yonah

one only has to read the story of yonah to realize that we jews today are the same people as we were in biblical times. who but a jewish prophet would try to hide from hashem when the master of the universe  wants him to get the non-jewish city to repent all because he didn't want to make the jewish people look bad? who else would  have the chutzpah to do this all in the name of ahavas yisroel? only a jewish person would do this. then again, a lot of jews would be looking out for the people of ninveh it would be modern times and they would denigrate their own people for not being able to do t'shuvah. then again perhaps this was the point of the story of yonah. it shows us that there was a time when jews stood up for fellow jews and were protective of our brethren even when we aren't perfect .  then again it also shows that hashem loves all people(for example ninveh) so modern jews who look out for the good of the world and social justice are not wrong either. hashem needed yonah to tell the city of ninveh to repent so they would not be destroyed independent of how it might make the jewish people appear.

ahavas yisroel

when we say the term ahavas yisroel what do we mean? do we mean we should have a love for all jews or just a love for jews who are like ourselves? does it mean we should only love other jews just so we can mekarev them ?
after telling some left wing yeshivish friends of mine about the movie brothers from the jewish film festival which i reviewed in this blog in my may 14, 2011 post titled brothers, it made me mull over this issue. when i told these friends about this movie they promptly began to tell me about all of the wonderful kiruv that is being done in israel.. my friend totally missed the point of my movie synopsis. i think that kiruv is wonderful , but for all jews to have ahavas yisroel and mutual respect  i do not think that all jews need to be frum yidden..  it should not be the only reason one has ahavas yisroel. then again, loving other jews just so one can mekarev them is still better than writing them off all together.
i think that one can have ahavas yisroel  for those who are not exactly like oneself religiously because we jews are family . families aren't always the same religiously but we still love one another, still are a part of each others lives. i think this is the best way for people to look at jews who may not be where we are religiously. certainly this i how i would like a family member who is not on the same page religiously to view me.

pre-pesach peril

i HATE crowds. and because i hate them so much i normally stay out of brooklyn supermarkets at their most busiest times. today i had to pick something up in a grocery store . i should have done so while i was still in manhattan. manhattan is not having a pre-pesach shopping meltdown in their supermarkets.
first i had opted for shoprite. bad move. i should probably be benching gomel. a grey haired russian , probably jewish, man who was in front of me pushing a  shopping cart was upset that i was behind him so he pushed into his cart backwards with brute force into my cart. i  fortunately was able to move back quick enough so i was unscathed. a shoprite employee reprimanded him , but i had enough. i left shoprite and instead made my way over to my least favorite avenue m supermarket- moishe's. there too there were those with shopping carts who stood behind me who bumped into me, but when i told them not to they stopped.  the express line was long,the temperature july-esque, but i was able to get what i needed without any physical injury.
needless to say, i do not plan on entering any brooklyn grocery stores until after pesach.

imagine...

imagine if  united states senators banded together and demanded that the  jews  rid our communities of ponzi schemers.
 a jew is more likely to stab you in the back monetarily than physically . neither are acceptable morally or religiously (as if these were separate issues! lol)
it would be dandy if the rabbis would get up to snuff and encourage everyone to be honest in business, but i don't think that the american government should be sanctioning such measures. we ourselves as jews should be mandating this.
this is just a thought.

the numbers game

this year at the jewish film festival there is a new seating policy. you show your ticket when you enter the building and they write a number at the back of your ticket. when its time to enter the theater for the movie they call out 15-20 numbers and slowly everyone gets to enter the theater. the great thing is that when you are waiting to enter the screening room you can go to the ladies room and not lose your place in line. you can also sit as you wait to enter the screening room.
the new seating policy for fully attended screenings at the walter reade theater began with the jewish film festival this year. im not sure if they will be employing this policy with all of their  screenings,but im sure this protocol will return next year for the jewish film festival. it made entering the screening room much less chaotic.
as chaotic as the entry to the theater had been at the walter reade theater it was always much worse with the israeli film festival. perhaps someone should suggest this seating method to them.

