Merry Christmas to you all! This is the first time in eight years of writing this column that the publish date has fallen on Christmas Day. Happy day to us all.

Your big day meal is probably underway, so let’s look forward to a simpler meal while the whole family is still around. What about a make-your-own pizza night? It gets everyone involved, pleases the picky and the progressive eaters and warms up the house all at once.

The other beautiful thing about a make-your-own pizza night is that all those little bits of leftover duck, gorgonzola, broccoli with pinenuts, sauteed greens – the list will be your own, but I’m sure you’ll have one – all of those little bits can top a pizza in the newest and most interesting combo yet created.

May you all share many times together today and this week that are filled with bright laughter and nourishing food.

For one large pizza, the ratio for little bits of this and that in your fridge should be:

1 cup tomato sauce (if you like)

1/2 pound grated and/or crumbled cheese

1/2 pound meat such as sausage, prosciutto, bacon or salami

1/2 pound cooked vegetable such as asparagus, broccoli, broccoli raab, onions and/or peppers

1/2 pound uncooked vegetables such as sliced tomato or spinach

So I’ve given you the basics, and some ideas for combining what you have. But I can’t resist giving you my favorite pizza recipe, which I often make on the boat as a way of using up leftover broccoli raab and sausage.

This recipe, while it calls for broccoli raab, is perfect for most hearty greens, such as kale, swiss chard, turnip greens and beet greens. Blanching them and then sauteing them with the sausage sweetens them a little and also evaporates the excess water that makes pizza soggy.

Many people think of broccoli raab as too bitter. But when it’s blanched, much of the bitterness leaches out and it becomes more acceptable to most palates, especially, as in this following recipe, when balanced by the rich, salty taste of the sausage.

Broccoli raab is a popular Italian vegetable and given that it’s high in all vitamins and minerals related to leafy, green vegetables, it’s worth a try.

If you don’t have time to make the dough, you can usually find white or whole wheat pizza dough in the deli or prepared foods section of your grocery store, refrigerated and ready to roll out.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound Italian sausage, spicy if you prefer, cut into 1/2-inch chunks

10 oz. broccoli raab, coarsely chopped; about 5 cups or 1 bunch

1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary

Several grinds of fresh black pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pizza dough (recipe below)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place a pizza stone in the oven on the top shelf (if you don’t have a pizza stone, use a baking sheet with the bottom side facing up.)

Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook until it begins to brown on the outside. When the sausage is nearly done and the water is boiling, add the broccoli raab to the pot of water. Blanch for 1 minute, then using a large slotted spoon or flat strainer, remove the broccoli raab from the water, allowing the broccoli raab to drain well. Transfer to the pan with the sausage. Add the rosemary, salt and pepper and mix well; continue cooking until any excess water has evaporated.

Dust the counter with flour and press or roll your pizza dough out to a little less than the diameter or width of the pizza stone or baking sheet. If you own a pizza peel, dust it now with corn meal. If not, dust the baking sheet. Transfer the dough to the pizza peel. Drizzle the dough with olive oil and spread the sausage and broccoli raab over the dough.

To transfer the pizza to the stone, angle the peel and wiggle the peel assertively to encourage the pizza to slide off, removing the peel as you go.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the crust is golden brown on the bottom.

Serves 4.

PIZZA DOUGH: The dough recipe below will make one large or two small pizzas – multiply as you see fit. If you have unused dough, you can use the remainder to make focaccia or a loaf of crusty Italian bread for another meal. You’ll to increase the rising and baking time, of course.

3/4 tablespoons yeast, or one package

11/2 teaspoons salt

21/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup warm water

1 tablespoon olive oil

Cornmeal for dusting

Makes dough for one large pizza.


Sunday, July 21, 2013

Mainly managed by its subsidiary PT Taman Impian Jaya Ancol ("TiJa") which includes the management of tourism areas (recreation and resort) and supporting business activities: entertainment, conventions and shopping. PJAA manage "integrated tourism area" covering 552 hectares, the location near the beach, the best in Jakarta with easy access via the toll, busway and rail.
* Beaches and Parks
Parks and beaches are amusement rides which offer freshness beach atmosphere for all backgrounds and ages. Beaches and Parks has 5 beach (Beach Festival, Beautiful, Elegant, Ria and Carnival Beach Club) and Dream Lake, along approximately 5 km, with a promenade along the 4 km.
* Fantasy World
Fantasy world is opened to the public on August 29, 1986, and popular with the title Dufan, is the first theme park developed by Ancol. Dufan is the largest outdoor entertainment center in Indonesia that pamper guests with Fantasy Around the World, through a variety of high-tech content of games, which is divided into 8 regions, namely: Indonesia, Jakarta, Asia, Europe, America, Greece, and Balada Kera Tale. The Company also makes Dufan as one of the existing edutainment center in Ancol that with the opening of the World Fantasy Physics (Fidufa) and Stage Performance. Dufan has been certified ISO 9001:2008 since 2009.
* Atlantis Water Adventure
Atlantis Water Adventure (AWA) is the second theme park developed by Ancol and stands on an area of 5 hectares. AWA is the result of revitalization Water Recreation Park Arena Pool Ancol that will give visitors adventure water main with 8 pools, namely: Poseidon, Antilles, Atlas Plaza, Aquarius, Octopus, Atlantean, and Kiddy Pool.
* Venues Ocean
Venues Ocean Ancol ("Ocean") is the third theme park developed by Ancol. Ocean is edutainment theme park nuanced nature conservation gives to the visitor experience to know better and loving creatures, such as dolphins, white whales, seals, and a 4D cinema. In Cinema 4D or 4-dimensional performances, you have to queue to get into the theater building. Inside, officers will distribute 3-D glasses. After waiting some time in front of the door, the audience will get into the theater. The film is presented lasted approximately 15 minutes. With 3-D glasses, you'll feel the image is in front of you and saw that you can touch, coupled with a seat that can be rocked and bursts of water or wind on a particular scene that you can mesakana real atmosphere. There are 5 options on the schedule Monday through Saturday and 2 extra performances on Sundays and Public Holidays. But, you can only view one time due to enter into this vehicle should use the tickets contained in the entry ticket.
* Sea World
Sea World is the first underwater aquarium and the only one in Indonesia, with an area of 2 hectares (managed by the BOT format).
* Mermaid Cottages
Unique style beachfront inn-shaped cottages with 133 rooms has a variety of special facilities, such as: multi-purpose room, meeting rooms and a beach party location. Mermaid also offers sports facilities, such as swimming pool, table tennis, bicycles, tennis courts, beach volleyball and lapanan. Ancol Mermaid artistic architecture with a strong blend of style and romance posmo Eastern Indonesia, arranged in harmony with the coastal environment to create tasteful and exotic atmosphere.
* Padang Golf Ancol
Padang Golf nuanced beach in the middle of the tourist area which has 18 holes with unique design field. Strategically located and easily accessible from all parts of Jakarta.
* Marina
Cruise ship dock (speed boat and yacht) cosmopolitan style first and most comprehensive in Indonesia, designed for yacht berths of various sizes. Marina also serves as a center for marine sports, water skiing, wind surfing, diving, sailing, and yacht harbor towards the Thousand Islands. Equipped with facilities for the marina docks, marine band, gas stations, loading and unloading docks, travel agents and nautical sports.
* Art Market
Art Market is the center of arts and crafts activities that provide inspiration and insight for art lovers and collectors. Art market is a real form of Ancol concern over the survival of talented artists. Art Market Gallery exhibition also comes with (North Art Space / NAS), Souvenir Shop, Plaza and Stage Performing Arts.
* Angel Island
An island for the middle class in the Thousand Islands which can be reached within 20 minutes from the Marina. Angel Island has 49 cottages consisting of 23 units of deluxe type, 20 types of family units, 3 units of the type of family suites, and 3 types of suites and has a sports center, 2 multi-purpose hall, a restaurant, bar and souvenir shop. A unique attraction, the vehicle swim along with the dolphins (swimming with the dolphin), can be enjoyed on Angel Island.
* Retail
More than 30 stalls selling souvenirs, food and beverages
* Hailai Executive Club
Hailai an international executive club is equipped with a restaurant that provides 3,000 seats, sports facilities, and entertainment. Hailai managed by PT Philindo Sporting Amusement and Tourism Corporation in collaboration with PT Sarana Ria.
* Sky Lift

Gondola (sky lift) is a cable car that connects tourist spot each other in the Ancol area extends along approximately 2.4 miles from the parking area to the Beach Festival AWA. Ancol has 37 gondolas gondola unit with a capacity of six people per gondola and three station stops. With a height of 21 meters above sea level, with a gondola trip takes 20 minutes. Ancol Gondola is a business unit in cooperation with PT Karsa Surya Ancol Indonesia (KSI).
* Bowling
Bowling sports facilities of international standard with 60 tracks.
* Culinary Tourism
Restaurant and cafe facilities

by: Tourism in Indonesia.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Jakarta Old Town

Jakarta Old Town

Kota (Indonesian: Kota Tua Jakarta), is a small area in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is also known as Old Jakarta, and Old Batavia (Dutch: Oud Batavia). It spans 1.3 square kilometres of North Jakarta and West Jakarta (Kelurahan Pinangsia, Taman Sari and Kelurahan Roa Malaka, Tambora). Kota is Indonesian word for "city", it was the reminiscent of the vicinity during colonial times in 16th century that the city was only within Batavia walled compound (today Kota), while the surrounding areas was only kampung (villages), orchards, and ricefields. The largely Chinese down town area of Glodok is a central part of Kota.
Dubbed "The Jewel of Asia" and "Queen of the East" in the 16th century by European sailors, Old Jakarta — or Batavia, as it was named by the Dutch — was once a center of commerce for the whole continent due to its strategic location and abundant resources.

