its that time of the year again...

here we go again. its THAT time of the year again. its the birthday. yes , another year has passed. am i any wiser ? who knows? a lot has happened this year, a lot i would have like to have happened has not. so i guess it has been pretty average. i wish everyone a year of blessings . i am very happy to have reached this day of the year again. happy birthday to me.

im running as fast as i can

new york is such a fast paced city. everyone is running from one engagement to another . if you cant keep up with this fast paced beat you are considered a loser. if you actually get seven hours of sleep each night you are so boring. to stay home on a sunday and relax is the ultimate no-no. tell me again what is wrong with trying to sit back and catch one's breath every so often? no wonder why i feel like im ready to retire.

ciao bella

i recently consumed the most divine sorbet ever. peach ginger sorbet by the company ciao bella. blood orange and wild blueberry are equally delicious.  they are star k and parve. they are available at whole foods and pomagranate (as well as other locations) . try it . you'll like it.

the great dictator

i love old movies , so i recently viewed charlie chaplin's classic the great dictator . my friends, this is the most amazing movie. it was released in 1940 which was during world war 2. it is about 2 men who look identical. one man is adenoid hynkel (a.k.a. adolph hitler) and the other is a jewish barber. chaplin skewers the nazi regime. first off he calls germany  'tomania' and his henchman are named garbage and herring. one of the countries he fights is called 'bacteria'. the jewish barber is often mistaken for hynkel. chaplin is the first in hollywood to actaully feature the ghetto in an american world war 2 film. he is also the first to actually mention that the nazis were trying to murder the jewish people. he is ingenius.this is the first movie that chaplin's voice is heard. chaplin felt that the gravity of the subject manner required his voice.
coincidentally in real life chaplin and hitler were born the same week in april of 1889. they were both born into poverty. they both were interested in the arts including film. as soon as chaplin saw hitler's war films he was fascinated by his acting, as well as disturbed by his politics. chaplin was well loved world over for his films . hitler hated this. he hated the fact that chaplin was so well recieved by the german people. chaplin had a history  of making films with a political message. as soon as hitler was ascending to power chaplin knew he needed to make an impact, thus he created the film the great dictator. many hollywood jews were justifiiably afraid to make a movie so bold. chaplin was not. he knew that hitler liked american movies and that he would see it.  sources believe that hitler did see the movie but do not know what hitler's reaction to it was, beside banning it from germany.  an anti - nazi german who wanted to challenge hitler in a quiet way found a copy of the great dictator and managed to have a viewing for some nazi soldiers. at first they didn't realize the irony , but when they did, one of them started shooting the screen and that was that.
chaplin was so despised by hitler that there even is an anti semitic book called the eternal jew that skewers chaplin for being a jew. chaplin never confirmed or denied being jewish.
it is so striking how two men who had so many similarities , even looked similar, led such different lives. chaplin lived a life fighting for truth , peace and freedom  while hitler , yemach shemo, was pure evil.

Obama's Religion - the Dry Bones Blog

Obama's Religion - the Dry Bones Blog

check this out folks! this is right on the money and hysterically funny!!

fear of g-d vs love of g-d

if the reason you follow the torah is due to fear of g-d , well that grows old fast, especially when one's alleged fear of g-d is often really fear of peer pressure. i think that after awhile a person has to observe the mitzvos because of their love of g-d which a lot of the time is really their love of doing the mitzvos. 

of course in the end it really has to be a mixture of the two philosophies. if you only do mitzvos because you love g-d , then you may figure you don't have to do so much because heck he will forgive you , he loves you and he will understand. you need a little fear of h-shem so you actually stay observant.

