Last week I drove past the old Zinkal building, a.k.a "the building with the values-of-days-gone-by inscription", and this is what I saw:
For years I drive by this building. I finally decide to write a few words about it, and a month later it's gone. As the saying goes: sic transit gloria mundi.
It was Friday night, a week ago. I was in Seoul, alone in my hotel room, facing a long shabbat with nothing to do but read. I started reading this book at 10pm. By the time I went to sleep, at 5am, I was half-way through it. The only reason I stopped was that I wanted to give myself a few more days of pleasure, instead of finishing it all in one go.
This is an epic novel that traces several generations of the Ingledews, the first settlers of the town of Stay More in Arkansas. The town was named so by the Indian the brothers met upon arriving in Arkansas (or rather, John met, as Noah was scared shitless of the native and ran to the woods). This Indian, Fanshaw, who spoke English with a British accent, referred to the Ingledew dwelling by this name because John kept telling him politely to "stay more" every time he came to visit. So it is only natural that the town dwellers became knows as the Stay Morons.
This wonderful book has twenty chapters. Each chapter opens with an illustration of a building, and through the story of that building and its distinctive architecture, Harington weaves the tale of Stay More and the Stay Morons. The tale makes its way through the Civil War, the Great Depression and two World Wars, gradually building a world which entrances the reader and makes him fall in love with its inhabitants. These hillibillys, with their simple ways and their reluctance to adapt to PROG RESS, go through good and bad but stay fiercely proud of their home town. The men work hard, which makes them come down with bad cases of the Frakes, a mysterious incapacitating disease that makes life seem utterly pointless, but they also enjoy the simple pleasures in life: hunting, fornicating, or simply sitting around on the porch of the town's general store or mill. The wives are busy producing children and taking care of their homes, although most of them turn out to be much smarter than the men.
The best way I can find to describe this novel is to call it the "American 100 years of Solitude". It will make you laugh aloud, it will make you smile, it will make you ponder life and it will definitely change the way you think about early American settlers and their modern-day offspring. I don't recall how I came by this book and why I bought it, but I'm so thankful I did.
The British Medical Journal just published a list of seven medical myths, common medical beliefs that turn out to be wrong.
Here they are:
1. People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
I always knew there something wrong with this one. Even during my military training days I had difficulty drinking 8 glasses of water a day.
2. We use only 10% of our brains
Actually, I didn't know this one. However, had I heard about it I would have taken it to be true, simply based on watching most people around me. So I believe further research is warranted before dismissing this. I'll grant them 20%, but no more.
3. Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
I have nothing to say about this one. I'm surprised it's a myth.
4. Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
I used to believe this one, until I starting losing my hair.
5. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
Yes, I believed this one. I actually berate my children for reading after lights out. Although, come to think of it, I should have known better. I behaved exactly like them when I was a child, and my eyesight is still perfect.
6. Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
I don't eat much turkey, so I wouldn't know. Didn't know this one.
7. Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals
This I knew not to be true, as mobile phones operate on different frequencies. Another myth (not medical) is that mobile phones interfere with the aircraft navigation systems. Yeah, right.
I took a peek into North Korea today. It was a short peek, it was foggy so I couldn't see much, but it was a peek nonetheless.
With the end of the Korean War in 1953 and the signing of the armistice agreement between South and North Korea, the DMZ (de-militarised zone) was set up. Where the front line stood at the end of the hostilities, a military demarcation line was drawn, from one end of the Korean peninsula to the other. The area 2km north and south of this line became the DMZ. Today I took the half-day "DMZ Tour" from Seoul to try and catch a glimpse of The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The drive from Seoul to the border is astonishingly short. On a traffic-free Sunday morning it took us well under an hour, driving north on the "Freedom Highway". After some formalities like having our passports checked (officially the DMZ belongs to neither country) and switching to a tightly-controlled official tour bus, we arrived to the southern border of the DMZ. There, the South Koreans constructed a small museum that describes the history of the place and everyone is made to watch a 7-minute movie that shows how the DMZ today, despite the de-facto state of war between the two parts of the divided country, is nothing more than a big nature reserve (with about 1 million soldiers around it, mind you).
