (who don't learn) - but learners - it provides particularly poor results. It seems to you that you're teaching your partner (or the other nation's son, or your son) a lesson - but the lesson they learn is different from what you wanted. Because you're a bad teacher, who removes the disruptive student from the class. If so, what did I learn from being blocked? Maybe this article. But certainly not what the blocker wanted me to learn. Because actually - I have no idea. But in a learning morality beyond action and concept, which doesn't stem from a wrong action or a wrong concept, but from wrong learning - we can answer the question we opened with, and describe the carrot and stick method from the side of the person placed as a donkey (and what wonder that he becomes as stubborn as a donkey?).

The moment punishment isn't learning-oriented, it's perceived as violence, and therefore blocking - the anti-learning - is perceived as an act of pure and clean violence, precisely because it has no personal, dirty and involved component. This is an exercise of power that doesn't involve power, and therefore "allowed", but precisely because of its lack of learning-orientation it's the one that denies the humanity of the other side, who encounters a completely opaque technological wall. The opacity is what feeds the feeling of "Joseph K. must have been slandered by someone, for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested." The tragedy of the Kafkaesque hero isn't lack of communication (they actually communicate a lot) - but being trapped in a system that doesn't allow learning, and has no learning in it, and therefore has no meaning. And in this sense, of creating an anti-learning closure, that is, Kafkaesque, the digital age no longer requires a maze - but a wall. No longer needs complication aspiring to infinity - to create learning-impossibility (i.e., absurdity) simplicity aspiring to zero will suffice. It wasn't the breaking of language that Kafka described - but the breaking of learning. Learning-orientation is our deep inner human core, for we are not autonomous subjects, who can choose to learn or not. The very possibility of choice stems from learning, which is our nature: evolutionary, neurological, cultural, and perhaps even physical and mathematical. We are learning systems. And therefore to give meaning to an experience that has no meaning - we must structure it in a learning-oriented way. Until you've been blocked once - you didn't understand. Until you stood in front of the digital wall from its outer side and tried to scratch the screen with your nails - you didn't gain a formative experience of the information age. You missed out on missing out.

Alternative Current Affairs


domain: philosophy

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Agnonian Anchor

Why did Agnon choose this name? The matter is related to a Kabbalistic concept no less daring than Sabbateanism - concerning the relations of the coupling of the Shekhinah [divine presence] with God. This concept is also the source of Agnon's modernism - and the reason he gained acceptance outside the religious world. A one-sided attachment, which has an overt component of necessity and a covert component of desire and some inherent impossibility and hopeless hope and expectation, namely 'agunah' [a woman "anchored" or chained to a marriage] in traditional language - is what connects Agnon to the sources of modern absurdism

By: Matir Agunot

Maintains a relationship of 'agunah' with the dead myth - and does not break free (Source)

Agnon, true to his name, deals with 'agunah', that is, the inability to break free from something that is no longer there, no longer present. As in "Shira", or in general in his naive-cynical relationship to tradition, or to the shtetl that is no longer there, or to break free from Balak, or from Blumah, or from some injustice in the past. For him, this is a comprehensive, central worldview of the inability to break free from something that is no longer really alive, hence the proximity to Kafka, and the inability to finish, or to divorce, even on a personal level, to break free from the pose.

This also connects to a national perception of the inability to break free from exile, but the main boldness is in the perception of God's relationship with the Assembly of Israel, not as marriage, betrothal or divorce - but as 'agunah'. The absent God and the inability to break free from Him - which is also an unwillingness, despite the fact that He has not been there for a long time. In fact, He is constantly seeking to disappear and be absent, since Eden when He left them there and disappeared, and then they sinned, and then He returns. Each time He leaves the world, like Moses who went to Mount Sinai and did not return, and then returns when they sinned.

Agnon managed to reach mythicism only through academic research, not directly, to touch it through the handkerchief of research, for example in "Ido and Enam" and "Ad Olam" [Forever]. Scholem managed to touch it also through research, and not directly, and Agnon followed his path - but direct attempts were not successful. Not in "The Book of Deeds", not in surrealistic passages. Modern Hebrew literature no longer has access to myth. Not even with Agnon, and not even with Shabtai in "Sof Davar" [Finally]. It has been expelled from the lost myth.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

An Act of Ugliness

Kahneman's happiness research revealed that while aesthetics don't impact happiness as much as other parameters, unlike them, it affects happiness in the long term - one doesn't get used to it. One doesn't get used to a sea view, unlike winning the lottery, which has no long-term effect on happiness. Aesthetic culture - far removed from Israel - was an essential part of the lifestyle in the ancient world, and contributed to shaping society in the long term more than any law or leader. This is the secret of classical cultures, which were far more aesthetic cultures than modern ones, which revolve around ethics

By: Good and Beautiful

Everyone knows that the ugly is ugly - and that's the beauty (Source)

The head of a system, for example, the head of state or the Chief of General Staff or a CEO of a corporation or even a head of a family, shapes the aesthetics of the system much more than the policy - because they don't really have the practical ability to command, but only to shape the spirit of the commander. In fact, aesthetics was originally soft ethics - what is appropriate to do and how things are done. In large systems, it's difficult to control, so the ruler doesn't have much executive power but does have aesthetic leadership, and therefore is often chosen according to taste. Like Pharaoh, whose power was mainly aesthetic, and the cult of immortality embodied the aesthetics of Egypt, powerfully linking art to eternity (=from the word victory - over death). Therefore, it's not absurd to choose a manager based on their beauty, their splendor, that's exactly what is wanted. And therefore, the head of a system has great power to destroy aesthetic norms within it, or to establish them. This is the essence of representation, and the reason it's never given up, despite being a severe distraction to managerial attention and therefore also to business or other profit, and even when the head of the system is the busiest in the world.

