text:
The Degeneration of the Nation

Long and Irritable - External Summary: What Do You Want from Us?

The summary of all summaries, the response to all responses, and finally the answer to the most important question: Who wrote the website?

By: B.R.'s Note

An image of Bilhah, which has nothing to do with the real Bilhah, but you need it (source)

Well, what did you expect? And what did you think would happen, that could happen (alternatively: why are you so dramatic)? Are you also whining-disappointed-victimized (I thought you were against that)? Why should we respond to someone who doesn't respond to us/me? Why blame the whole world, look in the mirror, what do you see? Who are you, Bilhah? Who are you really, Bilhah? I know who you are, Bilhah! Who do you think you are, huh? I knew you were a man! (Two men outdid themselves by writing to me in masculine form). Do you really exist? Why should I be interested in someone who doesn't exist/talk to me/play with me/go out with me? Why should I bother to read, are you paying me for my time? (I don't have time, no one has time, time no longer exists). Why is everything so long and inconsiderate to the reader (me!), don't you understand that this hurts you? Why don't you shorten it? Are you willing to shorten it for me/chew it for me/love me/summarize it for me?

So here, I'm willing. I received a plethora of responses privately (and publicly) about the internal summary article, which was actually intended for within the group, simply because it seemed important to me to summarize the website in some article among ourselves, and not just abandon it, after the editor-in-chief, the Chief Rabbi, asked each of us to write something for the conclusion (Circle contributed a final avant-garde and exceptionally daring dream that simply cannot be uploaded to Facebook, the Bitch returned to a final scathing critique that devours not the reviewed but the reader, Balak son of Zippor chose a summary essay on deep trends in Hebrew prose and the development of its style, the Singing K.B.R. published a collection of poems and remnants, etc... and we even transcribed an old lecture by the Netanyahite, post-mortem). And now I will summarize for you all my responses to the responses, including the answer to the eternal question: What does Bilhah want. And this question, you'll be surprised, is related to the question: What does Bilhah do in the shower.

And not just in the shower. But also in the bathroom, in sports, in walks to the grocery store, in travels, or when I'm removing hair. I think it's already thousands upon thousands of hours, that is, on the order of magnitude of a degree or two, and it all started from some list by the Netanyahite that's circulating among us, which actually begins like this: "Kol Halashon: Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, Rabbi Shlomo Fisher, Why lectures - everything, Katzir lectures (everything) - science, the channel of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (except for 'Such is Life' interviews with emeritus professors and trash conferences), Ben-Ami Shillony - Japan, Yuri Pines - China, Ronnie Ellenblum - history, Avner Ben-Zaken - history of science, Prof. Michal Schwartz - immunology, Prof. Michal Biran - history, Assaf Inbari - literature, Ohad Naharin - dance, Dan Miron - literature, Menahem Blondheim - communication and American studies, Ariel Hirschfeld - literature, Leo Corry - history of mathematics, Yehuda Liebes - Kabbalah, Menachem Froman - thought, Daniel Kahneman - economics, Yossi Vardi - entrepreneurship, Zvi Lanir - aging and strategy, Gideon Ofrat - art, Yehuda Bauer - Holocaust, Israel Aumann - economics, Yuval Noah Harari - history (by the way, not anymore. Since he converted from Judaism to Buddhism, the hollow practice of meditation has made his mind completely hollow, and the brain damage is noticeable to the listener: he's no longer interesting and I've stopped following - B.R.), Dan Ariely - economics, Yoram Yovell - psychology, Yoav Rinon - literature, Amos Oz (repeats himself), A.B. Yehoshua, Haim Be'er - literature, Aaron Ciechanover - biology, Ruth Arnon - biology, Idan Segev - neuroscience, Inbal Goshen - neuroscience, Yair Zakovitch - Bible, Arik Glasner - literature, The Hebrews series (all archive segments) Yair Kedar - literature, Peretz Lavie - medicine, Ishay Rosen-Zvi - Talmud, Yehuda Vizan, Meir Wieseltier, Aharon Shabtai - literature, Haim Sider - biology, Yonatan Hirschfeld - painting, Isaac Ben-Israel - security, Dani Karavan - architecture, Shabtai Rappaport - Halacha, Shimon Gershon Rosenberg - thought, Yishai Mevorach - theology...". And it continues (but you'll say Bilhah is digging) - a list of people whose almost everything they say is interesting in some way (copy and save!).

From here comes the annual ritual, where I download all the new lectures, lessons, and talks of all the people on the list who haven't died from YouTube (searching by upload date) and other sites, and turn them into mp3 files using the free MediaHuman Youtube Downloader software, which then enter my Android, and from there to my brain. Do I appreciate, love, or even believe all these people? Not at all (some I hate!). But I listen to them. It's important for me to confront Harari, or Zipper, or Oz, or Meir Shalev, not because I'm their groupie, but because they are challenging phenomena, and the very confrontation with them builds me. And all these are just people I bothered to confront while I'm, say, on the toilet (if it's not Torah lessons), or doing Pilates. There's a list many times longer of people I've listened to for a few hours of theirs, and understood their point, or bothered to check them out and listen to them for an hour. And reading? Here they won't be counted due to their multitude. I've checked almost everyone and everything I've heard of or from them some interesting thing that innovated something for me. Sometimes it was a page. And sometimes it was reading everything the person wrote. And how did I decide? According to how much it challenges me and innovates for me, and constitutes innovation in general in relation to the system (culture, literature, science, Torah, philosophy, art, economics, technology, etc.). I'm not a groupie of anyone, but very interested in any substantial innovation, namely in possible futures of the system. If you will: a groupie of innovations (though not innovations for the sake of innovations, like for example in the hollow avant-garde in the "daring" art of our time and in playful linguistic innovation, but what the Netanyahite called deep innovation, which is innovation in the method of the system, namely: learning innovation. For example: precisely through its new continuation of its previous depth directions, by discovering its "deep method", in the Netanyahite's terminology, which it itself was not aware of).

What always surprises me - is that people are not like me. Innovation doesn't interest them, and not even the future of the field they're engaged in. Not really. And therefore all this doesn't occupy them. They don't constantly ask themselves: in what other new directions can literature develop, or how might science/Torah/society look like in a few more decades, what will be the next big turn in art history, or in philosophy and human thought, or what could be the next paradigm shift in culture. And that's how it looks - in their output, and in what they consider important and interesting, and in what they read or search for. Namely: in perception, in action and in judgment - innovation is not a central mental category for them. The horizon of the future does not define their consciousness, as it defines (probably necessarily) our consciousness, the students of the Netanyahite. That's why I'm so not nice, by Facebook standards (in reality I'm nicer than all of you!) - because people don't interest me. I'm not even interested instead (in what elitism) only in mere "content" - but in innovations. That's why so many are transparent to me. They don't really have anything to offer to the future. They don't present some other direction of development in a new way of the system, which is not an uninteresting variation, namely without a future. And no one in the future will be interested in them.

