I make no claim to have read or even started anything like all of these or even half (maybe a quarter?)

OK: Here's a potential looooooong class on American Books to trace what they foretold for the present day

The American Revolution/Radicalism in the American Revolution/Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Writings of Ben Franklin/Writings of Thomas Jefferson

Rights of Man/Constitution

Federalist Papers

The Story of Ameriacn Freedom

McCullogh/Ellis

Democracy in America/Emerson Essays

American Genocide/The Spirited Resistance

Walden/Little Women

Poe

Hawthorne

Moby Dick

Leaves of Grass

American Slavery 1619-1877/The Half Has Never Been Told

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass/Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Dickinson

Twain

James

William James/John Dewey

Up From Slavery/The Souls of Black Folk

Civil War Historiography: Shelby Foote

Battle Cry of Freedom/Republic of Suffering

Memoirs of Ulysses Grant

Reconstruction/Slavery by Another Name

Race and Reunion/Confederate Reckoning

The Education of Henry Adams

Varieties of Religious Expreience/Theory of the Leisure Class

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

House of Mirth/The Awakening

Oz

The Jungle

Frost

Eliot

Stevens

To End All Wars/Ten Days that Shook the World

Yid Lit

Winesburg, Ohio/The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Dreiser

USA Trilogy/Studs Lonigan

Cather

Gatsby

Hemingway

Faulkner

O'Neill

Tin Pan Alley

Porter

The Gershwins

Harlem Renaissance

Hank Williams/Robert Johnson

Coming of Age in Samoa/The Good Earth

The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

Their Eyes Were Watching God/Gone With the Wind

Lubitsch

Studio Hollywood

The Maltese Falcon/The Long Goodbye

Our Town

Steinbeck

Woodie Guthrie

Nathaniel West

Mercury Theater

The Mankiewicz Brothers

Hiroshima/The Making of the Atomic Bomb

All the King's Men/Let us Now Praise Famous Men

The Liberal Imagination/The Vital Center

An American Dilemma/Notes of a Native Son 

Invisible Man/Native Son

Autobiography of Malcolm X/To Kill a Mockingbird

Billy Wilder

Nabokov

Tennessee/Miller

The Beats

Bradbury/Vonnegut

Serling

Dick

Sid Caesar I

Sid Caesar II

Foundation/Dune

The Public Burning

The Double Helix/The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male/My Fight for Birth Control

Charlotte's Web/Catcher in the Rye

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

New York Intellectuals (the liberals)

New York Intellectuals (the conservatives)

Hofstadter

Niebuhr

One Hit Wonders

Rand

A Theory of Justice/Anarchy, State and Utopia

Didion

The Feminine Mystique/The Bell Jar

The Affluent Society/Capitalism and Freedom

Silent Spring/Nature's Metropolis 

The Sixth Extinction/Guns, Germs and Steel

O'Connor

A Confederacy of Dunces 

Bellow

Baldwin

Capote

Chuck Berry/James Brown

The Guns of August/The Vital Center

Contours of American History

The Life and Death of American Cities

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy/US Foreign Policy (Lippmann)

Dylan

Robert Hayden

Paul Simon/Lou Reed

Dispatches/The Things They Carried

Chomsky

Strauss and Bloom

Junky/Naked Lunch

In Cold Blood/The Executioner's Song

The Seven Story Mountain/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Children of Crisis/The Road Less Travelled

Sondheim

Cosby (you gotta include him)

Tom Wolfe

Gore Vidal

The Goldmans

Altman

Joan Rivers

Edward Said

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee/Bless Me Ultima 

The Killer Angels/The Judas Field

The Woman Warrior/

Orientalism/Hidden from History

A People's History of the United States/Gender and the Politics of History

And the Band Played On/Angels in America

The Emperor of All Maladies/Plagues and Peoples

Springsteen/Randy Newman

Pryor

Cormac McCarthy

Coppola/Scorsese

Stephen King

Roth

Caro

Carlin

Le Guin

Shel Silvestein

Structure of Scientific Revolutions/The Mismeasure of Man

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Pynchon

DeLillo

Morrison 

Robinson

Spike Lee

Angels

DFW

Seinfeld

The Simpsons

Tarantino/PT Anderson

Richard Linklater

Coen Brothers

Chris Rock/Dave Chappelle

American Holocaust/The American Age

Seeing Like a State/Why Americans Hate Welfare

Imperial Life in the Emerald City/Assassin's Gate

Demoracy's Discontent/Bowling Alone

The Age of Blogging

Naomi Klein/Jeffrey Sachs

1491/1493

Lawrence Lessig and Internet Freedom

Mary Oliver

The Sopranos

David Simon

The Graphic Novel 

Robin Williams

Franzen/Saunders

Dreams of My Father/The Color of Water

Hillbilly Elegy/The Liar's Club

Intersectional Feminism: Audre Lorde/bellhooks

The Omnivore's Dilemma/Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Kindred/The Fifth Season

The Looming Tower/Falling Man

Reservation Blues/Ceremony

Barbara Ehrenreich/Arlie Hochschild

Michael Lewis

Unequal Democracy

Mad Men

The Warmth of Other Suns

Far From the Tree/Random Family

The New Jim Crow/Evicted

CK

GRRM

Veep

Between the World and Me

Demon Copperhead

Mulaney

The Story of American Freedom/These Truths

Colson Whitehead

I dunno...

