In answer to somebody’s very good question about my general attitude towards unions, I have this to say. I’ve always been ambivalent about unions. On the one hand, we definitely need them because look what’s happening. We really need strong unions as the era of post-work dawns on us.
But the problem is that unions always end up defending people from needing to work. My graduate union at Yale wanted to fight to abolish grades and the Latín requirement. It wanted to fight for the right of people who failed the comprehensives to continue in the program in the same status as those who passed. It wanted to fight to let us stay in the program for 8-9 years. I was an organizer for the union and I suggested that we fight also for the right of those who wanted to graduate sooner. That didn’t go over well. We always ended up fighting for the rights of absolute losers at the expense of people who actually loved the work.
In the current union, for which I was a rep at some point, we have the same problem. During COVID, the union got downright vicious to prevent me from working in-person. Mind you, I wasn’t making anybody else do it. I scheduled everybody in the exact modality they wanted. But the union went to war (and lost) to prevent me from working. Because the fact that I worked was showing up everybody else who wasn’t.
I often have a feeling that the best scenario for the unions is that everybody gets the UBI and doesn’t work at all. I don’t know why it always ends up going in that direction. I want to be enthusiastic about unions. It’s either them or neoliberalism, and we all know how I feel about that. But every single time, unions champion the right of the worst layabout to do absolutely nothing.
We are currently in a very serious situation at my school. People can lose their jobs. Programs can get eliminated. And I have a terrible feeling that the only thing that the union will achieve in its negotiations will be to remove me and install, at a modicum of my compensation, somebody who is a very good person but for a variety of personal and health reasons shouldn’t be anywhere near this job. It’s like they picked the most loserish scenario on purpose and went after it with a single-minded devotion.
I agreed not to go to the press. I could have been very effective doing that but I decided to honor the union’s plea not to do it. I refused interviews with two very serious newspapers and a local TV channel. And I’m now visited with the horrible suspicion that the only effect of all this will be to cut my term as Chair short and to replace me with somebody who… is not in any danger of being asked to speak by the press, let’s put it that way. Or to defend people’s jobs. Or fill out the simplest paperwork.
I want to believe that this is my bad luck and not all unions are like this. But what I’m seeing is not heartening.
Clarissa's Blog 
Unions suck. Here’s a bit of German history
A Review of German Leaders During WWII
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) spat out speeches that shackled education to the Führerprinzip. This “Leader Principle,” the iron gauntlet gripping Nazi Germany, crushed democratic voices and pulverized collective will beneath the sole rule of the Führer—Hitler’s ruthless dominion. It throttled dissent, enslaved minds, and forged a dictatorship of absolute obedience.
Heidegger hailed the Nazi revolution, at first, as a spiritual rebirth of the German Volk. A man stripped of shame, he refused to kneel, never coughed up an apology, never retracted his venomous allegiance. After the war, he slithered through denazification, dodging accountability and twisting truth with evasive lies.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer thundered opposition at Nazism from its dawn. He hurled blistering public condemnations at Hitler’s regime, especially its savage persecution of Jews, and hammered together the Confessing Church to shatter the Nazi state’s iron grip on Christianity.
The German Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) erupted in the late 1930s, clawing back against the Nazi regime’s choking stranglehold on Protestantism, particularly within Lutheranism. After Hitler seized power in 1933, the regime dragged Protestant churches into the German Evangelical Church—a grotesque puppet engineered to broadcast Nazi hate, soaked in anti-Semitism and militant nationalism.
The Barmen Declaration (1934), forged by firebrands like Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer, ripped to shreds the Nazi regime’s attempt to enslave the church. It blasted state control, spat contempt in the face of political distortion, and declared open war on the regime’s monstrous manipulation of Christian faith. The Confessing Church ignited fierce resistance, its leaders hurling themselves into the breach, condemning anti-Semitic laws, and refusing to bow before tyranny. The state retaliated with brutal repression—arrests, beatings, and executions—but the Church’s defiance fractured the Nazi façade of total control.
