There are plenty of shuls and communities where a convert and a baal teshuva (a person born Jewish who becomes Orthodox later in life) will never fit in and plenty where he will. I’d put the ratio at about 70-30, with 30% representing communities that will give him a fair chance. Among the Orthodox who do outreach to other Jews, there’s usually a two-tiered social life that is never mentioned explicitly. Those who are born and raised Orthodox will usually prefer to mix with the same. I have no problems with this. It’s natural for like to mix with like. You can’t just become an Orthodox Jew and expect to accepted as those who’ve been doing it for 40 years. It’s a complicated religion and how are you going to trust the kashrut etc of those learning the system?
As a convert to Judaism, I feel like I should be entitled to sprinkle my speech (depending on the company) with colorful expressions like sheygetz and shiksa because it is obvious coming from a man of such immense good will as myself that I mean no harm. I get told all the time by modern Jews that these terms are demeaning and shouldn’t be said, while traditional Jews have no problem with them and even more colorful terms.
* Grifters daven hardest, particularly on Rosh Hashanah. They love to kiss the Torah and to shake with religious fervor.
* Does a rabbi and a shul have liability if they allow someone in who’s an admitted child molester?
* Ambulances and fire fighters won’t go into many ghetto areas (in Los Angeles and elsewhere) without a police escort, hence a lot of people there die who would otherwise live. Those deaths are on the gangbangers.
* I don’t see why it is any worse to kill people with chemical gas versus machine gunning them, ergo, why intervene in Syria?
* Seeing BYU thrash 15th ranked Texas tonight, reminds me that I had such Mormon envy growing up as a Seventh-Day Adventist. Adventists seemed without accomplishment in the world aside from in health (Adventists were never in the news except for health and weird things like David Koresh etc) while Mormons dominated in business, sports, politics, etc.
Posted inOrthodoxy|Comments Off on Can A Convert Fit In With An Orthodox Shul?
I often hear sportscasters talk about some athlete having his game face on. It means a look of concentration.
What does concentration look like? To most people, it means a degree of extra tension in the face. If your face is not free to react freely to the moment, then your options have narrowed, your thinking has narrowed, and your emotions have narrowed. I can’t see how this is helpful in any endeavor.
Concentration is not helped by scrunching and tension. Concentration is helped by the letting go of unnecessary tension so that you are more free to be in the moment.
From UrbanDictionary: “Game face means “a confident swagger you bring out when you are about to get ready to tackle something difficult, or when you are about to take on a challenge. Or when you are getting ready to get down to hard business.”
As I walk through life, I see all sorts of horrible accidents about to happen, largely related to cars and general human carelessness, and 99% of the time, nothing bad happens. Some times I warn people to not step into oncoming traffic and occasionally I’ve put a hand on someone to pull him back to the sidewalk. When I walk cross a street, I always try to keep my eyes peeled for reckless traffic, and when I drive, I usually slow at intersections.
I remember one time when I was about 20, I was enjoying my radio so much that I zoomed through a red light at about 50 mph. A car was about to pull out on green right in front of me, but he saw me and stopped, preventing a deadly accident. Knowledge of my own tendencies to carelessness keeps me alert for other people’s blundering.
Monday, 1:35 p.m., I drop off four books and two audio books at the Robertson Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. I walk to the corner of Robertson and Airdrome and wait for the Walk sign to cross east on my normal route home. After a couple of seconds of waiting, I decide to change things up and walk home via Robertson Blvd north.
I pass four kids. The youngest, looks about six years of age, zooms ahead of the pack on his skateboard all the way to Key Street while his pals remain behind near the 7/11. Hmm, not safe, I think. He’s perilously close to the street but doesn’t fall into traffic.
I walk on, approaching the corner of Pickford and Robertson. More than four years ago on a weeknight, I was crossing this street on a Walk sign, lugging about 12 books from the library stacked on my arms. I saw the SUV driving west on Pickford enter the intersection and then turn straight toward me, heading south on Robertson. I tried to run out of its way but it keeps turning in and eventually speeds by me through the northbound lanes. I’m scared to death and curse under my breath the gangbanger driver.
