Avi Garelick

The Violence Is the Point

By the time Meir Kahane was shot to death in a hotel in Manhattan in 1990, he had lost his U.S. citizenship, been arrested more than 60 times, and spent time in Israeli prison for what he called “my ideas” (planning violent attacks on Palestinians in Hebron). None of his apocalyptic predictions of recurring Jewish victimhood have come to pass. Yet last Ramadan, as Jewish extremists paraded through the streets of Jerusalem attacking Palestinians and chanting “Death to Arabs,” a number could be seen wearing stickers emblazoned with the slogan “Kahane Tzadak”–Kahane was right.

Spitting It Up

milk brings forth butter - one who spits - no genderless pronouns - somewhere at the root – the regifting of milk – letters covered in honey – one who forsakes – Torah like oxen – value to each

Bros Before Hos in the Mishna

with a woman - which - your - any available - (e.g. rape, adultery) - don’t know Torah - it’s antisocial - your own eyes and the eyes of others - looks bossy - gay? - will fight - more than you - spite - misogynist injunction - A. Do not - B. Do not - towards excess - unwieldy desires

Investigation of a Blessing

Everyone has a family! - Anyone? Any age? - to make up for being girls - a family with other orphans! - after you turn 100! - you can’t say a blessing if you are dead

The Unresolved

they are essential differences - you know this word - I choose this example because its subject matter is arcane - both agree, he can vow and be vowed - gentile lacks the power of a subject - you cannot make a vow based on someone whose life is worthless

Oneida

the domain of sex was excluded from utopian consideration - seeds of a new society - everyone can have virtue - just by trying to live that way with a group - but no one got pregnant - infantile fascination with the power of land - who-shall-be-the-greatest mania - strong pathos of the bourgeois family - gross self-delusion and uninhibited decay - the posthumous condition of a Christian life - this was NOT a kind of serial monogamy - it is a termination - long after a wave of weddings

The Uses and Abuses of History vol. 4844: Abraham Firkovich

we literally missed the crucifixion - the Russian approach was haphazard - glimmering fragments of these unrecorded legends - a scroll of sacred writings (the Book of Esther) discovered by Firkovich - the Madjalis Document had sketchily disappeared and then reappeared in the Firkovich collection

On Incest: Its Whys and Why Nots

what is wrong with incest - people who think Freud’s ideas are icky - did he commit a crime - the identity between natural (selection) and natural (aversion) - Maimonides describes a divine law - your mother, sister, or a beast - the primary function of revelation is political - she is your mother!

Love Potions

amplified amorous power - already existing architecture of passion - the coast is clear for the two to escape - a ridiculous, contrived obstacle - the domain of an evil god - death, and thus spiritual union - immense longing for beautiful women - « Says R. Hanina, one who is seduced » - what is a Godly way to get drunk

Beastly Flesh

« tying up and slaughter » - the most modern age - « just so I could smell their brisket » - « disengagement yields great fruit » - slaking a lust for beastly flesh - « He spilt blood! » - an interstitial mythic space - the secularization of meat - triumphant overcoming - « grow by the flesh of others »

No Rain Comes From Heaven

« the whole world » - rainfall is about lifestyle - spiritual inflation - why is God doing this to us? - theological victim-blaming - « Hydrological drought always has a social history » - the writers of ritual - to refuse food when the Lord does not feed you

The Afterworld Debt Crisis

the Alter Rebbe - the imaginary structures of death and the afterlife - the logic of empire was retained in Byzantium and Islam - intercessors as a path to pardon - the barbarian lands of postimperial Europe - nightmare visions of Irish lawyers

For the Day That Is All Sabbath

kinetics - when the dust settles on history - for what reason must you allow your cattle to rest - General Strike - the inwardness and outwardness of cessation

God for the Perplexed

two dangerous works of Jewish heresy - the Dominican intervention - the study of systematic theology - God in terms of reason - His strong hand, His outstretched arm, His face - a philosopher’s predilections - the tenets of negative theology - disdain for spiritual intuition - an ideal category, a conceptual defect, or a failure of practice? - why ask an expert when you could ask a book? - « if I am greater than he »

Afterthought on “Incest, Cannibalism, and the Gods”

Snakes on a Paradise

sin and exile - one primary being and one helper - fabrics and words - why is the imaginative faculty called « snake »? - outside the garden before we know it - one interdicts, the other contradicts - hiding in the bushes from our actions - paradise as a bus stop

The Idea of Karaism: A Provocation to Rabbinical Judaism

a demographic and ideological threat - to open up the Bible, as though it were a car manual - enterprise of ventriloquism - a bewildering litany of strangenesses - emphasis on rational access - « those before us were of truth » - like refusing to eat bread before learning to bake - not a cause for embarrassment