 I find myself a blank for what to write lately and haven't written much. My health's been terrible, first mental, then physical shortly after I felt better. I wish I'd done so much more in the leadup to this election, volunteer, knock on doors, make phonecalls, everything I've wished everybody else to do I've done a horrendous job mysef.

But even were I better, it escapes me how one can choose what to write when the world wafts in so many directions that there is no keeping abreast of all its developments. What happens tomorrow is so historic that the mind draws a blank for teasing out all its possibilities. All I can say is that had I the mental effort to think about it lately, I'd be scared. But I don't, so it all just seems up to some higher being, and we're just waiting for a decree out of our control.

Democracy should never be this dramatic.

Order of Appointment of Annaus as high priest by Empress Livia - beginning revamped

  By order of Empress and Domina Livia in the name of Autokrator Dominum Nostrum Imperator Caesar Augustus in the year 759, I hereby invest Annaus Iacobus-ben-Flavius as Lord High Priest of the Judeans, under the auspices of Governor Coponius. 

The objectives of Annaus are as follows: 

1. Build relations with assimilated Sadducees as countervailing force to Pharisee fanatics, with tax credits and housing inducements to greater observance of Jewish faith in Roman supervised ritual practice, involving more involved synagogue participation, more frequent temple tributes and sacrifices, and the cultivation of a rabbinate more amenable to secular influence that will moderate the more fanatical rulings of Pharisee rabbis like Shammai, against whom Rabbi Hillel's opposition is insufficient to be meaningful.

2. As Hillel and Shammai have proven themselves incapable of being assassinated--Shammai having emerged unburnt from a stake, Hillel having walked off a crucifix--further attempts to assassinate them may encourage the perception of weakness in Rome's standing, therefore rather than assassination, they must be watched without cease and their ordinances countermanded vigilantly. 

3. A rumor has gripped the land that Herod died because Hillel stabbed him while Shammai held him down. Irregardless of this rumor's veracity, intelligence must propagate an alternate rumor into city speculation which elucidates the probable truth: that Herod died from overwhelming natural causes which long threatened his life. Rumor goes about Judea that Hillel had frequent bouts of septicemia first acquired when Imperator Augustus demanded a blood oath, but surely Rome cannot be held responsible for the misfortunes of its colonized, and therefore mention of this rumor must be punishable by crucifixion. 

4. While Governor Coponius is 

Everybody Should Have Known

For many of us, the despair of October 7th was compounded by what we knew would follow. There was no quick resolution of October 7th. This was never going to be another one of those endless skirmishes we call 'wars.' From the moment October 7th happened, this would be the real thing, the total war, the point of no return, the revolving node which all sane people feared would start spinning, because once it starts, it could spin for decades.

October 7th was perpetrated by a cult of death determined to visit their death on their own people. Were the initial attack not met with a crushing response, Iran would go about planning a second October 7th, then a third, until such time as Israel visits unprecedented calamity on its neighbors to deter them. It is so much easier to destroy than create, and Iran is secure in the knowledge that however many soldiers were killed from Hamas and Hezbollah, their ranks would replenish from the hatreds engendered by those who lost loved ones.

People who think of Israel's actions as Israeli slaughter visited on Palestine have failed to answer the most basic question: What is Israel supposed to do? You cannot negotiate with Hamas. You cannot negotiate with Hezbollah. You cannot negotiate with Iran. You just can't. Every promise from them is a lie, not only to Israel but to their own people. They are determined to end Israel and end the Jews who live there: and Israel is shunned for successfully stopping them.

All of which plays into the hands of an Israeli government that has no heavy heart about executing Israel's responsibilities. What should be the gravest business in the world is practically a lighthearted divertissement for them. The moment this happened, I knew Netanyahu would survive even as everyone I knew predicted his downfall. Netanyahu has now survived the demands for his resignation. Believe it or not, he's actually leading in the polls, and the one right wing holdout party from his cabinet, the New Hope party under Gidon Sa'ar, has joined, giving Netanyahu an almost completely secure government until the 2026 election, which he now can win. The Netanyahu era stretches farther and farther to the future nd the line between democracy and authoritarianism blurs ever further. Far right partners in Bibi's coalition threaten to leave if Netanyahu does not pursue complete decimation, but the truth is, Netanyahu would have pursued complete decimation anyway, knowing fully well that in the long run, total victory against radical Islamic movements is impossible.

Now, it should be said, if you're going to wage a war, you can't do it much better than Israel has done thus far against Hezbollah, hitting hard at the beginning so that you have the option to get out quickly. But if this war is short, I will eat my shoe. Netanyahu encouraged Lebanon to rise up against Hezbollah to avoid a long, Gaza-like war. The fact that he needs to appeal to the Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah is a sign that no matter how many Hezbollah members are killed, they can't break Hezbollah's hold on Lebanon. Netanyahu is encouraging Lebanon to plunge itself back into civil war, and if there's civil war, the end result will be that Israel occupies southern Lebanon yet again.

In Gaza, Netanyahu deliberately placed unreachable goals for victory - the complete dismantlement of Hamas replaced by a government supervised by Israel, knowing fully well that this total war makes the death of hostages that much more likely. Even now, when it appears Hamas is defeated militarily, its ranks are replenishing with a fresh round of radicalized mourners. Radical Islam is a hydra with a hundred heads, always replenishing itself with fresh reasons to radicalize new generations of young men, and now it will replenish itself in an era when Gaza's population has doubled in a single generation. Only a naif could think this the defeat of Hamas or anything Hamas stands for.

