I remember reading once a very clever analogy, which I was sure that I had found in the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz (who sourced it, from memory, in the writings of the Rav, R' Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, who himself sourced it in the Rambam), but I can no longer locate it at all. In essence, the analogy stated that God is like fire. Different objects, when dropped into the fire, react differently. Some become hard. Some become soft. Some let off smoke. Some change their hue. Some make a noise. Some might explode. But while all of these different reactions can be found, at no stage is the fire anything other than a fire; the difference in responses to it is to be found in the different objects that come into contact with it.

So too, the analogy concluded, when it comes to our relationship with God. When we pray, we change ourselves in order that God might interact more favourably with us. We do not hope for God to change in any way, but for ourselves to change instead. God's influence upon the world is constant and unchanging; it is we who are in flux.

Does this analogy sound familiar to anybody? If you can direct me to a printed source (be it in the writings of the Rav, or Prof. Leibowitz, or whomever it was who came up with this), I would be much obliged.


Question: Can you disavow a whole domain apart from the index page?
Answer: There is no way to disavow a portion of a site.  Here is the documentation for the disavow file format.  It only supports three types of lines:


Comments that start with a #
Single URLs (each on a line by itself)
Domain rules such as domain:shadyseo.com


The disavow file does NOT support more complex matches such as:


Folder matches
Wildcard matches
Regular expression matches.


The only way to disavow all the links on a site other than on the homepage would be to make a complete list of all the pages with links on the site but then not include the home page.