A Minyan of hits

2012-01-23T10:52:00.001-05:00

Discrimination in Housing:My father, Joesph B. Robison, worked for the American Jewish Congress from 1947 to almost the end of his life in 1983. He was instrumental in the development of state law prohibiting discrimination in housing. His legal language was adopted first by New York State, and then by many other states as well. Today, discrimination in rental and sales of housing in the United States is generally illegal.

Haredi communities in the United States and Israel like to raise men who dedicate their efforts to Torah-true study, to the neglect of almost everything else. If you think it is admirable for more than a few, gifted members of the community to spend their lives this way, please consider that people who turn only toward our Talmud and Torah are mentally disabled when circumstances require them to address an important principle: to dedicate to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Here is a quote made by the Failed Messiah Blog. It bgins a thread at COLLive by a resident of the Crown Heights neighborhood:

We would hope that landlords, especially the Crown Heights landlords, would put a priority on our values, but sadly the need to make money is taking precedence for them. Some young agents and landlords will specifically rent to these goyim instead of a fellow Jewish family.

The commenter is quite oblivious that landlords in the area might simply have chosen not to break the laws about discrimination in housing. (In fact, in his statement at COLLive, he says flatly that he intends to discriminate as a landlord.) We religious Jews live in the United States. The laws of our governments give us certain incredibly valuable rights, and restrict us in various ways that, we hope, will be for the public good. How can we consider ourselves useful people, if we are going to blunder around here in the dark, unaware of the secular country that surrounds us and keeps us at peace?

Saving Anton’s Seat:

2011-12-05T18:56:00.001-05:00

We have a small shul that comfortablyseats 35 guys and 18 women. A few of the seats are three-personcouches. Last Shabbat, I sat in the middle of a couch. Anton,siting next to me, was called up for Maftir.

While Anton was reading the Haftorah,Davy arrived, stood before Arthur’s seat and put on his Tallit.Quite obviously, he intended to sit in this apparently empty place.

What should I do? Should I inform Davy that the seat belonged to Anton? I reflected on my own experience. Ihave often lost my seat while being called up for an honor. Usually Idon’t mind, and I just sit elsewhere. On the rare occasions when Iwanted my seat back, all I had to do was ask. It seemed wrong, but Idecided not to say anything.

Davy sat down in Anton’s seat, and Ifelt, oh, a little guilty.

When Anton finished the Haftorah, hecommenced leading Musaf. He was not going to sit down for the rest of the service. I realized that my agony over what to do hadbeen pointless.

Old Man Building his Sukkah:

2011-10-11T18:45:00.000-04:00

Our Sukkah is about thirty-five yearsold. The frame consists of aluminum poles and metal joints. Twoboards top the aluminum poles, a heavy, beautiful canvas makes thewalls, and 100 bamboo poles make the schach. We decorate the Sukkahwith forty charming glass ornaments; they won’t attract animals andinsects.

Nothing in my life makes me feel my agemore than that Sukkah. I used to need ninety minutes to assemble it.Now it takes two days, with several periods of work separated byrests for recovery. It’s hard work putting up that sukkah. I’mold.

A Hechsher for Water:

2010-10-14T06:11:00.001-04:00

The O-U has just put their kashruthy seal of approval on distilled water. Not plain water, not water that has additives that actually require kosher supervision; water that is distilled. Well, the product does contain electrolytes (these should be inorganic minerals), so perhaps formal supervision is required:

MD Drinks, Inc.

Redondo Beach, CA

Brand: Function Water

Product(s): Vapor Distilled Water and Electrolytes, OU

We get older and smarter:

2010-10-12T12:29:00.002-04:00

The cloth that encircles our 8x12 sukkah is gaily-painted canvas, heavy to lift. When Sukkot is over, I have to return it to its resting place in our attic, two flights up. Folding the cloth neatly is a time-consuming exercise, partly because its length is longer than our largest room.

Last year I got smart. I realized that I did not need to roll the cloth up very neatly, I only needed to roll it up so that I could carry it, and it would fit nicely in our storage attic. I’ve saved 90% of the roll-up time!

The "Hot Sukkah"

2010-09-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

We live in central New Jersey, and this has been the year of the of the "Hot Sukkah" -- very hot temperatures and strong sun plaguing our visits to the Sukkah. I remember nothing like it. Walking back and forth between the kitchen and the Sukkah was exhausting, due to the much lower temperatures in our air-conditioned home. We sweated and sweated during our daytime meals, and in the evening, unfamiliar "noseeum" bugs bothered us and dropped onto our plates.

I'm afraid that the hot holiday of Sukkot will not remain a rarity. More likely, we are experiencing global warming. Every two to three years, when the holiday begins in summer, it will be hot again, unless we get some blessed rain.

I dreamed of a giant exhaust fan over the sukkah, but in practice, there's only one way I can deal with all that heat: I'll have to lose weight.

You're a Nerd if (I have never attempted this form before):

2010-06-06T09:15:00.000-04:00

You're a Nerd if you try to put your tie on while wearing headphones. (Now how did I ever think of that?)

Dad lost his father’s tefillin:

2010-06-02T09:06:00.000-04:00

My father’s father was a significant Reform Jew. He was the treasurer for the organization that proposed a Jewish State to the League of Nations. (We still have one of these formal proposals, written out in beautiful longhand.) Granddad had six children, the first four of them boys. None were religious, but all of his children were proud to be Jewish.

As I got deep into my Baal Teshuvah process, my father apparently remembered his own father’s tefillin. He could not find them, so he asked me if by chance, he had already given them to me. I would love to have had those tefillin! It was quite clear I had never heard of them. My dad was disappointed. He said he hoped he might still find them. I never heard about them again.

My parents died many years ago. A shattering question occurred to me today, and there’s no hope of answering it. There are so many wonderful questions to ask about the past, and their context slips away, covered in the sands of time, before you notice them. Here’s my question:

Why did my father inherit his father’s tefillin?

Dad was the youngest of the four boys. The oldest son was easily the most active in Jewish matters. In fact, a few years after granddad’s death, the oldest would be smuggling guns to aid Israel’s War of Independence. But my father got the tefillin. There must be a wonderful story there, and I’ll never know what it is.

The 'Other' Ketchup:

2010-04-28T15:13:00.001-04:00

I’m serious about my ketchup. I use it on lots of foods, and I make serious use of it. I have observed that if you cook your own food, you can douse it with as much ketchup as you want, without fear of offending the cook. So of course we buy Passover ketchup.

You know the stuff I mean. Somehow, the great ketchup companies KNOW how to make ketchup, and the passover food companies make a pale imitation. For Passover, that’ll do. But then Passover is gone.

And I’m left with half a bottle of Passover ketchup. I ought to throw it out, but I do the “right” thing: Painfully and surely, I use it up. When it’s gone, can I say a Shehechiyanu?

RIA, the new Airline:

2010-01-21T11:27:00.002-05:00

Have you heard about the new airline, RIA Air? They only make round trips.

Through the Generations: The 'Axe Detailer'

2010-01-15T16:58:00.002-05:00

The 'Axe Detailer' is a cleansing tool for men. One reviewer called it, reasonably, a loofah for guys. (It's made out of artifical materials.) The ad copy that comes with it warns us that "when girls check out a guy, they notice every part. They don't miss a thing." This is silly advertizing of course. ('Dove for Men' sells an extremely similar product with no silly ad copy at all.) But when I use the Axe Detailer, I get a special pleasure due to the marketing.

