can i have a ride?

since purim is upon us and purim is a social time, i thought it would be a good time to post about this. the ride schnorrers. please note that i do not own a car.
whenever i go to a party, simcha etc, there is always the issue of transportation. i am always game for public transportation, but sometimes things end late, but i still would like to attend, so there is always that issue of how im going to get home. usually i make sure to go with someone else who if worse comes to worse ill take the train with home if i cant find a ride. or i leave early enough so its not a big deal to take the train alone.
its not such a big deal to take the train home if im going to the city , but if its new jersey or long island, sometimes its really impossible to get home without a ride, and i dont always know anyone with a car to give me a ride. in this case its tougher. im forced to ask people i dont know well for a ride either one or both ways. sometimes its not a big deal, because i live in apartment building with alot of social individuals and if i ask one of them for a ride , even if i dont know them well, im not asking them to go out of their way. i still feel a little bad because i dont have a car and cant reciprocate.
sometimes ive encountered people who are fed up about giving others rides. i understand. those with cars always are asked to give rides . sometimes it could be overwhelming, especially since sometimes the only reason some people chat them up is to get a ride. i truly appreciate those who have been kind enough to give me rides over the years.
i have offered to pay for tolls and gas as a passenger especially when ive gotten a ride from someone i dont know well.
i know that the answer is to get a car, but i really cant afford one. its difficult to find parking near my home. even with a car, if i got home late i may have a sizable walk from a parking space , so id still prefer a taxi ride over driving my own car late at night.
sometimes i actually prefer public transportation to a ride. some people drive so poorly i would prefer to take the subway.

hamantashen

ive been rather disappointed this year, not as many midwood bakeries have poppy seed /moon hamantashen which are my favorite. i went to isaacs bakery and ostrovitky's on avenue j . ostravitsky's tried to pass off a poppy seed pastry as a hamantashen instead of admitting all they had was prune and apricot. weiss's bakery on m only had small poppy seed hamantashen, not the large ones. schrieber's on avenue m had small poppy seed hamantashen , but they didnt have any large hamantashen when i was in their store today. ostrovitsky's hamantashen are some of the best in midwood in my opinion, but they only get half a vote because i had to have a prune one instead of a poppy one this year. i dont especially like apricot hamantashen, but every bakery seems to carry them.

i ended up getting hamantashen from schrieber's . i actually bought the less desirable apricot as well as my favorite poppy ones. i need some shalach manos supplies that i wont be tempted to eat before purim. i DEFINITELY wont be eating the apricot ones.

we know that moshiach must be coming soon when hostess twinkies are kosher

i had a friend years ago whose favorite saying was that we would know that moshiach would be here soon when hostess twinkies were kosher, because hostess twinkies are about at treyf as you can get. recently(it could be maybe a couple years ago) ive noticed that hostess twinkies have a triangle k on them. triangle k is not a hechsher i go by, so this still doesnt help me, but does it still count as being kosher? even in some remote roundabout way?

other signs that moshiach is coming soon. 7-11 on avenue m has cholov yisroel milk available for its coffee drinking customers. now i do agree that it really is just due to demographics. any establishment in midwood that offers cholov yisroel milk is definitely going to generate more traffic than one that doesnt .... still.... this is 7-11 we are talking about. redneck heaven. to me, its gotta be a sign.

another sign that moshiach is coming is walgreens on avenue j . they even have hebrew on their storefront. now i agree that the fact that walgreens has green in its name and there are alot of jewish people with the name green or some variation of green in their name (greenstein, greenberg, greenblatt)however , its still a step. walgreens was a well known chain of pharmacies in the midwest where i grew up, the midwest is redneck heaven, which of course makes walgreens count. i know that growing up in the goyishe bible belt , one would never imagine a walgreens store, not even one in brooklyn, having hebrew on its storefront. so there you have it moshiach must be on the way.

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.

in town, out of town , all around town

there has been alot of talk all over the blogosphere (material maidel and frum punk) about new yorkers calling anyone who lives out of new york out of towners. of course, im originally from outside of new york and i take great pride in being called an out of towner. in fact , these days native new yorkers get quite perplexed when i still say im an out of towner after living in new york all these years. there are a alot of good things about new york, but i cant say that its in my blood like those who were born here.
the interesting thing is that through blogging and the internet specifically, i think that the boundaries of community have expanded and the world has gotten smaller. someone in israel can leave a comment on a blog as quickly as someone in california or brooklyn can. its quite nice.
the only thing that defies this theory is when people write about their hometowns and local events. if you live somewhere else you might feel left out. then again , it makes you closer geographically to a far place. you may not live there , but you can know instantaneously whats going on there as it is happening.
the blogosphere becomes its own community as well. when bloggers live geographically closer to each other they are more likely to actually meet, but the very fact that someone is blogging at all they are more likely to meet no matter how geographically diverse. when i read a comment from someone living in california it seems as though the person lives as close by as a new york commenter. on a blog the distance is reduced.