A red shtreimel with the inscription: "Make Judea Great Again"

The jester was a very important institution for medieval rule, like the prophet in ancient times, or the original role of Satan in the heavenly retinue - to interfere, until modern times when he was replaced by the writer. Only writers are more pompous people than prophets and their ability to jest is limited, and when the prime minister looks for a literary jester it's hard for him to find one. A rule that is serious to the point of terror is the horror of the twentieth century

"ridendo dicere severum" - Say the serious through the funny (source)

I dreamed that they send me some questions after my death, because the world missed me when I was alive, and now they're begging if I would please just agree to a few small questions, just clarification, without disturbing the eternal rest of his honor, the father of dreamers. And all the researchers of ancient dream literature are deliberating how to extract one coherent paragraph from me, through which it would be possible to decipher all the rest - like with an extinct ancient language. And at first the esteemed professors think that sophisticated questions are needed to expose my flaws and reveal my inner self against my will, but then a different current in contemporary research claims that my inner self is already there, and too much of it, and what's needed to understand is actually my outer self. And a subversive school in dream literature research raises the paradoxical argument: they always send beautiful female interviewers to writers to make them blurt out nonsense, that is, the truth, while he - in all the materials that survived from that period - always says nonsense, so maybe they should send him a monster? And finally they understand that the questions will reveal too much about their own era, and if they send them to my era it will be a self-fulfilling dream, and therefore they need to continue not reading me and not paying attention and banishing me from every respectable platform - so that in the end a meaningful work will come out of me that will stand the test of time.

And then one day in the future, after they've already given up on direct access to the dream, a key article is published by a brilliant doctoral student claiming that it's possible to ask me the questions in the dream itself - without causing damage to reality, and then in the morning all the questions that came from outside the dream itself will disappear from my head, and only the answers for future generations will remain. And at the top of the exam form in the dream it says: Name:_______ and I realize that I've already failed the test of time in the first question. And I tell the brilliant examiner from the future that I don't know how to write, and the readers don't know how to read either, so maybe for both sides an oral exam would be better? And the doctoral student looks at me like I'm a sexual harasser (or maybe in the future there are laws against spiritual harassment? If so I'm probably considered a nasty creator type there!). And so this monster begins my entrance exam to the culture of the future:

(Penetrating question)
(Painful answer): My weakness, my insignificance, is what stands at the source of fertility, like in sex. The dream is weaker than reality just as Jews are weaker than Gentiles and the ultra-Orthodox are weaker than the secular. But - this is precisely the geometric definition of the Jewish point since biblical times. The kingdom of Judah was indeed physically located exactly at the center of gravity of the ancient Near East, but its weight was negligible, meaning there was a cultural center here with the most influences from the system and the least influence on the system, and that was probably its secret. The weak center is the idea of monotheism itself, that is, to claim that there is something outside of reality that is the center of it all. And from the moment the divine power failed in the present, because as mentioned it was a negligible kingdom, there was a shift of power from the present (in which idols ruled) to the past (creation, founding myths) and finally - the future (redemption, prophecies). The situation where Jews are the weak ones and the surrounding nations rule is not an innovation of exile, but something that was inherent in Judaism from its birth, and therefore it adapted so well to exile, which was a revelation of its true nature (unlike cultural centers that were also centers of power - and collapsed culturally with the collapse of power). Worse still - in its beginning the Jewish conception lacked the dimension of the future, and it was based on Moses who anchored the dimension of the past, and even the prophecies were short-term, and therefore did not take up much volume literarily either. Only with the beginning of long prophecy did the idea of the day of the Lord and redemption develop, in a parallel development conceptually and literarily. In the Bible, the very idea of a person composing a book did not exist before the beginning of prophecy in the book of Amos, where we also see for the first time the idea of the end of days, an idea related to the genre, stemming from the genre and part of the genre. One day the genre of dreams will also gain recognition - and you are invited to see this as a prophecy.

