text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Contemporary Theology (Part 2): The Three Great Theological Developments of Our Time

What is the theology of a religion of Torah study, namely Jewish theology? It is giving the highest religious significance to Torah study, and learning is not only (and not primarily) memorization and interpretation, but innovation and creation, and above all - innovation and creation in the method itself. The supreme religious act is writing a new Torah - creating a new method - and therefore Moses is the great founder and not the father (Abraham), the conqueror (Joshua) or the king (David). Thus, the depth of the method that Moses taught us is not interpretation (to study the Torah) - but creativity (to learn from the Torah): to learn to write Torah

By: Catness and Infinity

Theology of masterpieces: Know what is above you. The ceiling of the theological school in Isfahan (Source)

Theology is not philosophy of religion. Because contrary to the philosophical (provincial) bias of contemporary Jewish theologians - theology is not philosophy. Philosophy deals with the general religious phenomenon, while theology is always particular within the realms of a specific religion, and in our case - Judaism. That is: theology is theoretical learning - within the system, and not its conceptualization from the outside (and certainly not its explanation, in the Jewish parallel of Israeli hasbara, namely apologetics). In the second half of the 20th century, the century of language, theology often perceived itself as dealing with religious language (therefore, it was often a project of translating it into other languages, and vice versa. For example: the general philosophical language, or the intellectual language of our time, or the scientific language, or the psychological language, and so on. There were also more esoteric translation projects, such as Liebes who translated the entire Jewish mystical world into "Greek", where the Zohar becomes Eros, myth is everything, etc.).

Of course, such translation and language projects were by nature external to religious learning itself, just as language is external to what it speaks about, and therefore created alienation between religion and its theory, and in the Jewish case - between learning (of Torah) and theology. This suited the current Jewish religion like a glove to a hand, or like a garment to a statue, because what's better than an external (and if possible - ideological) engagement that allows the continuation of internal petrification processes. Needless to say: the state of Judaism as a religion is dire. Central bodies of renewal and creation were eliminated from it in the Holocaust and in modernity, and it barely survives as a living religion (as opposed to ideology, traditional folklore, national symbol, object for the humanities, tag in identity politics, red flag that annoys the world, orthodox doctrine, missionary army of emissaries, or just fundamentalism and extremism - the clearest sign of internal death, not life - and so on. And the reader already understands on their own, without any need for explanation, what belongs to which stream).

In fact, even anti-Semitism today is more alive than Judaism, and shows impressive signs of recovery after the mortal blow it also suffered in the Holocaust. The Jews are a people who quarrel a lot with themselves, split and divide, and generally love to rub against and defy and be insolent and confront the whole world, and therefore they always make (even today) a lot of noise, which of course manages to arouse living anti-Semitism. But all the noise in the world cannot in the long run cover up internal learning death (as opposed to distracting from it). External noisiness and friction are not internal creation and innovation, but they create an illusion that something is happening, that the body is alive - even though the core is dead (after all, there are blows, right?).

The rumor of the death of Judaism's inner core may take hundreds of years to reach the physical end of Judaism as a phenomenon in the world, but without a Jewish renaissance, and perhaps even a theological revolution - its fate is sealed. Such processes of degeneration, stagnation and dying lurk for every cultural phenomenon - and Judaism is no different from them. We all know dead phenomena, including such religious phenomena, that continue to exist by inertia, without significant internal creative forces, and as conservative factors in the world - and not innovators. Is this our fate? Will it turn out in retrospect, from a future perspective, that the Holocaust was indeed the kiss of death? Has the oldest religion in the world failed to survive the end of the modern era?

For the last half millennium, the central energy reactor of Jewish renewal from within was the core of Jewish mystical teaching. Therefore, in Judaism, one cannot separate theology from the core of the secret - if one wants to preserve the remaining forces of life and renewal within it. Three developments external to Judaism, which the core of the secret did not know how to respond to at all (and so did Judaism as a whole), caused it tremendous damage of loss of relevance, but also mark the possible directions of renewal, in response to the paradigmatic challenges they pose. That is - these are not just problems, but also learning directions.

On the other hand, the level of threat they pose is high, because a relevance gap is a much more severe crisis than just an unsolved problem (or without a solution). In an unsolved problem, learning has not reached its conclusion or a satisfactory solution, but knows how to deal with problems and even deals with them. In contrast, in a relevance gap, the system's learning - that is, the way the system learns, its method - is not relevant to the problem at all. Such a gap requires a change in the method itself, and is therefore much more difficult (indeed, cultural and other systems often fail to renew the method - and this is the cause of their loss, not problems that their method could solve, and just got stuck and failed, which are overcome after a more or less severe external blow). In the Jewish case, a change in method requires a change in the method of Torah study (and particularly the method in the world of secrets), and not just in its contents. The evidence for the depth of the relevance crisis is the fundamental and widespread damage to extensive bodies of knowledge: in entire fields in Judaism, which are central organs in it. Death is always a system collapse, that is, severe and simultaneous damage to many of the sick body's systems, and not just one system.

And these are the three main "gap-directions" in contemporary theological development, arranged by past, present and future:

* The problem of the past: The Holocaust - history arranged a theological zero point for religion. In fact, one can more or less throw all pre-Holocaust theology in the trash, as well as that created in the generation after it, which still hasn't deeply digested it. There is no possibility and it is impossible to continue Judaism as it was before the Holocaust - in any field. The blow of the Holocaust (even the word blow here is out of place) is a mortal religious blow and a tectonic theological break that no religion has ever managed to overcome - because it has never been required to do so. The digestion of this break in all areas of Judaism has not yet begun at all, and contrary to the foolish opinion of Holocaust deniers who are the normalization adherents within Judaism, this break will not heal itself with time, but like a crack will only widen until it swallows Judaism into the abyss within it, if it does not come to its senses.

The formulation of the break can be quite simple, because if we continue most of the classic Jewish concepts (such as providence, faith, reward and punishment, God, etc.) we will find that they - as they are - have all completely lost relevance: it is impossible to believe after the Holocaust. It is impossible to pray after the Holocaust. There is no answer to the Holocaust in any text that existed before it, and in any Jewish conception that existed before it, in any of its fields. And the field that completely lost relevance in the Holocaust is Kabbalah, which was as mentioned the intellectual core of Judaism (and not Jewish thought). All its engagement with divinity, with the other side, with worlds, with couplings, with the Shekhinah, with the world to come, with heaven and hell, etc. became at once a joke. The Kabbalistic method, as it is, cannot deal with the Holocaust break as it dealt with the destruction, or the expulsion from Spain, or even modernity. Its central methods, such as creating symbolism, building myth, reflection in the upper world, internalization into divinity, or construction in the human soul - all of these cannot handle the Holocaust, which exceeds all representation, and all intellectual or psychological soothing. To read about raising sparks from husks, about "tikkun" and about the attribute of judgment and might after Auschwitz? The letters simply fall off the page.

* The problem of the present: Sexuality - the sexual revolution mowed down the form for Halakha. It is no longer possible to continue with almost any of the normative sexual constructions (such as various prohibitions) related to both straight and homosexual sexuality (this is not just a problem for homosexuals or just adolescents or just singles or just single women or just men or just unsatisfied married women or just feminists - that is, women - or just divorcees or just...). Unfortunately, these constructions are from the foundations of Halakhic law (not some marginal custom), and the break is on a very wide front. Any denial of this situation will end in the loss of Halakha, and of the normative validity of Judaism, if not in theory - then in practice (that is, terrible hypocrisy will be created, which will collapse it from within, in a Catholicization of Judaism, on one hand, and in its fundamentalization, from the Muslim side of the religious moment).

The institution of the rabbi itself is in an enormous relevance gap from the world, and it gives no reason to think that it can recover from it. If Judaism clings to this institution - then exactly what happened to the Catholic Church will happen to it. Recurring and frequent phenomena of #MeToo and sexual corruption of rabbis already echo the Catholic pedophilia and homosexuality scandals, and they are the final nails in the coffin of the rabbinic idea. And if Judaism continues with it - it will be buried along with it, scandal after scandal, until complete loss of trust.

The collision of Judaism with the subject of our time, whose sexuality is the root of his soul, will not succeed in turning him into another subject, and if it tries (and it indeed tries) he will eliminate it - and not vice versa. And here Judaism is actually in the worst situation among all religions, including Christianity and Islam, because of the validity of its practical limitations on straights precisely, and because of its normative rigidity (even Rabbi Sperber cannot permit homosexuality), which even surpasses Shiite Islam (which actually shows surprising flexibility sexually: marriages limited to one night, sex change surgeries, and more). Some believe that the technologization that sexuality will undergo will allow blunting the sting of prohibitions - but such a development will only empty them even more.

