For years, people thought of me as just a big head. I was an intellectual. The rest of life I rushed through to get to what I do best — think.

Thanks to Alexander Technique, I am now a complete human being. Like Woody Allen, I am a triple threat — I can think, feel and move.

I am reading volume two of the Congress Papers from the eighth International Congress of the Alexander Technique.

Boy, were those some wild times in Lugano, Switzerland during that fateful week of August 10-16 of 2008.

Only now can the truth be told of what went on there. It made ancient Rome look like a nunnery. You lock a bunch of Alexander Teachers in a room together, turn off the lights, and what inevitably results is debauched kinesthesia.

I am currently studying the essay of Brigitta Mowat on “The Use of Touch in an Alexander Technique Context.”

Brigitta is a psycho-therapist and a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique.

She writes that early on “Freud used touch in the form of massaging his patents’ necks or lightly touching the head, the intention being to help a patient to release muscular tension and embedded, long-forgotten memories. However, he abandoned touch quite early in his career, yielding to the pressure of his peers, who feared that touch would stimulate sexual feelings. To this day, psychoanalysis adheres, at least in theory, to a non-touch policy.”

F.M. Alexander was a critic of psycho-analysis. He said it reinforced the mind-body dichotomy.

Brigitta writes that we need to understand the causes of underlying muscular tension.

She says that the psychological impact of touch is rarely discussed in the Alexander world, even though this touch is a big reason why many people getting hooked on having Alexander lessons.

Psychoanalyst Frances Sommer Anderson got Alexander lessons weekly for three years. She wrote:

Two-thirds of each one-hour session was spent standing, turning, and bending, very slowly, with keen attention to doing it correctly. I quickly suppressed my feelings that this exercise was tedious, boring, and to my surprise, infuriating… The last part of the session, I lay on my back on a massage table, fully clothed, with my head off the table, supported only by my teacher’s hands. This posture was absolutely wonderful. I had never experienced anything like it. Her supporting my head was blissful and soothing. For about three years I went for a class once a week, enduring the first part in order to get to the second part so that I could experience her holding my head. I had no idea why that was so important, and I never asked for the rationale for that part of the lesson.

According to Anderson, the table work portion of the Alexander lesson invites regression. Being held can help one integrate. The teacher has the power, and the student can easily feel childlike. A good teacher can help the student achieve emotional and physical balance.

Naomi Sharagai is also a certified teacher of Alexander Technique and a psycho-therapist. She writes on page 219:

Poor use can also profoundly change our capacity to assess reality, think clearly, and make constructive decisions.

With rigid use and tight muscles, one’s thinking becomes increasingly narrow and rigid as well. There is less mental space available to reflect and to allow for new and creative thoughts. The tendency becomes to repeat thinking in a less constructive manner.

In the same way that poor use leads to inefficient movement, it also leads to inefficient thinking. When solutions are not found and thoughts seem to overwhelm the individual rather than offer new alternatives, anxiety can develop.

With poor use, individuals find it difficult to manage feelings. They can either be overwhelmed by them (not knowing how to unwind) or out of touch with their feelings.

It was the Spring semester of 1988 at Sierra Community College in Rocklin, California.

I stood in the parking lot talking with a friend of mine from Calculus class.

He said that girls in Southern California were really loose.

I was a virgin at the time and the prospect of loose girls seemed heavenly.

He gestured with his hands to describe how wide and moist they were in a certain passage. He indicated that one could do anything with them and they’d love it.

March 30, 1994. I drove for seven hours north from my parents home in Newcastle to UCLA. It was a couple of months after the big Northridge earthquake and traffic on the Five South was diverted on to side streets at one point.

It was raining. It was about 10 p.m. when I pulled into a UCLA dorm where I’d stay for the next couple of months with a member of the faculty.

The next week, I’d place a singles ad in the Los Angeles Times. I only remember one response. It was from a spunky woman who was all giggly and excited to meet me. She said, “I look like Julia Roberts, only I have bigger breasts.”

She picked me up that next evening in Westwood. She had a Julia Roberts smile and facial structure and her bust was plentiful.

She worked as a movie editor in Hollywood and lived in Studio City.

I was so happy to be back in LA after five bedridden years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Her big breasts symbolized the bounty of Southern California. I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

She wasn’t Jewish, but I didn’t mind. She took me to a sushi bar in Santa Monica where she ate dinner as we talked about my conversion to Judaism.

Then she drove me north on the Pacific Coast Highway, pulling off to the side in Malibu.

It was about 10 p.m. We walked out to some rocks beside the ocean and I put my arms around her and we started making out.

Then I got bold and reached for her.

“OK, but no further,” she said.

Then she drove me home.

A few evenings later, she picked me up again.