* History

In 1526, Fatahillah, sent by Sultanate of Demak, invaded Hindu Pajajaran's port of Sunda Kelapa, after which he renamed it into Jayakarta. This town was only 15 hectare in size and had a typical Javanese harbour lay-out. In 1619 the VOC destroyed Jayakarta under the command of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. A year later the VOC built a new town named "Batavia" to honor Batavieren, the Dutch ancestors. This city was centered around the east bank of the Ciliwung river, around present day Fatahillah Square.
Inhabitants of Batavia are called "Batavianen", later known as "Betawi" people, the creole ethnic, the descendants of mixed various ethnicities that inhabited Batavia.
In 1635 the city expanded towards the west banks of Ciliwung, on the ruins of former Jayakarta. The city was designed in European Dutch style complete with a fortress (Kasteel Batavia), city wall, and canals. The city was arranged in several blocks separated by canals. The city of Batavia was completed in 1650. It became the headquarters of the VOC in the East Indies. The canals were filled up due to outbreaks of tropical diseases within the city walls because of poor sanitation. The city began to expand further south as epidemics in 1835 and 1870 forced more and more people to move out of the cramped city, to the Weltevreden area (now the area surrounding Merdeka Square). The city later became the administrative center of the Dutch East Indies. In 1942 during the Japanese occupation, Batavia was renamed Jakarta, and still serves as the capital city of Indonesia.
In 1972, the Governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, issued a decree that officially made the Jakarta Kota area into a heritage site. The governor's decision was necessary in order to preserve the city's architectural roots — or at least what was left of it.
Despite the Governor's Decree, the old town remains neglected. Even though the majority was pleased just by the issuing of the decree, not enough was being done to protect and conserve the legacy from the Dutch colonial era.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Located on the northwest coast of Java, Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre, and with a population of 10,187,595 as of November 2011, it is the most populous city in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia, and is the thirteenth most populated city in the world. The official metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek (a name formed by combining the initial syllables of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi), is the second largest in the world, yet the metropolis's suburbs still continue beyond it. Jakarta is listed as a global city in the 2008 Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC) research.and has an area of 661 square kilometres (255 sq mi). This area has a population of well over 28 million,making it one of the world's largest conurbations in terms of number of inhabitants.
Established in the fourth century, the city became an important trading port for the Kingdom of Sunda. It was the de facto capital of the Dutch East Indies (known as Batavia at that time) and has continued as the capital of Indonesia since the country's independence was declared in 1945.
The city is the seat of the ASEAN Secretariat. Jakarta is served by the Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport, and Tanjung Priok Harbour; it is connected by several intercity and commuter railways, and served by several bus lines running on reserved busways.

* Geography

Jakarta lies in a low, flat basin, averaging 7 metres (23 ft) above sea level;[citation needed] 40% of Jakarta, particularly the northern areas, is below sea level,while the southern parts are comparatively hilly. Rivers flow from the Puncak highlands to the south of the city, across the city northwards towards the Java Sea; the most important is the Ciliwung River, which divides the city into the western and eastern principalities. Other rivers include the Pesanggrahan, and Sunter.

* Climate

Jakarta has a hot and humid climate on the boundary between tropical monsoon (Am) and savanna (Aw) according to the Köppen climate classification system. Despite being located relatively close to the equator, the city has distinct wet and dry seasons. The wet season in Jakarta covers the majority of the year, running from November through June. The remaining four months forms the city’s dry season. Located in the western part of Java, Jakarta’s wet season rainfall peak is January with average monthly rainfall of 389 millimetres (15.3 in), and its dry season low point is September with a monthly average of 30 millimetres (1.2 in).

* Culture

The "Betawi" (Orang Betawi, or "people of Batavia") are the descendants of the people living in and around Batavia and recognized as an ethnic group from around the 18th–19th century. The Betawi people are mostly descended from various Southeast-Asian ethnic groups brought or attracted to Batavia to meet labor needs, and include people from different parts of Indonesia.The language and Betawi culture are distinct from those of the Sundanese or Javanese, forming itself as a language island in the surrounding area. The language is mostly based on the East Malay dialect and enriched by loan words from Dutch, Portuguese, Sundanese, Javanese, Chinese, and Arabic. Nowadays, the Jakarta dialect (Bahasa Jakarta), used as a street language by people in Jakarta, is loosely based on the Betawi language. Betawi arts have a low profile in Jakarta, and most Betawi have moved to the suburbs of Jakarta, displaced by new migrants. It is easier to find Java- or Minang-based wedding ceremonies rather than Betawi weddings in Jakarta. It is easier to find Javanese Gamelan instead of Gambang Kromong (a mixture between Betawi and Chinese music) or Tanjidor (a mixture between Betawi and Portuguese music) or Marawis (a mixture between Betawi and Yaman music). However, some festivals such as the Jalan Jaksa Festival or Kemang Festival include efforts to preserve Betawi arts by inviting artists to give performances.
There has been a significant Chinese community in Jakarta for many centuries. The Chinese in Jakarta traditionally reside around old urban areas, such as Pinangsia, Pluit and Glodok (Jakarta Chinatown) areas. They also can be found in old chinatowns of Senen and Jatinegara. Officially, they make up 6% of the Jakartan population, although this number may be under-reported.Chinese culture also had influenced Betawi culture, such as the popularity of Chinese cakes and sweets, firecrackers, to Betawi wedding attire that demonstrates Chinese and Arab influences.
Jakarta hosts several prestigious art and culture festivals, and exhibitions, such as the annual Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFFest), Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival, Jakarta Fashion Week, Jakarta Fashion & Food Festival (JFFF), Jakarta Fair, Indonesia Creative Products and Jakarta Arts and Crafts exhibition. Flona Jakarta is a flora-and-fauna exhibition, held annually in August at Lapangan Banteng Park, featuring flowers, plant nurseries, and pets. The Jakarta Fair is held annually from mid-June to mid-July to celebrate the anniversary of the city and is largely centred around a trade fair. However this month-long fair also features entertainment, including arts and music performances by local bands and musicians.

* Transportation

               - Road

                    A structured road network had been developed in the early 19th century as a part of the Java Great Post Road by Daendels, which connects most major cities throughout Java. During the following decades, the road network was expanded to a great extent, although it could not keep up with the rapidly increasing numbers of motorized vehicles, resulting in highly congested traffic. A notable feature of Jakarta's present road system is the toll road network. Composed of an inner and outer ring road and five toll roads radiating outwards, the network provides inner as well as outer city connections. The outer ring road is under construction, but it is largely in use. While 6 Jakarta Elevated Toll Roads are still in tender progress.
See also: List of toll roads in Indonesia
The five radiating toll roads are the:
=   Prof. Dr. Sedyatmo Toll Road linking to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport
=   Jakarta-Tangerang Toll Road linking to Tangerang and further to Merak in the west
=   Jakarta-Serpong Toll Road linking to Serpong
=   Jagorawi Toll Road linking to Bogor and Ciawi in the south
=   Jakarta-Cikampek Toll Road linking to Bekasi and Cikampek in the east
Throughout the years, several attempts have been made to reduce traffic congestion on Jakarta’s main arteries. Implemented solutions include a 'three-in-one' rush-hour law, during which cars with fewer than three passengers are prohibited from driving on the main avenues. Another example is the ban on trucks passing main avenues during the day.

         - Public road transportation

            - Electronic Road Pricing

                    Due to the city's acute gridlock, the Jakarta administration will implement Electronic Road Pricing i n 10 districts: Tanah Abang, Menteng, Setiabudi, Tebet, Matraman, Senen, Gambir, Tambora, Sawah Besar and Taman Sari. The projects will initiate once it is approved by the Finance Ministry.

             - Railway

                    Long-distance railways and local tram services were first introduced during the Dutch colonial era. While the trams were replaced with buses in the post-colonial era, long-distance railways continued to connect the city to its neighbouring regions as well as cities throughout Java. The surrounding cities of Jakarta are served by KRL Jabotabek, a mass rapid transit system which serves commuters both in and around Jakarta. The major rail stations are Gambir, Jakarta Kota, Jatinegara, Pasar Senen, Manggarai, and Tanah Abang. During rush hours, the number of passengers greatly exceeds the system's capacity, and crowding is common. There had been plans for a monorail and part of it was already under construction, but the project stalled in 2004 and was officially abandoned as of 2008, mostly due to a lack of investors to fund it all. If completed, the monorail would have been made up of two lines: the green line serving Semanggi-Casablanca Road-Kuningan-Semanggi and the blue line serving Kampung Melayu-Casablanca Road-Tanah Abang-Roxy. A two-line metro (MRT) system is proposed, with a north-south line between Kota and Lebak Bulus, without connections to the cancelled monorail lines; and an east-west line, which will connect to the north-south line at Sawah Besar Station. In the end the JMRT would be a combination of both subways and elevated rails. The metro system construction started in April 2012, with the first, 15.2 km-long line between Hotel Indonesia and Lebak Bulus, and the north-south line MRT network is scheduled to be operational by 2016. Jakarta Capital City Government had decided to build rail-based mass transits because this type of transport is capable of carrying passengers in large quantities quickly and cheaply.
         - Air

             - Waterway

                    On 6 June 2007, the city administration introduced the Waterway (officially Angkutan Sungai), a new river boat service along the Ciliwung River.However, because of the large amount of floating garbage which kept jamming the propeller, it is no longer in service. The varying water levels during the dry and wet seasons were also a contributing factor to the close-down.

            - Sea

                    Jakarta's main seaport Tanjung Priok serves many ferry connections to different parts of Indonesia. Tanjung Priok is the largest seaport in Indonesia, with an annual traffic capacity of around 45 million tonnes of cargo and 4,000,000 TEU's. The port is also an important emproyer in the area, with more than 18,000 employees who provide services to more than 18,000 ships every year. The Port of Jakarta has 20 terminals: general cargo, multipurpose terminal, scraps terminal, passenger terminal, dry bulk terminal, liquid bulk terminal, oil terminal, chemicals terminal and three container terminals, 76 berths, a quay length of 16,853 metres, a total storage area of 661,822 m2 and a storage capacity of 401,468 tonnes. In December 2011, Muara Angke Port has been renovated yet with cost Rp130 billion ($14.4 million) in 3 hectares area. Next, Muara Angke Port will be used for public transport port to Thousand Islands, while Marina Ancol Port will be used as tourist ship port.


