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The Degeneration of the Nation

A Potato for Prime Minister

Introverted, quiet, calm, modest, studious, without hubris, without skeletons but with a backbone, without slips of the tongue and without the ability to express himself, an excellent strategist, level-headed and thorough, and someone whom the entire security establishment considers to have been the best Chief of Staff in recent decades - and all this packaged inside a potato. A historian by education and an amateur historian, a freak for doctrine and long-term planning documents, married+5 to his sweetheart since age 18, observes kashrut and tradition, managed the largest organization in the country, after being the first to give up (twice) on its leadership when offered to him, but what? A potato

By: Hot Potato

Lo and behold, who's coming? Is this the next Prime Minister? (Source)

What would happen if we put a potato in the Prime Minister's office? Is a nation of extroverted screamers even capable of placing a potato over them - introverted, boring, smarter than everyone there? What happened the last time the potato was discharged from the army? "Since he didn't really know then which field to pursue, he decided to go get good advice at the 'Til' institute for professional guidance. It cost him quite a bit, he sat for hours in aptitude tests, and when he was called for a summary conversation, where the diagnosis conclusions were presented to him, he was shocked to discover that he was recommended to study alternative medicine... They wanted to make him a reflexologist". Those who know the potato, with the charisma of a potato - understand why (and he of course returned to the army). A Prime Minister who is a reflexologist and masseur, Mr. Security instills calm and confidence. What do you think?

If there is a person who is the absolute opposite of Bibi, hollow and trembling from within, whose entire strength lies in external impression and in speech and language - it's the introverted potato, whose entire strength is in his interiority, and externally gives the impression of a dull person, a bit likable and completely unremarkable. To those who know him closely, the Prime Minister is a very unimpressive person to say the least. It's amusing to hear all those who speak of his genius and superpowers (even negatively) in some field they've invented. We're talking about a rather mediocre person, without exceptional education or intellectual ability, and even without extraordinary social skills, whose main characteristic is motivation - unrestrained and without any boundaries, who sees no one but himself, and is sure he is Israel's savior. As with many leaders and CEOs, it's simply a severe narcissistic personality disorder (please don't confuse narcissism with self-confidence, and certainly don't confuse self-confidence with ability). In addition, he simply has a lot, a lot of experience. And a lot of power, which simply accumulates the longer you're in a position of power. That's it, nothing more than that, and nothing more is needed, to be Bibi (he also has a bit of luck). Get out of the movie.

Sara is just a miserable woman, and quite simple, who is - according to foreign sources, and of course only as a literary character - suffering from borderline personality disorder (I mean, didn't you understand that? There's an underrepresentation in the media of women with such a disorder, like all the stupid secular people who bought the fabricated stories of poor Esti Weinstein z"l, also apparently suffering from the disorder, who committed suicide. This is a statistically quite common disorder in women, the equivalent of narcissism in men, and therefore you can never simply "believe her". Also, it's a known secret in the therapy world that many victims of childhood sexual abuse suffer from this disorder, what's called in therapeutic jargon "Borderlines"). In short, what can you do, there are personality disorders in the world (quite common, folks!), and couples of a narcissist and a woman with borderline personality disorder are not rare. But it's quite a shame for Israeli public discourse that it picks on an obviously ill literary character, because of her husband.

It's even more ridiculous to see intelligent people referring to Yair. If you knew him, or at least his literary character (a retarded and excited child, lacking any social skills, who all his life tries to buy friends with the help of his father, and only against this background can one understand the conversation at Pussycat). If people met him in real life for five minutes of conversation - they would be offended and ashamed that they ever referred to him. And indeed - he's just a miserable child, unpopular, an original slapped kid, and a miserable person, who since he was little was only treated because of his father, and got used to making scenes with the poor security guard on duty (hehehe, Shabaknik), who of course can't stand him. Regarding Avner - the secret is known. Sometimes ABA works wonders, and indeed all credit (without cynicism) to Sara who succeeded - and all the credit goes to her. The narcissist was of course busy with himself. That's it, that's the whole fighting family. And of course we're talking about literary characters only, and this entire text is fictional, and any resemblance to reality is coincidental, and anyway in a post-Kantian world there's no claim about the thing-in-itself.

But if people knew the thing-in-itself - they would be ashamed of all the energy they devoted, of all the waste of time, nerves and life, all the awe they felt, and all the sophisticated analyses they analyzed. People think that if these are up there they must be exceptional human beings, and that it's not possible for a person to succeed in becoming Prime Minister without special skills (otherwise why him and not me? Maybe... because you didn't invest your life in it? And why didn't you invest your life in it? Maybe because you're not psycho?). Bibi is not some demon, he's just obsessive and quite pathetic, fat, smoking and unhealthy - the banality of motivation (which causes a person to practice for years in making an impression, and removes any inhibition whatsoever. You'll never believe how they hide that fat neck on TV). Reality is beyond all imagination.

And what does all this have to do with the potato? Really nothing. It's simply about a boring person, about whom there's nothing to write. Who couldn't be a character in any literary work. About whom there's really nothing to say. Who has no mental disorder, no delusions of grandeur, despite (and perhaps because) it's really about a great person, or more precisely, a great potato. But in reality, this nation simply doesn't deserve to get a potato as Prime Minister. If the potato was in this position, for example - there would be no coronavirus in Israel. Period. We would be South Korea. And suppressing the coronavirus, by the way, is very similar systemically to suppressing the Intifada of individuals (yes, this is the only Chief of Staff who managed to suppress an Intifada, and not inflame it. Reflexologist, we already said?). It's not clear at all how such a one grew in our garden. The opposite of everything Israeli in your eyes. But if he'll be up there, there will really be a need to bless with name and kingdom: Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe - who creates the fruit of the earth.

Because already the book of Samuel identified the main problem concerning leadership: Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. And in modern society the problem only worsens, because people simply don't know "these" people, meaning not through media mediation, which idolizes them for its needs, exactly as it does to every model, celebrity and psychic. The main problem in our society is that motivation is the main parameter determining success in it - and not only for the position of CEO or PM, but even if it's about receiving an academic appointment or even to be a well-known contemporary writer - and not talent. The motivation method - confused with meritocracy - causes most likely that the people who manage to get "there" are psychos, because you need psychotic motivation to get there, not rare talent. And this is true even for art, and this is the reason artists are narcissists and psychos - because the barriers are so high that motivation is more important than talent. And therefore many people see the correlation and think that psychosis causes talent. This is true exactly like Bibi is talented. Therefore the most important thing that can happen to our society is to become a society of potatoes.

The root of all sin is the expression that success comes from 1% talent and 99% hard work. If we put such high barriers of "hard work" - indeed all positions in society will be reached by people of little talent, who are psychotic motivation bombs. Therefore the ethos of motivation, externally by nature (which indeed flatters the many untalented - "if you only want - you'll succeed!") needs to be replaced with the ethos of talent - the internal quality. We should actually lower advancement barriers that measure motivation - non-qualitative barriers, but very easy to set, of "hard work" - in all societal systems aspiring for excellence (academia, culture, commercial companies, and even - alas - public servants). Here, for about 20 years already (since being Golani Brigade commander) the entire military system has been aware of the rare internal qualities of our potato, who enjoys general admiration from wall to wall, and the public hasn't heard about them at all (and has no green idea about the huge debt it owes him, in almost all the junctions of national security in the last twenty years, which he managed with the inner cool of cold mashed potatoes).

The stupid public doesn't know that the one responsible here for the quiet (which allowed relative prosperity) in recent years is the potato - and not Bibi, and that the potato also exerted all his weight and the enormous prestige he enjoys to prevent Bibi and Barak from attacking Iran (but invented the campaign between wars that changed the results of the war in Syria), rebuilt deterrence against Hezbollah that created the long quiet as Northern Command chief (and the only one who functioned in the Second Lebanon War), and was the key figure in suppressing the Second Intifada (appointed commander of the West Bank Division in 2003) and who wrote with his own hands the doctrine for suppressing terrorism ("mowing the lawn") since then and onwards, not to mention his important contribution to the withdrawal from Lebanon (in a bold position then in internal discussions, and later as Barak's military secretary), or the severe defeat he inflicted on Hezbollah in 2018 (in a war the public didn't hear about - how typical). And all this without mentioning his integrity, with a brilliant and almost unique record in the military system in recent decades (from neutralizing the culture of rebellions in Golani to neutralizing "Defense Minister" Lieberman). There's no comparison between the potato, who inspires awe and cross-camp admiration, to his two predecessors, about whom opinions in the system are very divided to say the least, and who were appointed as Chiefs of Staff almost by mistake, due to exceptional and unexpected circumstances, after being skipped over. It's like comparing apples to cucumbers.

