Lichtik ליכטיק: Bilam and the flotilla

Lichtik ליכטיק: Bilam and the flotilla

Bilam and the flotilla

 

This week's parasha (Torah portion) tells the story about a king called Balak, who hires a prophet (Bilam) to curse the Jewish people. He did this, because he saw, that the Jews recently won the war against the nations of Bashan and Emor through miracles. He was also preparing to fight the Jews, so he was afraid, and thought he has to first destroy the spiritual power of the Jews in order to be able to defeat them physically. For this he needed to curse them.



Let's look at modern history now:
When the State of Israel was established in 1948, the neighboring Arab countries immediately attacked to destroy the new non-Arab country. They couldn't reach their goal. Those countries tried it again a few more times, but always failed. Not only on the battlefield, but also morally: the Western World was supporting the small, democratic country against the bigger dictatorships. The Arab leaders realized, this way it will never work. So they came up with a new idea: to transform the picture from the "big dictators against the small free country" to "the poor occupied ones against the rich occupiers." Since 1973 Arab countries directly didn't attack Israel, but the 2 intifadas broke out. Through the media coverages the whole World could see the poor Palestinians with stones against the Israeli soldiers equipped with the most state-of-the-art weapons. The World opinion started moving against Israel, but still as the Palestinians using the method of terrorism, especially suicide bombers killing innocent people, it was close to balanced. Now they even stopped that (except the rockets fired from Gaza), to create a totally anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian sentiment in the World. The new method is the "flotilla-techniqe". Ships packed with food, medicines, human rights activists and reporters are set to sail for the Gaza strip. If it was really a humanitarian aid, if their goal was to send food and medicines to the poor Palestinians, they would send them through the legal borders, where Israeli border policemen would inspect it, and in case of not finding any weapons, they would let them in. But the senders know, that Israel has no choice not to check it, since smuggling weapons is very common at the borders of Gaza. And if they refuse to allow the inspection, the process can easily turn violent, and Israel might seize the ships. They tried this a year ago, and it succeeded. The World media was filled with pictures and coverages of Israeli soldiers "attacking" and seizing a "humanitarian-aid" ship... This was a very powerful attack against Israel. The moral picture of the Jewish State was probably at its lowest point ever.

This week, when we are reading in the Torah about our enemies trying to destroy our spiritual-moral state in order to defeat us, "humanitarian" flotillas full of reporters are about to leave the ports of Greece, Cyprus and Turkey to reach the Gaza-strip, to provoke Israel, and to destroy again its moral picture in the World!

But we can be optimistic. Bilam gets embarrassed by his donkey, when the animal refuses to move (those ships also have some problems), and when he finally gets to the place, his curse turns into a blessing! Maybe parallelly, instead of making the World see Israel as the devil, this time the provokers will be embarrassed and the curse will turn into a blessing, as the real intentions will be evident. What do we need to do? I am sure, that besides trying to wisely communicating the situation, our moral deeds can help too. If we help each other, and stop the enmity among us, if we stop saying lashon hara (bad things about others), and if we control our negative emotions, like anger, envy or selfishness, and turn them into positive ones, like empathy, giving, and altruism, we can show God that we are still fitting for turning the curse into a blessing, the moral destruction into a moral victory!

a very short wort (simple, but very important)

After the shacharis (morning prayer) we recite the quote from the Talmud: "Talmidei chachomim marbim sholaym boaylom", which means: "Knowers of the Talmud increase peace in the World.
How do they increase peace? My favorite interpretation is: One, who knows only a little, and sees someone doing something differently, than how he learned, starts arguing, and tells him, that he is doing wrong. If a person who knows a lot sees someone doing it differently, he doesn't argue, because he knows that what he knows is not the only possible way, the other one can be right too...

About the changes

In the Middle East, often the most unexpected happen. Last month, old, well-established regimes fell. Fall of these dictators is not the most unexpected story, but the way they fell, was something, which was never predicted by any Western analysts (at least, I never read or heard such). The power of Tunisia's Ben Ali, and Egypt's Mubarak were not terminated by military intervention (like it happened in Iraq in 2003), nor by murder (like Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat), neither by a civil war or a coup, or any other known ways in the Middle East. They had to leave their office as a result of a way of angry protests, mostly by the masses of the young, unemployed population.

