Humor

Awesome New Name Suggestions for the Washington Redskins

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Bob Wenzel is out with a new post of his top ten suggestions for a name change for the Washington Redskins. They are these:

10. The Washington African Americans
9. The Washington Transgenders
8. The Washington Lesbians
7. The Washington Public School Teachers
6. The Washington Keynesians
5. The Washington Union Pension Fund Managers
4. The Washington FOMC Members
3. The Washington Libwaps
2. The Washington Drone Shooters
1. The Washington AIPAC Lobbyists

Here are some more:

  1. The Washington Registered Sex Offenders
  2. The Washington Retards
  3. The Washington Chickenskins
  4. The Washington Football Players
  5. The Washington Minorities
  6. The Washington LGBTQ’s
  7. The Washington Jews
  8. The Washington Gentiles
  9. The Washington Gun Enthusiasts
  10. The Washington Same Sex Marriages
  11. The Washington Bible Thumpers
  12. The Washington Abortion Enthusiasts
  13. The Washington Necrophiliacs
  14. The Washington Politicians

A Jewish Interpretation of The Four Blood Moons. Some Purim Torah.

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

There’s some hoopla going on about the fact that there will be a tetrad of total lunar eclipses in the next year and a half that fall out on the first day of Pesach and first day of Succot 2014, and then again on the first day of Pesach and Succot 2015. In between those four “blood moons” so-called because the moon turns red with the Earth’s shadow, there will be a total solar eclipse on Rosh Chodesh Nissan 2015.

The last time this happened, when all four total lunar eclipses fell out on Pesach and Succot, was in 1967-68. The time before that was 1949-50. And then before that 1493-94. As for a total solar eclipse happening on Rosh Chodesh Nissan right smack in the middle, I don’t know if that has ever happened before.

Pastor John Hagee, who I have always found mesmerizing but rather creepy, is going all out about this stuff predicting the second coming of Jesus and whatnot. He wrote about it, was featured on Fox News about it, gave a three part sermon on the coming of the Rapture about it, music played in the background during the more emotional Jesusish parts, he kept saying over and over “the King is Coming” and referring to Psukim with bad translations and incorrect chapter/verse numbers.

Hagee wants to say that four blood moons signifies something about the Jews, 1493-94 being the expulsion from Spain (it was actually 1492), 1949-50 being the founding of Israel (it was actually 1948) and 1967-68 being the reunification of Jerusalem, which is on the dot. Therefore, something big is supposed to happen in 2014-15 involving the Jews and Israel, and Hagee expects it to be the Rapture, the Second Coming, either, both, whatever, I don’t know.

Hagee takes a verse from Yoel which he calls 2:32, but which does not actually exist. The verse is 3:4. He erroneously places it in chapter two because along with most Christians reading a book that is not theirs in a language not theirs, he doesn’t know how to read. Chapters 1 and 2 concern the past, being the locust plague Yoel describes. Chapters 3 and 4 concern the future, which Yoel is comparing to the locust plague that had just happened. In any case, the verse Hagee quotes is this one:

הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ יֵהָפֵךְ לְחֹשֶׁךְ, וְהַיָּרֵחַ לְדָם–לִפְנֵי, בּוֹא יוֹם יְהוָה, הַגָּדוֹל, וְהַנּוֹרָא.

“The sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great terrible day of the Lord.”

Well, OK, that seems to be talking about a solar and lunar eclipse, so maybe there’s something to this. But there’s a lot that Hagee is missing. I’ll fill some of it in. Some of this stuff comes from a friend of mine who’s into seeing signs and such.

The three religions that sprang from ancient Israel are governed by three different calendars. Islam has a purely lunar calendar. Christianity a fully solar calendar. Judaism is a combination of both, with leap lunar years to compensate for the differences in the calendars. We are currently in such a lunar leap year. The moon represents Islam, which is loosely identified with Yishmael. The sun, Christianity, loosely identified with Edom, or Esav.

The generally accepted Rabbinic view of the battle of Gog and Magog on Israel is that Edom and Yishmael will battle each other on Israel’s territory. Israel will not be directly involved, but will only be caught in the crossfire. In other words, Christianity and Islam will duke it out over here for whatever reason.

The first question that occurred to me when seeing the coincident dates of 1493, 1949, and 1967 was 1967 and 1949 I get. But why 1493? Forget about being a year late, but really, was the expulsion from Spain all that cosmic? We’ve been expelled from lots of places. It was traumatic, but earth shattering day-of-the-Lord? Not really.