And I, what to do, come from the side of the future to the present world (hence the alienation and estrangement of present murmurs, for example Facebook). Every reading on the site, and every presence of the site on Facebook for example, is a collision and confrontation between someone whose world's premise is the future, and a platform and discourse whose eternal essence is the present. And all this not because I'm a prophet or futurist (I'm actually not), not because of the source of the message or even its content, but because of the direction of learning: its interest. I'm not interested in what they said today in the news, or wrote in Haaretz, or in the feed. Therefore they were marked as enemies, that is, as those who impose the present on human consciousness, contrary to thought and literature of the kind that seeks the next thing, and therefore they have a messianic horizon, which is a position of constant resistance to discourse - not in imposing another discourse (like discourse struggles in the present), but from the direction of its own future (if you will, it sees Judaism not as minority and as principled resistance in space, as it's customary to portray it "today", but as resistance that comes from the direction of time, and not only that of the past, as in the Haredi world, but also and mainly from the futuristic direction, hence the enormous power of the Jewish world precisely at the modern historical moment. We believe in the future, unlike for example the Enlightenment, which like science fiction, is the imposition of the present direction on the future through a simple stretching of the current vector, and therefore it is a belief in man, the ruler of the present, and not a belief in darkness - in the unknown that is the future. Messianism is adherence to the future as a signifier, as a learning interest - and not as a specific signified, that is, not in the future as a certain content revealed to us. I could continue but then they'll complain again about Bilhah's convolutedness, so come on, let's close parentheses).

You'll ask: if Bilhah doesn't live in the moment and in the present, because all her free time is full of words and speeches of others, and her consciousness is almost not free for wandering, then when does she think at all? Isn't this a dystopian existence? When does Bilhah stare? Well, I think while I write. Writing itself is the learning action, and everything else is just materials for it. I simply discovered that it's absolutely inefficient and doesn't work to think just like that, and my mind wanders to daily troubles, or worse to present nonsense (if you dedicate time to thinking about Bibi - something's wrong with your brain), and writing focuses me on what really interests me. That's why I chose to write the Alternative to Current Events column on the site, precisely out of a desire to confront from the direction of the future - against the present. That's why I, unlike the rest of the site members, was interested (and still am) in Facebook. This is the arena of confrontation, and sometimes collision (and therefore the blocking didn't surprise me at all, the present is unable to digest real originality, because it shows it the horizon outside it - and marks its limitation by its very existence. And it doesn't matter at all what the specific reason we were blocked for, which we'll never know, because Facebook only shows a generic message, according to which one of the more original sites that arose in Hebrew - is spam). That's why I'm also writing a response article - this is my confrontation. And here we're approaching the question of what the hell Bilhah wants from us. If you're not interested in discourse with us and don't participate in our discourse, then what the hell is our role in your show? To sit and applaud you? Don't you notice the internal contradiction in this position? What's the point of addressing the world, and what do you care at all about the site's position in the present? What do you want?

Well, deal with it. This is, in essence, the position I present on Facebook, when I publish materials as long as the exile - right in the middle of the destruction of attention, and in the heart of the enemy. And indeed, the rest of the site members are not really that interested in you, it's just me - who went out to confront in your field, and whose writing is within the arena. And true, I'm not interested in neither applause and responses, nor claims and arguments, but in the confrontation itself, each according to the root of their soul. And our culture has simply stopped confronting, and is no longer capable of confronting, anything that requires confrontation. Reading a long text? God forbid. An encounter with a literary perspective truly different from our own? Not in our school (not to mention our bird). An encounter with a different religious world? Interests grandma (with the sheitel). The Netanyahite philosopher formulates a paradigmatic change in philosophy? What? What does that even mean? After all, if it's interesting, it will come to me on its own, diluted and digested, maybe in twenty years, while I'm sitting and expanding my belly and opening my mouth wide wide, and the feed brings me all the world's dishes, and I don't even need to leave the house and my passive comfort zone. And if it has a mixed taste like vomit - well, that's the world. I knew there was no point in developing taste, and independently checking such a radical claim - that someone actually formulated an alternative to the linguistic philosophical paradigm, which is the great mother of all thought that has been thought in the last century. So is it any wonder that the texts I wrote (I, Billy), somewhat complex (and truly: not really), received the status of a bone in the throat? The demand here is actually quite simple: deal with it.

The site never sought readers, and never thought or aspired to become popular reading material. It sought contenders. And such were not found for it. And shame on us, even our cultural figures are unable to deal with any cultural proposal that deviates from the present of their repetitive and boring discourse. And believe me, as an expert on innovations, I know very well how to identify when it's a real innovation, which for example marks a new format (the Netanyahite would be more precise: a new method), and not a pretense of innovation, which is what characterizes the cultural field of our time, which is an infinite collection of slight variations that no one will ever remember (about me). The flooding present creates in them (and this is its method) a pressure, which does not allow any attention and listening to anything outside the system, including its own future possibilities, which are critical to its very vitality as a living system (and no, it's not the porcine acapitalism, which actually is interested in the future and therefore succeeds, but the porcine conformism, namely simply that good old and fattening and self-marinated stagnation from time immemorial, which frequently takes over cultures, not to say naturally, and snores with contempt towards any innovator. The aspiration for innovation is the exception, which characterizes exceptional states of the cultural system: golden ages). And indeed, we are not living in a golden age, and the disregard for innovation and the inability to deal with it leave the arena of confrontation outside the present - in the future.

There are those who are completely unable to identify innovation (and this ability not to see, when it comes to radical and significant innovation, is almost psychotic, and is explained only by the brain's ability to ignore everything that doesn't fit into its ready-made categories and conceptions as noise), and there are those who are able to identify (and these are the vast majority), and the innovation did reach them (for example on Facebook), but they never bothered to investigate it, to delve into it, to understand it and to be interested in it as an innovation, that is, to confront it (even if it is not to their liking, or against them, or in a completely different direction than they hoped, but exemption from confrontation - there is none). This does indeed require a bit of reading (but not in relation to any ordinary thick book), but this is not the real obstacle and barrier. For reading another book (and another book) that doesn't really innovate anything - many are easily capable of, and quite a few can read the entire site in a week or two, according to the reported rate of consumption. But what is required here is to leave the lazy zone of discourse, in which they dominate and are proficient, and to embark on a learning journey in a new spiritual territory - and this is much harder. Many of our cultural figures think and teach and write within the paradigm of the philosophy of language and one of its descendants or various formulations - and how difficult it is to exit your own paradigm! How difficult it is to internalize that the beloved and old and familiar format of the novel is not the great format of the future, but of the past, and that we are on the threshold of another format. And how difficult it is to read poetry that doesn't revolve around language, or around one of the spheres that descend from it, but around learning. Yes, there is someone who writes not inspired by the Zach-Alterman polemic (from either of its sides), which is of course linguistic in its essence, but following didactic learning formats (Lucretius for example), or open and contemporary - and new.