I realized today that the pleasure I get is kindred with the feeling I get when I don tefillin. That act puts me in touch with untold generations of Jewish men who have done the same before me. Scrubbing with the 'Axe' puts me in touch with a delightfully younger generation of desperate men, all doing what I'm doing.

46 Wiggins (once Yavneh House) Demolished:

2009-02-24T13:27:00.003-05:00

In 1961, a few Orthodox Jews at Princeton University established a group called Yavneh. Currently, the term "Yavneh" refers to the activities of the Orthodox group at the Princeton University Center for Jewish Life. But this group's first two homes were off-campus. The second, from about 1966 to 1971, was at 46 Wiggins, a short distance NW of campus. The house was probably built in the late 19th century. Its interior was a bit bizarre. There was a small room on the first floor that could be shut off by closing a pair of large doors. We usually said prayers there. The room looked as if it had been used for other strange rites in the past. There was a small living room, a large dining room, and a kitchen.

The group got a zoning variance to operate a kosher kitchen there, open to outsiders. There was resistance from some neighbors. Their battle cry was “Today the Jews, tomorrow the Black Muslims.” But the variance was obtained. The kitchen had a non-working mechanism to enable people in the rooms upstairs (2nd and 3rd floors) to send a signal. Numbered metal tiles would have moved when a button was pressed upstairs. There were fore stairs and back stairs, apparently so that servants could move about the building without passing residents.

Yavneh left this building in 1971 to move to Stevenson Hall, 83 Prospect, a University-sponsored kosher dining hall. Since then, 46 Wiggins has and several owners (I think) and many residents. It became a condo, and later (again, I believe) owners lived in it while renting out apartments in the building. These owners expanded the house, building a side porch and a rear porch, and extending the living room to the side as well. Recently, 46 Wiggins was bought by R. B. Homes, a home builder. The house at 46 Wiggins occupied barely half the property, and it appears that RBH has other plans for it. 46 Wiggins was demolished this February (2009), in less than two weeks. Almost all of the demolition was done by one piece of machinery, shown in the photos.

This machine has an immense metal head that consists of a pair of clamping jaws. I think that most of the destruction was accomplished by hitting the house with these jaws, usually positioning them above something and dropping, to utilize gravity. Then the jaws dragged material away from the house.

46 Wiggins was of course much larger than the machine that destroyed it. But those claws made the house look feeble and in need of a mercy killing, making the structure shudder again and again as it was attacked. If we believed that houses had feelings like animals, we would never allow such a thing.

Here is the house from the rear, showing the added porches:

Here's the house from the front. In preparation for destruction, a chain link fence surrounds the property:

Here's the front door, with the last piece of delivery (a newpaper) tucked in:

And here's a bucolic side view:

Here, the front of the house has been battered:

The side, severely battered:

Here's the machine that did it:

Here's the machine that did it, working on the side:

Here goes the top (1):

Here goes the top (2):

Here goes the top (3):

Here goes the top (4):

Just a pile of rubbish ...

It's all over:

It's February 24, 2009. 46 Wiggins is no more. (29 Olden, 83 Prospect and CJL are still standing.) Stay tuned for a pic of whatever gets built here next.
- Tobias D. Robison

Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable Soup: no longer Kosher:

2009-02-02T09:13:00.004-05:00

Look sharp, you may still find a few cans of Campbell's Vegveg soup that has a Kosher symbol. According to Arlene Mathes-Scharf, Campbell used to produce the VegVeg soup (and possibly a few other soups?) at a separate Kosher plant, but they are now making the soup in all their plants, due to the increased cost of shipping.

Update: I can't be sure about this, but it looks like my queries to the Kashruth Alert web page and the Webbe Rebbe led to more alerts about Campbell Soup. This is really sad, especially since shipping costs must be pretty low at this moment.

My wife and I broke up a party:

2008-12-27T20:23:00.001-05:00

My wife and I broke up a party. I have an abhorrence of breaking up parties. When I was a small child, nine maybe, my beloved Germanic grandma told me about the difference between French Leave and English Leave. She was a goldmine of misinformation, so please don't try to learn anything from what she said: “French Leave” is a term of disdain, but it's the right thing to do. The Frenchman thanks his host or hostess discreetly and sneaks away, leaving the party in full swing. The Englishman goes around saying goodbye to everyone, shaking hands, and giving everyone else the excuse to go. He breaks up the party. I would never want to do that!

But there we were, at a dinner party that started at seven p.m. on December 25. Several delicious hours had passed, and the whole meal had been served with much animated conversation. Many of the guests were older than we, in their seventies. We had to get up early the next day for morning services, a Yahrzeit. So we suggested that we bentsch. Bentsching was fun.

But sure enough, after that, everyone said goodbye and left. I knew it was going to happen. I cringed all the way through bentsching. Maybe we should have crawled into some corner to say our prayers without a mezumin. But ... bentsching shouldn't break up a party.

It's Unscrupulous, but it's Kosher?

2008-12-12T15:13:00.000-05:00

Like many orthodox Jews, I am against the idea of a “Hechsher Tzedek”, a kashruth seal of approval that certifies both the halachic kashruth and the ethical quality of the food production. But please bear with me. I seem to have a commonsense position that many proponents of Hechsher Tzedek might be able to accept. I shall use the Rubashkin Circus for my example. I know there are Rabbis who have said that there's only one thing that matters: Was the meat processed according to Halacha? To this question, I have an answer.

To a large extent, we trust the people who produce our kosher meat to police themselves, and to work accurately. If we know that the people controlling kosher meat production have no respect for secular law; if we know that some of their workers are mere teenagers who work twenty hours a day; how can we begin to assume that their kashruth is accurate?

In general, if a family does not observe the sabbath, their observance of kashruth is suspect. And if we know that people work very, very long hours, we know their work cannot be error-free. Similarly, if a meat processor seems to observe and respect nothing but halacha, and forces workers to work far past the limits of accurate work, we cannot trust him. For the Rubashkins at least, we need no new seal of approval, just a little common sense.

It's October 24, and I'm running scared.

2008-10-24T16:33:00.002-04:00

There's not a lot of incentive to disassemble my Sukkah, but it's always an embarrassment if the thing's still standing on Thanksgiving. Do you know how few days there are till Thanksgiving? And the holidays just ended.

I repeated 'Layolom':

2008-08-02T21:30:00.002-04:00

In Orthodox services, there's a tendency to frown upon, or entirely ban, word repetitions. And yet, I did something this morning I've never done before: Leading Musaf, in the Kedusha, chanting “Yimoch Hashem Layolom ...”, I repeated 'Layolom'. Nobody complained, but I want to describe the unusual circumstance that made this happen.

As I was chanting the line, I realized I had said that word unclearly, almost a mumble, more like “lolom”. Now I strongly believe that God knows what word I said, He always knows what we mean. And I know that everyone who was there understood me; we all know the text, they probably heard the word clearly despite my poor pronunciation. So why did I repeat the word?

The answer is: because I'm recording an audio book. As I record and edit, I've learned that it's very hard for people to understand mumbled words. And as they've never read the book before, they can't often guess what a mumbled word is. When I'm recording, if I notice a poor pronunciation, I stop and repeat.

Oh, the embarrassment. It won't happen again.

(If you're curious, you can find out about the book here.)

