False Dichotomies

Look out in the next week for pieces on the US elections, the Israeli elections, Philip Roth’s Indignation, and reflections from a Jerusalem traffic-jam. In the meantime, stick 2 tha script…

Biggie was the oracle of False Dichotomies’ demise; it seems only fitting that he be the prophet of its resurrection. “The key to staying on top of things,” he argued, “is [to] treat everything like it’s your first project…like it’s your first day back when you was an intern. Like, that’s how you try to treat things like, just stay hungry.” By the time I took Falsedi offline eighteen months ago, that passion just wasn’t there anymore. The constant grind of writing about the most overwritten subject in the world – the Arab-Israeli conflict – had taken its inevitable toll. There was nothing more to say. Read more

On Yom Kippur, Rabbi Joel (Kol Nefesh Masorti, London) spoke about Elisha Ben Abuya. Elisha Ben Abuya is (in)famous for becoming a heretic, the quintessential other of the rabbinic tradition. In Ruth Rabba, we discover why he abandoned Judaism:

They say that one time he was sitting and learning in the Valley of Ginosar, and he saw a man climb up to the top of a palm tree and remove the mother bird while her chicks were there present – and he climbed down safely. Upon the departure of the Sabbath, he saw a different man climb to the top of the palm tree, and he took the chicks but only after sending the mother bird away – and when he climbed down he was bitten by a snake and he died. He said: It is written, “You shall surely send away the mother [bird], only then taking the chicks for yourself, so that you may fare well and have a long life” (Deuteronomy 22:7). Where is this wellness, and where is this longevity? Read more

Over at South Jerusalem, Haim Watzman is worried about the current status of marriage in the Modern Orthodox community: “My son graduated high school, then studied at a yeshiva for a year and a half, and is now performing military service in a unit that will require him to serve at least one year beyond the already long mandatory term of three years. Add the de rigueur year of travel after the army, and he won’t even begin college until he’s 25. If he goes for an advanced degree, he may not reach the real world until he’s well into his thirties.” Read more