Hearted Youtube comments on Sam Aronow (@SamAronow) channel.
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Sam, I don't know if you hear this very often enough, so I'll say it here. You have become a truly amazing storyteller. 8 haven't been watching your channel from the beginning, the first video I watched is one you've since taken down, the one on Hebrew linguistics (I think the relationship between it and the other Semitic languages, but I can't recall exactly), which, despite your misgivings 8 enjoyed greatly. After that, I proceeded to watch your entire backlog up to that point, and have watched every new video nearly as soon as it comes out. It didn't take you long to hit your stride, but you've never stopped improving. Keep up the good work. Now, I'm going to rewatch this video, because you've reached the point where it's both very enjoyable to do so, and practically necessary to actually absorb everything.
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This was certainly one of the most fascinating episodes. The story of Shabtai Zvi gets crazier the more I learn about it. To be perfectly honest I kinda hoped we will hear more on this channel about the Jewish life in Poland-Lithuania before everything went downhill in 1648, for example about the forms of Jewish self-government: the kahals and the Council of Four Lands (and the separate Council of Lithuania since 1623), but maybe there will be an opportunity to mention this institutions latter, before or as they will be dissolved? Or maybe a mention of the Karaim (Karaites) community. BTW did you count the Karaites among the Jewish population of the Commonwealth?
I was really surprised by that part about inbreeding (and the soundtrack was a very funny touch).
Describing the Cossacks, specifically the Zaporozhian ones, as "Russian-speaking" at 4:27 might be very problematic to some, I think that Ruthenian or East Slavic would be safer terms (Ukrainian might be a bit anachronistic). Interestingly, I remember reading in Timothy Snyder's The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 that during the Pereyaslav Council of 1654 Khmelnytsky's Cossacks and the representatives of the Russian Tsar discovered they need translators, despite both calling their language "Ruski/Rusky", because the forms that became modern Ukrainian and Russian were already becoming significantly different.
I assume that the ending was a foreshadowing of Hasidism, but was the foreboding "for the most part" at 27:22 a foreshadowing of Frankism?
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