“I want to show you something,” she said, and drove me to the Holocaust memorial at Pan Pacific Park.

As we stood there in the dark, I tried to grope her, but she held me off. She didn’t think it was right to fool around in a Holocaust memorial.

I wanted to spend the night with her but she said she couldn’t drop me off in Westwood in the morning.

I told her I had access to a friend’s apartment in Westwood that was being renovated.

She dropped me off at the dorm. I ran inside and grabbed a blanket and then rejoined her in the car and we drove down the hill and then we parked and went up the elevator and I turned the key in the lock and in the midst of the reconstruction, I spread out the blanket and we took off our clothes and laid down together and began kissing.

I’d been imagining this moment for days but now it was strangely anti-climactic. I was so excited to have what I wanted most that I couldn’t rise to the occasion. And as I lay on top of her, her D-cup natural breasts no longer seemed that big.

Finally, I rolled off her and held her in my arms.

Then she drove home.

I don’t think I ever talked to her again.

I got busy with two women I knew from Rieber Hall at UCLA (1988-89).

Then this woman I knew flew in from New York for the Memorial Day weekend.

I let Julia go.

A few days later, I got a long letter from her. When I read it, I felt like she was holding me close once again and looking into my eyes while the ocean surged around us.

She talked about how much she treasured our time together. She thanked me for being gentle and considerate with her. She asked to reconnect.

I don’t know why I didn’t call her. She had everything I wanted in a woman (aside from Judaism).

I guess I was spoiled. I’d been in LA for a few weeks, and I’d already nailed various women who’d previously been out of my league.

I lived in the city of angels and felt that Julia wasn’t such a big deal.

I was wrong. I was very wrong.

Many nights when I go to bed alone, I think about Julia.

I don’t reread her letter in my mind and wonder what might have been.

I don’t picture what she looks like now.

I don’t replay us wrestling beside the Holocaust memorial. Nor do I dwell upon my inadequate performance of the ultimate deed.

Instead, I see us standing on the rocks beside the ocean on our first radiant night together.

I see her lean away from my kiss to pull off her shirt and to unsnap her bra and to offer me breasts as big as the moon.

She stands above me as I sit on the rock and suck on her like a hungry child.

Bob emails:

Luke, I am struck by the amazing popularity of the VH1 shows: “Celebrity Rehab”, “Sex Rehab” and “Sober House”. These shows take drug addled, sex crazed C-list celebrities and throw them in a house to fight out all their demons on the air.

I feel you could ride this wave of unsavory exhibitionism with your own rehab show with a decidedly Jewish spin. Here’s the pitch:

Six disgraced Rabbis
Six over-sexed porn starlets
One 500 ft studio apartment
One Alexander Technique practicing, vegetarian, CFS afflicted spiritual leader
All come together for an intense 28 day experience know as …
Shomer Hovel

Can Luke Ford rehabilitate these 12 desperate souls with posture improvement, soy milk, the music of Air Supply, Torah and 9,000 pages of Dennis Prager radio transcripts?

Tune in the fall to Shomer Hovel!

Dennis Prager took a call Friday from a man who was concerned that half of his 42 year old fiance’s friends were men, including some ex lovers, and that she’d go out with them, to Happy Hours and the like.

Dennis: “That she is clear that the man she marries is her male friend. It doesn’t mean that no others can be in her life…Marriage is your best friend of the opposite sex.”

Man: “A couple of them are ex lovers.”

Dennis: “If they love her, in the truest best sense of the word love, they will say to her, ‘You’ve found a good man. Now he’s your man. I have to drop out of your life.’”

Man: “Maybe once or twice a week but every other week?”

Dennis: “No. No. It’s not realistic. You are the man in her life. The ex lovers are not. We all understand a periodic call, a Christmas card. I’d say the same thing for a woman with a guy and his ex lovers. Not out of jealousy or insecurity, because that’s not the way it works.”

“Guess who’s coming to dinner? Jerry, who I made love to five years ago. I’m sorry.”

“It reminds me of the 1960s when people were into open marriage. She will be free to see who she likes and I will be free to see who I like. And they all broke up. Of course it doesn’t work.”

I think Dennis is totally right here. It’s never worked when I’ve had a girlfriend who wanted to stay close with her ex-boyfriends.

I think most women grow up believing that they will find a man who will take care of the big things in life for them. A man who will blaze a trail ahead of her, a man who will provide and protect.

Now I keep seeing women reduced to tears as they realize that either they have no man to take care of them, or the man they are with is not going to take care of them. So they have to deal with a lot of messy things in life that they would rather ignore.

There are all sorts of tasks in life such as buying a car etc that the average woman does not want to do. She wants a man to look over her and to take care of her, though in today’s climate that is not politically correct to express.