Today, I see the Walk sign come on to cross Robertson via Pickford heading east. I see a young Hispanic teen smoking a cigarette step out into the street, not checking the traffic. I always look both ways before crossing the street, even when I have a Walk sign. Now I see a sturdy American car on Robertson barreling at about 40 mph through the red light heading east across Pickford straight towards the teen. I scream, “Hey! Watch out!”
The kid stops as the American car, driven by an old white man with an old white woman in the passenger seat, swerves to his left at the last second, misses the kid by inches, and charges on.
The kid smokes his cigarette and keeps crossing the street, not looking back until he reaches the other side, when he turns to me, extends his hand, and says to me in perfect English, “Thank you. That guy missed me by about four inches.”
“Jesus, that guy was out of control,” I say. “It’s outrageous.”
“It’s happened to me before,” says the kid.
“More pedestrians are killed in LA by cars than drivers,” I say.
He says goodbye, closing with “cheers.”
I want to remonstrate with him to always look both ways before crossing a street, even when you have the Walk sign, but I say nothing.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on I Just Saved Somebody’s Life
I’m an anxious insecure personality. The outside world is a scary place and at social events, I’m often dying to get away.
And then a tall black chick walks up to me with kinky hair and gleaming teeth and she initiates the conversation and we hit it off and I keep circling back to her all night.
I love her confidence. I love her strength. Black chicks are so forthright. They just say things right off. They just get it out there. They lay things on the table. There’s no beating around the bush. You know where you’re at. They don’t play games like white chicks.
If I can’t marry a black chick, an Ethiopian Jewess or some such, then maybe I’ll snag a creamy Persian or Sephardi. Just so long as she’s strong enough to kick my butt.
* “Emotional starvation” is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about my early childhood. It’s why I strike people as needy and insecure. What did you want from your parents when you were a little kid? It probably bears a dramatic resemblance to what you want from your partner today (aside from the sex). I didn’t get as much mothering as I wanted in my earliest years, so I suck my sheilas dry today, certain the breast will soon run out. I didn’t get as much fathering as I wanted, so to this day, I keep seeking out substitute father figures, and, on occasion, idealizing and glorifying them.
Posted inDating, Personal|Comments Off on I Love It When A Chick Makes The First Move
Most Alexander Technique teachers are kind and considerate. They enjoy devoting themselves to a helping profession. They’re rarely provocateurs.
What happened to me? What has the Alexander Technique done for me? I’m obviously an odd ball in the profession.
I’m much calmer since my Alexander lessons, hmm, perhaps it doesn’t come across!
It’s like I have taken a chill pill and then decided to let it rip nonetheless, but with a tad more freedom and less compulsion.
I still feel driven to provoke.
I tried for a while to keep things chill to get along with the AT community but then I just gave up on that and decided to do my own thing.
I badly wanted to teach the Technique but I tried so hard and had so little success, that I decided I’d go back to saying what I wanted and damn the consequences.
I don’t speak this way in the classroom or in connection with the Technique.
I’m very much unfinished, in every way, including with the AT.
I find myself getting up at 2 am to check if I’ve lost a FB friend (many block or unfriend me for obvious reasons). I have an anxious attachment style.
It took AT for me to learn to say to myself, “I’m going to be gentle with myself this weekend.” I’m awkwardly learning to be a better friend to myself.
All attempts to see myself professionally as anything other than a writer has not worked. They just don’t take.
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In 2001, I met this Latina Jewish girl at a succah party.
After some talking, I walked her to her car and made out with her. We made plans to meet the next day, a chag (holy day), for lunch at the home of friends of mine.
So far so good. We meet up. She complains about this Israeli guy I know who’s been causing me problems in the community (trashing me behind my back). She says he’s harassing her. That he keyed her car. Hmm.
I bring her with me to lunch and she won’t eat even a mouthful of bread for chamotzi (blessing over bread that follows kiddush, the blessing over wine, and starts a meal). I’m embarrassed. I realize I can’t take this girl anywhere.
After lunch, she breaks up with me. If I won’t take care of this guy who keyed her car, she’ll find someone who will.