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.

we have no prophets in 5770

there are no prophets in 5770. this seems obvious, but not to everyone, especially those who seem to have a pat reason for every disaster that has befallen human kind lately.

when i heard that people were saying that hurricane katrina happened because of the gaza pull out i was sure someone was making that one up. why would poor blacks in new orleans who probably never have met a jew in their life be the receptors of the punishment for the israeli pull out from gaza? its too pat. one can connect every dot to form any conclusion one wants. i don't buy it.

after the disaster in haiti someone told me that they thought this happened because the people of haiti practise avodah zarah. well isnt that a simple solution.

others like to say that the holocaust began in germany because reform judaism began there. well, what about the fact that at the same time sara schnierer started the bais yaakov movement to counter the spiritual decline and many of her students were brutally murdered al kiddush hashem.

the problem i have with all these "reasons" for these tragedies is because they make life too simplistic. furthermore, we do not have any prophets in modern times, so there is NO WAY of knowing that any of these conjectures of these rabbis are real or not. there is however a reason we do not have prophets these days. this i do know. probably because if we knew the true reasons for these tragedies we wouldn't be able to handle it or perhaps no one would listen to them anyway, so its better they are not around for us not to listen to. or we would be too petty if we knew the real reasons these tragedies have befallen mankind. oops! we are being petty which is exactly why we dont have prophets or know the true reasons for any travesty .

all this finger pointing is rather useless. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and though we have to believe there is a reason it is not necessary for us to know what the reason is . sometimes its best to just put one's faith in hashem and assume he has his reasons but we as people aren't wise enough to understand them. THIS is what i was always taught.

oy gevald!

if you want to know why we are still in galus see the documentary film gevald. i did and now i know that the biggest danger for the state of israel is not the arabs, its the jews. apparently those who are ostensibly fervently orthodox have lost site of what ahavas yisroel is.
i saw gevald this past monday at the jewish film festival in new york city. gevald chronicles the ideologies of rabbi shmuel chaim pappenheim and the late rabbi avraham ravitz.
rabbi pappenheim hates secular jews and anyone who does not believe as he does. he is from a sect of chassidim that are a bankrolled by satmar chassidim in new square. this sect is anti-israel and only leave their enclave to rally against the state of israel. for them it is a great honor to be jailed for rallying against the state of israel. for their children they distribute propoganda books that equate secular jews to the nazis not unlike how the arabs distribute anti-jewish propoganda books to their children.
rabbi avraham ravitz was perhaps just as strict as rabbi pappenheim, but he believes in working within the system to fight for charedi rights as opposed to hooligan tactics. he and his wife had a home that was open to guests. his wife was actually shown on screen as well as one of his sons and some of his grandchildren. according to rabbi ravitz the jews of meah shearim danced with joy when israel became a state. he even showed a picture of it on screen. alot has happened in 60 years.
there is an old joke about how if you have two jews in a room you will have three opinions. so you can imagine that within a country full of jews that everyone will have his opinions and then some. to me someone like rabbi ravitz who tried to change israel within the structure of the government is more respectable even if i dont agree with all that he stood for. rabbi pappenheim on the other hand is a pure disgrace to the jewish people . he hates other jews for not being exactly as he is and defends his actions by saying that this is what the torah wants. it is not what the torah wants. the bais hamikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam and because we cannot seem to get along with each other. apparently we haven't learned a thing.
when israel was established the secular jews did do alot wrong to the religious jews , especially the yemenite jews, but two wrongs dont make a right. if the religious route is the high road then we should live it, not stoop to the lowest level. if you want change to really happen, you have to seek it in a way that will be taken seriously. it seems that rabbi ravitz tried to do this. rabbi pappenheim would prefer to be a haylegah thug.

i hate stereotypes

i hate stereotypes. new yorkers have a reputation for being loud and pushy. though a lot are, not all are. jewish men especially like gentile women because gentile women aren't as smart as jewish women and will let jewish men treat them like garbage. of course this is a stereotype as well . not all jewish men treat their wives like gabage. not all jewish women are intelligent and not all non-jewish women are imbeciles. as for jewish men being cheap.... well not all jewish men are cheap either. and all jewish men aren't all winey, wimpy mama's boys. all jewish women arent materialistic or overbearing. if anyone ever called me jappy they would have to be deaf , dumb and blind. someone once asked me if i had my nose done because i have a small nose. well i did not. not all jews , if any, have big noses. oh and all jews do not have brown eyes or obnoxious brooklyn accents.
the worst part about stereotypes is that they are often perpetrated by the very people whose reputation they attempt to defile.
there are good and bad in every group, race , religion and ethnicity. if a person isnt able to see this they need to get a life.

a serious man?

