So I was waiting in line with this woman who grew up in London but has split her past decade between the U.S. and Israel.
“It’s easy to be Jewish in Israel,” she said. “But life is much harder than here. It is easy to be Jewish here.
“In Britain, there’s much more anti-Semitism. We (British Jews) were brought up to be low-key. We were told to avoid congregating on the sidewalks after the high holidays so as to not attract too much attention. We were told not to walk together in large clumps.”
I’ve heard secular Jews complain to me about Pico-Robertson and “Orthodox Jews walking down the middle of the street on Saturdays like they own the place.”
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “Republicans are looking for a serious person with the right ideas who understands what is at stake in November of 2012. The reason Mitch Daniels is not running for president is family related. He does not want the damage the media will do to candidates, especially Republican candidates. I don’t blame him.
“Many people are willing to die for this country but are not willing to have their name ruined for this country.”
“There is only one answer. The private lives of major people in the media must be revealed. Those who have money to spare in Republican life might want to consider starting a fund with millions of dollars to have muckrakers publish the life and sexual habits of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal (even though the WSJ does not engage in this), Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, etc…
“If your claim is that we need to know everything of a public figure because of the influence they wield, then because of the influence you wield, we need to know this much about you.”
The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.
Both seek to dominate society and to use state power to do so. Both seek to eliminate the Other — for Islamic fanatics, that means non-Muslim religions and secularism; for secular fanatics, it means Christianity and virtually any public invoking of God. The Islamists impose Sharia law; the American Civil Liberties Union and the left generally impose secular law. The Taliban wiped out public vestiges of Buddhism in Afghanistan; the ACLU and its allies seek to wipe out public vestiges of Christianity in America — as it did, for example, in Los Angeles County, when it successfully pressured the County Board of Supervisors to remove the tiny cross from the county seal. A city and county founded by Catholics — hence the name “The Angels” — was forced to stop commemorating its founders because they were religious.
This fanaticism has been on display most recently in the state of Rhode Island. This past Christmas, the governor, Lincoln Chafee, renamed the state Christmas tree a “holiday tree.” Though Christmas is a national holiday, for the secular fanatic, anything Christian — or, as we shall see, anything that relates to religion or God — must be banned from public life.
The latest expression of the secular equivalent of Islamism is the lawsuit brought against a Rhode Island high school, Cranston High School West, for allowing a banner, written by a seventh grader in 1963, to remain hanging on one of the school walls. An atheist student, along with the ACLU, brought the lawsuit and a judge ruled that it is unconstitutional for it to hang in a public school.
To appreciate how fanatical the student, the ACLU and the ruling are, you have to know the words on the banner. So here they are:
Our Heavenly Father
Grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, to be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School west.
Amen
The idea that this prayer violates the Constitution of the United States is as much a mockery of the Constitution as it is of common sense. Only a fanatic can welcome the removal of such a non-denominational, sweet, moral exhortation from a high school wall. America is indeed as endangered by the ACLU as the Muslim world is by Islamists.
Defenders of the judge’s decision point to the U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1962 banning state-mandated prayer in public schools. The parallel is invalid. No student is asked, let alone compelled, to state what is on the Rhode Island high school banner. But arguments citing the Supreme Court ruling serve only to confirm my argument: that secular fanaticism has been taking over America. The New York State prayer that the Warren Court outlawed 50 years ago was as non-sectarian, as morally uplifting and as inoffensive as the Rhode Island prayer.
* God does not lead the Jews by the land of the Philistines. “Perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war, and they will return to Egypt.” Sometimes it is the right thing to go to war. (Ex. 13:17)
* Ex. 13:18. The Israelites were armed when they went up from Egypt. They weren’t pacifists.
* Why did God harden Pharoah’s heart? What about his free will? Harden could just as easily be translated as “strengthened.” In a battle with God, a human being will need strengthening precisely so he can have free will.
* After the Egyptians were wiped out, the Israelites sang a song of rejoicing and there’s nothing in the Torah that indicates that this was not right.
* I met this cute Jewish girl in yoga whose life work was persuading people to eat bugs. I felt conflicted. On the one hand, she hot and smart. On the other hand, she was into eating bugs.
