Seth J

TSA and Profiling Part 1

2010-11-23T16:09:00.006-05:00

I'm sure this can lead to a whole long series of posts, so let's call this Part 1, on the assumption that there could be a Part 2 and possibly more.

Some people are trying to make the case for racial profiling at airports based on the fact that the TSA's new screening techniques are horrible violations of individual rights, and the idea that racial profiling, as practiced by El Al* would be much better, and that we have been forced to submit to this tyranny because of "PC run amok". I'm sorry, that's false.

I am no fan of the TSA or its screening methods (something for a later post), but it is not (or ought not be) an issue of PC. I'm against straight racial profiling, but I'm not against using El Al's techniques. El Al profiles, but not racially. It's also not an invasive or obstructive process ...that causes major delays. They interview every single passenger, and when someone fits a profile - any profile - of someone that might be a threat (shifty, nervous, no checked baggage, one-way ticket, etc.) they interview them more thoroughly and check their bags by hand. This would also be a more effective method of detecting illegal contraband. And then there are several highly trained, armed and alert - and hidden - air marshals on the aircraft. http://online.wsj.com/video/how-israel-screens-for-terrorists/987D025A-145D-42F5-9756-7B43CC7613CE.html?mod=googlewsj

Even the head of the New Jersey ACLU has said that only once someone has been determined to be a possible threat, once there is probably cause - and only once there is probably cause (such that a full strip-search would be warranted) - should the full-body scanners be used (ie, as a convenient alternative to a physical strip search).
http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/doherty/sens-doherty-beach-introduce-resolution-calling-on-congress-to-reconsider-tsa-screening-procedures/7133

But you'd have to have people who are properly trained and who are educated beyond a high school level. You also have to have people who love their jobs. It can't be a standard civil-service job; it has to be a smart, highly educated and extensively trained workforce.

Watch this short clip see how ridiculous and ineffective the screening process is (it's the "Adam Savage says, 'WTF, TSA?'" video, in case you've already seen it):

*I do not know for certain that El Al is in fact the entity employing the screeners at Ben Gurion Airport. But this is the way people are addressing the issue, and I'm not about to delve into a whole lengthy research project and explanation into who is or is not responsible for the security protocol in Israel's main airport, So I'll just go with it for now.

Is this a normal election year? Part II

2010-11-01T15:37:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post criticizing the conventional wisdom as being flawed. I thought that analyzing traditional voter models would give us a false sense of who is likely to vote, and that, therefore, the polls predicting the outcomes of this year's elections were faulty.

I also criticized Nate Silver, from 538.com, whom I admired for his success in predicting past races, because, although, he has in the past been one to ignore the conventional wisdom, I felt that, this year, he is only slightly modifying the analysis of the conventional models, rather than relying on better models like he had in other elections.

Yesterday, though, Mr. Silver wrote a great piece, explaining that not only are conventional models are flawed, but how they are flawed, and how that could actually mean a BIGGER Republican landslide than the conventional models have been predicting.

Here's the piece: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/5-reasons-republicans-could-do-even-better-than-expected/

He also promises a follow-up piece explaining how this could mean that the Democrats could hold on and stave off a devastating tidal wave of Republican resurgence. I hope that comes today, as I'm very curious to read the other side of this analysis (no, not because I hope the Democrats are successful; I just really am curious). I find Mr. Silver's honesty refreshing, and I wish he and others had been as honest about this faulty polling and data analysis long before this weekend.

Argh! The Tea Party, Limited Government, and States' Rights. Or: What happened to the freakin' Constitution?

2010-10-19T14:27:00.003-04:00

Wendy Kaminer writes in the Atlantic that the Tea Party does not live up to its purported ideals of limited government. No kidding? Who knew?

Unfortunately, in making her point, she very badly falls into the trap of the Tea Partiers' (and Reagan-Bush II-Cheney Republicans') definitions of the terms she is trying to pry out of their hands.

Read the article, and (I hope) you'll understand what I mean.

Here's my take on it, as I wrote in the comments:

"Only a minority of libertarians (some of whom can be found at the CATO Institute) are consistent in their commitment to individual freedom and an unregulated marketplace."

Why does it have to be all or nothing in order to be consistent? Federal intervention in the market can be defined (and manifested) in different ways. Regulation is NOT the same thing as corporate welfare or takeovers of whole industries. Setting fair-play rules when corporations run by elites affect the lives of individuals in all 50 states is not necessarily anti-Federalist (at least not as far over the line as bailouts or corporate takeovers). And government recognition of marriage - at all - is as anti-Federalist as government restriction on some marriages. As a fundamentally religious institution, marriage ought not be dealt with by the federal government at all. If the government wants to promote higher birth-rates and finds it better for children to grow up in a family environment, then let's have tax policies that favor family units over non-family models of child-rearing, and let's have a political debate over what defines a "family". But let the government stay out of defining marriage altogether.

There needs to be a serious debate about what role the federal government has in a society that is supposed to be made up of "the several States", as our Constitution refers to them over and over. Simultaneously, and not necessarily independently, there needs to be a serious, renewed debate about States' rights, what that means, what the limitations are, and what the limitations are on the federal government's reach into states' affairs.

And, hello? Doesn't anyone ever read the 9th or 10th amendments? Or do they get confused by the 7th, gloss over the 8th ("Yeah, Cruel and Unusual Punishment is bad; I get that") and then quit?

Just as a follow-up point, it turns out that Christine O'Donnell doesn't know what the Constitution says. There's a shocker.

Is this a normal election year?

2010-10-13T14:21:00.006-04:00

I don't know. Everyone is saying this is the year of the Republican Party. The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats aren't excited and won't turn out, and that the Tea Party is "fired up and ready to go". Over the last few election cycles, though, I've been seeing a trend: conventional wisdom is not what it used to be. We've seen exit-polling that has been at odds with election returns. We've seen wild shifts in polling results. Some have even claimed that we've even seen political pundits with an agenda determine, by sheer dint of their insistence that a close election went the way they wanted it to, the accepted version of the final election results.

Even the venerated election forecaster Nate Silver of 538.com fame is going along with the conventional wisdom this year. I know this is a swing year, and that the Democrats, especially freshmen in conservative districts, are likely lose seats. But I have not yet been convinced that this election cycle is going to follow traditional patterns. Even though 538 has an incredibly accurate track record when it comes to forecasting results, Silver is still using, fundamentally, traditional models to reach their conclusions. Yes, he is using new ways to analyze those models, which is what has led to some very different and surprisingly accurate predictions as compared to everyone else, but in the end everyone is weighing polling data that is based on interviews with registered voters.

In this election, the polling data, I feel, is incomplete. There is no way to predict - at this point - how disappointed liberals will act (or not act) on Election Day. The "enthusiasm gap" is real, but how it will manifest itself in the election is, I think, still up in the air. If the liberal base of the Democratic Party is really upset, they would be hurting their own interests by sitting at home or voting for an uber-liberal, third-party candidate. After the Newt Gingrich years, the 2000 election and the Bush years, I'm not so sure they would do that to themselves.

Of course, if people don't feel compelled to act in their own self interest, which is typical of the American electorate, the traditional models will likely be proven correct, and everyone who has been hoping for a revival of the youth vote, of sorts, will be left wondering how they could have gotten all excited in one election and then stayed home in what is essentially the follow-up.

"Excuse me, sir, I know you might be Jewish, but can you spare 3 quarters?"

2010-07-01T09:39:00.008-04:00

I was asked this question yesterday on the DC Metro (of which I am not a fan anymore anyway - please support a blog I find most helpful and often funny: http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/ and follow its creator on Twitter @UnsuckDCMetro).

And I posted the comment on Facebook, asking my friends if they could think of any way to not take offense to this. Just by way of giving context, I decided to add, "I just said, 'Excuse me?' and he repeated himself word for word! Then I just told him I didn't have any change." I got a whole bunch of "What?" and "OMG" type of comments, along with a lot of witty replies. I got one reply actually attempting to make me feel better about the situation, which was, "how to not be offended..he could have needed 10 bucks but was trying to be nice and only ask you for 75 cents..." [sic]

I agree that it's important to judge others favorably. It's a core principle in Pirqei Avoth (1:6). After being introduced as having received the Mesorah (tradition) from his teachers, in direct succession from Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our teacher), Yehoshua' ben Perahiyah is quoted as having said, "Make for yourself a Rav [rabbi/master/teacher/mentor], acquire for yourself a friend (this clause, historically, has received a tremendous amount of commentary, which I won't get into in this post), and be one who judges every person in the cup (as on a scale) of merit." This has generally been understood to mean that we ought to give people the benefit of the doubt, to the point that even if we know that someone is doing something wrong, we must at least try to come up with a reason - even an implausible one - to justify the person's actions in our own minds. This, incidentally, does not apply when you are coming to a verdict in some criminal or civil case, but it applies forcefully (along with other similar principles) when you are sitting as a judge/juror hearing testimony and evidence, before you are ready to make your judgment.

In any case, I don't think it really applies here, and this is why (this is my edited response to my friends' comments on Facebook, plus a little commentary of my own at the end):

I ate Hummus and Pita with a non-Jewish co-worker in his office last week, and he was telling me about when he was younger ... his next door neighbor comes over to introduce himself and says, "Hi, I'm Lou the Jew!" This co-worker is about 40, and this was when he was probably 20+, and at the time Lou the Jew was apparently approaching 90. So there may have been a generational disconnect, but he thought it was absolutely hilarious, and I said, I understand, it probably sounded like he was saying, "Hi, I'm Ike the Kike!" He told me that Lou the Jew taught him a few words and phrases in Yiddish. I told him my personal feelings about Yiddish (not positive, in case you were wondering), and we discussed how pop culture reflects a lot of Yiddish-based Jewish culture as translated into American society, but how this is outdated because it is from a time when the entertainment industry was dominated by Jews who were just trying to make a living in the "Goldeneh Medineh", and how a lot of the remnants of that are really only seen among secular/non-practicing Jews in America, not religious/practicing Jews in America - or even in Jewish communities elsewhere in the world. We discussed the fact that Jews all over the world have different cultural norms, even while maintaining a core element that ties us together - our Jewishness (however that is manifested, either religiously or otherwise). I have no problem sharing annecdotes, even ones that skirt - or cross - the line of what would otherwise be considered appropriate conversation, with people who respect me and recognize that they and I both view me as being different from them. That's our role - to stand out and set an example of people who are put on this earth to serve G-d. But when someone blatantly throws an offensive stereotype in my face, and he doesn't blink or even seem to think it's offensive, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. My reaction 10 years ago might have been a bit more dramatic. I think if I had wanted to rumble with this guy I would have had about 20 people helping me. But I just calmly told him I didn't have any change and left it at that.

I don't think in certain circumstances that judging favorably helps. I don't think in such circumstances that it is even warranted. In this particular case, the man either didn't care or didn't know that he was saying something offensive. And that, to me, speaks volumes about his ideas of what makes for proper discourse. The best case scenario, that I can think of, to judge him favorably, is that he simply has no frame of reference for what it means to choose your words carefully so as not to offend another person by assuming you know their personality based on external appearances. But even this isn't applicable, because this man was African American, not entirely but pretty well disheveled, and was telling people that he just got out of criminal court and was trying to get somewhere (home, I assume) after having been released from prison. How does someone who is fitting (and presumably having trouble fighting) some evil stereotypes about his own race, sex and appearance, not realize that perhaps it would be to his benefit not to subsequently judge others by evil stereotypes based on theirs appearances? Eventually, I think, you can draw the line and say, no, this person just doesn't get it - or else, to use a word he probably would have expected me to use, he is a complete schmuck.

2010-04-13T11:35:00.003-04:00

In response to criticism of the comparison in the cartoon below that such a comparison is "cheap and unjustifiable", I ended up writing the following comment (below the link):

http://blog.cagle.com/2010/04/09/matthew-borss-cartoon-for-492010/

I am not the one who asked, "what if the governor had been German?" But I did ask (at the time of the controversy) "How about a Nazi History Month?" The comparison is neither cheap, nor unjustifiable. Nazism had philosophis about society and politics that, had they not all been rooted in a notion that the Jews were the cause of all their problems, would be ideas that could be debated with critical analysis, if not even accepted. At the start there were many Jews who supported the Nazi Party and joined the cause, because they agreed with those philosophies. The fact that we can debate States' Rights vs. Federal Power, or the idea that Lincoln may have overstepped his authority as President, does not depend on recognizing and celebrating "Confederate History". One cannot - in any reasonable way - celebrate the history of a movement/philosophy/ideology/institution whose core was rotten and evil, and believed that other human beings were less simply because of some genetic factor. ... See MoreYes, the Confederacy had noble principles. Yes, there is plenty of reason to believe that slavery would have ended even in the Confederacy after couple of more decades. Yes, we have a federal government today that seems to forget the founding principles of the United States. Yes, a lot of that can be traced back to the Civil War era. Yes, had there never been slavery the Confederacy might still have ceceded from the Union and there still might have been a bloody Civil War over the rest of their principles. But the fact that the core of the Confederacy's complaint about States' Rights was an effort to protect their "traditional way of life" (ie, owning slaves that were treated not only as property, not only as sub-human creatures, but as THINGS with which they could do whatever they wanted, including but not limited to raping, deforming and killing), makes the entire institution evil, and all its complaints and ideals and philosophies moot. To celebrate "Confederate History" - and to "forget" to include any reference to slavery! - is to insult an entire race of people that, had the Confederacy not been quashed, might still be enslaved today. Just as to celebrate Nazi History would be an insult - a grotesque insult - to millions of us who, had the Nazis not been crushed, might today not even exist.

JStreet vs. Palin

2009-11-20T11:24:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in a while, and this will be short, but it's what I'm thinking about...right...now.

I'm getting a headache reading this stuff. Read at your own risk (if you haven't already). http://www.jstreet.org/blog/?p=740

There's no question in my mind that Palin is ignorant, and dangerously so for a person with such a public platform to influence others (and, G-d forbid, possibly become president). But there is also no question in my mind that JStreet is the least pro-Israel group out there that purports to be pro-Israel. Their positions consistently undermine not only Israel's security, but the legitimacy of Israel's government (and public) to make its own decisions. Reading this whole back-and-forth is really starting to make me dizzy. Kudos to ADL Director Abe Foxman for calling it like it is. The ADL has a long history of condemning attacks on Jews and Israel from the outside, and as long a history of biting its tongue when Jewish groups attack one another. If you purport to be a Jewish and/or pro-Israel group, and the ADL is coming after you, you have some serious problems with your approach. At the very least, your message is not being delivered in a way that reflects well on you. I've been trying to give JStree the benefit of the doubt that they've simply got their priorities totally out of whack, but there's definitely a part of me that feels it's all a front and that they actually hate Israel.

I'm just curious what you think.

Have a wonderful Shabbath.

For reference:
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/11/18/1009285/palin-on-settlements-jews-flocking-to-israel-need-a-place-to-live
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/11/19/1009314/foxman-blasts-j-street-on-palin-questions-its-pro-israel-slogan
http://www.jstreet.org/blog/?p=740

Jumping to Conclusions, The Patriotic Retirement Plan, and Fuzzy Math

2009-08-20T10:35:00.006-04:00

The following email has been going around a lot lately. The text (of at least one version) of the email is immediately below, followed by my comments on it.

-----------------------------------------
Subject: PLAN TO FIX THE ECONOMY

This is from an article in the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper on Sunday. The Business Section asked readers for ideas on “How Would You Fix the Economy?”

I think this guy nailed it!

Dear Mr. President:
Please find below my suggestion for fixing America ’s economy.Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the Following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – Housing Crisis fixed.

It can’t get any easier than that!

If more money is needed, have all members of Congress and their constituents pay their taxes…
------------------------------------------------

Now, first of all, whenever you get one of these emails, you have to ask yourself where it originated. My gut instinct is to always check www.snopes.com. They're very good at confirming or debunking urban myths sent around by email. In this case, I didn't look it up on Snopes, but instead I just looked up the line preceding the proposal, "You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan," on Google. It turns out that, with a little embelishment, the proposal presented in the email did, in fact, come from a reader of the St. Petersburg Times, who was, in fact, responding to a request by the paper for readers to submit their ideas for how to fix the economy. It was first published in print (and online) on Sunday, February 8, 2009.
Here's the link: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article973953.ece

Fine, it's settled that this is not some hokey chain email that someone made up in his basement for his own amusement that went viral.

But wait, let's think about the proposal itself. It sounds good, right? $1M retirement package? 40M new jobs? 40M cars purchased? No more "underwater" mortgages?

Oh, wait, I'm sorry, how are we going to pay for those payouts? Here's an imaginary conversation I had with the generic reader of this guy's suggestion whose gut reaction was to say that this would be an amazing idea and who passes it on by email to all his or her friends and family.

Said Reader: Well, it's only a million dollars. Surely the government can afford that. Why, we give billions to the banks!

Me: Yes, but it's a million dollars to a lot of people.

SR: Right, but let's figure this out: 1 million dollars times 40 is only 40 million dollars.

Me: Yes, yes, but remember, it's not 40 people. It's 40 MILLION people.

SR: Oh, right, so what's that then, like 400 billion dollars? We can afford that, right?

Me: Nope, it's higher.

SR: What, then, like 4 trillion? So what? That's high, but not as high as our national debt, which is only going to get higher because of all the money we're handing out in stimulus that may or may not work.

Me: That would be true, except that it's not. Keep going. It's not $4 trillion. It's $40 trillion.

I can see how someone can gloss over the 40 million x $1 million equation. I really can. I almost did, myself. It's easy to look at the bullet points and say, "Hey, that looks really good," without actually thinking about the total cost of the idea. I wish it were so simple. Unfortunately, we simply don't have that kind of money, and we won't anytime soon, especially if we enact something like that.

On the other hand, I have seen and heard some other proposals, which are not quite as costly, which have a bit more merit. One that sticks out in my mind has even been proposed by conservative economists to Republican leaders (I heard it, I think live, on C-SPAN Radio), and one that is very similar was mentioned by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and got a nod from another conservative economist, who was his guest, as a plausible solution to the housing crisis. Basically, the two similar proposals buy out all the "underwater" mortgages, or at least the portion that is "underwater", or perhaps take the average value of homes that are "underwater" and give that portion to those with mortgages that are "underwater" or nearly so, perhaps with a means test, so that people facing extreme financial pressure can have more money freed up from their debt, and so that the banks can have their liquidity back and can begin lending again (instead of just hoarding their bailout checks).

The latter option, with whatever variations and stipulations would go along with it, would be very expensive: somewhere in the tens to hundreds of billions, possibly even the low, single-digit trillions, of dollars. Whether it would work as intended, there's no way to know for sure. Whether it would trickle out (not exactly "down") to the rest of the economy, again, we can't know for sure. But it sounds like it could. It doesn't matter, though, since there's no talk of that happening. And with Health Care dominating the discussions these days, the bank bailouts already ongoing for several months now, and other stimulus projects slowly beginning to take shape, there's no money for that sort of initiative.

But it's a nice idea: Trickle-down hasn't worked, and trickle-up is too dependent on the moods of the people, so give money to the people with stipulations on how to spend it, or give it to the banks on behalf of the people, and everyone will get the money they need so that the economy can loosen-up and rebound.