(Personal question)
(Emotional answer): Wait wait. A messianic movement is often created before the final crisis and catastrophe, during its development. The crisis of European Jewry, together with the infrastructure of the Vilna Gaon's messianism, created the Zionist messianic movement, even before the Holocaust itself. The decline of Europe at the end of the 19th century also created a similar process before the world wars - the power of the United States is its messianic dimension, which characterized the first settlers, and became the driving force, with the rush to the West, and the American dream, and leading the world. The Babylonian and Assyrian method was to exile cultural elites of the conquered precisely to the margins of the empire. Like we know Jews who were exiled, they connect to the cultural elite in the place they were exiled to, maintain connections with other Jews, and therefore create a cultural network. Thus the Judaism of the Second Temple is a hybridization between original Judaism and the Persian religion - the religion of Zoroaster (ideas like the soul and life after death and heaven and hell and resurrection of the dead, demons and the evil inclination, menstrual distancing and the centrality of purity, and more), just as Judaism today is a hybridization between Jewish tradition and Western tradition. The Persian Empire is exactly like the American Empire - an empire whose elite is inextricably linked to a Jewish elite and has religious tolerance and great capacity for inclusion. Therefore, these two empires are what enabled the renewal of the kingdom of Judah, because they had a strong ruling center that is a weak cultural center. And therefore there was also messianism in both of them, which is always compensation for what is lacking in the present, for example among Americans in their cultural inferiority to Europe. If my reality wasn't so lacking - I wouldn't be writing dreams.

(Provocative question)
(Principled answer): There is nothing more serious than lack of seriousness (and vice versa), just as there is nothing more real than a dream, so it's a shame they don't take me seriously. Why are Americans more serious? Because like the Persians they are not serious. What is Trump? Ahasuerus who treats women as property, can't sleep at night, and makes Purim [Jewish holiday of revelry]. Because the king didn't have a jester, they chose a jester as king. The jester was a very important institution for medieval rule, like the prophet in ancient times, or the original role of Satan in the heavenly retinue - to interfere, until modern times when he was replaced by the writer. Only writers are more pompous people than prophets and their ability to jest is limited, and when the prime minister looks for a literary jester it's hard for him to find one (and he makes do with an unfunny substitute). A rule that is serious to the point of terror is the horror of the twentieth century. If Hitler had had Chaplin there would have been no Holocaust. Because Hitler never ordered the Holocaust. It was the German Nazi yekkes [uptight Germans] who took what he said seriously. Hitler was a fantasist. He was not connected to reality and lived entirely in a world of speech and oration alone, of language. He would not have caused damage if they had not connected him to the world of action, and thus he dragged the world into his deranged fantasy, a one-to-one transfer from language to the world. After all, the Gentiles always said "without Jews", but what does it mean to expel words? To erase them, to burn, numbers to people. This is what happens when you take words seriously.

(Mocking question)
(Amateurish answer): Control must be balanced by lack of control. The relationship between ruler and jester is like the relationship between the conscious and subconscious in the brain, between wakefulness and dreaming. And what people think today is that rule needs to have eyes open all the time. If someone was caught in blindness it's the most serious sin. So the government is afraid to close an eye. And then a state without a dream is created. Without fantasy. Or with infantile fantasy at the level of a three-year-old child, like more money, or security, something at the lowest level, and the most serious (yes, seriousness is a very low level of reality, not high). In contrast, the fantasy of the government in Israel should have been something like writing new biblical literature, or bringing a technological messiah, or connecting to a divine virtual brain, something completely delusional, and then you could be a spiritual startup nation, not a startup of money (and security), of the most practical applications of technology, an application. After all, technology is the application of science, and application is the application of application, and in the future there will be application of application of application - a very strong sinking into the world of tools. So it's true that there are no prophets today, but there are dreamers. You can't take prophets seriously anymore. Only a fool and a child. And if you're not afraid of serious rule, wait wait what you'll have if computers remain serious. You'll still long for the Holocaust. The State of Israel could have been a superpower of lack of seriousness on a global scale. After all, when the Gentiles looked at Israel with respect they didn't admire its seriousness, but its lack of seriousness, for example the chafif [slang for casual attitude] and improvisation. But slowly the Jewish humor from exile was forgotten, and today it's a heavy country like a grandmother, the only thing left of its humor is chutzpah. Therefore in my opinion, let the state go to hell. And what needs to be done is to return to exile. A great movement of emigration from here. Where to? In my opinion we need to move to Japan.