By far the most fascinating part of this generally drab tour is the visit to one of the tunnels dug by the North, with the purpose to invade the South one day. The South Koreans, initially by accident and later with the aid of the Americans, began unearthing these tunnels in the 1970s. Four have been found so far, but the general belief is there are many more. The one open to the public is the 3rd tunnel, discovered in 1978. It is located 73m below ground level and runs through the entire DMZ. A tourist train goes down the interception tunnel dug by the South Koreans, and then one can walk about 200m north into the DMZ, below ground. It's a back-breaking experience, as the height of the tunnel is just short of a normal (Western) person's height. No picture-taking is allowed.
This 3rd tunnel was discovered after a defector from North Korea tipped off the authorities. The South Korean military engineers bore holes into the ground in several places and filled them with water in PVC pipes. Eventually, they hit the tunnel. Notwithstanding the evidence - the direction of the dynamite drill marks, the slope of the tunnel - the North Koreans vehemently denied they were responsible for digging it. In fact, they tried to hide the fact this was an incursion tunnel and claimed it was a mine; they proceeded, in their retreat, to paint parts of the tunnel black using charcoal in order to "prove" this was true. Silly buggers.
Another part of the tour is Dorasan train station, the northermost railroad station in South Korea. It was reconstructed after the rapprochement of 2000, and stands there today, brand-new, state-of-the-art, shiny... but totally empty, except for a souvenir shop and a couple of fancy-looking soldiers. The signs say Seoul-Pyongyang, waiting for the day this train route will become a reality. A nifty gimmick: you can stamp your passport with an immigration stamp to show you've "taken" this ride between the two capital cities. President Bush visited here a few years ago, and left a hand-written message:
Aside from the fact it was foggy and a freezing cold day, this man-made piece of history was a welcome distraction in an otherwise boring weekend in Seoul.
The Japanese go to great lengths to study English. Walk into any bookstore in Japan and witness an impressive number of English textbooks. Within a rock's throw of any train or subway station you'll see signs for quite a few English schools. Many commuters on the long ride to and from work will be listening to English lessons on their iPods.
But by far the most entertaining method for learning English is watching the Zuiikin Girls show on TV. These girls will teach you an English phrase by repeating it several times while doing aerobic exercises. Useful phrases, ones that would come in handy in daily conversations. For example, this one:
Want to see more? Thankfully, someone put together a page with all available Zuiikin Girls videos on YouTube. Enjoy.
Today is the last day of Hanukkah, so it's back to school tomorrow. After almost 2 months, the high-school teachers' strike in Israel is drawing to an end, so hopefully tens of thousands of teenagers will finally start their school year in the coming days.The teachers' union and the government are about to sign a deal, giving the teachers a small raise (a few percent). This is basically same deal the general labour union (Histradrut) got from the government after striking for half a day a few months ago.
So all the talk about raising teachers' pay by 50% and agreeing on sweeping reforms in education has fizzled to a few percentage points. Nothing to write home about. Certainly not worth keeping kids away from school for weeks. The union's failure in this case is yet another example of the "value for money" organised labour get you.
The education system in Israel has many faults. Slowly but surely those who value better education, and are willing to pay for it, are moving to semi-private schools. The ultra-religious have had their private system for decades. The national-religious have in effect privatised their igh-schools through the system of "high-schoool yeshivah". There are almost no religious public high schools left in Israel, and those that are still around are typically in poorer cities and neighbourhoods. "Free education" is fast becoming an empty slogan. Parents are required to pay extra for books, extra-curricular activities (many of which are nothing but an extended timetable after "regular" school hours), school trips and much more. Despite this, over-crowded classrooms and short school hours are still the norm.
If the government does not make education a national priority (my guess: it won't), then the education system will go down the same path as the health system. Private healthcare in Israel is no longer for the rich only. Many families pay for private health insurance and many more for "enhanced" insurance through the existing national plans. Those who have, or those who are willing to pay extra, will get to the same place with education; those who don't, will be left behind.
Two interesting items in the news in Israel this week:
1. Deloitte announced the results of its annual survey of fastest growing technology firms in EMEA. The first three spots were taken by Israeli firms: Voltaire, Celltick and Runcom.
2. The Ministry of Education published the results of the 2006 PIRLS tests. These tests measure and compare the proficiency of school students across 45 countries. Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore took the first three places; Israel got in at the 31st place.
These two seemingly unrelated stories tell a very strong story.
