Sarah Leah Levitt

I want to wish a mazal tov to David, Tikva and Aharon Levitt on the birth of a daughter/sister!

עליתי

עליתי אתמול מאתונה לירושלים להודות לא-ל .

I went up yesterday from Athens to Jerusalem to worship God and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.

On Not Complaining

Georgetown 1 Princeton 0

Oh well, I was rooting for the other side. In the end, a good showing. I am pleased.

Michigan!

Still waiting on a few more, although apparently Yale and Berkeley don't love me. Well good riddance I say.

ברוך דין האמת

Rabbi Yaakov Kret (zt"l) died this past Thrusday. He was 97.

I knew him as my father's rebbi--probably the single greatest reason that my father is frum today. In lieu of a grandfather, he was the closest I knew from age three, always greeting me with a great smile ("Zeyv, how are you?") and indulging my pedantic strings of questions. I loved him.

For the Torah world this loss reverberates as the deafening silence of nothing, the sound after the felling of a great oak. Rabbi Kret was the Sgan Rosh Yeshiva of Nevardik at Bialystok in 1939 (at some ridicules age of 29 or so--he was giving the second heighest shiur at 22) when the Russians were approaching on the eastern front and the Germans from the west. Many of the talmidim fled the towards the Germans, who had been kinder to the Jews in the Great War, but he returned from Lithuania to be with his mother and the ailing Rosh Yeshiva to be captured by the Russians and sent to a forced labor camp. The Russians were the good guys. They did not butcher their captives, they just starved them. When the war ended, Rabbi Kret was placed in charge of a small yeshiva for DPs and eventually moved to NY, receiving a pulpit in the Old Broadway synagogue in Harlem, which he occupied for more than 47 years.

With his passing passes Torah. He was, to my knowledge, the last surviving member of a European Yeshiva hanholo. With his passing passes the last surviving link to Voloshin, Nevardik, Slobodka and Bialystok. May his neshomo serve as an advocate for am yisroel in shomayim.

Penn & Inklings

P&I has a new home! I am very pround of myself :)

El Presidente, if you're not into the whole brevity thing

Listening to the President's interview on NPR was a puzzling piece of oration, until I read it as The Dude would. And then, suddenly, it all makes sense.

Donny: By the way, just quickly, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader says that if you have an incursion into Iran, he expects that you would come to the Senate for approval.

El Presidente: I have no intent upon incur—going into Iran. I mean, this is the kind of thing that happens in Washington. People ascribe, you know, motives to me beyond a simple statement – of course we'll protect our troops. I don't know how anybody can then say, well, protecting the troops means that we're going to invade Iran. If that's what he's talking about, there's – I mean, we will protect our interests in Iraq. That's what the American people expect us to do. That's definitely what our troops want to do, and that's what the families of our troops want us to do. And if we find the Iranians are moving weapons that will end up harming American troops, we'll deal with it.

He said the magic words!

For the first time ever, in a State of the Union address, Pres. G.W. Bush used the words "climate change." Hazzah!

America’s on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

Lessons Learned

I think at least one of this blog's readers is considering graduate study in economics at the U of C. Bear this in mind; If you should ever get on Gary Becker's bad side, do not put yourself in a position where you are vulnerable to him. He will hurt you.

I'm from Cork, apparently

I had to get my car inspected today. I had to drive to Staten Island to do so. To make a long story short the mechanic was very helpful and when he through me the keys he remarked,

I had a bit of a problem with the engine, but don't worry, I got the sticker on there anyhow. Anything for a fellow Irishman.

I would have driven twice as far to get that line.

Why can't we just all get along?

Because you're a shmuck, that's why! The NYT ran a strange article last week about the feeble and misunderstood R. Yisroel Dovid Weiss and the Neturei Karta movement. What the article oddly neglects to say is that Iran is calling for Israel to be wiped off the map while simultaneously seeking the means to make good on the hope. Generally, a position which compromises millions of (Jewish) lives in looked upon with derision amongst normative Judaism (sometimes called a moser, a distinction better to avoid). I am thus puzzled why neither he, nor the good article's author, appear to grasp this rather rudimentary principle. The article further neglects to mention that similar treatment is not bestowed on all Jewish anti-Zionist, but reserved for ones who support the current Iranian regime. I doubt, though, that acute (or even accurate) sociology was Ms. Santos's motive.

