Brian

i will not be letting em know until giannis is in a cleveland cavaliers uniform or lebron idk

@Jason When people show up with pitchforks at your house you needn’t wonder why

Heading to Cleveland Need courtside or behind Knicks bench if anyone has the hook up

i’ve had a hot dog in 22 MLB ballparks and the best in baseball is at citizens bank park by far #ringthebell

@PatMcManamon Only if he’s paid like a 6th or 7th man off the bench

Should the Cavs sign James Harden to an extension after the season?

She hates capitalism and billionaires but has a new junk product to sell every week lol

@FastbreakHoops5 Oden’s body didn’t hold up I don’t put that in the same category

The biggest busts in NBA history.

@elonmusk please, please, please do Gen Z boss in a mini for Halloween 🎃 😂

@HilzFuld Instead of using AI to write your posts, try using it to work on brevity.

Signing off for 50+ hours of family time away from all ringing, pinging, tweeting devices! Best time of the week! Tonight begins the holiday of Shavuot, otherwise known as Pentecost or “the Feast of Weeks”. Then we go directly into the Shabbat on which we read the portion of Naso, which means to count. We always read Naso the Shabbat after Shavuot, which begs the obvious question, why? What is the connection between the holiday of Shavuot and Naso that they are always one right after the other? Furthermore, Shavuot is an extremely unique holiday for a multitude of reasons. Rabbi Sacks raises two of them. “The mystery of Shavuot is twofold. First is that uniquely among the Jewish festivals it has no date; the Bible gives it no explicit place in the Jewish calendar. Instead, it is to be arrived at by counting seven weeks after the beginning of the Omer, the offering brought from the barley harvest, the first crop to ripen in the spring. “And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the wave offering – the day after the Sabbath – you shall count seven weeks”. The second is that alone of the pilgrimage festivals it has no overt historical content. The Jewish festivals have a double character. They belong to cyclical time – the seasons of the year. And they belong to linear time – they recall formative moments in Jewish history. So Pesach is the festival of spring and also the time when we re-enact the Exodus from Egypt. Sukkot is the festival of the autumn harvest and the time when we re-live the journey through the wilderness in temporary dwellings or tabernacles. But as we read the biblical description of Shavuot, half of the festival seems to be missing. Its seasonal significance is clear. It is called the “Feast of the Harvest” and the “Day of First-Fruits.” But the historical dimension is absent. So Shavuot raised two questions that were to become the subject of deep controversy: when was it celebrated, and why?” But there is an even more obvious question about Shavuot, namely, what is the commandment of the day? On Rosh Hashanah, we blow the shofar. On Yom Kippur, we fast. On Sukkot, we live in huts and bring the four species. On Passover, we eat Matza and don’t eat Chametz. On Hanukah, we light candles. Etc. What do we do on Shavuot? The answer is… Nothing. Sure, we have customs on Shavuot that were instituted not by the Torah but by the sages. We stay up all night learning Torah. We eat dairy products. Why is there no Torah commandment surrounding Shavuot? Why isn’t there some act that we fulfill on this day? I’ll remind you, Shavuot is the celebration of us receiving the Torah, which might be the most important moment in Jewish history. How is there no Torah commandment on this important holiday? To the two questions, what is the connection between Naso and Shavuot and why isn’t there any act that the Torah commands us to do on this day, I believe there is one answer and it is both fundamental to Judaism and deeply profound. I believe this idea can also answer Rabbi Sacks’ two questions of why the Torah doesn’t give us a date or historical context for the holiday of Shavuot. Let’s begin with Naso. When reading the portion, which is the longest portion in the entire Torah, you can’t help but become confused. There doesn’t seem to be any common thread between all the topics in the portion. “The parsha of Naso seems, on the face of it, to be a heterogeneous collection of utterly unrelated items. First there is the account of the Levitical families of Gershon and Merari and their tasks in carrying parts of the Tabernacle when the Israelites journeyed. Then, after two brief laws about removing unclean people from the camp and about restitution, there comes the strange ordeal of the Sotah, the woman suspected by her husband of adultery. Next comes the law of the Nazirite, the person who voluntarily (and usually for a fixed period) took upon himself special holiness restrictions, among them the renunciation of wine and grape products, of haircuts, and of defilement by contact with a dead body. This is followed, again seemingly with no connection, by one of the oldest prayers in the world still in continuous use: the priestly blessings. Then, with inexplicable repetitiousness, comes the account of the gifts brought by the princes of each tribe at the dedication of the Tabernacle, a series of long paragraphs repeated no less than twelve times, since each prince brought an identical offering.” What is going on here and again, what is the connection to Shavuot? As we’ve asked and answered before, why is God counting the people, in this case, the Levites? Does God need to count us to know how many people we are? Obviously not. But even if He does, why does He count us so many times throughout the Torah, including in our portion? There are many answers to this question, but as I’ve said before, one answer resonates. When does someone count something? Kids count toys. Adults count their money or their cars. People count things they love. God wasn’t counting us for His benefit. He counts us for our benefit. By counting us multiple times, He is reminding us of His love for us. The best proof of that is the word the Torah uses for the action of counting. There are many words in the Hebrew language that mean to count. “Lispor”, “Limnot”, and others. The word used in the Torah is “Naso”. What is the significance of that? Well, the same word also means to raise up. So the Torah is telling us that God counts us to raise us up, to recognize each and every one of us equally. However, while God is indeed showing us how each one of us, each individual matters, it is clear that Judaism also values the collective. We are compared to a grain of sand on the shore, which is insignificant on its own without the millions of other grains, but we are also compared to the stars in the sky, each one being significant on its own. It is this balance between the individual and the collective that makes Judaism so unique. Each one of us was created by God; in His image; because on that day, God decided the world is imperfect without our presence. So, each individual is important and significant but we are also greater than the sum of our parts. That same idea is true for Torah. The Torah gives us a framework for how to live a fulfilling life. But the Torah belongs to each and every one of us equally. No one person has ownership of the Torah. In fact, our sages teach that there are 70 faces to the Torah. There are thousands of interpretations for every chapter, every verse, and every word in the Torah. Torah is about