As someone with some minimal identification ability, I think I can easily and well mark the two great innovations that took place on the site, simply because it's very hard to miss them, and I can also mark the two great innovations that follow them, which are much less personally beloved to me (and therefore you've hardly heard about them from me), but I know very well how to identify their value as innovations, and of course I took the trouble to confront them: to read and digest, and finally even to oppose (yes, we too have disagreements. I like less the literary part edited by Balak son of Zippor, although in the culture section his editing is excellent in my opinion). And this is the opening quartet:

* In first place, in my opinion, and as anyone who reads me has noticed well, I place the philosophy developed by the Netanyahite teacher (without whom the site would have remained some kind of contrasting antithesis to "Haaretz", and we would never have reached the circle, and who is actually the one who united us into one school). I think many are not aware of how much all the thinking and philosophy and culture (and even technology and science and academia and art, etc.) of the last century are all within the same paradigm of about a hundred years, which is the paradigm of the philosophy of language. They were all its children. And all this is so difficult to see - until you get out of the paradigm, from within a new paradigm, and this is exactly what the Netanyahite did. His philosophy is not just another philosophy, and certainly not some New Age version of learning, as I've seen those who haven't really read him refer to it (this is not about personal learning, but about system learning, which is more similar to organizational or evolutionary learning), but it is a new philosophical paradigm, suitable for the current century, just as language was a paradigm that suited the previous century. It's not for nothing that Machine Learning drives the world, and the Netanyahite predicted the takeover of the learning paradigm in our world twenty years ago. The right place to start confronting his philosophy is his collection of seven essays - at the top of the "Culture and Literature" section edited by Balak. And following them, we (the students) wrote a long series of essays that apply this philosophical paradigm and continue the learning to every possible field (psychology, law, political theory, technology, economics, sexuality, science, geopolitics, mathematics, corona, aesthetics, and more and more), exactly as the philosophy of language found its expressions in every possible field, and they can be found both in the current affairs section with me and with Balak. The fertility of the learning approach, when contrasted with the linguistic approach, for analyzing and understanding cultural and social phenomena, is from my perspective a proven fact, which I discovered from my personal experience, and this in itself should have caused any real intellectual (that is, one who is still capable of dealing with abstract thinking not of the kind he learned in his bachelor's degree) to confront it. This is the learning turn, which replaces the linguistic turn, and whoever does not want (or is tired of) staying behind, stuck in the previous stale paradigm, is recommended to start trying to think within it - and discover its immense power.

* In second place, and as will not surprise those who follow me, stands who is in my eyes a huge miss of Hebrew literature, if such an imagined entity still exists. This is a very old story: someone publishes a book that doesn't look like any book anyone else has written or read before. The world is intrigued, but largely doesn't know how to digest this strange thing, and of course doesn't confront it. After a few years, this someone publishes something he claims is his great work, and this thing is as anomalous in the landscape as a UFO in the middle of the Sahara desert, a unique creation by any literary measure in time and space, and then - ta-da-da-dum! - no one reads it. Only we, within the school, are aware of this magnificent cathedral, with the variety of creatures that swarm in it, which describes the fantasy world of a person with an intimacy and exposure with which you don't even know your partner, and maybe not yourself (is it any wonder the author is hiding? It amazes me how much I feel I know him himself - without "knowing" anything about him). And to the shame of Hebrew criticism, we couldn't find even one literature critic who would even read (!) this creation, which creates its own yardstick (I don't know if it's even a book in the conventional sense), and certainly not even one righteous person in Sodom - who would confront it. Unfortunately, I had to ask Balak son of Zippor to write a review, and he indeed wrote a deep essay that confronts the uniqueness of the work precisely in a comparative genre view (and not, for example, ideational or poetic), but this is not the child we prayed for. This is a brilliant certificate of poverty for our literary criticism and literary republic, and its lack of curiosity about its own future, not to mention its irrelevance to the future of the world (as it is considered, for example, in a work where the computer is a central hero - and not in some sci-fi parable, but the real computer you hold in your hand. Or in a work that rethinks what fiction is and what poetics is and what literature is - and what their connection is to technology). Never mind, not everyone has to be interested in every system (for example: Hebrew prose, and indeed many are not interested). But if you are part of a certain system, and someone writes something that challenges all the basic assumptions of the system and offers new answers that have never been heard before to its most basic questions (for example to the questions: what is a book, story, hero, author, plot, soul, character, etc.), and all this simply doesn't interest you and you don't bother to confront it - then you're probably a creator, editor, reporter or critic with a very limited breadth of horizons. This problem exists not only in prose, but also in poetry, as we'll see below, and it's not a specific problem regarding a specific work, but stands at the basis of the degeneration of these republics, which is expressed in a huge inflation of writers who innovate nothing, and it's not clear why they bothered the world with their creation, except for the narcissistic need to "express themselves". And what is clear is why such inflation was created, and that's because the basic assumptions of the field are not at all interested in its future, and therefore do not judge a work according to whether it is an innovation (substantial or minor), and therefore the discourse of the present has completely taken over it (for example: the newspaper, Facebook, and so on). And so criticism itself has completely lost its relevance, because it doesn't understand that its horizon should have been the future of literature - not its present. And this is not about some avant-garde difficult work of thousands of pages, written in an esoteric language, and requiring complex confrontation in its very reading. Again, reading itself is not the barrier, because it's only about 500 pages of the trilogy of the circle, indeed like a not thin novel, but written in everyday language and readable fluently and easily. But the core of the confrontation here is with a new paradigm of prose - and this is already beyond the capability of our narrow-minded criticism. A narrow-minded field is not capable of confronting greatness of mind. We always delude ourselves that we the wise and open will not be like the blind of the past (those fossilized and small conservatives, who pave the entire length of cultural history), who when encountered (again and again) with significant innovative works simply plugged their ears and minds each time anew (what, they didn't learn anything?), and dismissed and ignored them. And we wonder about them (how stupid can one be?), and complain that it's a shame that in our days such works are no longer written (we ourselves would immediately recognize the importance of the new poetic thinking!), and certainly not in our miserable literature, which we wish would produce a truly original voice once in a jubilee. So how is this supposed to look, this "real thing", if not like this?

* In third place, something that will indeed surprise the followers, simply because I'm less interested in the field of poetry, which belongs to the boys' side of the site (Balak and co.). They really aren't interested in you or Facebook, and never thought there was any point in bothering to struggle within the current literary and poetic field and in the present arena - and they were probably right more than me. They believe that only the future will reveal who was the true innovator and truly interesting poet of the decade (hint: in their section). Are they right? I'm not entirely sure they are, and also not that they aren't. But if we try to take even the two most distant extremes in Hebrew poetry today, let's say Ars Poetica and Wizman, we'll discover that both are (and struggling) within the same paradigm - of the philosophy of language. At the core, the basic assumptions are the same assumptions - poetry is a language action that has a dimension of struggle over discourse. And not only the poetry groups and the licking Like, which give new meaning to the linguistic turn - but also Wizman himself (who in my opinion could have been a great poet if his whole world wasn't the narrow field of poetry, and then he would also write more, and perhaps finally take on writing the great Hebrew epic he yearns for) is deeply stuck within the linguistic paradigm of the twentieth century, and speaks in its name and from its throat (hence the anachronistic impression he produces), and sometimes even struggles (as per its century-old tradition) with poets who are still stuck in the previous philosophical paradigm, the Kantian one, of the individual subject self - and its consciousness and perception (and wounded feelings, alas). While following the Netanyahite philosopher, the Singing NCO developed on the site a whole poetic world (seven books of poetry) whose starting assumption is not language - but learning (and indeed they do not struggle over discourse, which is why you haven't heard of them, because they are not in the same poetic paradigm at all, and there is no common basis for wrestling - they have already moved on, and write deeply within the learning paradigm). There are poem-lessons, didactic-futuristic manifestos, poems in the form of exercises and homework for the reader, rhyming summaries, learning-based construction of a computerized soul world, and not a little poetry that stems from intellectual and internet worlds (dating sites...), with considerable contempt for language and waving at its poverty, and in a way that in my humble opinion undermines this poetry, despite its challenging innovation, and the completely new poetic style it presents (which anyone who is indeed interested in Hebrew poetry - should confront with full seriousness). There is something very radical - and perhaps too radical for this reader - in poetry that replaces language, the material of poetry, with learning material, and the figure of the poet with the figure of the teacher/student. Maybe it's my critical conservatism, but personally I told the Singing NCO that in my opinion poetry, by its nature, cannot be intentionally sloppy in its treatment of language - and stick out its tongue at language. The philosophy and ideology spoiled here, in my opinion, and came at the expense of artistic achievement. And indeed, one can easily identify a fault line in the NCO's poetry, between his four early books, which lay out a new and anti-linguistic style, and the three later collections, in which the treatment of language and sound is much better - but alas: the innovation is more thematic, and less in developing the style of learning poetics. But of course even the least innovative book by the NCO doesn't look like any Hebrew poetry you've read, and this is in an era where almost all Hebrew poetry you've read seems as if you've already read something like it in the past, and that "innovations have run out" (as if there's some kind of warehouse and it's been exhausted). Well, that's not the case.

