The redemption will not be monetized

Liberty? (Source: Flickr)

Porter Stansberry of Stansberry's Investments has created a new video presentation on the gloomy future of the dollar and the US economic system as we know it. Stansberry is credited with predicting the crash of many companies in the 2008 economic crisis, yet he claims that the worst is yet to come. According to his predictions, many Americans could soon face skyrocketing prices of basic commodities such as milk, bread and gas, coupled with closed banks, failing credit card companies, and bans on buying gold and foreign currencies.

America's consumption-led way of life led the country to borrow frivolously using short-term loans on which they were unable to pay interest. When major banks collapsed in 2008, debts were absorbed by the U.S. government and other world governments from which it borrows. The reason Americans don't feel these debts to their fullest is because the response of the US monetary system for the past decade has been to print dollars whenever it's in a bind. The US is the only debtor that can print more of the world's reserve currency -- US dollars -- anytime it wants. Because it can always print more dollars, the US can never go broke, since its currency forms the foundation of the world's economic system since World War 2.

The danger of this strategy comes when other countries realize what's going on and start to discount the value of the US dollar. Ever since the US has become accustomed to consuming more than producing, the real value of the dollar has sunk. According to Stansberry, this consumption-led way of life will become impossible to maintain. If other countries begin to price basic commodities in a currency other than dollars, those commodities will become much more expensive to Americans, and the frivolity of US monetary policy of the last decade will be felt rapidly. Rising oil prices would cripple the US economy and way of life, affecting the cost of transporting food, farming, commuting to work, air travel  prices.

Stansberry claims the world's preference for currencies other than the dollar has already begun, even if most Americans find it hard to believe. Robert Fisk recently wrote that Europe and Gulf states are conspiring to end dollar dealings for oil and instead move to a combination of Asian and new currencies to govern the oil market. China has recently been reported as investing more in the Yen than in the dollar. Americans are used to being able to use dollars wherever they travel, but Stansberry claims a major bank in Mexico has refused to accept dollars on the grounds of the weakening of the currency.

You can watch Stansberry's video presentation here. The presentation is long, and there's no way to rewind, fast-forward or pause (as far as I know), but there's a lot of good information in there, the gist of which I've summarized here. Stansberry's warning is intended for investors and those seeking to avoid the hit to their investments and retirement funds. Beyond this, these warnings also serve to herald the decline not only of the dollar, but of the consumption-led lifestyle which has become the universal currency of life in the last several decades. In this week's Haftorah (weekly reading of the Prophets), we read the following:

 חנם נמכרתם ולא בכסף תגאלו

You were sold for nothing, and without money will you be redeemed (Isaiah 52:3)

Today the values of consumerism seem so fundamental to life itself, so much as we can not even accept the basic human rights of a person who does not "work"--a view completely foreign to Torah, in which a poor person is a representation of a loan which God owes that person which we can pay for Him. After spending a week on Rothschild Boulevard, I believe one of the major achievements of Israel's latest protest movement is the introduction of a way of life which aspires to exist outside of the economic system which the government has imported from America. No one knows where it is heading--not even those who are considered its "leaders".

The tyranny of a life led by consumption is crumbling, and in its midst the ground is clearing for the reemergence of the values and dreams that have laid dormant for our two thousand years of exile. We need not rely on the empty promises of anarchy, socialism, or secular democratic utopias imported from states fallen, nor on doctrines of asceticism, minimalism or other dogmas that champion the Greek split between body and soul. After all, our people left Egypt not hungry and miserable, but laden with its stashes of gold and silver. The answers the times seek are ever-bubbling in the overflowing spring of the soul of our people, who throughout two thousand years of exile awaited the pure soil and air of the Land of Israel like a child waiting for its mother to return home, for the place where it can rekindle the spirit of prophecy and the bond between humanity and God for the sake of all of creation.

Friday is Gimmel Elul, the Yartzeit of Rav Kook, who saw these days.

On San Fran-sicko and Circumcision

San Francisco burns after the 1906 earthquake

It's no coincidence that San Francisco, CA, the decades-old capital of sexual lawlessness, is the first U.S. city in which circumcision will appear on the ballot in November. Although experts doubt the bill will survive a public vote, the anti-circumcision movement has picked up momentum in past weeks, and with it, its cousin, anti-Semitism has not forsaken an opportunity to lash out yet again in the guise of liberalism.

According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the foreskin represents the complete immersion of the human spirit in sexual desire, to the extent that this desire then eclipses higher realms of a person's being. According to Rav Kook, the question of circumcision concerns whether sexuality can be harnessed as an essential component of a full-fledged human being, or whether the human experience can be detached from its supernal root and left to rot in decaying bodily desire.