Category Archives: archaeology

Scott Corrales on “Pre-Adamic” Civilizations

From Inexplicata:

The Resurgence of Paleoufology

Pre-Humans and Non-Humans

Antediluviana: Chronicles of Worlds Before This One

Hat tip to The Anomalist.

Hunting Dyson Spheres With Kepler Data

Plus stellar archaeology is cool!

Dyson sphere hunt using Kepler data .

From YouTube via Red Ice Creations:

Red Rain in India
The Extraordinary Tale of Red Rain, Comets and Extraterrestrials

Also tune into Red Ice Radio:
Michael Mautner – Panspermia, Seeding the Universe with Life
Lloyd Pye – Human Origins, Intervention Theory & Genetic Experimentation
Mike Bara – Dark Mission, The Occult NASA Moon Mission

Maybe Sir Ridley Scott wasn’t too far off the beam?

Horizon: We Are The Aliens

Tectonic Movement on Mars?

But they won’t live forever, heh-heh.

Ancient Australians and the Americas

Cranial morphology

Clovis culture

New finds in seven sites

Not related to Native Americans

After all, to find otherwise would upset the known paradigm.

Did Australian Aborigines reach America first?

hat tip

The Ethics of Neanderthal Cloning

For a break from space stuff, I would like to put forth an ethical conundrum of science; “Should we clone Neanderthals?”

Neanderthals were a branch of humanity (according to mainstream science) that existed for over 450,000 years and coexisted with our homo sapien ancestors 50-60,000 years ago.

They supposedly were less intelligent than homo sapiens and one prevailing theory up until recently said that our ancestors wiped out the less aggressive Neanderthals.

Now there seems to be proof that both branches of humanity where able to interbreed (viva la differance!) and instead of being wiped out, the Neanderthals were absorbed into the larger homo sapien gene pool.

With the advances in genetic engineering, it has become possible to resurrect the Neanderthal race of homo sapiens, but that has started an interesting problem and the the question posed at the beginning of the post:

[...]The Neanderthals broke away from the lineage of modern humans around 450,000 years ago. They evolved larger brains and became shorter than their likely ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis. They also developed a wider variety of stone tools and more efficient techniques for making them. On average, Neanderthals had brains that were 100 cubic centimeters (about 3 ounces) larger than those of people living today. But those differences are likely due to their larger overall body size. Those large brains were housed inside skulls that were broader and flatter, with lower foreheads than modern humans. Their faces protruded forward and lacked chins. Their arms and the lower part of their legs were shorter than modern humans’, making them slower and less efficient runners, but they also had more muscle mass. Their bones were often thicker and stronger than ours, but they typically show a lot of healed breaks that are thought to result from hunting techniques requiring close contact with large game such as bison and mammoths. They had barrel-shaped chests and broad, projecting noses, traits some paleoanthropologists believe would have helped Neanderthals breathe more easily when chasing prey in cold environments.

Recent studies comparing Neanderthal and modern human anatomy have created some surprising insights. “Neanderthals are not just sort of funny Eskimos who lived 60,000 years ago,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck. “They have a different way to give birth to babies, differences in life history, shape of inner ear, genetics, the speed of development of individuals, weaning, age of puberty.” A study comparing Neanderthal and modern children showed Neanderthals had shorter childhoods. Some paleoanthropologists believe they reached physical maturity at age 15.

As different as Neanderthals were, they may not have been different enough to be considered a separate species. “There are humans today who are more different from each other in phenotype [physical characteristics],” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin. He has studied differences in the DNA of modern human populations to understand the rate of evolutionary change in Homo sapiens. Many of the differences between a Neanderthal clone and a modern human would be due to genetic changes our species has undergone since Neanderthals became extinct. “In the last 30,000 years we count about 2,500 to 3,000 events that resulted in positive functional changes [in the human genome],” says Hawks. Modern humans, he says, are as different from Homo sapiens who lived in the Neolithic period 10,000 years ago, as Neolithic people would have been from Neanderthals.

Clones created from a genome that is more than 30,000 years old will not have immunity to a wide variety of diseases, some of which would likely be fatal. They will be lactose intolerant, have difficulty metabolizing alcohol, be prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease, and maybe most importantly, will have brains different from modern people’s.

Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago studies the evolutionary history of the genes that control human brain development. One gene that affects brain size particularly interests him, a variant of the microcephalin gene, which Lahn thinks may have entered the human gene pool through interbreeding with Neanderthals. If that turns out to be true, roughly 75 percent of the world’s population has a brain gene inherited from Neanderthals. Lahn is excited to see what the Neanderthal microcephalin gene sequence looks like. “Is the Neanderthal sequence more similar to the ancestral version or the newer, derived version of the gene?” Lahn asks. “Or is the Neanderthal yet a third version that is very different from either of the two human versions? No matter how you look at it, it makes that data very interesting.”

The Neanderthals’ brains made them capable of some impressive cultural innovations. They were burying their dead as early as 110,000 years ago, which means that they had a social system that required formal disposal of the deceased. Around 40,000 years ago, they adopted new stone-tool-making traditions, the Châttelperronian tradition in Western Europe and the Uluzzian in Italy, that included a greater variety of tools than they had used in hundreds of thousands of years. But even if they were as adaptable as Homo sapiens, the question remains–if they were so smart, why are they dead? Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum believes our species hunted and gathered food so intensively that there simply was not enough room for the Neanderthals to make a living. In other words, they had the same problem as many species facing extinction today–they were crowded out of their ecological niche by Homo sapiens. Finding a place in the world for a Neanderthal clone would be only one dilemma that would have to be solved.

Bernard Rollin, a bioethicist and professor of philosophy at Colorado State University, doesn’t believe that creating a Neanderthal clone would be an ethical problem in and of itself. The problem lies in how that individual would be treated by others. “I don’t think it is fair to put people…into a circumstance where they are going to be mocked and possibly feared,” he says, “and this is equally important, it’s not going to have a peer group. Given that humans are at some level social beings, it would be grossly unfair.” The sentiment was echoed by Stringer, “You would be bringing this Neanderthal back into a world it did not belong to….It doesn’t have its home environment anymore.”

There were no cities when the Neanderthals went extinct, and at their population’s peak there may have only been 10,000 of them spread across Europe. A cloned Neanderthal might be missing the genetic adaptations we have evolved to cope with the world’s greater population density, whatever those adaptations might be. But, not everyone agrees that Neanderthals were so different from modern humans that they would automatically be shunned as outcasts.

“I’m convinced that if one were to raise a Neanderthal in a modern human family he would function just like everybody else,” says Trenton Holliday, a paleoanthropologist at Tulane University. “I have no reason to doubt he could speak and do all the things that modern humans do.”

“I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties,” says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The law does not define what a human being is, but legal scholars are debating questions of human rights in cases involving genetic engineering. “This is a species-altering event,” says Andrews, “it changes the way we are creating a new generation.” How much does a human genome need to be changed before the individual created from it is no longer considered human?

Legal precedent in the United States seems to be on the side of Neanderthal human rights. In 1997, Stuart Newman, a biology professor at New York Medical School attempted to patent the genome of a chimpanzee-human hybrid as a means of preventing anyone from creating such a creature. The patent office, however, turned down his application on the basis that it would violate the Constitution’s 13th amendment prohibition against slavery. Andrews believes the patent office’s ruling shows the law recognizes that an individual with a half-chimpanzee and half-human genome would deserve human rights. A Neanderthal would have a genome that is even more recognizably human than Newman’s hybrid. “If we are going to give the Neanderthals humans rights…what’s going to happen to that individual?” Andrews says. “Obviously, it won’t have traditional freedoms. It’s going to be studied and it’s going to be experimented on. And yet, if it is accorded legal protections, it will have the right to not be the subject of research, so the very reasons for which you would create it would be an abridgment of rights.”

Human rights laws vary widely around the world. “There is not a universal ban on cloning,” says Anderson. “Even in the United States there are some states that ban it, others that don’t.” On August 8, 2005, the United Nations voted to ban human cloning. It sent a clear message that most governments believe that human cloning is unethical. The ban, however, is non-binding.

The legal issues surrounding a cloned Neanderthal would not stop with its rights. Under current laws, genomes can be patented, meaning that someone or some company could potentially own the genetic code of a long-dead person. Svante Pääbo, who heads the Neanderthal genome sequencing project at Max Planck, refused to comment for this article, citing concerns about violating an embargo agreement with the journal that is going to publish the genome sequence. But he did send ARCHAEOLOGY this statement: “We have no plans to patent any of the genes in the Neanderthal.”

The ultimate goal of studying human evolution is to better understand the human race. The opportunity to meet a Neanderthal and see firsthand our common but separate humanity seems, on the surface, too good to pass up. But what if the thing we learned from cloning a Neanderthal is that our curiosity is greater than our compassion? Would there be enough scientific benefit to make it worth the risks? “I’d rather not be on record saying there would,” Holliday told me, laughing at the question. “I mean, come on, of course I’d like to see a cloned Neanderthal, but my desire to see a cloned Neanderthal and the little bit of information we would get out of it…I don’t think it would be worth the obvious problems.” Hublin takes a harder line. “We are not Frankenstein doctors who use human genes to create creatures just to see how they work.” Noonan agrees, “If your experiment succeeds and you generate a Neanderthal who talks, you have violated every ethical rule we have,” he says, “and if your experiment fails…well. It’s a lose-lose.” Other scientists think there may be circumstances that could justify Neanderthal cloning.

