Consider this a follow-up to last week’s post of qualified optimism about the prospects for American democracy to outlive the Trump administration. We continue to be steaming towards a direct clash between Trump and the Supreme Court. How that plays out will be a big factor in whether our way of government survives.
A lot of the pessimists I talk with say this clash has already happened and the bad guys won. Specifically, the Court told the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from the concentration camp Trump has established in El Salvador. Trump has ignored that order and gotten away with it. So: courts and laws are powerless and Trump will do as he pleases. For all practical purposes, American democracy is already dead.
I read the situation somewhat differently. To me, the Supreme Court and the Trump administration look like two fighters circling each other warily, each waiting to see if the other really wants to do this.
It already seems clear that the Court will not endorse Trump’s most obviously illegal acts. It will not deny that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, no matter how badly Trump wants that denial. It won’t agree that he can invoke wartime powers (like the Alien Enemies Act) when there is no war. It won’t endorse him unilaterally unmaking agencies made and funded by Congress. The administration seems to understand this, which is why it hasn’t pushed for the Court to resolve those issues quickly.
Instead, Trump’s lawyers keep offering the Court ways to surrender quietly, by writing itself out of the picture. For example, the portion of the birthright citizenship case that the administration argued in front of the Court this week did not seek an answer to the central question. Instead, it focused on whether lower court injunctions could cover the entire country. The acting Solicitor General argued for a system in which each loss in a lower court only affected the specific plaintiffs involved, leaving the administration free to ignore the birthright citizenship of any other Americans until they sued too. Only a Supreme Court ruling could shut the administration down completely.
This leaves an enormous loophole: If the administration simply refused to appeal a series of lower-court losses, none of the cases would make it to the Supreme Court, so there could be no national ruling against them.
In other words: You don’t have to endorse our position, Supremes, just write yourself out of the picture and let us proceed.
For its part, the Court has so far treated the Trump administration as if it were a good-faith actor, which it clearly is not. In the Garcia case, the Supremes supported a lower-court order to “facilitate” Garcia’s release, leaving the details to the executive branch. (That’s appropriate if the executive branch is acting in good faith, because the executive is presumed to be better equipped to deal with foreign governments.) In essence, it was offering Trump the opportunity to stop all this nonsense and start behaving like the kind of American president the Constitution envisions.
But of course he did not. The Trump administration interpreted “facilitate” in a ridiculously narrow way, and — surprise! — the details of Garcia’s release haven’t worked out. The government continues to give the lower-court judge a run-around as to what it is or is not doing to get Garcia back.
Sooner or later, Judge Xinis is going to tire of this and order the administration to present Garcia in his court on a particular date. That order will also get appealed up to the Supreme Court, which will then have to decide whether it is ready to confront Trump or surrender to him. If it isn’t ready to surrender, then Trump will have to decide whether he recognizes the authority of the Court. If he doesn’t, that’s the crisis point.
I don’t think anyone knows whether we’ll get there, or what will happen then. Trump himself may not know, and the answer may turn on how popular Trump is at the time, how the economy is going, how vigorously Republicans in Congress are standing up for him, how well organized anti-Trump protesters are, and a lot of other factors that have nothing to do with the case at hand.
It’s worth noting that so far the Trump administration is not acting as if it had thrown off the burden of judicial oversight. For example, on Friday the Supreme Court extended its previous ban on deporting any more people under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act until the administration’s invocation of the AEA’s wartime powers can be fully adjudicated. As best we can tell, the administration is obeying the order.
At least for now.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
In the Shadow of the Lie, In the Light of the Brit … Blood and Brit: A Judgment Against Revision and Hypocrisy.
In the shadow of the past, they twist and turn,
Revisionist tongues, where the embers burn.
Genocide,” they cry—a hollow refrain,
While Tora! Tora! fades in disdain.(1).
Infamy cloaked in a selective veil,
As kingdoms of Judea fade, their stories pale.
Three crowns of defiance, in history’s grip,
While the Arab presence slips, a phantom’s trip.
Jordan’s grasp on Samaria, a name to erase,
“West Bank” they call it, a political face.
No state for the people, no dreams to ignite,
Just shadows of rulers who vanished from sight.