And when, for the moment, the Hamas forces were depleted and war slowed down, Netanyahu wasted no time carrying the war onto Hezbollah. Netanyahu knows that if the pace of war slows down even for a minute before he can eke out an appearance of total victory, his administration is toast and he is in danger of prison yet again.

The nature of Israel's wars are always the same: a strategy that military, diplomatic and journalistic circles euphemistically call 'lawnmowing.' Depleting the weapons, expenses, and manpower of their opponents so that there's an extended period before they again can mount a serious attack on Israel.

Realistically, this is the only strategy available to Israel for a long, long time. Also realistically, if this is the only strategy, lawnmowing will eventually work no longer and Israel will eventually lose their longer war. If China ever decides to get involved with the Axis of Resistance, they will have a supply of all three that can never be mowed. This is the ultimate lawnmowing operation. Israel is clearly moving in for what it hopes is the kill on Hezbollah and Hamas, but you can't kill an idea, particularly if your only plan is to be the continual overseer of territories you mean to keep in perpetual submission.

Furthermore, even now, Israel has designs on influencing American policy. Joe Biden has been tested for his loyalty to Israel as no American president ever has. His reward for it is for Netanyahu to cast himself in the role of standing up to Biden, whom he paints as simultaneously weak and a bully. He clearly wants America to bomb Iran's nuclear facility, and seems hellbent on provoking the Middle East into a wider war until America has no choice but interfere on Israel's side. Furthermore, I'm not good at predictions, I predicted that Israel doesn't want to provoke war in Lebanon, and I could not have been more wrong about that, but it would seem that Iran will get involved just in time for the American election, and if Iran gets involved, the world's price of oil can balloon, and if the price of oil goes up, the incumbent American president gets blamed. There is no question that even after all of Biden's help against so much resistance in his party, Netanyahu still wants to help Trump get elected.

That's all I have to say for now. Anything I have to say about the Hamas side of this is too obvious to write, and most of the crowd opposed to this war is so blinded by anti-Israel hatred that their critiques of Israel have no basis in reality. If you're too naive to see nihilistic evil when it stares you in the face, there's nothing I can do to demonstrate the evil of Hamas to you. Israel is shunned for successfully preventing Hamas from committing acts that would make Israel's actions in Gaza look like a picnic, but that does not absolve Israel of sins that increasingly look like the sins of its enemies. To resemble Hamas even slightly should be cause for shame, and if you don't see that Israel has cause to feel shame in this, there's equally nothing I can do to convince you.

This is why I stopped regularly writing about this war. Whether I get predictions right or wrong is immaterial, but what's futile about this conflict is that nearly everyone refuses to stare obvious realities in the face. This is the nature of the Middle East in generation after generation, millennium after millennium. Israel is the small strip of land on which billions pin their hopes of a transcendent reality, but the human story is the story of hoping for a trranscendence that never happens, and if there is a god, God is there to watch our hopes dispelled so that we can learn a humility before His acts that few people learn before it's too late to prevent yet another historic disaster.

Order of Appointment of Annaus as high priest by Empress Livia - beginning

 By order of Empress and Domina Livia in the name of Autokrator Dominum Nostrum Imperator Caesar Augustus in the year 759, I hereby invest Annaus-ben-Flavius Iacobus as Lord High Priest of the Judeans, under the auspices of Governor Coponius. 

The objectives of Annaus are as follows: 

1. Build relations with assimilated Sadducees as countervailing force to Pharisee fanatics, with tax credits and housing inducements to greater observance of Jewish faith in a Roman supervised theology, involving more involved synagogue participation, more frequent temple tributes and sacrifices, and the cultivation of a rabbinate more amenable to Sadducee influence that will moderate the more fanatical rabbinic rulings of the Pharisees.

2. As Hillel and Shammai have proven themselves incapable of being assassinated--Shammai having emerged unburnt from a stake, Hillel having walked off a crucifix--further attempts to assassinate them may encourage the perception of weakness in Rome's standing, therefore rather than assassination, they must be watched without cease and their ordinances countermanded vigilantly. 

3. A rumor has gripped the land that Herod died because Hillel stabbed him while Shammai held him down. Irregardless of this rumor's veracity, intelligence must propagate an alternate rumor into city speculation which elucidates the probable truth: that Herod died from overwhelming natural causes that long threatened his life. 

4. While Governor Coponius is 

Remarks of Shammai to the Essenes - Outline - Slightly Rewritten

(It would apear that rather than a speech, Shammai's speech is merely a collection of small notes. - RW)

 Be sure to thank the Essenes profusely for their hospitality and discretion. Make sure they know you know the risk they're taking by hiding us. 

1. For years, I mistrusted you, but even during the period I viewed you as opponents, Hillel pointed out to me the enormous similarities in our beliefs.

1A. In Hashem's clarity of vision.

1B. In the belief in strict observance of Torah, Shabbos and Purity.  

1C. That virtue is rewarded and sin punished.

2. Talk about Herod's evil, and the failure to contain Herod due to the absence of backbone straight opposition - make the implication clear that it's Hillel's weakness that made Herod possible. 

2A. Remind them of their complicity by staying in the desert and not opposing Herod actively.

