Shmarya Rosenberg and Menachem Butler – Separated at Birth
(On the subject of the 42-year-old Rabbiner, the patient of Dr. Wilhelm Stekel.) Menachem Butler is the one who on May 3rd actually dug up this story and then someone, perhaps Butler himself, tipped the dirt collector. I can see how Shmarya lifted his post-ready posterior off the medicine ball in excitement, it got all that Shmarya craves like a vampire craves the blood: the molesting, the Rebbes, the Chabad and especially because the story reminds him on his own ailment – his hand knows only two motions – a jerk and a cut & paste.
How can I compare Menachem Butler to Shmarya Rosenberg you ask? One is the obsessive librarian with a narrowly focused autistic range who carefully sources his every syllable, effectively making his output unreadable. Another is the obsessive grime hound who lives off DJing someone else’s music. In essence the dry dos and the slobbering DJ, both inhabit the derivative world, the dreaded quotation culture. And this explains why Shmarya is such a hit in the frum community. They sense intuitively that he is one of them. Compare someone who treats people in sublime, mythological terms with someone who is always expecting the worst in people, compare someone always ready to slap a vile headline with someone always projecting a lying sugar-coated myth, both equally deny a human being his or her humanity.
The Books and the Reviews
Wilhelm Stekel (in Swiss forest): "In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings."
So the books are not for reading, you say, instead find a review that suits your special prejudice and start spamming. You don’t even need to read the review, just the first two paragraphs to decide if the reviewer is on your side. This is also part and parcel of the derivative culture. After all, long after they obliterated authorship, it still doesn’t matter what the text says, it always about what a Rashi says. Forget the yapping commentators who never read a book, even if they did, they would have to ask their supervisor to explain what they just seen with their own eyes. Some high-ranking reputable hack needs to tell them what to think of it.
In turn I will hold my opinion till I read Wilhelm Stekel’s book (Conditions of Nervous Anxiety and Their Treatment). I bought one on eBay for $13 before the seller realized that he was holding more than just another out-of-print obscure psychology text. I also ordered two Wilhelm Stekel’s books from the library including his biography. But at least I will be looking for these clues:
- There is a convincing claim that the Rabbiner described by Wilhelm Stekel is the Rashab.
- There is the psychoanalytic narrative of the childhood sexual abuse and the life long struggle to deal with it.
- Then the allegation that everyone overlooks, that Rashab became a soris (a castrato) after an illness. Let me just say that the Rabbi who was to “lead” the Russian Jews through the most challenging and deadly moment of the revolution, was allegedly carrying a malfunctioning apparatus (forgive the crudeness). It’s interesting because the Rayatz forbade his followers the operation (prostate?) that would render them a soris and the faithful followers suffered the immeasurable pain.
- In addition the nonchalant dismissal of the sin of the Onon as if the Rayatz didn’t tell a childless couple that “tzulib kinder darf men zich moise zain” (you have to sacrifice yourself for the children).
- There is the far-reaching allegation that a known molester was free to roam the houses of the four Lubavitcher Rebbes.
- There is the most interesting connection between the sexual trauma, the obsessions and the Rashab’s creative output.
- People seem to forget that Tanya to Chabad is what Torah is to Jews. I have said for a while that Tanya is a fascist book, the Tzadik Rebbe description concocted by the Alter Rebbe is a fraud, a vile rant against the humanity, evidently the Rashab in a frank moment would agree with me (put that into your samech vov stockings).
Maya Balakirsky Katz and the Authorship
I received an email from Maya Balakirsky Katz with this telling sentence: “you are the only one of hundreds of emails I received with a full name and affiliation info – and hence the only one I’m responding to…” And this pretty much portrays the picture of the anonymous locust that swarms the space. Maya wrote: “I spent thousands of hours crafting that article almost two years ago”, and she deserves more that a midnight cut & paste with a hideous headline. In fact she deserves the gratitude for returning the Rashab to the holy brotherhood of the original authors who ride the creative wave of the homo-tormented sexuality. This is how Kabbalah was born in Spain and this is how any original line ever written seen the light of the blessed day. Looking forward to Maya’s book and looking forward to getting to know Wilhelm Stekel.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
The accompanying photograph speaks ten thousand words; We behold a pallid Stekel with a maniacal visage that is only momentarily belied by his serene pose. He has arisen from his self-induced premature grassy grave to once again afflict us with the hadean horrors of an oedipaly obsessed psychoanalysis. A Prometheus of madness and chaos who draws to himself that specie of moth who ceaselessly flutter through a forest of meaningless fate attracted by the noxious odor of death. (the whole bunch of them should have stuck to “litcrit” and phantasmagorical pornography and left the rest of world alone)
Dear Baruch, this is undoubtedly the best thing you have ever written. Thank you! If I were you I would be careful though to speak in this tone about the Rebbe of the Rashab Rebbe, in other words the only person he could be truthful and himself with.
