intermarriage

one work issue that i always find difficult is having jewish co-workers who date gentiles. how can one be polite without making it seem like you condone their behavior? its easy to know what to say to someone when everything is theoretical, but when these are really people one knows, its a whole other bowl of wax.
i know that alot of people say that if someone wasnt raised frum what does one expect. they will be dating goyim . i dont really agree with this. there are plenty people that i know who grew up frum who have ended up dating non-jews. usually they are off the derech when they are doing this, but not always. sometimes someone is just lonely and then they meet someone who isnt jewish and though they are not going out of their way to do this they are suddenly dating someone who isnt jewish. this is not something that i would ever do, but i can see the logic.
some who date out say that they had alot of bad experiences dating in and that the gentile boyfriend/girlfriend has better midos than the jewish boyfriend/girlfriends they have had. what do you say to that? i usually dont say anything. it probably is true. but this doesnt prove that they would never be able to find a yid to have a relationship with that has good midos....they just havent yet....
currently i have a jewish co-worker who is dating a goy. he's the epitome of the boyfriend no parent would want their daughter to date AND he isnt jewish. its just so sad. her parents are plotzing, but im not sure what they would think if she actually became frum. they might not like that either. the thing is, this co-worker of mine is the type who if she went to a frum singles event she would be the belle of the ball. she'd have no problem finding someone.
of course im not the best example of how great it is to date someone jewish because im perpetually single and have more bad stories than i would care to share. i do know that its not just the jewish men who are creeps. i think that its hard to find quality men. i have gentile co-workers who also think that a good man is hard to find.

purim recap

had a nice low-key purim. it lived up to all of my anticipation. ate way too much shalach manos. i am a bit wiped , though. ill post more another day.

HAPPY PURIM!!!

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.