I'm Done!!!

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the rejection letters to roll in.

Saturnight

Saturnight: (n) the non-frum way of referring to motza"sh.

Apple

Along with the name change, Apple unveiled a cool new gadget that does just about everything save for washing underwear and toasting bread. I am very happy with the result for a couple reasons:

1. It will rock the market- As soon as I saw it I ran to see what RIMM (Blackberry) stock was doing. Sure enough it shed a good 11 points on the day. That's almost 8% of its total value! The iPhone does make the Blackberry look a little bit lot out-dated. The iPhone interface is so much smoother and the software will allow for upgrades which the Blackberry will need to employ in its hardwear, i.e. requiring one to buy a whole new device.

2. It is not that good- While it is about the coolest looking thing to come around in a while, it is not that good. It can't sync with Outlook, its price point is a bit high and the capacity is tiny. The iPod started out at 5gb and it is now up to 80, so progress will come in time. It also means that my 5G iPod has not moved from cool to junk in the course of an hour. You will not be able to hold all your music on the new iPhone so it will not be able to replace the 5G for a few more years. Innovation can tend to piss people off that way by making one feel a bit slow. At least this way I can still feel up-to-date for a little while longer.

Well the Street seemed to like it. The dip at about 12:15 EST today was for the announcement of the Apple TV and the subsequent rise occurred when Jobs announced the phone. AAPL never looked back (although not reaching its 52 wk high either, funny enough). As far as all the whining on Macforums over the iPhone many posts have referenced the iconic Thread 500. What is thread 500? It was the Macforums thread after the iPod was released. 133 positives to 173 negatives. Mac people were upset about the iPod! The same little gizmo that transformed Apple's market cap. It just shows how silly even people who are technically savy can often be.

Regionalism, here we go again.

Gematria Coincidences?

According to the calculations I made with the help of this website, it appears that Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, have more in common (from the perspective of Gematria) than one might think. Not only did the two die within four (4) days of one another, but the gematria of גראלד פורד is 528, half of which is 264. Now 264 is exactly 16 (that is 4*4) more than 248, the gematria of סדם חוסיין. In other words, Saddam is 4*4 less than half the man Gerald Ford was and note the significance of the number four here. Can this be mere coincidence?

Why is this not a joke?

On Miriam's urging I went to the site No Santa Clause for Hazleton and poked around. At first I was convinced, particularly after watching the sorry TV spot, that the website was satire, poking fun at the crusade against illegal aliens. After a little more study, however, I realized that they were serious. My question for the moment is what about the site (e.g. language, presentation, etc) convinced me that the author of the site is earnest about his or her beliefs? What properties key us into the intended meaning?

Update: Because it is a joke. Shumli 1 Zev 0.

Here is an obvious example of evolution at work. 

S'iz Shver Tzu Zein a Yid

If I can't look pretentious, I will have to look pretentiously. Mmmmmm, baby squid and fried chickpeas.....

Seriously tough, the number of artistic pleasures denied to orthoprax Jews is quite large. Restaurants, for starters, the vast majority of wines, architecture of great churches and the great art therein, fashion (as it relates to men looking at women), opera/musicals. I wonder what people with taste do in the afterlife?

Never Happened

What a wonderful publicity stunt for the State of Israel. Generally I tip my hat to the crafty nature of Ahmadinajad for his carefully balanced political act, but I think he has made a true miscalculation here. Israel, to a large degree, exists because of the crimes of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitic rhetoric of the 19th century panned out in the worst way and the Nations of the World understood, for a brief moment, that the Jews needed Israel (I am waxing poetic, and will desist shortly). By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust, you are setting yourself up for every survivor, every historian, every archivist with a passion for mid-20th century affairs to dig up every shred of support to the myth (and there are quite a few such shreds). This is not like the heliocentric model of the universe, it is the most well documented genocide in the history of the world.

By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust you only cause that myth to grow and entrench itself into the consciousness of the welt. Those who forget or become dispassionate suddenly see a call to action. There can be no greater aid for the State of Israel than to give cause for the world to reexamine how truly awful that episode really was.