Chassidus

A prosecutor in Los Angeles wants to convict someone who killed an attacker in self-defense. The attacker had a criminal record stretching to the moon. The prosecutor’s move: you couldn’t have known about that record when you killed him, so it’s irrelevant. The argument bugged me for weeks before I could name why. It’s not stupid. It’s the opposite of stupid — it takes a certain amount of cleverness to build. And that turns out to be the whole problem. ...

Relocate the question The primary question was never “should my child have non-Jewish friends.” That question can’t be answered in the abstract, and trying to answer it in the abstract is the error. The real question, the one that determines outcomes: What is the child’s home-based identity actually built on? Because that is what decides whether outside exposure is a minor wind the child leans into and walks through, or an existential threat. Same friend, same Sam, same team — the meaning of the exposure is set almost entirely by what the child is bringing to it from home. ...

When you translate Classical Hebrew texts into English, you hit a wall that has nothing to do with vocabulary or concepts. The wall is structural. The two languages think differently — not in some vague Sapir-Whorf way, but in a concrete, mechanical way that shapes how a reader processes every sentence. Hebrew Lets You Forget Hebrew builds long sentences by chaining clauses with ו (vav — “and”). Each clause arrives with its grammatical roles already stamped into the words themselves. Prefixed prepositions, the construct state, suffixed pronouns, the binyan system — all of it bakes the grammar directly into the morphology. So each clause resolves immediately. The reader absorbs it, lets it go, and the ו pushes them forward to the next one. ...

There’s a book I’ve wanted to share with the world for years. Sha’ar HaYichud (שַׁעַר הַיִּחוּד — “The Gate of Unity”), written by the Mitteler Rebbe, Rabbi DovBer Schneuri, is a foundational Chassidic text of remarkable depth. Years ago I went through the entire book and divided it into labeled sections and subsections — a structural layer I felt would make it significantly more accessible to readers. That work sat in my notes, half-forgotten, until a few weeks ago when something clicked and I decided to finally publish it. ...

A Street Interview A college student with a phone camera spots a Jewish man on the sidewalk and approaches him. Anthony: Hey man, you got a minute? I’m doing street interviews for my YouTube channel. I’m just gonna be straight with you — I’ve met a few Jewish people who have this vibe like they think they’re better than everyone else. There’s this whole “chosen people” thing, and some of them have been pretty condescending about it. Is that actually a Jewish belief, or am I just running into jerks who happen to be Jewish? ...

In what is found the greatness of man? In his understanding? That would leave the difference between man and beast to be a matter of degree. In fact, that would leave beast as our superior; his intellect is perfectly suited to his needs. The path to obtain them - or the cruel reality of his inability - is always clear. Unique to man is not-understanding - the ability to recognize a vastness which is not understood, and to be inspired by that awareness. The beast lives in his world, which consists entirely of what he perceives. Only man loses himself in the stars. ...

The story is told of the young man who comes back home after meeting a prospective match. His mother asks him, “How was she?”. The young man answers, “She wasn’t so pretty, but that didn’t bother me. And she didn’t have the most fine character, but that also didn’t bother me. She doesn’t come from such a good family, but that didn’t bother me…” And he continued down a long list of things which didn’t bother him about the young woman he had gone to meet. Finally, his mother cuts him off, and asks, “Why did none of that bother you??” ...

To my great consternation, route transition animations broke after upgrading the app – when going from one section to another, the old one was visible behind the new one until the transition was finished, and it looked terrible. I could not think what could be the problem. Then, out of the blue (well, after breaking my head on it for a while), it hit me – I didn’t have any material! (A bit of background – in the material design system, everything is based on material, which is inspired by how things work in the real world. ...