Finally, I have to give a hat-tip to the Alaskan Librarian for the thoughtful analysis of the Patriotic Retirement Plan email. http://alaskanlibrarian.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/road-to-ruin-patriotic-retirement-plan/

A Day of National Mourning

2009-07-29T11:47:00.003-04:00

{I'm writing this to my friends from the Taglit-Birthright trip that I staffed in December 2008. If you are not one of them but are interested in reading it anyway, that is fine, and I hope you find it interesting and even enlightening, but please know that this is not directed to you.}

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to drop you all a line letting you know I’m thinking about you. I thought I would also share some thoughts on today and tomorrow.

In case you weren’t aware, tomorrow is a very significant day in Jewish history. It is known simply as Tisha B’Av, which just means the 9th of Av (“Av” being the name of the current month on the Jewish calendar). It is also regarded as the saddest day in Jewish history.

A few of the sad historical events that occurred on this day:
1. 10 of the 12 scouts sent by Moses to inspect the habitability of the Land of Canaan came back with a negative report, leading to widespread panic, a refusal among the people to enter the land, and ultimately causing our ancestors to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, with none of that generation surviving to enter the Land. (Two of the scouts saw the same things as the other ten, but had a more positive outlook, yet the people accepted the negative account.) (BaMidbar / Numbers 13-14)

2. Solomon’s Temple (the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem) is destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Jews are expelled from the Land of Israel and spend 70 years in exile.

3. Herod’s Temple (the second Holy Temple in Jerusalem, whose retaining wall we visited – aka the Western Wall; we also saw the Southern Wall excavations at the Davidson Center) is destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Jews are expelled from the Land of Israel once again, an exile which is still in place in many senses today, despite the establishment of the State of Israel. Remember Masada? The refugees from this war fled there and died about three years later in 73 CE. Josephus Flavius, a Jewish-Roman historian at the time, claimed that 1,100,000 were killed, the majority Jewish. 97,000 were captured and enslaved.

4. Bar Kokhba, a military leader who inspired a huge following to rebel against their Roman conquerors, is killed in battle in 135 CE. The same day, the city of Betar is destroyed. Casualties are unknown, but estimates range anywhere from 80,000-580,000.

5. The year after the Temple is destroyed, Jerusalem is razed.

6. In 1290, the Jews of England are expelled.

7. In 1492, the Alhambra Decree, expelling Jews from Spain, is issued on the 7th of Av, and is strongly associated with Tisha B’Av (it is possible that the actual expulsion began on the 9th).

8. In 1942, on the eve of Tisha B’Av, mass deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camp Treblinka begins.

9. (This one is a bit controversial, depending on your political views.) The Gaza Disengagement Plan, resulting in the eviction of the Settlers of Gush Katif, is scheduled to take place on August 14, 2005 – Tisha B’Av. When this is announced, massive protests result in a delay in the evacuation until August 15.

Observances and practices:

Tisha B’Av is observed as a “major” fast day. This means that, like Yom Kippur, and unlike “minor” fasts, not only are eating and drinking prohibited, but also bathing and washing, applying fragrances, wearing leather shoes, and sexual relations. In addition, as an added observance as a day of mourning, we sit on low chairs, we do not fulfill certain positive commandments like donning Tzitzit or Tefilin, and we refrain from studying Torah or Jewish law, with the exception of the laws of the day, the laws of mourning, and the stories of the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. The added observances of mourning are practiced from sunset tonight until noon tomorrow, whereas the observances of the day as a “major” fast are practiced from just prior to the start of sunset tonight until just after the completion of sunset tomorrow (8:22pm tonight until 9:07pm tomorrow night in the Metro DC area).

At the onset of the fast (tonight), Eikhah, (the Biblical book of Lamentations), is read in the synagogue, while the congregants typically sit on the floor or low stools. Contact your local congregation to find out their schedule.

In the morning (tomorrow), Kinnot, or mournful poems, are recited in the synagogue. They are also recited following the reading of Eikhah in the evening (tonight).

For more on the historical significance of Tisha B’Av, check out the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B

http://judaism.about.com/od/daysofmourning/a/tav_events.htm

http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishhistory/a/greatrevolt.htm

http://judaism.about.com/od/daysofmourning/f/temple1.htm

http://judaism.about.com/od/daysofmourning/f/temple2.htm

For more on the religious significance of Tisha B’Av, check out the following:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/144558/jewish/The-Three-Weeks.htm

http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/tishabav/

http://www.aish.com/h/9av/

Obama Deficit Hole

2009-06-24T00:00:00.004-04:00

Very Funny. From Matt Wuerker at Politico.

Gmail Goes Offline (in a good way)!!!

2009-02-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

OK, so I haven't posted in a while. Why am I posting for the first time in months about Gmail? Because this is something really great if you, like me, have wrestled with the benefits of Gmail (SO MANY), yet have been dogged by that one lingering (HUGE) problem - the fact that it is only available online. What happens if you lose your internet connection? What happens if your connection is slow? If you have ever, like me, at one time or another lost your own wireless router to a hacker and had to enlist the help of a friend to hijack it back and kick off the hacker, these are not theoretical questions. If you, like me, enjoy working or playing on your laptop from places on the road, such as a cafe that either doesn't have, or charges for, wifi, or your car, or your parents' house before they got high-speed internet access and a wireless router, these questions are all too real. You're very limited if you want to access your previously downloaded emails and want to compose new mail that doesn't necessarily need to be sent this instant but needs to be written right now.

But Seth, you say, you can always download your email to Outlook or Outlook Express (or some other email client of your choice if you happen to be savvy - but if you're so savvy, why do I need to explain the benefits of Offline Gmail to you? Hmm?)!

Yes, you could do that, but then you would lose all your tags and settings!

If you, like me, have a dozen or so filters for easy email sorting, this is a big deal. To all my Orthodox peeps out there - I get about 50 Divrei Torah a week. To everyone out there - I also get email from various lists: local community information; a friends with a really interesting, but very time consuming hobby of researching obscure figures in Jewish history and sending out lengthy articles to all his friends every other day; most importantly these days, a dozen or so job lists.

In other words, if I gave up (or lost) my filters by downloading my email to my desktop, I would have to sort through all of these emails that I genuinely want to read, though not necessarily right now, in order to get other important emails from my family, friends and business contacts.

So, thanks to Offline Gmail, now I can access my previous emails offline and compose new messages to be sent as soon as Gmail detects an internet connection.

There's a lot more to write about this, like how it works, how you access it in the first place, how you send mail, whether or not you can get your new mail if a connection is available fleetingly, and more. But that's all be published in this handy-dandy blog post on the Official Gmail Blog right here:

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Offline Gmail

Palin's pastor problems vs. Obama's

2008-10-05T14:36:00.005-04:00

My previous post has been getting some people a little bit heated. First of all, the question arose as to what part of the sermon that I posted I was referencing. The speaker of the sermon, David Brickner, is the executive director of Jews for Jesus. He was an invited guest of Sarah Palin's church, where he spoke about his mission in Israel. What he said was that terrorism in Israel is a judgment against the Jews for not accepting Jesus.

(I've also been asked "where are the videos??" by my friends on Facebook - guys, I'm importing my notes from my personal blog http://www.sethj.blogspot.com, and the videos aren't coming through - click on the bottom of the note where it says "View original post" to be redirected).

The second question that was asked was whether I should be concerned by comments made by a guest speaker to Sarah Palin's church. The answer is yes, as one of the videos shows an interview in which the pastor said he would absolutely re-invite David Brickner to speak at his church, even after hearing what he said the first time. His beliefs are in sync with that of the church and its membership.

The third question that was asked was whether I really want to get into a debate about pastor problems, when Obama has his own problem, especially since Obama was a member of the church where Jeremiah Wright spoke repeatedly against the United States and Obama had a very close relationship with Wright.

Here's the difference, as I see it, between Palin's problem and Obama's.

When I first brought up Palin's religious beliefs as a potential problem for the general citizenry of the United States should she be elected vice president, a friend made a point of telling me that at her synagogue, rabbis have spoken and said appalling things, and she asked me if that reflects on her. That's a fair point to make in reference to the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Just because the rabbi or pastor speaks in negative terms about the morals and ethics of the society around you, and says inflamatory things that can make one's skin crawl, that does not necessarily reflect on you for being there - or even for having a close relationship with that person. Many people hold vastly different beliefs, and still turn to one another for friendship, guidance and counsel.

The difference here is that David Brickner's sermon goes to a deeper issue, which is that what he said at Palin's church is what MAINSTREAM Evangelical and Pentacostal Christians believe. Jeremiah Wright was demagoguing. Even if he actually believes all the things he himself says in his church (which I doubt), it's a cultural thing, and it's the type of thing that is believed by those who have been put down and trodden upon by society; not well-educated, open-minded individuals who are multi-racial and who worked themselves from food-stamps to editor of the Harvard Law Review.

On the other hand, Jews for Jesus is on a mission. It's a mission to convert Jews - at any and all costs. They believe that Jews not only are going to Hell at the "End of Days", but that we are doomed to suffer in this world as well. And it's a mission and philosophy in which millions (over 100,000,000) Evangelical and Pentacostal Christians believe in America, as well as many other Christian groups around the world.

There is a very prominent rabbi in Israel, whom I will not name because I have not spoken to him in reference to this post, who is well known to raise money from Evangelical and Pentacostal groups on behalf of the State of Israel, and is also well known to say to those groups, "in the end we'll see who's right." I speak from a position of authority because, though I have not spoken to him about this post - as I stated above - I have heard him speak about this exact tactic of his personally.

But this sermon by Brickner demonstrates to me why that philosophy - tolerating their "eccentric" beliefs for the time being in this world - is very dangerous. These Christian groups believe that Jews must accept Jesus, or else they will not only go to Hell, but deserve to suffer in this world as well. They're only on our side while it's good for them, and they'll only tolerate us while it's politically incorrect not to.

Would a Vice President - or President - Palin set up a mission to convert Jews? Not likely. But would she support missionary efforts under the umbrella of "Faith-Based Initiatives"? Absolutely. Would she send money to Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas? Definitely not! But would she turn a blind eye to a situation like that in Sderot - as Bush had done for over six years until very recently - saying to herself, "it's their own fault; if they'd only accept Jesus this would all stop; I'll intervene if the political pressure gets strong enough"? I am 100% convinced that she would. Yes. Would Obama? I doubt it - am I certain he wouldn't? No. But what I know about Christian society as a whole in America is that, while they support Israel, the Israel they are supporting is one in which Jews are slowly moved to accept Jesus so that he can return from the dead and bring the Rapture. They do not - LISTEN TO ME HERE - they do NOT support Jews living a Jewish life in the Land of Israel, Artzeinu HaKedoshah (OUR Holy Land). Nor do they particularly care if a synagogue in Los Angeles or Atlanta or Brooklyn gets vandalized. They don't like vandalism in general - it's bad for societal order - but they fundamentally believe, deep down, that we have it coming.

Look, ultimately it comes down to what you or I think is the more serious problem. Do I believe that Jeremiah Wright or his radical anti-America message is in any way going to influence an Obama-Biden administration, either in domestic policy or foreign policy? Not on your life. Would I ever have worried that the Jerry Falwells and David Brickners of the world would have influenced a McCain-Lieberman or a Giuliani-McCain (or vice versa) administration? No! But am I concerned that President Palin would conduct her policies with ignorance, and base her decisions on a fundamental belief that her work is the work of some twisted god that in no way resembles the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Ohh, you betcha! I'm not only concerned that she might; I'm convinced that she absolutely would. And I'm also convinced that if McCain is elected president on November 4, 2008, Sarah Palin would be sworn in as president no later than January 20, 2013. The Republican party bosses would make sure of it.

Palin's pastor problems

2008-10-04T21:53:00.003-04:00

If I had more time I'd edit these to all the relevant parts, but for the time being, here are some good videos to learn about Sarah Palin's religious beliefs. (Hint: they are not friendly towards Jews, Israel, or any non American-brand Protestant Christian denomination.)

Now audio from that sermon in her church with the director of Jews for Jesus (taken from the church's own website by me - not some anti-Palin blogger):
http://wasillabible.org/sermon_files/2008_Sermons/wbc080914.mp3

And here is the transcript (this is the pdf version; I have the original Word document version on my other computer, so if this, the pdf, doesn't match the audio, Beli Neder, I'll update it):
http://www.wasillabible.org/sermon_files/2008_Transcripts/The%20Jerusalem%20Dilemma.pdf

Support for Palin Among Conservatives is Fading

2008-09-27T21:23:00.006-04:00

Whatever your politics, and whatever your hopes for the outcome of this year's presidential election, there is one thing that cannot be ignored - Sarah Palin is, "Clearly Out Of Her League," writes conservative commentator Kathleen Parker, formerly a staunch supporter of the Republican Alaska governor-turned-vice-presidential-nominee, whom she once said, "makes feminists look like sissy-girls."

A video clip of Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy blasting McCain's choice of Palin as a running mate when they thought they were off-camera has been widely circulated (see below).

Now, though, criticism comes from an early supporter of the vice-presidential candidate, culminating with a surprising demand - for Palin to drop out to, "save John McCain, her party, and the country she loves."

If you want to read how Parker's support has faded, read her columns in order:

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/09/03/palin_the_impaled

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/09/05/palins_palliative

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/09/10/arugula_fatigue

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/09/19/a_time_to_worry

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/09/26/the_palin_problem

Phone Atone

2008-09-23T20:54:00.001-04:00

The Presidential candidates for 2008 atone for their sins for the New Year.....Bi-Partisan...phone atonements.....we are all very very sorry....and it's very very funny.... Happy Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish friends on the left, right, and places in between.

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A Peek Into the Mind of the Average College Freshman

2008-08-19T12:52:00.002-04:00

**Apparently the link to this article will expire soon, and it will only be available to paid subscribers after that. I hope that by posting the title of the publication and the author's name I won't get into any trouble. I'm only sharing this because it's fascinating. If I am asked by The Chronicle of Higher Education to take it down, I will oblige. Probably.**

The Chronicle of Higher EducationTuesday, August 19, 2008

A Peek Into the Mind of the Average College Freshman

By DON TROOP

Yes, professor, you really are getting old. Just take a look at the members of this year's freshman class.

Assuming the students in that class were born in 1990, they would have been conceived about the same time as the World Wide Web, taken their first steps as Clarence Thomas took the Supreme Court oath, and had their entire lives to angle for a gig with Teach for America. And the Warsaw Pact— what's that?

Each August, Beloit College publishes its Mind-Set List to help professors and administrators understand the average incoming freshman's frame of reference by describing how things have "always been," or at least how they've been for the past 18 years.

The two men who compile the list—Tom McBride, a professor of English, and Ron Nief, director of public affairs—note that while many things have changed since the Class of 2012 was born, some things seem remarkably similar to the world as it was in 1990: "Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big 3 car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace."

The Beloit College Mind-Set List

For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

1. Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.

2. Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties.

3. They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.

4. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.

5. Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.

6. Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.

7. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.

8. The students' parents may have dropped them in shock when they heard George Bush announce "tax-revenue increases."

9. Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.

10. Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.

11. All have had a relative—or known about a friend's relative—who died comfortably at home with hospice.

12. As a precursor to "whatever," they have recognized that some people "just don't get it."

13. Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando, Fla.

14. Grandma has always had wheels on her walker.

15. Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.

16. Häagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.

17. Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.

18. WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.

19. Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.

20. The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.

21. Students have always been "Rocking the Vote."

22. Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

23. Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.

24. We have always known that "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

25. There have always been gay rabbis.

26. Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.

27. College grads have always been able to Teach for America.

28. IBM has never made typewriters.

29. Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the national anthem again.

30. McDonald's and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.

31. The students have never been able to color a tree using a raw-umber Crayola.

32. There has always been Pearl Jam.

33. The Tonight Show has always had Jay Leno as its host and started at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.

34. Pee-wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.

35. They never tasted Benefit cereal with psyllium.

36. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.

37. Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.

38. Lenin's name has never been on a major city in Russia.

39. Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.

40. Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the United States.

41. Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.

42. The students' parents may have watched American Gladiators on TV the day they were born.

43. Personal privacy has always been threatened.

44. Caller ID has always been available on phones.

45. Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.

46. The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.

47. The students have never heard a gasoline-station attendant ask, "Want me to check under the hood?"

48. Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.

49. Soft-drink refills have always been free.

50. The students have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about "nothing."

51. Windows operating systems have always made IBM PC's user-friendly.

52. Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.

53. The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum.

54. The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.

55. 98.6 degrees F, or otherwise, has always been confirmed in the ear.

56. Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate-cancer research.

57. Off-shore oil drilling in U.S. waters has always been prohibited.

58. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

59. There have always been charter schools.

60. Students always had Goosebumps.

Apple just gave out my Apple ID password because someone ask

2008-07-09T10:28:00.001-04:00

This is UBELIEVABLY frightening! Don't read this article if you 1)store personal information online - especially credit card or banking info, and 2)are faint of heart!

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Jewish Woman Appointed as Bahrain's Ambassador to U.S.

2008-05-30T15:04:00.001-04:00

The King of Bahrain issued a decree appointing Houda Ezra Nonoo, a Jewish woman, to serve as one of its ambassadors. It is believed she will be posted in the United States.

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ARGH! I COUNTED THE WRONG DAY OF THE 'OMER!!!!

2008-05-12T17:28:00.002-04:00

OK, I've had it with relying on my own memory for things like shopping lists, to-do lists at work, appointments, and most importantly, counting the 'Omer.

I wrote a blog post about this two years ago, and in it I linked to what I called "the most handy Sefiras Ha'Omer calendar I've ever used."

This year I managed to keep up with the 'Omer for the first two weeks without the aid of the calendar. But, knowing my own weaknesses, on or about day 17, I dutifully printed out three copies of the calendar, as is my annual custom, to tape up in my apartment in three places - the outside of my front door, the inside of my front door, and the outside of my bedroom door. I do this every year to ensure that whether I come home late, come home early, or go to bed whenever, I must necessarily see the calendar, with its little check marks, and be reminded whether or not I have counted the 'Omer yet each night.

Unfortunately, although I printed out the calendar, I did not get around to taping it up in its proper places. This did not result in my missing a day - well not as such. What happened, is that because I had grown used to counting the 'Omer from memory, on day 20 I remembered that I had not counted the night before, and I quickly counted the 'Omer. Unfortunately, I counted day 19, instead of day 20. Had I been utilizing my calendar appropriately, I would have checked the boxes next to each date, and double-checked to make sure I was about to do the correct day's count. No, the three copies of my calendar lay on my dining room table, waiting for me to hang them up in their spots. What's so infuriating about this whole thing, is that I had just checked off all the dates up until that day. The only thing is that I didn't look at the numbers next to each date. I just looked at the date. I thought, "I know what day it is, I know how to count it in Hebrew, I just want to update my calendar, so that when I hang it up today or tomorrow or whenever, I will not have to bother with it. It will be all checked off up to the right date. Now I'm going to count." And so I did. I counted. I counted the wrong day! I'm an idiot! I realized that night that I had miscounted, and now I am "out", so to speak. That means I cannot count the 'Omer with a Berachah anymore this year.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. As you can tell, I'm a tad frustrated. This is the first year since I started using Wallach's calendar in 2001 that I will not have counted every day appropriately.