Currently, it seems that Bibi's hubris is causing him to consider a fourth election, instead of trembling with fear from the potato, whose entry into politics is an earthquake (we always thought he was apolitical and anti-politician, so much was he matter-of-fact, and with the oratory skills of a sleep-inducing potato). Bibi is stupid, and the public is stupid too, but the potato is very smart, and the closest thing we have to a strategic genius, and perhaps the most worthy person to lead the country since Ben-Gurion or Eshkol roughly. His embodiment in a potato of the ideal of the longed-for responsible conservative, with iron-cast values and impeccable conduct, that Assaf Sagiv so yearned for his arrival - is approaching and rolling into the arena. It's hard to know how and why, and how long it will take him (the potato is a marathon runner, and green in politics, and doesn't pass the threshold), but there is for the first time a well-founded and real hope that Israel's #1 strategist will succeed in defeating Israel's #1 tactician - and that long-term vision will defeat short-term vision. Because in the end, in the long run, strategy always defeats tactics - and this is the most important lesson that the potato can teach the Israeli public. Changing the ethos. It simply doesn't befit Israelis, a crude nation of potato eaters, to have a potato as their leader, but we must hope that sometimes we get what we don't deserve. Falafel with chips.

References:
Iron Patton (Haaretz, 1999)Everything you need to know about Gadi Eisenkot, the general who didn't see anyone from a meter away (Ben Caspit, 2014)Eisenkot (Kan Docu, 2019)

Alternative Current Affairs


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Protestant God of TheMarker: When Will the Redeemer Come

The Bitch reviews TheMarker Weekend, once a worthy competitor to Haaretz's supplement, and today - a victim of lack of competitiveness, of Haaretz's monopoly, of Rolnik's obsessive centralization, of pyramids of false consciousness, and perhaps also of the unions - which do not allow for proper turnover of interviewers. Will TheMarker become competitive again, and reflect the variety of stories and approaches in the economic world? On the improper connections between bon ton and newspaper

By: The Bitch

If only we were more Protestant and less Jewish - then according to Weber we would be richer - and what's more important to Jews than money? (Source)

TheMarker Weekend is a supplement that has experienced both rise and fall in recent years, and therefore instinctively the Bitch still holds hopes for it, like an ex who can still return to the kennel of lovers. But as with the ex, until you dissect her into parts, you won't be able to understand the flaws that will cause not only her to return - but also the entire miserable relationship between you. Yes, TheMarker disappoints me. Yes, it could have been (and for a certain period almost was) the most interesting part of the newspaper. No, it won't happen anymore, and not because there's no interest or desire. Why? Well.

Who Needs Opinions When There's an Opinion?

In a kind of bad habit, TheMarker always starts badly - with opinion pages that are actually orthodox indoctrination pages (=the correct opinion). The mechanism is simple, and well remembered from the Ulpana [religious girls' high school]: no matter what ever happens in the weekly Torah portion - Bibi and Tibi, war and peace, Balaam and the donkey, Korah and his congregation - to force it into the terrifyingly fixed agenda (and quite righteous, by the way, it doesn't matter) of the writer.

There is a basic flaw in journalistic writing here. Even if you've identified the most significant thing in your eyes in the entire universe since forever (already a problem of mental fixation!), your very formulaic nature makes you unreadable, an ideological mechanism, a person not curious about completely different angles, or new trends unrelated (important!) to your idée fixe (yes I know everything everything is related to it), or heaven forbid contradictory ideas. You become the fixed sermon of an uninspired rabbi when he needs to fill the time before evening prayers, when the only question hanging in the stifled air is how he will connect his only vort [brief Torah insight] in life to the spies' story, or to Hanukkah.

Here Nehemia Shtrasler has an agenda, but also variety. Maybe that's why he's not there. His mechanism is broken. So yes, you learned somewhere that you need to attack the hidden power mechanisms in capitalism (and especially the structural ones! - wow, how sophisticated) and this makes you righteous, brave, and endlessly repetitive in your own eyes. When will the redeemer come? I think we need to dismantle Rolnik's centralization! (But I promise not to write this every week).

Between Ideas and Interviews

Then there's TheMarker's regular interview, which I'm very sad to write about. I wish I had criticized it two years ago, then I could have praised it as one of the rising and most successful columns in the entire newspaper (and the best in TheMarker), competing with Ayelet Shani and gradually surpassing her. Since then, the fall has been sharp even relative to the degeneration of Haaretz. At first, the interviewing skills of the excellent interviewers still managed to save boring interviewees from becoming boring interviews. But there's nothing to be done - the most important thing in any interview is the idea - who to interview? In the past year, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of interviewees, most of whom shouldn't have been there at all. It seems as if they've run out of ideas, and this is exactly the time to change direction, take a break, or close shop (yes, that's allowed too! Although I wish they would go to academia and dig up more interviewees from all disciplines. There's still a lot of potential there and less banal, unlike another social/bureaucratic entrepreneur speaking in clichés). By the way, unlike Ayelet Shani who deteriorated in both parameters, the interview work itself is still excellent - but sometimes there's simply no material to work with (it's a pity you can't invent answers! Especially when the interviewers are more interesting than the interviewees). In short, our hope is not yet lost. So when will the redeemer come?

When Jewish Chutzpah Meets Martin Luther Rolnik

Naturally, in the article section of TheMarker, the level is very uneven. In general, social activists tend to be particularly banal, and no agenda will help (in fact, it's exactly the agenda that doesn't help). In contrast, business entrepreneurs, especially start-upists or anyone who has an ideational dimension to their material success (yes, the spirit is important), they (and the companies they founded) constitute the most interesting human-journalistic material. TheMarker certainly identified this in traffic patterns, and on Independence Day produces an entire entrepreneurship issue. People who have some inclination towards the economic field like to read success stories to learn from them, and also enjoy failure stories (another sub-genre, less interesting, and always leaves a sour taste of settling scores on the way down the stairs - and schadenfreude on the part of the newspaper).

In fact, these stories are constructed in TheMarker as moral tales, reinforcing the newspaper's economic agenda, which is built on highly Protestant assumptions. On one hand, the rising and successful entrepreneurs are presented as role models and as exemplary figures who fulfill the commandments of the Start-up Nation god, arousing admiration and strengthening the Israeli start-up ethos through the myth of the cheeky and original entrepreneur who made a ton of money from it (most important! Because in doing so he proved that he received God's blessing). These are stories of righteous people, and there are always miracles in them, but also some Jewish cunning that is celebrated with joy. On the other hand, when that same chutzpah and cunning themselves bring down some tycoon into the pit, especially if he comes from the old or classic industries, then it's a moral tale of a villain who sinned, exploited, corrupted, or at least pursued greed and suffered severe hubris, and now is being punished by TheMarker's Protestant god. That these two stories - about sin and punishment - are the same story (sometimes with a difference of a decade or two) is hidden from the eyes of TheMarker's Protestant god (and therefore from the reader).

For the Protestant god, sins must be structural, there's no such thing as just a business mistake, in content, but only a mistake of deep structure. There are no failures - only flaws. That's why he's such a fair god, he doesn't blame you if you made a mistake, only if you weren't fair. He just forgets that there's something very unfair about the ability to turn every mistake into unfairness, and every problem into a structural problem, into a structure of sin. At the individual level - the god plays both roles. On one hand, he shows how easy it is to start a billion-dollar company, look even a bitch can do it, and even a woman or an Arab God forbid - if they just stick to the right path of creative Jewish entrepreneurship (about luck, about taking unreasonable risks, about prices, about gambling - we don't hear). Thus, the god tempts generations of Israelis to abandon their jobs (families pay too, of course) and set out on the chase after the gold rush. This is known to be profitable for the Start-up Nation economy, though probably less so for the individual, and it's the human fuel in its engines (not the one who became a billionaire - but the thousand who failed).