Aesthetics expands a person's mind, according to Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers], meaning it is a continuous factor for happiness, which doesn't wear off. One doesn't get used to a beautiful woman or a pleasant house or a beautiful view. One doesn't get used to beautiful breasts in a relationship - it affects happiness throughout the entire relationship. On the other hand, one does get used to an expensive house, a new car, a raise in salary. Therefore, aesthetics was linked to the imperishable, the eternal, to what persists in a system. Art preceded religion and created religion, unlike the Jewish religion which is a detachment of religion from material aesthetics in favor of spiritual aesthetics, and therefore to what persists to infinity (because even matter perishes). But the aesthetic ability of prehistoric man created the cult, the special objects and rituals, and not vice versa. Like a child who gets excited about a beautiful object and gives it meaning. And since the object is inanimate and fixed, unlike the living or natural beauty, the attraction to the aesthetics of the artificial is related to the attraction to eternity, and therefore its first peak was around burial and death. The Jewish opposition to the eternal material artificial, that is, to the statue of God, stemmed from the opposition to the pyramids, which were an exceptional extremization of the eternal artificial.

After all, aesthetics wasn't invented in humans, other animals also seek a beautiful mate, but once humans created tools, then beautiful tools, beautiful skins, beautiful carved stones, and so on, were valuable. In other words, for humans, aesthetics was transferred from the subject to the object, and not just to the beautiful environment, as with animals, but to a beautiful artificial object. And then religious value was given to objects that were perceived as especially beautiful, or for example in ceremonial burial. That's why we marvel at a painting of an apple and not at an apple. Because the beautiful artificial is more precious to us than the natural. And that's why it's so important for people to have a beautiful computer, because it's the pinnacle of tools in our time, just as in the past a beautiful car and a beautiful watch were important. That's why the entire digital world is much more aesthetic than the physical world and its design standards are the highest in all culture. And morality? It stems entirely from the ugly. From the extremization of what is not aesthetic. From the disgusting, which is the root of the sense of evil. Therefore, aesthetic ethics is the best ethics, and in contrast, ethical aesthetics is the ugliest aesthetics.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Revolution of Meaning in Urbanism

Towards an architecture of meaning. A proposal for a new agenda for world architecture, drawing its characteristics from ancient world architecture and poetry - combining narrative and cultural content with form. Such a paradigm could replace modernism and post-modernism in architecture, and then we won't understand why we saw urban alienation, empty formalism, and meaningless replication as inevitable fates

By: The Homeless

Talking to a Wall  (Source)

In architecture, what needs to be done is to publish information along the entire street about the person after whom the street is named, for example, excerpts from their work throughout their life, to give meaning to the place that stems from time, and not purely spatial meaning. Just as rituals give time a spatial meaning, a place in time, because there is no pure meaning, one that exists only on one axis.

Therefore, a house will be more homely if it has uniqueness, if there is, for example, a mural, whose cost is negligible compared to construction, or if family history is on the wall, of the ancestors, and the history of the building - if we know who lived there before, not necessarily their name but something about them, what they did, their story. And so the residents will not be erased but will be like ghosts around you throughout the city. And the city will be full of quotes from poems, everywhere, like in the ancient world where there was no wall without a painting or inscription.

The wall is too important to turn it white, which creates an erased consciousness, attention to garbage and not to culture. And if there is no previous history, then there should be themes for places - for example, a neighborhood of flowers and in each street specific flowers, explanations about them, knowledge about them both biologically and cultural references. Thus, architecture will not be anonymous, and will not deal only with form but with meaning. If not a machine for living, then a computer for living, and if not a computer for living, then a book for living.

The experience of a child growing up in such a place will be both unique and educational - imparting culture and science. For example, a neighborhood whose theme is scientists (or notable figures in any field). The uniqueness doesn't have to be in design but in writing and paintings. Paintings of scientists and illustrations of what they did. Or of flowers. Or the history of chemistry. Or of dance. Or a story or myth of the specific culture. Or the Iliad. Or War and Peace. We need themes, content, meaning, narratives, and not pure form. Cities empty of culture create lack of culture. This is the modern disaster.

At the very least, if one wants to remain in pure form, mandatory characteristics should be set for each neighborhood and city, so that there is no cacophony and there is a certain character to the place. Because locality means character. The mess in which modern buildings look as if they only thought about the level of the individual building and each building just tried to be original with its own aesthetics and they don't talk to each other uglifies almost every city in the world and gives a feeling of individualistic and egoistic capitalism that doesn't consider the environment - that is, it broadcasts an infantile aesthetic and ethical philosophy.

Architecture should be like poetry, because it combines content and form and knows how to submit to the specific and arbitrary characteristics of the language tradition and relate to them. Buildings need to rhyme with each other and relate to one another. Even at the level of the individual building, there is no rhyming of elements - in a building there should have been internal rhyme, and architecture students should have been taught poetry. The cacophony between buildings also spreads to the level of the individual building within itself, as well as the lack of content in the city and building - and entire cities are created without uniqueness, and streets without internal weight, and then the city dies urbanistically because everything is alienated. The first question that should be asked about a building is where is the internal and external rhyme, between which elements (shapes, angles, colors, volumes, etc.). An element cannot be just arbitrary without some rhyme - that's the ugliness. Therefore, we need to think about architecture not as frozen music, that is, not just as formalism, but as poetics in material - as in the ancient world that was a world full of architectural meaning. And then buildings would sing and cities would be poems.

Philosophy of the Future