Egypt held Gaza, a fleeting charade,
Yet Nasser’s ambitions left nothing but shade.
Arafat’s embrace of a name, ’64 newly found,
In the wake of recapture, the truth’s tightly bound.
Revisionist whispers, like ghosts in the night,
Denying the horrors, distorting the light.
To compare Gaza as Holocaust, a vile, bitter jest,
In the theater of history, they fail the true test.
So let them rewrite, let them spin their tale,
But the weight of the truth will forever prevail.
For history’s not written by lies that deceive,
Though buried in Arab sands of deception & fraud,
Israel arises in Zion, on its own ancient National feet.
WordPress participants, if you slap the term “genocide” onto Israel’s response to the Oct 7th Abomination War, then intellectual honesty demands you paste the same label on the Dec 7th, 1941 assault—the “day of infamy”—which launched America into World War II. Accusing Israel of genocide while excusing the Allies’ firebombing of Tokyo and atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reveals either flagrant hypocrisy or ideological dishonesty.
Revisionist hacks whitewash the role Arab states played between 1948 and 1967, fabricating a myth in which a sovereign Palestine once flourished—until Israel supposedly destroyed it.
In truth, Jews rooted themselves in the land through three distinct political eras:
The united Twelve-Tribe Kingdom,
The Judean Republic under Persian suzerainty, and
The Hasmonean Dynasty, which threw off Greek-Syrian domination through armed revolt.
No Arab or Muslim polity ever ruled a sovereign state in the land now called Israel. Between 1948 and 1967, Jordan occupied Samaria—renaming it the “West Bank” in a rhetorical land grab—but never lifted a finger to forge a Palestinian state. The British Mandate for Palestine dissolved in 1948; no successor Arab government attempted to revive it. Arab states rejected UN 181, Britain’s feeble divide and conquer UN 242. Post the Nakba defeat and Israeli Independence, the UN has no authority to impose 194 – “right of return” upon the Jewish state. Despite the Goebbels repeated mantra refrain: Zionist entity Crusader State.
Egypt, likewise, seized control of Gaza. Despite the 1950 UN condemnation (endorsed by every member state except England and Pakistan), Egypt’s monarch made no moves toward Palestinian statehood. Nasser later toppled that king, but Arafat didn’t even adopt the term “Palestine” until 1964—just three years before Israel’s recapture of both Gaza and Samaria. The PLO’s founding charter, penned under Arab occupation, refused to claim either territory; instead, it called for Israel’s destruction. Their silence about Gaza and the West Bank in 1964 screams louder than any later propaganda.
Revisionist history mimics Holocaust denial by distorting the record, concealing cause and context, and blaming the victim for surviving.
When Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership named the new state “Israel,” they didn’t merely select a name—they resurrected an identity. “Israel” evoked ancient sovereignty, tethered modern Jewish nationalism to ancestral roots, and announced a reborn nation. This name galvanized a people and reshaped geopolitics.
Had the Jews named the state “Palestine,” the identity landscape might have fractured. For centuries, “Palestine” referred to geography—not Arab nationality. During the British Mandate, the term “Palestinian” often denoted Jews, not Arabs. Arabs roundly rejected both the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate, which carved out a Jewish National Home. That rejection didn’t spring from a desire for Palestinian independence—it flowed from opposition to Jewish statehood.
The Jerusalem Post bore the title Palestine Post during the Mandate, further underlining the term’s original association with Jews. The Zionist movement, founded on Herzl’s vision, drew legitimacy from the Balfour Declaration. Every Arab war against Israel traces back to Arab rejection of Jewish self-determination.
Foreign propaganda outfits often deploy the word “created” to smear Israel as artificial or illegitimate. But in 1947, two-thirds of the UN voted in favor of Jewish self-determination in the Middle East. Following Israel’s Declaration of Independence, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union immediately recognized the Jewish state. Yet Arab states categorically rejected the British-sponsored UN Resolution 181 and waged war to erase Israel from the map.
The emergence of a “Palestinian Arab” national identity didn’t arise in a cultural vacuum—it developed as a reaction to Zionism and the Jewish victory in the War of Independence. Jewish sovereignty forced clarity onto a region long trapped in imperial ambiguity.