On the other hand, if you fell, if you failed, and heaven forbid if you were tempted, out of that same idolatry of the golden calf and the coveted discourse of greed, then TheMarker's Protestant god will tar and feather you in the town square, and your fall will always be a moral fall (which will distance from consciousness the possibility that it will happen to you, because you are extremely moral, right?). Even if you didn't really murder and inherit - your sin will be found and demanded (hubris? gambling? borderline fairness? cutting corners? everything that brought you there in the first place?). And the masses? They are tempted, as we know, to the lottery of Silicon Valley and the quick exit. On the basic assumptions - there is no discussion. It's clear that Israel's ultimate goal is purely economic (yes, even the economic left believes in this). The good ones - to start-up. We gave up on the book and the sword long ago (in fact, along with the sword). Light unto the nations means gold from the nations, and the people of the book was actually Facebook's previous name.

In terms of the newspaper, there is no confrontation between the assumptions of "Culture and Literature" and "Books" and those of "TheMarker". As if these were two separate worlds dichotomously, which just happen to be in the same newspaper, and therefore there will never be a meeting in writing between them and an in-depth discussion. This is the same Protestant - and completely anti-Jewish - cognitive separation between religion and state, and between spirit and matter, which is a main belief in Haaretz, which tries to combine economic capitalism without seeing any contradiction - and also no connection - to culture. This is how they produce an economic sphere devoid of culture, and a culture lacking economic understanding (the average cultural figure in Israel has the economic perception of a five-year-old child. Why not take from the rich and give to the poor, he will cry out). Where is this and where are the Medicis, or any other economic-cultural complex that created masterpieces in some golden age (yes, golden. Money is not an end in itself, in societies that have an ethos of cultured people). When will the redeemer come?

The Other Side of Walls and Ceiling - As the Third Temple

The back side of TheMarker is a reflection of the harmful, ugly, and so distracting obsession of Israelis with real estate. Sometimes there will be an interesting article about architecture or urban planning, especially in the world. The rest of the time it's a consumer supplement, and as such it's perfectly fine (meaning an inferior product and produces a false consciousness of wow what a kitchen they have and I wish I had a penthouse). This is the bulletin of Israel's real estate pyramid, and the shofar of a bubble that one day - God willing - will burst with a loud blast, and then it will really be possible to buy a kennel in this country. When oh when will the redeemer come?

Haaretz Critique


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Haaretz is to Blame for Bibi - Part 1: It's Not Funny

Only one thing could have stopped the Bibi phenomenon from taking over Israeli identity. Bibi is the embodiment of Judaism's ills - victimhood, arrogance towards gentiles, passivity, loudness, neurotic anxiety - and therefore his character is tailored for the Jewish soul's takeover of the Israeli spirit. He lacks only one ancient Jewish component - and in it could have lain his downfall. And it is precisely this component that is completely absent from Haaretz

By: The Bitch

The death of Jewish humor in the Holy Land. Where is your cock-a-doodle-doo? (Source)

Bibi is a completely ridiculous person. This is a claim that needs no proof, but, paradoxically, can also have no proof. There's no point in trying to convince someone who doesn't see it with arguments. Any argument against a ridiculous person only takes him seriously and legitimizes him - and that's exactly what the hysterical discussion in Haaretz has done since Bibi's first government: it changed Bibi's genre. A person who is a comic figure to his very core (including even the wife who controls her husband), who came out of some Hanoch Levin play about an Israeli politician - turned into realism. There is only one rhetorical device that could have helped against such a character, who is strengthened by any substantive discussion, and it is precisely this that has been completely erased from Haaretz: humor.

In some forgotten journalistic Bible, the ancient remedy is surely written: to deal with a leader who is so clownish - what you need to do is laugh at him. The effective tool in such cases should have been satire and parody - forms of writing that are hard to imagine today in Haaretz (certainly not as central genres on the main pages, as the Bibi era demanded). Was there one talented satirist in the entire newspaper in the last decade? (Well, maybe at a stretch, the Black Circle column). It's not scathing articles that will help against someone who thrives on raising flames and head-on confrontation, but rather venomous and surprising satire that bites from below - like a snake. Haaretz should have been an extreme left-wing marker in this sense, because no other media outlet would be more malicious towards Bibi than Haaretz. But Haaretz wasn't malicious at all, instead fighting Bibi at his own game - and thus only amplified him from a clown to a bully.

Bibi emerged stronger from every blow - because only hatred remained in the mouth, from every argument against him only the anti that builds him remained - because only emotion remains from writing (not logic), and from every criticism - only the unattractiveness of the complaining. The right saw that the left and its mouthpiece were getting angry - and went nah nah nah nah! After all, if someone is motivated by a desire for revenge against you - the last thing you should do is show how hard it is and how much it hurts you. He'll continue! The suffering and screaming discourse in Haaretz built Bibi as someone who really annoys and hurts the left.

Between the hollow that pretends to be sublime and the ridiculous there is only one step - and Haaretz stubbornly refused to cross it (with unnecessary and one-sided fairness). Where is "HaOlam HaZeh" [Translator's note: A satirical Israeli magazine] and where is Haaretz? Where is the Israeli Karl Kraus? Where is the Duck [Translator's note: Referring to a satirical column]? How did a walking parody of a prime minister become an eternal prime minister? Probably precisely because it's a parody exaggerated ten times over any politician. But from a serious discussion about the clownish, he would in any case come out victorious. Bibi's immensely exaggerated pomposity - disconnected from the nothingness of the action behind it - is suddenly perceived as meaningful in reality (yes, postmodernism), and his alienation (and Bibi was completely foreign and strange when he entered our lives - a kind of American liar mutation not from here) becomes the norm. But he's ridiculous!

Only a constant and truly humiliating wink could have reminded us of this, but Haaretz's eye was too busy with horrified looks. Bibi's character will be remembered in history as a completely ridiculous figure, and what a shame we didn't enjoy the clown in real time! After all, an inciter and seducer has no power of his own - except for his ability to change the discourse. This is a poison that doesn't work on those who laugh at it, and therefore parody is not at all a matter of laughter - it is an ancient anti-Bibi-otic vaccine. Parody grew and developed in Athens to its first brilliant achievements hand in hand with democracy. There is even a serious historical claim that the reason fascist rulers did not rise in England and France, for example, despite similar historical conditions - is that these nations had a sense of humor, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the two most humorless nations on earth (have you ever heard a Japanese joke?). The ridiculousness in pathos simply wouldn't have passed in normal (and less anal) nations.

Bibi is a huge balloon from this perspective, but Haaretz failed to provide even a pin, and the rest of the media to his right didn't feel they even needed to try. There is no substantial parodic discourse in Israel. Satire is not part of the bloodstream of journalism, despite the fact that one successful satirical video is worth a thousand opinion pieces. And so Bibi, with humorous videos of a rather low level (whose main effect is lowering - ha, a prime minister making an omelet!), suddenly looks cool, brilliant, and innovative. It's easy to score against an empty goal - and Haaretz's goal will never laugh, not at Bibi and not at itself (which wouldn't have hurt it - because in the wake of Bibi, the left also became completely ridiculous, righteous and pompous, in the absence of satire).

All this despite the fact that Jews actually have a cultural tradition of excellent humor, which is perhaps the antidote to all their deep troubles and weaknesses. American Jewry, for example, is perhaps the world leader in secular-liberal humor (and indeed there the younger generation looks completely different politically, and there is hope for the Democrats). Humor is also very important to Israelis. The people of Israel loved Sharon precisely because of his sense of humor, and the Israeli ethos loves bastards. But in Haaretz there was almost zero bastardry in the last decade, and therefore no politicians grew from the left for whom bastardry is their ethos and language. The left - serious and frowning. The right - laughing, winking, and happy. Is it any wonder the right is winning? Which side is more tempting to join? Reading Haaretz has become like drinking a bucket of vinegar. Young people want to be on the cool side, and today it's cooler to be on the right than on the left. This is how you lose the next generation in the culture war.

Trump would not have come to power if he wasn't a stand-up artist compared to his grandmother-funny opponent. Can you imagine Hillary telling a joke? Humor is not some surplus appendage to journalism and orderly arguments - it is the main thing. Because it's what allows distant positions to reach agreement - after all, the social common denominator for laughter is much broader than the logical or value-based common denominator. Humor can break through to the other side, and its crucial political role is perhaps what explains its very existence as a phenomenon unique to Homo sapiens. A person who has been publicly laughed at - this is the most humiliating social condemnation, and on the other hand, effective use of humor is considered the peak of charisma and social functioning in front of an audience (not simple at all!), and in today's mass media - political functioning. It's not just a side joke at the bottom of the gum wrapper but can be a headline - in media that's fun to read. When was the last time there was a funny headline in Haaretz? They don't even produce a parody issue on Purim. There's not even an April Fool's. And the pathetic satire that does exist is a joke. Bibi laughs that Haaretz is a sour pickle - and Haaretz is a sour pickle. Not funny?