The answer is, a tetrad lunar eclipse, if it does signify anything, has nothing to do with Jews. The moon is Islam. It has to do with Muslims. And 1493 was indeed a big year for Islam. It was the year they lost Europe. So was 1949, the year the Muslims lost the war against Israel. They were still fighting in 1948. The armistice and defeat was in 1949. If the tetrad lunar eclipses signal something about Jews, it would have been 1948, but 1949 was the defeat of Islam in Israel, not the founding of the State. In 1967 they lost Jerusalem and it happened in 6 days, so that one was on the dot.

As for a solar eclipse happening on Rosh Chodesh Nissan, that was the day when the Jewish People received their first national commandment, the first מצוה. The Mitzva of the calendar.

הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם, רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים:  רִאשׁוֹן הוּא לָכֶם, לְחָדְשֵׁי הַשָּׁנָה.

Rabbinically translated, “The new moon will mark the start of each month for you, and this month (Nisan) will be the first month of the year.”

Giving someone their own calendar is symbolic of freeing them from the forced calendar of slavery. But why should the new moon on the first signify a new month? Why not the full moon on the 15th, which would be counted as the first? In other words, why count from new moon to new moon rather than from full moon to full moon? After all, Israel were still slaves at that point, on Nissan 1. The 10th plague hadn’t happened yet. It wouldn’t happen for another two weeks. Why start the calendar now? At least wait until the deal is sealed and they’ve gotten out of Egypt.

In fact, now that I think of it, all of the beginning of Exodus chapter 12 is temporally displaced. Moshe warns Pharaoh of the 10th plague in chapter 11, warning that it will happen at midnight on the 15th. Then chapter 12 goes back in time 14 days about what God said to Moshe on the first of the month. Then it skips forward to the 15th and Israel gets out the next morning.

The answer is that by the first, God started the Mitzvot, which began with the calendar, and moved to the Pesach, Matza, the blood on the doorposts etc. By then, even though while technically still in Egypt, the fog of slavery had lifted, and all the people had to do was follow God and stay out of the way. Those who followed were saved. Those who didn’t, who knows.

If the solar eclipse next Rosh Chodesh Nisan means anything, and I’m not conceding that it does, then it could mean that Israel’s dependence on Christianity, Edom, AKA the US, will end on that date, just as its dependence on Egypt ended on that date even though Egypt didn’t give up until two weeks later.

So a combination of lunar eclipses on Pesach and Succot and a solar eclipse on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, if it signifies anything, would signify that both Christianity and Islam will block each other out, perhaps by fighting each other.

It is also significant that the final lunar eclipse of the four will occur on Succot, the very holiday focused on in the Battle of Gog and Magog on Israel. As for the significance of 2015 itself, my friend and I have been thinking about that for months before either of us knew about the four blood moons.

There are two things notable about 2015. First, it will be a shmitah year, when debts are liquidated. The last shmitah year was 2007-08, a year of a LOT of debt liquidation. The shmita before that was 2000-01, the end of the Nasdaq bubble and a LOT of debt liquidation. Another notable shmitah year was 1987, the year of the Black Monday market crash. Before that, 1980, the peak of interest rates and the 1980 gold bull top. 1973 was the year of stagflation, the first time the American economy experienced both stagnation and inflation together.

But 2015 has something else going for it. The Hebrew year will be תשעו, written fully התשעו, or rearranged תשועה, meaning “salvation”. That is 5776, starting in September 2015.

I am no kabbalist, but what follows is a translation from my friend’s blog. Let’s be cute and call this Purim Torah:

וַיְהִי בִּימֵי אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ הוּא אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ הַמֹּלֵךְ מֵהֹדּוּ וְעַד כּוּשׁ שֶׁבַע וְעֶשְׂרִים וּמֵאָה מְדִינָה

“In the days of Achashverosh, that is Achashverosh who ruled from India to Ethiopia, 127 states.”

It is well known that the Book of Esther contains within it many hints and secrets regarding the final redemption. The book falls within the context of Ezra’s move to Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple which was postponed at the time. This parallels our time, especially since Esther and Mordechai are both from the tribe of Binyamin, and we are under the rule of Mashiach Ben Yosef of Binyamin.

(Rafi’s note, I don’t know what he’s talking about  with the Binyamin thing.)