“If we could really do it and we know we are doing it right, I’m actually for it,” says Lahn. “Not to understate the problem of that person living in an environment where they might not fit in. So, if we could also create their habitat and create a bunch of them, that would be a different story.”

“We could learn a lot more from a living adult Neanderthal than we could from cell cultures,” says Church. Special arrangements would have to be made to create a place for a cloned Neanderthal to live and pursue the life he or she would want, he says. The clone would also have to have a peer group, which would mean creating several clones, if not a whole colony. According to Church, studying those Neanderthals, with their consent, would have the potential to cure diseases and save lives. The Neanderthals’ differently shaped brains might give them a different way of thinking that would be useful in problem-solving. They would also expand humanity’s genetic diversity, helping protect our genus from future extinction. “Just saying ‘no’ is not necessarily the safest or most moral path,” he says. “It is a very risky decision to do nothing.”

Hawks believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. “We are going to bring back the mammoth…the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away.” He doesn’t think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. “In the end,” Hawks says, “we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I’m just sure of it.”

I’m not sure I agree with Hawk’s rational of cloning the Neanderthal genome, just because we can clone the mammoth’s genome, we should clone the Neanderthals’.

In my view, just because we can, doesn’t necessarily mean we should.

And the ethics of bringing another race of potentially intelligent beings back into existence should be considered. What of their ‘rights?’ Should they be afforded the same as other human beings? What of their ‘nationality?’ Does that influence what rights of being they have?

To me, the legalities of this act should be considered before any ‘resurrection’ is performed.

What do you think?

Should We Clone Neanderthals?

hat tip

The ‘Humalien’ Mystery

Pat Regan, a researcher exploring the possibility of human-alien hybrids he terms “humaliens” in his book ‘UFO: The search for Truth’, posts about humaliens as they relate to Lloyd Pye’s Star Child Skull and a photo taken at the turn of the 20th Century of a Siberian woman with her child who exhibit some strange physical characteristics:

The creation of my latest book, ‘UFO: the Search for Truth’, has been an immense learning curve for me personally. My experience so far has been as a published writer connected with mythology, native Pagan legend/religion and the eco-system and more recently concerning the deception within politics. UFO: the Search for Truth holds numerous accounts of strange public sightings concerning UFOs and aliens. The subject of poltergeists and other extraordinary phenomena is also broached as being relevant to the subject at hand.

However, just before I finalised the book fate stepped in and an amazing disclosure occurred. I was contacted by the proprietor, Mr Chris Bray, of a well-established Leeds bookshop, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Chris was aware that I was writing UFO and he kindly wanted to grant me permission to use an image from his private collection. Just before the book went into print I rushed in to request from my publishers, ‘CanWriteWillWrite’, that we should include this late disclosure.

The old photograph Chris sent to me was astonishing as it seemed to fit perfectly with what I had already written concerning the potential of our Humalien heritage. I had already included in the book American data from the Starchild Project – an established scientific operation run by Lloyd Pye. Recent tests on an extraordinary ancient skull of a child had revealed that one of the parents of the child in question possessed DNA that was not recognised as being of human origin. The potential of our Humalien heritage was being revealed.

I quote from Lloyd’s own 2010 news release:

“This past weekend (March 2010) I met with the geneticist working on the Starchild’s DNA. He explained how he can now prove the Starchild is not entirely human, which has been our position for years. Now it is no longer a question of “if,” but of “when” and “how” we spread this astounding new reality beyond the mailing list.”

Lloyd reiterates that scientific corroboration now clearly illustrates that a “significant part of the Starchild’s genome is not found on Earth.” This groundbreaking discovery by Lloyd’s expert team will indeed I believe transform world history and the way we perceive life in the universe. However, the new photo that came to light, thanks to Chris Bray, threw a whole new light on the exciting issue of humans who had indeed crossbred with extraterrestrial races.

The photo (that we affectionately call “Alien Mom”) was an authentic shot of a mother and child from Siberia. These two individuals potentially hold alien traits of a physical nature. Chris explained in my book:

“The pic is very historic, taken at the turn of the century (circa 1900). Notice in particular the shape of the mothers head and the length of her fingers! The kid looks almost identical to the Area51 images of aliens and could easily be the result of mating between aliens and humans. The photo is absolutely genuine but no claims of extra terrestrial influence have been made about it before.”

But there was much more.

In June 1908 The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska Explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred over the so-called Southern swamp, a small morass not far from the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia. There was not I believe a great deal of scientific interest about the impact at the time, possibly due to the remoteness of the Tunguska region. The first recorded expedition arrived at the impact site more than a decade after the event.

In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, visiting the Tunguska River basin as part of a study for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, deduced from neighbourhood accounts that the explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. Kulik, persuaded the Soviet government to finance an expedition to the Tunguska region, based on the prospect of meteoric iron that could be salvaged to support Soviet industry. Kulik’s party finally undertook an expedition in 1927.

Kulik made arrangements with the local Evenki hunters to direct his party to the crash site. Reaching the vicinity was an extremely difficult task. But upon reaching an area just south of the location, the superstitious Evenki hunters would go no further, fearing what they called the “Valleymen”. Kulik was therefore impelled to return to the nearby village, and his party was delayed for several days while they sought new guides.

Who were the mysterious Valleymen that struck fear into the hearts of the Evenki hunters? Did they have any relationship to the Tunguska Explosion? Later on, other claims came in about a wreck of an alien device that had been found at the site of the inexplicable explosion. Reports indicated that Russian scientists, belonging to the Tunguska space phenomenon public state fund, said they found the remains of an extra-terrestrial apparatus that allegedly crashed near the Tunguska River in Siberia in 1908.

The mystery of the Tunguska event continues, yet now we have the Siberian mother and child issue to consider also. I must say here that the more I personally discover about this particular subject the more I am convinced that extraterrestrial intervention with our own race has genuinely occurred before. The evidence of experts does appear to be most compelling indeed.

I shall let Chris Bray explain what is particularly fascinating about the alien x human situation herein. What did he personally feel about the Alien Mom photograph and its inclusion in my book? He informed me:

“You’ve stitched together some interesting links here and of course apart from the Tunguska impact there have been many other meteorite hits in northern Siberia over the centuries any one of which could have disguised the crash landing of a spaceship (if indeed it was a crash and not a chosen landing) but my take on the photo is that the mother is herself a product of Alien interbreeding from several generations previously and we need to look for a ‘visit’ anomaly during the period 1775-1800. The importance of this picture is that it seems to record alien physical traits which will have subsequently been ‘subsumed’ during later interbreeding of alien offspring with the native Siberians who make up the majority of the population. Hence only a DNA analysis could now repudiate the possibility that this picture is proof of a race of humaliens living in Siberia.”

Chris’s pioneering disclosure deserves great credit. His “humaliens” theory in fact makes excellent sense and would perhaps form the basis of a brand new investigation for scientists researching DNA, such as the one headed by Lloyd Pye. I feel this situation alone merits greater research than is being currently undertaken. Are we finally witnessing evidence of genetic amalgamation between extraterrestrial life forms with humans?

Since ancient times up to this day; inexplicable UFOs have indeed been reported over Siberian and Russian areas. I welcome greater scientific investigation into this exciting situation. Others also seem to be suggesting similar.

The UK press reported in February 2010 that Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal of the UK, stated that aliens could be amongst us and we may not be able to distinguish them. Rees, who is also the President of the Royal Society, said:

Alternatively, recent sensationalistic scare-mongering by others such as top scientist Stephen Hawking, who warned us in April not to ‘talk with aliens,’ appears to be unjustified in view of the disclosure highlighted in this article.

The physical characteristics of the woman and her child seems to be very weak evidence to me. I’ve known people during my five plus decades of life that show the same traits. You have to do better than that to convince me of the Star Trek version of alien life.

But I do endorse Lloyd Pye’s research of the Star Child Skull. Physical evidence is the only way to convince the powers that be of the possibility of intelligent life that might not be human.

But not necessarily ‘alien.’

ALIEN MOM -The Humalien Connection – Our Extraterrestrial Legacy Finally Revealed – by Pat Regan

hat tip

More Moon Anomalies

Most folks believe since Mr. Obama’s FY11 Budget for NASA cancels the Constellation Program leaves Moon exploration out in the cold.

It could be no further than the truth.

Johnson Space Center’s Project M, which utilizes robotic and telerobotic technologies, forcasts a return to the Moon is feasible using such tech by 2013, returning to the Moon sooner by two decades than by using Constellation tech.

In doing so, many old Surveyor Lunar Maps have been recovered and redone, plus the Indian probe’s Chandrayaan-1‘s photo survey are being studied and utilized.

But many folks have some of the supposed recovered photos and discovered many anomalous things, such as towers, old bases, spaceships, stacks, arches and other proofs of previous civilization.

Are these possible? Are these true? Are we seeing things?

You decide.

Here is a link to NASAWatch and a lecture by Dennis Wingo, a technoarcheologist who has worked on recovered Surveyor Probe photographs and upgraded them to today’s standards digitally.

Real Telepathy and Homo Erectus the Sailor

In the UK, a professor at Southampton has invented a real telepathy machine:

We are about to make history. As long as these electrodes don’t electrocute me first, I am seconds away from becoming the first journalist in the universe to try the professor’s telepathy machine.

He doesn’t call it a telepathy machine, of course. He’s a scientist so it’s called the brain-to-brain communication experiment, or B2B. Still, my brain is about to read his daughter’s brain. Gwyneth and I will communicate solely by brain wave. Which, in my unscientific book, is telepathy.

The “professor” is actually Dr Christopher James, a pioneering biomedical engineer at Southampton University, and his invention makes fact out of science fiction. Decades from now we won’t be phoning home to say the train’s late. We’ll be thinking it. Soldiers will take orders from their commanding officers cerebrally and minds imprisoned in disabled bodies will be free to communicate with others via cyberspace. Centuries from now, one evil dictator will misappropriate the brain-to-brain technology, take over all our minds and destroy us.