making it our own. The Torah means something different to every person. Does that mean we can do whatever we want? Of course not. I’ll repeat the analogy that I heard and that captures this idea. The Torah is like a coloring book. You need to stay within the lines but within those lines, you can do whatever you want. You can use whatever color you want. You can draw whatever you want. All you have to do is stay within the lines. The Torah gives us the framework, the lines. As long as we stay within those lines, we can make Torah individual to us. Well, now let’s look at the many questions we asked. Naso starts with the counting of the Levites and is a continuation of last week’s portion in which Moses counted the whole nation. Why? Because, as we said, we are all individuals and each one of us matters. Counting the people emphasizes the individuality of each person but it does so within the context of the collective, the nation. Just like Torah. It is here for each one of us to take and make our own, as long as we stay within the heritage, the tradition, the collective. That’s the connection between Shavuot and Naso, the balance between each one of us and our importance and the role we each play within the collective. So why doesn’t the Torah give a special date or a historical context? Because Torah is an absolute in our lives. Sure, we celebrate Shavuot on one day but Torah doesn’t exist only on that day. Torah transcends time. Why don’t we know the historical significance of Shavuot? Because Torah isn’t about history. Torah is alive in every generation and it guides us in the present and prepares us for the future. Torah is not a history book. Why don’t we have a unique commandment on Shavuot? Because this holiday is here to remind us that the Torah doesn’t belong to any one person. On Sukkot, every person has their hut and their four species. On Passover, every person has their Seder and their prohibition not to eat Chametz. On every holiday, there is an element of the individual and how that person celebrates the day. Shavuot is not about me or you. Shavuot is here to celebrate the Torah, which belongs to the entire nation of Israel equally. No one person can claim ownership of the Torah. Shavuot is about our heritage, our tradition, our identity as Jews. Shavuot is not about the individual because the Torah is not about the individual. And finally, the last question. What is the common thread between all the seemingly disconnected parts of the portion? Well, let’s go back to the balance we spoke about before. A Jew has to learn to balance their own individual significance while never forgetting their role in the nation as a whole. When we manage to strike that balance, that is when we have achieved wholeness, inner peace. That is when we are complete. When did we strike that balance between being individuals and being a collective? At Mount Sinai when we were “Like one man with one heart.” There was total unity and peace. We found that magical balance and it happened as we received the Torah. Now let’s look at Naso. “The answer (to our question regarding the common thread) lies in the last word of the priestly blessing: shalom, peace. In a long analysis, the 15th century Spanish Jewish commentator Rabbi Isaac Arama explains that shalom does not mean merely the absence of war or strife. It means completeness, perfection, the harmonious working of a complex system, integrated diversity, a state in which everything is in its proper place and all is at one with the physical and ethical laws governing the universe. This is a concept of peace heavily dependent on the vision of Genesis 1, in which God brings order out of tohu va-vohu, chaos, creating a world in which each object and life form has its place. Peace exists where each element in the system is valued as a vital part of the system as a whole and where there is no discord between them. The various provisions of parshat Naso are all about bringing peace in this sense.” Naso is about peace. All of the different sections in the portion are somehow related to the idea of peace. Internal peace and external peace. “The most obvious case is that of the Sotah, the woman suspected by her husband of adultery. What struck the Sages most forcibly about the ritual of the Sotah is the fact that it involved obliterating the name of God, something strictly forbidden under other circumstances. The officiating priest recited a curse including God’s name, wrote it on a parchment scroll, and then dissolved the writing into specially prepared water. The Sages inferred from this that God was willing to renounce His own honour, allowing His name to be effaced, “in order to make peace between husband and wife” by clearing an innocent woman from suspicion. Though the ordeal was eventually abolished by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai after the destruction of the Second Temple, the law served as a reminder as to how important domestic peace is in the Jewish scale of values.” Peace in the home. “Likewise, the long account of the offerings of the princes of the twelve tribes is a dramatic way of indicating that each was considered important enough to merit its own passage in the Torah. People will do destructive things if they feel slighted, and not given their due role and recognition. Again the case of Korach and his allies is the proof of this. By giving the Levitical families and the princes of the tribes their share of honour and attention, the Torah is telling us how important it is to preserve the harmony of the nation by honouring all.” Peace in the nation. “The case of the Nazirite is in some ways the most interesting. There is an internal conflict within Judaism between, on the one hand, a strong emphasis on the equal dignity of everyone in the eyes of God, and the existence of a religious elite in the form of the tribe of Levi in general and the Kohanim, the priests, in particular. It seems that the law of the Nazirite was a way of opening up the possibility to non-Kohanim of a special sanctity close to, though not precisely identical with, that of the Kohanim themselves. This too is a way of avoiding the damaging resentments that can occur when people find themselves excluded by birth from certain forms of status within the community.” Peace of the individual. “If this analysis is correct, then a single theme binds the laws and narrative of this parsha: the theme of making special efforts to preserve or restore peace.” “It is no accident therefore that the priestly blessings included in Naso end – as do the vast majority of Jewish prayers – with a prayer for peace. Peace, said the rabbis, is one of the names of God Himself, and Maimonides writes that the whole Torah was given “to make peace in the world”. Naso is a series of practical lessons in how to ensure, as far as possible, that everyone feels recognised and respected, and that suspicion is defused and dissolved.” So to summarize, the holiday of Shavuot is about each one of us taking the Torah and making it our own as long as we stay within the lines, within the tradition, within the collective. That balance. The balance we saw at Mount Sinai as we received the Torah. Naso too is about striking that balance between the individual and the collective. When that balance is successfully achieved, the result is peace for the person, peace within the home, peace for the nation, and ultimately, peace for all of humanity. Shabbat shalom and Chag Sameach