The following is a translation by Yaacov David Shulman at ravkook.net. The original passage appears on p. 300-301 of Rav Kook's Orot HaKodesh (Lights of Holiness), Volume 3. 

The precious reason for circumcision, which decreases sexual desire, encompasses broad principles of wisdom. The covenant-"to be a God to you and to your children after you"-offers knowledge of God's oneness, which is connected to circumcision. The covenant and circumcision are intimately intertwined.

"From his flesh does a man see God." If you have the power to harness all the abilities of your soul and all your drives to an enlightened and ethical goal, you will see unity in your internal world. The unity of the outer world will become increasingly clear to you. But if your abilities are splintered, if you cannot conceive of overall control of your drives and desires, you will conclude that the entire world, like you, is splintered, and that no unity can be found in existence.

Sexual desire in its essence-and in related expressions, physical, imaginative and spiritual-comprises the basis of all drives. If you experience sexuality in a way that your exalted spirit can rise to it and surround it, can unify it with all the wealth of human abilities (physical and spiritual), leading it to one integrated ethical and supernal goal, then that unity, in its power, is revealed. the revelation of Godly unity will appear in your flesh.

The total immersion of the human spirit in sexual desire to such a degree that the ideals and ethics in its realm are silenced has brought about the substance of the foreskin. This pathological state expresses itself physically as a powerful sexual drive that has left the realm of ideals and the transmission of the ultimate ethics.

Pessimism corresponds to ethical decline. It gives urgency to the divorce of sexual desire from idealism: since existence in general is such a great evil, how can the procreation of miserable creatures be ideal? This doctrine teaches that the sexual drive is not rooted in idealism, but merely demonstrates the eruption of desire.

How different is the outlook of general goodness, of optimism: "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." This view permits idealism to extend even over the sexual drive.

The nature of flesh and the inclination of one's heart can descend to the degraded state of the foreskin. But with circumcision, you rectify the holy covenant and stride on an exalted path. All your abilities are directed toward a goal that is all-inclusive, ideal and holy. From your flesh will you see God. You will sanctify the Holy One of Israel, the one God.

Often those who oppose circumcision, although they are usually atheists, challenge supporters: If God wanted circumcision, why did he not create babies that way? The rabbis anticipated this question and wrote the following in Midrash Tanchuma (Tazria, 5):

Turnus Rufus the wicked asked Rabbi Akiva: "Whose deeds are better—Those of God or those of humans?" Rabbi Akiva answered, "Those of humans are better."...Turnus Rufus asked, "Why do you circumcise yourselves?" [Rabbi Akiva] replied, “I knew you would ask me about that, which is why I pre-empted and told you that things made by humans are better than things made by God.” Rabbi Akiva then brought Turnus Rufus two items: stalks of wheat and baked rolls. Rabbi Akiva said: "These [the stalks of wheat] are the deeds of God, and these [the baked rolls] are the deeds of humans. Are these [baked rolls] not more beautiful?

It's worth noting that the Rambam disputes the notion that circumcision reveals a lacking in God's creation, and emphasizes that circumcision comes to fix something on the human end of the spectrum, by curbing sexual desire. Either way, the above passages remind us that circumcision has always been revolutionary, and the debate over it brings up a society's deepest convictions concerning creation and the responsibility humans are given to take part in the creation of the next generation - the bridge between humanity and eternity. Circumcision involves a level of temimus - wholeness and simplicity of the Jewish soul before its Creator, both our best weapon and our culprit in the face of enemies of the Jewish people and the spirit of sinfulness and impurity polluting the otherwise relatively clean air of San Fran-sicko.

Keep in mind: Even though hatred towards anything related to God is flung at the Jews these days (and always, for that matter), the anti-religion tone of the bill and the media surrounding it nationwide are in effect a reaction to Christian ethics concerning sexuality, and their modern-day conflation with Judaism. As demonstrated in Rav Kook's passage above, Judaism affirms life and in this affirmation affirms sexuality. In recognizing the power of this drive in human nature, it seeks to provide boundaries and guidelines to ensure it does not eclipse all parts of one's life and of a society, so as to not nullify its own purpose - re-creation.

Descent for the sake of ascent

Former NY Congressman Chris Lee (R)

Yesterday, New York Congressman Christopher Lee (R-NY26) resigned from office, after the social gossip website Gawker publicized e-mails and pictures that Lee, who is married, had exchanged with another woman. Hours after news of the scandal occupied newsmakers around the country, Lee issued a submitted his resignation statement:

It has been a tremendous honor to serve the people of Western New York. I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents. I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness...The challenges we face in Western New York and across the country are too serious for me to allow this distraction to continue, and so I am announcing that I have resigned my seat in Congress effective immediately.