Right now we’re at the very beginning of this revolutionary journey. I’m at one end of an anonymous office on the university campus with two electrodes stuck to the back of my head (and one, alarmingly, on the front “for grounding”). Gwyneth is sitting at the other end thinking either “left” or “right”. Two electrodes are connecting her to a computer that can tell, from her brain waves, what she is thinking.

It then passes this information, via the internet, to my computer, which flashes a series of lights at me. I can’t tell the difference — it’s all far too quick — but my brain can. My electrodes detect the same sequence of lefts and rights that Gwyneth is thinking. In short, my brain has read her brain. Eureka.

James is keen to point out his invention’s limitations. If his 11-year-old daughter thought of a cat or Venezuela or how she’d much rather be out tobogganing than sitting here thinking of left and right, I wouldn’t know it. We can only do lefts and rights. Nevertheless, non-verbal communication has arrived.

“These are the very first baby steps towards communication by thought,” James explains. “It is not impossible to imagine a future where this direct brain-to-brain interaction is commonplace. But we have a long way to go in terms of the speed, accuracy and robustness of the technology.”

He likens the thought processes of a brain to a cocktail party. Except that it’s a cocktail party attended by 100 billion guests and they’re all jabbering away noisily at the same time: “What we’re trying to do is eavesdrop on individual conversations at that cocktail party but we’re trying to do it from outside the building. Currently, the eavesdropping is fairly crude.”

The external sensors that James uses to measure the tiny electrical currents generated when we think are haphazard. They pick up interference, they mix up signals and, frequently, James has to glue them back on when they fall off. New ones are being developed but, says James, “the point where we can measure hundreds of thought waves in isolation is still a long way off”.

The alternative is to ditch the sensors and bury electrodes directly in the brain. Invasive brain-computer interfacing is far more controversial but also far more accurate and it has already been tested in America. In 2005 Matt Nagle, a college football star left tetraplegic after a stabbing, became the first person to control an artificial hand through thought. He had a 96-electrode chip implanted on the surface of his brain. A computer was then programmed to recognise Nagle’s thought patterns, enabling him to operate the robot hand.

“I can’t put it into words,” said Nagle during the trial. “It’s just — I use my brain. I just thought it. It will give me a sense of independence.”

James believes the non-invasive route to brain-computer interaction is a more feasible one. He speculates that the holy grail of full thought-controlled navigation — a life-changing concept for the severely physically disabled — could be achieved in decades.

The next watershed is when computers become faster at reacting to our thoughts than our own bodies, when a tiny chip in your glasses can understand millions of brain waves in millionths of seconds. It is still a long way off but is by no means unimaginable.

Full brain-to-brain communication is certainly further off and faces significant hurdles. While progress in reading thoughts is rapid, passing those thoughts to another human being is fraught with both scientific and ethical problems. Since announcing his breakthrough in direct communication, James has received letters imploring him to desist in his mad science. People are gravely concerned that his team’s work will lead to an underclass of zombies controlled by the scientists of tomorrow.

I wouldn’t worry. Quite apart from the sheer complexity of reproducing the exact electrical and magnetic stimuli to precise areas of the brain that trigger thoughts and movements, the amount of electrodes (and accompanied drilling) that would be required is something of a stumbling block.

Back in the office I have swapped places with Gwyneth. I’m thinking left, right, left, left but the computer claimed that I had thought four lefts in a row. If I was in a thought-controlled wheelchair I would have shot down the stairs by now. The computer needs time to learn my brain waves. I need time to learn how to imagine right and left clearly enough for the computer to understand.

Frankly, I’d rather be out tobogganing as well. And even though it is conceivable that James’s invention will one day be viewed with the same breathlessness as Archimedes’s momentous night in his hot tub, right now I can’t help thinking it’s simply good to talk.

I’ve used the telepathic soldier concept myself in my Lamont science-fiction. I think it’ll be practical in ten years.
Homo Erectus the Sailor?

Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.

Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.

In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.

These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.

Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.

“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”

Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.

Ancient Hominids May Have Been Sea-Farers

Today’s hat tip

Ancient Aliens 2009

Here are some links to a History Channel show, “Ancient Aliens 2009″ which features some of my favorite researchers mainstream scientists love to hate; Erik von Daniken and Zecharia Sichen.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, this is a good show.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Good stuff. Makes me wish I still had cable. LOL!

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Call it Inevitable: Mayor Douche Nozzle Bans 2 Liter Sodas with Pizza Orders

So how long till the Little Dictator tries to control how many twelve packs of soda his subjects may purchase?

Why do Bloomberg and his Democratic cohorts hate the poor so much?

The New York Post reported the following:

“It’s not fair. If you’re gonna tell me what to do, it’s no good,” said Steve DiMaggio of Caruso’s in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. “It’s gonna cost a lot more.”


Shaarei Yosher, sec. 5: Sharing – Part 3

The ending in the Jerusalem Talmud is even more shocking:

… Rabbi Aqiva visited him.

[R' Aqiva] said to [Nachum Ish Gamzu]: Woe to me that I see you like this!

[R' Aqiva] said to him: Why are you cursing me?

A Physics Metaphor for Coming to Terms with Theodicy

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Aristotle believed that motion was caused by an intellect imparting impetus to an object, which then moved until the impetus ran out. Newton replaced this model of physics with his three laws, including:

Inertia and linear momentum. Newton replaced impetus, which has a finite lifespan, with the notion of momentum, and the conservation of momentum. If no external force acts on a closed system of objects, the momentum of the closed system remains constant.

But in practice, we living here on earth never see momentum conserved. A rolling ball doesn’t roll forever, to stay at a constant speed, you need to occasionally put your foot on the gas pedal. Thanks to air drag and other forms of friction, there is always a “force impressed” to reduce the momentum. In daily experience, Aristotle’s impetus matches what we see — but it is really Newton who was correct.

Similarly, we have metaphysical laws of Divine Justice and Mercy. But like the conservation of momentum, there are always other factors that occlude our seeing these laws in action. So at times Hashem poses yisurim, challenges in our lives, that don’t seem fair or merciful. And so “שכר מצוה בהאי עלמא ליכא — reward for mitzvos is lacking in this world.” (Qiddushin 39b)

But it doesn’t make the rule less true, it just means that we must be aware that at least in the governance of this world, there are other factors that occlude our view.

When a Paradox is not a Disproof

The central theme of religion is whether the values, ritual, and system of thought work. The issues of genesis, the flood, or the tower of Babel are tangential, and out the outskirts of the Torah as a “theory” of meaning and purpose in life.

It’s like studying modern physics. We currently have two systems: quantum mechanics (QM) which was born in the head of Max Planck and developed by numerous other people. Including Einstein. There is also relativity (which has two parts: special and general), which was pretty much entirely Einstein’s.

QM works well in the domain of the very small, relativity works well with the very large. (In between, Newton’s old system is a good enough approximation and people don’t bother with such things.) But they are based on contradictory assumptions. For example, relativity is  Background Independent. This means it isn’t about things that happen within space and time, but the nature of space and time is itself part of the theory. This is not true of QM. Figuring out quantum gravity — a theory of gravity that fits both QM and relativity, is a challenge. Filling this challenge are things like string and membrane theories, the Higgs Boson (the subject of the book “The God Particle”), and others.

Because each works so well so often in ways it was not designed to, that the typical physicist is sure some resolution of the two that will preserve nearly all of both theories is out there, waiting discovery. For that matter, we have chips of semiconductors designed using QM in our GPS systems carrying out computations that include compensating for the relativistic effects of the satellite being in motion relative to earth. So, even though the two theories are built on contradictory assumptions, scientists place trust (bitachon) in them. They have faith (emunah) that each will have to be tweaked only minorly to get them to fit, not a major overhaul.

For similar reasons, these science vs Bereishis questions don’t really bother me. Neither is really about what happened in the past; scientific theories makes claims about the past to explain what we observe astronomically and archeologically, the Torah tells us about our past to help us work toward our future. These areas of conflict really are side-topics in each discipline.

It might even be that the reason our generation finds these topics so pressing is a flaw in today’s zeitgeist. Science and technology have brought us so much since the Industrial Revolution that we perhaps forget that it’s not the only venue. As Rabbi Soloveitchik would put it, Cognitive Man is so successful “fill[ing] the earth and subdu[ing] it”, as per Hashem’s blessing of Adam in Bereishis 1, that we forget the Lonely Man of Faith. We feel a pressure to get our religion to play ball on science’s court, when in reality we are looking at the fringes of what religion is for. Truth must be consistent, but the problem isn’t a pressing one.

Each “theory” works so well so consistently in their own domains, I presume that some resolution will someday be found — much like a quantum mechanical understanding of gravity, an understanding of the small-scale workings of a phenomenon only significant in the large scale. One cannot ignore science in the pursuit of the Divine, but neither can one ignore the Torah; nothing is gained by wallpapering over one source of truth in favor of the other. I can live until then with the open questions.

