Blogging is peculiar delusion based on the strange expectation that there are more people in the virtual world who understand you compared to the real world. It’s hard to find a more prefect mental distortion.
Burning of the Jews during the Black Death, Liber Chronicarum, 1493
Two Jewish treasures discovered in Colmar, Alsace region of France in the 19th century and recently in 1990s in Erfurt (former Eastern Germany) are on display in London at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition will be on the permanent display in the Old Synagogue of Erfurt, one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. Both treasures were hidden during the flight from the towns by the Jewish families. Guardian has a video review of the exhibition. Amazing jewelry and memory.
The Erfurt wedding ring with a bell inside. Many photographs show just the crown of this ring while the most unusual detail are the two folded hands on the bottom of the ring. The tops of the widow decorations are slightly bent inwards so a beautiful bride wouldn’t scratch herself. The stars form what appears to be a three-dimensional Star of David. I feel it is possible to imagine and bring to life the bride that was wearing the ring, bring back her flowing robes and her fleeting dreams. Hes sense of doubt and her generous acceptance. The fragrance and the love.
The image above is part of the Nuremberg Chronicle.
Lewis family, Adam and Eve , 19th C.
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Images licensed courtesy of Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts
John Frederick Lewis, A sleeping child
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On the subject of The Chasidic Court of Bernard Madoff, here how it’s done by the professionals of the Abuhatzeira family. A hair raising tale in Haaretz - N.Y. Jews accuse Be’er Sheva Kabbalist of massive fraud. All Bernie Madoff promised was the steady 10% and he actually delivered for 40 years! But Elazar Abuhatzeira went on to do what every miracle maker and a Rabbi on the face of the earth has done before him, exchanged superstition for cold cash. And what Elazar Abuhatzeira sold was not the lousy 10% but the very life itself, is there a price one would not pay for that? One might say it’s the fault of this confused man from Brooklyn, but no, he only followed to the letter what the Rabbis told him to believe. And the esteemed Rabbis teach this with the specific purpose so that this very fraud ride continues indefinitely.
Is the Google page rank algorithm redirecting our culture? At the end of last year Fred Wilson wrote a post – People First, Machines Second. Fred was saying that the page algorithm elevates linking and anchoring of information, a human action. But there is a peculiar omission from the logic, machines or uncaring humans can link and anchor many times faster, and they do to the tune of billions of pages and millions of dollars. More importantly they poison the well of knowledge by cluttering the “super highway” with the clunkers or should we call them drones. For sure Google is aware that this has the enormous impact on the search results quality. But there is the deep apprehension that Google in fact prefers quantity over quality. Google is an advertising supported business, they need the inventory to distribute the ads, they would rather monetize point of purchase not the point of information (see Chris Dixon on the massive misallocation of online advertising dollars) and they don’t particularly mind the drones because that can multiply page views by the millions (see Aaron Wall – Spam vs. Mahalo).
Now Matt Cuts started to direct humans to the Google Spam report page, “help us maintain the quality of Google search results”. If this is not an admission that a Google bot sees no difference between a splog and a blog than what is? We know that Gmail spam filer works pretty well but then it relies on the reporting benefit of the huge installed base of the darn humans. And it doesn’t look like the usability of the search results will improve anytime soon, not after the massive amount of the social media clutter is now integrated into the pages. Tweets might be a human signal but if the disjointed bits of information, mostly click-through links to the 3rd party sites is not a spam than what is? Inevitably signal to noise ratio in relationship to a particular search is dismal. In short the search no longer gives you the aha “buzz”…
This commentary would remain academic if not for the fact that the “setup” is detrimental to writers and content originators. The machines don’t emote to art, poetry, heck they don’t even properly recognize the significant technical or scientific writing. The bots are not very good at detecting copyright. The robots are way too busy selling the washer dryers and the quantifiable viral amusement. If you think this has nothing to do with the punishing grip of this great recession than you really might be a machine.
I don’t get many arguments these days on how dysfunctional is the Jewish traditional society but yet we have the obligation to our forefathers, to the imagination, to the sacrifice, etc. Who can argue with the forefathers? But just in their defence I would have to point the following:
- It’s unlikely that the forefathers and foremothers would recognize their own religion as practiced by the grandchildren. They would be inclined to make the burden of the future generation lighter not to make their life unbearable, especially in their name.