We didn’t steal a land. We reclaimed a homeland—and we won our war of national survival. Arab propaganda still clings to the word “created” because it cannot stomach the truth: Israel wasn’t manufactured by foreigners. Jews rebuilt it. Fought for it. Bled for it. Secured it.
The Palestinian national identity emerged in opposition to Zionism, not as a longstanding expression of sovereignty. Historical facts—like the Jewish political presence across millennia, the origins of the term “Palestinian,” and the legitimacy of Israel’s statehood—have been distorted by propaganda.
“There are those who parade mitzvos in public and butcher the brit in private.” Yet even as we confront the lies of nations, we must confront the lies we whisper to ourselves—in the shadows of our courts and the corners of our sanctuaries.
They sculpt their piety for the crowd. They cloak themselves in tallit and tefillin while gutting mishpat behind locked doors. Their lips chant hallel; their hands extort, manipulate, betray. They don Torah like theater, not oath. They fear scandal, not sin. Exposure, not exile. They crave applause, not HaShem’s judgment. They hijack yirat shamayim and weaponize it for social control.
“And there are those who break Torah laws in Zion, but build it in secret.”
They offend the eye. They scandalize the synagogue. They clash with halakhic decorum. But when no one watches, they feed the widow, guard the convert, return the lost. They wrestle with the brit in the dead of night. No banners. No blessings. Just emunah forged in sweat and silence. They cut paths through darkness while the righteous sleep.
“I prefer the latter.”
The Kotzker doesn’t flinch. He scorches the hypocrite. He crowns the broken. He hunts the soul that bleeds for justice while the choir sings. Better the one who stumbles in daylight but plants mishpat in the shadows than the one who dazzles the crowd while hollowing out Sinai with assimilated Greek logic and statute halachic codes. Better the sinner who limps toward HaShem than the Cohen who flees like naked Adam who clothes himself in gold and titles.
A Mashal: The Two Sons of the King: Yitzak & Yishmael
To what may this be compared? To a King who had two sons.
One son dressed each morning in royal garments. He walked the palace courts with a Koran under his arm and Molotov cocktail burning in the wind while publicly fasting on Ramadan to show honor to the homeless poor. When courtiers passed, he bowed low and recited Surahs & Ayahs in full voice. He offered tithes from the royal table and dipped his bread with flourish. But in the cellar—where no servant dared tread—his corrupted scales weighted profits from theft, scrolls smeared with lies, two separate accounting books. His voice rang holy; but his hands shed the innocent blood of corruption.
The other son wore torn g’lut clothes and wandered the outer gates. He walked upon dusty roads while his lofty brother goose stepped upon paved sidewalks. He spoke roughly, fought openly, and refused to step into any court which switched the syllogism for פרדס(2). When he prayed tefillah within his heart, the k’vanna did not address any God in the Heavens, but rather he stood before the Torah ark and remembered the oaths sworn by the Avot. The ministers mocked him; the elders wrote him off. But by night he visited the sick. He buried the forgotten. He returned coins dropped by the blind. His door on Shabbat remained open to orphans and strangers. He studied Torah alone, by candle, and wept when he did not understand its common law פרדס inductive logic. No trumpet announced his deeds. No ledger recorded them but the King’s.
When the Day of Reckoning came, both sons were summoned. The first stood proud, wrapped in Alba, Stole, Chasuble, Cincture, Pectoral Cross, and Liturgical Colors. The second stood silent, eyes lowered, hands crusted and scarred. And the King said:
“Better the son who stumbles in the street but guards My brit in secret, than the one who honors Me with his lips but who Koran never once mentions the brit in print. (3) For I do not seek actors in My court, but servants who carry justice in the marrow of their bones.”
Thus taught the Kotzker Rebbe: “Give me no angel wrapped in costume. Give me the soul that limps, bleeds, hides—but clings to HaShem with both fists.”
Chagigah 5b:
The baal teshuvah does not merely regret; he wrestles, burns, and rebuilds. He rips out the rotted beams of his past and drives Torah into new ground. No pedigree props him up. No ancestral merit shields him. He grafts emunah into the flesh of his heart and buries it deep within the souls of his children—where no eye sees, where only HaShem weighs the kiddushin mitzva of ‘fruitful and multiply’. He constructs his legal identity from the rubble of assimilation and statute laws. He births halakhic common law identity out of intermarriage chaos—not through inheritance, but through fire. Through sweat. Through judgment. Through t’shuvah.