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 5: Sharing – Part 2

With this idea one can understand how charity has the effect of enriching the one who performs it, as the sages say on the verse “‘aseir ta’aseir – you shall surely tithe’ – tithe, so that you shall become rich – shetis’asheir” . Someone who is appointed over a small part of the national treasury who does a good job guarding at his appointment as appropriate will be next appointed to oversee a sum greater than that, if he is not promoted in some other way. If they find a flaw in his guard duty, no fine qualities to be found in him will help, and they will demote him to a smaller task. Similarly in the treasuries of heaven which are given to man. If he tithes appropriately, he satisfies his job of disbursement as he is supposed to conduct himself according to the Torah, giving to each as is appropriate according to the teachings of the Torah, then he will become wealthy and be appointed to disburse a greater treasure. And so on, upward and upward so that he can fulfill his lofty desire to do good for the masses through his stewardship of the treasury. In this way a man of reliable spirit does the will of his Maker.
ועל פי דעה זו יובן סגולת הצדקה שמעשרת את בעליה, כמו שדרשו חז״ל על הכתוב “‘עשר תעשר’ – עשר בשביל שתתעשר” (תענית דף ט.), שכמו שהממונה על אוצרות הממשלה באוצר קטן, אם ישמור תפקידו כראוי אז יתמנה להיות גזבר על אוצר גדול מזה, אף אם לא יצטיין במעלות אחרות, ולהיפך, אם יתגלה חסרון במשמרתו, לא יועילו לו כל מעלות שימצאו בו, ויורידוהו למשרה קטנה מזה, כל כך באוצרות שמים הנתנים לאדם, אם מעשר כראוי ממלא תפקיד הגזברות שלו כראוי ליטול לעצמו כפי דרכי התורה, ומחלק למי שראוי כל כך על פי הוראת התורה, אז יתעשר ויתמנה לגזברות על אוצר גדול מזה וכן הלאה למעלה למעלה, למען יתקיים רצון העליון בהטבת הכלל על ידי שמירת האוצר, ובזה איש נאמן רוח עושה רצון קונו יתברך.

In the previous portion, Rav Shimon advised us to see ourselves not as possessors, but as the part of the Jewish People that happens to be holding something on behalf of the whole. Here Rav Shimon explains a causal connection between giving to others and getting reward. Someone who shares Hashem’s bounty plays his role with what he is given, and thus it furthers Hashem’s goals to share with him even more. And even though a person only gives a percentage of his wealth, Hashem will still increase his entire wealth in order to increase that percentage.

This is why Rav Yochanan (Taanis 9a) homiletically explained “aseir ta’aser” (Devarim 22:41) ias “aseir bishvil shetis’asheir — tithe so that you will become rich.”  This isn’t merely testing G-d — that would be prohibited. It’s not even a promise of personal reward, offering a selfish reason to do the right thing. It is a fundamental expression of “im ein ani li, mi li — if I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Become rich, because the broader, fully developed “ani” of someone connect well beyond himself could use the wealth.

Malki-Tzedeq and Birkhas Avos

Compare these two snippets. I added color to highlight my point.

First, Bereishis 14:19-20. A massive regional war just completed, and Avraham joins the kings he fought with. Malki-Tzedeq the king of Shaleim (the future Jerusalem) and priest of the Kel Elyon (most high G-d) serves food and blesses him:

וַיְבָרְכֵהוּ וַיֹּאמַר: “בָּרוּךְ אַבְרָם לְאֵ-ל עֶלְיוֹן קֹנֵה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ.
וּבָרוּךְ אֵ-ל עֶלְיוֹן אֲשֶׁר מִגֵּן צָרֶיךָ בְּיָדֶךָ”, וַיִּתֶּן לוֹ מַעֲשֵׂר מִכֹּל.

He blessed him and said:
“Blessed be Avraham to the Most High G-d, Owner of heaven and earth.
“And Blessed be the Most High G-d who delivered your enemies in your hands.”
And he gave him a tenth of all [the booty].

And now, Birkhas Avos, the first blessing of the Amidah:

אֵ-ל עֶלְיון. גּומֵל חֲסָדִים טובִים. וְקונֵה הַכּל. וְזוכֵר חַסְדֵּי אָבות. וּמֵבִיא גואֵל לִבְנֵי בְנֵיהֶם לְמַעַן שְׁמו בְּאַהֲבָה: מֶלֶךְ עוזֵר וּמושִׁיעַ וּמָגֵן: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’, מָגֵן אַבְרָהָם:

… Most High G-d, Supporter through good generosity, Owner of everything, Who remembers the generosity of the forefathers and brings the redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of His Reputation, with love.
King, Helper, Savior, and Protector.
Blessed are You Hashem, the Protector of Avraham.

And in case you find comparing “Qonei shamayim va’aretz” and “Qonei hakol” a stretch, note that on Friday night, in a shortened repetition of the Amidah, the Chazan does use “Qonei Shamayim va’aretz“. Chazal did consider them roughly identical; although it would be interesting to explore why they changed the expression from “heaven and earth” to “everything”.

To further this comparison, Malki-Tzedek’s titles for G-d — “Keil Elyon” and “Qoneih haKol” — are uniquely found in this story (here and in Avraham’s reply) and nowhere else in Tanakh. They also make very weak theological claims: “Keil Elyon” is true — Hashem is the Highest Power. But it can be asserted by a Canaanite who happens to believe that El is greater than his other deities. Similarly, as the Creator, of course Hashem owns what he created. But to only call Him “Owner” also includes people who don’t believe in creation. These phrases make sense for Malkhi-Tzedeq, who was trying to preach monotheism even before Avraham. (Our sages associate him with Sheim, Noach’s son.) They allow him to build a student base without confronting too many of their beliefs up-front. But they are odd expressions for us Jews to use in prayer — and in fact they do not appear elsewhere in the siddur, either.

I think therefore it’s clear that the Amidah is making reference to Malki-Tzedeq’s blessing. And moreso, a blessing of “אֱ-להֵינוּ וֵא-להֵי אֲבותֵינוּ. אֱ-להֵי אַבְרָהָם, אֱלהֵי יִצְחָק, וֵאלהֵי יַעֲקב — G-d as we perceive Him, G-d as perceived by Avraham, by Yitzchaq, and by Yaaqov” uses terms from a less developed perception of Deity, language of Malki-Tzedeq who attempts to be a priest between idolators and the Creator without confronting his “congregation”.

I am not sure what to make oft this — it’s counterintuitive. Perhaps the point is just that — to identify the lofty conception of G-d the avos discovered with the concept their contemporaries grappled for when they looked at creation. That the G-d of revelation is the G-d of nature.

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 5: Sharing – part 1

Similarly it is appropriate to think about all the gifts of heaven “from the dew of the heavens and the fat of the land” (Bereishis 27:38) that they are given to the Jewish people as a whole. Their allotment to individuals is only in their role as caretakers until they divide it to those who need it, to each according to what is worthy for him, and to take for himself what is worthy for himself.
וכן ראוי להתבונן על כל מתנות שמים מטל שמים ומשמני הארץ שהם נתונים לכלל ישראל כולו, והתחלקותם להיחידים הוא רק בתור גזברות, על מנת שיחלקם לנצרכים, לכל אחד כחלק הראוי לו, וליטול לעצמו כפי חלקו הראוי לו.

When I quoted this portion to someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, the words “to each according to what is worthy for him, and to take for himself what is worthy for himself” triggered memories of Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Critique of the Gotha Program, ch. 1) But we can’t escape the fact that giving to those is need isn’t called “charity” in Hebrew, but “tzedaqah — justice.”

However, had we stopped at Rav Shimon’s discussion of the centrality of self-interest, and how ethics can be based on an informed self-interest, his position would have sounded like something out of Ayn Rand. Compare Rabbi Aqiva’s statement that if there is only enough water for one, you are not obligated to give it up or share to save another with these words Rand puts in the mouth of John Galt, “I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Thus, all else being equal, items should go to those that need them. Recall, though, that Rav Shimon’s model isn’t a black-and-white, in the “ani” (my sense of “I’) or outside of it. “The poor of my city come first” — there are ever decreasing gradations of connection. So all else isn’t always equal.

Rav Shimon doesn’t expect someone to “live for the sake of another man”, but rather for the sake of the greater whole of which both of us are part. Nor does he expect me to give according to the needs of another, but rather to lose that feeling that he is “another” to begin with.

It is interesting to compare these words to those of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch (Horeb par. 565, emphasis added):

G-d, to Whom you owe everything you possess, imposes upon you the duty not to consider it as given to you alone, but also to allow your brother who is poorer than you to make use of it, and to lend him money to enable him to rise out of his distress, to earn a livelihood and gain his independence at your side.”

Judaism is founded on the notion of beris, covenant. G-d forms covenants with Adam, Noach, Abram (and Abraham)… and the Torah itself is a beris. This is the topic of a prior post. To summarize, with an emphasis on the connnectionist aspect:

In the US, law is based on rights. Rights-based law trains the citizen to focus on insuring that no one else wrongs them. The line between people is protected by making sure no violator enters a victim’s space. But that has the danger of being abused as society slides into a culture of entitlement.

The historically common alternative is a contract-based law, people are given obligations to each other. Each side gives up something in order to get something from the other party that they value more. The line between people is protected by making sure no potential violator leaves his own space. People have obligations and restrictions that serve the other.

In a covenant, both sides come together to create something new. There are obligations and restrictions, as well. Not in deference to the other, but as my role toward that creation. The focus is thus not on protecting a line between people, but on people working together across those lines. Which would explain the value Rava ascribes to the middah of maavir al midosav (see the previous post). This is “keshe’ani le’atzmi, mah ani –When I am for myself alone, what am I?”

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 4: Connecting – Conclusion

ולדעתי מרומז ענין זה במאמרו של הלל ע״ה שהיה אומר “אם [אין] אני לי מי לי? וכשאני לעצמי מה אני?” היינו שראוי לכל אדם להתאמץ לדאוג תמיד בעד עצמו, אבל עם זה יתאמץ להבין שאני לעצמי מד, אני, שאם יצמצם את ה״אני״ שלו בחוג צר כפי מראית עין, אז ״אני״ זה מה הוא, הבל הוא ובאין נחשב, אבל אם תהיה הרגשתו מאומתת, שכללות הבריאה הוא האדם הגדול והוא ג״כ כאבר קטן בגוף הגדול הזה, אז רם ונשא גם ערכו הוא, שבמכונה גדולה גם מסמר היותר קטן אם רק משמש כלום להמכונה, הוא דבר חשוב מאד, שהכלל בגוי מפרטים ואין בכלל אלא מה שבפרט,

Rav Shimon’s take on this famous mishnah is striking.