the new metrosexual

a few years ago the news was peppered with articles about how men are now starting to care about their looks much like women. oh and these men are not gay either. well this shabbos i came across a new phenomenon or at least a new phenomenon to me. apparently yeshivish teenage boys are just as interested in dressing in designer duds as yeshivish teenage girls. this came as a total shock to me. i understand why a charedi girl would be interested in fashion. after all thats one of the few kosher interests she can cultivate. the average bais yaakov graduate can don makeup better than an elite model and is always decked out in the latest  tzanuah fashions.then again, they are girls and girls usually are concerned about clothing and dressing fashionably. now the boys want to get into the picture. are sports now being frowned upon by the yeshivas? is it that young yeshivah boys have no other outlet left other  than the choice of what brand of white shirt he should be wearing? is the reason they  over focus on their wardrobe because the do need to actually get dressed? otherwise  they should only be focusing on torah subjects.
im  all for yeshivah boys showering and being concerned over their appearances. it just scares me when any male is as gung-ho about fashion as a woman.of all issues for men and women to be equally interested , fashion should not be one of them.. this of course is only my opinion.

rich people and kavod

the kids with rich parents used to get the good parts in the school plays. people always thought the rich people's kids were extra cute.
 many rabbis extol the virtues of kolel , yet the rich people in the yeshiva community get all of the honors. no one gets rich sitting in kolel. to me there is a dichotomy. sure, a yeshiva guy could marry  a rich girl, but he is still not getting any the kavod for being a good kolel bachur. he is being fawned on due to his rich father in law (or father).
just because someone has cooked up a ponzi scheme, embezzled or committed tax fraud does not mean he is evil in every aspect of his life. HOWEVER just because he is not completely evil does not mean he should not be punished for his crime. i for one think its just desserts for all of these yidden who are being caught for committing all of these fraud crimes. this jokers think that they are invincible just because they are the respected richies. they think that they can do know wrong. after all, this is what the community and their mothers have been telling them for years. im not happy these jews have been accused or convicted of fraud crimes, but i am glad to see that they will have to be accountable for their actions. the problem isn't that these folks are being caught for these fraudulent acts, its that they think that what they have been doing is no problem until they get caught. if you do the crime you should do the time.

the end of the story

im a girl who hates surprises. i usually read the last few pages of a book first. im THAT impatient.
on the other hand i believe that life is like a story and death is like the end of the story. with the story of life i for darn sure am not racing to see what the ending is . id prefer to enjoy the journey . id like to take my time getting to the happily ever after, the end part.

why i am modern orthodox

i have many friends who are bt who will say that they always feel most comfortable with bts or people who are not frum. i think that often this is the case. no matter where we go we feel  most at home with the those who share the  values we have grown  up with even if we have changed alot since back then.
i grew up modern orhodox and even though i had  a ten year stint as being more yeshivish i returned to my more modern orthodox roots. why is this you ask? well first and foremost i do not have a new york accent so everyone always assumed i was bt. very annoying. and then i  did not get married before i was twenty five which is another reason i cant blend into the yeshiva world. i always felt like someone was watching me when i was in the yeshivish scene and it wasnt that i felt i was being watched by g-d. when i am in the modern orthodox world i am considered one of the crowd. no one doubts that i am religious. i dont feel like im being "watched" all of the time. i feel like i can be myself. i enjoy yiddishkeit but i also enjoy secular culture. i dont think that it is a contradiction.

living in a plastic surgery world

if you ever bother to read women's magazines like allure or glamour you will see lots of articles on cosmetic surgery. from the sound  of these articles it would seem that everyone and there aunt its having plastic surgery. i suppose that this is because it is more affordable these days. the more i read about cosmetic surgery the more it enforces the fact that i do not desire it. i understand if someone is disfigured that they want to have it, but if its purely cosmetic, im not sure why someone willingly goes under the knife.
when i was a kid i had elderly relatives who looked their ages. they could not have had cosmetic surgery even if they wanted it because they couldn't afford it. my grandmother who was shot in the nose in a pogrom when she was a child did have a bit of plastic surgery, but plastic surgery is not what it is now so she still looked somewhat disfigured from it. and you know what? even though i noticed it and i thought her nose looked like a hamantashen, it didn't make me love her less. there had even been a time when she was younger that she could have had more cosmetic surgery to fix it but she didn't. she was married by then and my grandfather told her that he loved her and thought she was beautiful just the way she was. okay , maybe they would have had a hard time affording the cosmetic surgery at the time, but i do believe this is what my grandfather had felt at the time. they had met and married years after she had been shot in the face in that pogrom.
beauty is in  the eye of the beholder. its important to make one's self  as presentable as possible, but even those who do plastic surgery are not always happy. happiness comes from the inside. with all of joan rivers' plastic surgeries, she is always having more. when does it end?