Official Google Blog: Tell the Tale: Holocaust Remembrance Day

2008-05-08T12:38:00.000-04:00

I wish I had seen this last week. It's good to see that Google is using its resources as one of the largest and most powerful information gateways to spread the word and strengthen awareness of the Holocaust in an age in which people have been using the power of the internet to spread lies and false accuasations and plant the seeds of doubt in people's minds about the accuracy of the historical record on such a black mark on human history.

Official Google Blog: Tell the Tale: Holocaust Remembrance Day

A slice of pizza gets pricier

2008-03-19T21:31:00.001-04:00

Rising wheat prices are pushing up costs for baked goods, and foods from muffins to pizza are getting more expensive. And they try to convince us that the falling value of the dollar doesn't raise costs on domestic goods.Were you aware that energy and food don't count in overall inflation numbers? That's because food is a natural resource, and is up to the whims of nature - you can't blame the government's policies for lack of preparedness for things like the weather; and energy (read: oil) is dependent upon international events - you can't possibly blame the government's policies for things that happen elsewhere!! No, that would be ludicrous...

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If Purim Were Today OR: Purim in 2008

2008-03-19T16:23:00.002-04:00

A Purim Spiel by (some of) the 4th grade students of the Congregation Beth El Religious School in Bethesda, Maryland

Originally posted at:
http://www.jewneric.com/2008/03/19/if-purim-were-today-or-purim-in-2008/

If Purim Were Today
A Spiel by (some of) the 4th Grade Students of the Congregation Beth El Religious School in Bethesda, Maryland

President Achashverosh –
Vice President Haman –
Zeresh —
Mordechai –
Esther –
Guards –
President's Assistant –

SCENE 1:

Zeresh: Hi, Haman (every time Haman's name is mentioned, everyone on stage and off boos loudly, including Haman, who has an increasingly annoyed look on his face each time), sweetie, how was work today?

Vice President Haman: Oh, it was really good. President Achashverosh is throwing a huge party. It’s gonna last for 187 days.

Zeresh: Oh, wow, that’s quite a party! What’s it for?

VP H: Well, we won the war in Iraq. Now Achashverosh is President of 127 countries!

***

SCENE 2:

President Achashverosh: Hey, Haman (boos), how’s the party?

Vice President Haman: It’s going great! You know what would make this party even better? You should have First Lady Vashti come down in her bikini and do that thing she did last time! It was really funny!

Pres. A: That was really funny! We should totally do that! Call her up on your cell and tell her.
(Haman pulls out cell phone and presses speed dial. Wait for one ring and then start talking): Hi, Madam First Lady? This is Haman (boos). The president wants you to come down to the party in your bikini and do that thing you did last time. It was really funny! What? But, you have to! The president wants you to!
(Turns to Achashverosh.) Um, Mr. President, she hung up.

Pres. A: What? She can’t do that to me! I’m the president!

VP H: You need to do something about that. You can’t let her get away with this. Send her to Guantanamo Bay.

***

SCENE 3:

President Achashverosh: Hey, Haman (boos). Wow, am I hung-over. I can’t even see straight. Where’s Vashti?

Vice President Haman: Uh, Mr. President, you sent her to Guantanamo Bay. When she got there, she was killed by a guard dog.

Pres. A: Oh, man. That’s not good. What am I going to do for a wife? I need breakfast.

VP H: OK, sir. Here’s what you do. You send out invitations to your 3rd inaugural ball, and have all the good looking, smart, college-educated women come to D.C. to meet you and see if you want to marry any of them.

Pres. A: That’s a great idea! But, Haman (boos), do me a favor. Don’t invite any girls from Yale. They know me there. I don’t think they like me very much.

***

SCENE 4:

Mordechai: Hey, Esther. I’m so glad you’re home from college. Your report card came. You got all A’s. Your parents would be so proud of you!

Esther: Thanks, Uncle Mordechai. Hey, you know what I heard? All the pretty and smart girls are being invited to the White House to try out to be President Achashverosh’s new wife. How lame is that? There’s no way I would go, even if I were invited.

Mordechai: Yeah, funny thing about that. You got invited. It turns out you actually have to go whether you want to or not. It’s part of the military draft bill Congress passed last year.

Esther: Do I really have to?

Mordechai: Yeah, I’m afraid so. But, just remember one thing. Don’t tell anyone you’re Jewish. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. People in Washington act like they’re open minded to other people’s religions, but you never know how they really feel.

Esther: Hmm, OK.

***

SCENE 5:

Mordechai (on his cell phone): Oh, wow! I don’t even know if I should be happy or upset. President Achashverosh chose you? That’s really incredible. Well, just remember what I said. Don’t tell him you’re Jewish, OK?

Guard #1: Yo, bud. The boss man says we gotta kill Achashverosh tomorrow night.Guard #2: Alright. Send him a text message that we’ll do it.

(Guard #1 begins texting on cell phone)

Mordechai (on cell phone): Oh, wow, Esther! You’ll never believe what I just heard! Two of Achashverosh’s guards just said they’re planning to kill him! Yeah, you gotta tell the president!

***

SCENE 6:

Vice President Haman: (Walking down the street with Zeresh, sees Mordechai walking casually): Excuse me. Excuse me. You, there.

Mordechai: Me?

VP H: Yeah, you. You should know by now, the president signed a new law that says that everyone has to bow down to the vice president.

Mordechai: Yeah, I know. See, I’m Jewish. We only bow down to G-d, not to people. Sorry. (Walks away)

VP H: Ugh! I’ll kill him!

Zeresh: I know you don’t mean that.

VP H: You’re right. I’m just so…

Zeresh: I think you should do it.

VP H: What?

Zeresh: You should kill him. Don’t you know who that is? He’s the Secretary of Judaism. He used to be the Chief Rabbi of Bethesda until President Achashverosh conquered the State of Maryland. Then, of course, the president realized Maryland was already part of the U.S. But that’s not the point! He’s the head of the Jews in D.C. now. You have to kill him and all the rest of the Jews. He’ll ruin your career if you don’t.

***

SCENE 7:

Vice President Haman: Mr. President, I need to talk to you.

President Achashverosh: Sure, Haman (boos). What do you need?

VP H: I need your permission to pass a new law that declares all Jews “Enemy Combatants.”

Pres. A: You want to send all the Jews to Guantanamo Bay? Why?

VP H: They were behind 9/11!

Pres. A: What?!

VP H: It’s true. I read it on the internet. Antisemite.com says the Jews who worked in the World Trade Center didn’t show up for work that day!

Pres. A: Well, if it’s on the internets it must be true!

VP H: Um, Mr. President, it’s “internet.”

Pres. A: That’s what I said. Internets.

VP H: Internet.

Pres. A: Internets.

VP H: INTERNET.

Pres. A: INTERNETS.

VP H: Inter.

Pres. A: Inter.

VP H: Net.

Pres. A: Net.

VP H: Internet.

Pres A: Internets.

VP H: Oy, vey.

***

SCENE 8:

Esther: Uncle Mordechai, you want me to talk to President Achashverosh? But he doesn’t let people into the Oval Office unless they’re invited.

Mordechai: You have to. We need you to. Otherwise we’ll all be sent to Guantanamo Bay next Adar 14th! Listen. You were chosen to be First Lady for a reason. If you won’t help save the Jews, we’ll be saved some other way, but you will wish you had helped.

Esther: OK, I’ll do it.

***

SCENE 9:

President’s Assistant: And that was the day Mordechai saved your life!

President Achashverosh: Did we do anything for him, like throw a party or a parade or anything? Go call Haman (boos)!

(Haman Enters)

Haman (boos), how would you honor a man that has done a great deed?

Vice President Haman: Well, I would put him in the President’s limo, give him the President’s best clothes to wear, and parade him down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pres. A: Good, good. Do all that for Mordechai, ok?

Haman: (Makes a face and grunting sound. Then, miserably): Yes, Mr. President.

***

SCENE 10:

(At the door to the Oval Office)

Esther: Mr. Achasvherosh, may I come in?

President Achashverosh: You may enter. What do you want, Esther? You can have anything – up to half of the White House.

Esther: Would you and Haman (boos) like to join me in a private party I’m throwing tomorrow?

Pres. A: Sure!

***

SCENE 11:

Vice President Haman: This is a great party. Wow, 2 parties 2 days in a row! I thought yesterday’s party was good, but today’s is great!

Esther: Thanks, Haman (boos). By the way, Achashverosh, Haman (boos) here is trying to get me deported. Thought you’d like to know.

President Achashverosh: What? Guard! Send him to Gitmo!!

THE END

State Dept (Mildly) Decries Anti-Zionism as Anti-Semitism

2008-03-14T15:11:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, the State Department published a report, in which it drew a long-ignored connection between Anti-Zionism and/or opposition to Israeli policy, and Anti-Semitism.

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Boundaries

2008-03-10T13:25:00.001-04:00

Can we modern Jews embrace the modern world around us, while staying true to our ideals?Repost from a piece I wrote for Jewneric.com in September, 2007.

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The Passing of a Real-life Hero

2008-02-28T16:07:00.001-05:00

Reflections on the passing of Dan Shomron, architect of the legendary "Raid on Entebbe", in which the IDF rescued 103 hostages from the hands of terrorists, from the perspective of a young, modern, religious, American, Jewish professional - me!

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Slate Magazine - Let the Rabbi Split the Pie

2008-02-07T09:50:00.001-05:00

I just think this article is fascinating. I remember when I learned Masecheth Sukkah in about 8th grade, and we discovered a reference to pi in the Talmudic literature. Seriously, people actually think that we understand the world better today than the ancients? Maybe some things. Maybe like certain big picture things and some subtle nuances, but the fundamentals were there, and I truly believe that the understanding that at least the intelectual class of the ancient world had, probably was on par with, if it didn't even surpass, the general understanding of the world that today's intelectual class has. I mean, think about it - how many of today's principles are ENTIRELY dependent on discoveries in the ancient world? Yes, the Middle Ages were a dark, dark time for Europe and for scientific advancement in general. But even then, other cultures were thriving and making discoveries that we still depend upon today. But there is no question that the ancient world had its share of individuals who had the brains and the platform to discover and spread knowledge that even today we are still trying to prove and/or use for other purposes.

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Government to evict own citizens again. Disengagement II?

2008-02-06T16:42:00.001-05:00

Residents of a Jerusalem suburb received notice yesterday that they are to be evicted. In August 2005, thousands of Israeli citizens were forcibly kicked out of their homes and towns. The land was giving back to the Palestinians who promptly destroyed much of what was there. What will happen this time?

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Presidential Politics and the Jewish Orthodox view.

2008-01-28T09:12:00.001-05:00

Why do Orthodox Jews generally feel the need to be swept up with the whims of the “orthodox” denominations of other religions’ political persuasions?

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Hava Nagilah

2008-01-10T17:07:00.000-05:00

It appears that Hava Nagilah is now going mainstream. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ll share some bits of an email conversation I had yesterday with a friend. For purposes of full disclosure, I ought to tell you that I am Orthodox, having grown up in a mainly Orthodox home, although my extended family (nearly all my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) are not Orthodox. A few are not in any way religious, some are intermarried, and the rest are about evenly split between Reform and Conservative, either by affiliation or by practice. So I’ve always felt that, although I’m Orthodox and I see the world through that lens, I am open and understanding to other points of view. My friend is not Orthodox. Because I do not want to risk misrepresenting his views, I will leave it at that.

Here is (part of) our conversation, (almost) unedited:

Daniel:
date Dec 18, 2007 10:54 PM
subject hava
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/935420.html

Me:
date Dec 19, 2007 11:26 AM
subject Re: hava
I watched it last night. I have no idea what to make of it. I thought I’d sleep on it, but I’m still confused.

Daniel:
date Dec 19, 2007 11:32 AM
subject Re: hava
ha what don’t you understand?

Me:
date Dec 19, 2007 11:36 AM
subject Re: hava
let me first ask you - what do you think of it?

Daniel:
date Dec 19, 2007 12:41 PM
subject Re: hava
Well to be honest many thoughts come to mind. But i guess on a superficial level, the girl is attractive but really young, wow. But I guess the song isn’t too bad, though I’m not sure if I like the English that was added into the song. It’s nice to have a jewish song beat out Christmas songs and on Christmas even too. And I guess I’m a bit perplexed as to why a father would endorse such promotion of one’s daughter through sexualization.

You?

Me:
date Dec 19, 2007 1:18 PM
subject Re: hava
OK, so let me ask you a couple follow-up questions. What do you think of the song Hava Nagilah in general? Was it played at your Bar Mitzvah? Why or why not? Do you generally expect it to be played at Bar/Bat Mitzvah parties or Jewish weddings? Why or why not?

I’m not sure how people of different demographics view the song. I know how I view it, but my view could be tainted by my presumption about how others view it.

Daniel:
Dec 19, 2007 1:35 PM
subject Re: hava
Okay…well I don’t really have many thoughts about the original song in general. Yes it was played at my Bar Mitzvah and all Jewish formal parties I’ve been to. Yes I expect it to be played.

Me:
date Dec 19, 2007 2:02 PM
subject Re: hava
At your Bar Mitzvah, did you particularly want it to be played? It was not played at my Bar Mitzvah, nor any Orthodox Bar/Bat Mitzvah parties or weddings I’ve ever been too. The only time I’ve ever heard it played was for little kids at JCC camps/day care, at non-Orthodox events, and when the Jon Stewarts and Stephen Colberts of the world use it to mock Judaism. Orthodox Jews have a wide array of Jewish music. There’s just now beginning to grow a Jewish music scene that is not exclusively Orthodox. But this is very new.

So what I’m confused about, I guess, is whether to be excited about this, or nervous about it. Will it excite more Jews who would otherwise be alienated? Or will it reinforce the negative stereotype that Jewish events - Bar Mitzvah parties, especially - suck unless they’ve got some really cool theme and cost half a million dollars?

At [a recent Bar Mitzvah] party they had a DJ and dance troop with strobe lights and whatever else. First they started out playing Hava Nagilah and some other sucky Jewish songs, and the grown ups danced in a “hora” of sorts while the kids looked bored out of their minds. After about 10 minutes, the DJ announces, “Alright, now let’s have some fun!!” and plays Hip Hop, Techno and House music for the next 3 hours.

Everyone recognizes that Hava Nagilah is a crappy song, which is why Orthodox Jews don’t play it at their functions. But Orthodox Jews have a long history of Jewish music, and it’s really grown over the past 30 years in particular. Now Conservative singers are becoming more interested in making Jewish music with a mainstream sound, but it’s still in its infancy.

Will this become mainstream? Will Jay Leno make fun of it (and her)? Will it pop and fade? Will it last? Does anyone else care?

Daniel:
Dec 19, 2007 2:12 PM
subject Re: hava
All good thoughts. I didn’t realize that Othodox events were different really. And I didn’t know that they don’t play Hava Negila.
All the events I’ve been to that have been conservative events were different than what you described [about the Bar Mitzvah]. Usually from what I’ve seen the Hora/Hava Negila gets a great reaction from the crowd and is usually one of the more popular songs/events during the evening.

Me:
Dec 19, 2007 2:22 PM
subject Re: hava
Really? I’m surprised to hear that. It’s always been portrayed (in my observation) as 1.a joke/something to make fun of and 2.that annoying song we have to play b/c we’re Jewish.

Daniel:Dec 20, 2007 7:57 AMsubject Re: hava
true story!

So I’m still confused. I asked someone last night, who grew up Conservative but became Orthodox in college, and has been practicing Orthodox Judaism for a number of years what they thought about this conversation I had had with Daniel. They told me that to them, growing up, Hava Nagilah was sometimes that song that is the Jewish thing so we have to play it, and other times it really is a root expression of Judaism so let’s enjoy it. They said Hava Nagilah at a Bar/Bat Mitzvah was like, “eating falafel at the Israel Day celebration at the JCC”.

My take on it is, if my previous perception is correct, that disaffected Jews and non-Jews use it as a point to mock our religion, then, even if this song does become a hit, it could go the way of the Macarena and become fuel to add to that fire of negatively stereotyping the “emptiness” (Chas VeShalom) of Judaism. On the other hand, if people really do identify Jewishly through the song, then the new Pop version of it could further bolster people’s Jewish identity and attract other Jews who were otherwise ambivalent (or worse) about their Jewish roots, by mainstreaming a Jewish cultural phenomenon.

I’m still confused, but at least now I know why. What does everyone else think?

2007-08-08T12:23:00.001-04:00

OK, so I got into the whole Facebook thing, and now I'm into Redbull Roshambull, or whatever it's called. Challenge me to a match here: http://apps.facebook.com/redbullroshambull/home/send_challenge.php?to=605600282

Shane's Wish

2007-05-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

I don't know if anyone is even reading this blog anymore, but just in case, here's something you might be interested in doing - MAJORLY TIME SENSITIVE!

Shane Bernier is a courageous seven-year-old boy from Lancaster, Ontario who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was only five. On June 6th, 2006 Shane and his family received some unfortunate news: Shane experienced a relapse after completing 108 of 130 weeks of treatment. However, despite the bad news, Shane has managed to keep a positive outlook on his situation and has made a heart-warming wish... He hasn’t asked for money or toys or anything of the sort. Instead, his birthday is on May 30th and he would like to break the world record for the most birthday cards ever received. His goal is 350 million cards. With every card, Shane’s courage grows. Something as simple as sending a birthday card could be enough to help Shane find peace and joy in his current circumstances. Please take the time to send a card to Shane and make his dream become a reality. Share his story with your friends, family and co-workers. If at all possible, get your youth groups, church congregations, employees, neighbours or communities to set aside a few minutes to write a thoughtful note to Shane. With every card, Shane’s smile grows...

If you’d like to send a card to Shane, please send it to:

Shane Bernier
PO Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
K0C 1N0
Canada

Check out this website: http://www.shaneswish.com/

Democracy Inaction (not a typo)

2006-09-14T11:55:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday I was a poll worker for a local candidate in the primary election here in Montgomery County, Maryland. If you haven't heard, Montgomery County and Baltimore City had HORRIBLE problems on Tuesday with the electronic voting machines. First of all, there were a number of reported cases of machine failure throughout Montgomery County, Baltimore, and I believe also Prince George's County. This is something that was foreseen by a number of people who were fearful of the potential for fraud and abuse. But worse than that, there was human error - none of the precincts in Montgomery County or Baltimore had the electronic cards necessary to operate the voting machines when the polls opened at 7am. Some places did not get the cards until as late as 11:30.

I started the day at Olney Elementary School, where there were a number of poll workers supporting various candidates. They ran out of provisional ballots for Democrats around 8:30, and did not get the electronic cards for the machines until 11:30. That means that for 3 hours, no voting took place in the Democratic primary at that polling place. Meanwhile, a newly arrived pollworker from another place told me that when he voted they were not allowed to use the provisional ballots, despite there not being any cards for the machines. At Olney Elementary, while I was there, a candidate had to vote provisionally. He was one of the best prepared, best organized, most qualified (in my opinion) candidates for his race and he came in 6th or 7th out of 8. So, his polling place, where he lives, and where most of the people who know him likely live, was essentially shut down for three hours in the morning, and he loses by a landslide. Coincidence?