* As the Israelites wandered through the wilderness, they were blessed with lightboxes so they could look for bugs in their lettuce. They were also given food detergent so they could wash their fruits and vegetables.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “…human beings are basically dissatisfied creatures. The rabbis taught us that he who has one hundred (million, billion, trillion?) always wishes for two hundred!”
The most beautiful woman you see? There’s a man out there who’s tired of being with her.
Rabbi Wein writes: “The rabbis, therefore, defined wealth in terms of personal satisfaction and gratitude and they ruefully remarked that there are rather few wealthy people present in our world.”
I’ve found that most of these people are religious.
Dennis Prager says that the essential ingredient for happiness is gratitude.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The exultation of Israel at seeing its hated oppressors destroyed at its feet knew no bounds.”
This seems truer to Jewish history than the midrash that God reproved the angels from rejoicing at the death of the Egyptians pursuing the Jews into the Sea of Reeds. Yeah, perhaps angels should not rejoice at the death of the wicked, but human beings should.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “However, almost immediately the people of Israel, faced with the problems of the real world which seemingly never disappear no matter how great the previous euphoria may have been, turn sullen and rebellious.”
I remember after the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl, Dennis Prager asked, how exactly does this help New Orleans? When President Obama was elected president, how did anyone’s lives change for the good? They still have to pay for their gas and their mortgage.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The moment of absolute physical triumph is not to be repeated again in the story of Israel in the Sinai desert. But physically speaking, the experience of the desert of Sinai will hardly be a thrilling one for Israel. So it is with all human and national victories. Once the euphoria settles down, the problems and frustrations begin.”
Most people don’t even get one euphoric moment like the drowning of the Egyptians. So if you get one in your life, don’t expect two.
I remember when I was on the cover of the Jewish Journal. I was euphoric for a few hours — despite the article portraying me as a jerk — and then I had a crash. Afterward, life went on. Despite being on the cover, I did not get any more Shabbos invites. Not even that weekend. No Shabbos invites.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The less grandiose our expectations are the less painful our disappointments become.”
I think that’s part of the reason that my life has been so painful. My grandiose expectations for myself. I feel like I was born for greatness, yet I struggle to pay the bills.
* I blame pop music for my pursuit on unrealistic highs. I blame Kelly Clarkson.
What if I told you
It was all meant to be
Would you believe me,
Would you agree
It’s almost that feelin’
That we’ve met before
So tell me that you don’t think I’m crazy
When I tell you love has come and now
A moment like this
Some people wait a lifetime,
For a moment like this
Some people search forever,
For that one special kiss
Oh, I can’t believe it’s happening to me
Some people wait a lifetime,
For a moment like this
* Most of my relationships have started out with amazing interactions and then they steadily devolve and crash within a year.
The half-life of most sexual relationships is six weeks. That means that six weeks in, the sex is half as good as it was at the beginning, and every few weeks after, it becomes steadily less volcanic.
* Will Israel attack Iran in 2012? Let’s say Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear program to smithereens, we’ll still have to get up and go to work in the morning. It’s not like goyim will give us the day off.
* I noticed that frozen yoghurt store on Alcott and Robertson is open on Shabbos. Yet it is certified as kosher. Some stores such as Coffee Bean are open on Shabbos and yet are still certified as kosher by the rabbis.
* I quote Rabbi Berel Wein a lot. One day I had lunch with a bloke who said, my mother is married to R. Berel Wein.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “And finally the manna taught us that God’s grace does not fall evenly on all humans. The Talmud again teaches us that the manna fell at the doorstep of the righteous while others had to travel into the desert to find and gather it. Some have it easier than others in life.”
I’ve often been jealous at the apparent ease by which many around me made money.
I’ve often been jealous at the apparent ease by which many men around me bedded women. Some guys in high school go all the way. Not my luck. I reconnected with somebody from my high school, from Placer High School, and the things this lad did blew me away. I spent much of high school reading the New Testament. And I wrote untucked dress shirts on top of sweats or jeans and I unbuttoned my shirts and I wore a chain with my house-key on it. Still, no action. Even though I was a latch-key child.
* I think I’m at a low spiritual level. I can only study Torah on my own if I’m listening to goyisha pop music at the same time. Why can’t I get into the Miami Yeshiva Boys Choir?
Or do you prefer the Christian band Libera?