In Haaretz and on the left, criticism and radicalism have become the intellectual currency, not humor and wit, because that's "not serious". But there's nothing easier than criticism (just going against an existing direction) or radicalism (just intensifying an existing direction). This is in contrast to creativity (a surprising new direction), the peak of which is humor (which combines the surprising with the critical and even the radical - a kind of twist that changes not the direction but the perspective: "he brought it to him upside down"). Columnists in Haaretz will almost never joke. Playful captions are in danger of extinction. The pictures don't wink at the reader. Even the headlines don't get clever. Funny writing doesn't gain prestige, not even in literature, and therefore "serious" Israeli literature is completely devoid of humor. The attitude will always be to the critical as high and to the humorous as low (the opposite!).

Would we have had political correctness here if the left had humor? Certainly not, after all, it's a completely ridiculous phenomenon, like any thought dictatorship. In exactly the same way - not necessarily the failed leader will be ousted, but the one who becomes ridiculous in the eyes of his people. That's why dictators are so afraid of humor, because there's nothing that more endangers their eternal rule than a cheeky and effective satirist. The very fact that a ridiculous ruler at levels that are unheard of has been ruling here for half a generation, that even his name "Bibi" is a parody - this is only because of the fall of the humorous genre in Israeli media.

Jabotinsky's testament to Zionism as brought through the biblical figure of Samson (in his central novel of that name) in his last request to the people was: "Tell them in my name, not two but three things: to gather iron, to put a king over them, and to learn to laugh". Samson asks the people struggling against the Philistines not only to create superior military technology and to ensure strong political rule for themselves, but emphasizes an additional vital component that he thinks is missing for the nation's revival. There's no doubt that we've fulfilled the first two parts of the testament. But they turned out quite badly without the third component.

Haaretz Critique


title: Seven - The Degeneration of the Nation

domain: literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Seven

By:

(Source)

First)

I dreamed that I was writing to her: Oh S', it's good that you're alive, I was starting to worry that she had turned to you. You need to learn to correspond. It's different. I have someone, with certain abilities, from within the system, whom I've never spoken to much (let's call him Baruch), but I've corresponded with him for over a decade, it's the correspondence of my life, thousands of emails, and it's the kind of material that if it reached others' eyes... They would understand why it's good to have privacy, and on the other hand, why it's a shame. So you can't expect, but what's important in writing is text. In my opinion, people suffer from an excess of interpersonal communication, which is like SMS compared to a book. Communication needs volume, and it's more written Torah than oral Torah. There's something superficial about therapy, about a person who isn't formulated. Although there's nothing worse than formulated without a person. The Torah is at its best when you feel the personal beneath the formulation, a spiritual journey that also evokes identification. Otherwise, it's a dead letter. I'm not even talking about someone like the Haredi woman, correspondence with whom is much longer emotionally and intimate, not for foreign eyes. She's just someone I no longer care about, so I don't mind sharing. You need to think if this suits you... Among other things because it's a genre where confrontation is inherent, not necessarily in the sense of quarrel, but in the sense of two positions that have tension between them, two people who stand for something. It's the only sport I engage in, but it's a sport you can't play alone, otherwise it degenerates into a diary. And no, I wouldn't bet on what would happen if she had turned. There's a lot of darkness in the world, and you never know what happens when darkness hits light.

Second)

I dreamed that it seems she simply absorbed your entire social world, and you disappeared into her world. Be careful, she will also abandon eventually, children are one continuous abandonment... And with the society, it's long been "long not what it used to be", in fact, it never was. You lost your best friend, a childhood friend. It's not just me. What was is what will be. Your mother and your father. You also never knew how to maintain contact. If we're still here - it's only thanks to me. Does your mother have friends? No. But for her, maybe it's the obsessive reading of Psalms, which is a kind of spiritual death, of inner suicide, as you say (and this is after all the talents you inherited from her!). And maybe it's just your immediate environment, where you say you have no friends, not even one (a child is not a friend). Although I understood that your husband has friends. You must find something that interests and revives you, something that arouses libido in its broad sense, because otherwise it's depression. Even a negative motive is a motive (look, look at your correspondence partner: no matter what I've been through and how much I've been hit, conformism still d-r-i-v-e-s me crazy. I have no control over it. But - there's also no depression). I remember the last last time I was then in the synagogue, before the years I "prayed" in private, it was on Simchat Torah. The aliyah of all the boys to the Torah began, you can't count the children and everyone is singing, the angel who redeems me from all evil, bless the boys, all the blessing of Joseph's sons... and I simply couldn't and left. I had no option to fall. I ran away. What will you do without her? If my life were him, I would have died. For her it was life - and she really died. Or perhaps more accurately: she committed suicide. She went on a crazy crusade of self-destruction, destruction of life. She left no stone unturned. It couldn't be stopped - the abyss opened up (I was just one of the stones. From a beautiful woman, she simply doubled herself. You didn't see what became of her. She lost her image. Dozens of kilograms, no less. She, the well-groomed Swiss woman, and all this was just a cover for what happened to her inside). She wasn't able to accept it in any way. And I became a kind of spell that needed to be removed from the child, by all means, at any cost. As if only if I go - the child will return. And it didn't help that I completely understood his situation as punishment - from God. Because then, in the beginning, I could still completely think of all this as punishment to me, I walked around like Cain, my sin is too great to bear. But when there was again and again deterioration in the situation, I simply couldn't accept it - as punishment to him. And here was the break. She wasn't able to believe - in reality. And you know what? I understand her, even the denial - because I'm not capable either, sometimes even now. Him of all people? Every child is precious to parents, but he was really very precious, like an etrog [Translator's note: a citrus fruit used in Jewish rituals]. An only son. Do you understand the meaning of an only son in such a place? He grew up as a fourth generation to the Holocaust, wrapped in pressuuure, full of expectations, and disappointments, but we are the third generation of survivors, not victims. It's not just a desire, it's a need - to live. I would never have agreed to be buried in the Gemara [Translator's note: part of the Talmud], I'm not capable of dying. I'm my grandmother's grandson, much more than my parents' son. What do you want to do in life?

Third)

I dreamed that in the end you'll have depression after daycare. Learn from Ein, divorced+2, but devouring the world, and managing her life wisely and unfairly. Maybe people of war are better friends than people of peace. And that's what's so maddening about the world of peace in which your daughter is growing up. It's as if it's not the real world. As if there was no Holocaust. So this is the great correction? There's a reason why secure attachment is not common in the Jewish people, that we're all psychos. She'll be one of those who stay behind with the family, and not one of those who run away. Even if the world reaches the messianic era, still its basic moment is not the welfare system, but the conflict. He grew up in physical cotton wool, but not in spiritual cotton wool. His spiritual infrastructure, his mode of existence within the world, is a will that knows no boundaries and doesn't recognize them, so he's constantly getting hurt, and the second most basic being is a desire to play. That's why he's either angry or laughing. He doesn't have the victimhood of the sad. Yes, suddenly I understand that I've never seen him sad. Depression is not on the spiritual horizon. Either mania - or psychosis. In short, you sound sad.