* In fourth place, I consider the prose published by Balak Ben Zippor in the "Culture and Literature" section he edits. They are developing there, in several dozen pieces they've published, a kind of style that aspires to draw inspiration from both the biblical style and the Kafkaesque style (Balak's two literary heroes) - but all this with a futuristic twist. There is, for example, pseudo-biblical writing describing the creation of the computer and the internet (a kind of biblical-technological story), or fantasies that combine Kafka with science fiction, much preoccupation with the triangle between sexuality, technology and religion, and other experiments in prose. But I must admit and confess that there is also a not insignificant dose of toxic masculinity there (unlike the sweet circular one), which didn't help me connect to the unique style. But again, it's a very interesting laboratory, operating out of a conscious attempt to synthesize a biblical-Kafkaesque style, which is certainly an unconventional direction, and a promising combination for creating a new (old) Jewish Hebrew prose style.

This is a summary of the site for those interested, and now I'll move on to summarizing my responses to the question that came up again and again to the point of exhaustion, which is the question of the authors' identity. And since I'm very tired of it, I'll simply quote 2-3 responses to commenters (some in private and some in public):

* You have no idea how funny and amusing Mr.'s philological observations are, and in fact cast a heavy shadow on your entire professional enterprise, for if you are unable to identify even one correct detail about the identity of a contemporary author(s), in a society that is not so far from you, what level of credibility should be given to your historical research and insights about distant times and places? And this is not only about the personal skill of your honor (really a detective in action), but in all the basic assumptions of this "academic" field, which have never been tested in any valid statistical tool of the kind accepted in matters where validity really matters (drug approval, for example), or significance, and standard deviation, and other basic statistical inference tools (like Bayes' formula), which are certainly familiar to you from your bachelor's degree in the "sciences" of the humanities. For example, the assumption of "the narrator speaking innocently" regarding one of the most sophisticated and deceptive narrators I've ever encountered in our literature - is more aggressive arrogance than valid heuristics. But thanks to deep insights like these, I came to an insight (deep?) of my own, which is that all the common research assumptions in your places start from an incredibly absurd starting point: that the writing person, who is certainly an exceptional specimen in every sense and measure from his society and era, is actually the typical one. That the most paranormal and far-from-average spiritual phenomenon we know - is in the average of the normal distribution (don't you grasp what an anti-spiritual bias is hiding here?). And that the most exceptional comes (of course!) only to testify about the rule (and vice versa). Just like the assumption in Eitan's book that a victim of incest and a prostitute by choice is a representative example of female sexuality and "love" (are there more general intentions there?), which is as convincing as if we were to choose a schizophrenic or autistic hero to represent human (normal and regular) consciousness. And the result? Whore words. Literature that descends into ideological prostitution and is a victim of feminism, comes from academia and will go to academia, and as if about it Inbari wrote 20 (!) years ago "Again returns the nightmare of literature's recruitment". Because after academia completely destroyed the entire art world - it came to destroy literature as well... And with the same exact proven methods). And when the tools of biblical criticism are directed at you yourself, and try to prove that you are not who you are - you receive an unforgettable lesson in the faith of sages. And so, the constant doubt in my very existence caused me to stop doubting the existence of all the biblical figures (including Og king of Bashan!), and even the existence of Homer - and even the existence of Odysseus (bless him). It's the modern consciousness that is unable to believe, and doesn't want to believe, but to doubt (this certainly feels smarter! But oh how foolish it looks from the side that knows), and this caused me to deeply doubt its doubts, and all this so very clever picky-picky (Pokemon!). And one last thing, your honor should ask himself exactly what nerve is being stepped on by that clumsy circle whose language and opinion are poor, and who has never dealt with him and his work, so where does all the toxic Eros come from? Rest assured - time will judge between him and you. And you have nothing to fear, right?

* And let's assume, as you say, that everything was written by one person (a man, of course. Because a man can write and pretend to be a woman. While a woman is not only incapable of writing like this, but certainly incapable of pretending to be a man). And let's assume that I am a circle (truth be told, I was flattered), and also the Netanyahite, and so on - we are all the same super-brain that wrote and programmed a site that even seven people could barely lift. Isn't this some kind of exceptional interdisciplinary genius and a completely Renaissance figure, who fortunately for us is our contemporary and from our place, and therefore it is worthy to listen and read and drink thirstily and internalize every word of hers (and she has many such words, in every possible field of creation). After all, if so, it's even much more impressive! And truly awe-inspiring. And perhaps the awe here is actually the issue? For the inability of contemporary man not to know, causes him to "know" complete fictions, because what really bothers you (and here I am fictionalizing you exactly as you are fictionalizing me) is that this whole thing hurts your pride. You have no idea. And there is no greater humiliation than that, right? So let me tell you something even more frightening: that the Netanyahite was exactly like that - a true Renaissance man. And maybe he is speaking to you from the grave (and you surely don't believe in the grave, right? It must be a symbol for something else, right?).

* Outside a very limited circle (and completely by chance - your circle), "Ofri Ilany" is an avatar just like "the Netanyahite", who is a subject in a very limited circle (and completely by chance - mine), even if his real biography was blurred due to inside jokes and external circumstances. Therefore the obssssession with the personal is (in my eyes) fruitless. You of course don't have to believe me - but (and this is exactly the point) it doesn't really matter. Choose for yourself the story, and decide what's more absurd in your eyes: there's one person here who pretended to be a school, and wrote half a million (!) words in two years, or there's a school here that all pretended to be one person, and managed to agree on a unified creation. It reminds me a bit of the question I once saw on Facebook whether a circle is pretending to be ultra-Orthodox - or not. Because what's less absurd, that a secular person would pretend to be ultra-Orthodox and write about his religious world obsessively for a decade, during which he hides obsessively (and pays heavy prices for it, which only a blind reader wouldn't notice), or that maybe there is such a person. And if all this is true (I don't know!), isn't this an even more interesting consciousness? Isn't this an even more unique subject? At least in culture and literature - there should be room for such a thing, even if it opposes the current fashion that judges every creation by its creator and every statement by its speaker, and brings redemption to the world.

That's it. And since I don't have the energy for responses - I won't publish this article on Facebook.