The speed at which the legal side of Judaism is losing legitimacy, compared to its petrification, will eliminate Halakha as a whole, and it will become like Catholic law. In any system: when there is no adaptation - a break is created. When there is no learning, and excuses in language begin, then the next stage is the transfer of learning outside the system, and the end of the system as a living learning system. The constant humiliation and elimination of any non-Halakhic option, such as "Reform", "Conservative", "antinomian sectarian", and so on - do not strengthen Halakha, but eliminate its own ability to recover from within. And unlike Kabbalah or secret doctrine, where one genius can make a revolution, one cannot expect a change in law within a huge, degenerate and cumbersome legal system like Halakha.

For example, one of the common forms of denial of the problem in the system is seeing it as the "feminist problem" stemming from the feminist revolution (and therefore if there were only female rabbis, or a more feminine Torah, it would be fine) - no, it's the sexual problem - stemming from the sexual revolution (feminism itself is just one moment of it). Will Judaism be destroyed because of its attitude towards sex? Can one even imagine a non-rabbinic Judaism, after such dominant control of Halakha and the rabbinic option in Judaism for almost two thousand years (yes, there have always been and still are other options!), to the extent that Judaism is almost identified with the figure of the rabbi, who is its greatest enemy (from within)?

* The problem of the future: Technology - Torah study has almost nothing to say (that is not trivial and worthless) about the most important development in the world - ever - not to mention that this is the messianic development. Yes, "the" messianic development. This is apparently what it looks like. Compared to the enormous learning system of the modern era with its tremendous achievements, Torah study - and even more so its center: Talmud study - have simply lost relevance. The Talmud has no ability to compete with the intellectual and cognitive development of the information age, and the age of the networked human, not to mention the approaching neuro-technological era. It's not just the inability (and lack of interest) to concentrate on such a book in the smartphone era, it's a matter of knowledge networking, where an isolated and secluded island of knowledge, like the Talmud, loses connection to reality, to the world, to development, to the future, meaning it loses any relevance, and can no longer stand in its face, because it penetrates everything. There are no more walls, no more ghetto, no more fortification within the system. If Torah study remains Talmud study - it will take a mortal blow compared to the universal human learning and the combined ideological-technological development that is the center of gravity of the world today.

There is a limit to all kinds of moments like Talmud as defiance against technology, and the ancient as a radical option against the new. It's nice, but it won't hold water in the long run, when all innovation is only on one side (and the other is dragged behind it opposing and screaming and stomping its feet). The enormous "innovations" of our time have long since not been in the field of Talmud, and neither are the prodigies and great scholars of the generation. The lack of interest in Talmud among many of its learners is just the symptom, because interest is the motivation for learning. Therefore, if one wants a living and innovative Torah, one must overcome the idea of Talmud study as the center of Torah study. But what could possibly replace the Talmud? These are no longer discussions about "Torah and science", because science was theoretical and isolated itself and accessible to the knowledgeable, just like the Talmud, and in practice the Talmud was stronger than it (through Halakha, may it rest in peace). In contrast, "Torah and technology" is already the practice - actions are followed by hearts - and technology as a practice is stronger than any Halakha, for example.

Technology, for example, is destroying the book. Is the Torah not a book? Perhaps, but the Talmud is definitely a book. Day and night they chant: Learning, oh learning, Torah study... Can anyone even claim that Judaism has learned something significant (meaning truly learned Torah) from these three world-changing revolutions? This absolute lack of learning is the sure sign of internal petrification and death, not of strength and power, because learning is the life and vitality of a cultural phenomenon, including religious. In fact, the ideology of Judaism has become non-learning. Self-preservation. Standing in the breach. Holding on. Resisting. Resisting learning. And thus the obsession to survive at all costs - will lead to annihilation. One who cannot give up anything of himself, and cannot change deeply, is not preserving tradition - but preserving himself. Because the tradition of Judaism is precisely learning - and even revolutionary learning. And these revolutions - like the rabbinic revolution, or the Zoharic revolution - should be celebrated (and not a false ideology of all Torah from Sinai). Is there anyone who deludes himself that in the Talmud it will be possible to find this future learning? Meaning that the Talmud is the future of Jewish learning - and not its past?

But is Judaism even built to separate from its central bodies that carried it through exile and even (with much less success) through the modern era? Bye bye Kabbalah? Bye bye Halakha? Bye bye Talmud? What's left at all? Well - the Torah itself, the Written Torah, is still strong, and as a literary work and as the foundation of culture it is undisputed. And not only among the religious, but also among the secular. And not only among the secular, but also among the gentiles. The Holocaust too is not only a rupture, but also an identity definer with tremendous power. It's not pleasant to admit, but for a dying body like Judaism - the Holocaust is also an asset. The holidays - are still strong too. This is a ritual system that has not lost its vitality, and so is the ritual system of the life cycle itself and the rites of initiation and transition and mourning, and to a considerable extent also the Sabbath as a weekly ritual system. Prayer, on the other hand, died quite dramatically with the Holocaust. And its intensity as a ritual system (meaning: much more daily time waste than in Christianity and Islam) is only to its detriment, and only increases the distress from it. That is: we are left with relatively long-term ritual systems, with the Holocaust, and with the Bible. Almost identical to the secular identity (which is the true seismograph for Jewish life, meaning what is really alive and attractive in it). Where is the religion?

In fact, the crisis in the religious system can be located much more precisely if we look at the method of Jewish renewal. One must always follow the learning. What exactly is the method that allowed Judaism to survive and renew itself at all? Well, once every few hundred years, as an order of magnitude, a masterpiece is written in Judaism, which is a giant work (also quantitatively), and provides spiritual nourishment for generations after it, who interpret and study it, until the next work, which also founds its own field and method. That is: each time a new Torah is written, as part of Torah study. The Torah of Moses. The Prophets. The Writings. The Mishnah and rabbinic literature. The Talmud. The Zohar. And... oops, that's it? Simply put - the Jewish crisis (and perhaps even the Holocaust itself! which also stemmed from the lack of Jewish adaptation and learning) simply stems from the fact that no new Torah has been written for too many hundreds of years. And therefore the Torah has lost relevance. If the most innovative and unsettling thing in the Jewish world is still Kabbalah, meaning a product of the Middle Ages - then we are in trouble (and in huge lag). We would expect the situation to be reversed, meaning that like in modern literature, or like in the encounter of Jews with modern culture, modernity would produce an inflation of masterpieces. In fact, it was strange to expect at all that Judaism would survive without its ancient method: without writing a great masterpiece of the human spirit, of the national soul, of Jewish genius - and of the religion of Moses.

How far is Judaism from writing such a work? Very very far. The resistance within it to any innovation of this magnitude is enormous, and no one from any stream even begins to dare to take on such an enterprise (which probably, and so far it has been, cannot be an individual enterprise at all, but a whole literary movement). Worst of all - there is no creative method of this kind at all within current Judaism, which is expressed in zero such attempts in recent generations: 0. And only after many attempts and wanderings can one even think to try at all to succeed in a task of such cultural magnitude. None of the previous works was created in one day. Not even in one generation. And even if Ramadal [Rabbi Moses de León] perhaps wrote the Zohar entirely alone, he was the product of a whole kabbalistic ideological movement, including strong previous attempts (like the Bahir, Sefer Yetzirah, and more). There are no such forces in dying Judaism, pushing in this direction, or any insight into the urgency of this enterprise, its necessity, or even its feasibility. One cannot give up on the Talmud, Halakha, Kabbalah and prayer if there is nothing to replace them. We will be left with nothing. With a secular, Reform, traditional identity, and so on, meaning not with a living religion but with folklore. A ghost.

If so, Jewish theology at this time should not justify religion and try to artificially hold or strengthen it in an ideational (external) structure. We are not in the Middle Ages, and justifications for those returning to questioning/faith are a pathetic and even destructive matter intellectually and in terms of learning (good justifications actually have an anti-learning effect). The moment there is learning, renewal and creation within Judaism, its power of attraction will naturally increase, like any cultural phenomenon (just as the current corpse smell drives Jews away from it, to the point of assimilation. It has lost its appeal). What responsible theology - which is honest religious theorization - needs to do at this time is to become critical theology (as opposed to secular criticism of religion) and point out the depth of the learning crisis of the system, the collapse of internal systems and methods, and the disease spreading in the organs - in the bodies of Torah. Then it must characterize the learning disease, show the symptoms of stuck and irrelevant methods, and analyze what causes what (so that we don't just deal with symptoms instead of the deep problems: the methodological problems). And finally - it should offer concrete healing directions: new and relevant religious methods (and not: secular methods that treat religion, because religion will reject them as a foreign implant, as it has done so far). Because theology of a sick religious-cultural body becomes cultural medicine.