When I voted I personally experienced no problems, but I did overhear someone talking with a poll judge and the chief judge at the polling place. It seems that person was showing up on the computer as already having voted. Their solution: vote on a provisional ballot. Either that means anyone can vote multiple times so long as they use provisional ballots, or it means that the provisional ballots are meaningless and never get counted even in the case of a contested/close election.

The polls stayed open an extra hour in Montgomery County, although I heard that in Prince George's, where there was some sort of problem as well, they closed at the pre-set time. Even in Montgomery County, one hour at the end of the day does not make up for the 2 or 3 hours that the polls were essentially shut down in some places. Not to mention that the extra hour of voting was done on provisional paper ballots. These ballots are counted in the event that the results are very close and there is a contested race.

These polling places were not equipped for this sort of thing, and at the place where I ended my day, they actually ran out of provisional ballots with about 8 people still in line to vote. One woman who showed up to vote walked out a few minutes later in rage about how she had gone out of her way to come back in the evening after the debacle in the morning, but did not have time to sit and fill out the application required to vote on a provisional ballot. (This, I noticed, generally took most people between 15-25 minutes). When the polls officially closed, finally, at 9pm, there were still a number of people in the polling place filling out their ballots. I don't think the place was empty of voters until after 9:15.

This is absolutely ridiculous. It's a travesty. I highly doubt that any fraud or abuse took place during the primary, because that is something that could really damage a candidate in the general election in November, but it shows how ripe the situation is for abuse.

Leave comments.

Kashruth Conundrums: A Quest for Answers to Common, Unfortunate Questions - Update III (OR: Negatively Toned, But Informative Article)

2006-08-20T12:37:00.000-04:00

Now, the reason I posted my last post is that I was sent an email that contained this article.

It's quite interesting, although I don't agree with the tone.

Kashruth Conundrums: A Quest for Answers to Common, Unfortunate Questions - Update II

2006-08-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

Here is a post that I apparently forgot to finish and post. It is from about a year ago (August 4, 2005). It was called "Kashruth Conundrums: A Quest for Answers to Common, Unfortunate Questions - Update II". The reason I never finished it is that it requires a great deal of research to answer the questions I've been asking. I have found enough answers to get by in my own quest, but not nearly enough to comment on them authoritatively. If that is not clear enough, let me do this: Disclaimer -

THIS IS NOT A CRITIQUE OF THE KASHRUTH SUPERVISING AUTHORITIES, NOR IS IT MEANT TO SUPPORT OR CONDEMN/PROMOTE OR DISCREDIT ANY SUCH ORGANIZATION/INSTITUTION OR ANY MEMBERS/STAFF/LEADERS/EMPLOYEES/VOLUNTEERS OR ANYONE ELSE IN ANY WAY INVOLVED OR ASSOCIATED WITH ANY SUCH ENTITY/ENTERPRISE. THIS IS JUST MY OWN PERSONAL BLOG, WITH MY OWN PERSONAL THOUGHTS, AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW ME, DON'T TRY READING BETWEEN THE LINES. I AM LOOKING FOR MY OWN ANSWERS ON MY OWN WITHOUT ANY UNSOLICITED HELP, AND IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY WHAT YOU THINK ARE MY THOUGHTS, JUST KNOW THAT I GO BACK AND FORTH AND ANALYZE THINGS MY OWN WAY, AND MY FEELINGS ON THE SUBJECT ARE NOT AT ALL CONCRETE. If I get any negative comments, I reserve the right to delete them (which I did not do with my first post, so it was quite annoying that I felt the duty to keep one such negative post up).

Anyway, here is the incomplete post from last year.

I am hereby changing the name of my research project from "Kashruth Police" to "Kashruth Conundrums: A Quest for Answers to Common, Unfortunate Questions". I hope nobody minds. I am afraid that the original title might convey disrespect to the "establishment", which was never my intention at all. While many see the Kashruth industry (and it is an industry) as evil and corrupt, I have never felt this way, although I do recognize that there are major problems with it, and that there are those who use Kashruth certification as a means to earn money, sometimes illegitimately. My goal from the beginning, however, has been to find the reasons for various degrees of "reliability" among different Kashruth certification agencies and organizations, and to see if perhaps there was/is some level of fraud and/or Motzi Shem Ra' (slander) going on.

I had a phone-meeting last Thursday morning with Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Weinreb, the Executive Vice President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (commonly referred to as the Orthodox Union or the OU). The OU is one of the original, and currently the largest Kashruth certification organization in America, and perhaps even the world. OU certification is almost universally accepted, with major exceptions being certain Hareidi (so-called "ultra-orthodox") communities, which rely only on their own communal standards and certifications for things like meat and milk. There are varying stringencies held by certain communities regarding milk, which are not held by all Orthodox Jews, and varying opinions regarding what makes meat Kosher or non-Kosher, some opinions based in stringencies, and some based in different interpretations of the actual Halachah (law) itself. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews of Ashkenazic (lit. German; also northern and eastern European) descent follow a particular interpretation, while, again, some small groups, primarily Hasidim, follow their own communities' standards. Orthodox Jews of Sephardic (lit. Spanish; also southern European, Mediteranean, Middle Eastern, and northern African) descent have slightly different understanding of the Halachah itself, and I have not looked into their practices very closely. I am therefore only researching the Kashruth industry and its effects on the Ashkenazic Orthodox Jewish community.

Other than the aforementioned, relatively few exceptions, the OU's is the most universally accepted Kashruth standard among Orthodox Ashkenazic Jews, in America and in many other parts of the world as well. I started my inquiry by asking Rabbi Weinreb if the OU has one individual Posek (Halachic authority figure) or several. He told me that the OU refers its questions to Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, a prominent rabbi and leading Posek in New York and, by extension, the US, and Rabbi Herschel Schachter, dean of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University.

Exactly.

2006-08-09T20:59:00.000-04:00

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1224692,00.html?cnn=yes

Seriously, I don't know what Ned Lamont was thinking. It could all be much ado about nothing, with Lamont winning in November and Democrats around the country winning seats on the wave of dissatisfaction with Republicans and the status quo. But what if it's not? What if this does lead to a split in the election (and others like it), leading to Republican pick-ups? Or what if it splits the party by driving its base further to the left and leaving the centrists wondering if it's really their party anymore? Could this destroy the Democratic Party for the long term, even permanently? Could a third, centrist party be formed? What if driving a wedge in the Democratic Party was all part of a Rovian tactic to begin with, way back before he came to prominence in 2000? What if driving the Republicans to the far right was meant to drive the Democrats even further to the left, making it more comfortable for centrists to choose to be either moderate Republicans or Independents who vote Republican, or even to create a third party, which would essentially destroy the Democrats? I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But maybe Lamont is a right-wing plant?

Oy, Vei Is Mir

2006-07-07T11:38:00.000-04:00

I just have to wonder if this kind of thing will completely negate any progress that has been made over the last couple of years towards bridging the gap between Hareidi and Hiloni communities.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885932435&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

At a complete loss for words.

Have a good Shabbos.

Turning My Stomach

2006-06-30T12:18:00.000-04:00

I just read a thread on another blog, which pertained to Da'as Torah. Da'as Torah (lit. knowledge of Torah) is essentially the idea that someone steeped in Torah has an inherent understanding of how the world functions, and therefore is a suitable (and according to some, preferrable) source for advice on one's regular-life issues. In other words, the translation of "Knowledge of Torah" should be understood, not as "the knowledge a person has of Torah" but as "the knowledge that is contained within Torah" or "the knowledge that Torah has".

By the way, if anyone is wondering, no this is not a twisting of what some ancient phrase means. It is certainly something that our ancient ancestors likely did, as do any religious people of any faith. You want to do things in a spiritually wholesome way, and so you see your spiritual leader for advice. This is nothing new and there is nothing wrong with it. The phrase "Da'as Torah", however, to the best of my knowledge, is a modern one, and does mean what it is being used for. But there seems to be a recent push and extension of the principal in certain circles. There is a mindset in certain parts of certain communities that Da'as Torah is the only way to go, and that thinking on your own is dangerous.

I don't like this.

It literally started making me nauseous as I was reading it. I have friends who are very spiritually wholesome people, and who I'm sure rely on Da'as Torah as one of many sources of advice for all sorts of life's issues. I myself rely on it from time to time as one of many sources of advice.

I think Da'as Torah is ultimately valid and worth seeking, as are the opinions of anyone who is experienced and/or wise, however it is not infallible, nor is it always necessary to try to get. People need to make their own choices and decisions, and people are not bound by any advice they get, from any source.

Some sources have earned more consideration than others. My parents' opinion is worth more to me than a drunk college buddy's. An expert in a particular field deserves to be heard over a layman. And a rabbi can offer an opinion worth considering, even about something not related to Torah study or Kashruth, etc. But that doesn't mean I have to listen to what the rabbi, OR my parents, OR the expert have to say. Sometimes the layman can have a spark of inspiration that none of the others had, and sometimes the drunk college buddy can wax philosophic and be insightful.

My point is, you can get advice from any source, and let's not get all worked up over validity of a source of advice, and take every word of advice for what it's worth, and consider it and make your own decision. But that's just my opinion, and you don't have to agree, even though I'm right.

Tai-Shan is a lazy Prince

2006-05-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

We went to the National Zoo with some friends before Pesah and saw the new baby Panda.

His name is Tai-Shan, so I wore my Pistons hat, hoping to get an autograph. But, as you can see, he was asleep most of the time. That's him up in the tree.

Anyway, I've wanted to post these for a while, but I haven't had the time to learn how to do it.

I also took some video footage of the pandas, particularly of the father eating. He's a fat, lazy dad, lying flat on his back with his gut hanging out while he eats, which he doesn't seem to stop doing except to sleep. Meanwhile, it's the mother who tends to the baby.

The truth is that the father is separated by a barrier set up by the zoo staff, because apparently in the wild a baby panda doesn't have any interaction with its father in its developing years, so they wanted to keep it as real as possible. But it's still pretty comical to watch this Homer Simpson-esque panda just being a fat, lazy blob.

If I ever learn how to post video, my plan is to put them up here. But something tells me Blogger doesn't let you post video, so we'll see if that ever happens.

Just a Reminder

2006-05-14T17:37:00.000-04:00

If you haven't downloaded the David Wallach 'Omer calendar, which I posted a month ago, it's still available online, and it's still the best 'Omer calendar I've come across. You can go here for it, or you can go directly to David's website for it.

If you haven't missed a day yet, but you've been lucky, it's a good download. Just make sure to post it someplace where you cannot avoid seeing it before going to bed but after the start of the Zeman.

The "Phone"y Open-Mindedness of Left-Wing Talk Radio

2006-05-12T17:11:00.000-04:00

There is a "left-wing" talk radio show that I listen to almost daily. It's called the Ed Schultz Show, and the reason I normally listen to it is that he usually makes well-reasoned points, rarely getting into arguments with callers, even though he invites people who disagree with him to call in, and they do. Ed is usually as cool as a cucumber, listening patiently to the comments of those who call with a difference of opinion, and discussing their difference of opinion openly and clear-headedly. At this point his is one of the only two shows on the radio I still listen to, because of the following:

On Friday I called his show, and I actually got through. I believe this is because he was at his son's graduation, and most of his listeners tuned out when they realized someone was filling in for him. I actually was about to tune out as well, until I heard an interesting comment come out of the mouth of his substitute, Jay Marvin. He was upset that conservatives are railing about amnesty for illegal aliens and how it's unfair and unjust because they broke the law. His main complaint was that he didn't hear these same conservatives complaining about the president breaking the law with the domestic wire-tapping program.

I called to say that I don't want amnesty to be granted to illegal aliens, because it is unfair and unjust to offer the same advantages to law-breakers that law-abiding citizens get, or worse, to offer those advantages that are not offered to people sitting in other countries, waiting to be allowed in legally, and that I also feel that the president broke the law with the domestic surveillance program. This is just how I feel, and I wanted to say, "here I am, a conservative (at least someone he would consider a conservative), who wants no amnesty for illegal aliens and also feels the president broke the law."

Since the purpose of the left-wing talk radio movement was to give a voice on the radio to the left, after years and years of talk radio dominance by the right, and to create a more balanced atmosphere with free speech and open-mindedness, I assumed that my opinion would be heard and welcomed on this left-wing show. Unfortunately, Jay Marvin apparently didn't feel that "open-mindedness" ought to be extended to people who didn't fit his ideology or anyone who wouldn't help him prove his point that everyone on the right is evil and has what he called, "selective morality".

"Very Tough Moral Dilemma"

2006-05-08T20:59:00.000-04:00

I wrote the post below on "Out of Town" Jews after Ariel Sharon had his stroke. I decided at the time that I would add his name to my Holim (sick people) list. Every time that I Daven I say his name in "Refaeinu" ("Heal Us" - a blessing in silent 'Amidah prayer, recited three times daily), and I think about that decision every time. And I wonder if, now, after so much time has passed, people might be more willing to add his name to their prayers than when he originally had the stroke. I know that some people had no interest in praying for him because they felt he had betrayed the Jewish people as a whole. One person with whom I spoke about this seemed angry at the mere suggestion of praying for him as a member of Kelal Yisrael (the Jewish People). I wonder if she would feel differently about that now. I mean, how many emails do you get a week or a month, and how many notices do you see in your Shul, asking you to pray for someone you don't know? I know a lot of people probably ignore them, and a lot of people probably think to themselves, "I would pray for that person if I could memorize names better," or "I would pray for that person if I had some way of finding out later on if they recovered or not, so I don't end up praying for them indefinitely." I used to add names without knowing anything about the person, and now I add them if I feel that I will be able to find out later what their status is. But I have a very long list and it's difficult to add the names of people I don't know. But what about Sharon? Let's say we don't like his policies? Let's say we don't like him personally? Does that mean that we have a valid reason not to pray for him? I know exactly who he is. And I will almost definitely be able to find out if he recovers or doesn't. I know for a fact that he is currently still living and currently still in a coma and in need of prayers. How can I choose not to pray for my fellow Jew who's stuck in a coma, when these are the circumstances? Anyway, below is my original post on the now mostly abandoned "Out of Town" Jews.

It's clearly the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Ariel Sharon, if he survives, will never hold political office again, barring a miraculous recovery. (If anyone anti-Sharon is reading this, please understand that I am using the word 'miraculous' in the literal sense - ie, that it would take a miracle for him to recover fully to the level to be able to run for political office again - not the optimistic sense - ie, that it would be wonderful and miraculous if he could make it back to power. I am attempting to leave politics completely out of this conversation.)

But the question has presented itself to me: How do we treat Sharon's illness on a religious/spiritual/Jewish level?

If we love Ariel Sharon, we must obviously pray for his full, "miraculous" recovery, and that he chooses to ignore what will almost certainly be his doctors' most urgent order, to retire for his own health's sake. If, however, we oppose Sharon, as a prime minister, as a politician, and/or even as a person, we are faced with a dilemma. I do not know the answer, but here are the factors that must be considered:

1. He is a human being with a family, and one who spent his life trying, at least in his own mind, to serve Israel and the Jewish people as best as he can.

2. He is a Jew. Jews have always prayed for one another. We have a saying from Pirqei Avoth: "Kol Yisrael 'Arevim Zeh LaZeh" - "All of Israel is responsible for one another." (Israel is this case, of course, refers not to the State but to Jews as a nation). This statement has been understood throughout the millennia to mean so many things, including one another's physical survival, welfare, health, financial well-being, and even religious/spiritual well-being.

3. He has been involved in political scandals. He may have muscled his way to power and abused power. He and his family have been accused of criminal conspiracies.

4. His policies may be damaging to Jews and the Jewish state.

5. He is a symbol of Jewish strength and political and military success.

This is where the dilemma comes in.

At what point do we draw the line and pray for someone whom we hold to be damaging to the Jews? Do we say that he deserves this as punishment for his actions? Do we assume that if he lives he will have no influence over policy, and that therefore we can be comfortable with his survival (assuming we disagree with those policies)? Do we say that we pray for any and all human beings, no matter how much we may disagree with them?

My feelings may appear to have come out a bit in this post, but I have tried to stay neutral. I believe I have succeeded. I played both sides, and I noted where assumptions on one side or another would be necessary. Obviously the dilemma is slightly more pronounced on one side than the other. I hope I didn't offend anybody. This post was inspired by some conversations I had with others, in which many different opinions came out, and I tried to represent all of those opinions fairly here.

D-troit Gettin Some Respect - Sort Of

2006-05-01T20:49:00.000-04:00

ODDS ON FUTURE HEADLINES IN DETROIT NEWSPAPERS

500-1 "Tigers Win it All!"
20-1 "Red Wings Win it All!"
5-1 "Pistons Win it All!"
2-1 "Lions Contracted!"

--ESPN The Magazine, Vol. 9, Issue 09, p.40
May 8, 2006

What am I? Don't ask!

2006-04-25T01:03:00.000-04:00

Wow.

Well, I took this quiz that's been going around. At first I was very wary of it. Like most of these online quizes, I assumed this one would be poorly conceived, ill-defined, and shallow. But I have to say I really like it. And it summed me up pretty well. I answered all of the questions as honestly as I could, and below is the result. I'm "Huh?", which is actually kind of what I've always ended up making people say whenever I've expressed more than one of my views within Orthodoxy at a time.

What are you?

Shalom Bayis

2006-04-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

Oh boy. Here it is. We knew it had to happen sometime.

The Wings are playing the Oilers in the first round of the NHL Playoffs as we speak.

Here are the rules (so far):

1. The rivalry cannot begin more than half an hour before each game.
2. The rivalry must end at the conclusion of each game.

Ali wants some rules to be slightly biased in her favor because the Red Wings are the favorites. I don't think that's necessarily a good idea, but we'll see how the series goes.

I just got a look from Ali because she didn't realize they had already played one game (neither did I, which, thank G-d, she believed). So I'm going to end this here and watch the game with my wife.

Wish us Hatzlahah (success) in getting through this series happily.

Just a quick update

2006-04-21T11:59:00.000-04:00

So Pesah was really nice overall. We were in Toronto for the first days, where we spent the Hag with Ali's family. Most of her family is not observant, but her cousins have slowly become "frum" (I hate that word, by the way, but that should probably be a separate post all on its own) over the last couple of years. They also moved around a bit, from Edmonton to Calgary a number of years ago to Toronto about two years ago. So now they happen to be Halachically observant and settled not terribly far away from us, so we took advantage of our first real opportunity to spend a Yom Tov with Ali's close family.

We went to her distant cousins in Vegas for Succos and, while Ali is very close with them emotionally, and her grandmother joined us there, it wasn't quite like spending the Yom Tov with her family, but more like spending it with very close friends and some family.

This was the first time we were able to spend Yom Tov with her family that she grew up with. The Seder was virtually the same as it always was when she was little, including a lot of yelling and shouting and beating up one another. Most of the time everybody was laughing at something or someone or another. It was really a lot of fun. Also her cousins are all boys, from 24 down to 18, so it was a unique experience.