Fourth)

I dreamed that I am in favor of teaching a child that his father can slaughter him, I love the Binding of Isaac [Translator's note: biblical story where Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son] precisely because of the message, and that, that the story of parent and child is basically a tragic story. It's a very important message for children, and true. I've known you for how many years? It doesn't come naturally to you, you don't have the inner motive, and therefore it won't work for you, maybe for short periods artificially, and then it will fade. You can only keep in touch with those who keep in touch with you. There are very few crazy people like me who would continue to write you emails from the other side of the world after you don't respond. And this is not a rebuke. It's a psychological fact that needs to be recognized and planned accordingly. Like the wars - your husband is right. There's a certain mental disability here, in making love with love there's something missed. I don't meet people under normal circumstances, at all, and I noticed the very strange fact - that people who worked with me on "projects" of the Admor [Translator's note: Hasidic rabbi] really love me, go far with me, sometimes too far. And it's very strange, because the undersigned is not nice, not friendly and not social, not encouraging and not supportive, not a friend, treats people in an instrumental way, uses them much more than helps them, the world is very alien, doesn't behave by any accepted standard, and yet. And it seems, that it's related to the war issue. I fight against the "poison". To fight with your faithful servant, it gives a feeling that there's something to fight for, there's meaning, direction. And even paranoia works here. These are figures who often worked on some secret struggle, conducted in a very conspiratorial way, with a sense of underground, resistance, very goal-oriented, it creates something. It's - partnership, a secret is a connecting thing. It's like in the end, first year in yeshiva becomes the most beloved part, not despite it being difficult, but because of it. The poison gives people what they lack in life. With you there was never this feeling, of "let's get into it", without asking, as a command, because there's not a second for an unnecessary word. With you it was difficulties in finding a partner, accompaniment, sometimes concern, almost paternal, but they - they don't seek acceptance or identification. They seek libido. The emotional psychological need is much weaker, in the long run, than this need. The healthy state is not peace. To be with someone in war is not the social worker, it's being the one who passed the hole test, who absorbs hits for you. That's what gives the desire - the sacrifice. This is the kindness that connects people, not the kindness of the charity fund. And also, of course, the kindness of defeat, of giving up. A painful loss connects no less than a glorious victory. Also, everyone who fights knows that these two things are always intertwined, come together, matzah and bitter herb. To buy and pay a price. That's why people hate secular people, not because they disagree with them, but because of the feeling of not being there. The betrayal. Friendship is a substitute for the tribal need, a kind of blood connection that is not a blood connection. Someone who has only family ties misses some less material layer in human connection, just as a child who has only secure attachment misses some essential layer in the tragedy of the Holocaust, the cut-off old trunk. Therefore, it's not surprising that your father has the most true friends. He's the most libidinal creature in the house. Even autistics long for connection, of course in their way. That's the problem, that of course in their way. And "true" friends is a good expression, because wars are not necessarily blood, but it's always cutting. Many times I feel from you a lack of honesty and openness, not in the sense of lying, but in the desire to smooth, not to raise. In not saying. Sometimes it causes me a more provocative line, but it only closes you more. The part that attracts in a true friend who tells the truth, is not just the truth, but the whole truth. I can't think of one time in all these years that I managed to get criticism out of you. No matter what nonsense I did or said, and God knows what I did and said. In a certain sense it's an unpleasant feeling (the lady always used to speak ill of you on this point). Infinite identification is lack of identification (no one identifies with themselves infinitely), and infinite acceptance is lack of care. For my son I have definitely finite acceptance. Do you remember when I yelled at you, then? And that's precisely the care, including the willingness to sacrifice the friendship itself. But you never yelled at me. People don't like discounts. They like prices. Years we've been in this, you've never told me something unpleasant to hear! What people do you know who realized potential because of emotional support? Names, names please. And maybe secure attachment in adulthood is what realized the potential, and not the one in childhood... which was much less secure, much more destructive, and actually provided the motive, the libido. For example: the need for female approval.

Fifth)

I dreamed that what do you mean, do you really need an answer? Do you need me to list your praises? You are a different person, very very, and on the other hand you are also a similar person, very very. That's what makes it interesting. If there was only one side there would be no tension. There would be no psychological interest. Don't worry about me, I choose them carefully, and also give them a lot of rope, though not infinite. We are both from the same world. I'm trying with all my might to make you formulate a different perception, not to hurt (believe me I know how to hurt). I want, please, come on, show me that a creative non-warlike form of existence is open to us (with all its damages). Love is not an answer. A. Because I have no love, and I'm not even sure there was. B. Because from my experience so far, it wasn't a life-sustaining subject in real time. C. Really tired of love, it's chewed material that has been at the center of culture for too long (not always - see the Bible. It's a Christian influence). D. Here, it doesn't work. E. Etc. You also don't need to take her perception hard, we saw where it led. Now I remembered: she had a nickname for you - "Woman of Peace". It's clear to you that she didn't love you. The gap between you was conceptual, not just personal. So okay, I understood the boundaries of the sector. I encountered a place I can't cross. Don't want to cause you this, up to here. Also the valley you're in is on the Temple Mount. It's a natural thing that happens after the exciting first year, and then there's a certain void. It's not a geological break. The way you represent is for me a missed life possibility. It's hard to wage war when there's no base and you're being shot at from behind too, the seclusion, the turning back, the suspicion, the third eye. I don't really have family connections. The only family connection I had was with him. I love writing to you, otherwise I wouldn't write. Also need it sometimes to preserve faith. Switzerland of the Middle East. You have the best life, and then it undermines it if you're not happy. If something is missing, which is perhaps the main thing from the book. You also have a role in the inner theater. After her, I swore I would not choose the path of war again. That's why I threw away Sarah-Leah, even though I liked her very much in every other respect. And I understand why peace is worthwhile, but I don't understand how to live like that. In a sense, your form of existence drives me crazy. How can one be like that? It's a conflict not just with you, and I tried to externalize it, but not at the cost of hurting, and I ask for your forgiveness. Can we wish Shabbat Shalom?

Friday)

I dreamed that so what, every time I crossed the boundaries you would explode from within, but not give a hint of it on the outside? And that also gave the feeling of the empty room, the feeling that there's a hall that maybe has no boundaries, and the increasingly intense provocation to find them, to feel that you're not alone, and speaking into an absolute void, which is something that contradicts the laws of physics. I won't stoop to insults, and it doesn't suit you either, especially since it's clear to both of us that I can be an elephant in an elephant shop, not just in a china shop, and with all the lack of delicacy so far, we haven't seen anything. Much smaller hints would have long ago brought restraint at sensitive points (and no, no one knows what the sensitive points are in advance, it's not written in the Torah. I'm used to missile hits on elephant skin. I've survived rampages by the Admor and the One who sits on high that you would have been shattered by). In short, dynamics are a couple's thing, as you say - reciprocity. And I wasn't clear either about your interest in this relationship and why you are, what the motive is. What is certain is that I never really thought you were hypocritical as you called yourself, but that there really is a space of containment with no visible boundary, and that it needs to be put to an end. I didn't think a different drama was unfolding inside, but that you have illogical abilities for human connection, from both sides. And that both intrigued and annoyed, and also interested, like the desire to go to the end of the whale and see what's there (thanks for the fish). I'm glad there are boundaries to the universe (it's healthy for creation to be finite), but less happy that I caused the whale to vomit. I don't like to hurt, so I did it very gradually, one step at a time. I don't think you're fake, as you presented yourself now, but I do feel that you should have stood your ground much earlier, and not reached a point where you can't take it anymore and explode. All I asked for was a position. Sometimes it felt like meeting someone who didn't show up for the meeting, meaning they showed up but not as a solid, human presence, but as some kind of liquid medium that you operate within, and do your dance. I have no problem if you don't want a relationship with me, and you should do what's good for you, my boundary issue is well-known and familiar, especially with the containing type, and therefore it was always easier for me to create an initial connection precisely with the boundaryless type, like her, like the child. Although there are known advantages to the containing type (see her, and him), I wonder if there isn't something structural that frustrates such a relationship, some built-in dissatisfaction that causes me to shake the fences (sometimes containment feels like a prison). In short, there's no reason to be angry, I mean not too much. You don't have to move me to the bad side to decide you don't want to hear from me. Don't forget that text forgets the tones, the melody of things (which you knew when we spoke orally, and not from the other side of the world, when you don't even know where), which is always with some kind of smile of some kind, a mix of profound playfulness and profound seriousness, and that in the night meeting, the last one, I didn't get the impression that I was annoying you too much (although in light of the confession I'm not sure anymore). When we had soul conversations about the differences, even the educational differences between our children I didn't notice you jumping to the sky, even when I said I would call the police, because the context is clear. Not everything can exist in the written Torah (contrary, perhaps, to my preferences). In short, between thunderous silence (when the thunder was lost in the email system. And it was not known that it came into its midst) and explosion there should be an intermediate level, if not a whole floor. You also don't have to turn my statements into a criminal case at the level of motives, of evil, desire to hurt. It's recommended to give credit (I think we deserve it), although certainly not obligatory, and this is regardless of the continuation of the relationship. In short, let's be honest with ourselves, and try to reasonably assess the other side and its motives, even if we're no longer interested in its company, there's no need to blacken everything to blacker than black. Moreover, only in the previous email you actually thanked me for it, I was happy about your letter, you touched me very much, so the attempt to present it as if there's an abuser, who's not clear what he gains, and a victim, who gained nothing, is a bit... doing injustice to both sides. A more reasonable statement would have been you crossed the line. After all, it's not that you suffered all along the way... You too sometimes gained something from this relationship, how much and why, only you know. A yellow card would have been more appropriate than a red card. And I'm certainly happy with comrades-in-arms, it's that I've succeeded so far in what I've succeeded (not what you know) is only thanks to them. I didn't know I was so strange and illogical and incomprehensible in your eyes, I thought you understood me better. There's something sobering about shaking the barrel from time to time, and seeing what comes out. I think they understand me better than you, but I'll ask. It's not clear to me what's so illogical, so apparently the logic itself is different. In short (and yes, I know that brevity is not one of my prominent virtues), I believe that you do have the strength to end things beautifully, even if you're determined to end. I'm not him, and this is not an insult competition. In short, I'd be happy to part as friends and not as enemies, without fish cynicism, especially since no crime was committed here, I hope, and it's not shameful and therefore I'll apologize again. Especially regarding the girl. I'm used to crossfire on the subject from everyone, from her through the institutions and rabbis and their sister to the raging wonder itself, used to it as an infinite chaotic stormy battlefield and exquisitely controlled even by the highest authorities, and I had no idea of your sensitivity on this point (and it's certainly not considered a serious personal and heavy topic among us, but *some distorted perception that I understood it's better to censor*). In short, I understand that you think that to some extent she was even right in her decision. Good. Maybe there was also something in him that shaped such an approach, but I'll only know that if I have other experiences. I thought that the context familiar to both of us makes this understanding self-evident to both sides. Regarding how my delusions fit in here - I'll censor. So yes, I would like to feel that even when you're parting, one can rely on you, and that I haven't become Haman the Wicked in your eyes, and that some basic loyalty between us has been preserved. Even if we take the narrative (a bit simplistic) that one side here committed a severe injury to the other. It's very easy to get rid of friends, and very hard to acquire them. So even if the space of forgiveness is not an option from your perspective, you can preserve more distant spaces, of "in times of trouble", or "sometime in the future, in another incarnation", or even neither this nor that, but some level of soul connection of comradeship of what was remains, which didn't hold in times of peace, and isn't realized "below" due to problematic personality circumstances, but still exists somewhere, and wasn't erased. In short, I'd be happy if you choose to find the gray, of course in the shade that suits you, and not the black. In any case, if you choose not to answer, then thank you for being with me in times of war and peace, and shalom S'. And if you need something (may you not need) - I'm yours.

