Hit the Big Time!

שלום וברכה לכבוד הרי"ג שיחיה

אחר מבוא השלום כראוי

תח"י ספרו הנאה בגדי שיש על ספר שופטים

ברצוני לשאול האם יתן מר את רשותו להכנסת הספר לאוצר החכמה ויאותו רבים לאורו

בברכה

בצלאל דבליצקי

אוצר החכמה

I said yes, of course. 😊

 

What makes it all worthwhile

There are many challenges and difficulties involved in Chinuch. And, personally, when things are difficult, I wonder why Hashem didn't make me a Rosh Yeshiva as per my youthful aspirations. From time to time, a talmid or talmidah reaches out and reminds you why Hashem placed you where He placed you at a certain time and place. This note, which came a few minutes ago, is such a reminder...

May 5

Hi Rabbi Bechhofer,

I don’t know if you remember me, but I was your student at your stint teaching at Kushner in the mid-2000’s.

In March of 2005 you encouraged me to do something I never would have thought of doing on my own, to learn Daf Yomi for 1 Mesechet and make a Siyum. I did just that.

That experience of learning Gemara and making a Siyum planted a seed. That seed sprouted into the desire to learn in a good Yeshiva, and ultimately blossomed into a goal. The goal to finish Shas.

I want to let you know that after 18 years, I will be making a Siyum Hashas on May 24th, if you are in Israel for some reason you are invited to come.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to you. I am firmly convinced that my entire life would look different had you not pushed me to learn Mesechet Brachot 18 years ago. You gave me the gift of learning Gemara, the gift of Torah, which lit something inside me leading me down the path I find myself today – Living in Israel, married with 4 sons who are going to see their father, a man who works full time, make a Siyum Hashas.

I don’t imagine you are looking for credit but I think you deserve some. So know that a simple act of Chinuch, one which you probably forgot about has made a big difference in my life and ultimately facilitated a Siyum Hashas.

Thank you!

Beis Yaakov and Sara Schenirer - Yesterday and Today

 

http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2023/05/beis-yaakov-and-sara-schenirer.html

Reb Herschel quotes me in the post, I make additional remarks in a comment:

http://disq.us/p/2u5bxck

and there are comments on my comment.

Mussar Avicha by Rav Kook zt"l, part 1: The Introduction

Mussar Avicha

by Rav Kook zt"l, part 1:

The Introduction

(Rav Kook for the non-initiated)

Mussar Avicha was written by RAYH Kook zt"l while he was serving as the rabbi of Boisk (now Bauska), Latvia. Although it was written in 1896, it was only published posthumously in 1946.

It is described on the title page as,

"Chapters of guidance concerning awe and the service of God, character traits, and the assessment of one's soul."

Subsequent episodes in the series are through part 18 are linked in the comments to this post.

Part 18 is its own post at https://rygb.blogspot.com/2023/10/mussar-avicha-by-rav-kook-ztl-part-18.html and subsequent episodes are linked in the comments there.

The Sefer is available at https://hebrewbooks.org/37472

The "Kuzari Principle:" The Statistics

You can find a nice explication of the "Kuzari Principle" at: https://academic.oup.com/book/32413/chapter/268723130

A more entertaining version can be found at:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3007/jewish/How-Do-We-Know-that-We-Heard-G-d-at-Sinai.htm

See also:

https://rygb.blogspot.com/2006/04/in-response-to-query-of-os-alumnus.html

It's main idea is actually very tersely stated in the actual Kuzari - and by the king of the Khazars to boot:

48. Al Khazari: An arrangement of this kind removes any suspicion of untruth or common plot. Not ten people could discuss such a thing without disagreeing, and disclosing their secret understanding; nor could they refute any one who tried to establish the truth of a matter like this. How is it possible where such a mass of people is concerned?

The following article I just stumbled upon provides the statistical basis for the principle...

Maths study shows conspiracies 'prone to unravelling' - BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684

By Alex Berezow

Science writer

It's difficult to keep a conspiracy under wraps, scientists say, because sooner or later, one of the conspirators will blow its cover.

A study has examined how long alleged conspiracies could "survive" before being revealed - deliberately or unwittingly - to the public at large.

Dr David Grimes, from Oxford University, devised an equation to express this, and then applied it to four famous collusions.

The work appears in Plos One journal.

The equation developed by Dr Grimes, a post-doctoral physicist at Oxford, relied upon three factors: the number of conspirators involved, the amount of time that has passed, and the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing.

He then applied his equation to four famous conspiracy theories: The belief that the Moon landing was faked, the belief that climate change is a fraud, the belief that vaccines cause autism, and the belief that pharmaceutical companies have suppressed a cure for cancer.

Dr Grimes's analysis suggests that if these four conspiracies were real, most are very likely to have been revealed as such by now.

Specifically, the Moon landing "hoax" would have been revealed in 3.7 years, the climate change "fraud" in 3.7 to 26.8 years, the vaccine-autism "conspiracy" in 3.2 to 34.8 years, and the cancer "conspiracy" in 3.2 years.

"The mathematical methods used in this paper were broadly similar to the mathematics I have used before in my academic research on radiation physics," Dr Grimes said.

Building the equation

To derive his equation, Dr Grimes began with the Poisson distribution, a common statistical tool that measures the probability of a particular event occurring over a certain amount of time.

Using a handful of assumptions, combined with mathematical deduction, Dr Grimes produced a general, but incomplete, formula.

Specifically, he was missing a good estimate for the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing. To determine this, Dr Grimes analysed data from three genuine collusions.

The first was the surveillance program conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA), known as PRISM. This programme involved, at most, 36,000 people and was famously revealed by Edward Snowden after about six years.

The second was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the cure for syphilis (penicillin) was purposefully withheld from African-American patients.

The experiment may have involved up to 6,700 people, and Dr Peter Buxtun blew the whistle after about 25 years.

The third was an FBI scandal in which it was revealed by Dr Frederic Whitehurst that the agency's forensic analysis was unscientific and misleading, resulting in the imprisonment and execution of innocent people.

Dr Grimes estimates that a maximum of 500 people could have been involved and that it took about six years for the scandal to be exposed.

The equation he created represents a "best case scenario" for conspirators - that is, it optimistically assumes that conspirators are good at keeping secrets and that there are no external investigations at play.

Connecting the dots

Crunching the numbers from the three known conspiracies, Dr Grimes calculated that the intrinsic probability of a conspiracy failing is four in one million.

Though this number is low, the chance that a conspiracy is revealed becomes quite large as time passes and the number of conspirators grows.

The Moon landing hoax, for instance, began in 1965 and would have involved about 411,000 Nasa employees. With these parameters, Dr Grimes's equation suggests that the hoax would have been revealed after 3.7 years.

Additionally, since the Moon landing hoax is now more than 50 years old, Dr Grimes's equation predicts that, at most, only 251 conspirators could have been involved.

Thus, it is more reasonable to believe that the Moon landing was real.

Prof Monty McGovern, a mathematician at the University of Washington, said the study's methods "strike me as reasonable and the probabilities computed quite plausible".

Dr Grimes added: "While I think it's difficult to impossible to sway those with a conviction... I would hope this paper is useful to those more in the middle ground who might wonder whether scientists could perpetuate a hoax or not."