We just bought the exact same Sorbet maker:

2008-04-13T19:26:00.002-04:00

Last year we bought the wonderful Cuisinart ice-30bc to make sorbets. We used it several times this year, and learned how to get really good results. We just bought another one for Pesach. The new one (the exact same model) is a lot cheaper. I assume this means that there are now better sorbet makers on the market. But I don't care. We paid our dues, learning to get good results with the 30bc. There's little time to experiment on Pesach. We'll know what we're doing.

What I think of you:

2008-02-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

It was supposed to be a three -- or three and a half -- day field trip, working 300 miles from home. I drove down Monday morning. It was very painful to learn, on Thursday, that I would have to work Friday. (In fact, this is one of those typical cases where I did not get home for Shabbat.) I was out of clothes. I was too tired to wash anything. The prospect of going through my clothing to find the least sweaty things seemed more effort than I could manage.

Then I had a thought: on Friday, I would dress to make a point. The point? That I wasn't expecting to have to be there! I wore the exact same clothes I had worn on Thursday. Very passive-aggressive, hey?

Rabbenu Tam, Where are you when I need you?

2007-12-26T12:09:00.000-05:00

We're keeping our house cold to lower our heating bills. I found the cold unbearable until I started wearing thin, black “duofold” underwear designed to keep me warm. I call this blessed stuff “middlewear”, since it goes between my shirt and undershirt.

Every morning, I have to decide whether to place my tallit katan under, or over, my middlewear. I think this is a matter of taste that has no practical consequence, so I don't always make the same decision. That may explain why, this morning, I put the tallit katan under my middlewear. And I put the other tallit katan over my middlewear. My intention, of course, is NEVER TO DO THAT AGAIN!

It takes longer to build my Sukkah:

2007-09-24T12:29:00.000-04:00

Our sukkah's frame consists of pipes connected by joints held together by tiny bolts that one screws in with an Allen Wrench. In its time it was about as easy to assemble as any Sukkah could be, and I used to assemble it in an hour.

It takes me a lot longer now, and there are two reasons. One is that I'm older, slower and less strong. The other is less obvious. Like many oldsters, I'm more aware of my mortality and more averse to risk-taking. I know this makes no sense, my life was more worth preserving when there was more of it left to live, to say nothing of the lives of my children, but that's the way people are. So I take a lot more time than I used to, to make sure that the bolts that hold the sukkah together, that keep the schach from falling on our heads, are screwed in tight.

OCD? I don't think so. I know that those bolts used not to be screwed in so well.

My father's Toast:

2007-04-11T18:41:00.000-04:00

My father made up a toast. It's not great. In fact I got rather tired of hearing it. But I'd rather memorialize it on the web, than have it vanish forever. Here it is:

L'Chaim! Ul'Shalom! [Sings like sinatra:] You can't have one without the other!

Kosher Innovations:

2007-03-13T17:18:00.000-04:00

The company that makes the great Sabbath Lamp (and other neat inventions like the Sabbath alarm clock) has a new name: Kosher Innovations. Check them out! We own two "KosherLamps" and one "KosherClock", and now I'm thinking about the KosherLock (keycoded, no electricity).

A PDA is not a Siddur:

2007-01-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

It's easy to download hebrew prayers onto a PDA, and very handy to have your own electronic prayer book when you're at, say, a wedding. I often use my PDA as a siddur in my usual shul also, because carrying any load for a while, even a thick prayer book is hard on my back. The PDA's much lighter and easier for me to hold.

At Mincha for the last Fast of Tevet, a brief moment forced me to realize how much a PDA differs from a real Siddur: We were of course not wearing tallits, and the Torah was being returned to the ark. as the Torah passed us in the front of the room, people reached out their prayer books to touch it. Would I ever reach out my PDA to touch the Torah? NOT ON YOUR LIFE!

The slow left turn: A Michshol!

2006-12-24T16:03:00.000-05:00

In my youth I occasionally made slow, leisurely left turns at intersections. It seemed to me elegant to take all the time I had, right up to the moment of the light changing red. And I would be more safe I thought, because moving slowly and dependably allowed all the other drivers to see what I was doing, and to react if I was accidentally moving into their space.

I never take slow left turns anymore. I had one or two experiences that foreshadowed the traumatic one. I now think of the slow left turn as a terrible michshol, a stumbling block placed before the careless driver. Here’s what I learned:

My first clue to the evil of the leisurely left turn was a small one. Once or twice I turned left as the light changed yellow, and found to my amazement, that a driver behind me had made the turn as well. That driver must have hot-pinked the light. Or perhaps that driver was determined to make the turn, infuriated by the slow movement of my car, and just pushed through the intersection in my wake.

One evening, returning home, I turned left off of the last highspeed road I had to travel that day. The light changed yellow. A sports car was coming towards me from the other direction. It was driving fast, evidently intending to catch the light. I calculated that I would be out of its way in time, and took my leisurely turn, driving slowly, safely into the crossroad beyond the intersection. As I did this I heard a hideous sound of brakes screetching and tires skidding on the road. I looked in my rear view mirror, and this is what I saw:

There was a station wagon right behind me. The driver behind me had also turned left, following me through the intersection.

The sports car was just beyond the intersection on the LEFT side of the road, exactly where I had begun my turn. It had avoided hitting the station wagon by a remarkable deft maneuver, yet it would have crashed headon had there been another car following the station wagon that stopped at the intersection.

The woman in the station wagon was a terribly careless driver, and she must have just assumed the road was clear for left turns. I believe my car blocked her view of the sports car, but she should not have committed to a turn until her view was clear. But that’s why I call the slow left turn a Michshol: I set up a rare situation in which a normally careless driver could suffer, or cause, a headon collision.

And there were no airbags in those days.

I've got that part covered:

2006-10-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

I was part of a large software development group working on a very difficult schedule to integrate many applications into an exciting new product. The schedule was, of course "challenging" (explanation for the uninitiated: "challenging" means "ridiculous"). We dozen people had weekly status meetings, working sessions that were critical to the potential success of the project. None of us missed any of these meetings. So one fall day as we grouped in, I explained how I would be missing seven work days in a month to the fall Jewish holidays. "That sounds like a good deal," said Brian (not of course his name), "how do I get in on this Jewish thing?"
"There is an initiation," hinted Mike.
"A small matter of the knife," growled Judy.
"Oh I've got that part covered," said Brian.
"Then you've got a problem, "I quipped.
Everyone began laughing hyseterically. Well, Brian did not laugh, and neither did I. But the others seemed really unable to stop. After several minutes the laughter quieted down to a steady ripple of chuckles.
"Let's get this meeting going," said our manager, and she collapsed in another round of laughing hysterics, setting all the others off again.
A few people tried to say something statusy, but only laughter emerged. After a several feeble attempts, our manager got up.
"Same, ah ha, same time next week," she laughed, and she walked out.

I call it the "Mordor" K:

2006-10-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

As we all know, there are just TOO many kashruth symbols. I recently saw yet another one, a box containing a large letter K on the left, and the letters "orc" vertically arranged on the right. So this must be the Mordor K. I suppose that an orc would make a pretty good mashgiach. He might not fully understand all the nuances of the law, but all would be in great fear of making any kashruth mistake that he could detect. For example:

"A Kosher Alert: The So and So company has placed an unauthorized Mordor K on its Pork and Beans Sauce product. An army of four thousand orcs is now marching towards its factory."

Hitchhiker forced to eat at knifepoint!

2006-03-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

I read a headline saying that a man was forced to eat pizza and drink wine at knifepoint. Can you blame me for assuming the story was about a Jew who (normally) kept kosher?