The righteous man who never falls may stand, but the baal teshuvah ascends. Not like a Cohen on temple steps—but like a soldier dragging himself up Sinai, gashed, ragged, but clutching the sworn oath brit in stained bloodied hands. The baal teshuvah climbs from the pit of assimilation and intermarriage ruin to build something stronger than innocence—he builds justice from ash.
This Kotzker line doesn’t whisper piety. It shouts Torah common law. It carves a verdict: authenticity belongs to the one who fights for the brit in secret. The Rebbe doesn’t moralize—he judges. He cuts down the pius religious Jew who bases statute law Judaism code upon Greek foreign logic.
۞ Haqq al-Kadhib: The Truth of the Lie ۞
In the cadence of ancient reproach
Have they not claimed what they did not build?
Have they not wept over stones they did not lay?
Have they not called themselves what they were not named?
Lo! The land spoke before their tongue.
The hills bore witness before their fathers’ dust.
Zion remembered her children—
But they remembered not her name.
They cry “return”—but whence did they come?
From Kheibar? From Damascus? From the sands of Najd?
Not from Yehudah, not from Shomron.
Their fathers did not plant olives in Ephraim.
Their mothers did not sing by the waters of Zion.
Woe to the people who inherit envy.
Woe to the nation born of grievance.
They forged a people from negation.
They raised a flag over a wound.
And say: “Nakba! Nakba!”
But who cast the first spear?
Who heard the call of Mufti and Pharaoh?
Who marched seven nations against one boy, wrapped in prophecy?
And they were broken like clay jars on the threshing floor.
And lo—they claim Jerusalem!
Did their prophets anoint it?
Did their songs rise from her gates?
No—
The Temple did not weep for them.
The Cohonim did not speak their tongue.
Say to them:
You are Ishmael, son of the field—
And we are Israel, bound to the altar.
We remember the fire.
You remember the sand.
So perish the lie that cloaks itself in keffiyeh.
Perish the myth born in Cairo’s tongue.
The land knows her children.
The stones cry out against their claim.
And history is not mocked.
________________________________________________
(1) “Tora” references the Japanese military code for “lightning attack” (totsugeki raigeki), famously transmitted during the Pearl Harbor assault on December 7, 1941. The line critiques modern willful ignorance or contempt toward historical warnings or aggression.
(2) “פרדס” (Pardes) – A one-line footnote or aside explaining the four levels of Torah exegesis (Peshat, Remez, Derash, Sod) might enhance the meaning of rejecting syllogism for covenantal reasoning.
(3) The koran affirms earlier prophets but omits the concept of the brit as a legal-political alliance cut with Israel. The first word of the Torah בראשית contains ברית אש.
The application of buzzwords like “genocide” and “apartheid” to what Israel is doing is nothing but intellectual laziness – letting emotionally-charged words do their rhetorical work rather than crafting a coherent argument. The current situation fails to meet the actual definition of each word, so a coherent argument is impossible. This is no different from anti-abortion activists calling legal abortion “baby murder,” even though ZEFs aren’t “babies” and abortion isn’t “murder” in any jurisdiction in the U.S.
That being said, the current conflict is a tragedy for the people of Gaza, whose suffering is real, and shouldn’t be minimized or dismissed.
Oct 7th like Dec 7th 1941 has its consequences.
For some time, I rejected out-of-hand the “Genocide” business, because the vast over-response to the brutal and disgusting crime of Hamas was in a way sort of justifiable. But after these months of Netanyahu’s escalating campaign, the increasing defiance of all international standards with not just the massive attack on civilians but the tightening blockade of humanitarian aid to civilians of the area, the massive displacement of the civilian population to “safe” areas that were then at tacked, and now the announced plan to remove the whole population to *somewhere else*, has led me to a simple conclusion: Fuck Netanyahu and his whole Likud and the rest of the neo-Nazis now in control in the formerly respectable State of Israel, this is genocide.
