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Shtisel

I'm struggling to get back to work now that my daughter is school age. I was walking along thinking about my antipathy for the todo list. 

Then I thought how Shulem has to pretend he's making a gifted school, to appeal to the vanities of the parents, to win his school back when it's wrestled away from him. 

Sometimes you have to participate in antithetical things you don't like to keep what you do like. That is just one of the many countless absurdities of the modern life.

I also loved the conflict between the ascetic life, the pious life, versus the artistic life, the life of beauty. I think the spiritual life needs beauty, that's how you find the spiritual life. And yet running for comfort and pleasure don't work. 

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