An unusual Purim Party:

2006-03-15T16:58:00.000-05:00

We gave a Purim Seudah this year for about 45 people. A dozen Israelis (on extended visits to our town this year) were among our invitees. The party was supposed to start at 4:30pm. That time passed, and no one had arrived. But a few minutes later all the Israelis showed up. Everyone else trickled in later.
"What kind of a party is it," I asked, "when the Israelis are the only ones who arrive on time?" An Israeli friend who phoned us on Shushan Purim answered my question. To her, this was just another example of how, on Purim, all is changed.

Smaller Mohammed, larger bomb:

2006-02-27T09:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not good with graphics, but if I were, my wife would tell me NOT to publish a cartoon of a smaller Mohammed with a larger bomb in his turban.

I think that each time a serious group of Islamists demonstrates no reverence for human life or the holiness of their religious places, that cartoon should be republished with the man getting smaller, and the bomb larger.

There's a practical limit to this series, too. It can't go on forever.

Kosher Edible Funguses!

2006-02-14T11:16:00.000-05:00

Now that I've got your attention, please commiserate with me. The O-U's latest Kashruth alert reports that SHANDONG JIUFA EDIBLE FUNGUS CORP. LTD. ofSHANDONG, CHINA is now making some kosher products. I cook Chinese, so I was really curious what their "Edible Fungus" products might be. Here's what the O-U lists:

Canned Diced Tomatoes OU
Cold Break Tomato Paste OU
Hot Break Tomato Paste OU
Whole Peeled Tomatoes in Juice OU

Gee, I don't need a weirdly-named Chinese company to sell me tomatoes.

Off the beaten Path:

2005-12-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

I sometimes take a circuitous route to shul on Saturday mornings. I go past the place where we used to doven, and then navigate around a few choice landmarks. It's a nice walk. But last week in the snow I realized something about my nostalgic route. Part of it goes where no one else would dream of walking. I know that because, for two whole minutes, I walked on pristine, unplowed snow.

I used to be a boyscout (Shomer Negia):

2005-12-13T19:58:00.000-05:00

I was walking to shul in the snow and ice, when I came up to a street corner surrounded by ice and slush. A little nun, perhaps 70, had just left the adjacent church, and was fretting on the sidewalk. She asked me if it was icy where I had been, and I assured her it was. I offered my arm for her to hold – I think this was just a small stretch of Pikuach Nefesh – and she eyed me dubiously. “I used to be a boyscout” I said. She took the arm and we slowly worked our way past the ice and slush. “I'm fine now” she said, and we went our separate ways.

Coffee Beer: Will it be kosher?

2005-11-03T05:51:00.000-05:00

Nestle's has patented a new beverage that smells like coffee (made from cofffee beans) and foams like beer. It may actually be non-alcoholic too.

Will it be kosher????

Stella D'oro cookies: Still all Parve?

2005-11-02T13:11:00.000-05:00

I believe it was way back in January 2003 that Stella D'oro decided to stay Pareve. But many of their cookies still have labels that say O-U (D). I'm really puzzled by this.

First, I think they've had time to clear their pipeline of incorrect labels.
Second, I would expect O-U to stop hechshering them unless they fixed their labels after a reasonable amount of time. Requiring people to KNOW that Kosher labels are wrong sets a bad precedent.
Third, what if Stella D'oro ever decided to really sell a dairy cookie. How would we know?

I called Stella D'oro at 1-888-8stella, and reached a very friendly customer rep who had no idea whether some of their cookies might be regarded (in a kashruth sense) as dairy. She did say that if you are lactose intolerant, just look for milk products listed on the label.

UPDATE: The O-U tells me that all Stella D'Oro is parve; ignore the dairy labels.

Transportation, Transportation:

2005-10-13T23:40:00.000-04:00

This story, full of surprising twists and turns, begins on Erev Yom Kippur. It was raining, so we decided to take a taxi both to and from services. The taxi was late, and despite assurances from the taxi company that it would arrive any minute, we faced a deadline of being unable to get our considerable stuff to services (prayer books shofar, promised apple juice for fast-breaking, etc.) Our town lacks an Eruv. So at 15 minutes to Kol Nidre, we jumped into my car, forgot about the late taxi, and drove onto the nearby campus where I delivered our stuff and my wife. (Although services are a 0.8 mile walk from home, they are a 1.5 mile twisty drive.)
It was now too late to drive home and walk back, so instead I parked on campus in a garage that was a seven minute uphill walk from services, and I missed nothing. I was a little worried about the car though. I actually have a sticker that says I can park in this garage because I'm a radio DJ for the campus station. But I'm only allowed to park in the mornings, and the car would be there 25+ hours. Would it still be there? Ticketed? But I set these worries aside and went to services.

We now congratulated ourselves that we would not need a taxi either way. The money we saved would be greater than the ticket I might get from the University. I had brought a wad of cash to services to pay the two taxi drivers, and this also turned out to be useful, because another family had parked in a municipal garage and brought NO money to get their car out after Yom Kippur. We loaned them our cash after Neilah so they could get home.

After services I left my wife to get the car, pick her and our stuff up, and drive home. I had my cell phone but she did not have hers. The walk downhill to the car took wice as long as the uphill walk had taken. Fasts can do that to you. As I approached the car, I could see from quite a distance that it was still there (not towed). As I got closer I could see it was not booted. When I got very close I could see: no ticket. At this point I felt WAY ahead. I got in the car, depressed the clutch, turned the key, and the car lurched forward towards the cement wall just in front of it. Horrified I slammed the brake, the car stalled, and I started to figure out what had happened.

It quickly became clear that the clutch pedal was doing nothing for me. It was unnaturally low, and I could not get in or out of gear unless the car was turned off. I faced the prospect or walking back to my wife, both of us hungry and tired after the fast, and telling her we needed a tow AND a taxi (and had no money). Might there be SOME way I could get the car to run?
The garage was practically empty, and it was built on an incline. I tried letting the car roll and shifting directly into second. No dice. Then I got the incredible idea. I COULD work the gear shift with the car turned off. So I put it into first and THEN turned the key. It's pretty terrifying doing this, the car lurches, the lights flicker on and off, but it worked. Stopping the car was no fun either: I could hit the brake and stall, or I could hit the brake AND turn the car off and not stall. I drove proudly around the garage a bit, then out and back to services to get my wife. I drove strictly in first gear, and on the way I went very carefully through two stop signs and also drove right past a campus guard who would have liked me to stop. I waved vigorously at him like an old friend as I went past. Nothing happened.
The campus - and the town - are a bit hilly. I doubted I could make the car start when pointed uphill. I was just hoping for a lot of luck on this rainy night. My next problem was that I had to turn around where I picked up my wife. I got her and our stuff in the car, explained the situation, and then started the business of going backward and forward to turn around. Backing up by turning the car on in gear is even more terrifying, it starts moving too fast. This was not fun. But I did get turned around, and drove off campus. I again passed the two stop signs, as carefully as I could. (Bear in mind that every time I stopped, I would have to turn the car off, put it first gear and turn it on again with another lurch. I wanted as few starts as possible.)
Driving home I had to stop for the first light, put on my emergency lights, and lurch-start when we had the green. Not fun. Then I had to drive up a hill with more lights. It turned out I COULD lurch-start even uphill! We got home. Of course I didn't park in our driveway, I'd never get out again. We drove another block to find a wide open place where I could stop at curbside, and then trekked home in the now steady rain.

