Comic and a bit of philosophy

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for Friday, February 25, 2022

• How do you stop being jealous of other people?
• The key is to always do what is true to you. Find your highest ideal and pursue it.
  Then, when other people have more success, you can recast your failure as a heroic struggle for purity or beauty or whatever.

This comic, which portrays a very cynical view of the world (a common feature of comics by its author), calls to mind a very famous quote from the Talmud (Pirkei Avot, aka "Ethics of the Fathers", Chapter 4, mishna 1):

Simcha Jacobovici: Proof for the Biblical Exodus!

Proof for the Biblical Exodus!

There’s now a new translation of an ancient Egyptian monument known as a “Stela” that has just been published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies by Professors Robert Ritner and Nadine Moeller, of the Oriental Institue of the University of Chicago. The translation basically links Pharaoh Ahmose (18^th Dynasty/New Kingdom) with the eruption of the Thera/Santorini volcano. In the past, scholars argued that Ahmose and Thera were divided by more than a century. The new translation proves that they were contemporaneous i.e., Ahmose witnessed the effects of one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in human history. This goes a long way towards linking Thera, Ahmose and the Biblical Exodus.

Still more evidence that the Exodus really happened.

Simcha Jacobovichi: Decoding the El Arish Stone

Decoding the El Arish Stone – blog entry 1

Almost forgotten, in the tiny museum of Isma’ilya, some 125 km northeast of Cairo, is an artifact that corroborates the Biblical Exodus and provides us with the inside story from an Egyptian point of view.
...
In the past, I’ve always summarized the findings. Now, what I want to do is treat the hieroglyphics on the stone as a series of posts. I want to decode the 2,300 year old inscriptions and see what secrets they may reveal.

This is a fascinating article describing the first evidence (that I know of, anyway) that describes the Exodus from the Egyptian point of view. Click through to read all three parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Providence and Lion Attacks

A fascinating article, both from the zoological standpoint as well as from the Torah view.

Rationalist Judaism: The Locusts Are Coming! Yum!

Rationalist Judaism: The Locusts Are Coming! Yum!

I love the irony of Egypt being hit by a plague of locusts just a few weeks before Pesach, in the year when their government was taken over by terrorists.

We've already seen the blood.  When will the frogs, vermin, boils, hail, etc. hit them?

Rationalist Judaism: The Prince of Egypt

Rationalist Judaism: The Prince of Egypt
By Nathan Slifkin

... there is one major theme in the movie which, while it probably grates on the sensitivities of some Orthodox Jews, is an important part of the story ...