But theology, meaning the doctor, must remember that it is not the patient. The signs of life are not supposed to arise in it. It is not the field of creation and innovation, but religion itself. It is just a gardener who wants growth (meaning: learning) in the garden, and provides fertilizer and water, and its goal is the growth of a new branch on the tree and the giving of fruits. The three problems we raised are also the three directions of solution, meaning: any masterpiece of religion today - any new Torah (messianic Torah? Torah of the Land of Israel? Torah of the future to come?) - is supposed to deal with these very areas and grow in new directions. There may even be several real solutions (vision of the end of days) that will compete with each other, and fertilize all of Judaism for spiritual flourishing - and thus it will have its resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is very likely that any real solution will deal with all three questions, and give them a solution that connects them in deep ways. How might such a solution look?

First of all, we face the problem of genre (prophecy is no longer relevant, right?). One of the reasons there is no serious writing attempt "in the direction" is that the genre for such writing simply does not exist. There is no platform for writing Torah in our era, not culturally and sociologically, and more seriously - not literarily. Therefore this will have to be a work that invented its own genre (an internet genre?) - just like all the previous great works. But because of the degeneration that has spread in the religious world itself, there is no chance of creating such a work within it. They simply won't print it (and won't relate to it). There is no credibility. Therefore the most likely way to proceed in the current situation is through literature precisely. If S.Y. Agnon had written such a work, perhaps by the power of his genius he would have succeeded in being not only our senior writer, but more than that. So too Kafka, certainly. That is: we need a religious Kafka, or a Ramadal of our time, or a Nachman of Breslov who lived in our time until the age of 83 and not 38, or our own Kabbalistic Freud, or a Moses of the information age, or (perhaps) Elijah (who created the professional biblical prophetic world by the power of his charisma). Another problem is that in our time a single person, or a flesh and blood person, probably cannot stand behind such a work. It must be a work of a group - the voice of the multitude as the voice of the Almighty - or of a pseudonym.

In any case, a purely theoretical-theological response to the problems, or such a halakhic-Talmudic response, is not a response that will provide an answer. Because the problems are deeper than their reduction to problems in practice alone or in pure theory - these are depth problems. And here is the great advantage of a mythical-literary text: it can touch these layers (action and theoretical thought) from all the layers together - that is: it can be deep. It can not separate between the theoretical, the practical and the narrative. Therefore it will be able to do much more than a text that is limited to one of these worlds (a new Shulchan Aruch, for example, will not be accepted). And if it will be a great text - Judaism will accept it, in the end. Maybe for lack of choice. Maybe with enthusiasm. Maybe with long resistance (as happened to the Zohar). But if its influence will be deep - it will become part of its core secret, and create new life within it.

To Part 1

Culture and Literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Contemporary Theology (Part 2): The Three Great Theological Developments of Our Time

What is the theology of a religion of Torah study, namely Jewish theology? It is giving the highest religious significance to Torah study, and learning is not only (and not primarily) memorization and interpretation, but innovation and creation, and above all - innovation and creation in the method itself. The supreme religious act is writing a new Torah - creating a new method - and therefore Moses is the great founder and not the father (Abraham), the conqueror (Joshua) or the king (David). Thus, the depth of the method that Moses taught us is not interpretation (to study the Torah) - but creativity (to learn from the Torah): to learn to write Torah

By: Catness and Infinity

Theology of masterpieces: Know what is above you. The ceiling of the theological school in Isfahan (Source)

Theology is not philosophy of religion. Because contrary to the philosophical (provincial) bias of contemporary Jewish theologians - theology is not philosophy. Philosophy deals with the general religious phenomenon, while theology is always particular within the realms of a specific religion, and in our case - Judaism. That is: theology is theoretical learning - within the system, and not its conceptualization from the outside (and certainly not its explanation, in the Jewish parallel of Israeli hasbara, namely apologetics). In the second half of the 20th century, the century of language, theology often perceived itself as dealing with religious language (therefore, it was often a project of translating it into other languages, and vice versa. For example: the general philosophical language, or the intellectual language of our time, or the scientific language, or the psychological language, and so on. There were also more esoteric translation projects, such as Liebes who translated the entire Jewish mystical world into "Greek", where the Zohar becomes Eros, myth is everything, etc.).

Of course, such translation and language projects were by nature external to religious learning itself, just as language is external to what it speaks about, and therefore created alienation between religion and its theory, and in the Jewish case - between learning (of Torah) and theology. This suited the current Jewish religion like a glove to a hand, or like a garment to a statue, because what's better than an external (and if possible - ideological) engagement that allows the continuation of internal petrification processes. Needless to say: the state of Judaism as a religion is dire. Central bodies of renewal and creation were eliminated from it in the Holocaust and in modernity, and it barely survives as a living religion (as opposed to ideology, traditional folklore, national symbol, object for the humanities, tag in identity politics, red flag that annoys the world, orthodox doctrine, missionary army of emissaries, or just fundamentalism and extremism - the clearest sign of internal death, not life - and so on. And the reader already understands on their own, without any need for explanation, what belongs to which stream).

In fact, even anti-Semitism today is more alive than Judaism, and shows impressive signs of recovery after the mortal blow it also suffered in the Holocaust. The Jews are a people who quarrel a lot with themselves, split and divide, and generally love to rub against and defy and be insolent and confront the whole world, and therefore they always make (even today) a lot of noise, which of course manages to arouse living anti-Semitism. But all the noise in the world cannot in the long run cover up internal learning death (as opposed to distracting from it). External noisiness and friction are not internal creation and innovation, but they create an illusion that something is happening, that the body is alive - even though the core is dead (after all, there are blows, right?).

The rumor of the death of Judaism's inner core may take hundreds of years to reach the physical end of Judaism as a phenomenon in the world, but without a Jewish renaissance, and perhaps even a theological revolution - its fate is sealed. Such processes of degeneration, stagnation and dying lurk for every cultural phenomenon - and Judaism is no different from them. We all know dead phenomena, including such religious phenomena, that continue to exist by inertia, without significant internal creative forces, and as conservative factors in the world - and not innovators. Is this our fate? Will it turn out in retrospect, from a future perspective, that the Holocaust was indeed the kiss of death? Has the oldest religion in the world failed to survive the end of the modern era?

For the last half millennium, the central energy reactor of Jewish renewal from within was the core of Jewish mystical teaching. Therefore, in Judaism, one cannot separate theology from the core of the secret - if one wants to preserve the remaining forces of life and renewal within it. Three developments external to Judaism, which the core of the secret did not know how to respond to at all (and so did Judaism as a whole), caused it tremendous damage of loss of relevance, but also mark the possible directions of renewal, in response to the paradigmatic challenges they pose. That is - these are not just problems, but also learning directions.

On the other hand, the level of threat they pose is high, because a relevance gap is a much more severe crisis than just an unsolved problem (or without a solution). In an unsolved problem, learning has not reached its conclusion or a satisfactory solution, but knows how to deal with problems and even deals with them. In contrast, in a relevance gap, the system's learning - that is, the way the system learns, its method - is not relevant to the problem at all. Such a gap requires a change in the method itself, and is therefore much more difficult (indeed, cultural and other systems often fail to renew the method - and this is the cause of their loss, not problems that their method could solve, and just got stuck and failed, which are overcome after a more or less severe external blow). In the Jewish case, a change in method requires a change in the method of Torah study (and particularly the method in the world of secrets), and not just in its contents. The evidence for the depth of the relevance crisis is the fundamental and widespread damage to extensive bodies of knowledge: in entire fields in Judaism, which are central organs in it. Death is always a system collapse, that is, severe and simultaneous damage to many of the sick body's systems, and not just one system.

And these are the three main "gap-directions" in contemporary theological development, arranged by past, present and future:

The problem of the past: The Holocaust - history arranged a theological zero point for religion. In fact, one can more or less throw all pre-Holocaust theology in the trash, as well as that created in the generation after it, which still hasn't deeply digested it. There is no possibility and it is impossible to continue Judaism as it was before the Holocaust - in any field. The blow of the Holocaust (even the word blow here is out of place) is a mortal religious blow and a tectonic theological break that no religion has ever managed to overcome - because it has never been required to do so. The digestion of this break in all areas of Judaism has not yet begun at all, and contrary to the foolish opinion of Holocaust deniers who are the normalization adherents within Judaism, this break will not heal itself with time, but like a crack will only widen until it swallows Judaism into the abyss within it, if it does not come to its senses.