- Part of the historic preservation of the projected legacy is to make sure that the majority of Jews in every generation are deliberately cut off from the main trunk. This is peculiar because the cut off branches have the same claim to the forefathers if not more. In fact the assimilated Jews are usually the grandchildren of the Jewish aristocracy not some Romanian peasants. How do you think the forefathers feel about their own grandchildren being cutoff by the impostors in their name?
- While the present is being lived to re-enact the imaginary past utmost care and attention is dedicated to the sacred task of passing the dysfunction to the future generations. I doubt the forefathers are OK with that.
- The historically inaccurate theatrics, the séances with the dead come at the expense of being devotional to your fellow human beings. Bein odom l’meis always supersedes bein odom l’haveyro, not even close. I can’t imagine the forefathers being OK with that.
Jewish leaders promote this dynamic because the way they are treated is as if they are already dead even when they are alive. So is not that the Lubavitcher for example is now alive after he died but he actually was already dead when he was alive. He was remote, uncaring, unapproachable and detached and he became even more so after he actually died, so he is now more alive than ever.
Hanoch Daum is really most qualified to speak on this subject and he immediately points to the crux of the matter. Motti Elon is not just a charismatic leader or a great “communicator”. He is the Rebbe of the entire religious zionist movement. This is not some shmendrik named Leib Tropper that everyone knew was a creep even before the tapes. Just look at the YouTubes of Motti Elon, they don’t call this a “tish” for nothing. But do read Hanoch Daum’s article: Rabbi Elon affair shows that adoration of rabbis needs to be reassessed.
Christopher Hitchens denies that ever he took his commandments in a form of a tablet and then proceeds to hack the Mosaic code in the Vanity Fair, really as if it’s not even set in stone. The video below the fold: ►►►read more
Angelo Balducci is a Gentleman of His Holiness, or an usher for the Pope (one of several). Angelo Balducci is also a senior adviser to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the Vatican department that oversees the Roman Catholic church’s worldwide missionary activities. He has been caught dealing with a Vatican pimp Thomas Chinedu Ehiem who was a chorister, numerous times ordering male prostitutes, some of whom where seminarians. Guardian got the dope.
Raimund Abraham, Constellation 5, 2003
I don’t know about the life expectancy but one of the signs of the middle age is that suddenly people you personally know who are in their forties or fifties (plus minus ten years) start dying from natural causes (an occasionally unnatural causes). This is always a marker and extremely unsettling. It brings to the fore the thoughts about mortality, your start thinking about the “life’s score”. You start remembering your interactions with these people, the moments when they were in distress or more often when they were in a state of mental or professional exertion. Was it worth it?
Today someone emailed me about a man I worked with who died in January. “I am sure you know” read the email, but I didn’t. Half an hour later I saw in my RSS feed an announcement that my college professor was killed in a car accident in LA yesterday.
Now that I write about this suddenly it occurred to me that they both had one odd thing in common. Geoff Wodding spent his formative architectural years in Austria and Professor Raimund Abraham the designer of the Austrian Cultural Forum in NY is himself from Austria. Last week in Manhattan I saw a new building and as I looked at it I was thinking that the unusual roof line is exactly how I have done it in the Raimund’s class.
I will be Opening Comments on this Blog
by Ben Atlas on 03.4.2010.8:14pm · 0 comments
All the Top Ten Reasons I Closed Comments on this Blog are still intact. But there were some real encounters in the past month that made me realize that you got to put up with all the rotten sardines because occasionally you might catch or miss a golden fish. I think I am mixing up the metaphors but you get the point. And if you don’t have your net out there, etc… Perhaps this is how life works not just the comments? I still nurse my standing lament about not being able to have a real off-line connection even with the steady commentators. I still deplore the anonymity in the comments but my lone protest will not change the entrenched culture. See above about the rotten sardines or sheep to be more accurate.
In addition there were some technical reasons, I couldn’t find a commenting platform to my liking, I am picky. But it looks like there is resolution to the technical problems in sight. At least there is promise dangling out there for the imminent release. And my email still works as always.