I’m not big at taking care of things for my girl if it means confronting someone or other physical acts of courage. I don’t want that drama in my life. I like a strong woman who wants stuff I can give her like conversation. I’m not a practical bloke. I’m a talker, not a doer.
I guess I have lingering fears about my masculinity over this. That image of her telling me, “If you won’t take care of this, I’ll find someone who will” has stayed with me, left me feeling not so strong.
Dennis Prager says that women look for a man who will clear the path in front of her through life. They will protect her and keep her safe.
I don’t usually find neediness attractive in a woman. I certainly don’t find the pathetic a turn-on. I did have this one girlfriend who repeatedly said to me when I complained she was irresponsible, “You love me because I’m pathetic.” I protested that she was wrong. I loved her because she was available and ready for love and easy to get along with and undemanding, but once I realized her incompetence at life, I started to leave.
I had this beautiful girlfriend (one-eighth Jewish and not the good eighth) for a year. She broke up with me about half a dozen times during that time, and with each break-up, my willingness to sacrifice for her diminished.
So after her fifth break-up with me and then us getting back together, she got a bad case of the flu. She was staying with her family a few miles out of town. They were out. She called me about 3:30 p.m. on a week day and asked me to bring her soup and salty crackers. I thought for two seconds about all the work I had to do, and said to her, “Isn’t there someone else you can ask?”
I wanted to keep working away at my blog and to then go to an LA Press Club party that night in the opposite direction from her. I’ve never asked anyone, including her, to make such a trip for me. The idea of doing it for salty crackers and soup seemed silly. I have asked a girlfriend to bring me some soup and aspirin, but that was because she offered and it was on her way home.
So, anyway, my girlfriend found my suggestion that she ask someone else a stab in the heart that she never got over. She ended up asking her ex-boyfriend, who abandoned his work on the spot and drove out to her.
I think the next day she broke up with me. We got back together a couple of months later, but on our first date back, I didn’t wait around for the waiter to pack up her dessert to go because I wanted to get to the movie on time, and that was an unforgivable offense. She put it on her blog. I commented with my position. She erased everything. I haven’t seen her since and the internet tells me nought about what happened to her.
Posted inDating, Personal|Comments Off on I Met This Girl
Rosh Hashanah begins Wednesday evening. For the next three days, I’ll be off-line. I won’t be going to work. I won’t be answering my phone. I won’t be updating my blog or my Facebook.
Most people who try to reach me during this three days off-line are fine when I don’t get back to them until after the holiday, but other people take it as a personal rejection. Which type of people are most likely to take my silence as rejection? The anxiously attached aka people like me.
I have an anxious attachment style. I worry about my loved ones being there for me and when they don’t answer when I call or email, I start to worry after about 24 hours of silence.
The emotionally avoidant place a premium on their independence and don’t like to acknowledge feelings of vulnerability so they’re unlikely to reproach for not getting back to them sooner. For the securely attached, they don’t mount any protest behavior over my delayed response.
KENDRA CHERRY WRITES: During the 1970’s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth further expanded upon Bowlby’s groundbreaking work in her now-famous “Strange Situation” study. The study involved observing children between the ages of 12 to 18 months responding to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mother.
Based on these observations, Ainsworth concluded that there were three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. Researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style known as disorganized-insecure attachment. Numerous studies have supported Ainsworth’s conclusions and additional research has revealed that these early attachment styles can help predict behaviors later in life.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on The Jewish Holidays And Secure Attachment
Vlinden posts: After reading about Byron Katie on this board, I was interested to see her in action. Here is a link showing a session with an Israeli woman who tells Katie that she’s afraid of war.
I’ve never seen anything so insane in my life, outside of a mental institution. I’ve watched other videos and read parts of her writing, and now I am just stunned, once again, at what people will pay money to believe.
Katie’s reasoning is more deranged than anything put forth by Landmark Education, though there are basic parallels. She incorporates Landmark’s extreme (to the point of completely irrationality) existential you-create-everything and blame-the-victim philosophy, but then she essentially attempts to turn reality completely on its head with her reversal questions. For example, “My father abused me” becomes “I abused my father.” This doesn’t even begin to make rational sense, it’s like insisting you can wear your hat on your feet and walk just as easily, if not better.