the only thing serious about this movie is its title. it is a coen brothers film about a jewish physics professor named larry gopnick who is black mailed , has marital strife and and various eccentric family members. the jewish week likens larry gopnick to a modern day job. i say they are giving this film too much credit. this is a film that is one note more serious than an adam sandler movie.
the film begins with larry's 12 yr old son in hebrew school. he is close to bar mitzvah. the funniest scenes are those with the hebrew school teachers and children.
the film seems to be depicting reform jews in 1967 who seem to know a heck of alot more about judaism than most reform jews know. granted this is 1967, not 2007, but the characters are constantly referring to g-d as hashem, and ive never met a reform jew who would ever do this let alone actually know that hashem meant g-d. several of the rabbis in the film do not wear kippot in the tradition of reform jews of that era. the rabbis were portrayed in seinfeldian tradition. because they were sooo cartoonish you couldnt be too insulted by how absurd they behaved. i wish i knew more about reform judaism because i think i was missing out on some of the jokes.
as usual when i watch a movie with more authentic jewish references i find myself the only person in the audience laughing. often the hebrew/yiddish terms were not translated. the barmitzvah boy had a friend named he kept calling faigel. turns out the kids last name really was faigel. it took me awhile to figure this out . i kept thinking he was making fun of his friend. this of course was an inside joke for those in the know because it was never explained. i of course was the only one laughing about this one. there were other instances too, but i dont want to give them away if you decide to see the movie.
there is strife between larry and his wife who is carrying on with a homely widower 20 years her senior. one would be offended by the wife's overdone stereotypical jewish wife behavior, but she was so over the top one could not help but just laugh.
this is one of those few movies where actual jewish actors were used to portray jews.
after all of the comical strife that befalls larry gopnick the film has the most perfect ending. i will not tell you what it is, but i loved it.
this movie is most definitely not the the story of a modern day job. its much too over the top .
entertainment weekly said and and i concur that the idea of this movie is to show how jews of the 1960's thought they were so assimilated, but really they weren't. the way they showed this was by the inappropriately frum jargon the characters used by reform jewish characters. i find this especially interesting because more yiddish would have been used if this film were more authentic to the time period. more hebrew was used due to the lack of fluency in yiddish of the current young movie going audience.
a serious man was not the dark film i thought i was going to be. i didnt want to actually like it, it just worked out that way.

no good deed goes unpunished

there is no justice in this world. no, i havent just figured this out. its just been getting to me lately.
if you are a good worker and you slip up one time you are held under a microscope for your actions. if you are a lousy worker no one thinks much of it. after all what can one expect. it definitly pays to be the outlaw.
there are alot of cool simchas bais hashoavah parties for chozrei b'tshuvah. these parties like to ban the frumahs. the frummies could be a bad influence on the brain washing. there arent any cool parties for the already frum . they should not have been born frum, then they would be admitted to the cool parties.
i unfortunately have a very vapid family member who unjustly is defended for their actions more than i ever have been or ever will be by my family. this is precisely because they are so vapid. instead of simple validation for being disgusted with such frivolity this gets defended and those of good character are forced to hear the praises of those who are bottomless pits of attention sapping. it pays to be a b@#$@h.
after all.... no good deed goes unpunished....

sinas chinam

i watched part of the ou's tisha b'av production at one of the local brooklyn shuls. as usual the topic of sinas chinam surfaced. but of course. it is tisha b'av.
sinas chinam - hatred for no reason or baseless hatred.. well i guess this explains alot. the charedim in israel throw stones at the chilonim on shabbos for a reason (or so they say) so that folly isnt considered sinas chinam in their eyes.
when someone doesnt act respectfully toward someone less frum or more frum this isnt sinas china because they've got a reason for their dislike.
the goyim hate us because we have (anything that they dont) so i guess this isnt baseless either.
perhaps the reason the bais hamikdash was destroyed was due to sinas chinam, but it will only be rebuilt through the mitzvah of v'ahavta l'rayecha camocha. - through loving your neighbor as one loves themselves. the geulah will come through having respect for others humanity even though they may not be our spiritual clones.
all varieties of jews, reform , orthodox, conservative, conservadox, chassidish, charedi, reconstructionist , modern orthodox, carlebachian, yeshivish, yeshivish modern , need to respect the others level of judaism. by doing this it doesnt mean you are invalidating what you believe in, it just means live and let live. the rest of the world doesnt differentiate. to them we are one big group of jew. to them the syrian jews of last weeks notoriety and madoff are one and the same- jewish with a capital J. unfortunately we jews havent all figured that one out yet.
to me this is the only way to be mekarev any one into frumkeit. be nice to them. dont denigrate their beliefs even if its not as frum as yours. this does not dilute what you believe in.
if someone is downright disrespectful this is a different story. im speaking of people who just have a pareve opinion of frumkeit.
its tisha b'av (still) let's try to end the madness already!