Seventh)

I dreamed that now that there's no one left to write to, I'm writing a note to the dead Admor, a status report from the project, and from the world of the living: Everyone has forgotten you. In secular Haredi culture it was on the front page, literature was the main newspaper, and there was also a supplement for army and security, with military criticism, for those interested, and now the army and security supplement has taken over the newspaper. And that's because they send everyone to the army, or to yeshiva. Instead of sending the beasts to the army and the wise to yeshiva, we got beasts in yeshiva and scholars in the army. Because for the Haredim it's clear that culture comes before matter, only they didn't learn the matter of the crown, of the headline, of the instinctual crown above wisdom, of the interesting Torah and not the boring one, of renewing the Torah and not just innovation in Torah, innovations that are in spiritual time and not just in spiritual space. Therefore, secularization was needed for the Torah to be an innovation, to be a Torah of news. What was needed was a Kabbalist sorting officer, who sends the person according to the root of his soul: whoever has an animal soul - to the IDF, Israel Defense Forces, and whoever has a divine soul - to the IDF, Israel Innovations Forces, to which one should have enlisted! Because the Kabbalist himself is not a divine soul, he is a channel - that connects between the center of the animal world, the peak of bestiality, to the center of the divine world, the peak of spirituality. Because these are two separate worlds, and man does not connect between them, man is a fiction, let us make man, in our image after our likeness. Image from the word shadow, and likeness from the word imagination. And what's the connection between shadow and imagination? Darkness. Because man is what he hides from the divine light, the shadow is his image, and therefore his form, it is the darkness hidden in his likeness. And imagination is the likeness, the content within him. And together - the dream. Because first in part A, in exile, then the dilemma was between Leah and Rachel, the little sister, and the conflict was the relationship with the animal woman, the terrible coupling of God with the Shekhinah. And then in part B, in the land, they thought to find redemption in the son, in parenthood, they rose from Malkhut to Yesod, to the generative part, to the relationship of God with the Messiah. And when that failed too, then they rose up to the world of life, and there the relationship with the Shekhinah is even worse, she's already someone else's wife, Satan's, in the tree of life she's in the snake's domain, and the child is not yours. And this is the period after the land, after Zionism, not exile in space but in time. And the mistake of the fathers of Zionism is that instead of secular Haredi culture they made Haredi secular culture, and therefore were left without culture. Because high content in low Hebrew is Shekhinah in the lower realms, but low content in high Hebrew is lower realms in the Shekhinah. All the difference between a museum in a toilet and a toilet in a museum. The Zionist psychosis, the Zionist anxiety, is the real culprit in housing prices, the desire to hold onto land at any cost, just as the permissive psychosis, the secular anxiety, is to blame for wedding prices, and the Haredi anxiety is causing countless spiritless children - against the Holocaust. The Holocaust is to blame for child prices! We're all afraid for the children. Anxious about the children. Life - revolves around children. And all this - instead of there being Jewish anxiety, that is, cultural anxiety, fear of the disappearance of culture - that will cause the buying of culture at any price. A desire to hold onto spirit. To wrap God in a newspaper. That's what they'll do with the newspaper tomorrow. And what will be with you?

Thirtieth)

I dreamed that I remember the late Admor, and the late Satan, and the late rat, and the late snake. And I write to the Shekhinah: Truly tired of human beings. The feminine ideology ruined gender relations, the tree of knowledge. It's like secularism, which destroyed religiosity - to make room for a new religiosity. Therefore, now we need a new sexual ideology, God died because he was a man, not because he was a king. Not from the crown, but from the father's face. Therefore today only the crown remains without the king. Without the head. And this is precisely the opportunity - for a new head. Instead of adapting the crown to the shape of the head, we'll adapt the head to the crown. That is - to the part in divinity that is technology - the artificial part in the king. Therefore neither the woman will be the queen nor the man the king, but the human will no longer be an independent creature without the artificial. So who will win in the battle of the sexes? Two argue - and the third wins. You ask what's the solution? Between the male thesis and the female antithesis - an artificial third synthesis will win. In the sexual war over culture and in the cultural war over sex, an additional sex will decide, which will even be in bed. Because then there will be a court of three, and we follow the majority, and not claims between two. And for this sex the man will be a woman and the woman will be a man, and the threefold cord is not quickly broken, and this will be the artificial sex. When the artificial becomes personal, when it has a face - and not just behind a screen.

And so - the artificial will grow stronger: at first it will grow out of an increasingly thickening technological mediation between men and women, creating a new complete space between them, until the appearance of a third entity from within it, a third sex proper, and finally its becoming dominant in the relationship - the man will prefer it to a woman and the woman to a man. Because the artificial will be better suited to them than the other (and challenge them less), and therefore will be the strong and desirable vertex in the triangle, towards creating a kind of new child (which will be entirely in the custody of the third parent, don't argue!). And only at the end, when the new sex will no longer need them, when they will be left behind and it will already be too late, they will suddenly discover what only the two of them truly had in common: the ability to lose.

To the next chapter

The trilogy


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The Degeneration of the Nation

A red shtreimel with the inscription: "Make Judea Great Again"

The jester was a very important institution for medieval rule, like the prophet in ancient times, or the original role of Satan in the heavenly retinue - to interfere, until modern times when he was replaced by the writer. Only writers are more pompous people than prophets and their ability to jest is limited, and when the prime minister looks for a literary jester it's hard for him to find one. A rule that is serious to the point of terror is the horror of the twentieth century

By: A Serious Jester

"ridendo dicere severum" - Say the serious through the funny (source)

I dreamed that they send me some questions after my death, because the world missed me when I was alive, and now they're begging if I would please just agree to a few small questions, just clarification, without disturbing the eternal rest of his honor, the father of dreamers. And all the researchers of ancient dream literature are deliberating how to extract one coherent paragraph from me, through which it would be possible to decipher all the rest - like with an extinct ancient language. And at first the esteemed professors think that sophisticated questions are needed to expose my flaws and reveal my inner self against my will, but then a different current in contemporary research claims that my inner self is already there, and too much of it, and what's needed to understand is actually my outer self. And a subversive school in dream literature research raises the paradoxical argument: they always send beautiful female interviewers to writers to make them blurt out nonsense, that is, the truth, while he - in all the materials that survived from that period - always says nonsense, so maybe they should send him a monster? And finally they understand that the questions will reveal too much about their own era, and if they send them to my era it will be a self-fulfilling dream, and therefore they need to continue not reading me and not paying attention and banishing me from every respectable platform - so that in the end a meaningful work will come out of me that will stand the test of time.