In Chasidic thought, everything that happens in the world contains a lesson for our own relationship with Hashem. In Judaism, there is a principle that no matter what a person has done, the way of teshuva is always open. We must believe in the power within ourselves and within others of complete transformation, no matter what darkness surrounds us. This is the freedom that God places within the human being, freedom that can bring one to the depths, but also to the heights, even after one has already experienced the depths.

What does it mean that a person can always do teshuva? The key is that a person must not let his mind fool himself, that what he has already done, or the bad qualities he has, should prevent him from starting anew in this very moment. Because only God knows the secret of yeridah l'tzorech aliyah - descent for the sake of ascent - that it is precisely the leap from the depths to the heights that God desires. We are not angels; we are constantly falling in the mud and trying to get out of the mud, and no matter where we find ourselves, we must always look for the rope that reaches down into the very place we are, that hints to us, there's only up from here.

If a person feels in the dumps, his soul aching from all his moral failings and various mistakes, such that he cannot in his current state pick himself up and do what he needs to do, such as learn Torah, or fulfill commandments, in the world, and in the company of others, with a settled and joyful spirit, then he needs to take note, that his remorseful heart makes him in that moment a complete baal teshuva -- one who has gone from the depths to the heights -- and therefore his level is already very high, and he can put his mind at ease and return his natural state of joy, and occupy himself with all the good, without reservation, with a settled spirit and a joyful heart, for 'Good and honest is God' (Psalm 25).

- Adapted from Orot HaTeshuva 14:24 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

אם אדם נשפל כ"כ בדעתו, עד שמרוב מרירות נפשו על עוצם ירידתו המוסרית, בכל חטאתיו, איננו יכול להרים ראש לעסוק בתורה ובמצות, בישובו של עולם ובחברת הבריות, במנוחה ושמחת נפש בריאה, צריך הוא לשים אל לבו, כי מדכאות לב כזאת על כל עונותיו הרי הוא ודאי באותה שעה בעל-תשובה גמור, וא"כ כבר שגבה מעלתו, ויוכל להניח דעתו ולשוב לשמחתו וחדות רוחו ולעסוק בכל הטוב מתוך לב שקט ושמח, כי טוב וישר ה' - אורות התשובה י"ד כ"ג

The Convert Who Wanted to be High Priest

Blessing of the Kohanim depicted on the gravestone of
Rabbi Meschullam Kohn (1739-1819)

The following is a teaching by Israel's first chief rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, on this week's Torah portion, adapted from the book Ein Ayah by HaRav Chanan Morrison. A weekly teaching by Rav Kook is available by e-mail and for viewing on his website. 

The Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells the story of three Gentiles who wished to convert. In each case, they were initially rejected by the scholar Shamai, known for his strictness, but they were later accepted and converted by the famously modest Hillel. 

In one case, a Gentile was walking near a synagogue when he heard the Torah being read and translated

These are the clothes that you should make: the jeweled breast-plate, the ephod-apron.. (Ex. 28:4)

His interest was piqued. "For whom are these fancy clothes?" he asked. "They are special garments for the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest." The Gentile was excited. "For this, it is worth becoming a Jew. I'll go convert and become the next High Priest!"

The Gentile made the mistake of approaching Shamai. "I want you to convert me," he told Shamai, 

"but only on condition that you appoint me High Priest." Shamai rebuffed the man, pushing him away with a builder's measuring rod.

Then he went to Hillel with the same proposition. Amazingly, Hillel agreed to convert him. Hillel, however, gave the man some advice. 'If you wanted to be king, you would need to learn the ways and customs of the royal court. Since you aspire to be the High Priest, go study the appropriate laws.'

So the new convert began studying Torah. One day, he came across the verse, "Any non-priest who participates [in the holy service] shall die" (Num. 3:10). "To whom does this refer?" he asked. Even King David, he was told. Even David, king of Israel, was not allowed to serve in the holy Temple, as he was not a descendant of Aaron the kohen.

The convert was amazed. Even those born Jewish, and who are referred to as God's children, are not allowed to serve in the Temple! Certainly, a convert who has just arrived with his staff and pack may not perform this holy service. Recognizing his mistake, he returned to Hillel, saying, "May blessings fall on your head, humble Hillel, for drawing me under the wings of the Divine Presence."