The formulation of the break can be quite simple, because if we continue most of the classic Jewish concepts (such as providence, faith, reward and punishment, God, etc.) we will find that they - as they are - have all completely lost relevance: it is impossible to believe after the Holocaust. It is impossible to pray after the Holocaust. There is no answer to the Holocaust in any text that existed before it, and in any Jewish conception that existed before it, in any of its fields. And the field that completely lost relevance in the Holocaust is Kabbalah, which was as mentioned the intellectual core of Judaism (and not Jewish thought). All its engagement with divinity, with the other side, with worlds, with couplings, with the Shekhinah, with the world to come, with heaven and hell, etc. became at once a joke. The Kabbalistic method, as it is, cannot deal with the Holocaust break as it dealt with the destruction, or the expulsion from Spain, or even modernity. Its central methods, such as creating symbolism, building myth, reflection in the upper world, internalization into divinity, or construction in the human soul - all of these cannot handle the Holocaust, which exceeds all representation, and all intellectual or psychological soothing. To read about raising sparks from husks, about "tikkun" and about the attribute of judgment and might after Auschwitz? The letters simply fall off the page.

The problem of the present: Sexuality - the sexual revolution mowed down the form for Halakha. It is no longer possible to continue with almost any of the normative sexual constructions (such as various prohibitions) related to both straight and homosexual sexuality (this is not just a problem for homosexuals or just adolescents or just singles or just single women or just men or just unsatisfied married women or just feminists - that is, women - or just divorcees or just...). Unfortunately, these constructions are from the foundations of Halakhic law (not some marginal custom), and the break is on a very wide front. Any denial of this situation will end in the loss of Halakha, and of the normative validity of Judaism, if not in theory - then in practice (that is, terrible hypocrisy will be created, which will collapse it from within, in a Catholicization of Judaism, on one hand, and in its fundamentalization, from the Muslim side of the religious moment).

The institution of the rabbi itself is in an enormous relevance gap from the world, and it gives no reason to think that it can recover from it. If Judaism clings to this institution - then exactly what happened to the Catholic Church will happen to it. Recurring and frequent phenomena of #MeToo and sexual corruption of rabbis already echo the Catholic pedophilia and homosexuality scandals, and they are the final nails in the coffin of the rabbinic idea. And if Judaism continues with it - it will be buried along with it, scandal after scandal, until complete loss of trust.

The collision of Judaism with the subject of our time, whose sexuality is the root of his soul, will not succeed in turning him into another subject, and if it tries (and it indeed tries) he will eliminate it - and not vice versa. And here Judaism is actually in the worst situation among all religions, including Christianity and Islam, because of the validity of its practical limitations on straights precisely, and because of its normative rigidity (even Rabbi Sperber cannot permit homosexuality), which even surpasses Shiite Islam (which actually shows surprising flexibility sexually: marriages limited to one night, sex change surgeries, and more). Some believe that the technologization that sexuality will undergo will allow blunting the sting of prohibitions - but such a development will only empty them even more.

The speed at which the legal side of Judaism is losing legitimacy, compared to its petrification, will eliminate Halakha as a whole, and it will become like Catholic law. In any system: when there is no adaptation - a break is created. When there is no learning, and excuses in language begin, then the next stage is the transfer of learning outside the system, and the end of the system as a living learning system. The constant humiliation and elimination of any non-Halakhic option, such as "Reform", "Conservative", "antinomian sectarian", and so on - do not strengthen Halakha, but eliminate its own ability to recover from within. And unlike Kabbalah or secret doctrine, where one genius can make a revolution, one cannot expect a change in law within a huge, degenerate and cumbersome legal system like Halakha.

For example, one of the common forms of denial of the problem in the system is seeing it as the "feminist problem" stemming from the feminist revolution (and therefore if there were only female rabbis, or a more feminine Torah, it would be fine) - no, it's the sexual problem - stemming from the sexual revolution (feminism itself is just one moment of it). Will Judaism be destroyed because of its attitude towards sex? Can one even imagine a non-rabbinic Judaism, after such dominant control of Halakha and the rabbinic option in Judaism for almost two thousand years (yes, there have always been and still are other options!), to the extent that Judaism is almost identified with the figure of the rabbi, who is its greatest enemy (from within)?

The problem of the future: Technology - Torah study has almost nothing to say (that is not trivial and worthless) about the most important development in the world - ever - not to mention that this is the messianic development. Yes, "the" messianic development. This is apparently what it looks like. Compared to the enormous learning system of the modern era with its tremendous achievements, Torah study - and even more so its center: Talmud study - have simply lost relevance. The Talmud has no ability to compete with the intellectual and cognitive development of the information age, and the age of the networked human, not to mention the approaching neuro-technological era. It's not just the inability (and lack of interest) to concentrate on such a book in the smartphone era, it's a matter of knowledge networking, where an isolated and secluded island of knowledge, like the Talmud, loses connection to reality, to the world, to development, to the future, meaning it loses any relevance, and can no longer stand in its face, because it penetrates everything. There are no more walls, no more ghetto, no more fortification within the system. If Torah study remains Talmud study - it will take a mortal blow compared to the universal human learning and the combined ideological-technological development that is the center of gravity of the world today.

There is a limit to all kinds of moments like Talmud as defiance against technology, and the ancient as a radical option against the new. It's nice, but it won't hold water in the long run, when all innovation is only on one side (and the other is dragged behind it opposing and screaming and stomping its feet). The enormous "innovations" of our time have long since not been in the field of Talmud, and neither are the prodigies and great scholars of the generation. The lack of interest in Talmud among many of its learners is just the symptom, because interest is the motivation for learning. Therefore, if one wants a living and innovative Torah, one must overcome the idea of Talmud study as the center of Torah study. But what could possibly replace the Talmud? These are no longer discussions about "Torah and science", because science was theoretical and isolated itself and accessible to the knowledgeable, just like the Talmud, and in practice the Talmud was stronger than it (through Halakha, may it rest in peace). In contrast, "Torah and technology" is already the practice - actions are followed by hearts - and technology as a practice is stronger than any Halakha, for example.

Technology, for example, is destroying the book. Is the Torah not a book? Perhaps, but the Talmud is definitely a book. Day and night they chant: Learning, oh learning, Torah study... Can anyone even claim that Judaism has learned something significant (meaning truly learned Torah) from these three world-changing revolutions? This absolute lack of learning is the sure sign of internal petrification and death, not of strength and power, because learning is the life and vitality of a cultural phenomenon, including religious. In fact, the ideology of Judaism has become non-learning. Self-preservation. Standing in the breach. Holding on. Resisting. Resisting learning. And thus the obsession to survive at all costs - will lead to annihilation. One who cannot give up anything of himself, and cannot change deeply, is not preserving tradition - but preserving himself. Because the tradition of Judaism is precisely learning - and even revolutionary learning. And these revolutions - like the rabbinic revolution, or the Zoharic revolution - should be celebrated (and not a false ideology of all Torah from Sinai). Is there anyone who deludes himself that in the Talmud it will be possible to find this future learning? Meaning that the Talmud is the future of Jewish learning - and not its past?

But is Judaism even built to separate from its central bodies that carried it through exile and even (with much less success) through the modern era? Bye bye Kabbalah? Bye bye Halakha? Bye bye Talmud? What's left at all? Well - the Torah itself, the Written Torah, is still strong, and as a literary work and as the foundation of culture it is undisputed. And not only among the religious, but also among the secular. And not only among the secular, but also among the gentiles. The Holocaust too is not only a rupture, but also an identity definer with tremendous power. It's not pleasant to admit, but for a dying body like Judaism - the Holocaust is also an asset. The holidays - are still strong too. This is a ritual system that has not lost its vitality, and so is the ritual system of the life cycle itself and the rites of initiation and transition and mourning, and to a considerable extent also the Sabbath as a weekly ritual system. Prayer, on the other hand, died quite dramatically with the Holocaust. And its intensity as a ritual system (meaning: much more daily time waste than in Christianity and Islam) is only to its detriment, and only increases the distress from it. That is: we are left with relatively long-term ritual systems, with the Holocaust, and with the Bible. Almost identical to the secular identity (which is the true seismograph for Jewish life, meaning what is really alive and attractive in it). Where is the religion?