A Review of German Leaders During WWII
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) spat out speeches that shackled education to the Führerprinzip. This “Leader Principle,” the iron gauntlet gripping Nazi Germany, crushed democratic voices and pulverized collective will beneath the sole rule of the Führer—Hitler’s ruthless dominion. It throttled dissent, enslaved minds, and forged a dictatorship of absolute obedience.
Heidegger hailed the Nazi revolution, at first, as a spiritual rebirth of the German Volk. A man stripped of shame, he refused to kneel, never coughed up an apology, never retracted his venomous allegiance. After the war, he slithered through denazification, dodging accountability and twisting truth with evasive lies.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer thundered opposition at Nazism from its dawn. He hurled blistering public condemnations at Hitler’s regime, especially its savage persecution of Jews, and hammered together the Confessing Church to shatter the Nazi state’s iron grip on Christianity.
The German Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) erupted in the late 1930s, clawing back against the Nazi regime’s choking stranglehold on Protestantism, particularly within Lutheranism. After Hitler seized power in 1933, the regime dragged Protestant churches into the German Evangelical Church—a grotesque puppet engineered to broadcast Nazi hate, soaked in anti-Semitism and militant nationalism.
The Barmen Declaration (1934), forged by firebrands like Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer, ripped to shreds the Nazi regime’s attempt to enslave the church. It blasted state control, spat contempt in the face of political distortion, and declared open war on the regime’s monstrous manipulation of Christian faith. The Confessing Church ignited fierce resistance, its leaders hurling themselves into the breach, condemning anti-Semitic laws, and refusing to bow before tyranny. The state retaliated with brutal repression—arrests, beatings, and executions—but the Church’s defiance fractured the Nazi façade of total control.
Yet the Confessing Church splintered from within, torn between cautious cooperation and fiery rebellion. While some whispered compromise, Bonhoeffer and his allies sharpened their swords for active resistance. As Nazi terror tightened its grip, the Church staggered under relentless persecution—leaders vanished into prisons, congregations shuttered, voices crushed. Still, their moral blaze refused to be extinguished.
The Nazi regime clung desperately to the co-opted Lutheran Church to mask its monstrous agenda in sanctimony. Through the German Christian movement, the Nazis crushed dissent, injected venomous Aryan theology into sermons, and wielded Christian rhetoric to justify genocide and militarism. They weaponized faith to twist loyalty into fanaticism, forging a perverse godhead that sanctified cruelty.
Meanwhile, the Vatican under Pope Pius XII held its silence like a fortress of cowardice. Despite witnessing the Confessing Church’s fierce opposition, Pius XII calculated cold diplomacy over righteous outcry. When Rome’s Jews faced deportation in 1943, he offered hollow excuses instead of incendiary condemnation, betraying the innocent to the machinery of death.
Three Germans, three souls born into the turmoil of a shattered nation: Heidegger, the unrepentant collaborator, entangled in toxic ideology; Bonhoeffer, the prophetic conscience who sacrificed all to resist evil; and Pius XII, whose silence stained the Church’s legacy. Their stark choices carve a brutal fault line between genius warped by power, conscience sharpened by courage, and cowardice cloaked in diplomacy.
How the Cohen blessing ברכת כהנים shapes the kre’a shma tefillah from the Torah and halacha disputed between the Rambam and the Rosh
This blessing known as ברכת כהנים – the blessing of the sons of Aaron. Shares a common root denominator with the 3 Divine Names employed in the language of the opening p’suk/verse of Sh’ma Yisroel …
This tri-blessing stands on the foundation of the oaths sworn by Avraham, Yitzak and Yaacov which create continuously the Chosen Cohen People – throughout time. A mitzva which the Torah defines as a “time oriented commandment”. The Book of בראשית introduces Av tohor time oriented commandments. The next 3 Books of the Torah, they introduce secondary positive and negative תרי”ג commandments – according to the erroneous popular opinion of the Rambam.
This idea that limits Torah commandments to merely 613 commandments, the Rambam disputed with the earlier scholar known as the B’HaG, author of Hilchot Gadolot/Great Halachot. There in that sefer, the B’HaG argues that Torah commandments extend equally to rabbinic halachot “commandments”, under the pre-condition, when a scholar elevates rabbinic halachot to Torah time oriented commandments! A tremendous chiddush/new idea of how to understand the Torah commandments. Which clearly the Rambam failed to grasp.