Alternative Current Affairs

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The Degeneration of the Nation

Long and Irritable - External Summary: What Do You Want from Us?

The summary of all summaries, the response to all responses, and finally the answer to the most important question: Who wrote the website?

By: B.R.'s Note

An image of Bilhah, which has nothing to do with the real Bilhah, but you need it (source)

Well, what did you expect? And what did you think would happen, that could happen (alternatively: why are you so dramatic)? Are you also whining-disappointed-victimized (I thought you were against that)? Why should we respond to someone who doesn't respond to us/me? Why blame the whole world, look in the mirror, what do you see? Who are you, Bilhah? Who are you really, Bilhah? I know who you are, Bilhah! Who do you think you are, huh? I knew you were a man! (Two men outdid themselves by writing to me in masculine form). Do you really exist? Why should I be interested in someone who doesn't exist/talk to me/play with me/go out with me? Why should I bother to read, are you paying me for my time? (I don't have time, no one has time, time no longer exists). Why is everything so long and inconsiderate to the reader (me!), don't you understand that this hurts you? Why don't you shorten it? Are you willing to shorten it for me/chew it for me/love me/summarize it for me?

So here, I'm willing. I received a plethora of responses privately (and publicly) about the internal summary article, which was actually intended for within the group, simply because it seemed important to me to summarize the website in some article among ourselves, and not just abandon it, after the editor-in-chief, the Chief Rabbi, asked each of us to write something for the conclusion (Circle contributed a final avant-garde and exceptionally daring dream that simply cannot be uploaded to Facebook, the Bitch returned to a final scathing critique that devours not the reviewed but the reader, Balak son of Zippor chose a summary essay on deep trends in Hebrew prose and the development of its style, the Singing K.B.R. published a collection of poems and remnants, etc... and we even transcribed an old lecture by the Netanyahite, post-mortem). And now I will summarize for you all my responses to the responses, including the answer to the eternal question: What does Bilhah want. And this question, you'll be surprised, is related to the question: What does Bilhah do in the shower.

And not just in the shower. But also in the bathroom, in sports, in walks to the grocery store, in travels, or when I'm removing hair. I think it's already thousands upon thousands of hours, that is, on the order of magnitude of a degree or two, and it all started from some list by the Netanyahite that's circulating among us, which actually begins like this: "Kol Halashon: Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, Rabbi Shlomo Fisher, Why lectures - everything, Katzir lectures (everything) - science, the channel of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (except for 'Such is Life' interviews with emeritus professors and trash conferences), Ben-Ami Shillony - Japan, Yuri Pines - China, Ronnie Ellenblum - history, Avner Ben-Zaken - history of science, Prof. Michal Schwartz - immunology, Prof. Michal Biran - history, Assaf Inbari - literature, Ohad Naharin - dance, Dan Miron - literature, Menahem Blondheim - communication and American studies, Ariel Hirschfeld - literature, Leo Corry - history of mathematics, Yehuda Liebes - Kabbalah, Menachem Froman - thought, Daniel Kahneman - economics, Yossi Vardi - entrepreneurship, Zvi Lanir - aging and strategy, Gideon Ofrat - art, Yehuda Bauer - Holocaust, Israel Aumann - economics, Yuval Noah Harari - history (by the way, not anymore. Since he converted from Judaism to Buddhism, the hollow practice of meditation has made his mind completely hollow, and the brain damage is noticeable to the listener: he's no longer interesting and I've stopped following - B.R.), Dan Ariely - economics, Yoram Yovell - psychology, Yoav Rinon - literature, Amos Oz (repeats himself), A.B. Yehoshua, Haim Be'er - literature, Aaron Ciechanover - biology, Ruth Arnon - biology, Idan Segev - neuroscience, Inbal Goshen - neuroscience, Yair Zakovitch - Bible, Arik Glasner - literature, The Hebrews series (all archive segments) Yair Kedar - literature, Peretz Lavie - medicine, Ishay Rosen-Zvi - Talmud, Yehuda Vizan, Meir Wieseltier, Aharon Shabtai - literature, Haim Sider - biology, Yonatan Hirschfeld - painting, Isaac Ben-Israel - security, Dani Karavan - architecture, Shabtai Rappaport - Halacha, Shimon Gershon Rosenberg - thought, Yishai Mevorach - theology...". And it continues (but you'll say Bilhah is digging) - a list of people whose almost everything they say is interesting in some way (copy and save!).

From here comes the annual ritual, where I download all the new lectures, lessons, and talks of all the people on the list who haven't died from YouTube (searching by upload date) and other sites, and turn them into mp3 files using the free MediaHuman Youtube Downloader software, which then enter my Android, and from there to my brain. Do I appreciate, love, or even believe all these people? Not at all (some I hate!). But I listen to them. It's important for me to confront Harari, or Zipper, or Oz, or Meir Shalev, not because I'm their groupie, but because they are challenging phenomena, and the very confrontation with them builds me. And all these are just people I bothered to confront while I'm, say, on the toilet (if it's not Torah lessons), or doing Pilates. There's a list many times longer of people I've listened to for a few hours of theirs, and understood their point, or bothered to check them out and listen to them for an hour. And reading? Here they won't be counted due to their multitude. I've checked almost everyone and everything I've heard of or from them some interesting thing that innovated something for me. Sometimes it was a page. And sometimes it was reading everything the person wrote. And how did I decide? According to how much it challenges me and innovates for me, and constitutes innovation in general in relation to the system (culture, literature, science, Torah, philosophy, art, economics, technology, etc.). I'm not a groupie of anyone, but very interested in any substantial innovation, namely in possible futures of the system. If you will: a groupie of innovations (though not innovations for the sake of innovations, like for example in the hollow avant-garde in the "daring" art of our time and in playful linguistic innovation, but what the Netanyahite called deep innovation, which is innovation in the method of the system, namely: learning innovation. For example: precisely through its new continuation of its previous depth directions, by discovering its "deep method", in the Netanyahite's terminology, which it itself was not aware of).

What always surprises me - is that people are not like me. Innovation doesn't interest them, and not even the future of the field they're engaged in. Not really. And therefore all this doesn't occupy them. They don't constantly ask themselves: in what other new directions can literature develop, or how might science/Torah/society look like in a few more decades, what will be the next big turn in art history, or in philosophy and human thought, or what could be the next paradigm shift in culture. And that's how it looks - in their output, and in what they consider important and interesting, and in what they read or search for. Namely: in perception, in action and in judgment - innovation is not a central mental category for them. The horizon of the future does not define their consciousness, as it defines (probably necessarily) our consciousness, the students of the Netanyahite. That's why I'm so not nice, by Facebook standards (in reality I'm nicer than all of you!) - because people don't interest me. I'm not even interested instead (in what elitism) only in mere "content" - but in innovations. That's why so many are transparent to me. They don't really have anything to offer to the future. They don't present some other direction of development in a new way of the system, which is not an uninteresting variation, namely without a future. And no one in the future will be interested in them.