My friends and I have been watching these videos with our jaws on the floor.
In this one, Katie is dealing with an Israeli woman essentially suffering from PTSD, who needs some basic therapy and human support and understanding. She’s afraid of war. Of course she’s afraid of war. This is perfectly normal and sane, given where she lives. In fact, it’s healthy and important. Her fears of war could lead her to take every kind of appropriate action.
But according to the New Age Self-Help snake-oil soul “savers,” no one need or should ever be afraid, ever be upset, ever be angry or feel guilt or shame or anything “negative.” By promoting this patently ridiculous concept, they create the illusion that people actually could walk around in a state of bliss all the time — and this they call a state of “grace” — by simply disconnecting from their egos, their rational selves, and their critical minds.
If they just did back-room lobotomies it would be so much easier — but they’d sell less books.
Landmark and other LGATs of course trade in this counterfeit psycho-babble, at the expense of people’s lost minds and souls, but Byron Katie seems to take it to a new level perhaps because she was, for many years, actually barking mad.
So we have a barking mad woman now telling people to just “reverse” their thinking until they can convince themselves maybe nothing is what they believed, maybe everything is ass-backward, maybe everything is just FINE if they only stop thinking rationally . . . and people are calling her a guru and “the real deal.”
She actually tells this poor woman that she shouldn’t worry about war, because the FLOWERS ON THE TABLE are not worrying about war.
That’s right. The flowers. They’re not worried. They have no brain. Be like the flowers.
What a sick, sorry situation we’re finding ourselves in today, people. We are devolving. We need to be rational in order to survive. It’s our critical minds and rational thinking and respect for pain, fear and danger that allowed us to rise up out of the primordial swamps, harness fire, build cities, create laws, art and our greatest ideas. These New Age lunatics will have us drooling like the mental patients they once were, incapable of correct action because we no longer trust our most important faculties.
The issue isn’t whether we should ask ourselves questions, or question our own beliefs, motives, patterning, etc.
The problem with Byron Katie is that she supports the New Age perspective that people should live in some altered state of consciousness (called grace, I believe) that is without all of the “negative” states that Katie herself could not handle, and therefore ended up in a mental institution.
This is not a healthy perspective for the average person.
The woman in Israel was afraid of war for a very solid and logical reason. She also clearly wasn’t being incapacitated by it, she was out and about, sitting up on this stage. What she needed was community based therapy, support, and maybe even to join a pro-peace organization and work to make change for the better within her own country. Perhaps she could volunteer at a hospital for wounded soldiers or children, to feel she was contributing positively during a dark time.
But Katie wanted to promote the delusion that this woman could exist in some disconnected perpetual NOW where she doesn’t have to remember the fears of the past, or think logically or pro-actively about the future. This isn’t possible. It IS NOT POSSIBLE. Some stress-reduction therapies and techniques could help this woman deal with the moments of fear that may overtake her. But beyond that, she’s living in a war zone, and she’s in danger, and she damn well knows it. And you know what? That’s okay. It’s reality.
Katie wants to show rapid “transformation” and “conversion” up on the stage. Just like Landmark she needs people to “get it” so the audience can cheer. I don’t believe for a moment that the woman on stage, after being pressured to “get it” actually went home and felt she “got” a damn thing. Except manipulated so Katie could sell more books. And embarrassed for taking part in a New Age swindle.