In fact, the crisis in the religious system can be located much more precisely if we look at the method of Jewish renewal. One must always follow the learning. What exactly is the method that allowed Judaism to survive and renew itself at all? Well, once every few hundred years, as an order of magnitude, a masterpiece is written in Judaism, which is a giant work (also quantitatively), and provides spiritual nourishment for generations after it, who interpret and study it, until the next work, which also founds its own field and method. That is: each time a new Torah is written, as part of Torah study. The Torah of Moses. The Prophets. The Writings. The Mishnah and rabbinic literature. The Talmud. The Zohar. And... oops, that's it? Simply put - the Jewish crisis (and perhaps even the Holocaust itself! which also stemmed from the lack of Jewish adaptation and learning) simply stems from the fact that no new Torah has been written for too many hundreds of years. And therefore the Torah has lost relevance. If the most innovative and unsettling thing in the Jewish world is still Kabbalah, meaning a product of the Middle Ages - then we are in trouble (and in huge lag). We would expect the situation to be reversed, meaning that like in modern literature, or like in the encounter of Jews with modern culture, modernity would produce an inflation of masterpieces. In fact, it was strange to expect at all that Judaism would survive without its ancient method: without writing a great masterpiece of the human spirit, of the national soul, of Jewish genius - and of the religion of Moses.

How far is Judaism from writing such a work? Very very far. The resistance within it to any innovation of this magnitude is enormous, and no one from any stream even begins to dare to take on such an enterprise (which probably, and so far it has been, cannot be an individual enterprise at all, but a whole literary movement). Worst of all - there is no creative method of this kind at all within current Judaism, which is expressed in zero such attempts in recent generations: 0. And only after many attempts and wanderings can one even think to try at all to succeed in a task of such cultural magnitude. None of the previous works was created in one day. Not even in one generation. And even if Ramadal [Rabbi Moses de León] perhaps wrote the Zohar entirely alone, he was the product of a whole kabbalistic ideological movement, including strong previous attempts (like the Bahir, Sefer Yetzirah, and more). There are no such forces in dying Judaism, pushing in this direction, or any insight into the urgency of this enterprise, its necessity, or even its feasibility. One cannot give up on the Talmud, Halakha, Kabbalah and prayer if there is nothing to replace them. We will be left with nothing. With a secular, Reform, traditional identity, and so on, meaning not with a living religion but with folklore. A ghost.

If so, Jewish theology at this time should not justify religion and try to artificially hold or strengthen it in an ideational (external) structure. We are not in the Middle Ages, and justifications for those returning to questioning/faith are a pathetic and even destructive matter intellectually and in terms of learning (good justifications actually have an anti-learning effect). The moment there is learning, renewal and creation within Judaism, its power of attraction will naturally increase, like any cultural phenomenon (just as the current corpse smell drives Jews away from it, to the point of assimilation. It has lost its appeal). What responsible theology - which is honest religious theorization - needs to do at this time is to become critical theology (as opposed to secular criticism of religion) and point out the depth of the learning crisis of the system, the collapse of internal systems and methods, and the disease spreading in the organs - in the bodies of Torah. Then it must characterize the learning disease, show the symptoms of stuck and irrelevant methods, and analyze what causes what (so that we don't just deal with symptoms instead of the deep problems: the methodological problems). And finally - it should offer concrete healing directions: new and relevant religious methods (and not: secular methods that treat religion, because religion will reject them as a foreign implant, as it has done so far). Because theology of a sick religious-cultural body becomes cultural medicine.

But theology, meaning the doctor, must remember that it is not the patient. The signs of life are not supposed to arise in it. It is not the field of creation and innovation, but religion itself. It is just a gardener who wants growth (meaning: learning) in the garden, and provides fertilizer and water, and its goal is the growth of a new branch on the tree and the giving of fruits. The three problems we raised are also the three directions of solution, meaning: any masterpiece of religion today - any new Torah (messianic Torah? Torah of the Land of Israel? Torah of the future to come?) - is supposed to deal with these very areas and grow in new directions. There may even be several real solutions (vision of the end of days) that will compete with each other, and fertilize all of Judaism for spiritual flourishing - and thus it will have its resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is very likely that any real solution will deal with all three questions, and give them a solution that connects them in deep ways. How might such a solution look?

First of all, we face the problem of genre (prophecy is no longer relevant, right?). One of the reasons there is no serious writing attempt "in the direction" is that the genre for such writing simply does not exist. There is no platform for writing Torah in our era, not culturally and sociologically, and more seriously - not literarily. Therefore this will have to be a work that invented its own genre (an internet genre?) - just like all the previous great works. But because of the degeneration that has spread in the religious world itself, there is no chance of creating such a work within it. They simply won't print it (and won't relate to it). There is no credibility. Therefore the most likely way to proceed in the current situation is through literature precisely. If S.Y. Agnon had written such a work, perhaps by the power of his genius he would have succeeded in being not only our senior writer, but more than that. So too Kafka, certainly. That is: we need a religious Kafka, or a Ramadal of our time, or a Nachman of Breslov who lived in our time until the age of 83 and not 38, or our own Kabbalistic Freud, or a Moses of the information age, or (perhaps) Elijah (who created the professional biblical prophetic world by the power of his charisma). Another problem is that in our time a single person, or a flesh and blood person, probably cannot stand behind such a work. It must be a work of a group - the voice of the multitude as the voice of the Almighty - or of a pseudonym.

In any case, a purely theoretical-theological response to the problems, or such a halakhic-Talmudic response, is not a response that will provide an answer. Because the problems are deeper than their reduction to problems in practice alone or in pure theory - these are depth problems. And here is the great advantage of a mythical-literary text: it can touch these layers (action and theoretical thought) from all the layers together - that is: it can be deep. It can not separate between the theoretical, the practical and the narrative. Therefore it will be able to do much more than a text that is limited to one of these worlds (a new Shulchan Aruch, for example, will not be accepted). And if it will be a great text - Judaism will accept it, in the end. Maybe for lack of choice. Maybe with enthusiasm. Maybe with long resistance (as happened to the Zohar). But if its influence will be deep - it will become part of its core secret, and create new life within it.

To Part 1

Culture and Literature


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Post-Romantic Era

Now the inanimate is taking revenge on chemistry, biology, psychology, theology, everything, and rising above them all. After no one even thought about it anymore. And the final nail in man's coffin is woman. As long as he has woman, he can still live for her. But everyone knows that the compatibility between men and women isn't built so well

By: A Primitive Zealot

Jealousy - Edvard Munch (Source)

Man is crushed between jealousy of woman and jealousy for woman. Sexual jealousy, like a back pressed against a belly, leaves his sexuality with the space of a page. And if this is how you behave in front of another man, what will you do in front of the computer? In the face of a real challenge. If woman prefers the computer, the jealousy will be inconceivable, there's no ability to compete with it at all, neither physically nor intellectually. This is the revenge of the inanimate.

After the vegetative exploited it and rose above it, and after the animal exploited the vegetative and rose above it, and after the speaking [human] exploited the animal and rose above it, and above it culture exploited it, and above that the angels, the gods, and so on, the inanimate was already considered the bottom rung. Nothing from a spiritual perspective. Something not even worth considering. Just to be stepped on. And now the inanimate is taking revenge on chemistry, biology, psychology, theology, everything, and rising above them all. After no one even thought about it anymore. And the final nail in man's coffin is woman.

As long as he has woman, he can still live for her. But everyone knows that the compatibility between men and women isn't built so well, and like many other incompatibilities, eventually they build more suitable technology. The moment technology replaces sexuality, suddenly love will shine anew on the human horizon, because it will be the human advantage, and then the neo-romantic movement will return. But the moment technology replaces love, only death will shine at the end of the corridor, the last thing that is the human advantage.

Culture and Literature


domain: literature

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Iranian nuclear bomb falls on Tel Aviv

An embarrassing thought crosses my mind: Finally, there will be parking

By: IDF Spokesperson

The next generation of mutations that will challenge enlightenment  (Source)

I dreamed that Iran dropped an atomic bomb on Tel Aviv in the middle of the night. And after a fraction of absolute chaos, it progresses exactly like reverse creation: Let there be light. Even if I close my eyes, everything is as blinding as the midday sun. And immediately, let there be darkness. There's no electricity, everything is black. Then the tsunami arrives, and there's no difference between the waters and the skies, until dry land appears. And the plants wither and return to the earth, the fish dissolve in the sea, the animals die, man returns to dust, and so on. And an embarrassing thought crosses my mind: Finally, there will be parking there. Finally, there will be Shabbat there... But in the end, when the ashes settle, it just turns out again like in the Holocaust - those who died are dead and the big question is about the survivors. Because Tel Aviv turns into hell on earth and you can no longer find human beings there. Everyone has turned into mutations.