Yet the Confessing Church splintered from within, torn between cautious cooperation and fiery rebellion. While some whispered compromise, Bonhoeffer and his allies sharpened their swords for active resistance. As Nazi terror tightened its grip, the Church staggered under relentless persecution—leaders vanished into prisons, congregations shuttered, voices crushed. Still, their moral blaze refused to be extinguished.
The Nazi regime clung desperately to the co-opted Lutheran Church to mask its monstrous agenda in sanctimony. Through the German Christian movement, the Nazis crushed dissent, injected venomous Aryan theology into sermons, and wielded Christian rhetoric to justify genocide and militarism. They weaponized faith to twist loyalty into fanaticism, forging a perverse godhead that sanctified cruelty.
Meanwhile, the Vatican under Pope Pius XII held its silence like a fortress of cowardice. Despite witnessing the Confessing Church’s fierce opposition, Pius XII calculated cold diplomacy over righteous outcry. When Rome’s Jews faced deportation in 1943, he offered hollow excuses instead of incendiary condemnation, betraying the innocent to the machinery of death.
Three Germans, three souls born into the turmoil of a shattered nation: Heidegger, the unrepentant collaborator, entangled in toxic ideology; Bonhoeffer, the prophetic conscience who sacrificed all to resist evil; and Pius XII, whose silence stained the Church’s legacy. Their stark choices carve a brutal fault line between genius warped by power, conscience sharpened by courage, and cowardice cloaked in diplomacy.
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Heidegger was the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.
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False — or at least, not objectively true.
The claim “Heidegger was the greatest thinker of the twentieth century” is a value judgment, not an empirically verifiable fact. Its truth depends entirely on how one defines “greatness” in thought, and that definition varies based on philosophical, ethical, and methodological standards.
Heidegger’s Being and Time attempts to reawaken philosophical inquiry into the meaning of Being itself (Sein), arguing that Western philosophy since Plato has neglected this basic question. In this sense, Heidegger’s originality is undeniable: he re-centered the question of existence, not through abstraction, but through lived human experience (Dasein).
Heidegger’s critique remained internal to the Western metaphysical tradition. He did not engage non-Western logical systems or alternative epistemological frameworks such as PaRDeS (פרדס) — the fourfold Jewish hermeneutic model — or the clal u’prat method in Talmudic reasoning. Nor did he explore inductive-analogical reasoning characteristic of Oral Torah dialectics, in contrast to the syllogistic deductive logic rooted in Aristotelian tradition.
While Heidegger was a profound and original ontologist, his lack of engagement with non-Greek logics, his ethical failings (notably his support for Nazism), and his deliberate obscurity make the label “greatest thinker” deeply contestable. His approach to Being was revolutionary within European metaphysics, but it was not universal, nor did it integrate pluralistic or comparative logical methodologies.
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Heidegger he did not produce original scholarship. His scholarship as paper thin as Goyim reactionaries like the EU which condemns Israel’s Oct 7th Abomination War in Gaza while ignores that a terrorist just shot down two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington DC.
I realize this is a long piece, I just wrote it to my son in law. But it appears appropriate for this subject touching Heidegger as a Jew hating German pig.
I would like to introduce you to honest originial scholarship as opposed to the Heidegger drek.
How the Cohen blessing ברכת כהנים shapes the kre’a shma tefillah from the Torah and halacha disputed between the Rambam and the Rosh
This blessing known as ברכת כהנים – the blessing of the sons of Aaron. Shares a common root denominator with the 3 Divine Names employed in the language of the opening p’suk/verse of Sh’ma Yisroel …
This tri-blessing stands on the foundation of the oaths sworn by Avraham, Yitzak and Yaacov which create continuously the Chosen Cohen People – throughout time. A mitzva which the Torah defines as a “time oriented commandment”. The Book of בראשית introduces Av tohor time oriented commandments. The next 3 Books of the Torah, they introduce secondary positive and negative תרי”ג commandments – according to the erroneous popular opinion of the Rambam.