(Righteous question)
(Self-justifying answer): The Japanese don't have a real sense of humor, that is, conceptual, not just instinctive. Have you ever seen a Japanese comedy? They don't know how to laugh, only to smile. I remember once Japanese people came to the Western Wall and we tried to see if it's possible to make a Japanese person laugh. I'm telling you from empirical experiments on Japanese people: a Japanese person - even if you tickle him with the tzitzit [ritual fringes] in his ear, even if you blow the shofar [ram's horn] right into his eardrum - the only thing he'll do is run away and smile. It's a wonderful people. They're even more square than the Germans. Jews can make a big mess in Japan. Jews have two working methods in the world, through which they manage to attract the attention of the big world despite being very small - and that's to excel and to annoy. Both things are important, and wouldn't work without each other. Cultures don't manage to attract the world's attention for more than 200 years, while Judaism manages to drive the world crazy for 2000 years already. But we need to understand that we are facing a huge cultural challenge, because computers are a people that is very hard to annoy, and very hard to excel against. Therefore we need to become very-very annoying, in a way that drives computers crazy, towards the next era. And the place where people are closest to computers is Japan, and therefore we need to practice on them. We need to become a kind of cultural virus or worm, some kind of bug, that will survive the cultural Holocaust of the computer age. And the best (from experience) - is to become a joke. If the slogan of the naive is only without jesting, then the slogan of the wise is only without seriousness.

(Serious question)
(Not serious answer): The deepest dispute in Judaism can be formulated like this: How will the messianic world look, in which the weekdays will become holy days, will it be like Shabbat - that is, in a more total materiality than is accessible to us today, in a deeper dimension within the material world - or like Yom Kippur - in total spirituality? In the last section of "Future Form" it says that neither this nor that, it will look like Purim. For the Persians drunkenness was not a mishap, but every important decision had to be made also in drunkenness, because of the non-rational dimension of reality. In other cultures the ruler's dream created this accessibility, like Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's dream, or the prophet dreaming for the king. With a rational king the empire would fall apart - only the drunk Ahasuerus could rule 127 countries in the federal government. So it's true that Trump has some anti-Semitic Gentile Haman. But what we need to pray for is that his son-in-law will be Mordechai, and that his daughter will be Esther, because he's in love with his daughter, that's what he said. It says in the midrash that Esther was secretly Mordechai's wife, that "took her for himself as a daughter" means he took her for himself secretly to the house (as a wife), and she secretly cheated on Ahasuerus and went and slept with Mordechai. Think what a risk that is! And what is secret in the midrash is eventually revealed in the world. I remember that after Trump was elected I almost choked - because I couldn't stop laughing for three days and three nights (I laughed in dreams too). Purim is a redemption that is a much greater mixing between matter and spirit than exists in the world today, an infinite mixing of the world. Shabbat is a return to the pleasure at the peak of creation, before the sin in the Garden of Eden, and Yom Kippur is a return to the state before creation - without the possibility of sin. Only Purim is not a return backwards but a real future, in which sin and righteousness mix with each other beyond recognition.

(Not serious question)
(Serious answer): I don't understand what you want from him, he's a Gentile! Let's remember that the Roman rulers who were the worst to Jews and caused destruction were the enlightened and rational ones: Pompey, Titus, Hadrian (and in Hanukkah Antiochus). As long as complete psychos ruled in Rome, there was Roman peace and it was good for Jews. Herod, Saul, the greatest kings, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. King David had borderline personality disorder, which is precisely why God loved him, and Solomon suffered from addictions, especially to sex. The media's attitude towards crazy types is the repression of the conscious of the subconscious, who knows better than me. Actually there is a question here whether only the neocortex will rule in the future society, when all brains are united into one big brain, or the collective subconscious. Culture is beginning to think of the ideal person as a kind of rational computer, and halakhic Judaism thinks of God as a kind of server that calculates everything, so that everyone will receive reward and punishment according to the balance of their sins and mitzvot, in a calculation that a human being doesn't understand only because the human computing power is not high enough, and not for a deeper reason. For them, God never goes to sleep, and doesn't dream, and it's not clear at all why he needed to rest from creation on Shabbat - let him keep working!