3. We can, however, agree that rulers like Herod rise up because our people's lack of stringent observance in our laws allows them.

4. The State of Israel belongs to us, Essene as well as Pharisee, and those who exist upon our land must submit to our rule or face consequence. 

5. The light of the world is Hashem. We men are the darkness who constantly must aspire to live in a luminous path Hashem lays for us. Stray from the path and we remain in darkness. 

6. We have tried so much passive resistance, all for nothing. Tyrants like Herod can only be resisted through violent opposition.  

6A. Acknowledge that this belief is repugnant to the Essenes but like all of Israel they must be made to face the truth. 

7. Our reputation in the world as murderers is not because our people are murderous but because our people are weak. Every civilization arose because they killed those who opposed them. If we simply did what other peoples have long always done, our existence would be taken for granted. 

8. We know the Divine Will. We need only follow it closely enough and we shall prosper. 

9. G-d is testing us, waiting for us to show strength in the face of opposition and inertia to demonstrate ourselves worthy of His greatness. 

10. There is nothing obscure about what Hashem wants from us. There is no hidden truth. Everything about what Hashem wants has been made clear in the Torah. 

Thank them again. 

Burn paper after speech. 

Remarks of Shammai to the Essenes - Outline

 Be sure to thank the Essenes profusely for their hospitality and discretion. Make sure they know you know the risk they're taking by hiding us. 

1. Even during our enmity, Hillel pointed out to me similarities between my beliefs and the Essenes. 

2. Herod's evil, and the failure to contain it due to the absence of backbone straight opposition - make the implication clear that it's Hillel who made Herod possible. 

3. Rulers like Herod rise up because our lack of stringent observance allows them.

4. The State of Israel belongs to us, and those who exist upon our land must be made submit to our rule or face the consequences. 

5. The light of the world is Hashem, we are the darkness who must constantly aspire to live in the luminous path Hashem lays for us. Stray from that path and we remain in darkness. 

6. We have tried as much passive resistance as we can afford. We can only resist tyrants like Herod through violent opposition.  

7. Our reputation in the world as murderers is not because our people are murderous but because our people are weak. Every civilization arose because they killed those who opposed them. If we simply did what other peoples have long always done, our existence would simply be taken for granted. 

8. We know the Divine Will. We need only follow it closely enough and we shall prosper. 

9. G-d is testing us, waiting for us to show strength in the face of opposition and inertia to demonstrate ourselves worthy of His greatness. 

10. There is nothing obscure about what Hashem wants from us. There is no hidden truth. Everything about what Hashem wants has been made clear in the Torah. 

Thank them again. 

Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee

 To my esteemed colleagues and our honored donors,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt, though the warmth of the Babylonians I've known, through your commitment to Israel, to your commitment to keeping the Jewish people alive, Babylon is nearly as much home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, forever testing what he could get away with, but he was human and could strive half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod.

However evil Herod seems, he's much moreso than that.  He is the darkness forever present in Jewish History, the Amalek that it's arguable has always been within us. We claim Herod is not one of us, and yet if he isn't, has not the rise of someone like Herod always been inevitable?

From the moment we arrived in Israel, there were people already present. People we have conquered again and again for a thousand years and killed off by the tens of thousands over and over. Our people are continually dispersed, yet these people always remain, fight against us upon our return, continually lose, only for us to overmatch them and kill them again the way we ourselves were killed by others. This is as much part of God's plan as our return. We will be thrown out of Israel until such time as we learn to stop ourselves from aping the slaughter perpetuated upon us.   

Because through it all the Kingdom of Judea is a place of unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all. But there is something in the holiness of this land that provokes the dark within us all, and makes us unworthy to stay in this holiest of places. We leave and we suffer until such time as our sins are cleansed to make our return, only yet again for our behavior to force us to leave. 

Herod is the divine punishment for our people's sins. He is the murder we perpetrate visited back upon us. We cannot resurrect those Herod killed off any more than we can raise the souls our people have killed. 

I hear from the auditorium's consternation that this sentiment is as controversial as I presumed it would be. Perhaps you feel as you have to the boot of gentile hands upon your necks in an entirely different way from how they're placed on ours. Perhaps we in Israel give Jews a worldwide reputation as homicidal and slaughterous. The eyes of the world are forever looking to Israel, judging us as harshly as the Holy One does, condemning us in their minds as more animal than man. 

What sort of God would allow His people such an impossible situation? What sort of God would willingly place His nation in such peril? Why would He do it? What does He gain from our uncertainty?

We cannot know the divine will, but we can interpret, we can guess, we can plan accordingly, and perhaps this guessing game is the purpose that leads us to the crown of wisdom. The ability to interpret is the Jewish people's essence. Hashem left it up to us to locate connections between the world of God and the world of man. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and make the deals. We are the variables in God's experiments, we are the beta testers through which God observes the results of his new research. God is perfect, but perhaps His perfection is perfect because He is always evolving, rather than perfect because He is. Perhaps He is God not because He knows all but because He learns all. And because He learns, we Jews are those who learn half His truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells within various places of not knowing.  

So therefore, without the Jewish people, there can be no 'this world,' because how could God create a world without testing its results? Before this world, there was only the world to come, but we bring parts and essences of the next world down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but however much He knows, only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine Hashem's intentions, it is that we find the good within the bad just as we are easily tempted by seeing the bad within the good. 