וַיֹּאמֶר הַמֶּלֶךְ לְאֶסְתֵּר בְּמִשְׁתֵּה הַיַּיִן מַה שְּׁאֵלָתֵךְ וְיִנָּתֵן לָךְ וּמַה בַּקָּשָׁתֵךְ עַד חֲצִי הַמַּלְכוּת וְתֵעָשׂ

“And the King said to Esther at the drinking party, ‘What is your request and I will grant it, what is your wish? Up to half the kingdom and it will be done.”

The fact that the Temple is encoded into the Book of Esther we know from the Gemara in Megila:

Says the Gemara Megila 15B: “Up to half the kingdom and it will be done,” half the kingdom and not the whole thing, nor something that smacks of a kingdom. And what smacks of a kingdom? The Temple.

From here we can extrapolate the redemption of Mashiach Ben David. Achashverosh is limiting Esther, who represents Mashiach ben Yosef, up to the point of the Temple. The “up to” in “up to half the kingdom” comes from the blessing of Binyamin by Yaakov, which says “You will eat up to the morning”.

“Half the kingdom” – if Achashverosh rules 127 states, half of that would be 63.5. If we count from the beginning of the State of Israel, which is the beginning of the era of Mashiach ben Yosef, that turns out to be 2012, which is the beginning of the years of preparation for Mashiach ben David, which are 5772-5775. (Rafi’s note: He brings in a source here for that but I haven’t sifted through it.)

Therefore, the meaning of the verse is this: Up to half the kingdom and it will be done. “Up to half” means up to 5772 (2012). From then, Mashiach ben David begins to rise. And when is it complete? At the end of Shmitah, and when does that fall out?

It will be done is ותעש. Or תשעו. If you switch the letters. 5776.

My friend continues to point out that every time the word תשועה is mentioned in Tanach, it always has to do with David. No exceptions.

And there are other hints at 5776 throughout the Torah. Here’s a fun one though, one that I can proudly say I found. It’s in Breishit 38. Yehuda leaves his brothers after the sale of Yosef. Figuratively, after the downfall of Mashiach ben Yosef. Yehuda settles near a guy named Hirah, who has a friend named Shua. Yehuda marries the daughter of this guy Shua, and for the rest of the story this woman is only known as בת שוע, or Shua’s daughter.

It’s always bugged me why she doesn’t have a name.

When Bat Shua dies, Yehuda goes down to Timnah to sheer his sheep. Tamar, who has been sitting around waiting for Yehuda to give him his third son after the first two died, hears about it and follows him down. This leads to Yehuda thinking Tamar is a prostitute, sleeping with her and starting the Mashiach’s ancestral line.

So why Bat Shua?

אל תקרא בת שוע אלא ב-תשוע. Or 5776.

Also note that David’s wife, the one that gives birth to Shlomo, is בת שבע, or 5772.

And the fourth and final blood moon occurs on Succot, 5776, the holiday of Gog and Magog, when every nation is supposed to come to the temple to worship God.

All in all, this could all be nothing. I’d like to believe it, but can’t say that I do. But in case it isn’t nothing, let it be recorded here that I believed it plausible enough that I wrote it down as Purim Torah.

נכנס פורים יוצא סוד.

 

 

Why marriage should be outlawed for everybody

rafifarber Humor, Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Ron Paul often opened his congressional speeches with the line, “Imagine for a moment…” In honor of Dr. Paul, and also for its sharp effectiveness, I will do the same here in explaining why all forms of marriage should be outlawed.

Imagine for a moment.

Imagine for a moment that in order to be friends with somebody, you needed government approval. Imagine that you met somebody you liked talking to, hanging out with, drinking a beer with, whatever. But you couldn’t legally be friends with him until you both applied for a government “friendship license”. A friendship license, by the way, costs 600 shekels which goes right into government coffers, not to mention a week of rat-racing around to 6 different bureaucrat offices filling out forms (so all the bureaucrats can have jobs and “stimulate the economy”), so you lose a week’s salary in the mess. Once you pay up and you have those forms, you can then apply for a “friendship license” which gives you and your friend the legal right to get a whopping 2% sales tax break at any restaurant in the country where you order together at the same table, upon presenting a proper friendship license, of course.