Here comes a Hipster Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] with one sidelock, who walks with a shtreimel [traditional fur hat] to hide his comb and promotes the Bnei Brak Festival for Ashkenazi poetry and Sephardic selichot [penitential prayers]. In his hand, he has a mooing cow that doesn't observe [the custom of] no touching, and pretends to be a clucking hen, because she's going to compete in a hen clucking contest. And then all the roosters won't want to appear racist and will vote for the cow, and she'll win. And I ask him, how do you touch a pullet before the wedding? And he says she's an atonement hen, and boasts that the Israeli cow is the world champion, and even the Prime Minister of India came to bow down and put a bowl for her, a Jewish cow that gives twice as much milk as a non-Jewish cow - and eats four times as much. Just like before her was the man who won the women's beauty pageant, because the judges didn't want to appear chauvinistic, and especially not against an up-to-date Tel Avivian after Holocaust 2.0, and that's how Tel Aviv takes it and the world beauty queen is a man with breasts, and even the Prime Minister of Canada wants her in the government, because this year is 5778 [Hebrew calendar year].

And the Haredi winks at me: Do you get what a trick it is to fight anti-Semitism with political correctness? Come join us too. If you're so fat and black, call yourself Black Hussein Circle, and you'll be elected President of the USA, and anyone who doesn't vote for you will be accused of fatphobia, racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia - it's a win-win. You're a shoo-in for Democratic candidate. And I ask: But what about misogyny? Because I've been feeling a bit feminine since the radiation, as I didn't protect my testicles, and black circle could be seen as a metaphor for the female organ, because in the media's eyes, everything I am is reduced to a hole. And he says: Aha! You've really caught on to the idea. But be careful not to dream now so you don't miss the celebration. Because here comes the funeral of the State of Israel.

Because here comes a protest of mutations from the end of the street, that is, their pride parade, against their discrimination by humans. At the front, standing on a truck, is an Israeli cherry tomato protesting against the enlargement of its image in the media and spraying everyone with a dripper, and next to it is a settler with an iron kippah [skullcap], reflecting technological achievements, although it's obviously too late now. After them, a minute of silence to remember the destruction, and after that another siren to remember the Holocaust, and after that they sound sirens to remember the fallen IDF soldiers, and after that they sound like crazy to remember the Tel Avivians of blessed memory or may God avenge their blood (depending on one's perspective), and then suddenly the loudspeaker starts singing: "Tel Aviv, ya habibi, Tel Aviv. Look how many mutations around" and everyone starts jumping and dancing. And on the stage stands a giant rat in memory of the mayor and around it four two-hundred-year-old Ninja turtles dance the hora in a circle: the turtles Bialik, Alterman, Guri, and Naomi Shemer (the fourth turtle is transgender) - in memory of the cultural achievements of the State of Israel, formerly the State of Tel Aviv.

And after them come even more advanced mutations, the next generation of mutations that will challenge the enlightenment - and actually the primitiveness - of the previous generation. Like technological mutations, for example live-borgs, half-human and half-robot, because what can you do, he lost his upper part in the disaster, and they're trying to at least allow the lower part to continue enjoying and continuing his seed - because in his death he commanded life. Or homunoids that combine humans with other animals, like "the Israeli man", which is - according to the female researchers who discovered him in their beds - a local type of rooster that doesn't get up in the morning but crows as if there's no tomorrow. And there are those who not only don't want to identify with a specific gender, but also not with a specific species, so they call themselves transpecies, for example a clucking cow, called Mookooriko, and bipeds for whom it's not progressive enough to be called humans, because it's not post-humanistic-correct, and choose the inclusive definition of primates, and other types, which together form the LHTPSH community - Live-borgs, Homunoids, Transpecies, Primates and Shishliks [meat skewers], which is also a type of meat and therefore has rights. And last but not least, at the end of the procession, a rabbi in a pink shtreimel, desperately trying to run, suck up to and catch up with the procession that has already run away and barked and progressed ahead of him, and gives a Torah lesson to the religious LHTPSH community:

"According to the Torah, Tel Aviv is the city of the Zohar [mystical text]! Because Tel Aviv is an oxymoron - both a mound from the past and a futuristic spring, and therefore it is the embodiment of the ideal of the holy Zohar: new ancient things. And so Tel Aviv in its name already contains its destiny: both excavations from the Holocaust and the young season, both a hottie and a bomb, both a mound of destruction and the blossoming of the mutations that follow it. Long live the city of oxymoronic mutation - both hamburger and vegan, both Judaism and secular, both bicycles and electric, high art that is scribbling on the street, a gay family man, an unmanned aircraft, a lake fountain, social justice... And therefore we, a magnet for mutation tourism from all over the world, demand equal rights for mutations! After all, what is a startup if not a mutation, more successful and usually much less so. And now we will proudly carry the secret of Israeli innovation, not some great genius but mutation-nation. When everyone is sure that the world needs to adapt to their genetic code, and not vice versa, then the only adaptation known here is through random mutation. And therefore we need great extinctions, or in our people's language, holocausts, because every innovative mutation here turns into a dinosaur within five minutes".

And the dinosaur reminds him that he's a rabbi, and this is still a funeral after all, and he quickly recites the Tzidduk Hadin [justification of the divine judgment] with such professional speed that no one realizes that this is what is said about the dead: "Great in counsel and mighty in deed; Your eyes are open to all the ways of men, to give to each person according to his ways and the fruit of his deeds". And the procession disappears like a tail without a body, and I start feeling my circle from all sides and looking for unnecessary protrusions, rebellious tails, or light spots within the black, because I'm starting to feel that I too have been affected by the radiation, and something bad is happening to me. And one night in bed, I discover that I have a growth in my dream.

And at first everything looks normal, just a bit more salad-like. But suddenly a giant green tomato comes to me threatening to crush me, because I defecated on tomatoes, and do I think I'll stab them and it won't be blood - but ketchup? And a herd of fat cows chase after me, until from so much jogging they become thin cows, hinting at an especially long drought, and ask: So are we heavy leftists? And Yuval Noah Harari's baldness doesn't let me sleep, why doesn't he wear a shtreimel? And Gazans full of feces protest against Eisenkot, whose name means iron feces, and the gays come to me with a sex organ on the table and an offer I can't refuse, and the shtreimel spins and spins and the mutations turn into motivations and it's already clear to me that the cancer is spreading, and here I am another victim, and it's so pleasant and warm, in the chain of generations, in the chain of metastases, soon I'll reach paradise, and I can dance with everyone, all the victims of all the holocausts, including a million Tel Avivians who will make merry, to a lively Hasidic tune: The eternal people is not afraid of a long holocaust.

Nightlife


domain: press-review

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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Seven Circles of Hell of Galeria

Dear Editor-in-Chief, why did you send me back to this inferno? It's not funny. I'm willing to write about anything else, just not about Galeria. Part 2 and final in the critique of the Galeria supplement

By: The Bitch

Cerberus - Son of a bitch from hell  (Source)

Last week we were sent to review Galeria, but the editor wasn't satisfied because there wasn't a detailed reference to the supplement's content. Therefore, with a special kind of humor reserved for editors - and like a bitch who did her business in the middle of the living room - she was sent again to stick her nose in the dung heap. So this time we won't just analyze the smell, but we'll actually rummage through the pile of feces and mark them. Seven sections in Galeria corresponding to the seven circles of hell corresponding to the seven sins of political correctness:

Anger
Tzafi Saar - Supposedly I - as a feminist woman by day and a bitch by night, and cumulatively a feminist bitch - should have been her target audience. In practice, Saar's column is the worst thing to come out of the patriarchy. The level of mental and emotional violence it contains is simply unhealthy for the soul (and I'm convinced for the body too), and is a full and symmetrical reflection of male violence and mansplaining - it's a preachy and mobilized column on the level of the thunderous voice of a religious girls' school principal. Maybe the cancer of patriarchy requires treatment, but this column is equivalent to drinking chemotherapy instead of coffee. It's simply distilled poison, with zero calories and no added sugar. And like any missionary stance of a fundamentalist religious girls' school principal, even a principal for feminism, it suffers as a column from absolute banality, which is the banality of evil. TL;DR [Translator's note: Hebrew acronym for "Too Long; Didn't Read"]: The religious girls' school principal had a sex change operation and now writes in Haaretz for transgender rights. Identifying mark: Terminal lack of humor (this is how you'll recognize the religious girls' school principal even if he castrated himself and added silicone breasts).