This idea that limits Torah commandments to merely 613 commandments, the Rambam disputed with the earlier scholar known as the B’HaG, author of Hilchot Gadolot/Great Halachot. There in that sefer, the B’HaG argues that Torah commandments extend equally to rabbinic halachot “commandments”, under the pre-condition, when a scholar elevates rabbinic halachot to Torah time oriented commandments! A tremendous chiddush/new idea of how to understand the Torah commandments. Which clearly the Rambam failed to grasp.
The Rambam never developed, (just as did the new testament fail to grasp time oriented Torah commandments), a clear understanding of tohor time oriented commandments as having a priority over positive and negative commandments. Why? The tuma influence of new testament avoda zara, shaped the Koran avoda zara. The idea of Monotheism, as a theological belief system which promotes belief in a Universal God, clearly befuddled the mind of the Rambam. The God of Sinai – a Tribal God. Mesechta Avoda Zara and other mesechtot argue that only Israel accepted the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. Hence the God of Israel, clearly not a Universal God as the avoda zara of the new testament and koran declares.
The Rambam, likewise clearly did not understand that the T’NaCH and Talmudic legal system spun around the central axis of common law. Rabbi Yechuda the Head of the Great Sanhedrin Court organized his 6 Orders of Oral Torah judicial legal rulings which he named “the Mishna” based upon this name given to the 5th Book of the Written Torah D’varim/Mishna Torah. Mishna Torah means – common law. The Mishna a Case/Din organization of common law judicial rulings.
The Rambam erroneously named his statute law, obviously assimilated – to the ways of how Greek and Roman law organized law into legal categories. The Rambam erroneously named his statute halachic code Mishna Torah, utterly oblivious to the fact that Mishna Torah means – common law. Later rabbis hence corrected this fundamental error made by the Rambam by referring to his halachic code by the name Yad Chazaka/strong hand.
The error that the Rambam statute law introduced, dates back to the Rif common law codification of halacha criticized by the 18 year old scholar known as the Baali HaMaor. Personally I admire and respect the Baali HaMaor’s critique made upon the Rif common law code. For me the Baali HaMaor rates side by side with the Rabbeinu Tam my personal hero of Talmudic common law. It seems to me that the Tosafot critique of the Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud centers upon the basic contradiction of Rashi p’shat learned from his common law commentary to the Chumash to the dictionary definition of p’shat learned from his commentary to the Talmud. The latter more resembles how Ibn Ezra learned p’shat as codified in his commentary to the Chumash. Assimilation and intermarriage define the k’vanna of the 2nd Sinai commandment, not to worship other Gods.
The RambaN (1194 – 1270), a scholar who challenged the Baal HaMaor’s prioritization of judicial interpretation of different Case/Law. The scattered Jewish communities during the height of the dark ages where travel and communications between distant communities almost completely perished. The RambaN opposed the prioritization of interpreting different judicial case/rule halachot from the need to establish a unified code of halachic common law so that the scattered Jewish communities could maintain some semblance of unified customs and traditions. Scattered Jewish communities needed at that time some type of fixed culture and tradition rather than the Talmudic priority of disciplined פרדס common law judicial ruling.
The Rosh, born around 1250, a harsh critic of the Rambam statute law perversion of Talmudic common law. This “perversion” introduced Halacha clothed in the garments of Greek/Roman, cult of Caesar personality, legislative decrees ruled by the authority of the Rambam – Heil to the Leader!
This altered and changed the Talmudic format, which relied upon court judicial ruling – ruled through precedents. The Rambam code expunged the concept of judicial precedents as the backbone for judicial common law rulings. Yet he amazing had the chutzpah to name his statute law code perversion – Mishna Torah! His replacement theology introduced Greek logic, specifically Aristotelian logic – based upon how Arabic scholar interpreted this system of syllogism based deductive logic.