(The text of Hillel's prepared remarks cuts off here. - RW)

Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - Half

  To my esteemed colleagues and our honored donors,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt, though the warmth of the Babylonians I've known, through your commitment to Israel, to your commitment to keeping the Jewish people alive, as though Babylon is nearly as much home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, forever testing what he could get away with, but he was human and could strive half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod.

However evil Herod seems, he's much moreso than that.  He is the darkness forever present in Jewish History, the Amalek that it's arguable has always been within us. We claim Herod is not one of us, and yet if he isn't, has not the rise of someone like Herod always been inevitable?

From the moment we arrived in Israel, there were people already present. People we have conquered again and again for a thousand years and killed off by the tens of thousands over and over. Our people are continually dispersed, yet these people always remain, fight against us upon our return, continually lose, only for us to overmatch them and kill them again the way we ourselves were killed by others. This is as much part of God's plan as our return. We will be thrown out of Israel until such time as we learn to stop ourselves from apeing the slaughter perpetuated upon us.   

Because through it all the Kingdom of Judea is a place of unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all. But there is something in the holiness of this land that provokes the dark within us all, and makes us unworthy to stay in this holiest of places. We leave and we suffer until such time as our sins are sufficiently cleansed to make our return, only for our behavior to force us to leave again. 

Herod is the divine punishment for our people's sins. He is the murder we've perpetrated visited back upon us. We cannot resurrect those Herod killed off any more than we can bring raise the souls of those our people have killed. 

I had half expected the hall to boo me out of the synagogue by now, but perhaps you feel as we don't have to the boot of gentile hands upon your necks as we in Israel give Jews the reputation abroad as murderous and slaughterful. The eyes of the world are forever looking to Israel, judging us as harshly as the Holy One does, condemning us in their minds as more animal than man. 

What sort of God would allow His people such an impossible situation? What sort of God would willingly place His own nation in such peril? Why would He do it? What does He gain from our uncertainty?

We cannot know the divine will, but we can interpret, we can guess, we can plan accordingly, and perhaps this guessing game is our purpose. Perhaps the ability to interpret, to locate connections between world of God to the world of man, is the Jewish people's essence. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and make the deals and. We are the beta testers, we are the variables in God's experiments. We are those who learn half the truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells securely in various places within the abyss of not knowing.  

Without the Jewish people, there is no 'this world.' There is only the world to come, but we bring parts and partials of the world to come down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse all the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine God's will, it is that we find the good within the bad just as we are easily tempted by seeing the bad within the good. 

Prepared Remarks of Rabbi Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - A Bit More

  To my esteemed colleagues and honored guests,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt as though this Babylon of Judean dreams is as home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even the worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, always testing what he could get away with, full of dangerous mischief, but he was human and strove half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod. 

Yet through it all the Kingdom of Judea is suffused with unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He kept his promise in full. The world is full of unaccountable darkness and unaccountable light, and the maintenance of both is Hashem's will: unknowable, unaccountable to all.

But we can interpret, we can guess, and perhaps the guessing game is our purpose. Perhaps the ability to interpret, to connect the find connections between world of God to the world of man, is the Jewish people's essence. We are God's middlemen, his portfolio traders, his lawyers and doctors and engineers, the white collar workers who tend the world's accounts and set up the deals and make the trades. We are the beta testers, we are the variables in God's experiments. We are those who know half the truth, who dwell in God's ambiguity while the rest of mankind dwells securely in various places within the abyss of not knowing.  

Without the Jewish people, there is no 'this world.' There is only the world to come, but we bring parts and partials of the world to come down to earth. We establish the new within the old and the old within the new. We sometimes bring the alpha, we sometimes bring the omega, but only God knows the divine alphabet from Aleph to Taf. 

If all this sounds very hermetic, not to worry. There are moments in your lives when such mystical jumble will seem as clear as a sunny day and others when they seem even more obscure than they do currently. This is the essence of God's kingdom, where nothing makes sense and it all seems like a load of shit. Forgive my language but you know it as truly as I do: an Israel where Herod is king makes no sense and leads us into the desire to curse all the earth. Yet the earth is a blessing, where all good things are possible. So far as we can determine God's will, it is that we see the good within the bad just as we are tempted to see the bad within the good. 

TCP: Prepared Remarks of Rav Hillel to the Babylon Judea Joint Distribution Committee - A bit more beginning

 To my esteemed colleagues and honored guests,

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. I have always felt as though this Babylon of Judean dreams is as home to me as Judea. The Babylonian dream guarantees freedom of worship for however many or few gods. How much more secure is that than Judea, where even the worship of one god is under threat forever?

When I first met Herod, he was ruthless, flawed, Machiavellian, always testing what he could get away with, full of dangerous mischief, but he was human and strove half-mightily to be a better king and do what's right. He is now the prince of darkness. The Romans have their Pluto, Jews have our Herod. 

Yet through it all the Kingdom of Judea is suffused with unaccountable light. God promised us the Land of Israel, and in His own way, He has kept his promise in full. 

TCP: Prepared Remarks of Rav Hillel to the Judean Distribution Committee of Babylon - Beginning

It is so wonderful to be back in my mother's home country. 

TCP: Whenupon He Shouted

To our Rabbanim Hillel and Shammai,  

This letter is for your eyes only. If it is to be discovered, we're all the dead men we may soon be. 