My next concern was to get permission to park on the street overnight, something generally illegal where we live. So I had to decide which police department to call. You see, I knew I had parked my car almost exactly on the border between our borough and our township. I called the township. The policeman I spoke to was quite helpful, but not at all sure the car was really in the township. He decided that HE would tell the borough I was getting permssion to park there, to save me the extra call.

Now what?

Our favorite garage is six miles away and of course not open late at night. I considered driving all the way there in first gear to leave the car for their morning discovery, but I wasn't sure whether I was beating it to death by starting that way. I wanted ADVICE. Whom did I know who knew about cars? (Not common knowledge in our circles.) Well, I remembered a wonderful guy who used to live next to us. He actually once bought, majorly repaired and sold a used Jaguar at a profit. I once asked him for advice about where to take my car for repairs, and he proceeded to discuss the nearby alternatives pretty much the same way a wine expert discusses wines. We hadn't been in touch for years, but I called him (and left a message).

When Jim called us back, he spoke first with my wife and then with me. He had wonderful suggestions. The first was that rather than trying to drive all the way to our repair place, in first gear on a 50 mile an hour road, I could drive part way - just enough to be within range of a free tow by AAA. He also pointed out that I could lurch-start in second gear if I wanted to go faster. But he considered the exact brand of car, a 1994 Honda Accord, and the symptoms. He said we might have a hydraulic clutch, and if so, we might just be out of fluid. He told me where to look under the hood if that was the case. I got back out in the rain, walked back to my car, and used the flashlight to look at the car manual. YES! We had a hydraulic clutch. I propped up the hood in the rain, hunted about with my trusty flashlight, and YES, we are out of clutch fluid.

Once again, now what? I considered calling AAA and asking them to come with the fluid AND a tow truck in case I was wrong. I was worried that the driver might decide to insist on the tow even if we didn't need it.
Then my wife had the really great idea: Wait till morning. In the morning I can buy the fluid, try putting it in, and see what happens. So that's the plan! I will edit this story further, soon, to tell you how it all works out.

All in all, I'm not sure this adventure was our worst post-Yom Kippur experience. There IS the time we had to remove 200 books from the University immediately post-YK, but that's another story.

EDITED TO ADD: We were low on clutch fluid, I added some and the clutch still did not work. I drove (in first gear) five miles to my favorite car repair. They found a leaky cylinder. Indeed, most of the liquid seems to have drained out onto my garage floor.

I was also told that once you get a car started you can shift without using the clutch, as long as you get the motor at just the right speed. (Had I known this, I would have been afraid to try it.)

The Mango and the Shofar:

2005-10-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

Many years ago we had a certain fine shofar blower for Rosh Hashana. On the second morning, he brought a brown paper bag to services along with his shofar and kittel. He seemed very pleased with himself. When it was time to blow shofar, before saying the second day shehechianu, he reached into the brown bag and pulled out a mango, which he stared at very deliberately and replaced in the bag.

He then proceeded with his shofar blowing, but those who had seen the mango had a hard time recovering their kavana.

A changing view of Neilah

2005-10-01T22:07:00.000-04:00

I've led the Neilah service many times. Originally, all of my nusach reflected a sense of purified exhaustion, seemingly appropriate to the end of the great trial of Yom Kippur. But then came the year I played racquetball. Eventually I beat my body into submission and had to stop playing, but for awhile I was in paticularly good health and strength. Yom Kippur arrived, the time for Neilah came 'round, and I was not exhausted at all. Rather I was in a state of energetic exultation.

I could have proceeded with the service I'd prepared, but that would have been quite a phoney thing to do, chanting melodies reflecting an exhaustion I did not feel. I improvised a great deal that year, singing the way I felt, and - Russian style - building up to more energy and excitement as the service progressed.

And that's the way I've done it ever since.

Israel made me careless...

2005-09-07T19:15:00.000-04:00

At home in New Jersey, when I walk through woods or places with clumps of trees, I'm very careful never to touch a single leaf. In Israel we went to several wooded places (especially the Dan Reserve), and there I happily blundered through the trees, brushing branches right and left, just as I had in my childhood.

Now I'm back in New Jersey, and I've grown careless. I often touch a few leaves as I pass between trees. I was so careful before, I never had to worry about Lyme Disease.

Walk to Israel (4,000 steps):

2005-08-25T18:02:00.000-04:00

My exercise is walking. I walk about five miles a day - not all at once. In fact my five miles will be the sum of many short walks.

When I fly, I walk on the plane. Sitting for long periods of time can cause blood clots, and anyway I want my exercise. I discovered this month that for good walking, you need a large plane. A 747, say. Going from Newark to Israel on El Al, I managed to walk two miles on the plane. Coming back I did it again.

Some explanation might be in order. First, it takes me about 2,000 steps to walk a mile. I figure that any 2,000 steps will burn about the same amount of calories, so I count steps. (When I walk familar paths, I already know the step totals, but on the plane I had to count.) Second, there are times on a long flight when the aisles are pretty empty. On a large plane you can "dodge" the people-obstacles, back-tracking and crossing to the other side. Some people will get annoyed if you keep passing their seat, but you can keep moving to different sections of the plane.

Standing up and moving around a plane for ten minutes is a humanizing experience. You don't feel trapped by the crampness of the seats.

So: Walk to Israel. And if you don't happen to stay, walk home.

A handful of ...

2005-07-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

I was supposed to take a business trip from Tuesday through Sunday. I'd be in a very unfamiliar place for Shabbat, so I had to pack all I'd need to make Shabbat. I took about two hours to get everything together. Then the trip was postponed a day. I was still at home on Wednesday morning and needed to shave. I had not packed my electric shaver in the usual place . (I usually put it in a separate bag of electronics along with my mp3 player and phone charger; why not?) I wound up taking EVERYTHING out of my big suitcase, finally spotting a plastic bag the right size. I put that bag aside and returned everything to my suitcase. (Are you asking yourself why I'm writing this entry in a Jewish blog?)

Then I took a close look at the plastic bag I had set aside. It contained the five candles I'd packed for Friday night and Havdalah. It really DID look a lot like my razor. I unpacked everything again ... and eventually found it.

The Earlier Friday Flight:

2005-07-23T23:00:00.000-04:00

We all hate flying on Friday, right? There's always that risk of not making it to our destination before Shabbat. I flew across country last Friday. The plan was to take a 6 a.m. flight from Palm Springs to L.A., and then jet across country to Newark before 4 p.m. That meant a sure thing to get home on time unless I missed my connection in L.A., where there was only forty minutes to spare. I awoke at 2 A.M., checked out of my hotel and drove the 50 miles to Palm Springs. I was disgustingly early, but I felt I had to leave time for losing my way. I checked in, went to the gate and discovered that there was an earlier flight at 5:22 to L.A. THIS was the flight I wanted, there would be an eon of time to get on the same jet back to Newark. I waited anxiously until an agent manned the gate and then asked if I could take the earlier flight.
Now I had already reasoned as follows: Suppose the six o'clock flight is late. Taking the earlier flight means I'll make it home but my suitcase will miss the connection. Would I rather get home for Shabbat even if I miss my luggage? OF COURSE!

The agent said I could take the 5:22. He then spoke into his walkie-talkie, "I want to move one suitcase from the 6 a.m. flight to the 5:22." I was about to protest that I did not deserve this special treatment, but the voice at the other end of the walkie-talkies said "We already moved ALL the luggage to the earlier flight."