the handshake

if one does not want to shake hands with a member of the opposite sex due to shomer negiah reasons it is very important that one have a good prepared answer and not to just say that you dont shake hands . that is not a good enough reason.
i work in a service oriented profession and though the higher ups that are jewish have heard about shomer negiah, there are non-jewish employees who are not familiar with it. once there was a male co-worker of mine who put out his hand to a frum client to shake hands and im not sure what she said to him because i wasnt in the room with him, but she must not have said anything because later he asked me why she did this , and did she not shake hands with him because he isnt jewish. i explained to him that it was not because he wasnt jewish, but it was because men and women arent supposed to touch unless they are married. when he realized that she didnt want to shake hands with him was not because he wasnt jewish and just because he was a boy he was totally ok with it. see , now how hard was that? and if you dont like the explanation i gave , all the more reason to give your own.
another time a chasidic couple were speaking to the office manager and the office manager put her hand out to shake hands with the husband and the wife said to her"we dont shake hands".
later the office manager said that she could care less that he didnt want to shake her hand , but that she thought it odd because moments before, the wife shook hands with her. i explained to her that it wasnt that frum people dont shake hands, its just that men dont shake hands with women because they arent supposed to touch any woman who is not their wife.
of course , the other thing that i find un-thrilling about frummies unwittingly leaving me to do the explaining for them is that whoever is asking why also asks me what i would do. well... when i was growing up i was taught that its okay to shake someone's hand at work so as not to embarrass them and that there really is not derech chibah in these types of handshakes.
if you are honest and genuine with people when you explain to people why you do not shake hands with someone of the opposite sex , they are really okay with it. i have seen a few people do it, and they are very sweet about it , no one takes offense. and if you cant explain it to them its better to shake their hand if you ask me. not giving a true explanation is worse and i know this because ive had to explain non-handshaking to several confused people.

holy indian wigs

this month's marie claire magazine featured an article about how they get hair from indian women to make wigs .

a few years ago their was a big ruckus in the frum community about not wearing wigs from india because their hair is shorn for "religious reasons" . needless to say after reading the article i realized that the only deity this hair is shorn for is the god of money.

apparently young women in india never cut their hair and when they do they cut all of their hair off in a ceremony and tell them that doing so makes them very blessed. meanwhile , these girls never get any monetary compensation for their shorn hair, and the money that is made from the sale of this hair is never given to the people of the community that had their hair shorn. it is purely business , and most of these young women have no clue this is occurring.

to me the whole hair shearing being religious is a hoax and seems to be based on a fiction. i do however feel bad for these poor girls who end up bald until their hair grows back. they are sacrificing their hair to the god of money.
from the article i was not sure if the ritual of cutting their hair was created before the demand for indian hair wigs.
i realize that the rabbanim did not ban the indian wigs because they felt that these women were being scammed, but to me, this would be the reason not to wear one of those wigs. i feel so bad for these women.

to drink or not to drink ?

on purim many are machmir to drink so they dont know the difference between arrur haman and baruch mordechai and sometimes this can be taken to the extreme. my fondest purim memory is leaving the basement apartment i was living in at the time and opening the door to outside of the house and seeing a teen aged boy open his car door to puke. gross! but you know, often gross things stay in your memory as much as if not more than good things. fortunately i have no recollection of this young man's face . so now, years later, when i may run in to him i dont recognize him. lucky for him. there was however a woman who threw up on the q train several years ago and her face i do remember. i still see her on the train in the morning and i make sure to sit far away from her.
so folks go ahead and enjoy yourselves, but do realize if you misbehave when you are drunk someone you dont know may have a very sharp memory of it. you may not remember that moment , but your actions may be embedded in this stranger's memory. if you are the type who considers negative publicity better than no publicity at all then knock yourself out.....literally.

shalom auslander

foreskin's lament came out in paperback, thus a great excuse to have another book reading at borders. after reading foreskin's lament i have wanted to see the author in person. in general i like meeting authors , and due to the content of his book, i especially wanted to meet shalom auslander.
well.... in person he is a little older than the photo on his book jacket. though i read the book, i was quite taken aback by how hardened he is. he told the audience that giving up judaism was like removing a tumor , but if you ask me it didnt really help him. he doesnt appear to be the relaxed, or at peace . he got rid of a tumor, or so he thinks. hes not a practicing jew in any way shape or form, but its not like this has made him a calm , happy , zen -like individual.
a woman who had been married to shalom's relative years ago, was at the book reading. she applauded his book and was so happy he had gotten out of the clutches of his abusive family. if you ask me, his deviant family is the reason he is ranting.
as usual, this book event proved to be an insightful affair.

momzilla attack!!