shabbos plans

every friday i hear the same question. "so what are you doing for shabbos?" sounds innocuous , right.? well sort of . the thing is as much as i like to go away for shabbos and visit friends, my most favorite thing is staying home for shabbos . this doesn't mean that i stay in my apartment like a hermit, just means i get to stay home and sleep in my own bed. i have friends over for a meal or go out for meals. i usually go to shul and later in the day sit on the benches on ocean parkway. i always make time for reading and a nice sized nap. if i go away for shabbos im on somebody else's schedule. for meals im at somebody else's mercy. usually when i go out for a meal when im home in brooklyn it doesn't matter what is on the menu. if the food is not plentiful i know that when i go home i will be able to refuel with my own food.
even if when i go away to a good friends for shabbos i still feel like i have lost  my weekend. even if i have a good time. when i go away for shabbos i lose that time of the week when im in charge of the day's agenda.

shomer shabbos

in brooklyn you really learn something new everyday. today i was at kosher delight on avenue j and  someone asked for a shomer shabbos as part of their order. i for one was baffled. we were at kosher delight.for heaven's sake! well... i had to find out what this meant so i asked the woman who placed the order what that meant. apparently this means that  a  jewish person puts the burger on the grill. sephardim are makpid on this.

its always fun to learn about a new chumrah one has never heard of ,but this one really floored me.i wonder if there is an extra charge for this? if so this is ingenious. i wonder how many kosher establishments provide this feature. 

true romance

we live in a culture that worships youth. the media mostly portrays young people as being the only age group that experiences true love. while i do believe that a young person is just as capable of love as an older person, i believe that true love is the love that has withstood the test of time. if you still love someone after parenting, various types of loss , wrinkles, possible illnesses , success as well as failure, you have really found true love. this is why i love the leonard cohen video of dance me to the end of love that i have just posted. elderly couples dancing together in front of their wedding photos is true romance. they love each other with every fiber of their beings . after fifty -sixty years of marriage they know exactly why they cherish each other.

Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love [OFFICIAL VIDEO]: PG-13 rating

change

sometimes life involves so much change that its hard to change even when one knows its necessary. i kept seeing the new blogger templates, but i kept resisting the change because i so like holding on to what works. im trying this new template out. im not sure if i like it because the raindrops kind of look like tears and im not trying to create a mood of sadness in my blog. i tried out another template with a picture in the background but i found it distracting to read my posts. ive settled on this template for now until another day when i have the patience to fuss around with it again.

the fly on the wall

sometimes i wish i could be like a fly on a wall and hear juicy conversations that i shouldn't be hearing. i heard  one such conversation today. someone was talking about how someone was being locked out of a singles event because they were over the age limit. "fortunately" for the person who was organizing the event the person was over the imaginary age range so they could lock them out of the event. this individual was not "cool" enough to get into the event. lucky for the organizer they were "uncool" and old so they could be locked out of the event.
it was uncomfortable to be the fly on the wall while hearing this tidbit being circulated. i might be out of the age range, but i could have "passed" for younger and i am "cool" enough to get in.
one could argue that someone just  " isn't in t the age range " so its fair. bull dinky! its more than that. many who are not in the "age range" get in . its also humorous because the people who are setting  the age ranges are often very close to or above the age ranges they are imposing. often those who support  age ranges  being upheld are eerily close to that age themselves. perhaps they protest too much to cover up their advancing age. (as if we are all too stupid to realize how old they are!)
 i am all for banning the 60-80 year old men who show up to young singles events, but often when they start barring people from singles events they concentrate on barring those who are just a few years out of the range instead of  just banning those who are 20-30 years above the age range.