Humming while duchening:

2005-06-14T22:33:00.000-04:00

Our regular Cohen has a long melody he hums before saying the last word of each line while duchening. If I were a Cohen, I imagine my humming would go like this:
Hm, hm hm, hm-hm-hm humm hummm hum,
Hm, hm hm, hm-hm-hm humm hummm hum,
Hm, hm hm, hm-hm-hm humm hummm hum,
Hm HUMMM, (psst, chazan: what was that word again?)

Incorrect OU Sefira calendar:

2005-05-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

If you go to The OU website, you'll see a link to the CORRECTED Sefira calendar. The calendar they published in their Passover magazine issue skipped a few days in the middle and then tacked them on at the end. (Something like: 1,2,3, ...20, 24, 25, 26, ...49, 21,22,23.)

The incredible thing is that this is not the first time the OU has published an incorrect sefira calendar. You might think that of all the things to proofread carefully, this one would get the attention. You might think that having made the unthinkable mistake once, they'd be careful not to do it again.

You might even think that, having discovered their error, OU would politely ask to send out a Kashrut Alert about their mistake, even though the alerts are done by a ~~competing~~different organization.

Well don't think any of those things. Just try to guess if they'll ever mess up the count again.

Jewish Bilbo and Gollum on the Sabbath

2005-05-07T21:43:00.000-04:00

"What has it got in its pockets, my precious?"
Bilbo, thinking furiously, asked, "There wouldn't be an eruv here by any chance?"
"We thinkss not!" replied Gollum.
"Well ... nothing, actually," said Bilbo, as he flung the ring far among the rocks.

Earplugs:

2005-04-26T18:13:00.000-04:00

I usually take earplugs to weddings. The foam type that reduces sound by about 20 decibels lets me really enjoy the band and the dancing, without pain. When I’m dressing for a wedding I ask myself this question: Should I bring a pair of earplugs, or should I bring a dozen pairs and sell them?
I once attended a wedding in a building that was basically one big room, a kitchen and no lobby. It was cold and raining outside. There was nowhere to go to escape the loud band.

Do you like kumquats?

2005-04-21T12:26:00.000-04:00

Do you like kumquats? If you do, you can get delicious "canned" (in a jar actually) sweetened kumquats for Passover. The product is made by Agam Hagalil, and is easily available in supermarkets at Pesach time. There's a catch though: the product is CALLED "mini oranges in syrup." But believe me, it's kumquats.

Ratzinger:

2005-04-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Endlich: ein Papst, der eine Sprache spricht, die ich fast verstehen kann.

How to concentrate on the drosh:

2005-04-12T11:40:00.000-04:00

Last shabbat I learned how to really focus my mind on the drosh, no danger of dozing off or my mind wandering. I played with Lego pieces. (Don't ask me how they came to be in the Shul.)

Shocktroops:

2005-04-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

I've been reading at Mail Jewish about Haredi who use cell phones, but have arranged with the manufacturer to disable Internet and messaging features so they won't be forced too far into the 21st century. Regardless of how you view such hairsplitting, the fact is that these people are shocktroops in a war that will embroil us all this century unless the Messiah soon comes. It will be increasingly difficult for us to live in a world in which:

Every large piece of household equipment is computer controlled.
It becomes almost impossible to move about a home without issuing verbal commands to the house computer.
Only computer-driven books are published.
Lighting systems are required by law to be computer controlled and sensitive to where people are, to minimize the use of electricity.
We are all expected to have computer chips implanted in our bodies.
Many countries make it illegal to try to conceal our movements from the GPS system that tracks our every step.

The non-machine sabbath life is going to get harder and harder to achieve. And harder.

When I mentioned the idea of a Jewish D&D campaign, mezzsing commented:

2005-03-31T13:31:00.000-05:00

Messzing commented: “… I see no reason why you could not have an Jewish version of D&D. It seems odd, in fact, that no one has already tried it. Resting on the Sabbath is a great idea for weary soldiers of fortune and if you had priests in your party, perhaps they could gain experience points towards casting spells, if they were studying in addition to resting. Or is that too irreligious?”

I think the deep question is how the DM would reward or penalize Jewish adventurers for observing, or not observing, halacha (traditional Jewish law). There are lots of possibilities, depending on one’s view of the religion, and you could only hope the adventurers would at least understand what the DM was up to. For example:
· The DM establishes a “guilt index” for each player, and their likely degree of guilt about their observance would affect NPC interactions.
· The DM gives simple rewards for acting halachically correctly, such as being invited to NPC meals, being given scholarly books, etc.
· If the DM believes that children are less likely to get sick when your mezzuzzoth are kosher, the adventurers’ level of observance could have spectacular side effects.
· How would NPC’s respond to your refusal to eat certain food?
· The DM could quantify Tumah (ritual impurity) and have it affect the game.
· Let’s not ignore wonder-working rabbis. For whom would they work wonders?
· Bat Kols, anyone?
· The sky’s the limit if you want to assume each adventurer has a certain level of kabalistic competence.

Perhaps this sort of thing has not been tried because no two Jews could agree on the right way to do it. Once upon a time two Jews were stranded on a jungle island. When they were rescued, the rescuers noticed that there were three menacing deep pits with signs of fresh digging. They asked one of the Jews what the first pit was.
“That leads down to a horrible dungeon,” he replied. “I’ve done some adventuring there, it’s terrifying but the rewards are great!”
The asked the second Jew about the second pit.
“That pit leads to an invisible tower,” he replied, “I’ve done some adventuring there, it’s terrifying but the rewards are even greater!”
“What about that third pit?” they asked.
The two Jews responded at once, “Oh, we would NEVER adventure into that dungeon!”

A wondrous moment at a wedding:

2005-03-28T11:20:00.000-05:00

I attended a wedding yesterday at which the bride decided she wanted to join the kahal to say Mincha. As usual in a big hotel, the Groom’s Tisch was at least 100 yards from where the bride was sitting on her throne. She simply got up and started walking towards the tisch. Her attendants and others circled her, singing and dancing.

As she approached the room with the Tisch, people near the entrance saw an impossible sex-role reversal: apparently the bride had come to unveil and inspect the groom! People gazed at the approaching procession in horror, with mouths agape, stunned, not knowing whether or how to panic. It was a wonderful moment.

Then the bride stepped into the women’s section of the Tisch, where a mechitza had already been arranged for the dozen or so who also wanted to say mincha with the kahal, and all was well again.

Battlefield Promotions:

2005-03-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

Once again, for maybe the 60th time in the last year, our Cohen got the first two Aliyoth. We have a severe shortage of Levys. There ought to be a system for battlefield promotions! What would they have done at the Mishkan if they didn't have enough Leviim?

Detached from reality and suscepitble to influence ...

2005-03-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

So we now know that the IDF says D&D players are detached from reality and automatically given a low security clearance.

Wow.

What do you suppose the IDF thinks about people who believe in Mazikin?

My contribution to the Metzitza Bapeh controversy:

2005-03-08T18:09:00.000-05:00

Here's the truly American tradition:
[Oregon]State teacher commission probes wound-licking practice by coach. A few quotes from the story:
The coach has “licked blood from several students.” [A parent complained that] the coach should have already been well informed about the potential dangers of bodily fluid contact, since the school district policy conducts annual bloodborne pathogen training sessions for teachers. Hepatitis, meningitis and HIV are among serious infectious diseases that could possibly be transmitted through such contact.”
Public health officials say saliva-to-blood contact probably poses only a slim risk, but that [the coach’s] action violated standards for handling of bodily fluid that have been taught in basic first-aid classes for more than a decade.