Imagine for a moment that not everyone in the country could legally apply for a friendship license with anyone he wanted. Imagine that an unmarried man and a married women, or vice versa, could not get a friendship license. It could lead to adultery, after all. Imagine that an Arab and a Jew could not get a friendship license. It’s a matter of national security, or something like that. Imagine that a father and son, or mother and daughter, could not get a friendship license. Family cannot be friends. Imagine that no more than two people could carry one friendship license. A group of three, for example, could not legally be considered friends, as that would be polyfriendamy. Therefore, all these people – the single man and married woman; the Arab and Jew; the father and son or mother and daughter, the group of three or more – all of them could not legally be friends and therefore they all had to pay that extra 2% in sales tax at restaurants.

Imagine for a moment that a “national discussion” starts taking place, the kind that enlightened media and intellectual elite like to call “a real meaningful debate” and other linguistic smokescreen nonsense. Shouldn’t an Arab and Jew have the legal right to be friends? Why can’t a married man and unmarried woman be recognized by Big Brother as friends? Shouldn’t three people have the right to be friends?

“Friendship equality for all!” the liberals would say.

“Friendship is a sacred human institution that has been around for thousands of years! Family cannot be friends! What sacrilege!” the conservatives would say.

Meanwhile, the libertarian looks around and sees the utter insanity of the whole situation. Take a deep breath and here it is in one sentence:

The government, looking for a way to extract more money out of private people, baits them with the possibility of a 2% tax break, which is essentially a promise to steal slightly less from them, if they pay 600 shekels and run around for a week begging for a license from a massive and totally unnecessary bureaucracy funded by millions of shekels in tax money for a relationship that is essentially private and has nothing to do with the government anyway, and instead of people repudiating these petty friendship licenses and ignoring them, they start fighting with each other about who has the right to a government license with catchphrases like “the right to be friends” and “friendship equality” and “the sanctity of friendship,” while in the meantime both sides are being stolen from in order to fund the bloated bureaucracy that is running the friendship license boondoggle so the government comes out of this way in the black with all the license fees and taxes and levies to fund the system and instead of uniting against the common thief and calling an end to friendship licenses and just lower sales taxes at restaurants for everyone by the measly 2% so we can stop having this STUPID argument and being at each other’s THROATS, we fight with each other about who gets to have the stupid licenses and who doesn’t.

People, we are being hoodwinked. No matter what the government says, the government does not define marriage, nor can it, not any more than it can define friendship. All it can do is promise to steal from us less if we engage in whatever relationship The Man endorses.

But in Israel the situation is even more ludicrous. In Israel, the State taxes you MORE if you get married because single parents get tax benefits. So you have people in Israel arguing with each other about who can “legally get married” and who “cannot get married” essentially fighting each other NOT over who gets a tax BREAK, but rather who gets the merit of being taxed MORE by the government, in exchange for precious, precious State recognition. State sanction to “marriage” is so important to people that no one can see how Uncle Shmuel is simply playing both sides against each other and collecting from both as we duke it out.

This is why marriage should absolutely be outlawed. NOBODY should have the right to be married. Not gays, not straights, not Jews to Arabs, not Arabs to Jews, not polygamists, not polyandrists, nobody.

Someone might say “Marriage has been around for thousands of years! How can it be outlawed?” Marriage has been around for thousands of years. Just as friendship has. If there were friendship licenses, those should be abolished as well, as their only purpose would be to promise us to steal a penny less in return for us funding a gigantic friendship government bureaucracy. The house always wins. It seems to me the institution of friendship, whatever that is, survives wonderfully without government recognition and intervention. So will the institution of marriage, whatever that is. For thousands more years to boot.

If you want to be married to anybody, you have to do it without any legal recognition. You will have to do it in private, without the government’s knowledge, and you will not be allowed to be taxed more for being privately married. Sorry, you’ll have to keep your money in exchange for not having any government recognition of who you marry.

To get to this ideal, I call upon a national boycott of all government sanctioned marriages. Paying bureaucrats for marriage licenses should be a crime. Participating in any way in the marriage license boondoggle should be frowned upon and shunned.

Marriage should return to the private sphere and outlawed as a public institution. Then we can stop fighting with each other over who gets to be stolen from more in exchange for government recognition of marital status.

Imagine for a moment we could have a debate about something that actually mattered instead of get distracted by who gets government recognition while they get all of our money.

What would Prime Minister Farber’s government look like?

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

(Note: This is satire, but does accurately reflect my feelings towards the Israeli government.)

While I do not believe in the legitimacy of any government to exist at all, if I were forced to be Israel’s prime minister at gunpoint (it could happen any day now) and I had to name ministers, what would my government look like, and who would be in it?