Oh, and I totally beat out Ali's attempt at Afikoman stealing. For months Ali was telling me that she was going to have her cousins gang up on me, like she was the queen and leader because she's the oldest. So I pulled a coup and stole the Afikoman from everyone, and held it hostage for a solid 20 minutes. I got everyone 30 bucks each. The next night Ali tried to do it the way she had planned and all we got out of it was 5 more bucks. Ali says it's because there were so many more people at the second Seder that she felt bad driving up the price. Please, who gonna believe?

Counting the 'Omer

2006-04-18T13:17:00.000-04:00

Here is a link to the most handy Sefiras Ha'Omer calendar I've ever used.

In my first year at YU David Wallach designed this calendar, and it was printed out with hundreds of copies passed around campus. I have used it every year since, and I have never missed a day since I started using it. The main thing is to print it out and post it in a place where you won't possibly miss it, and to check off the days (it has handy check boxes) as you go along (obviously checking the Shabbas boxes after Shabbas).

When I was at YU, I would consistently come back to my room after 10, so I just posted it (with my roommate's consent) on the outside of the door, so that when I came back I would see it and count the 'Omer before I walked in. Last year, in my first 'Omer since being married, I posted three copies - one on the outside of our front door, one on the inside, and one on the outside of our bedroom door. This way we necessarily have to see it after dark, before we go to sleep.

When I was vice president of the Student Organization of Yeshiva (the student council for the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and the Mazer Yeshiva Program of Yeshiva University), I made sure that these were made available to the students at YU. Last year, I attempted to contact the person who created this calendar, to get his permission to post it in my local community, but he never responded. This year I have noticed that he is posting it on his website for the availability of everyone. It has also been posted elsewhere. So, I am not afraid of posting it publicly this year. He clearly wants it made available to everyone, and I am just facilitating this.

Enjoy, Hag Sameah, and happy counting!

The Bubby Chronicles, Volume 2

2006-03-25T23:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I said I'd come back with more about Bubby, and that it would be a happy or funny story.

Tonight we discuss the wheelchair at the airport.

Bubby was 87, as I have mentioned. But she was not like your typical 87 year old lady. Bubby was active. Now, I know people say these things about old people - "he was so young at heart"; "she was very active"; "he was young-spirited"; "she was always out and about". This traditionally means that the old fart in question would putt around in the garden for a couple of hours a day and play with his or her grandchildren. Naturally Bubby did these things herself. But she wasn't all old. I have a picture of her that I have shown people, and gotten a response of shock and awe. They can't believe that in the picture, in which Bubby is blowing bubbles on the dance floor of our wedding, is an 85, almost 86 year old lady. I'll have to digitize the picture and upload it in a future edition of The Bubby Chronicles. Bubby took an Israeli dance class with my mother. My mother had a harder time with this class than Bubby, because my mother has had problems with her feet for some time. Bubby, on the other hand, had no such problems and danced her heart out. She danced at our wedding. Bear in mind, we're talking about an Orthodox Jewish wedding. If anyone is unsure just what this means, watch this video of a friend's wedding. We Orthodox Jews know how to party at a wedding.

Anyway, that was all background. This is the story I wanted to tell:

Bubby was once travelling, visiting one grandchild or another. For some reason she was flying standby. She gets to the gate, and gets herself on the list early and is told she's first for a standby seat. It turns out there is one standby seat available, and as Bubby gets herself ready to go, another "old lady" is wheeled up to the gate, and gets the spot. Well, this is unfair. This lady isn't any older than Bubby - in fact we think she may have been younger! Well, from then on Bubby required a wheelchair at the airport. Let me emphasize this point. She did not NEED a wheelchair. She REQUIRED it. In other words, she demanded it. She played the "old lady" card. She went for walks several times a week - miles long. But at the airport she was not going to just stand around while other old ladies got pampered just because today's generation thinks that an old lady in a wheelchair will break if not catered to on hand and foot. After all, she put in her time, and it was time she got something out of all of those years.

Oh, and by the way, this story is only a couple of years old. Yeah, she was feisty.

Buying a Home, part 2

2006-03-22T12:03:00.000-05:00

OK, first, in response to my good friend Koppie:

You're talking about San Francisco. I'm talking about "Kemp Mill" in Silver Spring, Maryland. Come visit us and you'll see what I'm talking about. There's really no comparing the ridiculousness (if that's a word) of the over-pricing in our neighborhoods.

Second, back to what I was saying in my previous post:

I want to start a revolt. I want to rebel against the real estate industry, which has a strangle-hold on our society, and is destroying the American Dream of land/home ownership. Now, the real estate industry is certainly not the only party at fault in this. The lending institutions keep on finding new ways of destroying people's lives, in addition to making it difficult for most and impossible for many to own their own homes, particularly in even the most mildly desirable of areas. In fact, if we didn't absolutely need to live in a neighborhood where we could walk to a Shul, we would never even talk about buying a house here. They are ugly (have I mentioned that yet?) But we want to live near DC, and that basically means we have to live here. There are other neighborhoods near DC that have nicer homes, but they aren't any cheaper. Some are astronomically more expensive. So here we are.

My rebellion will be along these lines:

First - we (that is anyone discussing buying a home) have to agree to significantly undercut the asking price of any house or plot of land. And I mean SIGNIFICANTLY. If we all bid at least $200k below the asking price, eventually the sellers and their agents will get the idea - the bubble has burst. Another way to accomplish this is to agree to initially bid no more than 40% of the asking price, and not to outbid one another by more than 5% at a time, with a cap at 60% of the asking price. We need to recognize that there are other homes available. There are always old people looking to retire in Florida, always middle-aged people looking to move to a smaller place after their kids have moved out, always people who need to relocate for work. The only reason the prices are so ridiculous now, is that the agents have us convinced that we will lose the house if we don't bid higher. And the reason they're right is because they've convinced the other bidders of the same thing. (Did you know that the law, as currently written, states that a real estate agent can tell a bidder that another bid has been made, but can't tell the bidder what that other bid is? This means the second bid can be $150k less than the first bid, but the idea of another bid existing will drive the first bidder to raise his bid even higher. This is supposed to prevent corruption and hyper-inflation of the price!)

Second (particularly if the first step doesn't work) - anyone who has bought a home at an exorbitant price should file and join a class-action lawsuit against the agents who inflated the prices of the homes they bought. This would get complicated. Someone would have to come up with an estimated amount of money that was unfairly and unethically pressured out of the buyers' hands at the time of purchase. They could work out some average amount that everyone would share, or some system to divide the money based on how much each buyer lost.

Third (particularly if the first and second steps don't work) - we should start up a group representing home buyers. There is already a Home Builders Association and a Realtors Association, why not a Home Buyers Association? Here and now, I am declaring the establishment of the National Home Buyers Alliance. Our goal is to represent home buyers and prospective home buyers, and anyone who hopes to become a home buyer in the future, to demand tighter restrictions on the tricks that real estate agents can pull to unfairly and artificially inflate the prices of homes, and to try to get laws passed that require one of the following, or some combination thereof:

a) Lawyers, not real estate agents, one representing each side, negotiate and haggle over the price of the home, and earn a flat fee - NOT A COMMISSION.
b) Real estate agents haggle over the price of the home, and earn a flat fee - NOT A COMMISSION.
c) Real estate agents cannot represent both sides of real estate transactions, not the same transaction and not other transactions - this means they represent either buyers or sellers, not both. Ever. They are no longer "real estate agents". They will be "real estate buyers agents" or "real estate sellers agents".

Look, I have good friends whose families have long histories in the real estate industry. I don't want to harm anybody. I also do not mean to suggest that real estate agents are to blame for the way things work, or that real estate agents are criminals or crooks. They are not. They work completely within the law. But the law breeds corruption and unfairness. It's gotten out of hand and the system needs to change dramatically.

Buying A Home

2006-03-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

OK, so that's a misleading heading. We're in no position to buy a home right now for a number of reasons, not the least of which the fact that I still don't have a real job. In fact I have to write quickly because I have to run off to my fake job in a second. I'm giving myself less that 10 minutes, so here goes:

Everyone I talk to about buying a home is infuriated. The houses in our neighborhood are hideously ugly. For some reason, the houses that for years hovered within a $50k range doubled, tripled, and in some cases quadrupled in price over the last four years. And they're ugly. The whole neighborhood was built by the same architect in the late '50s, and the man had a crazy infatuation with split levels. He apparently won an award, in fact, but not for the houses' aesthetic beauty. He won an award for their sturdiness and durability. This is rumor, so I can't say this for sure, but apparently this also means that it costs a lot more than normal to remodel the houses.

So if you buy a house in our neighborhood, you're spending a MINIMUM of $495k for a fixer-upper. That's crazy. There was one house that was going for under $450k, but not only was it a fixer-upper, but it had black mold and no land. Or something. And it was ugly.

I've spoken with a number of people who bought houses in the last year or two and they have told me that they did so because they realized the market would never drop and that if they didn't buy then, they'd get frozen out. And they recognize that their houses are ugly. They hate that fact but they wanted to be home owners, and that was it.

Here's why I'm writing about this. I want to know why it's legal for real estate agents to jack up the prices. How can it be legal for one agent to represent both sides of such a large transaction? How can it be legal (when there are two agents) for the buyer's agent to essentially be working for the seller by earning half of the seller's agent's commission? This is absolutely absurd! Is there another industry where major transactions, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, are negotiated for both parties by a person who earns a commission based on a percentage of the sale? I can't think of one. I've got to go, but more on this later.

The Bubby Chronicles, Volume One

2006-03-16T09:57:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, my Bubby passed away two weeks ago. There's a lot I would like to write about her, but it can't all fit in one blog post, so I'm going to break it up into different parts. It may or may not go in any particular order - I haven't decided yet. But here is Volume One of The Bubby Chronicles. Enjoy.

Today I think I'll just get something off my chest about the way Bubby passed away. Some days I'll write about her life, about her sayings, about her musings, about her philosophies, or about her death. Today I'm going to write about the way her illness and death affected her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

One of the most frustrating things to all of us with regard to Bubby's death was not so much the fact that she actually passed away. Of course we all loved her and we were all devastated by her death. But it was her illness and its progression that most hurt everyone to watch. You see, Bubby just didn't get sick. Bubby had kidney stones in 1991 and, aside from that, the last time she'd been in the hospital was when she gave birth to my Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue, much to her own chagrin, is in her 50s.

It may strike you that 50 years without a hospital visit is a long time. That's because it is. Bubby virtually never got sick. She smoked for decades and never developed any smoking related problems. I don't remember her ever having a cold or the flu, or complaining about anything other than her weight and men running the world. It was so long that she didn't have a personal physician.

So when Bubby actually had a serious health crisis last summer, congestive heart failure, it was really scary. But on the other hand, we figured she'd recover. Well, everyone but the doctors she saw figured she'd recover. That's because the doctors saw an 87 year old lady who was weak and frail and had just had congestive heart failure, instead of a woman not even 3/4 of the way through her life, who had only a year earlier danced up a storm at our wedding. She got rocked by this thing, and it was very depressing to watch. Talk about irony - her fantastic health her whole life convinced her she didn't need to waste time visiting doctors, which meant she didn't have a personal physician, which meant that the doctors who were treating her for her condition last summer and onward were strangers, who didn't know that she was really not this frail, weak, nursing home-bound, old lady. Had they fully understood that, fully appreciated that, I think they would have worked much harder to get her back up to speed, to where she was, not just to keep her alive for a few more months.

Well, I think that's all for now. Sorry it's so depressing at the end. Next time I'll try a funny story.

Funny

2006-03-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

Just a quick quote from my cousin Allan.

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Mommy, can I have this?

2006-02-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

Pleeeeeeeeease

Maddenization

2006-01-31T22:50:00.000-05:00

A word that tonight returned 6 non-identical hits on Google now has official status.

In refering to the atmosphere of the Chamber of the House of Representatives, in tonight's State of the Union address, Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, said the following:

"Well, you [Chris Matthews] saw what happened in the Chamber. Tim [Russert] and I were sitting here watching, and in the kind of Maddenization of television, you could have used a telestrator to draw a line right down the middle of that Chamber. The group sitting, standing; silent, cheering, and then the applause, the standing ovation that was sarcastic, it really is a divide not seen in a good long time."

Google it - I'd be surprised if there aren't a lot of comments on this in the next few days. The crazy part is that even if you had never heard the word Maddenization before, like myself, you probably knew exactly what he meant!

Link Error

2006-01-30T20:22:00.000-05:00

If anyone noticed, I had a dead link to "Out of Town" Jews. I apologize to anyone who was confused these many months. I've fixed it now and I hope it works. If you're so inclined, please enjoy it, and if you are:
1. an individual not from New York, who has feelings about Judaism;

2. an individual not from New York but currently living there, hoping this to be a temporary situation, who has feelings about Judaism;

or

3. an individual from New York, but not currently living there, who has feelings about Judaism

please let me know if you would like to be a contributor to "Out of Town" Jews.

Thanks.

2006-01-25T20:53:00.000-05:00

And this is just ridiculous. What's wrong with him???

2006-01-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

I have to give Menahem credit for this one.

Couchbike. It's pure genius.

Welcome to the SSPFC

2006-01-25T20:23:00.000-05:00

We must welcome Allioson Lazar, the newest member of the Silver Spring Pistons Fan Club. She and her husband Louie (he's more along for the ride, although he's a good sport) were over here at Headquarters last night to watch the Pistons-Timberwolves game. A native New Yorker, she hates the direction the Knicks are headed, and was looking for a new team to root for. She said she didn't just want to hop on a bandwagon, but she wanted to follow a fun and exciting team. She thought about Miami because of Shaq, and Cleveland because of Lebron, but I think she also wanted someone she can root with, because that adds to the excitement. Isn't that why sports fans love going to games and cheering with the crowd?

Anyway, thanks to Comcast (which is not a phrase I ever thought I'd use), we were able to watch George Blaha and Bill Laimbeer call the game, because Comcast, and probably the NBA, are trying to get people to subscribe to the second half of NBA League Pass by offering free access to it this week.

Welcome, Allison (and Louie). It's good to have you as members. Ken Yirbu!

By the way, I'm watching the Pistons play the Bucks right now, also through the local Detroit affiliate of Fox Sports, and the commercials really make me miss home. Well, some of them do. The one with Tayshaun talking about how he "can do that because I'm a pro. [Wallside Windows] can do that because they're The Factory," is pretty funny. And bad. But I still love you, Tay.

Update as of 1/26/06 at 7:13pm:

I love you more, Ali. xoxox

2006-01-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

So apparently it's difficult to just "come back" when one wants to, in terms of blogging. I think it's because I'm not working full-time. When I was, I would spend all day on the computer, and I would have to go online when I got home in order to see to some things that needed my attention after work, and in the lulls I would blog. Everyone I know who blogs spends hours online anyway. I don't spend hours online anymore. In fact, I have gone days without even checking my email - a very strange phenomenon for me.

I apologize to everyone who has been urging me and asking me if I am every going to come back. My Kashruth investigation had to be put on hold for the same reason. I haven't been going online for hours at a time on a daily basis since right after I started my inquiry, and that has simply led to my general absence from both my blog and my projects that require an online commitment.

Anyway, I just figured I'd give an update to my activities of late.

I'm waiting for word on a particular job, to which I applied a very long time ago. I have received a conditional job offer, dependent upon my ability to pass various tests. I've passed the basic tests, but I have to undergo a series of other tests and I'm still waiting.

I'm also waiting for a part-time job to begin. I was hired by an accountant who recently moved to the area - he is older and married a local widow, and he is slowly moving himself down from New Jersey. He has an established practice there and has been slowly moving everything down to be able to work from a new home-office they just built as an addition to their house, etc. He paid for me to take an income tax course through H&R Block during the fall semester, and I will be doing tax preparation for him. This is to give me something to do during tax season, to make some money, while I wait for the other job to come through.

I currently serve on the Mid-County Citizens Advisory Board here in Montgomery County. We're an official county commission, established by the County Council, along with the Up-County and Down-County boards, in order to represent the general sense of the local citizens on various issues, and advise the County Council as to how we feel they ought to approach and vote on various issues. This isn't nearly as impressive as it might sound - I didn't have to run in any election to get this position; it was an appointment, and I had to apply and interview for it, like a job. A committee of the sitting Board interviewed me, they recommended me to the County Executive, who nominated me (without ever meeting me - he just went on their recommendation), and the County Council confirmed me (also without ever meeting me, just going on the recommendation).

So there it is. My life over the last few months summed up in a few paragraphs. Again, I'll try to continue blogging again soon.

2005-11-22T14:48:00.000-05:00

It was an interesting week in politics. Representative Jack Murtha (D-PA), a hawkish Democrat, recommended the redeployment of US troops within six months. Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), a crazy person, insinuated that Murtha was a coward. Now, I really only have one issue here. I have gone back and forth in terms of which party I support, but I have been told by aquaintances and friends with years of political experience, people deeply entrenched in either party, that I would be best classified as a conservative Democrat. That may be, but I am still unaffiliated with either party. So my issue here is with political motive and procedure.

In addition to the official Oath of Office administered by the Speaker of the House, Schmidt took an additional vow to, "refrain from harsh words, name-calling and the questioning of character." (Read a statement she made shortly thereafter, by clicking here.)

It's not like this was such a long time ago, either. She was elected in a special election, narrowly beating her surprise challenger, Paul Hackett, a returning Iraq war veteran, and was sworn into office on September 6th. That's two and a half months ago. In doing what she did, she not only violated her own oath, which she took, no doubt, in order to try to give herself some air of honesty and integrity, (I personally don't believe she has any, but that's beside the point. Don't worry, I also think a lot of Democratic members of the House lack honesty and integrity.), but she also besmirched the good name of a very much senior member of the House, who happens to be a highly decorated war hero, and a well-respected military consultant to presidents of both parties.

Besides being booed (and rightfully so) by her colleagues on the House floor, she should have been censured. How could nobody have brought forward a resolution to censure her? It boggles my mind.

"Censure is usually a formal condemnation by the House or Senate of one of its own Members. It rebukes a Member for specific behavior considered to be inappropriate or demeaning to the institution. Article I, section 5, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the authority to "punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour." From that grant of authority, Congress has denounced, reprimanded, censured, or expelled its Members. " (http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly95.asp) I think calling another member of Congress a coward would qualify as "inappropriate or demeaning to the institution". Here are the rules for disciplining a Member. http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/rl31382.pdf

I'm back!

2005-10-11T13:02:00.000-04:00

Maybe. Well, for now at least. I had been on a roll with blogging, posting every week to ten days, and I had been getting lots of hits from all over (although my comments had sort of stopped coming in, but that could be because I had stopped commenting much on others' blogs). In any event, I would have thought that I was on such a roll that could not be stopped, and that I could have only continued to post and post and comment and comment and grow and grow. But, that didn't happen and so I cannot honestly say that I am back for good, because we can never know what the future will bring, can we?

So, I've been asked repeatedly about my Kashruth Kwetht. Needless to say, that train has been delayed. (My apologies to Mr. Steven I, in case he is reading this - the fact that I got sidetracked almost immediately after my conversation with Rabbi Weinreb, and after assuring you that I would post a report "today" was just a matter of bad timing). I do hope to be back on track with that project sometime after Sukkoth. I don't really think I have the time to pursue it right now, nor do I believe that those with whom I wish to speak have the time to give to me until after the Hagim anyway.

