On his radio show today, Dennis asked Adam: “Would Adam Carolla have ordered the assassination of Osama Bin Laden?”
Adam: “I would’ve done it while he was still in highschool. Just on a hunch. I just don’t like the look of this kid. That’s the last thing I would’ve said to my man before I dispatched him, put him in the ground. I’ve got a hunch about this one. And my man would’ve made some argument about the basketball team and I would’ve said it would be better for us to lose a few games than to lose a few thousand Americans.”
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There’s almost nothing in Dennis Prager’s new book that I have not heard him say on his radio show (most of the stuff I’ve heard him say over and over again).
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “Some of you might think that because you hear me regularly, the book is not new or different. I promise you that it is the culmination of a life’s thought that can not be condensed into a show. The book is not a repetition or a summation of my shows.”
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It used to be that when I put “Luke” into a search engine, the top result would be my blog. Now I put “Luke” into Google and none of the top 100 results are my blog.
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I did the walk for Israel Sunday morning from Rancho Park to the Museum of Tolerance and back. I wanted to go to the Israel festival but did not want to spend $15 (if you bought in advance or $19 at the show).
So after hanging around outside a little bit and having the privilege of washing my hands next to Orit Arfa, I trudged back home. About 300 yards east of Motor on Pico, I saw a ticket to the festival on the sidewalk. Nobody was around to return it to, so here was my opportunity to go to the show and meet women! But I did not want to reach down and pick up the ticket, fearing it would look undignified. And I did not want to try to use the ticket to get in and find out there was something wrong with it, that somebody had already used it, etc. I didn’t want to be humiliated.
So I walked home and spent all day editing highlights from the past two Torah Talks and cursing my isolation and wishing I was at the show talking to girls.
On Monday a friend told me, “It’s good you weren’t at the show because it was filled with hot Israeli girls and after seeing them, you would not be satisfied with the girls at shul.”
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Rabbi Miller was known within Haredi circles as a master orator, having superb command of the English language. His personal magnetism drew students, young and old, from all Jewish backgrounds.
He also trained himself to demand very little physically. For more than sixty years, he slept on a board. As a student in Slabodka, he wore a coat during the summer to conceal the multitude of overlapping patches that were his trousers.
Though having attended public school at a time when there were no formal yeshivas in Baltimore, he only spoke Yiddish at home, never speaking in English to his family.
Over a span of 50 years, more than 2,500 lectures by Rabbi Miller in English were published as tape cassettes, as well as several in Yiddish. He gave most of his lectures in his modest synagogue in Flatbush, dealing with Torah education and self-help, of which several hundred thousand copies were sold. His tapes remain available for purchase through the yeshiva he established, and at many Jewish book stores, and can be found in many Jewish tape libraries. Rabbi Miller was also the author of several books about Jewish history, Jewish thought, Evolutionary Theory, and other subjects. His tapes remain very popular after his death.
Rabbi Miller was a staunch opponent of Zionism, in both its religious and secular forms, and was known to help the Satmar Hasidim translate their anti Zionist ads in the New York times. He was also a well known, sworn opponent of the Theory of Evolution, which stemmed as a result of his uncompromising approach to any modern streams of Judaism.
To Rabbi Miller, time was very precious and he would always be careful never to waste it. In the 1980s, he told Dr. Yitzchak Levine that he wanted to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe and ask about his schedule; he wanted to know whether or not he should continue giving shiurim as they took away precious time from his learning. However when he learned that the appointments with the Rebbe were typically late at night, he canceled to prevent further disruption of his strict schedule.
* Charles Wheelan writes in the WSJ: “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You: Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.”
I was always interested in success but not always invested in making friends. So when I got sick at age 21 and was bed-ridden until 27, I was bereft when none of my friends my age gave a damn. They were all going on with their lives. I found that only people I knew who were in the second half of life were compassionate.
If you don’t want to end up like Rabbs and me, invest in friends.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “My insight is that the High Priest brings forgiveness to Israel through living – through a life of holiness and public service. The High Priest blesses the people and he is aware that he bears the responsibility for their behavior and is charged with being the proper role model for his fellow priests and for all of Israel generally.”
The High Priest was like a Hasidic rebbe.
* This week’s Torah portion deals with forbidden sexual relationships. I have not committed any of these sins.
Rabbi Wein writes: “The Torah pays no attention to the modern world’s “two consenting adults are allowed to do whatever they want” theory of proper human behavior.”
“Perhaps in no other area of the Torah is the contrast between the Torah’s value system and that of modern Western society revealed so clearly. The Torah recognizes no possibility for the existence of “alternate life-styles.” The ultimate question that lies behind this clash of values is that of defining what is the goal in one’s life. Is it to be pleasure and narcisstic self-satisfaction or is it to be the attainment of the goal of being kedoshim – a special, unique, spiritually developed human being?”