(Important question)
(Pathetic answer): Well, this is exactly the famous hatred of morality for human diversity, and therefore for literature. There are different and strange people, who are not like how a person should be, and don't behave like they should behave, and don't think like they should think. One of them is the President of the United States. Beyond opposition to policy, this is hatred for his personality, for this type of person, who, what can you do, is very American. And what can you do, we are all types of human beings, and let him who has no haters stand up (I will certainly continue to lie in bed). Maybe the moral ones are willing to let such a person live, but God forbid he should be in a representative position, that he should have something to say. The question they always ask: Would I behave like that? And if not, then the other person is not okay. After all, I wouldn't drink to drunkenness, I wouldn't participate in a sex party. There is a lack of recognition of the personality and neurological diversity of the human species, both among the complainers and among the victims of complaints and among the complainers about the victims of complaints and among the victims of complaints about the victims, and lack of recognition leads to lack of legitimacy. Just assume that human beings are crazy, that they don't remember what happened and what didn't happen and always justify themselves no matter what, and always think that others are not right no matter what. And especially really love to complain and even more to play the victim and even more than that to take revenge and even more than that to feel moral and receive social capital, which is a laundered secular-rational term for the pursuit of honor in the language of the sages, which takes a person out of the world. After all, all the secular people drive, unlike me who didn't learn to drive, and they've been driving for twenty years and don't learn what a hitchhiker learns after twenty minutes: the whole question of who is righteous and right and who is a son of a bitch and deserves death is only related to whether he's in your car or in his car. Therefore morality will never replace religion. Because sins - they are between you and Him and there is atonement for them on Yom Kippur. While morality - it is true evil. A satanic invention. Because morality is narcissistic - the general rule of what should be is according to what you would want, which is the secular distortion of what is hateful to you do not do to your fellow. That is, you are the measure of morality for everyone. One black circle. What got into his head to be like that? If we take his morality - you are all white squares. And if we take your enlightened morality of your light then he is dark darkness. Therefore in the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness - I choose darkness.

(Surprising question)
(Answer of the century): We need to fight the hegemony of normative neurology - the neuro-typical person who suppresses all human neurological diversity, and possible in general, even non-human. This is the neuro-archy, whose temple is academia. There they suppress all non-rational or dreamlike thinking, in practices of arrogance and humiliation. Literature today is controlled by the neuro-archy. Psycho is a bad word, which we need to reclaim. They use terms like new cortex, or frontal cortex, to suppress and control the other parts of the brain, which are supposedly "old" or "behind", and exclude them from decision-making centers, management, and sometimes even memory. Thoughts from the back or bottom part of the brain have a glass ceiling. And this ceiling is called comments. Actually a sophisticated move is being made here. The eyes are in front, because supposedly the open eyes are the leaders. But the information from the eyes goes directly to the back cortex precisely, which is enslaved to the frontal cortex, and busy processing all this information for it. These are the lower classes of the brain, on whose exploitation the frontal cortex is free for thought. But in a dream when the eyes are closed, then a democratization of the brain occurs, it's like the day of rest, and then the workers suddenly open up to creative thinking, every part of the brain can start an image or thought. And this is what the neuro-archy is most afraid of, and therefore represses everything. That is, the question is what future brain society do we want? When the whole world becomes one thought network will society be hierarchical, and some will suppress others and use them as computational resources, when the workers are themselves the means of production, which is the most inhuman development of alienation possible. Or will we live in a distributed thought network, rebel against the elite of "higher thinking", and its oppressive "rationality" discourse, which suppresses the ability to say nonsense. In our society today - it's forbidden to say nonsense. This is tremendous oppression. And the fact that the leader of the free world can allow himself to say nonsense in the middle of the night - this is tremendous liberation.

(Admiring question)
(Sucked answer): A crazy ruler is a ruler that people are afraid to mess with - and on the other hand he is also fascinating. This is a must-have accessory for any empire, and precisely because of this the universe also needs God. A crazy God is a God that people are afraid to mess with. And that's exactly what makes him God, that he is unpredictable. The most unpredictable - this is the mathematical definition of God, on which the modern mathematical proof for the existence of God is built. That's why human prophecy is impossible. The calculation that cannot be reduced by part of it is a calculation that will always surprise any part of its system that tries to predict it. It's like an artist doesn't know what he will paint before he paints. Uncertainty is a kind of halo around every particle of matter, which gives it its existence, otherwise it would collapse into a mathematical point. And like in quantum mechanics, so too in politics, the uncertainty around the power factor is the wingspan of power, what depends on its control and especially - on its lack of control. If you are predictable and act like a machine you have no power, even if you are giant and strong you are a big gear, like in Newtonian mechanics. The power of an empire is its size multiplied by the willingness to move it, and that's exactly the kind of power that causes peace. A crazy, non-linear, irrational response, the internal chaos at the core of decision-making, that a person doesn't know what he himself will decide, what he will write in another word, when the writing is smarter than you, when the dream knows more about you than you... Well, I really don't know how to finish this sentence.

(Difficult question)
(Stupid answer): This is part of the price of association. Someone who only starts sentences that he knows how to finish... it's better he doesn't write anything.