I was the proud owner of a new car (one Friday Afternoon):

2005-02-27T21:13:00.000-05:00

A few weeks after buying my new car, I was driving home from work on a Friday, and stopped about 20 miles from home to get gas. I locked the keys in the car in front of the pump, with the engine running.
The gas station people were very nice about this. No problem! One of them felt along the roof of the gas station and pulled out a long, wicked looking flat tool. He shoved it down the outside of the window into the bowels of my car's front door, and - dropped it inside the door of my car.
"Do you have another one?" I asked.
"NO!" he said.
I started to get nervous. I could wind up with my engine going dry AND not getting home for Shabbat. The gas station owner started making calls, and twenty minutes later a guy showed up with an identical tool. This time he was careful; they opened the door, retrieved the other tool, put some gas in my car, and I just beat candle lighting time getting home.

Cohanim!

2005-02-20T10:34:00.000-05:00

Here in Galut, when I lead Shachrit or Musaf, I'm careful not to call the Cohanim up for the three-fold blessing. I know that Israeli Cohens are used to duchaning daily, and that the strongly highlighted word “Cohanim” is a call to duty. Instead, while doing the repetition of the Amidah, I'm careful not to emphasize the word, but to group “Cohanim am kedoshecha ka-amur” as one phrase. I think I'm being helpful.

In Galut…

2005-02-10T09:27:00.000-05:00

I was surprised to see one of our Israelis at minyan this morning (first of Adar 1) since he wasn’t there yesterday. But then I realized : of course! Here in Galut, we celebrate Rosh Chodesh for two days…

What would That Great Rabbi have Poskened?

2005-02-08T10:24:00.000-05:00

I’ve been following several discussions online that express an idea which makes no sense to me. Several of the posters, not all in agreement, explain what they are sure some great halachic expert would rule were he alive today – either on a new subject, or on a subject where they have already poskened, but new data is available.
Now it seems to me that part of what has made these illustrious Rabbis so great in halachic reasoning, is that they have often surprised everyone with the brilliance and clarity of their arguments that reach an unexpected conclusion. I might personally claim that I know how perfectly ordinary Rabbi X might rule on a question, but my inability to predict what a Gadol haDor might rule, were I ever so much more knowledgeable, is simply part of what made them great.

I can recall a similar situation in medicine. A surgeon counseled a rather extreme operation for a certain condition. He encouraged us to consult with the surgeon well-known as one of the two greatest experts in the field, but he said, “and I know what he will say! He’ll tell you that this is the operation you need.”
The great expert counseled no operation at all, rather alternative treatment that made the operation quite successfully unnecessary. If the first surgeon had really known what the second one was going to say, he would have had to be an equal or greater expert in the field, not just someone familiar with his work.

What's the special Torah reading for Martin Luther King day?

2005-01-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

Bereshit 41:15 (Chalom Chalamti ...).

Oh no, not a variance!

2005-01-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

Mail-Jewish has a nice discussion going about halachaic issues in obeying the law of the land. One writer wrote “Since pulling a permit also involves a permit fee, avoiding a permit is tantamount to stealing from the city …” I wonder whether we should call it stealing when the city’s cost of processing the permit exceeds the permit’s price. And that reminds me of a wonderful anecdote which I hope you will enjoy. Here’s a case where the government would definitely have preferred NOT to be paid for the permit…

I was working in a small town a few miles from my home, at a small startup, a subsidiary of Exxon. Our offices were at a place called “Research Park”, a bundle of buildings full of small computer companies, many other small businesses hoping to make a big buck, a restaurant, a few lawyers and accountants, and a place selling cars. We were developing new kinds of office computers and at one point we needed to build six identical computers, so we advertised for someone with hardware manufacturing experience. This brought a call to our CEO from the local government.
“You can’t manufacture in Research Park,” he was told, “You’re not zoned for manufacture.”
Our CEO explained that we were just doing research into office computing, and maybe some development..
“You’re not zoned for research in Research Park,” he was told. “You can’t do development there either. You’re just zoned for accounting and lawyer offices and that sort of thing.”
Research Park had ALWAYS been full of computer companies. And the very name! Our CEO was really puzzled. “What about all the other computer companies?” he asked.
“Look,” said the government official. “Just don’t make it look like you’re manufacturing alright? I don’t want get into the other stuff.”

Well this may surprise you, but apparently Exxon is scrupulous about the law of the land. We applied for a zoning variance. The application was unhappily accepted. It took eighteen months to get our variance, during which time Exxon’s lawyers and the town’s lawyers spent more time than any of them wanted to spend. Throughout the whole process, I think the town was afraid that all the other companies were going to ask for variances too. But I believe none of them did.

Uh Oh, another "rational" calendar...

2005-01-04T10:29:00.000-05:00

Uh oh, a rational calendar…
I don’t know how reporters manage to be so credulous that you get news stories like this. If you follow the link back to the original story, you find this guy proposing a 364-day calendar. “To keep the calendar in synchronisation with the seasons, Henry inserted an extra week - which is not part of any month - every five or six years.”
An extra week? Just what everybody wants.
Many years ago, proposals for rational calendars were common, but they all attempted to SIMPLIFY and put calendar makers out of business. The general idea was to have 52 weeks plus a special day that is not a normal day of the week (on leap year, there would be yet another such special day). That day might be called “Lithe” instead of Monday. You wouldn’t have to buy a new calendar every year.
Now here’s the good part: If we adopted a calendar like that, our Sabbath would fall on Saturday one year, Sunday the next, and (more or less) so on. AT LAST there would be years where we could do what everybody else does on Saturday!
Sadly, religious groups of all faiths do not seem to agree with me. They are all against the rotating Sabbath, and have killed such reforms.
By the way, if you think the computer-year-2000 business was a mess: calendar reform would mean throwing away or seriously revising every old program. There would be NO QUICK FIXES!

Tight Shirts, loose Shirts…

2005-01-04T09:47:00.000-05:00

I have tight shirts and loose shirts. When I’m buying, I always have to think about which kind I need. I think I look relatively good in the form-fitting shirts. But when I wear a loose shirt, I can roll the sleeve up high enough to wear my Tefillin.

An incongruous pair:

2005-01-02T11:39:00.000-05:00

I was once taking a walk when I saw in the distance, an incongruous pair; A young man wearing a wide black hat and haredi garb, talking animatedly to the short, thin woman beside him scantily clad in short bright red shorts and a similar minimal red halter. As we approached I suddenly understood the obvious explanation for this pair:
I was looking at a new B.T. and his mother.

Why were you late?

2004-12-26T11:07:00.000-05:00

I know a brilliant mathematician from New York City who says that when he appears before HKBH for judgment, he will be asked "Why were you always late to Minyan?" He will respond, "You don't understand! I was always late to everything!"

And he tells this story on himself:

At the end of an academic meeting, a student he had never met approached him, addressed him by name and asked a question that they discussed. After awhile, he asked the student, "How did you know who I was?"
The student replied, "They told me that you would be the last person to enter the room."

Not Extortion!

2004-12-15T09:59:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it's best to ignore these things, but I sent a long comment to the web site that hosted this article: The "Kosher Nostra Scam" on the American Consumer. I said:

I am responding to Ernesto Cienfuegos' "Kosher Nostra" article. Ernesto regards the money that food companies pay to get a kosher symbol on their product as a sort of tax or extortion. This is inaccurate. The companies bear this cost because it enables them to make larger profits. A great number of Americans (and people elsewhere), not just Jews, prefer to buy products that have a kosher symbol on them. No one forces food companies to get rabbinic supervision of their products. They do it to make money. And larger profits sometimes means lower retail prices, not higher prices.

