I keep getting out of bed to blog and to update my Facebook. Can’t sleep.
I want to organize a rally at Dodger Stadium against the internet. Please share this on your FB. Sponsorship opportunities are still available! This will be bigger than my series of videos eroticizing endogamy.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Chabad shuls and I never remember any pressure to become Chabad. The Chabadniks I know want Jews to study Torah and to do mitzvahs but I’m not aware of them exerting much effort to get men to wear streimels and to strap on two pairs of tefillin every morning and take on the other distinctive customs of Chabad.
With many of the Chabad shuls I know, most of the people who go there aren’t Chabad.
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1994, I met an Orthodox Jew who was a nudist. He loved to be naked in the sun (no, I never saw him in this happy state). He lived in Fairfax/La Brea, an Orthodox community known for its tolerance of alternative lifestyles.
Because he was religious, he tried not to get naked around other people, particularly women and children, but invariably there were complications and he’d be seen outside in his natural state and his rabbis would reprove him (to little avail).
I wonder what happened to my friend? Did he marry? Does the hobby of nudism hobble one’s chances of getting a shidduch? Is it worse than blogging about porn stars?
I don’t even remember his name. Does anyone else remember him? He had distinguishing characteristics such as love of Torah and a sense of humor. I think he also liked to get drunk.
I believe he was a baal teshuva.
When I came to Los Angeles in 1994, Aish HaTorah was a friendly outreach institution experimenting with different programming to bring in secular Jews. Since 1998, the shul has become less welcoming and more restrictive (though it is still more friendly than most and I recommend checking it out).
Now Pico-Robertson has an amazing outreaching shul in the LINK Kollel on Robertson Blvd, just south of Pico Blvd.
Over the past year, LINK has become the most talked about shul in the hood. How are the folks at Aish reacting? Are they having meetings?
It used to be that if you wanted to check out Orthodox Judaism in 90035, Aish was the only shul interested in helping you out. Now the hood is filled with Chabad shuls and I suspect that far more Jews are entering Orthodoxy through its portals.
A source says: “I think Adas Torah moving into the Victory furniture building on Pico Blvd is a much bigger deal for Beth jacob and yicc. It is going to be a huge shul with a strong, young, yeshivish following and a dynamic rabbi. I think link is really limited to the Baal Teshuva crowd.”
“It is friendly but it is not a beginner’s place. It is open but intended for people who are already frum, yeshivish, knowledgeable, adroit, not for the Aish crowd who are passionate but don’t know much.”
I was driving east down Olympic Blvd yesterday afternoon when I noticed a Jew in a yarmulke in a crap car waiting to turn into my lane. I stopped and let him in. If he hadn’t been wearing a yarmulke, I would not have bothered.
I treat Jews with more care and consideration than I do non-Jews, and I treat Orthodox Jews with more care and consideration than I do non-Orthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews are part of my intimate community. Everybody else, including Conservative and Reform Jews, are outside of the core of my life.
There’s a holy streak to my life where things matter much more than they do in the secular side of my strivings.
I’m an Orthodox Jew first. That’s my primary identity. That’s the group I’m most concerned about. Conservative Jews can ordain gay rabbis for all I care (I’m still opposed to that but hardly lose sleep over it).
On the Friday before Shuvuot, I went to Elat Market to buy grapes and parsley and there was this adorable single young woman outside hawking “flowers for Shabbos.” She was so cute and so tznious (modest) at the same time! I had a hard time looking away and I had a hard time looking at her because I was not going to be a customer. I was impaled on the horns of a dilemma. I was sorely tempted to buy flowers simply because she was adorable but these were funds set aside to buy Marc Shapiro lectures.
My parsimonious side won out as it usually does.
I wonder if she’s interested in dating a poor blogger. I’d find a way then to buy her flowers for Shabbos!
If an Orthodox Jewish woman is proud of her body, to what extent is she allowed to flaunt it? Is she allowed to select clothing that shows her curves off to advantage? How much cleavage can she show with the blessing of the Torah? How high can her skirt ride? To her knee? Above? I’m taken aback when I meet observant Jewish women wearing skirts above the knee but I’m an old fuddy duddy.
I’m curious how much a God-fearing, Torah-observing woman can show publicly with the blessing of her tradition and her community? I notice that Chabad women show more than other traditional Orthodox women. They dress more stylishly. They wear high heels.
In Modern Orthodox shuls, I often encounter appalling displays of wantoness. What kills me is when Orthodox women with children and thick lumpy legs go to shul in short skirts. That to me is a quadruple sin. It’s worse than murder because you are simultaneously offending God, Torah, good taste and the community.
I notice many traditional Orthodox women (outside of Chabad) get all righteously upset if another frumie in their community dresses in bright colors. Red is not tznious. It’s hookerdic. If you’re not 30 pounds overweight, that’s not tznious.
On the other hand, I’ll go to an Orthodox shul and a woman leans over or crosses her legs and nothing is left to the imagination. I think that makes God cry. It certainly makes me cry.
I think we need to have a public dialogue about this. Let the sharing begin.
About 10% of the traditional Orthodox Jews (not the Modern Orthodox) I’ve known are into conspiracy theories. Many of them follow Ron Paul and their primary concern about America is the Federal Reserve. They feel that the Bildeberg elite are trying to control their lives. Sad. Such a waste. Federal Reserve policy is important but it is not the biggest problem facing America, which is the choice between whether or not the country should become a welfare state like Europe. Such a state will offer diminished freedom. It won’t have the resources or the will to protect the Western world from militant Islam. And it will be of little use to Israel.
When these Rand Paul Jews talk about what concerns them, it is never the fate of Israelis. Six million Jews could go up in the smoke of Iranian nuclear weapons and they’d be focused on America returning to the Gold Standard.
For most of the time since I was eight years old, I’ve felt like my primary mission in life was to write.
I started blogging in 1997 and started weekly psycho-therapy in 1998. All of my therapists have seen vast swathes of my writing as a major obstacle to my well-being. They’ve all wanted me to pull back from writing things that detract from my life. If I am committed to being an Orthodox Jew, then I should not blog things that hurt me in that area. If I am committed to teaching the Alexander Technique, I should not publish things that hurt me in that area. If I want to have friends, I should not make public writings that threaten those connections.
By contrast, I’ve usually held that my most important purpose in life is to write and that everything else can lump it. Yes, I want to protect my most important relationships and will never betray those dozen or so connections, but after that, I’m free to say what I want, and if doing so causes me isolation, well, that’s the price of being an artist, of having such a sensitive soul, such keen observations. I’m in this world but not of this world. Sir Thomas More lost his head, and I would lose mine too. Let it rest on Traitor’s Gate. Fine. My writing will be eternal.
I believe that close to half of Jews in America under 18 are Orthodox (while the Orthodox overall compose only about 12% of the American Jewish population).
The New York Times reports on New York: “Now, 40 percent of Jews in the city identify themselves as Orthodox, an increase from 33 percent in 2002; 74 percent of all Jewish children in the city are Orthodox.”
How can Reform and Conservative Jews, let alone secular Jews, have any passion about their way of life when it is plainly dying?
Only one way of living Jewish perpetuates itself — the Orthodox way.