Israel has no natural resources. It is a country burdened by high military expenditures. Its traditional industries, such as agriculture and diamond-cutting, are disappearing. The growth engine of Israel's economy in the past couple of decades has been the high-tech sector. In other words: Israel's future depends on "knowledge workers", people who can use their brains to create value.
The achievements of Israeli school children compared to those of their peers in Asia does not bode well for this country's future. Throw in the ongoing strike by high-school teachers and university professors (both get ridiculously low salaries), and the outlook is even gloomier.
Israel today is a leader the high-tech industry, worldwide. But this remarkable accomplishment is in grave danger. Continuing to ignore the fundamental problems in the Israeli education system - from kindergarten to PhDs - puts the future of this country at risk. The real threat to Israells' future does not come from Ahmadinejad and his likes. It comes from Israeli governments continuing to neglect the most important asset this country has: its people's education.
One day after the well-orchestrated show in Annapolis, Maryland, and the zillion words of commentary in the media about the "brave" or "expected" or "empty" speeches of the leaders (depending on who is doing commenting), it all boils down to three very simple facts:
1. Everybody knows what the deal will look like. Nothing in the main elements of a future agreement has changed (or can change) since Camp David 2000. So no speech can be "dramatic" or "brave" at this point in time. The problem is not the end result, it's the following two points.
2. Neither of the two leaders - Olmert and Abbas - have enough political power in their respective constituencies to strike a deal, certainly not the kind of deal they alluded to (i.e. partition of Jerusalem and the renunciation of the Palestinian "right of return"). Olmert is busy keeping his fragile coalition together; Abbas is busy trying to prevent the Hamas from taking away any remaining vestiges of power he still clings to.
3. Nobody in the US administration (or the international community) has the will nor the power to do what is necessary: dive into the mud to extricate the feuding parties, bang their heads together and force them to get the deal signed. Certainly not in the timeframe Bush and Olmert spoke about ("within 2008").
So, bottom line, I don't expect much to come out of Annapolis. In fact, I didn't even bother to watch or listen to the speeches; reading the headlines on the Web this morning was more than enough to figure out that plus ça change, etc. I obviously hope I'll be proven wrong, but I doubt it very much.
If you drive north on route 5 in Israel and look right (eastwards) after passing the Geha intersection (for Petah Tikva and Bnei Brak), you will see a decrepit industrial building with an interesting inscription on its roof:
I took this picture with my mobile phone, so apologies for the quality. Three letters are missing, but the inscription says: "We took a vow to partake in the building of the people and the Land of Israel".
I've been driving past this building for many years and I often look at these words. They strike an emotional chord within me every time. Yesterday, I googled these words and found out that the building belonged to an aluminium manufacturing company by the name of Zinkal, that apparently went under in 2002. Most of the entries about Zinkal on the Web are court proceedings of creditors against the company. The company's website returns an empty page.
I find this very symbolic. On one hand, the inscription shows the owners of Zinkal believed in values which most Israelis today view as passé and defunct. And yet they were proud enough of these values to inscribe them prominently on the copmany's building, in full public view on a main highway. On the other hand, the state of the building (and the inscription) are proof that the cynical view prevailed. Those who place the value of caring for the country and its people before the value of self-enrichment end up broke. I know I'm generalising, but it's a potent symbol nonetheless.
Update - 3 December:
Driving past the building again today, I noticed the sign posted on the top-left corner (you can just see it in the photo) is an ad for a lucky charm, an amulet, of R. Nachman of Breslov. This building' symbolism is stronger than I originally thought. Business gone bust, good old values failed, so let's turn to voodo Judaism to save us.
A couple of months ago I was in the final stages of negotiating a deal with a large company in South Korea. This company is notorious for its tough negotiating tactics. I was invited to a meeting with the VP in charge of purchasing to discuss pricing. The session was scheduled for 1pm, but he showed up at 4pm; we went on for 5 hours, during which I was not offered any food or drinks; no breaks were taken. This was all standard procedure, part of the "atmosphere" created by these companies to put pressure on the vendors. Not pleasant, but part of the game.
But every such negotiation has its funny moments. At one point, about 3 hours into the session, I was standing next to the whiteboard trying to reconcile our differences in pricing. I was moving numbers around, doing quick calculations and generally playing around with the figures to find a way to make it work. In the heat of the moment I must have been doing things a little too quickly for them to follow properly. One of the guys in the room suddently shouted: "stop!". I turned around and saw him holding his head between his hands. He gave me a desperate look, and said: "I can't take it any more with you and your Talmud!".