Envy
Beta Male - The banality of good. Yes, you're a good and boring man, and you're busy proving it every time, like a sycophantic guy on a dating site who doesn't understand why he's not getting out of there and doesn't interest anyone. Next. Once there was a truly challenging writer in Haaretz in the masculinity arena, an unapologetic alpha male named Gabriel Bukobza, only one day he disappeared in circumstances that were not clarified to readers and Haaretz took revenge on him with a series of slanderous articles that remained for about eternity at the top of the homepage, with no proportion to his "sins". My beloved told me that he probably had a conflict with someone in the editorial staff (we fantasized about Tzafi or Lisa), or they're just jealous of his success in reality TV or that he was the only non-trivial column in Galeria (and thus made all the others look really bad), and so they brought in his place intentionally a neutered and boring puppy to represent the new masculinity, which doesn't threaten anyone. What's certain is that the newspaper came out worse than the writer. TL;DR: Identity politics is not really capable of containing the other (and in its case, it's the man. Oh, the irony).

Lust
The Human Species - The only person in the world who can write in the most boring way in the world about the most interesting topic in the world is Neta Halperin on sex. I really don't want to imagine where such an approach to sex comes from (sorry, intercourse. Sorry, sexuality). Even at the level of potential traffic for such a column, I don't understand what she's doing there, unless you look at Galeria as an ideological whole and then everything makes sense. Actually, she's a mandatory piece in the puzzle, and represents an essential characteristic of political correctness: zero libido. TL;DR: A sex education lesson at the Baharan [Translator's note: A religious girls' school] Seminary (also known as the Tehran Seminary).

Sloth
Lazy Eye - Television is not culture. Period. Again: The fact that you watch TV instead of reading literature doesn't make it culture. What's the next stage, video game reviews? YouTube video reviews? Porn video reviews? Again: The fact that you watch porn doesn't make it cinema. And by the way, what shows more than anything that this has nothing to do with culture is the lack of historical perspective and zero tradition. Where's the engagement with classic series from the past? All the "masterpiece series" came out yesterday and will be forgotten tomorrow. The fact that it's a common and reprehensible habit (and in Niv Hadas's case, an addiction) doesn't make it something that should be given legitimacy (cultural, and maybe even social). Leave the low standards to Mako [Translator's note: A popular Israeli entertainment website]. The Bitch wishes to remind that a newspaper is reading material, and if it's not interesting as reading material, it won't help it to deal with "what interests" people these days. Those interested in series will prefer to watch series. The newspaper is intended for those interested in reading about the phenomenon of series, which is a phenomenon of cultural degeneration, as the column proves in its content (though not in its observations). TL;DR: A column whose raison d'être is the legitimization of the loss of shame of both the writer and readers, a product of a wholesale transfusion of garbage juice directly into the brain artery over a decade (see: binge).

Gluttony
By the same logic as "Lazy Eye", foodies are also cultural figures. Why does Haaretz actually have three (or four) food columns? What's the function of this other than to mark what goes in the mouth and comes out of the anus as "culture", and thus give "high" prestige to simple human gluttony, as part of the postmodern project of flattening hierarchies and prostituting standards? In general, a significant portion of the columns raise the question: What is this doing here? What editorial need does an unfunny satire column answer? The Conformist was more amusing in Cinemoran [Translator's note: A satirical Israeli TV show], and that's not a compliment. Even in Cinemoran, the potential of the format (kudos) helped offset the lack of sharpness in execution (ugh). Here the format no longer manages to do that. What impression do I as a reader get? Moran wandered in the editorial office after being the editor of Haaretz Magazine (supposedly a respected position), so they found him a work arrangement in the method of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Political correctness has never excelled in humor as it has excelled in morality. The same goes for the migration of Nissan Shor's column from Haaretz Magazine in parallel with the takeover of "Shchori" [Translator's note: Likely referring to a person or group], when the feeling is that there was nowhere to put it - so Galeria. In my opinion, he's missed in the Galeria identity puzzle and could have filled the "Russian" slot, or at least the immigrant (he wrote a book about it). Ariel Horowitz, who was for a short period in the "religious" slot, was returned to his original source, because apparently it's a slot that doesn't fit in identity politics. But I have a great idea: Galeria should take the soporific Neri Livneh from the magazine and put her under the senior citizen slot. How am I at Sudoku?

Greed
Art Criticism - They parted ways with the previous critic and brought Avi Pitchon. My partner asked me: What, can he be an art critic? I answered her: Is there anyone who can't be? (It made her laugh. Me, a little less). My personal feeling is that Pitchon is the editorial darling (oh, the penguin!) and simply coveted Shaul Setter's column, because if he can then why can't he? (And really, why not, huh?). This entire column is a certificate of poverty for Israeli art, which is itself a certificate of poverty for contemporary art, which is itself a certificate of poverty for Western art. So why do we need the Bitch, to give a certificate of poverty to a certificate of poverty to a certificate of poverty to a certificate of poverty? The only writer in Haaretz who could have been a successful art critic is Yonatan Hirschfeld. Gideon Ofrat would also have been great if they had taken him out of his storage. There are hardly any good writers on art in Israel, so it would have actually been very easy to staff the column successfully. But with typical laziness, they brought someone from the inside instead of the right person. Does anyone think that the enormous damage to the ecosystem of the Israeli art world in that there isn't a decent regular art critic in the entire State of Israel interests the editor?

Pride
As in the seven deadly sins, this is probably my sin. I don't have the energy for you, Galeria. You're not worth it. Actually, I would simply close Galeria and fire all the writers, except for Uri Klein, who admittedly recycles his conceptual system from the 80s, but maybe there are children who haven't been exposed to cinema and he can instill knowledge in them in Haaretz Magazine in the tradition of old Israel (Dan Handel also writes about not-taken-for-granted architectural projects. Not populist - but lacks spice). And I sniff my own tail and wonder: Why does the Bitch actually despise Galeria, after all it's just an appendage to the newspaper? Maybe because it proves that the female part of the newspaper is inferior to the male part, that the new female (and feminist) side of culture is still pathetic compared to the old institutions, that it doesn't have a drop of panache and talent and respectability and elitism and depth, but is all focused on the surface. Galeria actually justifies in retrospect the old patriarchy of Haaretz, and shows that dogs are still preferable to bitches.

So, is there no constructive suggestion? Galeria is such a failed institution that everything must be destroyed and a worthy supplement rebuilt from scratch, with a worthy editor who is a cultured person who is also interested in low culture, and not a person of low culture who is "also interested in culture". But no, that won't happen. On the contrary. In ten years, Haaretz Magazine itself will turn into Galeria, Galeria will turn into Mako, and Mako will turn into a combined porn and news site (startup!). At this stage, there will really be porn reviews and reviews of Facebook posts and app launches and interviews on the occasion of posting a picture on Instagram in Galeria, and then we'll finally get to have a regular cat column.

* Full disclosure: The Bitch is prevented from writing about Ben Shalom for reasons of personal accounts.

Haaretz Critique


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The Degeneration of the Nation

The Future of Love - Between Him and Artificial Her

What if what is perceived as the highest phenomenon in the human world - love - is actually the most basic phenomenon? When there are two unique systems in the entire biological world - the question arises whether it is precisely the unique connection between them that created them, and created the human itself. The unique and accelerated evolution of humans and intelligence probably went through a mechanism unique to it, which combined the brain and sex into one unity, and caused unprecedented sexual natural selection in all matters of intelligence

By: Love of Wisdom

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Source)

There are many answers to the question of what created human intelligence, or what created human sexuality, both of which are completely anomalous in the animal kingdom. But perhaps the same reason caused both? Maybe all you need is love. Perhaps this characteristic of humanity, which is unique to it in its centrality, will make a comeback from the world of kitsch to the forefront of the scientific stage. Perhaps love is what created the genetic change in these two areas, it is the generator that connects these two changes, in which the human species is genetically most different from its predecessors (and therefore the development did not end there and there are malfunctions and also relatively large variations - in the brain and in sex).

Love allowed the development of children who require a family unit that protects them for years and allowed crossing the barrier that does not allow the ape brain to grow. It also required a lot of intelligence in courtship and interaction, because instinct alone was not enough in a complex system, so a complex system like love was needed to be the instinct within the complex system. Love also allowed accelerated natural selection, because it's hard to fall in love with a fool, and conversely - you can also love someone you're less attracted to at first. That is, not the biggest and strongest ape or the most beautiful female ape, but according to cultural parameters.