And I, what to do, come from the side of the future to the present world (hence the alienation and estrangement of present murmurs, for example Facebook). Every reading on the site, and every presence of the site on Facebook for example, is a collision and confrontation between someone whose world's premise is the future, and a platform and discourse whose eternal essence is the present. And all this not because I'm a prophet or futurist (I'm actually not), not because of the source of the message or even its content, but because of the direction of learning: its interest. I'm not interested in what they said today in the news, or wrote in Haaretz, or in the feed. Therefore they were marked as enemies, that is, as those who impose the present on human consciousness, contrary to thought and literature of the kind that seeks the next thing, and therefore they have a messianic horizon, which is a position of constant resistance to discourse - not in imposing another discourse (like discourse struggles in the present), but from the direction of its own future (if you will, it sees Judaism not as minority and as principled resistance in space, as it's customary to portray it "today", but as resistance that comes from the direction of time, and not only that of the past, as in the Haredi world, but also and mainly from the futuristic direction, hence the enormous power of the Jewish world precisely at the modern historical moment. We believe in the future, unlike for example the Enlightenment, which like science fiction, is the imposition of the present direction on the future through a simple stretching of the current vector, and therefore it is a belief in man, the ruler of the present, and not a belief in darkness - in the unknown that is the future. Messianism is adherence to the future as a signifier, as a learning interest - and not as a specific signified, that is, not in the future as a certain content revealed to us. I could continue but then they'll complain again about Bilhah's convolutedness, so come on, let's close parentheses).

You'll ask: if Bilhah doesn't live in the moment and in the present, because all her free time is full of words and speeches of others, and her consciousness is almost not free for wandering, then when does she think at all? Isn't this a dystopian existence? When does Bilhah stare? Well, I think while I write. Writing itself is the learning action, and everything else is just materials for it. I simply discovered that it's absolutely inefficient and doesn't work to think just like that, and my mind wanders to daily troubles, or worse to present nonsense (if you dedicate time to thinking about Bibi - something's wrong with your brain), and writing focuses me on what really interests me. That's why I chose to write the Alternative to Current Events column on the site, precisely out of a desire to confront from the direction of the future - against the present. That's why I, unlike the rest of the site members, was interested (and still am) in Facebook. This is the arena of confrontation, and sometimes collision (and therefore the blocking didn't surprise me at all, the present is unable to digest real originality, because it shows it the horizon outside it - and marks its limitation by its very existence. And it doesn't matter at all what the specific reason we were blocked for, which we'll never know, because Facebook only shows a generic message, according to which one of the more original sites that arose in Hebrew - is spam). That's why I'm also writing a response article - this is my confrontation. And here we're approaching the question of what the hell Bilhah wants from us. If you're not interested in discourse with us and don't participate in our discourse, then what the hell is our role in your show? To sit and applaud you? Don't you notice the internal contradiction in this position? What's the point of addressing the world, and what do you care at all about the site's position in the present? What do you want?

Well, deal with it. This is, in essence, the position I present on Facebook, when I publish materials as long as the exile - right in the middle of the destruction of attention, and in the heart of the enemy. And indeed, the rest of the site members are not really that interested in you, it's just me - who went out to confront in your field, and whose writing is within the arena. And true, I'm not interested in neither applause and responses, nor claims and arguments, but in the confrontation itself, each according to the root of their soul. And our culture has simply stopped confronting, and is no longer capable of confronting, anything that requires confrontation. Reading a long text? God forbid. An encounter with a literary perspective truly different from our own? Not in our school (not to mention our bird). An encounter with a different religious world? Interests grandma (with the sheitel). The Netanyahite philosopher formulates a paradigmatic change in philosophy? What? What does that even mean? After all, if it's interesting, it will come to me on its own, diluted and digested, maybe in twenty years, while I'm sitting and expanding my belly and opening my mouth wide wide, and the feed brings me all the world's dishes, and I don't even need to leave the house and my passive comfort zone. And if it has a mixed taste like vomit - well, that's the world. I knew there was no point in developing taste, and independently checking such a radical claim - that someone actually formulated an alternative to the linguistic philosophical paradigm, which is the great mother of all thought that has been thought in the last century. So is it any wonder that the texts I wrote (I, Billy), somewhat complex (and truly: not really), received the status of a bone in the throat? The demand here is actually quite simple: deal with it.

The site never sought readers, and never thought or aspired to become popular reading material. It sought contenders. And such were not found for it. And shame on us, even our cultural figures are unable to deal with any cultural proposal that deviates from the present of their repetitive and boring discourse. And believe me, as an expert on innovations, I know very well how to identify when it's a real innovation, which for example marks a new format (the Netanyahite would be more precise: a new method), and not a pretense of innovation, which is what characterizes the cultural field of our time, which is an infinite collection of slight variations that no one will ever remember (about me). The flooding present creates in them (and this is its method) a pressure, which does not allow any attention and listening to anything outside the system, including its own future possibilities, which are critical to its very vitality as a living system (and no, it's not the porcine acapitalism, which actually is interested in the future and therefore succeeds, but the porcine conformism, namely simply that good old and fattening and self-marinated stagnation from time immemorial, which frequently takes over cultures, not to say naturally, and snores with contempt towards any innovator. The aspiration for innovation is the exception, which characterizes exceptional states of the cultural system: golden ages). And indeed, we are not living in a golden age, and the disregard for innovation and the inability to deal with it leave the arena of confrontation outside the present - in the future.

There are those who are completely unable to identify innovation (and this ability not to see, when it comes to radical and significant innovation, is almost psychotic, and is explained only by the brain's ability to ignore everything that doesn't fit into its ready-made categories and conceptions as noise), and there are those who are able to identify (and these are the vast majority), and the innovation did reach them (for example on Facebook), but they never bothered to investigate it, to delve into it, to understand it and to be interested in it as an innovation, that is, to confront it (even if it is not to their liking, or against them, or in a completely different direction than they hoped, but exemption from confrontation - there is none). This does indeed require a bit of reading (but not in relation to any ordinary thick book), but this is not the real obstacle and barrier. For reading another book (and another book) that doesn't really innovate anything - many are easily capable of, and quite a few can read the entire site in a week or two, according to the reported rate of consumption. But what is required here is to leave the lazy zone of discourse, in which they dominate and are proficient, and to embark on a learning journey in a new spiritual territory - and this is much harder. Many of our cultural figures think and teach and write within the paradigm of the philosophy of language and one of its descendants or various formulations - and how difficult it is to exit your own paradigm! How difficult it is to internalize that the beloved and old and familiar format of the novel is not the great format of the future, but of the past, and that we are on the threshold of another format. And how difficult it is to read poetry that doesn't revolve around language, or around one of the spheres that descend from it, but around learning. Yes, there is someone who writes not inspired by the Zach-Alterman polemic (from either of its sides), which is of course linguistic in its essence, but following didactic learning formats (Lucretius for example), or open and contemporary - and new.

