Wisdom from the Gentiles: Steinbeck

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Expose on the gentile influences in contemporary frum world music

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THE TORAH IS NOT HEFKER!

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MODERN CHAREIDI ROCK MUSIC: ITS SOURCES AND EFFECTS

FOR ADVICE ON ALL SUBJECTS OF MUSIC IN THE CHAREIDI PUBLIC:

הועד לנגינה יהודית

THE COMMITTEE FOR JEWISH MUSIC

• ADVICE TO BAALEI SIMCHAH FOR WEDDINGS
• LISTS OF KOSHER BANDS AND MUSICIANS
• ADVICE TO ARRANGE HACHNASSAS SEFER TORAH
• BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON THE SUBJECT OF CHAREIDI MUSIC
• LECTURES IN YESHIVOS AND SEMINARIES
• POSSIBILITY TO CONTROL THE VOLUME AT SIMCHOS
• WITH THE APPROVAL OF GEDOLEI HADOR

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Compassion on all

“Compassion is the feeling of sympathy which the pain of one being awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned they are to re-echo the note of suffering, which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart, bringing all creatures a proof of their kinship in the universal God. And as for man, whose function it is to show respect and love for God's universe and all its creatures, his heart has been created so tender that it feels with the whole organic world bestowing sympathy even on beings devoid of feeling, mourning even for fading flowers; so that, if nothing else, the very nature of his heart must teach him that he is required above everything to feel himself the brother of all beings, and to recognize the claim of all beings to his love and his beneficence.” R' Samson R. Hirsch, Horeb,125

nothing, nothing at all, would be gained

"So that even if to-day, through some miraculous chain of events, Palestine were to be placed at the unconditional disposal of the Jews, and they could return to the “Land of their Fathers” and found an independent state there: nothing, nothing at all, would be gained as long as the causes have not disappeared which once brought about the downfall of the state and the destruction of the Temple, yea which made that downfall unavoidably necessary for the preservation of Judaism and thereby Jewry. A Jewish National body with Jewish spirit would be, and remain, dead: a Jewish State, that does not, in making the laws of the Torah, a reality, present a picture of the realisation of the eternal laws of justice and love of one’s neighbor based on the sound foundation of purity of morals, would be a still-born creation, and irretrievably doomed to dissolution, even as it was thousands of years ago. But this is just by way of parentheses!"

R’ Mendel Hirsch, The Pentateuch, Haftoroth (Gateshead: Judaica Press, 1989), pp. 592-3. R’ Mendel Hirsch (1833–1900)