A quick game of catch-up on what I've been doing lately:

1. I'm taking a class at H&R Block in taxes. I'm going to work for an accountant here during tax season. If you'd like to know how I got into this, feel free to contact me to find out. If you know me, you probably know of some way of contacting me, so I don't feel that I need to post my information on the web. This class has taken up a great deal of my time, even more than the 12 hours a week I had thought it would. There are 6 hours of scheduled class per week (two three-hour sessions), with about one hour of homework per hour of class. Unfortunately, the particular class I'm taking tends to go over the alloted time on a regular basis, without actually finishing the material. This requires extra time spent at home, completing the material not covered in class, before going on to complete the homework for the next class.

2. I've been driving carpool for our neighbors' kids. The mother doesn't drive because she is from New York. She's working on learning how to drive, but in the meantime they need someone to drive the kids to school. They're very friendly, very nice, very interesting people, who let me play their xbox whenever I want.

3. Ali and I are going Las Vegas for Sukkoth. It's not quite what it sounds like. Ali's cousins have moved there, at least for now, and they have invited us to visit and spend the holiday in a hot, dry climate, as opposed to Detroit's cold, wet one (or fending for ourselves here). Ali's Grandma is also coming (because it will be 11 months since we last saw her). Grandma decided that, since we're going to be in Vegas, and we're going to have a car, that we are going to take one day of Hol HaMo'ed and drive to Fontana, California (outside of Los Angeles), to visit her sister. This has turned into a whirlwind relative-visiting trip, which is now going to include Grandma's cousin in LA, my great uncle (also in LA), and any and all grandchildren of the aforementioned who live anywhere around LA. The good news is that we are not going door-to-door to visit them all, but are meeting everyone at a restaurant for dinner (except for Grandma's sister, whom we are visiting at their house).

I'm not sure what else to include, so I guess that will be all for now. If I don't post again before Yom Kippur, have a good fast
(good=meaningful+not too difficult).

Gemar Hathimah Tovah for a Shanah Tovah.

The Soul of Judaism?

2005-08-22T23:08:00.000-04:00

I'm still working out the kinks in my Kashruth report, and I'm also working on a few side projects now, but please read the post below, which I wrote for the new "Out of Town" Jews. (I also have not yet figured out how to cross-post. If anyone knows how, please drop me a line. Also, check it out - both Seth J and "Out of Town" Jews have made it. We're on JRants, woohoo!)

Read this article. It's an Op-Ed piece from today's Jerusalem Post online edition. In it the author, Nathan Lopes Cardozo, dean of the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem, argues that in Israel today there is a deep void in the fabric of Israeli society, which presents itself as a lack of sprituality, when in fact, according to Cardozo, there is a lack of Menchlichkeit, or manners, and proper treatment of one's fellow Jew. He goes further than I would (he states that there are too many Yeshivot, for example), but he makes some very good points about the direction in which Israel is headed.

But isn't all of this true here as well? Isn't it true everywhere? Is it just Israelis who are reaching for some sense of spirituality, something that is intangible, yet Hollywood makes us think is easy to obtain by following their simple steps toward self-fulfillment? In his book, Twersky on Spirituality, Rabbi Abraham J. Twersky, M.D., defines sprituality as humanity - the state of being a person. Thinking, feeling, working, having a goal. Animals lack the ability to deny their own physical needs, hence they are not free to choose. Man, who can supress his desires based on morals or ethics, without any fear of retribution or punishment, is uniquely free, and this is what makes him human. All things that are uniquely human make up the human spirit, and therefore humanity is spirituality.

All mankind looks for some form of personal fulfillment, and, in doing so, we tend to trample on one other's humanity/spirituality (yes, sometimes inadvertently). What we need to focus on is not so much our own selfish needs, like animals, for giving in to our desires is the opposite of spirituality. We need to focus on the needs of our society as a whole, by ensuring that we take care of each other's needs one at a time.

"Out of Town" Jews - A Forum for the Rest of Us

2005-08-15T21:49:00.000-04:00

I recently realized that I have to accept the fact that New York is currently, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the hub of the worldwide Jewish community, at least in the eyes of most Americans. Even though Israel has the largest concentration of Jews in the world, and is predicted to surpass the US in Jewish population by next year, your typical American Jew still thinks that NY is the New Jerusalem (a title formerly held by Berlin). There is also a belief among most New Yorkers, Jewish and non-Jewish, that New York is the center of America, and among many Americans that America is the center of the world (hence, to New Yorkers, NY is the center of the world). Therefore, especially to NY Jews, NY is the center of the Jewish world.

It is because of this belief that NY Jews tend to refer to all other Jews as "out of towners". This is true even when they are not in NY. When I was in Israel for the year to study in Yeshiva, a NYer in my Yeshiva brazenly referred to non-Americans in this predominantly Israeli Yeshiva, located in Israel, as "foreigners" and to non-New Yorkers as "out of towners". This is not new and it will not end soon. The "Jblogosphere" is also dominated by NY Jews and American 'Olim. This is slightly different from the rest of the Jewish world, in the sense that Israel gets more or less an equal voice to the New Yorkers', and there are in a sense two equal halves of the "Jblogosphere". But I am sad to say that we, the non-New Yorkers, who are stuck in Shmutz LaAretz, have to struggle for our voice. We sometimes have a different perspective on issues facing Jews and Judaism than the NY Jews or the American 'Olim. Because of this, I recently started "Out of Town" Jews. It should have been started much earlier, but I guess this is a case of "better late than never". Give it a look, see if you like it, and leave some feedback either here or there. If you know my address, you can always email me too (no, I'm not posting it on the internet!).

Below are some stats I found on Jewish population this morning (I'm not sure how accurate they are - the WJC numbers at the bottom seem awfully high to me, but those numbers are from nearly a decade ago, so who knows?):

US population = 6,155,000 Jews, acc. to www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org; 5.2 million acc. to UJC in 2001
NY = 1.4 million Jews (UJC)

WJC 1998:
US 5.8 million
Israel 4.847 million
France .6 mil
Russia .55 mil
Ukraine .4 mil
Canada .36 mil
UK .3 mil

City populations (WJC 1998):
NY 1.75 mil
Miami 535,000
LA 490,000
Paris 350,000

Bibi, impress me. Please

2005-08-08T14:03:00.000-04:00

OK, so some ppl are impressed with Netanyahu's decision to oppose the disengagement by resigning his post. But let's take a closer look.

I didn't really begin following Israeli politics that long ago, but if I recall correctly, Bibi ran on a platform of opposing land-for-peace deals. He ran as a hardliner. But when faced with pressure from the Clinton Administration and the Israeli public, as well as world opinion, he softened his stance. His hawkish stance got him elected in the first place, but when the winds changed he fluttered. That cost him his job. He bided his time and now he's got an opportunity to get back in power. He's rallying to the call - the people are against the disengagement, so he is too.

With the economy in Israel in decline, and poverty on the rise, now is NOT the time for the Finance Minister to be leaving his post. It's selfish, it does not help the cause he is trying to represent (Minister of the Interior or Foreign Minister would be able to make a statement by resigning, but not Finance), and it hurts an already vulnerable segment of the government.

Bibi is the poster child for what's wrong with the parliamentary system, in its current form, in Israel. That is not to say that every MK is corrupt, or that to be an MK a person needs to be corrupt. But the system, as it exists right now, requires opportunism, and it requires the successful politician to fan the flames of the public opinion and to play the extremist card in order to make a run.

My opinions on the parliamentary system in Israel are many and I think it needs to be reformed in a number of ways, and they are too detailed for this post, but here's what I think of Bibi's decision to resign. It was opportunisitic and insincere.

At this point I think that Bibi is a disgrace to his family name. Yoni Netanyahu was a hero, who gave his life to his people. Binyamin Netanyahu, to me, right now, comes off as a sleaze, who is using his people to give him the life he wants. I guess time will tell on everything. But if he does manage to succeed in manipulating public opinion to get himself elected as Prime Minister again, he will have to do SOMETHING consistent, particularly something for Israel's well-being, in order to impress me like he once did. He is Israel's most articulate advocate, both in English and in Hebrew, and like Superman, he has "powers" that can be used for good or for his own gain. But that's just my opinion.

Bubby's better

2005-07-29T11:21:00.000-04:00

Just FYI, Bubby's home. Finally. She hates doctors more than ever, and the only fear we have now is that she might, G-d forbid, decide not to take her medicine just because she's tired of it. Let's just hope she doesn't get tired of it.

Kashruth Police - Update I

2005-07-26T21:03:00.000-04:00

I have an appointment scheduled for August fourth, to speak with a very powerful leader in American Orthodoxy, regarding the establishment of Kashruth standards and policies in North America. I spoke to him a few weeks ago just briefly, and asked him I could call him to talk about it. He warned me at the time, however, that he might not be able to answer all of my questions, but he assured me that he would at least steer me in the right direction and point me to the right people to ask. While he holds a very influential position in terms of setting standards in many important aspects of the lives of American Orthodox Jews, he obviously does not control the day-to-day lives of individuals, or the conduct or standards of different organizations.

Kashruth Police

2005-07-19T22:28:00.000-04:00

For a long time I've been wondering if the Triangle-K Hechsher is reliable or not. The reason for this is that I was told in high school, after years of eating Frito's and absolutely loving Funyuns, that it was no longer considered a reliable Hecsher, and I was given the following reason. Apparently there was some issue with the certifying rabbi passing away and his estate continuing to issue certification without actually dispatching anyone to check the manufacturing plants of the foods they were certifying as being Kosher.

This struck me as odd. I was young an naive and did not understand how presumably G-d fearing Jews could possibly cheat whole communities and attempt to deceive them for money-making purposes. I also did not understand how a major corporation could be fooled by some smooth-talking "rabbi" who claimed that his certification would be universally accepted, when in fact millions were rejecting it. Despite my reservations, my source was someone I deemed reliable and I accepted this rumor to be reliable enough to make me wary of the Triangle-K. (I have to admit, however, that it did take me a long time to give up Frito's barbeque corn chips, and even longer to give up Funyuns, which I still miss).

Over the years I have avoided any and all foods bearing the Triangle-K, treating them as if they had no Hechsher, and sometimes treating them as if they were actually Treif. This is in contrast to how I treated unlabeled foods, which could occasionally be deemed Kosher if a reliable rabbi said so personally. Even a plain K could be deemed Kosher if a local Va'ad listed the food in its newsletter. But for me, a Triangle-K was not only to be considered uncertified, but untrustworthy. Even if someone were to tell me that a certain product carrying a Triangle-K label were Kosher, I would be very hesitant to eat it, and I would feel very guilty when I did.

So I would only buy or eat products with a Triangle-K if someone very close to me, whom I considered very reliable, were to recommend it, AND if it were a very plain, minimally processed food, like frozen vegetables, and only certain brands that I was told were OK.

Lately, however, I have begun to wonder if this whole situation has not been resolved by now. After all, when I was first told of the alleged fraud of the proprietors of the Triangle-K label, it was nearly 10 years ago. This is quite some time. One would think that someone would have clued in the corporations to the problems with their Kashruth certification, and/or that someone would have sued somebody else over the problems and/or the allegations.

Recently I was in an uncomfortable position. I knew for a fact that Ocean Spray cranberry juices and other products carry a Triangle-K, and I even have close friends who eat and serve Ocean Spray cranberry products. These are people whom I trust, and at whose homes I eat. Until very recently I treated the fact that they serve Ocean Spray to mean that they simply were not aware of the questionable nature of the Triangle-K Hechsher, or that they knew something that I did not, and would simply not drink the juice or eat the product. Also, since it is something that is questionable, and not even close to being something I would consider a steadfast rule anymore, I would just not say anything, and continued to treat their home and their other foods as reliably Kosher.

So, here I was on a Friday, shopping for ingredients for some Shabbath dishes, looking for a can of whole berry cranberry sauce. I found a can of Ocean Spray, Triangle-K labeled, whole berry cranberry sauce. I called a reliable source - my mother - to ask what exactly was the deal with Triangle-K. My mother, to my dismay, replied that it was I who had informed her that Triangle-K was problematic to begin with. She also informed me that she often uses Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce WITHOUT a Hechsher at all, as that was sanctioned by either the local Va'ad or some rabbi she trusts (she didn't specify who told her it was OK, so I shouldn't really draw conclusions). In any case, she advised, the whole berry version WITH a Triangle-K could be no worse. So I bought it.

Since then I have done some research. Apparently, according to the Chicago Rabbinical Council (CRC), a nearly universally accepted and well regarded authority, any juices bearing a Triangle-K (or a half-moon K, which has been regarded as even less reliable by many as Triangle-K), other than grape juice or red grapefruit juice, are reliably Kosher. Canned vegetables under the Triangle-K (and half-moon K) are also acceptable, and the following quote comes from a letter released by the CRC in February of this year: "Canned FRUIT, except from China, does not need any supervision (except on Passover) as long as the only added ingredients are salt, sugar, corn syrup or water."

In case anyone is interested, I have heard several other rumors since beginning my research. One is that the Triangle-K allowed Little Debbie's cakes to be certified Kosher without Kashering their equipment after the OU had refused to do the same because that condition was not going to be met. The person who told me this also told me that he heard that this was a decision of the father and that the son was somewhat better. Another point that was made to me is that the Triangle-K certifies Wonderbread (and many other products that are deemed as not reliably Kosher by most Orthodox Jews), and several other breads that are dairy. There are two problems with this - one is that it is patently Asur (forbidden) to bake bread that is either dairy or meat, because of the confusion it might cause. This is a rabbinic decree that is centuries old. The other problem, which is WHY the first problem exists, is that they certify dairy hot dog buns.

My goal is not to find out what's good and what's bad under the Triangle-K label, but to get to the bottom of the controversy. This looks as though this may turn into an ongoing project, and I will post my updates as regularly as I am able.

John G. Roberts & Co.

2005-07-19T21:08:00.000-04:00

Just a quick question. Did anybody notice during the president's speech that he nominated John G, whose family members include wife Jane and kids Jack and Josie? John G, Jane, Jack and Josie. This is the man who was nominated by a man who goes by Dubya. Rednecks. Go figger.

Please Daven

2005-07-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

I apologize for not posting frequently lately. I'm in the middle of working on two posts - one which may not make it, and one which will likely be a long-term research project.

In the meantime, please Daven (pray) for my Bubby (grandmother). Her Hebrew name is Rachel bat Perel (I'm breaking from my preferred transliteration style for the sake of simplicity, and I hope never to have to do this again).

She was hospitalized last Friday with a heart arythmia (sp?). She hates doctors and, even though she wasn't feeling well, decided she would wait until after July 4th to see someone. Fortunately my mother and my aunt were able to convince her to see her doctor, and he ordered her to go straight to the hospital. They gave her medication and realized that she had bleeding ulcers, which she had neglected to mention, of course, and the medication made them bleed excessively. She spent a couple of days in the ICU (under protest) and yelled at the surgeon for implying that she might need his services. (Did I mention that she hates doctors?)

Anyway, she's in a regular room in the hospital now, but could still use some prayers. If you have any messages for Bubby, please feel free to leave them. Anything inappropriate will be deleted, of course, but please don't make me do that.

Thank you.

"Da' Mah LeHaShiv LeApikoros" (Eng: "Know what to respond to [one who attempts to challenge your faith]") ~ Pirqei Avoth

2005-07-10T15:53:00.000-04:00

I was posting a comment on my friend Shu's blog, and I began telling a story, which I realized I should post on my own blog. I was saying that in general, poor, crack-addicted, wannabe missionary types tend to have a fairly dark complexion, if you catch my drift, but that I once had to fend off a very WASPy wannabe missionary on a flight to Edmonton. Here is the story.

I had basically debunked his entire belief system and for some reason he kept coming back for more. I should have started earlier, I think, but I spent the first hour or so trying not to get into a fight with the guy so I just tried to get him to agree to disagree. When it became clear that he would not be satisfied just to disagree, I went on the offensive, so that I would not appear to be defensive, as I thought that looking defensive might make him feel superior. By the time we landed he was wishing he had agreed to disagree when he had the chance. He avoided me while we were getting our luggage, staying on the other side of the conveyor belt. I think it was because he had two or three little WASP children, with almost platinum blond hair and ice blue eyes, all under the age of 8 or 9, and he (or more likely his wife, who was also there - and also very very WASPy) probably didn't want the evil Jew to make them question his idolotrous faith.

I'm sorry if anyone out there thinks that this was wrong of me, by the way, but frankly the guy started it (actually I'm not sorry, because he had started it) - he began the entire conversation by whipping out a King James Bible and trying to prove to me that Yushkie was the Messiah, because I was learning Gemara in the seat in front of his. I had sat down in my seat, minding my own business, and he sat in his seat behind me. I got settled and pulled out my Gemara, and he asked if I was studying Talmud. I said yes, and then he whipped out the King James.

I think I tried hard enough not to make him feel like his religion was a sham, but when we would not let up after an hour, I felt it was appropriate to finally respond politely but with strong confidence. I knew what I was talking about and he did too, to an extent. He knew which passages to quote and which ones to avoid, and which partial verses to cite out of context, and even used the famous mistranslated verse from Isaiah, and I took advantage of every hole in his argument. He failed, thank G-d, and I am also thankful that he had probably never met a Jew before and will probably never meet one again, which means that he will never, I hope and pray, have the opportunity to try his skills on a weaker minded Jew.

I think that my story (and Shauli's too) shows that we are constantly under attack, for one reason or another, from one segment of the world's population or another, and we have to be ever vigilant and educated. We need to stay one step ahead, which is really not as difficult as it might seem. If we know the fundamentals of our religion, we can easily counterpoint any attack. Baruch HaShem.

Suspended Belief

2005-06-26T19:09:00.000-04:00

OK,

I was going to write about something else. But this just came up.

We're watching Annie. Yes, the 1982 musical. Ten year old Annie just started singing "Tomorrow" to FDR, and Ali thinks this might be a little too hard to believe. A little too hard to believe that a little girl would just burst into song to demonstrate to the president what she does to cheer herself up when she's blue.

Now, of all the films to cirticize for being too far removed from reality to appreciate, I have to say that, for me at least, Annie is way down towards the bottom of the list.

Can we take a survey of the LEAST believable films that people have seen?

Maybe we should have some ground rules. Obviously any fantasy film or sciece fiction is going to be high on the list of films requiring too much suspended belief. Most fiction requires some level of suspended belief. Let's say that movies set their own ground rules. Once within the framework of its own reality, though, a movie should be believable. For instance, if a movie were made about a superhero who was invincible and could manipulate reality without effort simply by willing it to be different, and a bad guy somehow manages to challenge him and put his life in danger (the second and third Matrix movies, anyone?), that requires too much suspended belief.

Alright, let's hear it.

More about the weather

2005-06-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

So summer in Washington is pretty intense. The heat is just crazy. Ali and I were here two summers ago, but I still wasn't prepared. We moved in last summer and experienced about half of the Washington summer, but I still wasn't prepared. I spoke to the IPA interns at orientation and made a half-joking comment about how I hoped they were all enjoying the weather, and not to worry, it will only get worse, but I still wasn't prepared.