We saw Rav Shimon pose a dialectic — on the one hand life is all about emulating Hashem’s middah of bestowing Good on others; on the other, in order to be active individuals (as He is), we need a healthy self-interest. This section is the synthesis. Self-interest can become the root of giving to others once we realize that our notion of “ani” only begins with my body and soul, and in reality reflects my being part of all of creation. Bestowing good therefore comes not from denying my self, but on my natural inclination to do good to myself. (Which sounds obscure until you think about parenting, and doing things for your children.)

In his eyes, the first two questions in the mishnah are the same dialectic. The first question, “If I am not for myself (li), who will be for me (li)?” refers to the need for self-interest. The second, “But when I am for me alone (le’atzmi), who am I?” speaks of the higher calling one has to invest in the whole. Note also Hillel’s shift in language, which supports Rav Shimon’s interpretation. In the first question, “for myself” is called “li“. Then he switches to le’atzmi” (which I translated “for myself alone”) is from the word “etzem“, bone, core, to describe the narrow “ani” of the courser individual.

This concept of Rav Shimon Shkop’s casts a new light on a number of middos:

Anavah: Anavah (humility) can be understood as stemming from a root related to anah, to answer. (R’ YG Bechhofer suggested this to me once.) An anav doesn’t make the world about himself, he understands that there is a bigger picture of which he is a part.

This could be why anavah, redemption, and making sure to repeat an idea in the name of the one who said it (Beraisa Avos 6:6) are interrelated. The anav has no problem sharing credit, doesn’t need to be the savior. Anavah brings redemption through the elimination of the “ani” which focuses only narrowly on the self.

The anav‘s self worth comes from knowing he is critical to the operation of the engine, even if that role is to be its littlest screw (as Rav Shimon) put it. The the engine won’t run without that screw either — it’s of no less value than the more-discussed parts like the spark plugs or pistons.

The anav therefore knows he has the same value as the “engine” as a whole which depends upon him.

Tzeni’us: Tzeni’us (modesty) is actually being happier being the screw. The anav gets value from his part within the whole, the tzanu’ah doesn’t want to lose his connection to others by having the limelight. As the Shunamit said to Elisha, “besoch ami anochi yoshaves — I dwell among my people.” (gemara holds up for us to follow. (Berakhos 49b)

Rachamim: similarly, the middah usually rendered mercy (most common), empathy (my preference), sympathy, or compassion, is also given a connectionist name. Rachamim is from the word rechem, womb, referring to the relationship between mother and unborn child.

Hodaah this word for thankfulness is from the same root as vidui (confession) and the rabbinic Hebrew usage of “modim” — to agree. (See my earlier entry, Gratitude, in particular section V.) What all three meanings have in common is that they focus on the I-Thou relationship: thankfulness is acknowledging I received from another, vidui is admitting I gave someone else a pain or problem, and to agree is to acknoeldge a shared position, one in which neither side is particularly giving to another.

The other two possibilities — my giving to you and you wronging me — are forms of connection that don’t require my dwelling upon. But they are in themselves the next two middos I believe are recast by Rav Shimon’s perspective.

Chesed: Lovingkindness is the dropping of barriers between myself and the other. Thus, there can be chesed which is good, as in the “chasadim tovim — good instances of chesed” we praise Hashem for sustaining us with when we say the first berakhah of Shemoneh Esrei. But there is also a lack of appropriate barriers, chesed that is not good.

Maavir al Midosav: Allowing his limits to be crossed. This is the person willing to forgo being slighted if it means someone else gains far more than his loss. “Rava said: Whomever is maavir al midosav, they [the heavenly court] passes [ma'avirin] over all his sins for him.” – Shabbos 17b. See my post on this middah.

With the conclusion of this section, I want to share some other ways in which connectionism / holism play into Rav Shimon Shkop’s general worldview.

I posted on the central difference between Brisker Derekh, the mode of analyzing halakhah developed by Rav Chaim Brisker, and his student, Rav Shimon Shkop’s, derekh. Rav Chaim analyzes halakhah on the level of “what”, of the law in legal terms. Rav Shimon added the level of “why”, grounding the analysis in philosophy, the psychology of those commanded, and the world around us.

But there is a second distinction… Rav Chaim would explain an apparent contradiction by finding “the chiluq“, the distinction between two cases that we initially thought ought to be the same, or the distinction between the viewpoints in two sides of a dispute. Rav Shimon also invokes hitztarfus, fusion or connectedness.

Rarely does an event only have one cause. Similarly, there is no reason to assume that it takes one cause to create an obligation or prohibition rather than a combination of them. From the Greeks until the 20th century, science focused on explaining things by explaining their parts. In the mid-20th century started the development of studying how things are connected. It turns out that networks of many sorts share the same math, whether we’re talking real communities, Facebook ones, links between web pages, neurons, etc… This is the notion of emergent properties, studying features that come from how parts are combined rather than being attributable to the parts themselves.

So the emphasis here on trying to become a critical part of the engine, to be indispensable in the interaction of parts while preferably avoiding standing out from the whole, fits Rav Shimon’s general worldview in other ways.

I took this holistic – connectionist approach even further in an early essay on this blog.

Another difference can be seen by contrasting the style of Aristotle with that of Rav Yehudah haNasi. Aristotle catalogues. He divides a subject into subtopics, and those subtopics even further, until one is down to the individual fact. Greek thought was focused on reductionism. To understand a phenomenon, break it down into smaller pieces, and try to understand each piece. This is typical of the Yefetic perspective….

As opposed to the way Rav Yehudah haNasi redacted the first mishnah. The beginning of the mishnah could have said that the time for evening shema is from sunset until 1/3 the night. But instead it uses referents involving kehunah, taharah and ashmores. This is not to confuse the issue, but because from the Semitic perspective the key to understanding one mitzvah is from its connections to everything else.

Yefes is reductionist, believing the world can be understood as the sum of its smallest pieces. Sheim is holistic, looking at the interconnections between those pieces, and the pieces only gaining meaning from the relationships in which they partake.

This is not only true statically, but also over the course of time. We get used to identifying “the cause” of something. Why did he hurt his foot? Because a can fell on it. Why did the can fall? Because someone else accidentally kicked it. And so on… However, it’s equally true that he hurt his foot because even though he usually wears iron toed hiking boot, he chose not to wear them that that day.

I would instead suggest that every event is like “the perfect storm”, every one has combinations of factors that come to a head at the same point….

Des Cartes famously said, “Cogito ergo sum — I think therefore I am.” A true skeptic can’t be sure of much. Even “1 + 1 = 2″ might be a delusion caused by insanity or a malevelent deity. The only thing one can be sure of is that there is an “I” doing the thinking, being sure. He then tried to prove the existence of other things, including G-d, with just this one given.

But even the Cogito is subject to this distinction. Are we individuals who interact, or only defined as individuals by the set of interactions we have with others? Moshe Rabbeinu lacked his full prophetic gift from the time of the Golden Calf until the rise of the next generation. The Or haChaim explains that this is because “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh” (Shevu’os 39a), which is usually translated “All Jews are guarantors one for another”. That’s consistent with another version of the quote, which ends “lazeh” (for this). However, “ba-”, in, implies a different meaning of the word “areivim”, mixture. All Jews are mixed, one into the other. Moshe’s soul did not stand alone, it is connected and overlaps those of the rest of the nation. When they lowered themselves with the calf, Moshe’s soul was diminished.

Even the “I” is not reductionist, but defined by its connections.

From this relation-based orientation comes a second distinction, a basically different approach to logic. The West never formalized the notion of reality having gray areas…

Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh”, the Jewish People are a unit.

Since the Babylonian exile, the remaining Children of Israel, the descendents of the Kingdom of Judea, have been called “Jews”, from “Yehudah”.

This is why the bareisa in Avos says that whomever says something in the name of the person who originally said it brings redemption to the world. By standing as part rather than being a whole.

Thus Rav Shimon’s notion of the greater “ani” is what being a Jew and Judaism are all about.

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 4: Connecting – part 4

ועוד יש בזה מעלות של איש השלם ראוי להשריש בנפשו להרגיש שכל העולמות כולם הוא ה״אני״ שלו, והוא בעצמו רק כאבר קטן בתוך הבריאה כולה, ואז גם רגש אהבת עצמו עוזר לו לאהוב את כל עם ישראל, ואת כל הבריאה כולה.

We so far saw the level 0 individual, who sees himself as little more than an animal, more clever than others but driven by the same basic needs, the level 1 individual who is aware of his own spirituality and his connection to G-d, and the level 2.0 individual who includes in his notion of “ani” (“I”) his connection to and interdependency on others.

We started with the person who connects in this way to just one other, then one’s immediate family, one’s friends, and so on — level 2.0 to 2.1, 2.2, …. But this gradual progression doesn’t reach the next level until the person so realizes that they exist as part of the Jewish People, the human species and the universe as a whole.

Perhaps this is what was unique about Moshe Rabbeinu — he could understand the “Mind” of the Creator in a way the rest of us can’t because he fully saw himself as part of the totality of Creation, entirely a piece within His Great Plan. And thus, the one who was anav mikol adam (more modest than all other people) was the consummate eved Hashem (servant of G-d) and the conduit for the transmission of His Will, the Torah, to humanity.

Earlier (Ch 1 “Mission”, sec 2 in this series) we saw this quote:

(ויקרא יט) “ואהבת לרעך כמוך.”  רבי עקיבה אומר זהו כלל גדול בתורה.  בן עזאי אומר (בראשית ה) “זה ספר תולדות אדם” — זה כלל גדול מזה.

“And you shall love your friends as yourself [I am Hashem].” (Vayiqra 19). Rabbi Aqiva said, “This is a great principle in the Torah. Ben Azai said, “‘This is the book of the generations of Adam’ (Genesis 5) — this is a greater principle than that.”