The Rambam codification uprooted the concept of Order established through Gemara sugya integrity. In effect the Rambam code cast the editing efforts made by Rav Ashi and Rav Ravina and the 150 years of Sovaraim scholarship between 450 to 600 CE, upon the dung heaps of history. His code effectively blew out the lights of Hanukkah which culminated in the victory of the P’rushim over the assimilated to Greek culture and customs Tzeddukim kapo Jews of the House of Aaron. The latter sought to make Jerusalem into a Greek polis whereas the former maintained the masoret of פרדס Oral Torah inductive logic reasoning; which compares case law to similar cases of case law ruled from previous court room cases.
פרדס logic defines the kabbalah of rabbi Akiva which all the rabbinic authorities in the Mishna and Gemara based their sh’ittot of learning upon. Inductive logic dynamic and not static as expressed through the syllogism model of Greek philosophy. Engineering a rocket’s flight path to Mars requires calculus variables. Whereas designing a bridge to span a river only needs algebra and basic geometry. In this sense, the modern scientific method which absolutely requires empirical evidence resembles static Catholic dogmatism.
The Rambam’s static code of Aristotelian logic, set the stage for the Reform Judaism revolt which denounced the halachic code of the Shulkan Aruch, modeled upon the Rambam’s Yad, as archaic and not applicable to the Modern Era – a just and valid criticism of post Ghetto rabbinic Judaism. Alas in the latter case, Reform threw out the baby together with the bath-water! It failed to address the eternal threat of Amalek. The consequences of Jewish avoda zarah assimilation and intermarriage with Goyim. This basic fundamental flaw equally defines and highlights the tragic error of the Rambam’s Yad introduction of Greek Roman statute law and Aristotelian logic based upon how Arab scholars understood this triangle syllogism of deductive static reasoning.
T’shuva demands that post Rambam Civil War scholars return and respect how the closing scholars sealed the Talmud texts. This requires a disciplined study of Talmudic sugyot. As an English minor, remember my Freshmen year of English literature. There the professor emphasized the organization of a thesis statement. This organization of a paragraph included the central thesis statement, followed by three qualifying particulars, and concluded with a re-statement of the original thesis statement.
This model, coupled with the deductive reasoning of a triangular syllogism, served as the basis by which I studied intact Gemara sugyot. The sh’itta of the Rabbeinu Tam, where he as a rule, tended to jump off the dof of the Gemara to some other Mesechta of Gemara intrigued me. Noticed that Rabbeinu Tam jumps to different Gemara “precedents” tended to follow the patterns which later Acharonim scholars on the Talmud tended to duplicate through their asterix terse commentaries which made a גזירה שווה comparison between different mesechtot of Gemara.
Early on, starting with my first year in Yeshiva, I strove to integrate the earlier Case/rule precedents within the Yerushalmi as the basis for the later Bavli scholarship. I started this sh’itta within 6 months of being in Yeshiva. In like manner my sh’itta of learning broke up the Chumash, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings of the T’NaCH. It seems to me that T’NaCH serves as the foundation of Talmudic common law just as much as the Yerushalmi serves as the basis of Bavli common law.
This premise caused me to divide the Chumash into בראשית Av tohor time oriented commandments and שמות ויקרא במדבר as תולדות קום ועשה ושב ולא תעשה מצוות. The Book of דברים of course name משנה תורה and the common law case/din style of the Mishna caused me to conclude, even before I entered my first Yeshiva at age 31 that the Talmud exists as a common law legal format. Hence I opposed the Rambam, Tur, Shulkan Aruch statute halacha straight from my mothers’ milk.
Perhaps the main reason that the rabbis permitted a 31 year old man to live and learn in a dorm of early 20s men, besides my cleaning the bathrooms, which everyone immediately appreciated, I introduced a thesis of studying the Talmud as common law based upon legal precedents. The rabbis laughed at my thesis, but I believe my early attempt to argue that the Mishna exists as a common law legalism impressed the Rosh Yeshiva rabbi Kaplan.