As someone with some minimal identification ability, I think I can easily and well mark the two great innovations that took place on the site, simply because it's very hard to miss them, and I can also mark the two great innovations that follow them, which are much less personally beloved to me (and therefore you've hardly heard about them from me), but I know very well how to identify their value as innovations, and of course I took the trouble to confront them: to read and digest, and finally even to oppose (yes, we too have disagreements. I like less the literary part edited by Balak son of Zippor, although in the culture section his editing is excellent in my opinion). And this is the opening quartet:

In first place, in my opinion, and as anyone who reads me has noticed well, I place the philosophy developed by the Netanyahite teacher (without whom the site would have remained some kind of contrasting antithesis to "Haaretz", and we would never have reached the circle, and who is actually the one who united us into one school). I think many are not aware of how much all the thinking and philosophy and culture (and even technology and science and academia and art, etc.) of the last century are all within the same paradigm of about a hundred years, which is the paradigm of the philosophy of language. They were all its children. And all this is so difficult to see - until you get out of the paradigm, from within a new paradigm, and this is exactly what the Netanyahite did. His philosophy is not just another philosophy, and certainly not some New Age version of learning, as I've seen those who haven't really read him refer to it (this is not about personal learning, but about system learning, which is more similar to organizational or evolutionary learning), but it is a new philosophical paradigm, suitable for the current century, just as language was a paradigm that suited the previous century. It's not for nothing that Machine Learning drives the world, and the Netanyahite predicted the takeover of the learning paradigm in our world twenty years ago. The right place to start confronting his philosophy is his collection of seven essays - at the top of the "Culture and Literature" section edited by Balak. And following them, we (the students) wrote a long series of essays that apply this philosophical paradigm and continue the learning to every possible field (psychology, law, political theory, technology, economics, sexuality, science, geopolitics, mathematics, corona, aesthetics, and more and more), exactly as the philosophy of language found its expressions in every possible field, and they can be found both in the current affairs section with me and with Balak. The fertility of the learning approach, when contrasted with the linguistic approach, for analyzing and understanding cultural and social phenomena, is from my perspective a proven fact, which I discovered from my personal experience, and this in itself should have caused any real intellectual (that is, one who is still capable of dealing with abstract thinking not of the kind he learned in his bachelor's degree) to confront it. This is the learning turn, which replaces the linguistic turn, and whoever does not want (or is tired of) staying behind, stuck in the previous stale paradigm, is recommended to start trying to think within it - and discover its immense power.

In second place, and as will not surprise those who follow me, stands who is in my eyes a huge miss of Hebrew literature, if such an imagined entity still exists. This is a very old story: someone publishes a book that doesn't look like any book anyone else has written or read before. The world is intrigued, but largely doesn't know how to digest this strange thing, and of course doesn't confront it. After a few years, this someone publishes something he claims is his great work, and this thing is as anomalous in the landscape as a UFO in the middle of the Sahara desert, a unique creation by any literary measure in time and space, and then - ta-da-da-dum! - no one reads it. Only we, within the school, are aware of this magnificent cathedral, with the variety of creatures that swarm in it, which describes the fantasy world of a person with an intimacy and exposure with which you don't even know your partner, and maybe not yourself (is it any wonder the author is hiding? It amazes me how much I feel I know him himself - without "knowing" anything about him). And to the shame of Hebrew criticism, we couldn't find even one literature critic who would even read (!) this creation, which creates its own yardstick (I don't know if it's even a book in the conventional sense), and certainly not even one righteous person in Sodom - who would confront it. Unfortunately, I had to ask Balak son of Zippor to write a review, and he indeed wrote a deep essay that confronts the uniqueness of the work precisely in a comparative genre view (and not, for example, ideational or poetic), but this is not the child we prayed for. This is a brilliant certificate of poverty for our literary criticism and literary republic, and its lack of curiosity about its own future, not to mention its irrelevance to the future of the world (as it is considered, for example, in a work where the computer is a central hero - and not in some sci-fi parable, but the real computer you hold in your hand. Or in a work that rethinks what fiction is and what poetics is and what literature is - and what their connection is to technology). Never mind, not everyone has to be interested in every system (for example: Hebrew prose, and indeed many are not interested). But if you are part of a certain system, and someone writes something that challenges all the basic assumptions of the system and offers new answers that have never been heard before to its most basic questions (for example to the questions: what is a book, story, hero, author, plot, soul, character, etc.), and all this simply doesn't interest you and you don't bother to confront it - then you're probably a creator, editor, reporter or critic with a very limited breadth of horizons. This problem exists not only in prose, but also in poetry, as we'll see below, and it's not a specific problem regarding a specific work, but stands at the basis of the degeneration of these republics, which is expressed in a huge inflation of writers who innovate nothing, and it's not clear why they bothered the world with their creation, except for the narcissistic need to "express themselves". And what is clear is why such inflation was created, and that's because the basic assumptions of the field are not at all interested in its future, and therefore do not judge a work according to whether it is an innovation (substantial or minor), and therefore the discourse of the present has completely taken over it (for example: the newspaper, Facebook, and so on). And so criticism itself has completely lost its relevance, because it doesn't understand that its horizon should have been the future of literature - not its present. And this is not about some avant-garde difficult work of thousands of pages, written in an esoteric language, and requiring complex confrontation in its very reading. Again, reading itself is not the barrier, because it's only about 500 pages of the trilogy of the circle, indeed like a not thin novel, but written in everyday language and readable fluently and easily. But the core of the confrontation here is with a new paradigm of prose - and this is already beyond the capability of our narrow-minded criticism. A narrow-minded field is not capable of confronting greatness of mind. We always delude ourselves that we the wise and open will not be like the blind of the past (those fossilized and small conservatives, who pave the entire length of cultural history), who when encountered (again and again) with significant innovative works simply plugged their ears and minds each time anew (what, they didn't learn anything?), and dismissed and ignored them. And we wonder about them (how stupid can one be?), and complain that it's a shame that in our days such works are no longer written (we ourselves would immediately recognize the importance of the new poetic thinking!), and certainly not in our miserable literature, which we wish would produce a truly original voice once in a jubilee. So how is this supposed to look, this "real thing", if not like this?

In third place, something that will indeed surprise the followers, simply because I'm less interested in the field of poetry, which belongs to the boys' side of the site (Balak and co.). They really aren't interested in you or Facebook, and never thought there was any point in bothering to struggle within the current literary and poetic field and in the present arena - and they were probably right more than me. They believe that only the future will reveal who was the true innovator and truly interesting poet of the decade (hint: in their section). Are they right? I'm not entirely sure they are, and also not that they aren't. But if we try to take even the two most distant extremes in Hebrew poetry today, let's say Ars Poetica and Wizman, we'll discover that both are (and struggling) within the same paradigm - of the philosophy of language. At the core, the basic assumptions are the same assumptions - poetry is a language action that has a dimension of struggle over discourse. And not only the poetry groups and the licking Like, which give new meaning to the linguistic turn - but also Wizman himself (who in my opinion could have been a great poet if his whole world wasn't the narrow field of poetry, and then he would also write more, and perhaps finally take on writing the great Hebrew epic he yearns for) is deeply stuck within the linguistic paradigm of the twentieth century, and speaks in its name and from its throat (hence the anachronistic impression he produces), and sometimes even struggles (as per its century-old tradition) with poets who are still stuck in the previous philosophical paradigm, the Kantian one, of the individual subject self - and its consciousness and perception (and wounded feelings, alas). While following the Netanyahite philosopher, the Singing NCO developed on the site a whole poetic world (seven books of poetry) whose starting assumption is not language - but learning (and indeed they do not struggle over discourse, which is why you haven't heard of them, because they are not in the same poetic paradigm at all, and there is no common basis for wrestling - they have already moved on, and write deeply within the learning paradigm). There are poem-lessons, didactic-futuristic manifestos, poems in the form of exercises and homework for the reader, rhyming summaries, learning-based construction of a computerized soul world, and not a little poetry that stems from intellectual and internet worlds (dating sites...), with considerable contempt for language and waving at its poverty, and in a way that in my humble opinion undermines this poetry, despite its challenging innovation, and the completely new poetic style it presents (which anyone who is indeed interested in Hebrew poetry - should confront with full seriousness). There is something very radical - and perhaps too radical for this reader - in poetry that replaces language, the material of poetry, with learning material, and the figure of the poet with the figure of the teacher/student. Maybe it's my critical conservatism, but personally I told the Singing NCO that in my opinion poetry, by its nature, cannot be intentionally sloppy in its treatment of language - and stick out its tongue at language. The philosophy and ideology spoiled here, in my opinion, and came at the expense of artistic achievement. And indeed, one can easily identify a fault line in the NCO's poetry, between his four early books, which lay out a new and anti-linguistic style, and the three later collections, in which the treatment of language and sound is much better - but alas: the innovation is more thematic, and less in developing the style of learning poetics. But of course even the least innovative book by the NCO doesn't look like any Hebrew poetry you've read, and this is in an era where almost all Hebrew poetry you've read seems as if you've already read something like it in the past, and that "innovations have run out" (as if there's some kind of warehouse and it's been exhausted). Well, that's not the case.