-Yerushalmi Nedarim 9:4 (vilna 30b)

R’ Aqiva and Ben Azzai argue over which verse is the one foundation. Rabbi Aqiva suggests one that applies only to people who qualify as “friends” (perhaps Jews, perhaps only observant Jews, perhaps also non-Jews who observe the 7 laws of Noah). Ben Azzzai instead says the entire Torah is founded on a verse that emphasized the fraternal bonds of all humanity — we are all children of Adam and Eve.

To fully reach Rav Shimon’s notion of the purest soul, one needs to have a universalist attitude, to have an “ani” that includes all people. Particularlism and ahavas Yisrael (Love of Jews) becomes part of that — the Jewish people are part of my extension to the whole. Just as a big part of my bestowing good on humanity as a whole is through the role given to me as a Jew.

This concept of ever broader circles of connection that the person includes as “I” is not the same as Universal Love. There is still a ranking. “A poor person who is his relative has priority to other poor. And the poor of his city are ahead of the poor of another city.” When lending money, halakhah obligates lending to family first, then neighbors, then Jews, then non-Jews (Qitzur Shulchan Arukh [QSA] 179:1), and when selling land, while priority is given to adjacent neighbors who would gain by having a single large plot, second in priority is again relatives, then friends, then neighbors, than citizens of one’s city, etc… (QSA 62:18)

This interplay between universalism and particularism appears repeatedly in tefillah. The first berakhah before Shema is all about how Hashem is perpetually creating, He is the source of both light and dark, good and evil — a description of His relationship to all of creation. Then, we get more personal and in the second berakhah bless G-d “Who loves His nation Israel.” We open the core of our prayers by starting with the universal and narrowing focus.

Aleinu, at the conclusion of tefillah, we do the reverse: we start focused on the Jewish People, “It is upon us to praise the Master…” Then, in the second paragraph, we pray for when that work reaches all of humanity, “to repair the world as a Kingdom of Shakai… As it says in Your Torah, ‘Hashem will rule forever’.”

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 4: Connecting – part 3

…ולמעלה מזה מי שמכניס לה״אני״ שלו בני ביתו ומשפחתו, והאיש ההולך על פי דרכי התורה, ה״אני״ שלו כולל את כל עם ישראל, שבאמת כל איש ישראל הוא רק כאבר מגוף האומה הישראלית.

We saw last time the first two gradations of soul:
Level 0: The person who thinks their “ani” is only their body.
Level 1: The person who thinks of themselves as body plus soul.

Going beyond this, we get to level 2, at which the gradations become a spectrum rather than discrete (and so I switched to floating-point numbering):

Level 2.0: The person who connects to another, and thus their “ani” extends beyond their individuality.

Typically this first person is through marriage: “עַל כֵּן יַעֲזָב אִישׁ אֶת אָבִיו וְאֶת אִמּוֹ, וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד –Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Bereishis 2:25) The unity with a spouse.

Then one can find unity with his children (G-d willing they are granted any) or other family. It is easy to stand up to defend one’s children, to see the nuclear family as “me and mine”. The soul reaches progressively higher levels of refinement as he broadens that definition. Once a person reaches the level of connecting to another, it becomes a gradual process of including more and more.

This is the synthesis I promised a couple of installments back.

The first two sections that I divided the introduction into focused on how: G-d created us to have someone to whom to be Good, imitating Hashem means therefore being good to others and being in His Image means refining oneself to be more able to do so in the future, and that “qedushah” (holiness) is the extent to which one is committed to that goal. (With the side effect of requiring drawing away from other goals.)

From proving that this separation must be a side-effect of a person’s qedushah rather than qedushah itself (since it cannot characterize Hashem’s holiness), Rav Shimon moves on to a discusion of the need to have self-interest as part of one’s service of G-d.

With this notion of extending one’s “ani“, we see how a focus on providing Hashem’s Good to others and self-interest do not contradict “as two warring co-wives.” Rather, it is one’s vested interest in the extended self — the ever-widening circle of those you touch and who touch you — that becomes the very motivation for giving.

Notice where the soul is placed in this progression. Connecting to one’s spirituality is lower in ranking than aiding others. First is the person who connected to G-d. Then comes the person who uses that connection to bestow His Good upon them.

The Meshekh Chokhmah (pg 403, top of 2nd col) discusses the priority of Torah learning in relation to the other mitzvos in these terms. The Y-mi Berakhos says that one interrupts learning to build a sukkah or set up a lulav. Rashi (Mes’ Sukkah) says that someone who is going somewhere to teach is exempt from sukkah and lulav. Don’t these two conflict? Learning itself is outranked by the preparation for these two mitzvos, but merely preparation to teach Torah outranks the mitzvos themselves?!

The Meshekh Chokhmah gives what he calls a “taam mufla” (an amazing reason). Learning just to learn is something he could have done before being born. The value in learning is when someone learns al menas la’asos (in order to do).

This is the essence of Moshe’s answer to the angels at Har Sinai. The angels complained to G-d how He could give the Torah to mere flesh and blood rather than them. Moshe answers, “It says ‘kabeid es avikha‘ (honor your father [and mother]), do you have parents?”

The ability to do a mitzvah, even the preparation for a mitzvah, is the whole justification of being born and placing that intellect that can hold Torah into a body that can act.

However, that’s not true for teaching. Therefore, the preparation to teach Torah, traveling to the class outranks mitzvos even as the mere preparation steps for those very same mitzvos outrank learning.

The contrast to Nefesh haChaim (cheleq IV) and its formulation of the ideal of Torah lishmah (studying Torah for its own sake) appears to me to be drastic. There, R’ Chaim Volozhiner portrays the ideal as absorbing and internalizing Hashem’s Wisdom, and thus Torah study is the ultimate mitzvah. The Meshekh Chokhmah’s idea is more along the same lines as Shaarei Yosher — giving Hashem’s Good (including Torah) to others is the highest priority, and the purpose for which we learn and do mitzvos between man and the Omnipresent.

Shaarei Yosher, sec. 4: Connecting – part 2

האיש הגס והשפל כל ״אני׳׳ שלו מצומצם רק בחמרו וגופו, למעלה ממנו מי שמרגיש ש״אני״ שלו הוא מורכב מגוף ונפש, …

How do people differ qualitatively? By the breadth of their notion of “ani” (“I”). Rav Shimon might mean “ani” as a reference to the same etymology from which Freud took his term “Ego”, I don’t know.

In his ranking of gradations of soul, we just saw Rav Shimon’s first two levels:

Level 0: The person who thinks r”l that they are only a body. They are totally unaware of their spiritual side, and in fact, just think they are clever animals.  The driving force in their lives are creature comforts: food sex, comfortable clothing, rest, etc…

Level 1: The person who is aware of their own soul. This person addresses both bodily needs and spiritual ones. But, their attention to spirituality is all for the self.

There is a machloqes, a dispute among the rabbis, as to how to view man. One side, found often among books of Mussar, views a person as a soul who inhabits a body (Ramchal, Derekh Hashem), or perhaps controls it as a rider upon a donkey (Rav Scherr’s introduction to the reprinting of Cheshbon haNefesh). This then becomes a key symbol in the Gra’s interpretation system — when one finds a chamor / donkey in a narrative, it is generally a symbol for chomer / physicality. Avraham at the Aqeidah or the mashiach come in riding on a donkey as a way to hint to us their mastery over their own physicality.

The other stream of thought includes the body in the definition of person. Man as a fusion of body and soul. Such as when the gemara (Sanhedrin 91b) compares a sinner to a blind man and a lame man who conspire together to steal fruit. Each claims innocence, so the judge puts one atop the other and judges them as a unit. So too, the gemara explains, in order to be judged for our sins, Hashem will bodily resurrect the sinner to reconstruct the person as they were then.

Rav Shimon’s topic is slightly different. The “ani” of a person is a matter of self-definition, not whether that self-definition refers to one entity (just the person), or many (the person’s “me and mine”). As we will see later, the above dispute might be more in terms of what the introduction idenfies with “atzmi“, not “ani“.


Arthritic Conditions (Foot & Ankle)

About Arthritis

Arthritis is a disease characterized by the inflammation of the cartilage and lining of the body’s joints. Inflammation causes redness, warmth, pain and swelling. Arthritis is a major cause of foot pain because each foot has 33 joints that can become affected by the disease.

The most common type of arthritis is called osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis causes excessive strain and the wearing away of cartilage in the joints of the foot making movement becomes very difficult and painful. The pain and swelling worsens while standing or walking, and stiffness usually occurs after periods of rest.

Gout is another form of arthritis that also leads to foot complications. Excess uric acid crystals collect in and around the joints of the big toe. The big toe joint is commonly the focal point due to the stress and pressure it experiences during walking and other weight bearing activities. This often leads to severe pain in the big toe.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is the most crippling form of the disease that can develop and affect people of all ages. There is no known cause for this condition. It can cause severe deformities of the joints with associated fatigue of the entire body.

Forefoot problems such as hammer toes, claw toes, mallet toes, and bunions often develop as a result of arthritis, particularly rheumatoid arthritis. Problems can also develop in the heel and ankle area due to the erosion of the involved joints.

Treatment and Prevention

Conservative treatment (non-surgical treatment) of the arthritic foot includes proper footwear, orthotics, and/or forefoot supports. Arthritic footwear should provide the following benefits:

  • High, wide toe box (high and wide space in the toe area).
  • Rocker Soles designed to facilitate ambulating (walking) and to reduce stress and pain at the ball-of-the-foot.
  • Arthritic footwear should also accommodate swelling of the foot. Orthotics designed to provide comfort, support and extra cushioning are also recommended.
  • Proper footwear and orthotics will reduce pressure to provide a comfortable and healthy environment for the foot.
  • Forefoot supports such as gel toe caps, gel toe shields, gel toe straighteners and others can often provide relief.

This information is intended to explain the treatment and for general purposes only. Specific questions or concerns should always be directed to your doctor, who can explain possible risks or side effects. Your physician can explain if this treatment is appropriate for you.

Source – WebMD and Wikipedia

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