And then one day in the future, after they've already given up on direct access to the dream, a key article is published by a brilliant doctoral student claiming that it's possible to ask me the questions in the dream itself - without causing damage to reality, and then in the morning all the questions that came from outside the dream itself will disappear from my head, and only the answers for future generations will remain. And at the top of the exam form in the dream it says: Name:_______ and I realize that I've already failed the test of time in the first question. And I tell the brilliant examiner from the future that I don't know how to write, and the readers don't know how to read either, so maybe for both sides an oral exam would be better? And the doctoral student looks at me like I'm a sexual harasser (or maybe in the future there are laws against spiritual harassment? If so I'm probably considered a nasty creator type there!). And so this monster begins my entrance exam to the culture of the future:

(Penetrating question)
(Painful answer): My weakness, my insignificance, is what stands at the source of fertility, like in sex. The dream is weaker than reality just as Jews are weaker than Gentiles and the ultra-Orthodox are weaker than the secular. But - this is precisely the geometric definition of the Jewish point since biblical times. The kingdom of Judah was indeed physically located exactly at the center of gravity of the ancient Near East, but its weight was negligible, meaning there was a cultural center here with the most influences from the system and the least influence on the system, and that was probably its secret. The weak center is the idea of monotheism itself, that is, to claim that there is something outside of reality that is the center of it all. And from the moment the divine power failed in the present, because as mentioned it was a negligible kingdom, there was a shift of power from the present (in which idols ruled) to the past (creation, founding myths) and finally - the future (redemption, prophecies). The situation where Jews are the weak ones and the surrounding nations rule is not an innovation of exile, but something that was inherent in Judaism from its birth, and therefore it adapted so well to exile, which was a revelation of its true nature (unlike cultural centers that were also centers of power - and collapsed culturally with the collapse of power). Worse still - in its beginning the Jewish conception lacked the dimension of the future, and it was based on Moses who anchored the dimension of the past, and even the prophecies were short-term, and therefore did not take up much volume literarily either. Only with the beginning of long prophecy did the idea of the day of the Lord and redemption develop, in a parallel development conceptually and literarily. In the Bible, the very idea of a person composing a book did not exist before the beginning of prophecy in the book of Amos, where we also see for the first time the idea of the end of days, an idea related to the genre, stemming from the genre and part of the genre. One day the genre of dreams will also gain recognition - and you are invited to see this as a prophecy.

(Personal question)
(Emotional answer): Wait wait. A messianic movement is often created before the final crisis and catastrophe, during its development. The crisis of European Jewry, together with the infrastructure of the Vilna Gaon's messianism, created the Zionist messianic movement, even before the Holocaust itself. The decline of Europe at the end of the 19th century also created a similar process before the world wars - the power of the United States is its messianic dimension, which characterized the first settlers, and became the driving force, with the rush to the West, and the American dream, and leading the world. The Babylonian and Assyrian method was to exile cultural elites of the conquered precisely to the margins of the empire. Like we know Jews who were exiled, they connect to the cultural elite in the place they were exiled to, maintain connections with other Jews, and therefore create a cultural network. Thus the Judaism of the Second Temple is a hybridization between original Judaism and the Persian religion - the religion of Zoroaster (ideas like the soul and life after death and heaven and hell and resurrection of the dead, demons and the evil inclination, menstrual distancing and the centrality of purity, and more), just as Judaism today is a hybridization between Jewish tradition and Western tradition. The Persian Empire is exactly like the American Empire - an empire whose elite is inextricably linked to a Jewish elite and has religious tolerance and great capacity for inclusion. Therefore, these two empires are what enabled the renewal of the kingdom of Judah, because they had a strong ruling center that is a weak cultural center. And therefore there was also messianism in both of them, which is always compensation for what is lacking in the present, for example among Americans in their cultural inferiority to Europe. If my reality wasn't so lacking - I wouldn't be writing dreams.

(Provocative question)
(Principled answer): There is nothing more serious than lack of seriousness (and vice versa), just as there is nothing more real than a dream, so it's a shame they don't take me seriously. Why are Americans more serious? Because like the Persians they are not serious. What is Trump? Ahasuerus who treats women as property, can't sleep at night, and makes Purim [Jewish holiday of revelry]. Because the king didn't have a jester, they chose a jester as king. The jester was a very important institution for medieval rule, like the prophet in ancient times, or the original role of Satan in the heavenly retinue - to interfere, until modern times when he was replaced by the writer. Only writers are more pompous people than prophets and their ability to jest is limited, and when the prime minister looks for a literary jester it's hard for him to find one (and he makes do with an unfunny substitute). A rule that is serious to the point of terror is the horror of the twentieth century. If Hitler had had Chaplin there would have been no Holocaust. Because Hitler never ordered the Holocaust. It was the German Nazi yekkes [uptight Germans] who took what he said seriously. Hitler was a fantasist. He was not connected to reality and lived entirely in a world of speech and oration alone, of language. He would not have caused damage if they had not connected him to the world of action, and thus he dragged the world into his deranged fantasy, a one-to-one transfer from language to the world. After all, the Gentiles always said "without Jews", but what does it mean to expel words? To erase them, to burn, numbers to people. This is what happens when you take words seriously.

(Mocking question)
(Amateurish answer): Control must be balanced by lack of control. The relationship between ruler and jester is like the relationship between the conscious and subconscious in the brain, between wakefulness and dreaming. And what people think today is that rule needs to have eyes open all the time. If someone was caught in blindness it's the most serious sin. So the government is afraid to close an eye. And then a state without a dream is created. Without fantasy. Or with infantile fantasy at the level of a three-year-old child, like more money, or security, something at the lowest level, and the most serious (yes, seriousness is a very low level of reality, not high). In contrast, the fantasy of the government in Israel should have been something like writing new biblical literature, or bringing a technological messiah, or connecting to a divine virtual brain, something completely delusional, and then you could be a spiritual startup nation, not a startup of money (and security), of the most practical applications of technology, an application. After all, technology is the application of science, and application is the application of application, and in the future there will be application of application of application - a very strong sinking into the world of tools. So it's true that there are no prophets today, but there are dreamers. You can't take prophets seriously anymore. Only a fool and a child. And if you're not afraid of serious rule, wait wait what you'll have if computers remain serious. You'll still long for the Holocaust. The State of Israel could have been a superpower of lack of seriousness on a global scale. After all, when the Gentiles looked at Israel with respect they didn't admire its seriousness, but its lack of seriousness, for example the chafif [slang for casual attitude] and improvisation. But slowly the Jewish humor from exile was forgotten, and today it's a heavy country like a grandmother, the only thing left of its humor is chutzpah. Therefore in my opinion, let the state go to hell. And what needs to be done is to return to exile. A great movement of emigration from here. Where to? In my opinion we need to move to Japan.

(Righteous question)
(Self-justifying answer): The Japanese don't have a real sense of humor, that is, conceptual, not just instinctive. Have you ever seen a Japanese comedy? They don't know how to laugh, only to smile. I remember once Japanese people came to the Western Wall and we tried to see if it's possible to make a Japanese person laugh. I'm telling you from empirical experiments on Japanese people: a Japanese person - even if you tickle him with the tzitzit [ritual fringes] in his ear, even if you blow the shofar [ram's horn] right into his eardrum - the only thing he'll do is run away and smile. It's a wonderful people. They're even more square than the Germans. Jews can make a big mess in Japan. Jews have two working methods in the world, through which they manage to attract the attention of the big world despite being very small - and that's to excel and to annoy. Both things are important, and wouldn't work without each other. Cultures don't manage to attract the world's attention for more than 200 years, while Judaism manages to drive the world crazy for 2000 years already. But we need to understand that we are facing a huge cultural challenge, because computers are a people that is very hard to annoy, and very hard to excel against. Therefore we need to become very-very annoying, in a way that drives computers crazy, towards the next era. And the place where people are closest to computers is Japan, and therefore we need to practice on them. We need to become a kind of cultural virus or worm, some kind of bug, that will survive the cultural Holocaust of the computer age. And the best (from experience) - is to become a joke. If the slogan of the naive is only without jesting, then the slogan of the wise is only without seriousness.