In fourth place, I consider the prose published by Balak Ben Zippor in the "Culture and Literature" section he edits. They are developing there, in several dozen pieces they've published, a kind of style that aspires to draw inspiration from both the biblical style and the Kafkaesque style (Balak's two literary heroes) - but all this with a futuristic twist. There is, for example, pseudo-biblical writing describing the creation of the computer and the internet (a kind of biblical-technological story), or fantasies that combine Kafka with science fiction, much preoccupation with the triangle between sexuality, technology and religion, and other experiments in prose. But I must admit and confess that there is also a not insignificant dose of toxic masculinity there (unlike the sweet circular one), which didn't help me connect to the unique style. But again, it's a very interesting laboratory, operating out of a conscious attempt to synthesize a biblical-Kafkaesque style, which is certainly an unconventional direction, and a promising combination for creating a new (old) Jewish Hebrew prose style.

This is a summary of the site for those interested, and now I'll move on to summarizing my responses to the question that came up again and again to the point of exhaustion, which is the question of the authors' identity. And since I'm very tired of it, I'll simply quote 2-3 responses to commenters (some in private and some in public):

You have no idea how funny and amusing Mr.'s philological observations are, and in fact cast a heavy shadow on your entire professional enterprise, for if you are unable to identify even one correct detail about the identity of a contemporary author(s), in a society that is not so far from you, what level of credibility should be given to your historical research and insights about distant times and places? And this is not only about the personal skill of your honor (really a detective in action), but in all the basic assumptions of this "academic" field, which have never been tested in any valid statistical tool of the kind accepted in matters where validity really matters (drug approval, for example), or significance, and standard deviation, and other basic statistical inference tools (like Bayes' formula), which are certainly familiar to you from your bachelor's degree in the "sciences" of the humanities. For example, the assumption of "the narrator speaking innocently" regarding one of the most sophisticated and deceptive narrators I've ever encountered in our literature - is more aggressive arrogance than valid heuristics. But thanks to deep insights like these, I came to an insight (deep?) of my own, which is that all the common research assumptions in your places start from an incredibly absurd starting point: that the writing person, who is certainly an exceptional specimen in every sense and measure from his society and era, is actually the typical one. That the most paranormal and far-from-average spiritual phenomenon we know - is in the average of the normal distribution (don't you grasp what an anti-spiritual bias is hiding here?). And that the most exceptional comes (of course!) only to testify about the rule (and vice versa). Just like the assumption in Eitan's book that a victim of incest and a prostitute by choice is a representative example of female sexuality and "love" (are there more general intentions there?), which is as convincing as if we were to choose a schizophrenic or autistic hero to represent human (normal and regular) consciousness. And the result? Whore words. Literature that descends into ideological prostitution and is a victim of feminism, comes from academia and will go to academia, and as if about it Inbari wrote 20 (!) years ago "Again returns the nightmare of literature's recruitment". Because after academia completely destroyed the entire art world - it came to destroy literature as well... And with the same exact proven methods). And when the tools of biblical criticism are directed at you yourself, and try to prove that you are not who you are - you receive an unforgettable lesson in the faith of sages. And so, the constant doubt in my very existence caused me to stop doubting the existence of all the biblical figures (including Og king of Bashan!), and even the existence of Homer - and even the existence of Odysseus (bless him). It's the modern consciousness that is unable to believe, and doesn't want to believe, but to doubt (this certainly feels smarter! But oh how foolish it looks from the side that knows), and this caused me to deeply doubt its doubts, and all this so very clever picky-picky (Pokemon!). And one last thing, your honor should ask himself exactly what nerve is being stepped on by that clumsy circle whose language and opinion are poor, and who has never dealt with him and his work, so where does all the toxic Eros come from? Rest assured - time will judge between him and you. And you have nothing to fear, right?

And let's assume, as you say, that everything was written by one person (a man, of course. Because a man can write and pretend to be a woman. While a woman is not only incapable of writing like this, but certainly incapable of pretending to be a man). And let's assume that I am a circle (truth be told, I was flattered), and also the Netanyahite, and so on - we are all the same super-brain that wrote and programmed a site that even seven people could barely lift. Isn't this some kind of exceptional interdisciplinary genius and a completely Renaissance figure, who fortunately for us is our contemporary and from our place, and therefore it is worthy to listen and read and drink thirstily and internalize every word of hers (and she has many such words, in every possible field of creation). After all, if so, it's even much more impressive! And truly awe-inspiring. And perhaps the awe here is actually the issue? For the inability of contemporary man not to know, causes him to "know" complete fictions, because what really bothers you (and here I am fictionalizing you exactly as you are fictionalizing me) is that this whole thing hurts your pride. You have no idea. And there is no greater humiliation than that, right? So let me tell you something even more frightening: that the Netanyahite was exactly like that - a true Renaissance man. And maybe he is speaking to you from the grave (and you surely don't believe in the grave, right? It must be a symbol for something else, right?).

Outside a very limited circle (and completely by chance - your circle), "Ofri Ilany" is an avatar just like "the Netanyahite", who is a subject in a very limited circle (and completely by chance - mine), even if his real biography was blurred due to inside jokes and external circumstances. Therefore the obssssession with the personal is (in my eyes) fruitless. You of course don't have to believe me - but (and this is exactly the point) it doesn't really matter. Choose for yourself the story, and decide what's more absurd in your eyes: there's one person here who pretended to be a school, and wrote half a million (!) words in two years, or there's a school here that all pretended to be one person, and managed to agree on a unified creation. It reminds me a bit of the question I once saw on Facebook whether a circle is pretending to be ultra-Orthodox - or not. Because what's less absurd, that a secular person would pretend to be ultra-Orthodox and write about his religious world obsessively for a decade, during which he hides obsessively (and pays heavy prices for it, which only a blind reader wouldn't notice), or that maybe there is such a person. And if all this is true (I don't know!), isn't this an even more interesting consciousness? Isn't this an even more unique subject? At least in culture and literature - there should be room for such a thing, even if it opposes the current fashion that judges every creation by its creator and every statement by its speaker, and brings redemption to the world.

That's it. And since I don't have the energy for responses - I won't publish this article on Facebook.

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