The Rambam never developed, (just as did the new testament fail to grasp time oriented Torah commandments), a clear understanding of tohor time oriented commandments as having a priority over positive and negative commandments. Why? The tuma influence of new testament avoda zara, shaped the Koran avoda zara. The idea of Monotheism, as a theological belief system which promotes belief in a Universal God, clearly befuddled the mind of the Rambam. The God of Sinai – a Tribal God. Mesechta Avoda Zara and other mesechtot argue that only Israel accepted the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. Hence the God of Israel, clearly not a Universal God as the avoda zara of the new testament and koran declares.
The Rambam, likewise clearly did not understand that the T’NaCH and Talmudic legal system spun around the central axis of common law. Rabbi Yechuda the Head of the Great Sanhedrin Court organized his 6 Orders of Oral Torah judicial legal rulings which he named “the Mishna” based upon this name given to the 5th Book of the Written Torah D’varim/Mishna Torah. Mishna Torah means – common law. The Mishna a Case/Din organization of common law judicial rulings.
The Rambam erroneously named his statute law, obviously assimilated – to the ways of how Greek and Roman law organized law into legal categories. The Rambam erroneously named his statute halachic code Mishna Torah, utterly oblivious to the fact that Mishna Torah means – common law. Later rabbis hence corrected this fundamental error made by the Rambam by referring to his halachic code by the name Yad Chazaka/strong hand.
The error that the Rambam statute law introduced, dates back to the Rif common law codification of halacha criticized by the 18 year old scholar known as the Baali HaMaor. Personally I admire and respect the Baali HaMaor’s critique made upon the Rif common law code. For me the Baali HaMaor rates side by side with the Rabbeinu Tam my personal hero of Talmudic common law. It seems to me that the Tosafot critique of the Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud centers upon the basic contradiction of Rashi p’shat learned from his common law commentary to the Chumash to the dictionary definition of p’shat learned from his commentary to the Talmud. The latter more resembles how Ibn Ezra learned p’shat as codified in his commentary to the Chumash. Assimilation and intermarriage define the k’vanna of the 2nd Sinai commandment, not to worship other Gods.
The RambaN (1194 – 1270), a scholar who challenged the Baal HaMaor’s prioritization of judicial interpretation of different Case/Law. The scattered Jewish communities during the height of the dark ages where travel and communications between distant communities almost completely perished. The RambaN opposed the prioritization of interpreting different judicial case/rule halachot from the need to establish a unified code of halachic common law so that the scattered Jewish communities could maintain some semblance of unified customs and traditions. Scattered Jewish communities needed at that time some type of fixed culture and tradition rather than the Talmudic priority of disciplined פרדס common law judicial ruling.
The Rosh, born around 1250, a harsh critic of the Rambam statute law perversion of Talmudic common law. This “perversion” introduced Halacha clothed in the garments of Greek/Roman, cult of Caesar personality, legislative decrees ruled by the authority of the Rambam – Heil to the Leader!
This altered and changed the Talmudic format, which relied upon court judicial ruling – ruled through precedents. The Rambam code expunged the concept of judicial precedents as the backbone for judicial common law rulings. Yet he amazing had the chutzpah to name his statute law code perversion – Mishna Torah! His replacement theology introduced Greek logic, specifically Aristotelian logic – based upon how Arabic scholar interpreted this system of syllogism based deductive logic.
The Rambam codification uprooted the concept of Order established through Gemara sugya integrity. In effect the Rambam code cast the editing efforts made by Rav Ashi and Rav Ravina and the 150 years of Sovaraim scholarship between 450 to 600 CE, upon the dung heaps of history. His code effectively blew out the lights of Hanukkah which culminated in the victory of the P’rushim over the assimilated to Greek culture and customs Tzeddukim kapo Jews of the House of Aaron. The latter sought to make Jerusalem into a Greek polis whereas the former maintained the masoret of פרדס Oral Torah inductive logic reasoning; which compares case law to similar cases of case law ruled from previous court room cases.