For a moment I was speechless. Then I just burst out laughing. They obviously knew I was Jewish and from Israel, but the last thing I expected to hear in that context was a reference to the Talmud. We all had a good laugh and after we calmed down I asked for an explanation.
It turns out that the Talmud is held in very high regard by Koreans. There are bestselling books in Korea, so I was told, that teach people how to think and negotiate better by using "Talmudic methods". The back-and-forth of Talmudic debate is considered a sophisticated way to reach the right conclusion, so this has been translated to advice heeded to by many Koreans. It's really all rather fascinating and it fits well within the widely-held myth (not particular to Koreans, by the way) that Jews are "intelligent" and "smart".
After a short discussion about the Talmud - they were impressed by the fact I study it every day - we continued the negotiation and eventually reached an agreement. I guess studying Daf Yomi has helped me in more ways than one.
Mike Huckabee is a Republican presidential candidate in the US. Last month, Chuck Norris announced he is endorsing Huckabee's bid for the highest office in the country.
And here below is the first campaign commercial Huckabee is running. My jaw dropped when I watched this the first time. I had to watch it again to make sure my eyes and ears were not playing tricks on me. Only in America.
Jokes about blondes are a dime a dozen. Blondes resent being stereotyped as dumb, but a recent study (from France, mind you) shows that men's mental performance declines when they are around blondes. In the words of the professor, "blondes have the potential to make people act in a dumber way".
Thankfully, I prefer brunettes.
One of the questions that comes up every now and then in the Israeli-Japanese discourse is whether the Japanese are descendents of the Israelite Lost Tribes.
Brief history: After the Israelite kingdom was run over by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C.E, ten of the Israelite tribes were exiled and never heard of again. Today's Jews are descendents of the kingdom of Yehudah, specifically three tribes: Yehudah, Binyamin and Levi. Over the centuries, many theories have been put forward as to the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes. In recent years, a group of Indians came forward and claimed they are descendents of the tribe of Menasheh; several of them made aliyah to Israel.
One of the theories is that the Ten Tribes (or some of them) ended up in Japan. Proponents of this theory point to Shinto, the native religion of Japan, purportedly showing that several traditions in Shinto can be traced back to biblical Jewish practices. The movie below summarises some of these finding, while this website is more comprehensive.
Personally, this all sounds a bit far-fetched, but who knows? After all, it has been almost 3,000 years so anything is possible. To me, the most frightening thought in this whole discussion is: imagine a world with 140 million Jews! The mere thought has me covered in cold sweat.
You've all heard about the sub-prime financial crisis, causing all that trouble to the mightiest institutions on Wall Street. Let's admit it: most of us don't really understand what it's all about.
Well, no worries. It is all explained here:
Last Friday night I attended "services" at a Reconstructionist "synagogue" in Irvine, California. No, I did not lose my mind (yet).
The group of Israelis I was with for the 2-week educational course were invited to participate in a panel about higher education in Israel, and this took place at this "synagogue". As it was our last evening together, I wanted to come and say goodbye to everyone, so after going to a real synagogue for services, I walked over to this place. As it happens, I arrived there just as the "services" were starting, so I was lucky enough to witness the whole charade.
This was no regular Friday. On this particular Friday evening, the event was called "Shabbat Alive", an especially lively show. There was a male "rabbi" and a female "cantor", who coincidentally also happen to be happily married. Both wore a tallit and a kippah. The "rabbi" had a wireless microphone attached to his jacket lapel; the "cantor" used a regular microphone. The "cantor" played a guitar, in addition to being accompanied by two sidekick singers and a band consisting of three musicians, no less.
The "services" were a mishmash of songs, some completely secular (such as Halleluyah, an Israeli song that won the Eurovision song contest back in the 1980s), combined with bits and pieces from the siddur (prayer book). In the spirit of egalitarianism, some of the passages were recited in both male and female format. This was carried to absurdity: when the blessing over the bread - which, for some odd reason, took place during the "service" even though dinner had already been eaten by the congregation - was recited twice, once as "ha-motsi" (male) and once as "ha-motsi'a" (female). The congregation itself, an assortment of Jews and Gentiles, 200+ strong, were sat in a movie-like theater, facing the stage. I thought this was appropriate, as this was indeed more a spectacle than a prayer.