I started thinking about this for more than a fraction of a second when I saw who got what in the divvying up of ministerial positions. So-and-so is minister of “strategic affairs”. Some other guy is minister of “agriculture”. Another idiot is in charge of “water”, because after all, if some politician who knows nothing about water supplies is not in charge of all of our water, we’ll all thirst to death and the Kinneret will turn into sewage overnight. This has already happened twice back before politicians were in charge of water.

And agriculture. Thank goodness a politician who knows absolutely nothing about how to grow food is in charge of the entire agriculture sector so he can tell us what we can import, export, buy, sell, when and where and how. Otherwise no one would be able to grow any food and we’d all starve.

But, OK, let’s assume I had to build a government and name ministers. Who would they be? First of all, I’d build a coalition of 120 MK’s and include everyone in my government by promising everyone a ministerial position. First, I would name Yair Lapid Minister of Male Grooming. He will be responsible for training all men in the state who can’t groom themselves and look like zhlubs, how to look decent, improve their smiles, and generally look kempt. I will pay him $500 a month and give him a budget of $20 all out of my own pocket, and if he goes over that amount, I will fire him and give his job to Ahmed Tibi.

Instead of only one agriculture minister, there will be 5 ministers of one lima bean plant. These 5 people will be Liberman, Silvan Shalom, Tzipi Livni, and two of the smartest apes I can find in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. They will all fight over how to regulate the lima bean plant and can pass whatever ministerial orders they want on how to restrict, tax, and at what age to draft the lima bean plant into the army, but nothing else. If they start fighting, they’re all fired, except for the apes, who can continue regulating at will.

There will be an Interior Minister, but he will only be in charge of regulating the interior of his Knesset office. In fact, everyone in my government can be an Interior Minister. They can all decorate them with lima beans they get from the Lima Bean Plant ministers on the off chance that the 5 lima bean plant ministers haven’t regulated and taxed the lima bean plant to death. I’ll give them each a shekel to buy some gum for their offices from my own pocket.

There will also be a Culture and Sport minister. (Yes, in Israel, there actually is a politician in charge of “culture and sport”. Because without politicians, we’d forget how to play soccer and be cultural.) The culture and sport minister will be Gidon Sa’ar, who word has it likes to go to night clubs. His job will be going to night clubs once a week and writing a report about the number of flies on the ceiling of the night club. If he doesn’t write the report every single week and submit it to my desk (This Week: Eight Flies), he will be fired and his position will not be filled.

The foreign minister will be nobody, as I’m not interested in talking to other state leaders.

The education minister will be nobody, as I’m not interested in telling parents how to educate their kids.

The housing minister will be nobody, as I’m not interested in telling people where they can and can’t build and live.

The communications minister will be nobody, as I am not interested in telling people how they can communicate and what cell phones they can buy for how much.

The welfare minister will be nobody, because there won’t be any welfare.

The finance minister will be ME and ONLY ME, and I will cut everyone’s budget by 100% and return all the money to the taxpayers who it was stolen from. I will continue at my private job now in order to earn a living. Every other politicians who have any skills can continue doing whatever their jobs are if they ever had any.

Naftali Bennett will be minister of Himself, in charge of regulating, taxing, and budgeting…himself. Anyone else who wants to be a minister will be Ministers of The Guy Who Sits to the Right of Them In The Knesset, all in charge of regulating and taxing the politician on the right. Politicians who have no one sitting on the right of them will be fired.

The defense ministers will be both Henin Zoabi and Danny Danon, who get along very well I hear. I will bring Balad into the coalition just for this purpose. The defense ministers will be locked in a room with blunt objects for the remainder of my administration and in charge of regulating how they defend themselves from each other. The army itself will be split into a bunch of different private military companies by district and left to fend for themselves by either being profitable or going out of business.

All regulations will be repealed except the regulation not to threaten or inflict violence on anyone’s private property, all markets will be freed, and strict gun control laws will be ruthlessly enforced on all politicians.

And so on.

Netanyahu asks for taxpayers to fund 10,000 shekels of ice cream for him

rafifarber Humor, Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

No joke. Hey Bibi! Why don’t you buy your own freaking ice cream?!

Oh, that’s right. You don’t earn any money. You only subsist off of my tax receipts. So then what’s the difference between Netanyahu, or any other government leach, asking for ice cream from a budget, or paying for it from his tax funded salary?

No difference. It’s all theft.