 

Shamai's Rejection and Hillel's Perspective

A fascinating story, but one that requires to be examined. Why did Shamai use a builder's measuring rod to send away the potential convert? What did Hillel see in the Gentile that convinced him to perform the conversion?

Shamai felt that the man lacked a sincere motivation to convert. By chance, he had overheard the recitation of the High Priest's special garments. The garments, beautiful though they may be, represent only an external honor. His aspirations were shallow and superficial, like clothing that is worn on the surface.

Furthermore, the chance incident did not even awaken within the Gentile a realistic goal. How could conversion to Judaism, with all of the Torah's obligations, be based on such a crazy, impossible fancy - being appointed High Priest? The foundations of such a conversion were just too shaky. Shamai pushed him away with a builder's measuring rod, indicating that he needed to base his goals on solid, measured objectives.

Hillel, however, looked at the situation differently. In his eyes, the very fact that this man passed by the synagogue just when this verse was being read, and that this incident should inspire him to such a lofty goal - converting to Judaism - this person must have a sincere yearning for truth planted deeply in his heart. He was not seeking the honor accorded to the rich and powerful, but rather the respect granted to those who serve God at the highest level. The seed of genuine love of God was there, just obscured by false ambitions, the result of profound ignorance. Hillel was confident that as he advanced in Torah study, the convert would discover the beauty and honor of divine service that he so desired through the sincere observance of the Torah's laws, even without being the High Priest.

 

Both Traits Needed

Once, the three converts who were initially rejected by Shamai and later accepted by Hillel, met together. They all agreed: "The strictness of Shamai almost made us lose our [spiritual] world; but the humility of Hillel brought us under the wings of God’s Presence." 

Rav Kook noted that the converts did not talk about Shamai and Hillel. Rather, they spoke of the "strictness of Shamai" and the "humility of Hillel." These are two distinct character traits, each one necessary in certain situations. In order to maintain spiritual attainments, we need the traits of firmness and strictness. On the other hand, in order to grow spiritually, or to draw close those who are far away, we need the traits of humility and tolerance. The three converts recognized that it was Hillel's quality of humility that helped bring them "under the wings of God's Presence."

Ingathering of the Exiles

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, a champion of
the spiritual and political revival of Israel,
who read the words below from Isaiah
at the opening of Hebrew University
in Jerusalem in 1925

Raise your eyes around and see
All have gathered and come to you
Your sons have come from afar
Your daughters carried on hips
Then you will see, and become radiant
...Your heart will expand and tremble
The abundance of the sea will turn over to you,
The heroes of nations will make pilgrimage.

(Isaiah 60:4-5)

According to JTA, 20 Jews from Tunisia have come to Israel amid the political situation in the country. Ten are members of one extended family who are making aliyah; the other ten are participating in programs and may do so in the future. Others in the country are considering making aliyah. About 1,100 Jews live in Djerba, while about 400 live in Tunis. 

On its website the Jewish Agency is offering to assist any Tunisian Jew to leave the country for Israel.

The Tunisian Jewish community dates back to the Roman period, when the Romans exiled the Kohanim as far as possible so as to quell possible attempts to reconstruct the Temple and Jewish worship. Most of today's Tunisian Jewish community in Djerba are Kohanim and have remained loyal Kohanim for centuries.

The Ga'on Rabbeinu Chananel, Rabbi Chananel ben Chushiel, was an 11th-century Tunisian rabbi. Yaakov ben Nissim was a Tunisian Jewish philosopher who wrote an Arabic translation to Sefer Yetzirah, the one of the first texts of Kabbalah. HaRav Nissim Gaon, Rabbi Nissim ben Yaakov was a great Tunisian Talmudist. During the Spain and Portuguese Inquisition in the 15th century, some Jewish refugees arrived in Tunis.

In 1948, there were 105,000 Jews in Tunisia. By 1967, the increasingly unstable situation led to the aliyah of 40,000 Tunisian Jews to Israel. During the six-day war, 7,000 immigrated to France. In 2002, a truck exploded at the outer wall of the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. 11 German tourists and 6 others were killed in attack. (Source: Jewish Virtual Library)

The popular Israeli singer Etti Ankari, who has recently reconnected with her Jewish roots and embraced a religious lifestyle, is from a Tunisian Jewish family.

Rav Kook: Love for God

I am full of love for G-d!
I know that my love and yearning has no name.
How can a feeling that surpasses everything:
all goodness, all essence, all existence, be given a name?
(Orot HaKodesh 4:400)

(Credit to I Love Noahides)

When I understand myself...

"When I understand myself I will understand everything - the world, life - until my understanding reaches the very Source of Life." - Rav Kook