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Part of the struggle against Amalek falls upon Moshe’s upraised hands. The Talmud interpreted Moshe’s upraised hands as the symbol of Jewish prayer to heaven and recognition of the role of the Divine in everyday life. It is not Moshe’s upraised hands so much that decide the war against Amalek, as it is the upraised faces and eyes of Israel heavenward that decide the issue.”
Anyone who’s been a part of a minyan he’s liked has experienced the power of prayer and communal bonding.
Rabbi Wein: “Amalek reminds us how vulnerable we are. Without Divine aid we are subject to the ruthless laws of nature and historical processes. Nations are ground under and disappear. Only a people – Israel – that is willing to follow supernatural law and, so to speak, live a supernatural life style will be exempted from these rules of natural law and history.”
* Rabbi Wein writes: “One would think that after the blows and plagues that Pharaoh and the Egyptian people sustained in the campaign of Moshe and Aharon to free the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage, Pharaoh and the Egyptians would have learned their lesson. They should have been happy and relieved to be rid of the Jews and the blows and plagues associated with them. Then why do Pharaoh and the Egyptian army pursue them into the desert and attempt to return them to Egypt? What logic justifies such a suicidal policy? The answer is that it is habit, stubbornness, hubris and the refusal to allow facts and changing situations to affect one’s decisions and attitudes.”
And why were the Egyptians so stubborn? Because they were stuck in certain responses to stimuli. Their necks were tight and their movements and thinking were governed by reaction, not thought-through response.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “This same rule of human nature applies toward the Jewish people as well. The Jewish people were and are notorious for being “stiff-necked.”"
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Thus there is a great feeling of apathy and emptiness in the Jewish world today. In the realm of traditional Jewry, much of Religious Zionism has lost its steam; Chasidut has pretty much frozen and atrophied and become insular; the yeshiva world has become a place of narrow focus and elitism; the Mussar movement no longer exists; and modern Orthodoxy has not found its voice and parameters.”
The presence of even one whole bug, dead or alive, can render an entire vegetable treif — unkosher. On this matter, Orthodox rabbis are unequivocal.
“From a Torah perspective, eating a Big Mac or eating a salad with insects in it, the salad is worse,” Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz, who runs the nonprofit Kosher Information Bureau, told me when I met him at his home office in Valley Village.
The above is nonsense. Orthodox rabbis have different positions on bugs.
The historical Jewish position on bugs in fruits and vegetables is that you wash them until you see no bugs and then you are free to eat. Bugs that you can’t see with your naked eye are not treif.
As we drink water and breathe air, we ingest microscopic bugs. This is not a sin.
If we eat a salad with insects in it that we can not sin, we are not committing a sin.
I challenge anyone to present a traditional source that says otherwise.
Only ignorant Jews or Haredi extremists will assert otherwise.
The RCC (Rabbinical Council of California) often appears to me as a combination of ignorant Jews and Haredi extremists.
The Jewish Journal reports: “…the RCC’s guidelines recommend that people use lightboxes.”
Do you think our ancestors in Eastern Europe used lightboxes to check for bugs? What about the Israelites in the desert 3200 years ago?
The Jewish Journal publishes: ““You have to wash [the fruit or vegetable] with a food detergent,” Muskin said about checking non-certified vegetables.”
Do you think our Orthodox ancestors washed fruit and vegetables in food detergent? Many Jews in Eastern Europe were so poor that they could not afford wine for kiddush. Do you think they bought food detergent or vinegar with their last funds to clean their fruits and vegetables?
I can use a magnifying glass and examine tap water or distilled water and find bugs. Drinking this water is not a sin.
If you examine meat or cheese or you name it with a magnifying glass, you’ll likely find tiny bugs.
Rashi’s teshuvot (rabbinic rulings) were published in 1943. About 500 copies were printed. Rashi says that you wash vegetables and this removes all the bugs prohibited by the Torah. The Rashba says you wash them and check them and any bug visible is prohibited but anything not visible is not prohibited.
These are the only two Rishonim who wrote on this.
The Stropkover Rov 200 years ago ruled that you must check for visible bugs on fruit and vegetables but anything not visible is not a sin.
Reb Moshe Feinstein’s position was essentially the same as the Rashba’s.
When this bug insanity started in Lakewood in 1982, Reb Moshe would have nothing to do with it.