 

Moshe Feiglin walks into a gay bar

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

This is my own translation of an article in Ma’ariv (original here) written by some guy who’s pretty decent, but doesn’t quite understand the concept of liberty all that well. To him, it’s a government guy saying he’ll fight for someone’s right to marry someone of the same sex, as if it matters who the government says you can marry at all, as if marriage were some sort of government institution. Marriage is whatever private people want it to be.

Moshe Feiglin himself does not fully grasp what liberty is, though he’s pretty close. According to him, the “status of the classical heterosexual family” has to be “protected,” as if saying that if the government does not actively “protect the classical family,” all of society will disintegrate into dysfunctional and total homosexuality.

What Feiglin doesn’t like, and I agree with him, is the government stealing money from one group and giving it to gay people. But the author of this article sounds like he’d like his own government goon to spend someone else’s money to promote same sex marriage with government funded advertising campaigns or something. I just want people to do whatever the heck they want to do without stealing money from anybody through government programs.

If the government subsidizes a gay couple (like gives them a tax break for being married according to the government), the people who don’t like gay couples get angry. If the government subsidizes a straight couple, the gay people who also want the subsidy get angry for not having “the right to be married”. It’s got nothing to do with a right to be married. It has to do with the right not to be stolen from. If straight people can get stolen from less (get a tax break) for being married, why can’t gay people? It’s always about money. Not marriage or love or tolerance. Let’s not forget that.

All Feiglin really should say is that the gay community should do whatever it wants, raise its own money, and stop trying to legislate laws which cost money and force unwilling people to pay for something they don’t believe in. And that as an MK, he will make sure neither straights nor gays are being stolen from by government unequally.

Gay Jews, I call a truce! How about this: We the straight people promise to not get government to fund straight causes. You the gay people promise to not get government to fund gay causes. Then we can all go out for a drink at a mixed gay/straight bar. I’ll have the vanilla vodka with sprinkles and a cherry. You’ll have the whisky. Then we’ll go home and both do our familial thing, whatever that is.

This article was a Kiddush Hashem. Whoever doesn’t see that and is wrapped up in the “homosexual abomination” thing, really does not have his eye on the ball of how healing this is. Moshe, thank you for doing this. Keep it up.

Feiglin and the Gay Community; a Reconciliation

The historic visit of the religious right wing MK at a gay hangout in Tel Aviv at first looked like a recipe for disaster • But then came the moment when he told how the story of how the son of a good friend came out of the closet and had a conversation with him that “influenced [him] more than any discussion on the topic ever could.”

Rabbi Ron Yosef is the only openly gay Orthodox Rabbi in Israel. “First of all, the fact that there is dialogue between the gay community and religious public figures – that’s a statement,” he tells me when I ask him about the significance of what is going to happen here tonight. “Once people see someone like Feiglin of Likud, considered a right winger, and as a religious person even known as a little extreme in some ways – it says to people: Wait a minute, something’s happening here. The very fact that this discourse will lead to questions for both sides as well as the public is great news.”

Afterwards I ask him why he thought Feiglin – who has in the past came out against gay pride parades, and even penned an article entitled “I am a proud homophobe” – suddenly decided to come here, to the Association for the Gay Community on Nahmani Street in Tel Aviv. Rabbi Ron Yosef replied to me that in his opinion, he realizes that there is a community in the country that has a right to have its voice heard and that as a public servant, he can no longer ignore it.” But just then, we heard a shout of “Please clear the way!” and the new (and a bit too tall, one might add) MK Moshe Feiglin entered the room followed by hordes of photographers trampling everything in their path, including Orthodox rabbis, homosexuals and journalists like me.

But it doesn’t matter, because the answer to my question I got an hour and fifteen minutes later, at the most intriguing moment of the evening in my opinion. One man threw bitter accusations at Feiglin that people like him, public figures, who speak against homosexuality in public, sow public homophobia that leads to murder. That moment was the first time that evening I saw Feiglin’s face change, and for a moment, this man – who throughout the evening had kept a cool that in my opinion very few are able to keep – looked as if something in him cracked, maybe even softened.

“In a way I have changed,” he said in the broken tone of an average man rather than that of a member of Knesset, and went on to tell how recently the son of one of his best friends came out of the closet in a conversation that “affected him more than any other discussion on the topic.”

I believed him. It was too human a moment not to believe him. Up until that point he had thrown all sorts of phrases in the air that had surprised me: “Within the framework of my own Jewish faith, a belief that integrates identity, inner meaning, and liberty, the freedom of all people is almost, I would say, the foundation… and so, in the most basic natural sense of my own understanding of Judaism, I fight for the freedom of every person and first and foremost the freedom of my people, which is also your freedom. I fight for you as much as anyone else. ” At one point he even stopped one of the speakers and told him that he came here to find where the two sides can identify rather than fight.