But the most suprising part for me was not the actual event. Rather, it was the reaction of my fellow Israeli friends, all of them secular. Some of them were more shocked than I was. To them, Judaism was purely Orthodox; in the spirit of Isaiah Berlin's famous words: the synagogue they do not frequent is an Orthodox one. So what transpired on the stage was nothing short of an abomination to them. One of my friends, a proclaimed atheist, refused to put a kippah on his head, saying he was so angry at the fact that the Jewish religion was being put to such mockery that he would not play along.
Even though halachically-speaking I shouldn't have attended this "service" (the hillul ha-Shem there was blatantly obvious), in a way glad I'm glad I did. Seeing with my own eyes what Judaism was reduced to in America was in many respects an eye-opening experience. Although from a historical perspective such aberrations were proven to be short-lived, it was still important to me to witness first-hand a symptom of "the vanishing American Jew" (the title of an excellent book by Alan Dershowitz).
If I were to look for a bright point in this story, I guess it is the following. There is some value to be found in these "religious" movements, as some Jews in America would have no connection whatsoever to Judaism were it not for the existence of the Reform or Reconstructionist movements. I heard from various people in the Jewish community in Irvine that there are many cases of the second generation (the children of the parent that married out) veering back towards Judaism, some even becoming practicing Orthodox Jews. So perhaps there is some sense and purpose in this madness.
Quality of life is a hard thing to measure. Economists argue about the parameters that make up this elusive measurement of how satisfied people are with their lives. There are several QoF indices being published by different bodies; The Economist's is one. Things like wealth, health, political stability, political freedom, climate and job security are taken into account. The weighting of each of these parameters is crucial in determining which country's QoF is better.
Because of its composition, the QoF index does not produce the same country rankings as the GDP per capita index. For example, in the The Economist's index, the US comes 13th in the QoF ranking, despite it being the country with the highest GDP per capita in the world (if you ignore tiny Luxembourg).
I thought about this during my recent stay in the US. I spent two weeks in Irvine, California, a southern suburb of Los Angeles (the locals will resent this definition; for them, Orange County is distinct and separate from L.A.). Irvine is one of the country's most peaceful and wealthy cities. And yet many of the city's residents work in L.A., which means they spend hours each day sitting in traffic on dreadfully congested San Diego freeway (route 405). Ensconced in their air-conditioned SUVs and Priuses, they spend their mornings and their evenings in a bumper-to-bumper river of cars. How do you factor this nightmare into the QoF index? People in Irvine may be sleeping in 3-million dollar homes and driving in 100,000-dollar cars, but can you really put a price on the agony of spending hours each day staring at other cars' backsides?
Or take dometic air travel in the US. I flew from L.A. to Boston yesterday. Economy class on United Airlines. It's been a while since I was on a long domestic flight in the US, and it wasn't pleasant. The security lines were long. The TSA personnel grumpy. The United employee at the gate kept barking at passengers. The flight attendants adopted another strategy: they simply ignored the passengers. No food was served, only drinks and a biscuit (this was a 5-hour flight). The only positive element of it all was that the flight was on time. Compared to domestic flights in Europe (and certainly in Asia) the Americans have it really bad. The treatment they receive at the airport and in the air is atrociously discourteous. And they seem to take it willingly. So either they've given up on being treated nicely or they've been bullied into stunned obedience by the post-9/11 American way of life.
Quality of life? I think not.
The fires in southern California are finally under control, after a week of firefighting, mass evacuations and many destryoed homes. I'm currently on a 2-week educational programme just south of Los Angeles. I arrived here with the fires, about 10 days ago, and although there were no fires in the immediate vicinity of my location, until a couple of days ago the air smelt heavily of smoke. In the first few days, there was a cloud of black smoke in the sky.
Orange County is a beautiful place. So serene, so green and so obviously wealthy. And yet when natural disasters like these wildfires strike, suddenly everything seems so fragile. Some of the local people I'm with were on stand-by to evacuate. Suddenly, one has to decide what to salvage from home that can fit in the car: photographs, valuables, documents. I thought what I would have done in such a situation and there are no easy answers.