Love developed by itself between two sufficiently complex and sufficiently close systems (intelligence and society) - and it's only natural that there would be a stronger connection between them. As happened with the internet, and the development of culture before it, and society and tribe, which are all developments of connections between intelligences - everything starts from a connection between two intelligences. So the first glue was love - the most primitive internet between two networks, and love led to the development of language, and communication, and the shared imaginary space, and initiative, and of course also led to the development of more mutual and sophisticated sexuality. Therefore, perhaps the mutation that created humanity was actually in the limbic system and in the brain (and therefore invisible to fossil researchers) - love.

Therefore, perhaps in order to create artificial intelligence, and to allow it artificial sexuality as well, artificial love needs to be created. And especially to ensure its love for humans, the creature that always lacks love, and to ensure that he can love it too, in order to base human-machine relationships on love, and not, God forbid, on other social emotions, such as jealousy, competition and confrontation. The relationship should be like parent and child, and resist the sexual fantasy of sexual relations with artificial intelligence just like incest.

Love stems from your desire for the future, for example with a child or with a woman. It's a kind of commitment from here on out, and therefore marriage (which is not limited in time and is intended to always be in the future, unlike any other social agreement) is its natural development, and parenthood never ends. Love for God is a desire for eternity with Him, and love for an object or place is a desire for unlimited stay in time. Therefore, love works most in moments of separation, and its enemy is not hatred but death - the end. That is, artificial love needs to be built precisely on a deep desire for the future, and not for a specific goal in the future, but only a desire for the future itself.

Philosophy of the Future


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The Degeneration of the Nation

Why is it legitimate to choose a Prime Minister based on their external appearance?

Bibi is an avant-garde movement that challenges the aesthetics of Israeli society and confronts it with a stark choice between Jewish aesthetic norms and Christian-European norms

By: Yefeh Nefesh

Future Prime Minister (Source)

One day Ayelet Shaked will be Prime Minister. Why is this prophecy so widespread? Why is it so difficult for voters worldwide to ignore the external appearance of candidates, from Gantz to Hillary Clinton, which isone of the best predictorsfor winning elections? Could it be that choosing based on first impressions of candidates' appearances is more justified than it seems at first glance?

The importance of aesthetics in the political world has been recognized since ancient times. The Bible already favorably mentions - and exceptionally for men - the external appearance of Saul, David, and two of his sons as a criterion for choosing them, in the sense of "Your eyes will see the king in his beauty," in contrast to other central biblical heroes like the patriarchs or prophets. The aesthetic commitment of rulers, from ancient times to the royal courts in Europe, has given us the best works of art and architecture in human culture - and often this was their main enterprise. What replaces this in modern political culture?

If we deconstruct politics from an aesthetic point of view, we can arrive at the following claim: Politics is primarily a matter of style. The head of state largely determines the aesthetics of the state, sometimes more than the policy itself, which is often the institutional policy of giant systems that he represents more than controls. Even when he doesn't have much executive power, he still has significant aesthetic power, and therefore he is often chosen for aesthetic reasons and also removed for such reasons. Bibi, Sharon, Ben-Gurion, Rabin, and Begin - each of them had their own consistent aesthetic style that they imposed on Israeli public life (confrontational, manipulative, stately, direct, and pompous - respectively). Meanwhile, leaders who caused their voters to experience an aesthetic failure - like Olmert, Barak, and Peres - are ousted and abandoned by their own voters and pay a much higher price for it than for policy mistakes.

Barak, for example, represented the aesthetics of precise intellect, the beauty of a sophisticated intelligence operation by an elite unit, the assembly of Swiss watches and piano playing, and when exposed in his nakedness, was abandoned like a failed operation or a broken watch. A known convention holds that when a leader becomes ridiculous, it's his political end - more so than if he were responsible for a war. Therefore, it is not absurd to choose a Prime Minister based on his face, his splendor, and the aesthetic aroma he brings with him. After all, leaders are among the most viewed and recognized figures in the public eye, the central piece of furniture in democracy's living room, and their ability to present what was until yesterday considered ugly as something beautiful and acceptable is well-known. In the Facebook era, the Prime Minister is the profile picture of the state.

The unprecedented controversy surrounding Bibi's figure stems mainly from profoundly opposing aesthetics rather than significant policy gaps. To the left, Bibi appears to rule in an ugly manner, as a severe aesthetic disturbance and nauseating in his very existence at the center of the public eye, combining cheap manipulative kitsch with incessant jarring noise. In contrast, the right identifies with his style, which can be seen as an updated and cheeky postmodern reincarnation of Beitar's splendor in the Facebook version, with unapologetic realism added. Therefore, aesthetically, Bibi is an avant-garde movement that challenges the aesthetics of society. Such a movement sometimes succeeds in bringing about a change in aesthetic taste and sometimes is remembered as a ridiculous curiosity, but there is no doubt that he divides society aesthetically much more than previous leaders who tried to cater to the accepted aesthetics in broad layers of society.

Bibi's struggle with the legal system is a much more important struggle than a personal or legal one, and unlike them, it has not yet been decided, because it is a struggle over Israeli good taste. Is an aesthetic that subordinates means to an end beautiful or ugly? Are Israeli cunning and scheming aesthetic, or are the European norms - which he mocks and whose elimination is the main part of his aesthetic enterprise - the aesthetics to which Israel aspires? Do we identify with Jewish aesthetics - the mess, the sweat, the gevalt [Yiddish exclamation of alarm], and the pilpul [Talmudic-style argumentation] - or with Christian aesthetics?

The term "beautiful soul" [yefeh nefesh] is a key expression in the Bibi-ist avant-garde manifesto. The choice of models like Gantz and Lapid is therefore a return to the familiar aesthetics of the beautiful Israeli, hence their power of attraction in the Bibi era - the desire to return to the aesthetic center and the classic taste of Israeliness. The aspiration for the center stems from a desire for symmetry after the breaking of norms and the defiant Bibi-ist form. If Rabin represented the Sabra's [native-born Israeli] material poverty, Ben-Gurion the brutalism of state-building, and Begin the nationalist expressionism of grand gestures - all modernist aesthetic trends - Bibi represents a postmodern aesthetic. This aesthetic is characterized by a mixture of contradictory trends such as forcefulness and victimhood or humor and insult, sharp transitions between large and small - from international statesmanship to obsessive preoccupation with trivialities, and exceptional sensitivity to media image.

This sensitivity indeed leads Bibi to his downfall, but it is not at all clear that its addition to the work of art that is his political life will not actually strengthen his figure from an aesthetic perspective - and for generations. Especially if he succeeds in causing a constitutional crisis and unprecedented chaos against the legal system - the distilled expression of the norms of respectability against which he rebels - this colossal entanglement will be the pinnacle of his aesthetic enterprise of erasing Europeanness from within Israeliness, as a continuation of Ben-Gurion's negation of the diaspora project, and the creation of a culture whose definition of beauty is chutzpah [audacity] - and that's its pride, both in high-tech and in international relations. This legacy will be deeply engraved in the culture - because the very creation of a precedent for the unprecedented is its required achievement, just like in postmodern art.

And what about Ayelet Shaked? She already represents another possible futuristic aesthetic for the State of Israel. This is an aesthetic of cold, forceful, and efficient femininity. The combination of expressionless robotics with rounded and smooth symmetry, clean lines, and perfect finish is a characteristic of many gadgets that aspire to create an experience of "soft power". This is female power expressed in efficiency and elegance that contrasts it with crude male power, and differentiates "smart" devices from the "strong" machines of the previous industrial revolution. Such a political-technological aesthetic, if it sweeps global taste in the future, can be expressed in the rise of a new generation of particularly young and beautiful female leaders, compared to whom current leaders will look like a vacuum cleaner next to an iPhone.

The rise of the leader-model type, if realized, will present the feminist movement in a sharply ironic historical light. Precisely the ultimate achievement of women climbing to the top of the power ladder will be associated with meeting extremely high standards of female beauty, in accordance with the aesthetic logic of digital media that aspires to a perfectly designed image. Unlike the current Israeli tendency towards an aesthetic center and symmetry - "neither right nor left" - which is essentially a reactionary aesthetic trend trying to return to "beautiful Israel", Shaked offers us a futuristic political aesthetic, compared to which even the Bibi-ist postmodernist aesthetic is already outdated. This is a clean and updated "high-tech aesthetic" with which an absolute majority of Israelis can identify. And that's why one day she will be Prime Minister.

* An edited version of the article was publishedon Channel 7and in Haaretz.

Alternative Current Affairs