I just read Orit Arfa‘s new ebook, “Survival of the S—test“.
I wish she hadn’t used an obscenity as her title and theme. I’m not into the fecal.
It’s not Jewish to muck around in that stuff.
Oy, what will the goyim think?
Nevertheless, this is the best book I’ve read on understanding and passing the many tests women throw at their men.
“Survival” is an excellent companion to “The Game: Inside the Secret Society of Pickup Artists” by Neil Strauss, one of the five books that most influenced me along with “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, “The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism” by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, “Titus Andronicus” by William Shakespeare, and “The Holy Bible” by HaShem.
I first met Orit on Tishu B’Av 2001. She was 23 and gorgeous, and as innocent as your typical yeshiva girl. She sat in my chair while I lay on my bed of nails and I gazed at her long legs stretching the length of the hovel as we discussed the great issues confronting the Jewish people in the new millenia (porn and stuff). As I stared into her neshama, I found my mind, to my great distress, wandering away from the the destruction of the holy Temple into more fertile pastures.
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In Pico-Rob’s green and pleasant land.
Modest clothing is so very important. Weak men such as myself are constantly taunted and tantalized in Los Angeles by young female flesh and in the competition between an invisible God and a visible thigh, the Almighty, the Master of the Universe, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, tends to lose out in my mind to Orit Arfa.
On that holy day, the fledgling writer-painter talked about various books she was working on, including a commentary on Genesis.
Since that shining citadel in time, I’ve come to appreciate Orit for her sterling artistic, moral and intellectual qualities so often on display in the Jewish Journal and I no longer, Baruch HaShem, think of her as a sex object.
However, many of my readers are not so elevated as me, and they want a concrete way to determine Orit’s worth as a woman (and whether or not they should buy her book).
The Torah teaches me to meet people as they are, not as I wish them to be. Ergo, I present to you the First Lady of Jewish Journalism in Los Angeles:
I like to imagine that this last picture is Orit contemplating her Moral Leader in all his hovel-dwelling, bearded majesty.
I feel sad about the number of times I’ve failed to meet Orit’s tests. I feel so small, like my conversion didn’t count with the Chief Rabbinate.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a hard time connecting with people, with Orit and Amy and Danielle and all the hot chicks at the Jewish Journal. I’ve done no better with them than I have with the RCC! Five shuls have ejected me, 5000 women have rejected me. But it’s always one that hurts the most.
Forty years ago, I failed to connect with my parents. They were too busy dying (mom) and evangelizing (dad). This has haunted me ever since and corrupts my every relationship.
I often get into tiffs with my girls because I have a hard time expressing my hurt feelings in real time. Instead, I tend to store up resentment until finally venting it in email, which never goes over well. She inevitably cancels our plans to meet up, and the demon seed builds up inside of me, and I feel alone in the hovel and emasculated, as though Rabbi U. cut the whole thing off in a fit of pique over my blogging. He doesn’t have that power, does he?
The next time I think we have a date and instead I hear, “Luke, my psychiatrist gave me a lot to think about, I talked to him about you, I think I’m going to go home to write in my journal, sorry for flaking on you,” I’m going to be a man and say, “I don’t think that’s a good idea because the emotional chill that will result from this will last for days and weeks and maybe forever. Why don’t you come over as scheduled and tell me everything that’s bothering you and, if you’re interested, I’ll tell you everything that is bothering me and we’ll work it through.”
I wonder what are the most common tests I fail with women?
Number one is my very awkward failure at connecting with humanity (of which I have learned lately that women are a part). Women often look at me in a social gathering and they just think I’m pathetic. They just feel sorry for me.
Oy, that is no good.
Number two, I have no sense of my own worth. Much of the time, I don’t feel worthy of chatting up a cute girl. I can’t look her in the eye. I feel like I’ve got “Failure!” written across my forehead.
I always get a feeling about a woman, a feel about whether or not she’s out of my league. If I think for a second she’s out of my league, I never succeed with her.
Yeah, I’ve shtupped a lot of porn stars, but that just shows my moral depravity.
