Linkage.

USA: KRISTI NOEM CONFIRMED AS DHS SECRETARY.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-kristi-noem-confirmed-as-department-of-homeland-security-secretary
Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem was confirmed as President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary on Saturday morning with a vote of 59 to 34 in the Senate.

LOS ANGELES: PALISADES RESIDENTS VISIT HOMES AFTER TRUMP VISIT.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/25/trump-effect-some-palisades-residents-visit-homes-for-first-time-since-fire-after-presidents-visit/
Residents of the Pacific Palisades flocked home on Saturday after President Donald Trump’s visit the day before, with many gaining access to their property for the first time since the Palisades Fire more than two weeks ago.

ISRAEL: LIRI, NAAMA, DANIELA, AND KARINA RETURN HOME.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402842
Four of the five IDF lookouts kidnapped from the Nahal Oz military post during the October 7 massacre are returned to Israel.

ISRAEL: HOSTAGES RETURN HOME (VIDEO).
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402843
Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag, Naama Levy, and Karina Ariev are re-united with their parents.

TIM BLACK AT SPIKED: THE SINISTER RISE OF THE ISLAMO-LEFT.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/19/the-sinister-rise-of-the-islamo-left/
How the Western Left allied with the islamo-fascists.

Jeremy Corbyn's reluctance to denounce Hamas is only the latest manifestation of a process that has been in the works at least since the 1990s, when the collapse of Communism forced the Western Left to find new allies. While Tim Black's article deals mainly with events in Britain, the same dynamics were at work in Europe and North America.

The make-believe battle against made-up nazis.

Everybody wants to be a hero. Everybody wants to be that one guy in the picture who's not giving the nazi salute.

Most recently, we've seen this in the case of the literal nazi salute that was supposedly given by Elon Musk.

And that's the appeal of modern left-liberalism. It's an appeal to vanity. If you convince yourself that the other guy is a nazi, then you only have to be one percent better than a nazi to be the good guy. If the other guy is Hitler, then you can be Stalin.

The left only pretends to care about anti-Semitism when it wants to smear its enemies as anti-Semites. They will make great noises of outrage, and pose and posture and portray themselves as "fighting nazis", just so long as those "nazis" can be connected to the people they don't like anyway - conservative, largely Christian and European-descended people.

The enlightened intelligentsia, the laptop liberals and timid technocrats who form the governing class and who deem themselves our moral and intellectual superiors, fancy themselves akin to the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy; when in fact they are fighting imaginary nazis in a fantasy battle that is about as dangerous as playing Call Of Duty.

Ask these folks to stand up for Israel - or stand against the keffiyeh-clad nazis who stage rallies daily in Europe, Britain, and North America, extolling Hamas and Hezbollah and calling for the massacre of Jews and the conquest of the West - and they'll pee their panties and bleat about "islamophobia".

The same people who cheered the global lockdowns and the forced medical experimentation on billions of humans; who praised censorship of social media and called for mass surveillance and suppression of dissenters; who support the jackbooted black-shirts of antifa and the islamo-fascists of Hezbollah and Hamas; who look forward to the glorious day when the world will bend the knee to the dictatorship of the UN and the WEF - these are the people who want to tell me who I'm supposed to be scared of because they're a "nazi"? Yeah, no. [353]

Exodus - Parashath Shemoth - Aliyoth 2 - 7.

ALIYAH 2 [Exodus 1:18 - 2:10] - MOSES IS RESCUED.

"Despairing of cooperation from the Hebrew midwives in his genocidal project, Pharaoh now enlists the entire Egyptian population in a search-and-destroy operation." (Robert Alter on 1:22, p. 216.) Moses' mother, Yokheved, places the infant Moses in a wicker ark (the Hebrew word for "ark" [tevah] is the same word used for Noah's vessel) and floats him down the Nile, where he is rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. Moses' older sister Miriam, looking on, approaches the Egyptian princess and asks to have Moses nursed by his own mother. Yokheved nurses Moses until he is weaned.

ALIYAH 3 [Exodus 2:11-25] - MOSES TURNS VIGILANTE, AND FLEES EGYPT.

Moses witnesses an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, and, believing himself unobserved, kills the Egyptian. The next day, seeing two Hebrews fighting, he challenges the aggressor, who retorts "Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" He flees to Midian, where he marries Tzipporah, daughter of Jethro; they have a son, Gershom. Meanwhile, the Hebrews in Egypt call out to G-d.