It was not easy. I must say the room felt like it was loaded with a sort of anger and there were several people in the audience from the gay community who I felt did not really come to listen, but to saturate Feiglin with the anger and frustration that had built up within them for years. But Feiglin was not really affected by it.

It seemed as if he knew that this was part of the game and that he honestly came here to be part of a genuine dialogue. The whole evening he sat with legs crossed and played with his fingers and just listened, commented at the appropriate times, and even laid out his philosophy concerning the classical nuclear family – a philosophy that he knew would not be welcomed very openly in the place he was sitting. “The classical family is the building block of society. If it falls apart – we would have no society,” he declared. And no one applauded.

Bridging the gap

I do not think that Moshe Feiglin will ever really be the spokesman for the gay community in Israel, and I do not believe we will ever hear him voicing support for a family that includes two fathers or two mothers, and despite his declarations, there is still a long way between him and the title of Freedom Fighter. But one must compliment him for the effort and courage to come here today and start the discussion. I think this is what “openness” is.

Towards the end of the evening Feiglin said: “The importance of the conversation is the very fact that it is taking place and dialogue is starting.” I wrote myself a note in my notepad: In the GLBT youth lounge at 9:20pm in Tel Aviv, I realized that the gap is still wide, but the sides are getting closer. Judging by the satisfied smile of Rabbi Ron Yosef on my right, it seems he understood that as well.

Is the federal government going to bail out the twinkie?

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Hostess, the brand that makes Twinkies and Wonder Bread, is closing down. And it looks like the interventionists are clamoring for a company that is $16,000,000,000,000 in debt to bail out a company that is $1,000,000,000 in debt. From the LA Times:

Ding Dong despair manifested itself in a myriad of ways over the weekend as Americans came to realize that Hostess Brands Inc. as they know it is likely no more.

A petition went up online asking President Obama to nationalize the Twinkie industry and “prevent our nation from losing her creamy center.” Organizers hope to gain 25,000 signatures by Dec. 16. So far, they have less than 3,500.

You know why they went bankrupt? Unions.

Recipes for homemade Twinkies began emerging online. The spongy cakes went up for sale on Craigslist and Ebay for thousands of dollars a box.

It was the kind of outpouring Hostess wished it had generated before throwing in the towel Friday. The company blamed a union walkout on its decision to close.

Of course, if we don’t bail out the Twinkie, I’m sure the entire financial system will collapse or something like that. Why don’t we just bail out everything and that way no one will go bankrupt ever and we’ll all be in a giant Soviet Style Utopia with price-controlled Twinkies for all?

The saddest thing, though, is that the plot of Zombieland can’t fit anymore. (Woody Harrelson spends the whole movie looking for twinkies in a post apocalyptic America where everyone’s a zombie, also starring that guy from The Social Network. Great movie. Highly recommended. Cameo appearance by Bill Murray. The best Zombie movie ever made.)

A bank story from the past

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

I wrote this 4 years ago before we were married. As true today as it was even before it was written. Before you begin, be aware that we currently have an account at Discount that we have been trying to close for 6 months, sitting there accruing Shas child welfare stipends I refuse to touch, so instead I just gave them to Feiglin’s Knesset election campaign yesterday. We now have an account at Bank Yahav, a tiny nothing pisher bank we use as little as financially possible.

Now let’s go back to 2008…

There are three major banks in Israel. Bank Discount. Bank Leumi. And Bank Hapoalim. They’re all really, really bad. A combination of incompetence, greed, robbery, redundancy, and incompetence have congealed themselves in these banks to create a new level of grossness. If you’ve ever moved your oven to see the kind of decades-old sludge of thousands of uneaten meals that’s behind it that you have to clean with oven cleaner that’s so corrosive that even the idea of it touching your skin will burn you like Holy Water assuming you’re Satan and it still won’t go away, that sludge is like these banks, but at least you can eat the sludge if you’re starving to death. But not if you’ve already sprayed it with oven cleaner.