Because he specifically taught in his Mishna class the Case/Din structure of the language of the Mishna – as proof of common law! Did he do this for me? I believe he actually respected the 50 page thesis, written while working milking cows on a socialist kibbutz, as my basis for which I asked permission to learn in Yeshiva as a 31 year old man. Yeshua Lapel, also taught as a rabbi in that Yeshiva, and early on he told me that he thought I might become a Torah scholar.
When I moved to the Yeshiva of D’var Yerushalem, they treated me as royalty, gave me a private room with a balcony! All other students had 3 or 4 in a room. When Rabbi Horowitz had a bad dream he asked me to give him, as one of the three men, מחילה. Rabbi Nemuraskii introduced me to Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv. His sons, Moshe and Benyamin, they danced at my wedding; and Rabbi Elyashiv asked me – erev Yom Kippur – to give him a public blessing, just before we began Kol Nidre.
Rabbi Nemuraskii’s son asked me one day while walking to the Elyashiv shul, why his father did not teach him the common law masoret which I learned from his father? Rav Nemuraskii, besides hilchot shabbat, he focused my attention upon the Chumash Targumim and the Midrashic commentaries made upon the Aggada of the Sha’s Bavli.
Prior to this introduction, had not considered the Midrash as the primary commentary to the Aggada. This huge chiddush of rabbi Nemuraskii shaped how I developed the thesis that the Talmud compares to a warp/weft loom. Where the Aggadic portions make a דרושפשט of T’NaCH Primary Sources to determine the k’vanna of the language of the Aggadic stories. And this k’vanna weaves into the halachot within the Gemara’s common law commentary which re-interprets the language of the Mishna.
Herein defines the explanation wherein the B’hag developed three distinct branches of Torah commandments as opposed to the Rambam’s two branches of Torah commandments. All the rabbinic commandments which the B’HaG ruled as mitzvot from the Torah, time oriented commandments! The dynamics of the B’HaG Code of Common law interpreted to mean that if a person wove Aggadic prophetic mussar into the רמזסוד of halachic ritual observance, that doing mitzvot with the k’vanna of prophetic mussar elevates these rabbinic mitvot into Torah commandments! This insight, seemed to me as a revelation in and of itself!
When I studied the Baali HaMaor’s criticism of the Rif, I studied it together with the B’HaG common law halachic codification. The genius of these to Talmudic scholars absolutely left me dumbfounded, thunderstruck, flabbergasted, stunned, and utterly astonished. Rabbi Waldman, whose opinion I admired and really trusted offered no enlightenment, why the Yeshiva world ignores these great men.
This caused me to reach the conclusion that post the Rambam extinguishment of the lights of Hanukkah wherein Israel had dedicated to remember the Oral Torah through interpreting the Written Torah – based upon the kabbalah of rabbi Akiva’s פרדס four-part inductive reasoning process – that following the disaster of the public burning of the Talmud in Paris 1242, rabbinic Judaism jumped off the path of studying the T’NaCH and Talmud as common law based upon this chosen path of פרדס inductive logic, and forgot the Oral Torah revelation at Horev 40 days after the sin of the Golden Calf – just as the blessing of Hanukkah in the bencher forewarns.
The Yerushalmi which teaches that over 427 prophets wrote the Shemone Esrei corresponds to the number of words in the Yerushalmi Shemone Esrei itself. Just as Siddur stands upon the foundation of ס – ד – ר, so too and how much more so the editing of the Talmudic sugyot likewise stand upon the identical foundation as defines the Order of 3 + 13 + 3 = 613. Six Yom Tov + Shabbat … the number of blessing said every shabbat. The Minorah lights of k’vanna by which Israel dedicates our the 7 faces of our soul to keeping the Torah oath brit alliance which continually creates from nothing the Chosen Cohen People יה, האל, אל, אלהים, אל שדי, איש האלהים, שלום … these 7 Divine Names distinguish the spirits dedicated and blown from the Yatzir Ha’Tov within our hearts from the breath blown from our lungs; just as the blessing over wine separates shabbat from chol מלאכה from עבודה.