Now that the sun is finally shining again and the air is (relatively) fresh, I look forward to the few more days I have here.
Reshimot (Notes) is one of the leading premium content sites in Israel. It is a platform for many gifted bloggers, a breath of fresh air in the mostly stale blogosphere.
The founders of Reshimot, all working voluntarily on this project since 2003, have published a call for help. Citing technical and financial problems they are seeking a strategic partner that will ensure the continuation of Reshimot. So far, they failed in locating such a partner.
If Reshimot fails it will be a sad day.
I hesitated before buying and reading this book. After all, I am not a big fan of Breslover Hasidim, especially the born-again, light-in-their-eyes, street-dancing, Uman-going kind. And that's an understatement. After having finished reading the book, my ambivalence persists.
Noa Yaron was a radio and TV celebrity in Israel in the early 90s. She was exposed, like many in her circle, to the teachings and writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the 18th-century founder of the Brelover movement. Today, at the age of 35, she has six children and spends her time disseminating the teachings of R. Nachman to any woman who will listen. Everybody in Israel is aware of the Breslover Hasidim, as their ill-founded mantra (Na-Nach-Nachma-Nachman-MiUman) is plastered on walls, stickers, kippot, t-shirts, etc. This quasi-messianic sect of Judaism works particularly well for those seeking a Judaism that is somewhat "new-age", an alternative to seeking the truth in a remote Ashram in India.
In this book, Yaron-Dayan describes her path to the light. Mekimi in Hebrew means "the one who lifts me" and is derived from a verse in Psalm 113 - "He who raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts up the needy out of the dunghill" - an appropriate metaphor for how she sees her journey. Although Yaron-Dayan describes the book only as "semi-autobiographical", for example she names the woman Alma and her boyfriend-husband Ben (her husband's name is Yuval), it is based on diaries she wrote during the years and is therefore a good account of the processes she went through.
The book opens with an account of the secular world, the world Yaron-Dayan knew well, a world that made a star out of her. The description is, as expected, quite glum: materialism is the only religion, drugs are being smoked on a daily basis, relationships come and go and there is this huge void in everyone's stomach, a void that cannot be filled by anything or anyone. The process begins halfway through the book, when Ben, at the behest of a good friend, agrees to listen to a lecture by an ultra-orthodox person, a lecture that transforms him completely. He begins his own journey towards Judaism and Alma, his partner, joins. The last part of the book is a shameless praise (propaganda) for R. Nachman.
So why am I ambivalent about this book? It is well written. Yaron-Dayan has not lost her sense of humour and the book is interspersed with witty remarks, some of it refreshingsly self-defecating. But more importantly, it is genuine. Her passion and her ardent belief in her newly-found way are palpably present in every page of this book. Yaron-Dayan does not embellish the process she went through (and is still undergoing). She makes it plainly clear that becoming, and staying, religious is a continuous struggle. One does not "see the light" and change his/her ways overnight. There are endless obstacles along the way. It does not feel like a path but rather like a roller-coaster ride, where every high point is inevitably followed by a fall. The trick, as Yaron-Dayan vividly demonstrates through her own experiences, is how to make it up the next slope, to the next high point.
And yet I cannot completely identify with what this book is about. Yaron-Dayan is trying to convince us (that is, the secular among us) that if we become religious we will be happier. The recurring theme in this book is: Judaism is the key to personal happiness. If you feel a void in your life, Judaism will fill it. I do not believe this to be true, neither in practice nor on a theological level. In practice, this is a dangerous approach; although for some people finding Judaism may mean finding happiness, this feeling might be temporary and then the question is, what happens next? If Judaism loses its initial lustre, does that mean we go back, or try a new approach?
More importantly, defining religion in an anthopocentric way is theologically wrong. Judaism is first and foremost a theocentric religion; God is in the centre and man's purpose is to worship Him. We are commanded by God and the mitsvot we are to fulfill are a yoke. Promising happiness to people is dangerously close to subjugating God to our purposes, in other words, close to avodah zarah. While I identify with Yaron-Dayan's focus on the quest rather than on the target - she understands the target is unattainable and the best we can do is strive constantly to reach it, even though we know it is impossible - I cannot identify with the proposition that our happiness is the main purpose of this exercise. This is the source of my criticism of the Breslover way (and, indeed, Hasidim in general).
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