Monday night was the worst so far. And I want to emphasize, so far. It was after 9pm, the heat itself was in the 80s, and the humidity was in the 90s - AFTER a thunderstorm, which, in most other places I've been, breaks the humidity, pulling the moisture out of the air and putting it into the ground. Oh, no. Not here! Washington was built on a swamp. The story goes that they chose Washington because it is so nasty in the summer that nobody in his right mind would choose to live here, and, therefore, nobody would become a career politician. Clearly that didn't quite work out, but if you've been here in the summer, you know that's definitely a believable story.

Winger

2005-06-09T11:47:00.000-04:00

Has anybody been reading Charles Krauthammer lately?

I put his Washington Post column as a link on my sidebar because in general I really like what he has to say. He's a brilliant thinker and talented writer, and a person who has come a long way in life. I have also moved in a similar direction in my political outlook (without all the accolades, unfortunately, but also without the tragedy, thank G-d). After earning a BA at McGill in political science and economics, a Master's at Oxford, and an MD at Harvard (during which time he was paralyzed in a diving accident, which left him in a wheelchair for life), he practiced medicine and psychiatry for three years and quit to work for the Carter administration. He then worked for Walter Mondale as his speech writer during the 1980 presidential campaign. He has worked for the New Republic, a center-left publication, and the Weekly Standard, a center-right publication. He has generally stayed very much at the center of politics, with a turn slightly to the right of where he started. This has been his trademark. He has been regarded as the thinker behind the Neo-Conservative movement, which many left-leaning Democrats oppose. While many agree that President Bush is a blubbering yahoo from the backwoods with no real intelligence other than a knack for hiring the right people to push his agenda and convince enough people to follow him, virtually everyone, left, right, and center, agree that Charles Krauthammer is the brain behind the movement that the Bush administration is supposed to embody.

I have it on good authority from the inside, that there are many Neo-Conservatives who oppose a lot of what Bush has done. Many highly regarded intellectuals and thinkers in that movement think that Bush has gone too far to the right and has become extreme and arrogant. I've read some of their published pieces and heard from acquaintances and colleagues of theirs, and it seems that many who idealize Reagan for his strong stance when dealing with the Soviet Union, and even support such plans as the partial privatization of Social Security and the rebuilding of Iraq and the spreading of democracy according to Bush's plan, would rather have a Clinton-esque Moderate than a right- (or left-) wing administration.

But for some reason, lately Charles Krauthammer has been very outspoken in favor of just about anything the Bush administration has done. Rather than being the voice of reason, as he has always been, he seems to have gone off the deep end. I don't know what exactly caused the change or how long it will last, or how deeply it is now ingrained in him, but I will keep his column linked to my blog for the time being. I just think it's odd.

Duck and Cover

2005-06-06T19:49:00.000-04:00

Was there a hurricane in the news? I wasn't really paying attention but the weather right now is nuts. There's a warning across the top of the TV that there could be hail the size of small coins in Virginia (about an hour from here), the sky looks like it's about an hour later than it actually is, and the trees look like they're going to start flying out of the ground.

I'm just waiting for a tornado siren to start blaring (hey, I'm from Detroit - you know what I'm talkin about Shauli, first Saturday of the month at 1:00, right?).

Oh, and let's go Pistons!

W. Mark Felt? Really?

2005-06-06T00:19:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else have a problem with the notion that W. Mark Felt, former #2 at the FBI, was Deep Throat, the secretive source who fed information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post and brought down the Nixon White House?

Here's my objection. I don't know if it was Felt or not, obviously. But doesn't it seem convenient that Felt, who is 91 years old, is now coming out and announcing his secret identity? He exposes his identity, in Vanity Fair magazine, of all places, at a time when he is at the tail end of his life, shortly after Woodward and Bernstein announce their intention of revealing the identity of Deep Throat upon his death. This follows rumors that Deep Throat is very ill and possibly nearing death. (Speculation circled around Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and President Gerald R. Ford).

So Woodward and Bernstein, who have already profited nicely from Deep Throat, by becoming living legends and launching their careers from obscure back-page reporters to front-page icons, not to mention publishing a book and selling their movie rights, are going to publish an in-depth background story and memoir with the blanks filled in (READ - $$$) and the actual legend gets squat. So Felt, whether or not he actually was Deep Throat, whether or not there actually was a single person, dubbed Deep Throat, who fed the information to Woodward and Bernstein, declares that he was actually Deep Throat. He wants to cash in. He knows he's close to the end, and he wants to get book rights so his family can have a sizeable inheritance.

Here's what I think:

Either it's all true, as they say it is, or else it was a money- and fame-making scheme, as I will attempt to resolve. There were multiple sources who fed information to Woodward and Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein either made up or exaggerated the lengths to which they went in order to safely meet with their sources and made it out that there was only one (or one primary) source. They are artful story tellers. They write like edge-of-your seat suspense novelists, and this was their way of getting the chance to do that. Meanwhile, three decades later, after they promise that they're going to reveal the identity of the now-famous Deep Throat, and they are preparing their story, Felt, who is probably one of at least three people who have always suspected that they were Deep Throat, decides to cash in. I think Ford, Rehnquist, and Felt, and probably others, fed information to the reporters, and probably all followed similar protocol for arranging meetings with them. Whether the protocol was invented by Woodward or designed by Felt and passed along by Woodward I don't know. But I think they were going to proclaim either Ford or Rehnquist as Deep Throat, depending on who died first. That way the other two (or more) possibilities would not be able to claim the title. But Felt beat them to the punch, so they had to roll with it. I think that any one of the possible Deep Throat candidates could have been named Deep Throat, and all of them possibly even thought in their heart of hearts that they themselves were in fact Deep Throat but didn't know 100% if they were right. They obviously didn't want to go out on a limb like that and be made a fool if they were wrong. But given his age, and the declared intention of Woodward and Bernstein to announce the identity of Deep Throat after his death, Felt decided to go for it, get a book deal, and make his family rich and legendary. Woodward and Bernstein didn't particularly care, so long as they got their new book and movie deals. Their initial reaction was probably shock and a little disappointment/anger until they realized that it didn't hurt their plan and that they could roll with it if they just worked together to iron out the kinks in the story. If you remember, their only comment after confirming that Felt was Deep Throat was, "We have a lot of work to do."

Anyway, that's my theory.

What's yours?

New face

2005-06-02T15:14:00.000-04:00

OK,

So you may have noticed that I have been playing around with the appearance of my blog. I got sick of everyone else having a cool looking blog but me. I didn't like most of the choices I was given by Blogger and I didn't want to "copy" someone else who had beaten me to one of the "cool" templates.

After some tinkering with the code (which is the first time in a VERY long time that I have touched code, and the first time I have ever done anything in html - this is html, right?), I am satsified for now. I will likely tinker some more in the near future. Maybe I'll get good enough to completely write my own template - who knows?

Any other nasty comments can be forwarded to yourmom@biteme.com.

Early Shabbath

2005-05-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

In our building there is (or there has been since around Rosh HaShannah) a nightly Minyan for Ma'ariv, as well as a weekly Friday night Minyan. Since the start of daylight savings time, however, it has grown increasingly difficult to keep up the nightly Minyan, and the Friday night Minyan has been going through tremendous debate over whether to hold it early or late, the early time generally being quite a bit after Plag (this week it would be 12 minutes after, if it happens at all). For that reason, I decided to look up the rules to bring in Shabbath early by doing a Google search for "Plag Mincha" (I know I broke my own rule regarding transliterating Hebrew, but it's the way everyone else typically spells the word).

I found this article, which I hope will be useful to others reading my blog:

http://www.ou.org/torah/tt/5765/behar65/early.htm

Have a Shabbath Shalom.

Seth

Reggie

2005-05-19T23:26:00.000-04:00

No, not the way to go!

Come on, Rick Carlisle! Are you kidding me?

As moving as the ovation at the end of the game was, and as much of a Pistons fan as I am, I just did not like the way the game, and with it Reggie’s career, ended.

First was the block. Ben Wallace, whom I love as a Pistons fan, as a former bench-warming, defense-oriented, blocking high school basketball player, ruined what could have been Reggie’s glorious exit. Obviously I wanted Detroit to win. And I think they would have won anyway. But when Reggie comes off the dribble to lob an off-balance three-pointer with under 30 seconds to play and an opposing player reaching for the block, it’s just wrong to actually succeed in blocking that shot. That’s Reggie’s shot. I mean it was his final game. You’ve got to let Reggie have his heroics, even if his team ends up losing.

The final sequence was even more disappointing, because it was more than just Reggie losing in his final bid to win a championship. It was a concession by Coach Carlisle. The Pacers are down 8 with Hamilton at the line for a second free throw. He’ll end up hitting it and putting the Pistons up 9. For most teams, under most circumstances, that’s when you pull your best player off the court and let him rest early. But this is an elimination game in the playoffs. And not only that, you have Reggie Miller on your team. And not only that, it’s Reggie’s final season.

You’re down by 9 with 15.6 seconds to go in an elimination game. Do you give up? No! You push till the buzzer. If you have Reggie Miller on your team and you’re down by 9 with 15.6 seconds to go in ANY game, much less a playoff game, MUCH less an elimination game, do you give up? Heck no! It’s Miller Time! And you’re telling me you’re going to let Reggie retire like that? Come on, Coach! That’s when you prove yourself and you let Reggie prove himself (once again). Down by 9 with 15.6 seconds to go IS Miller Time. You create a play for Reggie to get a 3 and then make a quick foul. You get a quick stop and another quick Reggie trey. One more stop and another Reggie 3-pointer at the buzzer and you go to overtime. You may lose in OT, but Reggie gets his heroics.

I am a HUGE Reggie Miller fan. On numerous occasions I have thought about whether I would be satisfied to witness Reggie get a title at the Pistons’ expense. The ovation was incredibly moving. People were crying and I was on the verge.

But it just wasn’t right.

You know, when Rick Carlisle was fired after two consecutive successful seasons, I was outraged. I was one of the many dumbfounded Pistons fans who just could not understand why you would get rid of the coach who made that difference. Now I understand. He just wasn’t that great a coach. If you can’t even think of an option that could potentially allow Reggie Miller to score 9 points in 15.6 seconds, the man who scored 8 in under 9 seconds, you just aren’t that good of a coach. It’s just about isolation and stops. As a coach, if you’re down by fewer than 10 points in an elimination game in the playoffs, and you have Reggie on the floor, you absolutely do NOT pull Reggie out of the game. The ovation was nice. But what about the game? What about his legacy? The Pistons didn’t win the game, Coach Carlisle gave it to them. The man is all about class, but in this case it was purely style over substance.

Loyalties

2005-05-09T23:03:00.000-04:00

Well, I guess it's time I posted a response to the "Dual Loyalties" debate between Isaac and Menachem. And by the way, when did you start going by Menachem? After you left YU, I suppose. (I hope I'm not embarrassing you by publicizing your time there).

Anyway, I'll address the topic at hand. I am actually very interested in this topic and was thinking about it just today. (I hadn't actually read your conversation until a moment ago). I came to a similar conclusion, apparently, to that of Dershowitz. However, I have to qualify that. It is true that I am loyal to both because of the way I perceive them both in being "right" (morally, not politically).

{WOW! That was a great play! (I'm watching the Suns-Mavs game 1. Stoudamire and Marion fast break in the first quarter - check for highlights on the internet).}

The difference between me and Dershowitz is that I am driven not by some Western, democratic ideal of what is "right" but by what Torah Judaism says is "right". I base my politics on that as well. And we can debate Separation Between Church and State another time - that's another one of my favorite topics. But I don't see anything wrong with allowing HaShem to guide my philosophy in life, which would, in turn, affect my political leanings.

I will never allow Eretz Yisrael to fall to anyone else's hands or be corrupted if there is anything I can do to prevent it. But as far as the State of Israel is concerned, I am loyal inasmuch as it is the conduit through which I am able to fulfill {Another WOW from the game - Stoudamire's block, leaping over Nash} what I believe is a Biblical duty to live in Eretz Yisrael (I also heard once, although I have not been able to find the source, that the RaMB"aN states somewhere that you can only fulfill Mitzvoth on the DeOraitha level if you are in Eretz Yisrael) and insasmuch as it is the home of millions of Jews.

But I am loyal to the United States because I know that it is the only nation in the world where I can comfortably wear a Kippah on the street late at night (I know a lot of people don't feel exactly the same way, but I do, and it's the only place that is true, except maybe Australia. Although I'm married to an Australian I have not yet been there, so I don't know for sure.) AND because it is "just" AND because it is my birthplace. If any of those were to cease to be true, my loyalty would likely falter.

But I don't foresee that happening, even in today's seemingly unstable political environment, because the system has proved that it can overcome political instability. It has managed to stabilize itself. People crave stability and normalcy. The environment after Bush was elected in 2000 stabilized because people kept on referring to the man as "President Bush" and it was a fact that could not be denied. And eventually, after a while, the opposition came to realize that the only way to get their way was to go back to working within the system. But I digress. My faith in the system was tested, but it proved itself to me really only this year, and I no longer fear the instability that was threatened.

So, to review, I am loyal to the U.S. and I intend to remain loyal, because I do not believe that any of the factors that make me loyal will cease to exist. I am loyal to the State of Israel and I intend to remain loyal as long as the factors that make me loyal remain true. I believe that the State of Israel's "right"ness or "faithful"ness is slightly less stable than America's. But I will always and ever remain unfailingly loyal to Eretz Yisrael and Kelal Yisrael.

I do not foresee my loyalties to any of the above coming into question or conflicting. If either the State of Israel or the United States of America were to suddenly be at war, that would mean that one of them has deviated from that which makes it worthy of my loyalty. But Eretz Yisrael and Kelal Yisrael cannot do that.

I hope that answered your questions without creating too many more.

Good night.

BS-a Palooza

2005-05-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

Not much new to report. People have been criticizing my few postings. Well, mocking is a more accurate term. The truth is, I guess, I'm just plain boring. I have nothing to post.

Today was a grueling day at work. Not as grueling as yesterday, but still quite exhausting. I won't bore you with all the details, and believe me, it would be pretty boring, but let me just say this - there's a lot of BS that gets flung all around Capitol Hill. I mean, come on - I'm just running an internship program. Where's the politics in that?? Right. So, yesterday I declared myself the Duke of BS. I'm definitely not the King, but I had to fling some around, both yesterday and today, in order to get things done.

Yep, can't wait till I get a full-time job there! (Sarcasm? You decide.)

PesahPalooza

2005-05-02T17:06:00.000-04:00

(Here's hoping Lou Shapp doesn't sue me over the subject line to this post)

Pesah is always fun in my house. And of course, by fun I mean not-so-much. This was actually a pretty tame Pesach by my family's standards.

I'll give you some examples of some of my favorite Pesah incidents:

1. Ninth or tenth grade: Talking on the phone with Snapple about sending in labels or bottle caps for free stuff, I'm sitting on the floor in the family room. I get up, leaning on the glass coffee table, and my hand just goes straight through the glass. Hijinks ensue. (Actually, replace the word 'hijinks' with 'yelling and screaming'.)

2. The following year: The refrigerator breaks down on Bedikah night. Hijinks ensue. (Actually, replace the word 'hijinks' with 'mass-panic and hysteria'.)

3. The following year: The NEW refrigerator breaks down the last day of Hol HaMo'ed. Hijinks ensue. (See above).

4. My year in Israel: I spend Pesah on a Kibbutz. I arrive on Bedikah night, and my first time at the Shul is 'Erev Pesah morning. I get lost on my way to Shul, making me late, which means I finish late, and then again on my way to the Heder Ochel. I miss the Siyyum and end up fasting all day. I break my fast on overly sweet, heavy, syrupy Israeli wine at the Seder. Not fun. Hijinks ensue. (Actually, replace the word 'hijinks' with 'gagging and near passing out'.)

5. My second year at YU: Having been recently dumped, very badly by the way, I am horribly miserable and depressed. Seder is not so fun. To top it off, I meet up with ex during Hol HaMo'ed. And of course there is the 7-11 incident shortly after Yom Tov ends. (Actually, replace the word 'hijinks' with 'stupid babbling and eventual death-threats'. For details ask Shauli [http://shuandnat.blogspot.com].)

6. The following two years: Ali comes into my life. She is horribly allergic to my family's cat, Bullseye. Hijinks ensue. (Well, replace the word 'hijinks' with 'asthma' and the word 'ensue' with 'is rampant'.)

Finally, we come to this year.

Having learned our lesson with the cat, we stay at a neighbor's house. I get to see a friend I grew up with, whom I haven't seen since at least high school. In our free time Ali and I read books we took out from the local library here in Silver Spring. No hijinks ensue whatsoever. Until yesterday. Finally, yesterday, we get some Pesah fun. Ali gets a stomach virus, and after putting on my favorite sweatshirt because she's freezing, and assuring me that she is not going to vomit on it, she does just that. Fun! Yay! It's ok, though. Ali's much better now, B"H, and thanks for asking.

Anyway, I hope you had a great holiday.

Thanks to Shalom Silbermintz for teaching me to love the phrase 'hijinks ensue'.

Our Worst Enemy

2005-03-29T10:44:00.000-05:00

The follwoing is an article I recently read. Scroll down and click on Comments to leave a comment with your thoughts.