Then I look at myself and see I don’t have the energy and the money and the practical know-how to always take care of my woman in this way. I guess I’m less of a man because I grew up believing that a man is someone who provides for his wife and his family.

A friend calls: I love how you robbed Dennis Prager’s moral bank account. You’ve devoted the last 13 years to writing about him and his family. You just went into his shop guns blazing. You didn’t just make a withdrawal from his moral bank account, you robbed it. It’s Point Break meets Heat meets The Chosen.

Twice this week, people have told me that Jews and Arabs both came from Chaldea and therefore share a bloodline.

I say big deal. What matters is values not blood nor pagan origins, but the consequence of what was produced. The Bible takes pagan rites and stories and gives them a profound moral spin.

By contrast, the Seventh-Day Adventist church is an exercise in irrelevance. It is obsessed with sexual sin and theological beliefs and health rituals. If all SDAs disappeared from the world tomorrow, it would not be more affected than if all Sri Lankans or all Vietnamese disappeared tomorrow.

Nice people, many of them, but not influential as a culture.

By contrast, throughout history, and in the world today, the Jews are uniquely influential.

At a party last night, a beautiful woman with big fake breasts asked me what Judaism has to say about what happens when we die.

I told her that while Judaism has always affirmed a belief in the Afterlife, it’s primary focus is on this life. Jews focus on this life. That’s why they get so passionate about what happens in the here and now. That’s part of the reason why Jews are so successful. They’re not waiting around for the much much better world to come. They are not concerned with other people’s theological beliefs. Unlike conservative Christians, they are not obsessed with sexual purity above all other moral questions.

From Hirhurim:

• Bar-Ilan University launches Jewish education journal: link
• Englewood group, synagogue settle dispute: link
• Female rabbis find field still not level: link
• R. Eli Shulman (YU rosh yeshiva): Whats Wrong With Giving Women Semicha: link (audio)
• In Dispute Over Using ‘Rabba,’ Supporters Find Reason for Optimism: link

JLan posts: R’ Pruzansky in his “Rise of Orthopraxy” article sets up a straw-man in order to force a false dichotomy. He creates an “Orthopraxy” which is insincere, acting for societal reasons rather than out of belief, applying to the left and right equally, as contrasted with “Orthodoxy” which involves sincerity of belief and commitment to the divine.

The problem is that his dichotomy is inaccurate because it presumes an insincerity on the part of the Orthoprax individual, who either doesn’t think about God or doesn’t believe in God. But there’s plenty of room to suggest that certain traditionally Orthodox ideas are incorrect while maintaining a divine (if not Sinaitic and/or singular) origin for the Torah and the Mitzvot and encouraging sincere worship and practice. Certainly R’ Pruzansky’s article would seem to write out Prof. Marc Shapiro, not to mention someone like James Kugel.

If we can posit the possibility that R’ Hirsch’s approach and R’ Hildesheimer’s approach both influenced the development of Modern Orthodoxy, it would seem to me that R’ Pruzansky tries to eliminate the possibility of the latter’s approach, emphasizing spirituality over reason and forbidding broad-based questioning rather than permitting inquiry and discussion. I’m not sure where that leaves us, but Torah without reason makes us unreasonable.

Guest posts: The real horror of Rabbi Pruzansky’s article is that while he ends with an appeal to cultivating passion, commitment, belief, etc. the piece overall seems to be raising the specter that there exist some kind of vast network of secret heretics lurking among us. It’s nice that he stops short of recommending an Inquisition. Others have already pointed out the utter straw man he raises, wherein he connects unscrupulous businessmen, with Orthodox feminists. What the hell? And all these are the same as people who swim on shabbos, who are the same as people who have more of an Ibn Ezra like approach to parshanut, or who honestly feel more influenced by Eliezer Berkowitz on halacha than the Chazon Ish? And what’s with his interpetation of the Yerushalmi directly opposite of its meaning? Who is playing exegetical games to arrive at whatever meaning is convenient. In any event, the irony of a Chait guy invoking the Zohar? Priceless.

The back and forth of the rabbinic organizations in their language and their delicate politicking is making me very tired. The RCA in its first public statement implicitly supported the Maharat title in order to make Rabbi Weiss and his supporters happy. In their second set of statements they backtrack a bit to make the Agudah and their constituents who learn towards Agudah happy. I wish there could be a Modern Orthodox rabbinic organization that clearly stood for something and was not afraid to say it.

Monica’s “Martinis and Melodrama” cocktail party is called for 7:30 p.m.

I walk up to her door and knock at 7:30 p.m.

I’m the first guest.

Her dog Eliot Epstein barks furiously. Last time I was here, he bit me.