Herod says nothing, he merely sits in full royal robes in a makeshift throne on a raised platform as a tribunal of 150 Pharisees sit below him in the temple to do his every bloody bidding. Nicolaus of Damascus lays out the charges and prosecutes every case - including his sons. There is no counsel for the defense. Everyone is an agent of his now executed children and heirs, everyone is treasonous, everyone is put to death by unanimous consent. Gradually, a trickle of tribunal members are put before the tribunal themselves, where the tribunal votes them as guilty of sedition as the alleged partisans. Herod replaces them on the tribunal with the alleged guilty's sons or brothers, where they have no choice but vote the death of kin. 

There was, however, revolt among the Sadducee class implemented by ones Yehuda ben Tzipori and Matisyahu ben Margalot. They lead a force to storm the temple, cut Rome's eagle down with an axe, threw the eagle down the western wall. For their futile stunt, they were burnt alive right in the Temple courtyard in front of the tribunal and all the Sadducees who followed them, whereupon the Sadducee offenders were hung on crosses at Golgotha Hill. 

It is said they were inspired by rumors of Herod's death, but no Jew is ever so lucky. Herod refuses to die. The maggots invading his boils are plainly visible. It's claimed he cannot talk without slurred speech, while his entire right side is plainly paralyzed. Amid these hundreds of showtrials, Herod's made only one intelligible comment whenupon he shouted 'Palestine has defeated Israel!' 

And that is not the worst that's said. It's said when Herod dies that he's ordered execution of the entire Sanhedrin that same day so that he might stop celebrations of his demise. Rather, the day of his death would be a day of national mourning. 

My dear Rabbanim, wherever you choose to go, if you return to Jerusalem, Judaism itself shall die. 

Ever your bokher,

Gamliel 

 

TCP: Baba Ben Buta - Complete

  Hillel: Are you sure this is the way?

Shammai: This is the only way. 

Hillel: Not what I meant. 

Shammai: This is the way we get to his cave. 

Hillel: I don't understand why we couldn't have taken a bedouin with us who knows the caves.

Shammai: And compromise our identity?

Hillel: What identity? We're in disguise! 

Shammai: We can't take the chance. 

Hillel: Nobody knows we're missing yet. If we don't get back by sunup tomorrow everyone will assume we've fled and they'll kill us.  

Shammai: They might kill us if we stay. 

Hillel: They'll kill us if we go, they'll kill us if we stay, why don't I go and you stay and we'll see who's alive by next week. 

Shammai: You want to go? Go. But it's your beloved people we're trying to save. 

Hillel: Wait, what are you trying to save?

Shammai: The sanctity of Hashem. 

Hillel: So you admit that Hashem means nothing without people to worship Him. 

Shammai: If I had known a brief walk in the desert is the only thing that would make Rabban Hillel grouchy I'd have taken him on a walk eighteen years ago. 

Hillel: I'm grouchy because we're about to get killed and you're taking me on a walk to a cave to visit a Rabbi we don't even know is alive. 

Shammai: He's alive.

Hillel: You'll have to excuse me for doubting you when you just told me for the first time that he survived the Sanhedrin massacre. 

Shammai: He's here. 

Hillel: How do you know?

Shammai: Because he said he would be. 

Hillel: What did he say? When did he say it?

Shammai: He told me in a dream. 

Hillel: Doesn't your school reject dreams as otherworldly temptation?

Shammai: We reject dreams unless we can prove to an authority that they come from God. 

Hillel: And your proof is?..

Shammai: My proof is when we find who we're looking for. 

Hillel: That's a dumb rationalization even for the School of Shammai. 

Shammai:  There is no school of Shammai, there's a School of Baba ben Buta. I'm just the Rabbi who spreads his word. 

Hillel: 'Spreads his word?' What on earth? You sound like a goy! 

Shammai: Once you meet him you'll understand. 

Hillel: What's there to understand?  Herod had a stroke and went meshuggeh. It doesn't get more simple than that.

Shammai: Nothing is simple in the eyes of Rav Baba. 

Hillel: Just what we need right now, something complicated. 

Shammai: That's why we need Rebbe Bava. He'll know. 

Hillel: What will he know?

Shammai: I don't know, but I know he'll know. 

(enter bedouin from behind a rock)

Bedouin: You seek the one who knows?

Hillel: GAH! 

Shammai: We seek nothing. 

Hillel: Genug Shammai. (to bedouin) We seek the one who knows!

Bedouin: He who knows is here. Very close by. Listen closely and you can hear what he sees. 

(they listen to the wind, and they hear two very faint voices, one shouting gibberish, the other shouting in terrible pain) 

Shammai: We do not seek whomever you think we do. 

Hillel: Shtum Shammai. 

Bedouin: You seek of whom I speak. 

Shammai: We do not. Zei gezunt and be gone. 

(the Bedouin disappears)

Hillel: Farkakte's sake, he disappeared. You don't fuck with a dybbuk like that. 

Shammai: LANGUAGE!

Hillel: Whatever, we'll be dead tomorrow. How many geists will you shoo off just because you don't want anybody to know where we're going.  

Shammai: We don't seek who he's taking about because Rebbe Bava is blind. 

Bedouin: (still invisible) Yet he who knows can see. 

Shammai: A blind man doesn't see. 

Hillel: We're here because your dream said to go to the House of Bread just like the prophet said, and that's what you saw in your dream. How many nesses do we have to see before you get it into your keppe that this invisible bokher is why we're here. 