פרדס logic defines the kabbalah of rabbi Akiva which all the rabbinic authorities in the Mishna and Gemara based their sh’ittot of learning upon. Inductive logic dynamic and not static as expressed through the syllogism model of Greek philosophy. Engineering a rocket’s flight path to Mars requires calculus variables. Whereas designing a bridge to span a river only needs algebra and basic geometry. In this sense, the modern scientific method which absolutely requires empirical evidence resembles static Catholic dogmatism.
The Rambam’s static code of Aristotelian logic, set the stage for the Reform Judaism revolt which denounced the halachic code of the Shulkan Aruch, modeled upon the Rambam’s Yad, as archaic and not applicable to the Modern Era – a just and valid criticism of post Ghetto rabbinic Judaism. Alas in the latter case, Reform threw out the baby together with the bath-water! It failed to address the eternal threat of Amalek. The consequences of Jewish avoda zarah assimilation and intermarriage with Goyim. This basic fundamental flaw equally defines and highlights the tragic error of the Rambam’s Yad introduction of Greek Roman statute law and Aristotelian logic based upon how Arab scholars understood this triangle syllogism of deductive static reasoning.
T’shuva demands that post Rambam Civil War scholars return and respect how the closing scholars sealed the Talmud texts. This requires a disciplined study of Talmudic sugyot. As an English minor, remember my Freshmen year of English literature. There the professor emphasized the organization of a thesis statement. This organization of a paragraph included the central thesis statement, followed by three qualifying particulars, and concluded with a re-statement of the original thesis statement.
This model, coupled with the deductive reasoning of a triangular syllogism, served as the basis by which I studied intact Gemara sugyot. The sh’itta of the Rabbeinu Tam, where he as a rule, tended to jump off the dof of the Gemara to some other Mesechta of Gemara intrigued me. Noticed that Rabbeinu Tam jumps to different Gemara “precedents” tended to follow the patterns which later Acharonim scholars on the Talmud tended to duplicate through their asterix terse commentaries which made a גזירה שווה comparison between different mesechtot of Gemara.
Early on, starting with my first year in Yeshiva, I strove to integrate the earlier Case/rule precedents within the Yerushalmi as the basis for the later Bavli scholarship. I started this sh’itta within 6 months of being in Yeshiva. In like manner my sh’itta of learning broke up the Chumash, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings of the T’NaCH. It seems to me that T’NaCH serves as the foundation of Talmudic common law just as much as the Yerushalmi serves as the basis of Bavli common law.
This premise caused me to divide the Chumash into בראשית Av tohor time oriented commandments and שמות ויקרא במדבר as תולדות קום ועשה ושב ולא תעשה מצוות. The Book of דברים of course name משנה תורה and the common law case/din style of the Mishna caused me to conclude, even before I entered my first Yeshiva at age 31 that the Talmud exists as a common law legal format. Hence I opposed the Rambam, Tur, Shulkan Aruch statute halacha straight from my mothers’ milk.
Perhaps the main reason that the rabbis permitted a 31 year old man to live and learn in a dorm of early 20s men, besides my cleaning the bathrooms, which everyone immediately appreciated, I introduced a thesis of studying the Talmud as common law based upon legal precedents. The rabbis laughed at my thesis, but I believe my early attempt to argue that the Mishna exists as a common law legalism impressed the Rosh Yeshiva rabbi Kaplan.
Because he specifically taught in his Mishna class the Case/Din structure of the language of the Mishna – as proof of common law! Did he do this for me? I believe he actually respected the 50 page thesis, written while working milking cows on a socialist kibbutz, as my basis for which I asked permission to learn in Yeshiva as a 31 year old man. Yeshua Lapel, also taught as a rabbi in that Yeshiva, and early on he told me that he thought I might become a Torah scholar.
When I moved to the Yeshiva of D’var Yerushalem, they treated me as royalty, gave me a private room with a balcony! All other students had 3 or 4 in a room. When Rabbi Horowitz had a bad dream he asked me to give him, as one of the three men, מחילה. Rabbi Nemuraskii introduced me to Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv. His sons, Moshe and Benyamin, they danced at my wedding; and Rabbi Elyashiv asked me – erev Yom Kippur – to give him a public blessing, just before we began Kol Nidre.