Here is a review of her book from Amazon:
If no stars were available, I’d choose that. This self-help book is aimed primarily at helping the author. I found it preposterous, and downright dangerous. I don’t think this woman has any credentials; rather, she seems to tout her qualifying experience as the fact that she had a nervous breakdown when she was 43 years old. Katie’s “help” is presented as a series of questions that branch from her initial query of “Is it [the situation, feeling, etc.] true?” Nothing intended to help people break out of lifelong conditioning works as fast as Katie would have one believe. Especially annoying parts of the book are the intro by her husband (who has no more credentials than his wife) where he belabors Katie’s lecturing on the ideas in her book for free (the book certainly is not free; thank goodness I borrowed it from a library), the many times Katie showcases her approach in a cult-like way as “The Work,” Katie pretending to be an objective participant when she is clearly steering people toward her sometimes-dangerous ideas, and Katie using endearments that just seem patronizing with her interview subjects in the dialogue transcripts (e.g., “Nice Work, honey”). I was muddling through the book and wondering when I’d get to something helpful when I read her exchange with a woman who was repeatedly raped as a child (around age 8 or 9) by her stepfather. Then the author, through a series of questions, ended up turning the blame for the rapes around on the victim, culminating in the idea that rape was the woman’s way of receiving love. All this was done in front of an audience. Brainwashing and abuse in the guise of therapy. Ghastly.
Posted inAbuse, Cults|Comments Off on New Age Flavor Of The Month Byron Katie
When I was growing up, husbands stayed away from the delivery room because the blood and mess would put you off sex for life. Nowadays it seems like all the husbands I know are in the delivery room. The prospect fills me with terror.
I asked a shiksa delivery nurse at Cedars-Sinai what percentage of husbands are with their wives in the delivery room and she said 100% except for the Orthodox Jews who stay away for modesty reasons. Hmm, that’s another good reason to be Orthodox, along with not having to wear a wedding ring (a traditional Jewish man does not wear jewelry and extraneous clothing and stuff that belongs to a woman, etc).
Plenty of Orthodox men wear wedding rings and plenty of Orthodox men are in the delivery room with their wives but the Orthodox practice is against both things. Just because an Orthodox Jew does something doesn’t make it the Orthodox way. Plenty of Orthodox women wear pants outside the home but that isn’t the Orthodox way. The Orthodox way is for women to wear skirts and for married women to cover their hair, etc.
* You tell a Christian he raised good kids, and you’ll likely hear, “It was the Lord.” You’ll never get that response from a Jew. Instead, you’ll hear, “Thank you” or “It was luck” or “It was genes” or “He had good rebbes”… Protestants in particular tend to deflect compliments while Jews generally lap them up and ask for more. “Did you see how awesome I was” is a typical though often unstated Jewish response.
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Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Herman Adler (who dressed like a Protestant minister) refused to accept any of the suggestions of the newly arrived East European rabbis, such as the banning hindquarter meat. Rabbi Adler referred to them as “people who came over here uncultivated and uncivilized.”
This is the first thing that breakaway communities do — open up their own shechita (rabbinic supervision of the slaughtering of animals). If you say you don’t trust the shechita of the rabbi of the town, you’re saying he’s not reliable in general.
So the East European Jews brought over their own rav in 1891, a Zionist, Arthur Cohen.
The traditional reaction to a breakaway community opening up their own shechita is to declare it trafe (unkosher). It’s trafe sociologically, not literally. It’s akin to the Satmar sect in Williamsburg that in the 1970s hung the Lubavitcher Rebbe in effigy.
The East European Jews didn’t care that Rabbi Herman Adler declared their shechita trafe and they got many East European rabbis such as the Chofetz Chaim and the Rogatchover to back them up.
There is Jewish history in Malta. The Knights of Malta would kidnap these people going to Israel and leave them on the island and ransom them. There would be all sorts of Jews, mainly from Italy, who’s job it was to ransom kidnapped Jews. The Jews were in better shape than other people. The typical Christian? No one ransomed him.
Our whole kashrut system depends on the owner being shomer shabbos (Sabbath observant). You can’t have inspectors in there 24/7. You rely on the owner being an observant Jew, which means the Jew observes the Sabbath and the other Jewish laws.
The hashgachas (kosher supervision agencies) can create doubt where there is no doubt to benefit themselves. A few years ago, the Vaad of Long Island, based upon nothing, cast aspersions on Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik’s hasgachah on Streich’s matza, which has been in the family for two generations. If you want to destroy someone’s business and make sure you get part of the action, all you have to do is to cast aspersions.
What about Rav Shach declaring Lubavitch shechita trafe? That’s sociological. Rab Shach regards the person doing the shecting is a heretic, but nobody in America took that seriously aside from David Berger.
Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor declares separatism forbidden in England but other rabbis felt they had justification for their separate kashrut organization (East European rabbis had a problem with Rabbi Herman Adler of London, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire). The Yiddish-speaking separatists got support from the Chofetz Chaim and the Rogatchover.
Rabbi Adler declared a particular type of Orthodox kashrut supervision (from Eastern Europe) trafe (not kosher) and they responded in kind. Rabbi Adler got support from Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, the greatest Ashkenazi posek (decider of Jewish law) of the time.
Why didn’t Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor feel the need to check with the other side in the dispute? He was not concerned with the kashrut controversy. He was concerned that it is forbidden to set up a Bais Din (Jewish law court) in competition with an existing Bais Din.
The Rogatchover doesn’t care about Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. He was no respecter of persons. He sided with the East European rabbis against Rabbi Adler. The reason the other rabbis in Lithuania go along with Rav Spektor is that they are following the famous old rabbi of Kovno [Spektor] like a blind man’s stick. They don’t think for themselves. But thank God, there is a Torah. We’re not like these other rabbis who don’t use their minds. Send me his words and I’ll scatter them like chaff.
That old man is sitting there in Kovno and writing and publishing with no end. Who asks him for this? Are we lacking books in this world?
Herman Adler was not a great Torah scholar. He was not on the level of his father Nathan Adler. Today Herman Adler would be regarded as a great Torah scholar but he was nowhere the great authorities of Eastern Europe. I think that Nathan Adler is the first rabbi in modern times to get a PhD.
Jonathan Sacks is not a great Torah scholar. He’s a great intellectual and a philosopher. He’s the greatest Orthodox public intellectual of our time. He may be the greatest Jewish public intellectual of our time. He’s the most significant religious figure in England. When they got this new Chief Rabbi of the British empire, they wanted a rabbi who focused on the Jewish community and on rabbis. Jonathan Sacks was the rabbi for the entire country, more respected by Christians than their own religious leaders. No one takes him as an authority on Jewish law.
There’s a blurb from Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky: “I am Lithuanian and everything in it is true.”
We Jews have an old principle that there is no book without an error (Ramban). I only skimmed the book. I didn’t have to look far to find errors, such as on page 130. Berel Wein writes about the ascendancy of Torah learning as a distinctive phenomenon in the modern Jewish world began with the Vilna Gaon. That makes no sense. We had Jacob Emden, Noda Biyhudah, etc. Berel Wein calls the Vilna Gaon “Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer.”
I’ve been studying the Vilna Gaon for 20 years. I don’t think it was more than two or three years ago that for the first time I saw the Vilna Gaon referred to as “Eliyahu Kramer”. I don’t think Berel Wein invented this falsehood. We’ll see another falsehood he invented.
It’s always the same thing. It’s people who want to sound sophisticated, I know the Vilna Gaon’s last name, when the Vilna Gaon had no last name. Nobody in history called the Vilna Gaon “Eliyahu Kramer.”
In the next paragraph, Berel Wein says that foremost among the Vilna Gaon’s students was Rabbi Chaim Rabinowitz, who served as the rabbi of Volozhin. I am certain that Berel Wein originates this, that Chaim of Volozhin had a last name and it was “Rabinowitz”. And Berel Wein goes on and on with “Rabinowitz”.
There’s a mathematical formula known as Kramer’s Theorem and some Orthodox Jews attribute this to the Vilna Gaon, but that’s nonsense.
Yeshivas are hotbeds for these sorts of ideas. Rabbi Jehiel Yaakov Weinberg was the first one to argue in print that Rabbi Yisroel Salanter preceded Freud in discovering the unconscious but what Salanter and Freud meant by the unconscious were different things. When Freud was big, it was very yeshivish to say that Yisroel Salanter preceded Freud.
Berel Wein does a good job popularizing Jewish history but he does make mistakes, such as not knowing the generation of Azriel Hildesheimer.
How many people think that “Satmar” comes from “Saint Mary.” That’s another myth.
Posted inMarc B. Shapiro|Comments Off on The Rogatchover Was A Genius
"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)