We will begin with Bank Hapoalim. Bank Hapoalim, in order to protect its customers from fraud and signature forgery, steals from said customers by committing fraud based on the assumption of signature forgery. Case in point, about a month ago, when we signed the lease for an apartment, we had to give the landlord a check for a certain amount of money. The check was signed. A few days later, said landlord is notified that the check was refused. Hapoalim has this policy that any refused check costs the account holder and the recipient a 20 shekel fine. Therefore, we are fined 40 shekels, for we will have to pay the landlord back the money that Hapoalim stole from him as well.

We call the bank. We are told that her signature does not perfectly match the signature she had 3 years ago. This is very dangerous, because if her signature changes slightly, that could mean someone is trying to forge it. Thank God for Bank Hapoalim. She is told to go into the bank to “change” her signature. She does so. She finds out the next day that the check has been refused again. Another 40 shekels – BAM! And more security! We are saved from theft! She calls the bank again. They tell her to come in and change her signature. She says she DID that. They say, “Oh, yeah. It’ll go through next time.”

She finds out that it was refused. Again. Another 40 shekels! WAP! Is security tight at Hapoalim? Is a frog’s butt watertight? Not as watertight as Bank Hapoalim! “Hapoalim – Where security is so tight, not even our customers can get past it.”

She asks about the fees. She is told that “Nothing can be done.” Of course not. The money was rightfully stolen. How could such a question be asked?

Back to Discount. “Discount – We specialize in turning your potential banking card into a paperweight.”

Bank Discount calls me. They want to know if I want a credit card. This is funny, because I have no income yet. But I don’t tell them this, because they’re going to send me one anyway, and I’m betting on the fact that it won’t work, just like the PIN they sent me months earlier. I say, “Sure, whatever, credit card.”

Sure enough, they send me the credit card. They want me to dial *6111 to activate it with the PIN number they sent me. I do that. I put in my ID number. I put in the PIN number. It doesn’t work. I do it again. It doesn’t work. I deliberate between, on the one hand, talking to a person, who will probably send me to a branch to get the problem sorted out, who will probably redirect me when I get there to the *6111 hotline for malfunctioning PIN numbers, who will probably charge me 20 shekels for using the hotline twice in a month. I decide not to bother. I cut up the credit card and throw it out and burn the remains with thermite plasma. I don’t actually burn the remains. But it would have been cool. A few weeks later I get a call.

“We see that you have not activated the credit card we sent you. Would you like us to activate it?”
“No, I would not like you to activate the card.”
“May I ask why not?”
“Because I destroyed the card.”
“Oh, may I ask why?”
“No. But I’ll tell you anyway. You would not let me activate the card.”
“So do you want us to cancel the card?”
“No, I want you to activate a card that doesn’t exist. Of course I want you to cancel the card.”
“OK, so we will cancel the card.”

A week later I get a letter that says I am charged 2 shekels for canceling a credit card.

“Israel Discount Bank – We discount the amount of money in your account for reasons WE can’t even understand.”

OK. On to Leumi. Now this one’s a real kicker. It happened nearly two years ago (6 now in 2012), when Natasha became a student. She was advised that, since she had student status and was exempt from all bank theft, to open accounts at all the banks to see which one was the least grotesque. So one of the bank accounts she opened was at Leumi. She goes there 2 years ago to put money into her account, which is what one usually does when one has said account in said bank. They inform her that there is a “problem” with the account, and she should see the front desk. She sees the front desk, who tells her the problem will be fixed and to come in some time later. She comes in that some time later to try to put money in her account. She is told that there is still a glitch and the computer will not allow money to be put into the account. She goes back to the person who deals with this stuff, who says they are trying to fix the problem. She says that she would much rather just close the account, because she has other accounts that actually sort of work.

The lady does not let her close the account.
Natasha insists. The lady insists that she will not close the account for her. This goes on for maybe 10 minutes.
She says fine, whatever, and leaves.

2 years later, about 2 weeks ago now, she gets a call from Bank Leumi. They insist that Natasha now owes them 80 shekels in fees. She tells them:
A) I have student status
B) I was not allowed to put money into the bank
C) I was not allowed to close the account
D) You people are completely insane, and I’m not paying anything

The guy on the phone says he “Doesn’t see why she can’t close the account.” That’s because he’s reading off of a paper like a telemarketer, probably. He insists that she pay the fees. She insists that she will not pay any of the damn fees. He says to come in to close the account, and then she responds, on my insistence, by hanging up the expletive phone.

“Leumi – The bank that’s actually a front for a drug-smuggling ring.”

(The good news is that Leumi called back a few weeks later and said that it was their fault, that she has student status, and is exempt from all theft. The account, however, remains open.)