Shammai: (shouts to the air) Zein nito! Be gone! 

Hillel: Fuck him don't listen! Show where you want us to go! 

(A star appears to shoot and slowly falls to earth, it illuminates a dilapidated stable)

Hillel: Well it can't hurt us to see what's there. 

 (Hillel and Shammai knock on the door of a horse stable. Inside they hear overwhelming screaming and cheers.) 

Shammai: Rav Baba? Rebbe Bava?! He doesn't hear us. 

(Shammai opens the stable door. Inside is Rav Baba, looking at a video images of the Nuremberg Rally from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. After three seconds, the images stop.)

Rav Baba: Komm mein kint! Shammai, you've done well. 

Shammai: Not well enough it seems. 

Rav Baba: It is Hashem's will you should fail, just as it was that I fail too. 

Shammai: When did you ever fail?

Rav Baba: To pacify Herod, and even that was a success. 

Shammai: You failed to succeed?

Baba: I succeeded to fail. 

Hillel: Oh... He succeeded to fail......

Baba: It was Hashem's will that I fail, and now I see what Hashem wanted. 

 Hillel: Ah... Now he sees what Hashem wanted....

Shammai: What does Hashem want?

Baba: He wants the Jewish people to leave Israel. 

(silence)

(Hillel bursts into laughter)

Baba: I came to Herod shortly before the Sanhedrin were massacred. The guards nearly killed me for approaching him. I told him it was not too late to repent his misdeeds, but he must do something for the Lord which only he could do. 

(silence)

Hillel: OK, I'll bite. What could only Herod do?

Baba: Only Herod had the funds to build the temple to the glory I thought Hashem wanted.

Shammai: The glory you THOUGHT Hashem wanted?

Baba: I thought glory was what Hashem wanted, but all glory but Hashem's is false glory. 

Hillel: So you're the reason Herod renovated our temple?

Baba: God is the reason Herod rebuilt a temple. His temple. Not God's. I was the mouthpiece through which God inspired Herod to build the temple. 

Hillel: So if I'm to understand correctly: you were the mouthpiece through which God told Herod to build the temple God doesn't want...?

Baba: God wanted Herod's temple, but God wanted Herod's temple so that He may destroy it. 

Shammai: God builds things so that He can destroy them?

Baba: There is a tree of life and a tree of death. God creates so that He can destroy and destroys so that He might create again.

Shammai: Master, surely our God is not so fickle. 

Baba: God's constancy is often fickle to our eyes. 

Shammai: Mein Rebbe, I have missed your wisdom every day for thirty-six years, but even I cannot believe you that God would be so indifferent to our essence. 

Baba: You were not brought here for easy emes. He that sits in the heavens laughs at us in derision. 

Shammai: Master!... Why?...

Baba: There is a world past this one, and we will know more when we arrive there. Perhaps there are many worlds with many different truths. 

Shammai: Rebbe, you just spoke heresy!

Baba: Treat what you don't understand with a little khesed Shammai. 

Shammai: The khesed you claim our god lacks?

Baba: He lacks nothing, neither khesed nor malice. 

Shammai: What has become of you?

Baba: Sha, sha kint.

Shammai: You have succumbed to the Other. 

Baba: I did not succumb to it, but Hashem sometimes does. 

Shammai: Hillel we must leave this evil place. 

Baba: There are evil actions which are not beneath Hashem, and there are actions great enough to be beyond his competence. 

Hillel: I actually want to hear more. 

Shammai: My master has become the evil he bravely fought. 

Hillel: I thought your master was a schmendrik, but your master may understand things we don't. 

Baba: I understand nothing Hashem did not wish for me to understand. 

Hillel: Rav Baba, please understand, Herod is very much alive and still more evil than you remember. He had a stroke after getting sepsis in his right arm. Since then he's had terrible brain damage and paranoia: he ordered one son executed and thrown his other two in jail. He's obsessed with a prophecy about a usurper about to be born in a house of bread, so he may be about to issue an order killing babies and young children around the country. Even if we wanted to stop him, he still has a bodyguard of 2,000.

Baba: The House of Bread is here. 

(pause)

Hillel: Shammai, how far are we from Beyt-Lekhem?

Baba: The border of Beyt-Lekhem is roughly a thousand cubits from where you stand. 

(they suddenly hear the cry of a baby. Enter Joseph) 

Yoseph: Koom arang my friends! Rav Balthasar has told us so much about his kavodiker guests! Kavodiker guests of a kavodiker freint! So much nakhes you must have from everything you do! And barukh hashem, all these presents you sent! Gold! Myrrh! Frankincense! I'd send you a thank you note but business has obviously been slow this year and I had to sell off my stationary. Koom, meet my nayes sohn, Yehoshua, along with his beautiful mother, Miriam. Everybody's named Miriam these days but this Miriam, this Miriam just had a baby! Miriam! Sha the baby already! We thought she would have to give birth in some cave but we met Reb Balthasar while registering for the Census, ochen vey that census, we were told by our elders we could register in Natz'rat where we live, but I'm from Beyt-Lehem and moved to Natz'rat because the wood there is so nice. I'm a carpenter by the way, and I had to go all the way from Natz'rat to Beyt-Lehem because I have to register in my birthplace. Did you know you had to register in your birthplace? Zicher I didn't and neither did my landsmen. I had to register, but I didn't know that Miriam was pregnant when we left and who would have? I'm sure King Herod does enough shtupping for us all but who has time around Pesach for anything in the bedroom am I right? Anyway, the whole spring you're lucky to have time for one quick one and that one gets you pregnant right when you have to make a huge nesiyeh from one land to the other. But anyway, we met Reb Balthasar in town and he's been such a mensch to give us this shed where we've been staying for more than a month. He really is nice for a greycer goy isn't he? 

