Interesting Posts and Articles #249

From חב"ד און ליין.  Click on picture to enlarge

1) Rucho shel mashiach speaks about Aviva Shalit's magical dollar from the Rebbe. And an explanation for the cross-out.

2) There is a famous joke that goes like this:

A psychiatrist gets a new job at an insane asylum, and he's making his rounds for the first time.  

"What's your name?" he asks the first patient he meets. 
"I am Napoleon!" the patient replies. 
"How do you know that?" asks the doctor. 
"God told me so." 
"I did not!" yells a patient sitting nearby.

An approbation is only as good as the person who gives it. Assume for a moment that the 'patient sitting nearby' had told the first patient that he was Napoleon. Would that really help?

3) Rabbi David Katz runs a blog called Soul Mazal, and has a service by which he tells you all about your soul, based on a kabbalistic system of name analysis developed by the Vilna Gaon. Here is Rabbi Glazerson's haskamah. Thus:

Rabbi David Katz is a Rabbi that uses Remez (hints) and Gematria to understand peoples names. Rabbi Katz operates a Kosher Blog called Soul Mazal, where he posts Torah related information along with his gematria/name services.

I find Rabbi Katz's work to be pure and 100 % Kosher and in full accordance with Jewish halacha, philosophy, and best interest.

I would recommend Rabbi David Katz as a resourceful and creditable source to delve into ones name with the rules of Remez and Gematria that he employs, in accordance with the way of the Vilna Gaon and other great Rabbis of old who used the same techniques and tools, and that Rabbi Katz has a strong grasp of how these Torah tools are to be used.

I hereby fully support the efforts of Rabbi Katz and the creative work he shows and displays on his blog.

He should be matzliach to spread His Torah and be a Beracha to those that seek his guidance.

That is great, and it might very well be true -- I certainly don't know the Gra's rules of interpreting names -- but Rabbi Glazerson himself asserts that Torah Codes is an authentic and legitimate means of deriving information from the Torah, and is within the realm of kabbalah, following the path of e.g. the Vilna Gaon.

Here is a sample of Rabbi Katz's work, in which he analyzes the name of Bibi Netanyahu:

In light of Bibi Netanyahu's name reading on Tamar Yonah:
                                                           בנימין בן בן ציון צילה נתניהו

• נ - נ - נ -נ : four Nun's in a row at the end of his name. Does this show Binah - as in Nun Shaarei Binah? Or does it show disaster as in the Torah's upside down Nun's that show Hashem's anger towards the Jews?
• Initial Letters: Gematria 96 : אמנה a covenant of Truth in conjunction with his gematria כתב..to write a covenant to who?
• בן ימין a son of [קץ]  meaning the "Son of " [End] of days
• End letters Gematria: 861 : אסף to withdraw or take away (West Bank/Jerusalem)?
• בנימין in full spelling = 744 "to force the end", in conjunction with his end letter value הר / mountain..we'll see how Bibi deals with Temple Mount and Jerusalem.
• "Son of his parents" = משנה = second to the King (Obama) (Pope?). Also can break down to שם נה to yearn for a name. Some would even accuse him of being Moshiach Ben Yosef..thus משיח בן מנשה the final redeemer, משה/Moses as משנה = מנשה...his end/beg. letters of his name even shows משה with a נ as ב''נון ...implying משה + נ  = מנשה/משנה.
• בנימין can be בני מין ...of sons of a heretic.
• The name shows בן צב ...a son of a tortoise..as it has been shown in recent politics, Bibi is seen as hardshelled and slow paced to peace.
• Atbash Gematria: 408 = חשק ...desire or lust..we all know how that went for him first time around in office...will he be the predicted straightened final government that gives way to משיח?

All of which strikes me, personally, as remarkably silly. Also, a haskamah from Rabbi Glazerson of psychic tractor driver Nir Ben Artzi:


The "problem" with such a haskama is that when it is based on Torah Codes, it is understood as coming not from Rabbi Glazerson's personal assessment, but from Hashem, as encoded in his Torah. So people might not come away with "Rabbi Glazerson endorses Nir Ben Artzi", but "Hashem endorses Nir Ben Artzi". And aside from various reasons not to take Torah Codes seriously, there is a serious problem of subjectivity, both in terms of what Rabbi Glazerson searched for (e.g. Chozeh but not Ramai / Nochel, meaning con-man) as well as interpreting those things which Rabbi Glazerson did find. And, of course, if a Torah Code shows something demonstrably false, then this indicates that there is a pegam in the Torah Codes. IMHO, to those who are capable of rationally assessing the nature of Nir's predictions, it is a joke. I can predict just as well as Nir Ben Artzi.

4) As great as Rabbi Glazerson and Torah Codes surely are, I thought that it might pay to bring out the big guns, and get a haskamah from the Rebbe. After all, if Bibliomancy is good, then surely consulting Igros Kodesh should be even better. I was tempted to ask the autistics about Nir Ben Artzi and Soul Mazal, or to ask Rabbi Yitzchak Kimmel (who is real!!!! 111!1!!) for psychic kabbalistic insight into others, but I am afraid that ain ladavar sof. At any rate, this was my response from the Rebbe. As they wrote:

"Hello, jx x, you received a response from the Rebbe שליט"א King Moshiach: volume 16, pages: 306 - 307."

I underlined the relevant portion of the Rebbe's response in blue. He declined to give a haskama, because that is not his custom, to give haskamos. Smart man! (Of course, I 'cheated' by asking the question multiple times until I could get something I could kvetch. And I didn't say "Yechi" like they requested me to.)


5) Bat Aliyah on a "brilliant idea" someone had, to have a separate checkout lane for men.


6) Circus Tent doesn't like Lipa Shmeltzer's performance as a Rebbe. But Blog in Dm is "pulling for him to pull it off."


7) Here on parshablog, Avraham was 74X the stature of a normal man.