The Curse of the Car

NYT—The White House on Sunday pushed out the chairman of General Motors and instructed Chrysler to form a partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat within 30 days as conditions for receiving another much-needed round of government aid.

A Rebbe a century ago remarked: you should do everything at least once just for the experience with the exception of driving a car; seems the Rebbe did not like cars. Perhaps it was not the car which was repugnant to the Rebbe, but the manner in which the car is massed produced.

Henry Ford, a known anti-Semite and inventor of the assembly line, was famous for saying: why do I need to hire a man when all I need is his hand. That curse has extended into all parts of society where one can sell their brain, their ability—the thing they love most for a buck.

Now the question is whether there is enough good in this complicated dehumanizing apparatus to justify continuation.

Transparency of the President

THE PRESIDENT: It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something. The president called Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, to say he was sorry. "He expressed his disappointment, and he apologized in a way that was very moving. He expressed that he did not intend to humiliate this population," Shriver said today on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The President promised the people even before becoming president that he was not perfect and would certainly make mistakes, but to hear a high official of the government make so public an apology is transparency at its zenith.

The Talmud-Book of Law records the following story. Rebbe Shimon (author of the Zohar-Book of Secret) once remarked on the ugliness of a particular man to which the man replied: God created me. Rebbe followed the man into town continually prostrating himself before the man begging for forgiveness. The great Rebbe humbled before the ugly man who refused to forgive him; when the townsfolk saw this perfidy they persuaded the man to comply.

Emissions from Space

The MAGIC telescope in La Palma (Canary Islands), observed a quasar (a celestial body that emits large amounts of radiation) emitting a jet of particles that points directly towards Earth.

In the Talmud-Book of Law is written the following story. Rebbe Yochanan was teaching how the Third Temple which is destined to come down from the heavens will have pillars of diamonds. A student asked, how is it possible to have pillars of diamonds when in the whole earth there are not diamonds bigger than a fist. Rebbe Yochanan was silent.

The student went on a trip out to sea and during the night the heavens opened up and his saw the angels hard at work sculpting the diamond pillars of the Temple. When he returned he told his teacher what he had seen. Rebbe Yochanan said, and when I told you, you did not believe? Immediately, the student acquired the ability of submission and became as the dust of the earth.