@krystalball @Martina @grok did @krystalball have a problem with Fetterman’s brain capacity during his campaign against Dr Oz when he was a progressive democrat?

This report on Fetterman is completely insane. We have a brain damaged Senator in thrall to an Israeli govt connected operative. How is this OK?? nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Not even close what the most important factor is in investing. The ability to study and gain employment in a stable high income growth career. The $85,000 salaried (with room to grow) nurse is gonna lap 99% of dead-end job hoppers. Stable high income is priority #1.

@laceyjmeeks @ImFromCle He was in the White House during my 8th grade trip to DC and our school got special tours all around town!

@KauffBrian @ImFromCle No shit?! I didn’t realize he was from CLE.

Who is the most famous person that went to your high school? 🤔

@BlaireWhite @grok explain what she means by the cia mask

Holy shit why is this man on Fox News wearing a literal CIA mask

wow what a relief

@gabbgoudy Does not bode well

very concerning

@SawyerMerritt @SpaceX Does that mean you need to invest $100k in the IPO or just have $100k at Schwab at the time of IPO?

I just spoke with Charles Schwab about the @SpaceX IPO. Schwab is one of a handful of brokerages selected by SpaceX to allocate IPO shares to retail investors. If you have an account with Schwab, here’s how to prepare for the SpaceX IPO: 1) You first need to opt into IPOs from the Trade > IPOs page on Schwab's website. 2) After you've opted in and the IPO shows on the page, you can submit an Indication of Interest. The indication of interest will be able to be submitted when the Roadshow period begins for the stock. This is currently expected to be early June. 3) You need to have minimum $100,000 in total balance to be eligible to participate in the SpaceX IPO share allocation. Schwab still doesn't know how many shares will be allocated to their brokerage at this point since SpaceX will be the one to decide that in the coming weeks. Just be prepared to check back on the IPO section of Schwab's website. Additional info will come later. Lastly, don’t be surprised if you receive fewer IPO shares than you requested (if any at all). Demand for the limited number of available IPO shares will almost certainly be extremely high, and these participating brokerages will only get a certain sized allocation of shares to offer to retail investors, so it'll likely be tough to accommodate everyone. The best thing you can do is to just be prepared. Note: SpaceX specifically stated in their S-1 filing that any purchase of their Class A common stock in this offering through these platforms will be at the same IPO price, and at the same time, as any other purchases in this offering, including purchases by institutions and other large investors, which means any retail investors that are lucky enough to get allocated some SpaceX IPO shares will pay the same price as the big guys.

@LaVidaLysandra Mark Price

What Cleveland athlete made you believe way longer than you should have?

@mehdirhasan @ArielElyseGold Mehdi is talking about the Jews, I’m shocked

Good. (And it’s antisemitic, btw, to conflate Jewish New Yorkers with Israel.)

the cavs loss doesn’t bother me nearly as much as seeing everyone gush over Todd freaking Monken.