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Somehow it is fashionable in the current day Jewish world to associate holiness and spirituality with the mystic, the supernatural, the irrational, the unknown and the not understandable. The plethora of books being written and published about Kabbalah, most of them of dubious content and scholarship, is one manifestation of this current trend. Another example of this trend is the ascent of “holy men” who dispense blessings or amulets, and their popularity amongst the masses.”
By contrast, the Torah’s teaching on holiness in the book of Leviticus are practical and prosaic. It is about self-control and following the dictates of your leaders.
Rabbi Wein writes: “The Torah defines holiness in concrete, easily understood, human terms. The definition of holiness in Jewish life is always expressed in terms of self-discipline. Self-discipline, control of behavior, speech and actions are the ingredients of holiness as the Torah sees it. Now, I will admit that this is unexciting holiness. It is much more glamorous to receive a blessing from a holy man at three AM in the morning, or to engage in meditation, transcendental or otherwise, or to dance in the aisle during a prayer service or create a more spiritual prayer service than the tired, old-fashioned traditional fashion of prayer, than to refrain from slander, sexual promiscuity or dishonest monetary behavior.”
* Just because Jews are sometimes weak and sinful does not mean that our rabbis will lower our standards. We don’t change the Torah to accommodate our own desires.
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Frequent and often outlandish, the show’s eroticism often overshadows or distracts from the actual story. It’s not just me: After the copious amounts of T&A during the show’s first season reached a nadir of absurdity with a now-notorious scene involving two prostitutes pleasuring each other, Onion AV Club television critic Myles McNutt was moved to coin the term “sexposition” to describe the way the show’s producers often arbitrarily shoehorn sex into the narrative as a way to cover up potentially snooze-inducing exposition.
…Yet there is something wearying and numbing about the series’ relentless oogling of the female form. It’s a constant reminder and reinforcement of the fact that pop-culture creators make content mainly for heterosexual men and then, maybe, for everyone else. They get tiring, these continued nods to the male gaze. (The implication is either that women aren’t watching or that the women who are watching have no interest in erotic eye candy of their own.) They’re also alienating, particularly when the sex seems to serve no purpose other than to titillate. My cluck-clucks of disapproval are as much about the situating of women as sex objects as they are my own sudden and reluctant prudishness.
Luke: “All of my life, I’ve been into self-help. I’m always trying to improve myself and to change my position in society upward. It’s done no good. People can still see and they immediately know I belong with the least popular of the popular crowd or the most popular of the unpopular crowd.”
Rabbi Rabbs: “When we went for a walk on Shabbos? When I normally walk around Pico-Robertson, people pay no attention to me. I got a lot of stares when I was walking with you, more than I ever get. I got stared down. It wasn’t a happy stare-down. It was like, why are you with that loser?”
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Rabbi Rabbs: “The real part of Judaism is sitting around learning Torah.”
Luke: “I’m getting into Tanya.”
Rabbs: “Why don’t you just go to the Kabbalah Centre and get it over with?”
“You’re into all this cult stuff. Your whole attachment to Alexander Technique, they’re making a circle and touching gently. You grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist. It’s a huge cult.”
“You were probably sucked into one of these ponzi schemes.”
Luke: “I was [in 1995]. Where you give $100 and you’re supposed to get back $200.”
Rabbs: “I can see you getting sucked into a pyramid scheme because they’re like, ‘Yay, Luke, you’re giving the money.'”
Luke: “A fortune teller took me for about $1,500 [in 1998].”
Rabbs: “You’re like a born sucker.”
Luke: “I’m just vulnerable.”
Rabbs: “Because you just want to be accepted. If I wanted to take every dime you have and f*** with your head, here’s what I do. I know your weaknesses — women and ego. If I could make a big party in Luke’s honor and all the guys are bowing to you and going, ‘Whoa, Luke, make a speech. Tell us how great you are.’ And all the women are flirting and rubbing their titties in your face. I could have every penny Luke was good for. Luke would give me all his money…”
Luke nods. “Just to feel accepted.”
Rabbs: “We’d carry Luke around the room and make him feel like a big deal.”
“You’re so needy for attention and acceptance and you want everyone to think how great you are.”
“That’s why you think Hasidics are so great because they have all these culty get-togethers. Say L’chaim Luke!”
Luke: “I used to be really into Aish HaTorah.”
Rabbs: “Is that a cult?”
Luke: “It’s as much a cult as anything else in Judaism.”
“They have banquets honoring Larry King, who’s inter-married countless times. You see their weird videos where the boys are dancing for Rosh Hashanah. The 36 levels of pleasure. The slick marketing. They take you in. They set you up at people’s homes. They try to help you turn your life around. I loved Aish HaTorah. The best experiences I’ve had in Jewish life were at Aish HaTorah. They were so loving, so kind to me there, before they kicked me out. They kicked me out multiple times.”
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