Ben: Thanks for your very kind words, but I should note that I did not tip off Shmarya about the existence of the RaShaB article, though I did have an exchange with him this week about the Chaim Rapoport review of the recent volume by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman see http://seforim.blogspot.com/2010/06/chaim-rapoport-review.html
Menachem, the only thing that I can say about Chaim Rapoport is that he is even a bigger moron than Samuel Heilman but this doesn’t add or subtract from the importance of Heilman’s book. Anyone who cares for the subject can learn a lot from it and this is all that counts. This all that counts for any book as a matter of fact. And I already stated my opinion about the reviews (above). What compels your fundamentalist pen to reinforce my point is beyond me.
Your promotional link doesn’t belong to this thread. But alas as I already wrote here, the links and quotes are to be expected from your dry derivative mind, never an original thought. Hence your “exchanges” with your twin brother.
You might have noticed that I have not responded to any blogs over the past several years. I have been focused on my own graduate work and my own research and writing. The entries at the Michtavim blog — oops, was this shameless promotion?? — are simply an opportunity for me to organize my thoughts and share some ideas with others. My apologies that those posts are not as original as the essays at the Seforim blog — whoops, there I go again — where we, each week (sometimes multiple times per week) post essays by guest scholars and rabbis throughout the world on a host of topics related to Jewish bibliography and seforim. You see, beyond the narrow world of blogging (say, in scholarly circles), there is an interest for these sorts of blogs. My apologies if you are not among the people who find these approaches rewording. In the end of the day, you can choose to read or not to read. No one is forcing you either way.
In addition, without resorting to “name-calling” (on either side of the aisle), why don’t you take the issues as each side presents them and come up with your own conclusion rather than simply accepting out of hand. Additionally, I don’t understand your comment that: “Anyone who cares for the subject can learn a lot from it and this is all that counts.” If someone (for example, Chaim Rapoport) believes that there are fundamental flaws to the volume and then provides, what he believes to be, accurate documentation (which will likely be questioned and challenged by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman), should not that count for something, as well? Scholarship — both traditional and academic — should not be constructed in the same way as the archery of parable from the lips of the Dubno Maggid. As for my being a fundamentalist, and your thoughts on my “dry derivative mind, never an original thought,” that really made my day. Perhaps one day you’ll see that there are those in the blogosphere (and in the Jewish world beyond the Olam haBlog) who actually live in a world beyond the blogs and engage in actual conversations and discussions on quality topics in Judaism, often using the discussions that can be found online to be a liftoff for additional discussions, both in person and over email. In such discourse, comments like “Chaim Rapoport is ..even a bigger moron than Samuel Heilman” are just immature. Perhaps as the simple result of your focus on blogging, you have forgotten that there is an entire world “out there.” At least Shmarya is, in some way, trying to perfect the world through his conception of avodat ha-kodesh. What are you trying to do?
I don’t know you personally and I am not familiar with your professional output, Menachem Butler. So I will refrain from the broad assumptions about “the good you do for the word”. But I kept an eye for years on your various online attempts to “organize your thoughts” as you put it and based on that, you appear as a dull, derivative “thinker”, an unimaginative mashup artist who confuses an original though and a “conversation” with the obsessive cataloging and the carefully sourced quote recycling.
Ben, I copied all your entries from the month of June into my word processor. My intention was to see how much of your own blog’s work was “original” and avoided the derivative/dj/link syndrome. Here are my findings:
In terms of word count 7815 words (or 65.6%) were “original” content, while 4104 words (or 34.4%) were quoted from others sources (this number also included generic introductions (e.g. “Nassim Taleb tweeted today:”). Hyperlink text was not included in this calculation, and it did not take into account paraphrasing or simple “like” statements (e.g. “A beautifully elegant riff and so true.”)
When it came to linking your blog unfortunately did far worse. While 28 links (or 36.4%) were internal (to your own site), 49 links (or 63.6%) were to other sites and material. External links here was a broad category and went from links to wikipedia and amazon pages to entire articles (which occasionally completely made up the content of one of your entries). (Note: The pdf to a chapter from Vocational Neurosis was not included in the link tally. Although it was technically an internal link to the blog, it included material entirely taken from another source.)
Finally, it should be mentioned that images and captions were not included in this analysis, although none could be considered original works of this blog (even if the online publishing of them sometimes was). For the same reason no posted music was included, however embedded youtube videos were counted as links.