The cost of a food product (and its retail price) reflect all the costs that a company decides is appropriate. That includes the quality of ingredients, the cost of labeling and also advertising. I would like to assure Ernesto that the wholesale cost of food he buys would be lower if companies used lower quality ingredients and did not advertise at all. Some companies DO use lower quality ingredients, and he is welcome to chose them as he prefers.

For traditionally religious Jews, the kosher symbols indicate that the laws of our religion allow us to use that food. For vegetarians, the symbols provide a reliable way to know whether there are traces of meat in a product. For those with dairy allergies, the symbols provide a reliable way to know whether there might be traces of milk in a product. Normal government labeling is not as accurate for these purposes.

For a great many shoppers, the kosher symbols, by suggesting greater supervision of the manufacturing process, indicate that products may be cleaner and more reliable. That is one of the reasons why non-food products also bear kosher symbols. In fact, kosher symbols on some non-food products are there ENTIRELY to attract non-Jewish buyers who feel that kosher symbols mean better quality, and have no relevance at all to religious Jews.

Food manufacturers are simply taking advantage of the needs of all these groups, to sell more product, when they arrange to get kosher symbols.

Start on Time?

2004-12-12T11:01:00.000-05:00

Small minyans face the great question of whether to start Shachrit on time. (“On Time” generally means starting before there are ten.) On the one hand we argue that we should wait for the latecomers, especially for the sake of those on time who are saying kaddish. On the other hand we argue that if we started on time, the latecomers would get their act together and come sooner.

There’s a lot at stake. If we start on time, obviously we finish earlier. In fact we finish even earlier than that because, without a minyan, we leave out the kaddishes at the beginning of Shachrit.

Jews Got Guns!

2004-11-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

Well this is different. Jews for the Preservation
of Firearms Ownership is inevitably going to look somewhat hysterical to those of us who think that guns are mostly a danger to those who carry them and their loved ones. But there are lots of excellent topics here. Examples: carrying guns on the Sabbath? Some reminders about how badly Jews in the Warsaw ghetto needed guns are here. And you'll find the usual extreme readings of the second amendment as well.

How do you feel when your tefillin are borrowed?

2004-11-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

How do you feel when your tefillin are borrowed? I've just arrived at Shachrit, they don't seem to be anywhere and it's a pretty sure bet some visitor, or some regular who forgot his, has borrowed mine. And they borrowed mine because there isn't any extra pair left for me. I can smile and say "You're welcome" at the end of services, but meanwhile there's nothing much to think about except, "Why was I late????"

When not to blog:

2004-11-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

Last Shabbat I listened to one of the leaders of a Chavurah minyan explaining to members how she was going to keep them abreast of schedules and events by Email. Afterwards I pointed out to her that if she made a blog, she could arrange that each entry was emailed to her list, but in addition, all of her information would be permanently available online. “In other words,” she said, “the members can go to my web site to see what’s going on.” I agreed.
“I don’t want that!” she said. “I want people to feel that if they want to know what’s going on, they have to come to services.” She could tell that I was a computer-oriented sort of person, so it was with difficulty that she realized she had convinced me she was right.

One of the many reasons I want to write a novel:

2004-11-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

I want to write a novel with a character named Morris Ayin. We won’t know much about Morris, but the other characters will see him coming and going, and it will always look like he’s doing something wrong. Eventually we’ll learn that he’s really an okay guy, just lacking a little commonsense about how to act properly.

XXX = ?

2004-11-15T11:24:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure last Shabbat of davening at a place where they post the current three-digit page number, using a rack with large numbered cards. Well, not an unalloyed pleasure – I was using an alternative prayer book, and had to keep resisting the impulse to turn to the “current” page. But that’s not important now. What interests me is this: when the service is over, what number should be left on the cards? Usually the last number just stays there (probably the Sabbath psalm) but why not change the last number to: 613!

Hebrew on the Palm.

2004-11-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

I’m a Palm PDA person. My previous (OS3) pda had full Hebrew support. When Palm brought out OS5, I got a Tungsten, a fine PDA except that for some reason OS5 made it very hard to support Hebrew. Eventually - after many many moons – two companies cracked full OS 5 support. It’s expensive, and reasonably so since a lot of work went into developing it. But I’m lucky, on my Tungsten I settled for half a loaf, and got it free.
I use a free document reader called HebDoc. It reads Hebrew palm docs like the ones you can find at Moadon. The company I got it from, Lionscribe, now gives away LionDoc. They also offer partial OS5 Hebrew support for $30, but I think you can use LionDoc without it. I find their unpointed high-resolution Hebrew fonts to be excellent..
Full OS5 Hebrew support is available (just recently) from Penticon for $65 (including an onscreen Hebrew keyboard), or in a $40 read-only form. The PILOC people have been offering full OS5 hebrew support for many months, $60.
I bought Penticon fonts for OS3 after trying them out. They had an interesting way of terminating the trial period: the Hebrew text started reading backwards.
And that’s the Palm Hebrew support I’m aware of. Comments, please?

Spelling Equality.

2004-11-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

On Shabbat, right after Shochen Ad, the short verses beginning “B’fi yesahrim tithallal” form an acrostic, spelling Yitzchak in the middle words. The last words of these verses can be rearranged (as they ARE in, for example, Nusach Ari, and in the Birnbaum High Holidays Siddur) to Spell Rivka as well. (Begin “B’fi yesahrim titRomam”.) If you feel that you believe in as much equality of the sexes as your flavor of Judaism will allow, perhaps you should pray this double acrostic.

Not Quite?

2004-11-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

One of the drawbacks of working for a newspaper is that you will – regretfully – think of headlines the paper can never print. At the New York Times last night, I’m sure employees were joking themselves to death about headlines they couldn’t put on the first page, such as:

Arafat Not Quite Dead!

I’M trying to save time and avoid sin…

2004-11-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

How about if I wear a button with the caption “Everything I say is Bli Neder.”

Dungeons and Golems.

2004-10-31T06:53:00.000-05:00

Years ago when I played Dungeons and dragons, I wondered whether it was possible for a good fantasy role playing game to have a serious Jewish flavor. I thought about a fantasy universe where heroes went out to kill monsters but also rested on the Sabbath, set time aside for prayer and study, and tried to decide when Pikuach Nefesh issues (surely much more common in FRPG than most people’s real lives) should override halacha.

It may be quite impossible to create a satisfying FRPG along these lines, and maybe that’s a good thing. I still wonder though.

Counting to Ten

2004-10-30T20:10:00.000-04:00

There are various methods of counting to see whether there are ten, but I'm fascinated by the idea of using visual glimpses to count rapidly. With a little practice you will instantly recognize the shape of a group of 3, 4 or 5, and can add the group totals instantly. But if you start young you might learn to recognize larger groups at a glance - six, eight or even ten at once. I'm sorry I did try to learn this skill when I was young.

One Shabbat morning we sat around for fifteen minutes waiting for a tenth to arrive. Suddenly we realized that we were already ten; we had miscounted.

Promotion?

2004-10-30T20:03:00.000-04:00

Our small shul has not been blessed with many Leviim lately. After the first Aliyah today, the Gabbai looked once again at the small group of familiar faces and said hopelessly, "Is anyone a Levy?" I think he should have asked: "Has anyone become a Levy?"