Rabbi Nemuraskii’s son asked me one day while walking to the Elyashiv shul, why his father did not teach him the common law masoret which I learned from his father? Rav Nemuraskii, besides hilchot shabbat, he focused my attention upon the Chumash Targumim and the Midrashic commentaries made upon the Aggada of the Sha’s Bavli.
Prior to this introduction, had not considered the Midrash as the primary commentary to the Aggada. This huge chiddush of rabbi Nemuraskii shaped how I developed the thesis that the Talmud compares to a warp/weft loom. Where the Aggadic portions make a דרושפשט of T’NaCH Primary Sources to determine the k’vanna of the language of the Aggadic stories. And this k’vanna weaves into the halachot within the Gemara’s common law commentary which re-interprets the language of the Mishna.
Herein defines the explanation wherein the B’hag developed three distinct branches of Torah commandments as opposed to the Rambam’s two branches of Torah commandments. All the rabbinic commandments which the B’HaG ruled as mitzvot from the Torah, time oriented commandments! The dynamics of the B’HaG Code of Common law interpreted to mean that if a person wove Aggadic prophetic mussar into the רמזסוד of halachic ritual observance, that doing mitzvot with the k’vanna of prophetic mussar elevates these rabbinic mitvot into Torah commandments! This insight, seemed to me as a revelation in and of itself!
When I studied the Baali HaMaor’s criticism of the Rif, I studied it together with the B’HaG common law halachic codification. The genius of these to Talmudic scholars absolutely left me dumbfounded, thunderstruck, flabbergasted, stunned, and utterly astonished. Rabbi Waldman, whose opinion I admired and really trusted offered no enlightenment, why the Yeshiva world ignores these great men.
This caused me to reach the conclusion that post the Rambam extinguishment of the lights of Hanukkah wherein Israel had dedicated to remember the Oral Torah through interpreting the Written Torah – based upon the kabbalah of rabbi Akiva’s פרדס four-part inductive reasoning process – that following the disaster of the public burning of the Talmud in Paris 1242, rabbinic Judaism jumped off the path of studying the T’NaCH and Talmud as common law based upon this chosen path of פרדס inductive logic, and forgot the Oral Torah revelation at Horev 40 days after the sin of the Golden Calf – just as the blessing of Hanukkah in the bencher forewarns.
The Yerushalmi which teaches that over 427 prophets wrote the Shemone Esrei corresponds to the number of words in the Yerushalmi Shemone Esrei itself. Just as Siddur stands upon the foundation of ס – ד – ר, so too and how much more so the editing of the Talmudic sugyot likewise stand upon the identical foundation as defines the Order of 3 + 13 + 3 = 613. Six Yom Tov + Shabbat … the number of blessing said every shabbat. The Minorah lights of k’vanna by which Israel dedicates our the 7 faces of our soul to keeping the Torah oath brit alliance which continually creates from nothing the Chosen Cohen People יה, האל, אל, אלהים, אל שדי, איש האלהים, שלום … these 7 Divine Names distinguish the spirits dedicated and blown from the Yatzir Ha’Tov within our hearts from the breath blown from our lungs; just as the blessing over wine separates shabbat from chol מלאכה from עבודה.
Observance of Shabbat as a time oriented commandment, the dedication not to do forbidden מלאכה on the day of Shabbat/shalom this holiness likewise dedicates the other 6 lights of the Menorah soul on the 6 days of the week we ‘most holy’ dedicate (an inference made upon Baba Kama 4 Avot Tam damages) not doing חמס, גזל, ערוה, ושוחד במשפט during the Yom Tov of the 6 days of the week. Hence just as the Menorah lights really one light, so too shabbat as a Torah time oriented commandment inclusive of the entire week. Herein defines how the k’vanna of the time oriented commandment of Shabbat encapsules all the Torah commandments, from the Torah as the Rambam learns and from the Talmud as the B’HaG learns.
But, if the court always surrender preemptively, then we are already past the crisis point, they have already been cowed. As is the most common case, we won’t know that we have left the Rubicon behind until it is already Manny miles behind us. This conflict might still be ongoing or it might already be over, the courts having lost. At this point, those situations are largely indistinguishable.
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