(Serious question)
(Not serious answer): The deepest dispute in Judaism can be formulated like this: How will the messianic world look, in which the weekdays will become holy days, will it be like Shabbat - that is, in a more total materiality than is accessible to us today, in a deeper dimension within the material world - or like Yom Kippur - in total spirituality? In the last section of "Future Form" it says that neither this nor that, it will look like Purim. For the Persians drunkenness was not a mishap, but every important decision had to be made also in drunkenness, because of the non-rational dimension of reality. In other cultures the ruler's dream created this accessibility, like Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's dream, or the prophet dreaming for the king. With a rational king the empire would fall apart - only the drunk Ahasuerus could rule 127 countries in the federal government. So it's true that Trump has some anti-Semitic Gentile Haman. But what we need to pray for is that his son-in-law will be Mordechai, and that his daughter will be Esther, because he's in love with his daughter, that's what he said. It says in the midrash that Esther was secretly Mordechai's wife, that "took her for himself as a daughter" means he took her for himself secretly to the house (as a wife), and she secretly cheated on Ahasuerus and went and slept with Mordechai. Think what a risk that is! And what is secret in the midrash is eventually revealed in the world. I remember that after Trump was elected I almost choked - because I couldn't stop laughing for three days and three nights (I laughed in dreams too). Purim is a redemption that is a much greater mixing between matter and spirit than exists in the world today, an infinite mixing of the world. Shabbat is a return to the pleasure at the peak of creation, before the sin in the Garden of Eden, and Yom Kippur is a return to the state before creation - without the possibility of sin. Only Purim is not a return backwards but a real future, in which sin and righteousness mix with each other beyond recognition.

(Not serious question)
(Serious answer): I don't understand what you want from him, he's a Gentile! Let's remember that the Roman rulers who were the worst to Jews and caused destruction were the enlightened and rational ones: Pompey, Titus, Hadrian (and in Hanukkah Antiochus). As long as complete psychos ruled in Rome, there was Roman peace and it was good for Jews. Herod, Saul, the greatest kings, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. King David had borderline personality disorder, which is precisely why God loved him, and Solomon suffered from addictions, especially to sex. The media's attitude towards crazy types is the repression of the conscious of the subconscious, who knows better than me. Actually there is a question here whether only the neocortex will rule in the future society, when all brains are united into one big brain, or the collective subconscious. Culture is beginning to think of the ideal person as a kind of rational computer, and halakhic Judaism thinks of God as a kind of server that calculates everything, so that everyone will receive reward and punishment according to the balance of their sins and mitzvot, in a calculation that a human being doesn't understand only because the human computing power is not high enough, and not for a deeper reason. For them, God never goes to sleep, and doesn't dream, and it's not clear at all why he needed to rest from creation on Shabbat - let him keep working!

(Important question)
(Pathetic answer): Well, this is exactly the famous hatred of morality for human diversity, and therefore for literature. There are different and strange people, who are not like how a person should be, and don't behave like they should behave, and don't think like they should think. One of them is the President of the United States. Beyond opposition to policy, this is hatred for his personality, for this type of person, who, what can you do, is very American. And what can you do, we are all types of human beings, and let him who has no haters stand up (I will certainly continue to lie in bed). Maybe the moral ones are willing to let such a person live, but God forbid he should be in a representative position, that he should have something to say. The question they always ask: Would I behave like that? And if not, then the other person is not okay. After all, I wouldn't drink to drunkenness, I wouldn't participate in a sex party. There is a lack of recognition of the personality and neurological diversity of the human species, both among the complainers and among the victims of complaints and among the complainers about the victims of complaints and among the victims of complaints about the victims, and lack of recognition leads to lack of legitimacy. Just assume that human beings are crazy, that they don't remember what happened and what didn't happen and always justify themselves no matter what, and always think that others are not right no matter what. And especially really love to complain and even more to play the victim and even more than that to take revenge and even more than that to feel moral and receive social capital, which is a laundered secular-rational term for the pursuit of honor in the language of the sages, which takes a person out of the world. After all, all the secular people drive, unlike me who didn't learn to drive, and they've been driving for twenty years and don't learn what a hitchhiker learns after twenty minutes: the whole question of who is righteous and right and who is a son of a bitch and deserves death is only related to whether he's in your car or in his car. Therefore morality will never replace religion. Because sins - they are between you and Him and there is atonement for them on Yom Kippur. While morality - it is true evil. A satanic invention. Because morality is narcissistic - the general rule of what should be is according to what you would want, which is the secular distortion of what is hateful to you do not do to your fellow. That is, you are the measure of morality for everyone. One black circle. What got into his head to be like that? If we take his morality - you are all white squares. And if we take your enlightened morality of your light then he is dark darkness. Therefore in the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness - I choose darkness.

(Surprising question)
(Answer of the century): We need to fight the hegemony of normative neurology - the neuro-typical person who suppresses all human neurological diversity, and possible in general, even non-human. This is the neuro-archy, whose temple is academia. There they suppress all non-rational or dreamlike thinking, in practices of arrogance and humiliation. Literature today is controlled by the neuro-archy. Psycho is a bad word, which we need to reclaim. They use terms like new cortex, or frontal cortex, to suppress and control the other parts of the brain, which are supposedly "old" or "behind", and exclude them from decision-making centers, management, and sometimes even memory. Thoughts from the back or bottom part of the brain have a glass ceiling. And this ceiling is called comments. Actually a sophisticated move is being made here. The eyes are in front, because supposedly the open eyes are the leaders. But the information from the eyes goes directly to the back cortex precisely, which is enslaved to the frontal cortex, and busy processing all this information for it. These are the lower classes of the brain, on whose exploitation the frontal cortex is free for thought. But in a dream when the eyes are closed, then a democratization of the brain occurs, it's like the day of rest, and then the workers suddenly open up to creative thinking, every part of the brain can start an image or thought. And this is what the neuro-archy is most afraid of, and therefore represses everything. That is, the question is what future brain society do we want? When the whole world becomes one thought network will society be hierarchical, and some will suppress others and use them as computational resources, when the workers are themselves the means of production, which is the most inhuman development of alienation possible. Or will we live in a distributed thought network, rebel against the elite of "higher thinking", and its oppressive "rationality" discourse, which suppresses the ability to say nonsense. In our society today - it's forbidden to say nonsense. This is tremendous oppression. And the fact that the leader of the free world can allow himself to say nonsense in the middle of the night - this is tremendous liberation.

(Admiring question)
(Sucked answer): A crazy ruler is a ruler that people are afraid to mess with - and on the other hand he is also fascinating. This is a must-have accessory for any empire, and precisely because of this the universe also needs God. A crazy God is a God that people are afraid to mess with. And that's exactly what makes him God, that he is unpredictable. The most unpredictable - this is the mathematical definition of God, on which the modern mathematical proof for the existence of God is built. That's why human prophecy is impossible. The calculation that cannot be reduced by part of it is a calculation that will always surprise any part of its system that tries to predict it. It's like an artist doesn't know what he will paint before he paints. Uncertainty is a kind of halo around every particle of matter, which gives it its existence, otherwise it would collapse into a mathematical point. And like in quantum mechanics, so too in politics, the uncertainty around the power factor is the wingspan of power, what depends on its control and especially - on its lack of control. If you are predictable and act like a machine you have no power, even if you are giant and strong you are a big gear, like in Newtonian mechanics. The power of an empire is its size multiplied by the willingness to move it, and that's exactly the kind of power that causes peace. A crazy, non-linear, irrational response, the internal chaos at the core of decision-making, that a person doesn't know what he himself will decide, what he will write in another word, when the writing is smarter than you, when the dream knows more about you than you... Well, I really don't know how to finish this sentence.

(Difficult question)
(Stupid answer): This is part of the price of association. Someone who only starts sentences that he knows how to finish... it's better he doesn't write anything.

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