Worrying about bugs is a way to avoid the real challenges to the Jewish community such as Biblical criticism (and modernity’s intellectual challenges), agunot (chained women) and converts.
Los Angeles has an Orthodox community of about 30,000 to 40,000, less than 10% by the most generous of standards.
Ask anyone who grew up in Eastern Europe before WWII if anyone washed vegetables with soap or vinegar? Many of these people did not have running water.
Most communal Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States don’t know much and they’re intimidated by their right-wing so they go along with this bug nonsense.
A woman called in Friday to Dennis Prager’s radio show and said that three friends over the past 15 years had burned her and therefore she now only has acquaintances.
Dennis: “I don’t get it. Do people do bad things to people out of nowhere? You’re wonderful for five years and then all of a sudden you do something? Is it out of character? Did you not know their character?”
My theory is that when people feel like they’ve betrayed, it’s really a case of the other person having a different set of priorities than what you imagined.
For instance, if I call an ex-girlfriend in tears and say, “I really need you to come over right now” and she declines, she’s not betraying me. She’s showing different priorities.
If I ask a friend to borrow $400 and he refuses, he’s not betraying me.
If I ask a friend for a ride or for a job or for a favor and he declines, he’s simply acting on different priorities than what I want.
If my spouse commits adultery, she’s acting on her own priorities, different from the ones I imagined she had. What she’s doing feels like betrayal to me but I don’t own her. She’s acting on her values. She’s acting on what’s important to her.
If I don’t want to go out with a friend one evening because I’d rather write or work or go out with another friend, I’m not betraying my first friend.
If a friend steals $200 from you, I doubt he’s primarily doing it to hurt you. He’s stealing from you because he has a priority above being honest with you. That priority may be paying the rent or getting a filling filled or buying some crack.
So I don’t think it is useful to think about friends burning you or betraying you or doing you the dirty. People have competing interests and you’re not always going to be your friend’s number one priority.
I’ll admit that many people have felt burned by me over the course of my lifetime. For one friend in high school, it was when I chose to write an article in the school newspaper that was critical of the football team. I lost other friends when I chose to write about a mutual acquaintance — Dennis Prager. I lost other friends when I chose to write about the porn industry. I lost one friend (a public school teacher) when I campaigned in 1992 in California for school choice (vouchers).
The presence of even one whole bug, dead or alive, can render an entire vegetable treif — unkosher. On this matter, Orthodox rabbis are unequivocal.
“From a Torah perspective, eating a Big Mac or eating a salad with insects in it, the salad is worse,” Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz, who runs the nonprofit Kosher Information Bureau, told me when I met him at his home office in Valley Village.
With stakes like that, it’s no wonder some kosher-observant Jews are willing to pay top dollar for kosher-certified produce. At one store in Los Angeles earlier this month, an RCC-certified head of romaine was selling for seven times the per-ounce price of one without the kosher designation. For East Coast consumers, who buy the majority of Asyag’s produce, most of the lettuce is first pre-cut and bagged as processed salads, and then sold at an even higher markup.
Greenhouse-grown, bug-free kosher lettuce is an Israeli innovation. First pioneered in 1990 in the then-occupied Gaza Strip, the growing technique is still often referred to as the “Gush Katif” method, named for the now-dismantled Jewish settlement where it originated.
Over the past five years, California has become home to the largest North American bug-free-growing operation, and it’s about to get bigger. Asyag, who has been selling RCC-certified lettuce under the brand California Kosher Farms since around 2008, is about to embark on a major expansion, aiming to double his farm’s output over the next 12 months to more than 1 million heads of lettuce a year. He’s looking to buy more land in Oxnard and has already started using Israeli-designed hydroponics to grow more lettuce in less space.
But while the equation “lettuce minus bugs plus rabbinic approval equals good returns,” might seem simple, the reality is anything but. This nascent industry is fraught with disputes, not just over what Jewish law requires, but over what price consumers and businesses should have to pay in order to keep their salads kosher.
Through dozens of interviews with growers, rabbis, local kosher caterers and staff from one local kosher supervision agency, a complicated picture emerges of a niche business that illustrates the complexities and the unusual financial challenges of the modern kosher marketplace. One thing is certain: It is the RCC supervisors who hold most of the cards.