You can read it on Toward Tradition's website at http://www.towardtradition.org/our_worst_enemy.htm

Below is the text:

Our Worst EnemyJanuary 20, 2005
By Rabbi Daniel LapinPresident, Toward Tradition
I am an Orthodox Jewish rabbi sadly denouncing one of the box office hits of 2004. Which movie has earned my wrath? Here is a clue—it surprised everyone by selling over one hundred million dollars of tickets in its first week in theaters. No, it’s not Mel Gibson’s Passion. The movie causing me deep distress is a Rosenthal/Tenenbaum production starring Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand.
I was sorry to see Barbra Streisand involved in the flagrant defamation of Judaism found in this, her latest movie hit. While she was making her film Yentl, for which I served as a consultant, she studied Judaism regularly and diligently with me. She was a warm and gracious guest on the occasions she had dinner with my family. Yentl’s nostalgic, if not altogether authentic glimpse into 19th century Jewish life in Poland, evoked a feeling of fondness for the characters, but like many ethnic Jews, Streisand is largely isolated from her religious roots. In the new film to which I refer, she plays not a role, but a heinous caricature of a Jewess.
I am reluctant to name the movie on account of the implied vulgarity of its title. If you are reluctant to part with good money for the privilege of seeing the Jewish people being defamed, you should abstain from this movie. In spite of having several Jewish producers and several Jewish stars, this film’s vile notions of Jews are not too different from those used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
I may be unsophisticated but I am not just a grouch with no sense of humor. I’ll fess up; I really enjoy funny movies. However you should know a little about this offensive excuse for entertainment. You might recall that in the first movie we followed Pam Byrnes as she introduced her very Jewish and nerdy boyfriend, Greg, to her parents. This sequel shows the Byrnes visiting their daughter’s future in-laws. The movie depicts Greg’s conspicuously Jewish parents as sexually obsessed, constantly concupiscent degenerates. Nice people, but depraved. Their home is filled with bric-a-brac that juts with anatomic suggestiveness.
Along with their son’s bar mitzvah talit, or prayer shawl, they have preserved the foreskin from his circumcision. To add to the hilarity, this souvenir makes a distasteful reappearance at an awkward moment. In reality, Jews treat the foreskin with reverence and bury it rather than turning it into a scrapbook joke. The hosts, who never miss an opportunity of exuding Jewish ethnicity, boast of their son losing his virginity to the gentile maid and they keep their guests waiting while they themselves practice what they preach in their bedroom upstairs. There are many more vile examples of Jewish people being defamed in this horrible excrescence. I am not sure that labeling it comedy excuses the defamation.
I do not particularly care for dark, socially significant films. Give me funny movies like The Blues Brothers and Hopscotch. However I really loathe movies that perpetuate hideous stereotypes about racial, religious, or ethnic groups, no matter how funny they may seem. What is more, I cannot see how racial bigotry is lessened if perpetrated by blacks or that anti-Semitism is diminished if delivered by Jews.
This movie defames Jews in a way that I haven’t seen since the worst that Woody Allen dished up. And Woody at his worst was breathtakingly hostile to Judaism. One need only recall how many of Woody’s films portray Jews, not to mention rabbis, as loathsome liars, desperate psychotics, pathetic perverts, and ridiculously lecherous losers. If Woody Allen were not Jewish, surely every Jewish organization would have roundly denounced him. And they would have been right. The problem is that he is Jewish and they don’t denounce him. Instead, we self-destructive Jews celebrate Woody Allen Week at Jewish Community Center film festivals.
It is not only in movies that Jews besmirch Jews as sexualizing the culture. Ruth Westheimer told The New York Times of her love for Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people. Meanwhile, as Dr. Ruth, with her grandmotherly appearance and her high-pitched Jewish accent, she titillates her audiences with shockingly explicit sexual advice.
Radio shock-jock Howard Stern intersperses his displays of dehumanizing depravity with a constant stream of “Oy veys” as if subconsciously compelled to highlight his Jewish ethnicity.
Jerry Springer, widely known as the Jewish former mayor of Cincinnati, normalizes depravity by projecting a deviant sub-culture and its cheering hooligans right into America’s living room.
A few years ago, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal gushingly profiled a Jewish pornographer whose stage name is Ron Jeremy. The piece praised the huge sums he’s been paid to “bed more gorgeous women than James Bond.” Jeremy, who proudly admits to have acted in or directed over 1,500 porn videos, cited the preponderance of Jewish men in porn and explained, “Jewish families tend to be more liberal than Christian ones, they aren’t obsessed by the fear of the devil or going to hell.” As if to eliminate any lingering doubt about Ron Jeremy’s Jewishness, the Jewish Journal breathlessly assures us that Ron Jeremy plans to marry in a synagogue.
You’d have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture. Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it.
Naturally, I am not suggesting that Americans of Jewish descent should conceal their ethnic identity. I am urging those for whom Judaism is a link to the eternal values of Sinai, to wake up and realize how other Americans increasingly perceive us. Furthermore we ought to recognize that this unwholesome perception of Jews is the result of anti-Semitism perpetrated by Jews rather than by non-Jews. It would seem that Isaiah’s twenty-eight hundred year old prophecy to the Jewish people has come true today—“Those that destroy you and those that wreck you go forth from thee.” (Isaiah 49:17)
By now, some Jewish readers will be cringing. You might be cursing me for making public the role of Jews in debasing the culture. Perhaps you subscribe to the notion that nobody has noticed. I sympathize and want you to know that I write about it only for the purpose of trying to solve the problem. Make no mistake, it is a problem, and the solution lies not in attempting to defame the critics, but in stepping forward to criticize the defamers. Indeed, if we Jews do not ourselves condemn the wrong that our brethren do, others with less sympathy eventually will do so.
This excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf shows how that evil megalomaniac roused his nation to hurl an avalanche of destruction at the Jewish people:
Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? What had to be reckoned heavily against the Jews in my eyes was when I became acquainted with their activity in the press, art, literature, and the theater….It sufficed to look at a billboard, to study the names behind the horrible trash they advertised….Is this why the Jews are called the “chosen people”? The fact that nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people, constituting hardly one hundredth of all the country’s inhabitants, could simply not be talked away; it was the plain truth. (Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Chapter II)
It does not excuse Hitler or his Nazi thugs for us to acknowledge that this maniacal, master propagandist focused on a reality that resonated with the educated, and cultured Germans of his day. Not once in Mein Kampf did that monster charge Jews with being complicit in the killing of Christ two thousand years earlier. He knew that long-ago event, shrouded in mystery and theological profundity, would never goad enlightened people to murder. Instead, he drew attention to the obvious and inescapable; that which every German knew to be true.
The sad fact is that through Jewish actors, playwrights, and producers, the Berlin stage of Weimar Germany linked Jews and deviant sexuality in all its sordid manifestations just as surely as Broadway does today. Much of the filth in American entertainment today parallels that of Germany between the wars.
About twenty years ago, one of Ayn Rand’s protégés, Leonard Peikoff, wrote a book called The Ominous Parallels in which he described how Germany’s cultural decline helped bring the Nazis to power. With haunting precision, Peikoff proves how similar is America’s cultural decline. I am not predicting vicious anti-Semitism in America but I am suggesting that most decent Americans today feel more viscerally outraged by the assault on decency than by the Crucifixion.
Bill Cosby rightly condemned black entertainment that hatefully glorifies destructive behavior. By contrast, Barbershop, the 2002 movie starring Icecube, and Cedric the Entertainer, limned a loving portrait of a hard-working African-American family valiantly struggling to achieve nobility in the face of formidable challenge. In the same year, Nia Vardalos did her hilarious My Big Fat Greek Wedding, clearly demonstrating her love for her warm-hearted and decent relatives. Contrarily, we Jews routinely depict ourselves in repugnant caricatures of people you’d want nothing to do with in real life. Why do my colleagues in Jewish communal leadership never condemn this anti-Semitism? For if it is not anti-Semitism, what is?
Ah, but wait. The leader of a famous Jewish defense organization that exists to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, recently denounced, in The Jerusalem Post, one of the most profitable movies of 2004 for its “vile notions of Jews.” Reluctant to “contribute to the overflowing coffers” of the producers by encouraging attendance, he nonetheless insisted that “only by viewing it can one understand how offensive it is.”
Was he describing the horrible sequel I am refusing to name? Sadly, not. He was referring to Mel Gibson’s The Passion. Nearly a year after its release, and after polls show increased regard for Jews among the film’s audiences, Jewish organizations still condemn The Passion as defamatory to Jews. Yet, astonishingly, they don’t consider the examples I cite above as defamatory to Jews.
Here is a simple question: Do you suppose that people’s view of what Jews are really like is shaped more by Caius, an obscure two-thousand-year old character in The Passion or alternatively by the contemporary couple played by Streisand and Hoffman? Which movie more egregiously defames Jews? Consider the meaning of the word ‘defame.’ To de-fame means to undo the fame currently being enjoyed. Jews used to be known for having endowed the world with the notion of sexual restraint and modesty. Judaism is now being defamed by Jews.
Inexplicably, nearly a year after its release and without a shred of proof that anyone thinks the worse of Jews on its account, The Passion continues to trouble some Jewish leaders. Hinting that their real target was Mel Gibson the religious conservative, rather than Mel Gibson the defamer of Judaism, a Jewish leader last week criticized Gibson for opposing the changes in Catholic teaching advocated by the Vatican II council. This is tantamount to a Christian leader criticizing an Orthodox Jew for opposing the acceptance of homosexuality advocated by the leadership of Reform Judaism. The only word for this is “Chutzpah”—indescribable impudence.
For years the same Jewish leader has ignored Jews who flagrantly and fraudulently defame Judaism but he incessantly continues to condemn Mel Gibson. He fails to realize that it is his exaggerated attacks on Mel Gibson, whose movie recently took top honors at the 31st annual People's Choice Awards, that do considerable harm to American Jews, not the film itself. Apparently Jews may behave outrageously while Christians, however, will be held to a higher standard. This abolition of honest objectivity lays the foundation for a frightening form of censorship and arbitrary prosecution. It would surely cause the most cynical KGB commissar of the bad old days to drool with envy.
A paramount principle of paleontology is that failure to adapt is a symptom of impending extinction. Anachronistically obsessing on yesterday’s dangers blinds one to contemporary perils. It is true that in the past, mobs of European Catholics did murder Jews. That has never happened in this most philo-Semitic of countries. American Jews are not threatened by rampaging Christians seeking revenge for the blood of Christ. However Jews are threatened by other forces against which we have precious few allies. Prominent among our allies are seriously religious, and for the most part, conservative Christians.
When will more Jewish leaders learn who their friends really are? When will they learn that those who incessantly bludgeon their friends eventually won’t have any friends left?
It would be foolish not to realize that most decent Americans are bothered far more by the trashing of American culture today than they are by our possible complicity in the killing of Christ two thousand years ago. Because so many of the most prominent trashers possess Jewish names and proudly proclaim their Jewish ethnicity, it becomes a Jewish responsibility to condemn the vulgarity by means of which they defame Judaism.
We can’t stop the Woody Allens and Howard Sterns, and in a nation that enshrined free speech, maybe we oughtn’t to try. However we could redeem ourselves by protesting them instead of dissipating valuable energies and priceless goodwill by endlessly protesting The Passion.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin is the president of Toward Tradition, a national coalition of Christians and Jews defending the Judeo-Christian values vital for our culture.
This article was first published in The Jewish Press.

About My Blog

2005-02-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

I've taken some criticism about my blog, particularly regarding my usage of commas. I told someone that I would review it and edit it, but having re-read some of it, I've determined that I do not overuse commas. I use them very deliberately and carefully. I use more commas than most people, because I am Mahmir on English Diqduq. That means that I am very old school. I'm not talking about Early-Mid-20th Century. I'm talking about 18th Century. If it were up to me, we'd be capitalizing all nouns.

If you read anything from before the establishment of the United States of America, and even a little after its founding, you will see a lot more commas in writings from that era than in my blog. Even my first post.

So, people whose last names rhyme with their attitudes, need to stop, take a step back, look around, take in their surroundings, smell the roses, and enjoy a good book. How about one of the classics - or, perhaps, may I suggest, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It's a great book, and it contains quite a lot of history of the English language and grammar.

I'll post again sometime soon.

Until next time,

Seth

Catching Up

2005-02-15T18:31:00.000-05:00

So apparently my blog sucks. Or so I've been told. I haven't really had much time to update it regularly, and to my regular readers, I apologize. Although, to be perfectly honest, if reading my blog is a primary source of entertainment for you, you ought to really assess your life. I'm just kidding! Of course my blog should be a primary source of entertainment for all! I sincerely apologize for working over 40 hours per week (including going home early on Fridays for Shabbos), without pay, spending an hour a night learning, and fitting my wife into my remaining free time, such that I haven't had the time or the energy to really post as often as I might like to. Clearly it is my fault, and I shall endeavor, from now on, to post more frequently.

Just for the record, I signed on one night last week to post, sat at the computer for about 20 minutes, and could think of nothing to say.

Anyway, on to the news:

I got a job. Well, it's a part time job. I'm going to be working as the fill-in Program Coordinator of the OU's IPA internship program. That's right, my name is now Sussman. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it. It's an inside joke among IPA alumni (and their spouses). As of now, I will still be interning on the Hill in the same office (Eric Cantor) as before. It just means that I'll be working fewer hours as an intern, and getting paid on the side from the OU. Yay, money! Thank G-d!

In other news:

Our car broke down a couple of weeks ago, but is now working. A few days prior to it breaking down, a woman backed into me as I was pulling out of a parking space at the Kosher supermarket. She was not Jewish - she was Asian. The Kosher supermarket is right next door to an Asian market, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I checked the car for outside damage, and I saw none. I was content with that, but the woman wanted to give me her phone number in case anything was wrong. I felt that was unnecessary, but very noble. I took her number, and she then asked me for mine. This made me nervous. Fortunately, however, there were two men who witnessed the whole thing, and one of them even told me, after I had given the woman my number, that I should not have done so, and offered me his number in case I needed a witness. She has not called, and I am not complaining!

Well, I don't really know what else to post here. I was thinking about something, but I cannot remember now what it was. I guess it will just have to wait until I post again, in about 3 weeks or so.

Until next time,

Seth

Amazing

2005-01-27T02:11:00.000-05:00

I seriously don't uderstand how people do it.

I'm exhausted.

I get up in the morning at about 7, and that's because I'm in too much of a zombie state to get up when my alarm goes off at 6:30. Then I have to be out the door and in the car by 8 (which, of course, really means out the apartment door by 7:53-ish, because you have to wait for the elevator and walk through the parking lot to the car). Which is difficult, because some days, at least, I have to take a shower.

And I make sure to Daven Shaharis. But there is no Minyan in the area that starts after the time that I wake up and ends before the time that I have to leave to go to the Metro. There's the 6:15 Matzah Minyan (they finish in under 18 minutes); there's the 6:35 Minyan (which is, I believe, Sepharadi); there's the 6:45/55 Minyan (depending on the day of the week); and there is the lone post-Seth's-awakening Minyan at 7:30, which does not finish until about 8:05/15 (depending on the day of the week).

So I Daven in the other bedroom by myself. Generally, because of my slowness in waking-up matters, I end up throwing on my Talis and Tephillin, and saying Shema' and the 'Amidah, and saying a haphazard Tahanun whilst taking off my Tephillin. I keep myself motivated not to miss Shaharis the way that I used to keep myself motivated not to miss a day of Tephillin - I have not missed a day of Tephillin, Baruch HaShem, since the day before I went to Israel for the year (I'm not sure though, anymore, if that means that the day before I went to Israel was the first day of my current streak, or the last day before my current streak, but, with G-d's help, I'll keep my streak going for good). Baruch HaShem, since getting married, I have not missed a day of saying Shema' and the 'Amidah with my own Talis.

I believe I have had breakfast only twice since beginning my internship, and those were on days when Congress was not in session and I was coming in at 9:30 instead of 9. Now, though I have to be out the door before 8 in order to be in the door before 9, which generally means I rush out the door as soon as my Tephillin are wrapped, without even taking the time to properly fold my Talis. In other words, "Breakfast? What?" Oh, and of course you can't eat on the Metro here. You can get a hefty fine. It's not like New York's subway. In fact, there's a magazine here called "The Washingtonian" (I'm told it is similar to "New Yorker"), which had an article that Ali and I read about 3 months ago, which discussed how, when they were designing DC's Metro, they used New York's subway as their model for what NOT to do. Here they don't want any rats roaming through the system for some reason. Go figure.

So then I get to work at 9. I'm usually there until 5, often until closer to 5:30, occasionally until somewhere between 5:30 and 6, and rarely (like yesterday) until as late as 7. Now, if the actual Metro ride takes me 45 minutes to get to work, it takes a full hour to get back from work to the stop where we park the car in the morning. So, with all the little extra time-eaters (the walking to the Metro from the office, the waiting for the train, the transferring and usually missing the immediate transfer and having to wait 4 minutes for the next one, and the driving home from the Metro) I get home usually at about 7pm. So that means I am out of the house for 11 hours a day.

Then I have two blissful hours that I get to spend with my wonderful wife, followed by learning at 9, Ma'ariv at 10, and bed at 10:30 or 11, depending on how lenient Ali wants to be with me in allowing me to do things like, say, write a blog. So I'm almost always unconcious by 11. Not always by choice - some nights I would rather be doing something productive, like cleaning up from dinner or preparing food or cleaning for Shabbos. But the mere fact that I am awake right now at 11:00pm, is probably entirely attributable to the fact that I am sitting upright and engaging my mind, which will probably cease to function at all, no matter what, within the next 20-30 minutes.

So, all in all, Ali and I get to spend approximately 2 hours each evening together. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no intention of giving up my Havrusa. It is something I always wanted to have if I were ever to be stuck in a work environment (as opposed to having the luxury of being in a Yeshiva environment full-time), but it is NOT something that I anticipated actually succeeding in maintaining. B"H, I think the reason we have been successful is largely due to the fact that we started about two months before I got my internship, and it became part of my regular routine, so much so that I cannot now fathom giving it up. At this point I would sacrifice my career goals and cut out an hour or two early in order to have more time to spend at home with Ali, rather than cut out that one hour a day that I get to learn, BiQvi'us.

So I don't know how people manage. It blows my mind. I know there are other people out there with the same or very similar schedules to my own. There are people out there who work longer hours and still find time to learn and to be with their families. And I wonder. What happens when we have kids? I guess it becomes routine. That's life. You adapt. We're starting to develop our routine, finally, now that our six month honeymoon has ended. And really the week isn't so bad. The hard part now, is motivating myself to get up on Shabbos. That's the only time Ali and I have together now, and it is hard to give up any of that time, even the couple of hours in the morning, when we could be spending that time catching up on the week.

Seriously, to all of you who have done this before me, Kol HaKavod. We're working on it. It's just so weird. I've never had a schedule this full or this rigid before in my life. I guess I just have to get used to it.

Until next time,

Seth

First Post

2005-01-23T22:20:00.000-05:00

So this is my first post on a blog. Ever. And it's my own. I've posted on forums and things like that, but never a web log. I actually don't even know where to begin. I guess the reason I started this blog is so that I can practice blogging for future endeavors. I just feel like blogs are the wave of the future for communication and even education.

I guess I should first start out by thanking Shauli. You inspired me. I've thought about starting a blog for well over a year now, but I didn't think anyone would read it, not because they wouldn't care what I have to say, but because they wouldn't know that what I have to say can be interesting and even useful to them. I now realize that it's all about marketing. You put your blog address in your away message. I can do the same thing. If my blog is any good, and people who read my away messages like it, then I can rely on them to create a buzz about it, and get other people to read it. This all sounds really stupid, if I'm just blogging my own thoughts or random stories from my day, but I actually have been talking to someone lately about starting a blog related to a mutually shared political outlook, only I have wondered how we would get anyone to pay any attention to us. Even Howard Dean, the first person to successfully use a blog to promote his political ideal (and for the record I cannot stand the man, so this is in no way an endorsement of him or his ideals, just recognition that he started a phenomenon that can be used by others [read: Me] for their purposes), only managed to get a couple hundred thousand people to regularly read and contribute to his blog. That is a lot, I will grant that, but when you're talking about challenging and changing the future of the American political scene, and in particular get elected to the White House, those kinds of numbers fall well short of the kind of audience you need to succeed. (Another side point is in order: I am NOT trying to change the future of the American political scene with my blog, nor am I trying to get elected to the White House - I'm not even old enough to run - I just want to be able to share my ideas with more than the handful of people I've spoken to who have asked me to write them down and share them with others. That didn't really come out sounding so great. It sounds very conceited. I don't think I have the solution to the world's problems. I just think I have ideas that some people might find interesting and/or enlightening, and the only reason I think so is that I was recently forced to share some of them with one particular person, who then almost begged me to write out for him what I had just told him.)

In short, and it's not so short anymore, I know, this is my first post of my practice blog. On it I will share thoughts and stories, Beli Neder, and it is my hope that this will give me practice in organizing my thoughts and in presenting them in a coherent manner. Who knows, maybe some day the president will read one of my posts and give me a job!

With that, I'm signing off.

Until next time,

Seth