Hillel: Yes, he is. 

Yoseph: All this naarishkeit about a God who's light and dark and doesn't know light from dark, what kind of schmegegge is that? Anyway, I just let him go on about his meicehs and I don't say anything because I'm a good guest but you and I both know it's a lot of bupkis. Right?

(Shammai clears his throat)

Yoseph: He goes on and on and on about how my son is going to be some king that overthrows Herod, but then he says that once he becomes king he should pay attention to his followers because they're going to be just as bad as Herod, so I say to him 'what does Yehoshua need to become king for?' He can just build houses like his Tateh, it's a nice living, at least it is when you're not running around to alla drerden telling the Romans you got born. Don't get me wrong Miriam is very happy her son's gonna be a king but if you ask me it's a lot of tsuris for not much. King Herod is a king and he seems pretty tsoredik these days.

Hillel: If you'd excuse us just for a moment Reb Yoseph, we will come meet Yehoshua in just one minute but we'd just like to understand something Rav Balthasar told us. 

Yoseph: Oh... alright... I understand. 

Hillel: Thank you Reb Yoseph. 

Yoseph: No, it's alright. A boy gets born and you'd think people would want to meet the boy. 

Hillel: Please understand. 

Yoseph: I understand! There's something really important here. What other reason would there not be for celebrating with a new father who just had his first born?

Hillel: Thank you Reb Yoseph. 

Yoseph: It's just... what is so important?

Shammai: Reb Yoseph ple...

Yoseph: A bokher just has his first child and all these kavodiker guests come from far away to be there for the birth, you'd think they'd want to celebrate the simcheh with him but apparently there's more important stuff to talk about. 

Hillel: Reb Yoseph, please try to understand we do want to share your simcheh and will come to you in just a moment. 

Yoseph: Oh you want to share your simcheh with me! So why don't you? What's stopping you? Apparently something so important is happening that you need to stop celebrating a simcheh for it. 

Hillel: But Reb Yoseph, it IS that important. 

Yoseph: Of course it is! Otherwise why would you interrupt a new family to talk about your vichtiger things that are too important to bother with a big simcheh! 

Hillel: Alright, this can wait... Let's meet your son. 

Yoseph: And my wife!

Hillel: And your wife...

Theory about the Missa Solemnis

 Theory: one I'm not sure I believe. In his late works, Beethoven wrote a series of novels in sound in which he tells us exactly what it's like to be from his era and locale: one in the final four sonatas, one in the final five quartets, and an orchestral one begun with the ninth symphony that doubtless had a few more to go. Scraps of every musical style he'd ever heard is in these works from sublime church counterpoint to garish street music, and late Beethoven functions as a kind of diary for them: perhaps a better way of referring to it is an 'autobiography in sound.'

The one thoroughly complete novel in a single work is the Missa Solemnis. A work so thoroughly atraditional that when the traditional ending insists on itself, there's still an hour of the work to go. It took Beethoven four years to write a work of this scale, even had he ten more years he would have not attempted another.

The Missa Solemnis is a near-literary stream of consciousness about Beethoven's experiences of the sacred. If you try to analyze it in a traditional harmonic way, you won't understand the work. This is, my guess, why Furtwangler abandoned performing the work during his Berlin period. True to his pessimistic nature, Adorno calls it an 'alienated magnum opus.' I suppose I understand why Adorno would think it alienated: think of Bach's B-Minor Mass and how it smiles at the question of transcendence, while Beethoven brings to the transcendent questions an unmistakable question mark. But anything that strives however mightily for the infinite will only bring an impression of the infinite down to earth rather than the real thing, and in that sense Beethoven's grandest work is no different from Bach's. If the Missa Solemnis is an alienated work, then all the most transcendent art is similarly alienated.

In that sense, the composer the Missa prefigures most is Mahler, so it probably follows that IMO, the conductors who get closest to its spirit are conductors who excel in Mahler: Gielen, Bernstein, Kubelik, a few other familiar names too, who perceive that this musical world must be made to sound as though it contains literally everything.

The musical key to organizing the Missa Solemnis is counterpoint, but the formal key cannot be found in music. I believe the key to organizing the Missa Solemnis is literary and philosophical. Doubtless Beethoven was extremely familiar with Goethe's Faust, with which it shares a seeming formlessness in its structure and seeming randomness in its themes. But in both of them, the teeming abundance of invention creates a shape of its own, a shape that cannot be contained by traditional boundaries of form.

Take Beethoven sonatas 106-111 together, and you have a larger metawork in which the ultra-contrapuntal ending of the Hammerklavier is the mere conclusion to a first volume of four, and taken together, the four are far more meditative and probing than even their most profound moments sound when played piecemeal in performance. In the same way, the Gloria is merely a conclusion to the second volume of five in which Beethoven mounts his ultimate answer to the questions of transcendence, or, perhaps, his ultimate question about the answers of transcendence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcGS6zs6Rxs