Watching, and reading the coverages, i didn't notice any burning American or Israeli flags, didn't see masked, armed terrorist-type marching. They were quite similar to the big protests in Europe: some objects caught fire, but the people behaved mostly peaceful (some cases, like beating and molesting Western journalists could make us worry though, but let's be optimistic at this point). The events were spread through internet social networks, such as Facebook, or Twitter. These sudden revolutions were carried out by a society of young Arabs, who use the internet, and see there the World outside, while they are fed up with their situation. Maybe the new generation of Arabs represents something, which has never existed before in these countries (or if it has, it had to hide): the Civil Society.
It is clear, that even if this society will not be ruling these countries, it will definitely be an important segment, which the new rulers (whomever they will be) will have to listen to.
Now, the question is: what do they (this new society) want? How do they think about politics? We don't know this yet. They will not even necessary be united in any idea, or goal. All we know is that they wanted change. But there is a chance now. Since they didn't show any signs of anti-Israel sentiment, hopefully they will not want to destroy the Jewish state, and they will not listen to the propaganda of hatred. They might say: "You, Jews can keep that twenty-something thousand square kilometers, we still have more than 10 million."

What I am saying, is of course not sure at this moment. The future is very uncertain now. We don't know, which direction these countries will turn after the fall of their previous dictators. I am afraid, even this new Arab society doesn't have any idea about it either. There is an unbelievable ideological vacuum there. But now, if we (Israel and the Westerners) communicate, and make our relations with the Arabs wisely, we can help them forming a new Middle East of peace, and mutual appreciation.

Lichtik ליכטיק: civ

Lichtik ליכטיק: civ: "In the Middle East, often the most unexpected happen. Last month, old, well-established regimes fell. Fall of these dictators is not the mos..."

Creation vs Weightlifting - the omnipotence paradox

Can God create a stone, which is too heavy for him to lift up?

This is the famous "omnipotence paradox". If the answer is yes, He can, then His weightlifting-power  is limited, if the answer is no, He can't, than His creating-power is limited. Either way, God is not omnipotent.
There are a few proposed answers from big thinkers. (just type "omnipotence paradox" in google, or wikipedia)

I would like to suggest the following answer:

The answer for this question is not yes, neither no. The answer is: it is a wrong question. Why?

Let's see first, how infinite works in mathematics (don't worry, it is not difficult maths, just  a little logic). Infinite is not an exact number. If you add one to infinite, what is the result? Infinite. So, the second infinite is bigger than the first one, since we added one to it. The same way, if we subtract one from infinite, we get infinite. In this case the second infinite is smaller than the first one. 

The same, using mathematical signs: 

∞ + 1 = ∞

∞ - 1 = ∞

if these are true, than: 

∞ < ∞ 

∞ > ∞ 

You can't really add/subtract a number to/from infinite. You will always get the same number, then the number which you added/subtracted doesn't exist. Let me demonstrate it with a very simple equation:

∞ + 1 = ∞     / - ∞

1 = 0      

(or 1 = ∞)          

But this is not true: 1 is not 0, neither infinite. One is one.

Therefore we can't use our known mathematical operations with infinite, because - as we've just seen - they will terminate in a false result. This happens with summation, subtraction, multiplication, division, and all the other known operations. We can't even use the smaller/bigger signs. Why is it so? Because all these mathematical operations are for the finite World. For real numbers, which are all finite. When we use infinite, all the finite operations and relation marks fail.

Now, let's go back to the "omnipotent paradox". Can God create a stone, which He cannot lift up? Let God's creating-power be "C", and his lifting-power "L". We assume, that both L and C are infinite (that is why the whole question is asked). The question is: which is bigger, L or C ? which of these statements is true?

C < L now the answer is: He can't, so He is not omnipotent, because His creation-power is limited.

C > L now the answer is: He can, so He is not omnipotent, because His lifting-power is limited.

C = L now the answer is again He can't, so He is not omnipotent, because His creating-power is limited. 

But we've seen above, that we can't say C < L, or C > L, neither C = L, because both C and L are infinite, and relation marks don't work in the World of infinite. 

Therefore the answer for the original question is:  
The question is wrong, because it has a false assumption, that relation marks can be used in the World of infinite.