my biggest pet peeve is when people use their baby carriages as weapons. its as if they have forgotten that their baby carriage actually contains a baby. you know the type. they stand behind you in line at the supermarket with the wheels of their carriages sinking into your heels, or running over your toes in the summer . what's with these people? its bad enough that they have kids, but dont get violent. i didnt have anything to do with them having a child. and if they are in such a hurry , why take the baby at all? leave the baby at home with a sitter. if they still want to be pushy solo, at least they only are using their bodies to push people out of their way, not a hard edged, hard wheeled baby carriage.

monsey madness

one experience i have not endured lately is a monsey bus excursion. i would say i miss it as much as one misses having a tooth filed...as in not at all. its the easiest way for me to get from mid-manhattan to monsey.or so i delude myself. the ride to monsey from the diamond district on erev shabbos isnt so bad now that the only passengers are allowed to put up the famed mechitzah(which is a sheet) and not the driver. on friday afternoons i had found that the mechitzah wasnt usually up. i dont mind if the bus has a men's side and a women's side, what i object to is the actual mechitzah itself . on motzei shabbat however, the mechitzah is usually up. when the mechitzah is up i make sure to get a window seat so i dont get hit in the head with someone's suitcase. when people walk down the bus aisle with a mechitzah up, they dont realize that there is someone on the other side of the partition and they will hit you in the head with a suitcase if they are holding one. another one of my pet peeves is when a man stands in the aisle of the bus on his side of the mechitzah and you are sitting in an aisle seat and the chassid in the aisle is suddenly sitting on your shoulder because if you cant see that someone is on the othere side of the mechitzah then they must not be. apparently negiah doesnt apply if its through a sheet/mechitzah !!?

foreskin's lament

i finished reading foreskin's lament by shalom auslander on thursday morning. how appropriate.though not planned. i wasnt actually sure if i would like the book, but i did. the book is about an ex -frum guy who has a son , but isnt quite sure if he wants to give his son a bris, and the internal philosophical dialogue that goes on within his head as he makes his decision. the book also tells you how a guy like him came to be who he is today. it was quite fascinating. like many of the ex-frum i know, though he no longer has the outward trappings of a frum jew , he isnt able to extract it from his head. some reviewers i read mocked shalom auslander's rebellion because they said that he wasn't even yeshivish , so what was he rebelling against. i disagree. no matter what level of yiddishkeit one hails from one can feel oppressed. look at woody allen and phillip roth. i hail originally from outside of new york and i can tell you that being modern orthodox where i grew up was equivalent to being a satmar chasid in new york. orthodox is orthodox no matter how u slice it. if you are shomer shabbat and and keep kosher you are a religious freak to most of the world . so i do understand where shalom auslander is coming from. what was so much fun about the book is that he is speaking about frumkeit from the inside instead of as an outsider . though i wouldnt mock like shalom auslander does, i can understand the inside jokes. what is fabulous is that by the end of the book he realizes that he still believes in g-d despite all of his rantings.
the only thing that surprises me is how praised this book is in the secular world . i wouldnt have enjoyed it as much had i not grown up frum or been familiar with the frum community.

sheitle shenanigans.

being single i never had reason to pay any attention to sheitle stores. all of the excitment over the coney island sheitle store down the block from chaim berlin has actually made me have an interest . of course not an interest in sheitle stores so ill be able to know what the bargains are once i get married. my interest in sheitle stores as of late is a product of missing sixth grade games of boys versus girls.



the alleged photos of women's heads wearing wigs has indeed been trumped. there are no more pictures of women's faces, but the picture that is now up is far worse. the picture is taken from the back of a woman wearing a long blond sheitle in a long-sleeved, long black dress. the photo to say the least really accentuates the woman's form....obviously the store owner is trying to rile people up. its too bad the owner has stooped to such stunts. she should have left her original headshots up .

from what it seems like to me is that those who banned the store should have left well enough alone and just have told the bachurim to stay on their side of the street. now that would have been good chinuch. the store window was quite tame to begin with. this sheitle store window should have been a non-issue.

i think that if the yeshiva was so concerned that the stores on the block may be objectionable, they should start buying all of the bldgs on the block when they become available. actually, the space that the sheitle store is in always has seemed to be changing ownership. the yeshiva lost its chance.

all of this "frumkiet " with the sheitle store is idiotic anyway. there wasnt anything wrong with the store window to begin with and why arent people more concerned with bayn adam l'chavero issues?

last of all, i didnt like the dynamics of petty sixth grade boys versus girls games when i was eleven ,and i certainly don't want to experience them when im biologically old enough to be the mother of a sixth grader.