We can picture Moses' state of mind on that fateful second day. He has just killed a man - has killed a master, one of his ostensible countrymen, in defense of a slave. He can't have slept well that night. Now he sees two of his unacknowledged kinsmen fighting, and he snaps. And then he learns that his secret is out.

ALIYAH 4 [Exodus 3:1-15] - THE BURNING BUSH.

At his new day job, shepherding for his father-in-law, Moses sees a bush that is burning yet is not consumed by the fire. G-d speaks to Moses, and declares that He will deliver the Israelites.

ALIYAH 5 [Exodus 3:16 - 4:17] - MOSES' MISSION, AND HIS DOUBTS.

G-d commands Moses to convene the Israelites and tell them the hour of their deliverance is at hand; then to approach Pharaoh to demand permission to travel a three days' journey into the wilderness, backed up by miraculous signs from the Creator. When Moses epresses doubt that Pharaoh will listen, G-d demonstrates His power by turning Moses' staff into a snake, and by afflicting Moses' hand with whiteness (or "leprosy" in some translations).

Still reluctant, Moses protests that he is "heavy-mouthed and heavy-tongued" (Alter's translation of 4:10). To this, the Creator retorts (4:11): "Who gave man a mouth, or who makes him mute or deaf or sighted or blind?" Further, G-d promises to send Moses' brother Aaron (who hasn't been mentioned until this point, 4:14) and that "he will be a mouth for you".

What's interesting about this passage is that it seems we've got one problem, but two solutions. If the solution to the problem (Moses' difficulty with speaking) is in the hands of the One Who " gave man a mouth, or who makes him mute or deaf or sighted or blind", then why bring Aaron into this at all?

ALIYAH 6 [Exodus 4:18-31] - MOSES SETS OUT FOR EGYPT.

Moses takes his wife, Tzipporah, and their two sons, and they set out for Egypt. On the way, there is a mysterious incident involving an angel, Tzipporah, and Moses' son. Moses and Aaron meet up, and together they address the Israelite elders.

ALIYAH 7 [Exodus 5:1 - 6:1] - REQUEST DENIED.

Moses and Aaron meet Pharaoh and present their demands. The Egyptian king scornfully rejects the request, and instead increases the workload on the Hebrews. Moses cries out to G-d, and G-d promises: "Now will you see what I shall do to Pharaoh, for through a strong hand will he send them off and through a strong hand will he drive them from his land." [612]

Journal 2025-01-26 Sunday afternoon.

The worst of the winter weather is usually over in these parts by mid-January, but it's not unusual for one last blast to hit us around the end of January (between my birthday and Groundhog Day). From the forecast, it looks like this year will not disappoint. But I'm not complaining, as we've had generally fair (though chilly) weather the past couple of weeks.

This coming week will mark eight weeks at my new job. The commute to Portland is longer than I'd prefer, but it's not bad and I've gotten used to it. After the first week or two of parking in the company garage to the tune of 14$ a day, I've taken to commuting by MAX (the local light rail) and it's slower but much cheaper and more relaxing. I'd rather spend 45 minutes reading a book than 20 minutes staring at tail lights.

I've been keeping up the music practice on a daily basis. I find that it's already changing the way I listen to music - I pay more careful attention to the sounds of the chords, the melody, and the tempo, now that I'm actively engaged in practicing music as well as listening to it. I think it'll also be a good way to keep my brain and nervous system in shape.

I finished the final book in the Harry Potter series last weekend. I loved the books, and it's a very satisfying end. People who had read the books told me that the HP books get progressively darker towards the end, and it's true. Particularly the final chapters of HP7 - Deathly Hallows, with Fred's death, and the revelations about Dumbledore, and Harry confronting his own mortality. The description in Chapter 34 of Harry's internal world as he walks toward certain death is stunning. The series treats of that greatest of great themes, mortality: the whole plot hinges on Voldemort's fear of death and obsession with immortality, and constantly returns to the ways we imagine, or wish to feel, the presence of the departed in our lives: the Mirror of Erised, the ghosts, the animated (literally) figures in the pictures, and Harry summoning the dead with the Resurrection Stone. Jo (JK) Rowling has stated that the series drew much of its inspiration from the death of her mother, Anne, at the end of 1990.

I'm hoping to get back into creative writing of my own before long. Meanwhile, I'm continuing the weekly Torah summaries at least into Exodus, because I want to get myself firmly grounded in this most foundational of all literary works. [430]