Observance of Shabbat as a time oriented commandment, the dedication not to do forbidden מלאכה on the day of Shabbat/shalom this holiness likewise dedicates the other 6 lights of the Menorah soul on the 6 days of the week we ‘most holy’ dedicate (an inference made upon Baba Kama 4 Avot Tam damages) not doing חמס, גזל, ערוה, ושוחד במשפט during the Yom Tov of the 6 days of the week. Hence just as the Menorah lights really one light, so too shabbat as a Torah time oriented commandment inclusive of the entire week. Herein defines how the k’vanna of the time oriented commandment of Shabbat encapsules all the Torah commandments, from the Torah as the Rambam learns and from the Talmud as the B’HaG learns.
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When Israel came out of Egypt the Torah teaches the prophetic mussar that Amalek-Anti-Semitism attacked the weary weak stragglers of Israel. Next the Torah defines these “Israelites” as lacking fear of Elohim. A reference to “Baal Shem Tov or Master of the Good Name. Not the Hassidic founder that goes by this Title, but a reference to the obligation of the Israelites to strive to protect and maintain their Good Name reputations. Hence the term “Fear of Heaven”.
The 2nd Sinai commandment: do not worship other Gods. The Monotheism preached by the Av tumah avoda zarah of Islam decapitates the 2nd Commandment of the Sinai revelation. If only One God then impossible to worship other Gods; like in the case of Par’o and Egypt. Therefore, what caused or generated the Torah curse of Amalek? Answer: Jewish avoda zarah – the direct 2nd Sinai commandment! How does the Torah define the 2nd commandment? Through the precedent negative commandments (1) Do not ask how the Goyim worship their Gods, that Israel might to likewise. This negative commandment interpreted to mean (A) Do not assimilate the cultures and Customs of the Goyim who reject the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, like as both Xtianity and Islam clearly do. Neither the bible nor the koran counterfeit faiths ever once bring or mention the Name revealed in the 1st Sinai commandment. Translating the Divine Presence Spirit, revealed in the 1st Sinai commandment to other words; in Hebrew the Sin of the Golden Calf – these are the אלהים/Gods who brought you out of Egypt. Hence since nothing in the Heavens, Earth, or Seas compares to the revelation of the Spirit Name revealed in the First Sinai commandment, therefore translating this Spirit Name to other words, such as Allah or Jesus or Father etc — herein defines the k’vanna of the substitute theology of the sin of the Golden Calf.
Consequently, when Israelites violated the 2nd Sinai commandment – the result of their assimilation to the customs and culture of Egypt and intermarried with Egyptians ie ערב רב/mixed multitudes – this avoda zarah destroyed their Good Name reputations making them “weak exhausted stragglers”. Not physically weak and exhausted but spiritually weak and exhausted! Who brought Israel out of Egypt HaShem or the strong and mighty hand of Israel? The Torah teaches the prophetic mussar that HaShem brought Israel out of Egypt! Hence whenever Jews assimilate and embrace the cultures and customs practiced by Goyim who reject the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, as do Xtians and Muslim religions, Amalek the Torah curse plagues Israel like as did the 10 plagues which cursed Egypt and Par’o. Jewish avoda zarah caused the Torah curse of Amalek in all generations.
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I am not aware of a union that does not end up like this. Not only does Conquest’s 2nd law apply with a vengance, given that from birth, there’s not much further left virtually every union can go, but the types who staff union jobs are at best just ideologues, and at worst, also too incompetent to have done their “real” job, resulting in their fleeing to the union hall where turning a wrench, etc. is not a necessary skill. AI will quickly point you to appropriate writings by Orwell, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, among many others who’ve written exstensively on the topic.
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I am also ambivalent for pretty much the same reason. The two unions I’ve been involved with made pay and benefits reasonable but absolutely protected and defended the laziest and most incompetent workers.
Amanda
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