Monica says the right things about putting him in her car for the party but of course she does nothing of the sort and we’re treated to his annoying yaps for the rest of the evening.

I head straight for her dining table and start heaping my plate with tabuli and pasta and humus. I haven’t eaten this well since LimmudLA.

Soon Monica’s two graphic designers show up and the three girls talk about martinis for 30 minutes.

I’m going out of my mind. Boring! I hate alcohol. I hate trivial conversation. I want something meaty to sink my fangs into.

Thank God, four grad students show up (Monica knows two of them from a retreat for nerds at Cornell) and I have the privilege of engaging the short tubby one in passionate conversation about his research — race and food in the South.

“What exactly?” I ask.

Nineteenth Century Southern cookbooks. He explains to me how these books ignored the contributions of the blacks who prepared the food. How this is symptomatic of America which so often fails to give sufficient due to the contributions of blacks, women, and other minorities.

It was such a fascinating discussion. I wish I could’ve pursued it more. But I was stuck the rest of the night talking to a tall blonde shiksa who’d gone to high school with Monica. They were both cheerleaders.

While Monica no longer has her cheerleading outfit, this girl does.

I suppose certain men would find that exciting. Oh, how they’d get a charge out of dating a former cheerleader, but as any regular reader of mine knows, I am all about HaShem and his mitzvos.

So yes, the shiksa was beguiling and beautiful and charming, but the whole time I was stuck talking to her, I wished I was instead in shul conversing with a frizzy-haired, big-nosed, buck-toothed menopausal Jewess.

I suppose in a certain light, going to dinner with this beguiling shiksa would be fun. Sure, the conversation would flow effortlessly. Sure, she’s easy on the eyes. Sure, she’s smart, educated and accomplished. But what does she know of Torah?

I suppose a certain type of man might think, hmm, I’d love to go for a walk on the beach with this girl. I’d love to hold her hand as we skipped in and out of the waves. I’d love to sit on an isolated outcrop with her and make-out. I guess for certain men, the joining of lips with this shiksa goddess would be pleasant, the running of your hands through her long blonde hair would have an appeal, the opening up of her Disneyland resort would be an E-ticket ride worth purchasing, but shoot, from where I sit, I don’t think a few decades of great sex, stimulating conversation, and beautiful children really compares to the reward that come from observing the Torah and mating with your own kind (even when they’re old, wrinkly and overweight).

So the whole time I was smelling this girls’ perfume, getting lost in her blue eyes, enjoying her reparte, listening to David sell her on Judaism, I was yearning for that earlier conversation on racism in 19th Century Southern cookbooks.

I’m an intellectual. I’m a serious intellectual. I’m outraged about the patriarchy and the hegemony of white males and the denial of basic civil rights to gay Americans. I doubt that this woman who was so enchanting has ever picked up a book by Michel Foucault or Emmanuel Levinas.

The shiksa wonders what is wrong with me. There’s something she’s missing.

“Is he a serial killer?” she asks Monica. “He’s good at pulling people in but there’s probably a dead girl in his freezer.”

“He’s actually not good at pulling people in,” says Monica. “He’s better at repelling him. But yeah, he is like a serial killer. The first time we went out, he took me to Lag B’Omer at Chabad, and then to Porn Star Karaoke.”

Judy, a Jew, launches into a discussion about how Jews are smarter and better than non-Jews. “Whatever religion you belong to, we have seniority,” she says. “We’re like old money.”

PS My best friend Chaim Amalek is now on Facebook.

Sex:
Male
Current City:
New York, NY
Birthday:
February 29, 1944
Hometown:
Upper West Side, New York, NY
Relationship Status:
Single
Interested In:
Women
Looking For:
Dating
Political Views:
I despise most politicians
Religious Views:
Lutherian Torah Judaism

College:

* CUNY City
* This and that

High School:

* Elisabeth Irwin High School ‘62
*

Employer:
None
Position:
unemployed file clerk.
Location:
New York, NY
Description:
I was the man with the cart, moving files to and fro.
Activities:
I am fairly inert these days, a consequence of a lifetime of too many plates of kishka and cookies. I know I weigh more than I should but hope to be back below 350 pounds by year’s end.
Interests:
Zabars, social justice, and mites.
Favorite Music:
Music plays no role in my life.
Favorite TV Shows:
Dragnet, the Milton Berle Show, Felix the Cat
Favorite Movies:
The Searchers, The Jazz Singer, Gone with the Wind
Favorite Books:
Who has time to read?
Favorite Quotations:
Not now.
About Me:
I’m poor, obese, old, and looking for a hot young shiksa to be my lover and pay my rent and bear my children and cook for me. I’m not looking for anyone shallow.