Sometimes I’ll run into a friend on the street. He’s with his wife. They’re both Orthodox. My friend will introduce me to his wife and she won’t say a word. She just stands there with pursed lips. She’s mute.
I remember Rabbi Akiva Tatz advising people not to make unnecessary conversation with a friend’s spouse. Why do you need to talk to her for?
The more Orthodox you go, the more the sexes are separated.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PST on the Rabbi Rabbs cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-50:26).
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “The book of Bereshith ends this week on a seemingly upbeat note. The family of Yaakov, united and now more numerous, live in an apparently friendly Egyptian environment, rather smugly protected by their political influence and their growing wealth.”
“The 130 years of good times in Egypt enabled the Jews to somehow survive the eighty years of slavery and persecution. Spanish Jewry enjoyed a “golden age” of centuries before its three century decline into expulsion and forced apostasy. Polish Jews also enjoyed hundreds of years of autonomy and governmental favor and protection before declining in the three centuries which ended with its destruction.”
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “As troubling as it is not to know the future it is perhaps even more troubling to know it. It is only the ignorance of the future that allows humans somehow to exploit the present and live a productive life.”
* I learned in daf yomi (Talmud study) that while it is generally a bad idea for somebody to immediately marry after the death of a spouse or after a divorce, in certain circumstances it is acceptable. For instance, if you need a wife to look after your kids. I heard about one rabbi who buried his wife in the cemetery and then immediately married another wife in that same cemetery that same day.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “How easy and understandable it would have been for any of our patriarchs and matriarchs to have become disappointed and disillusioned by the events of their lives. Yet their ultimate faith, that truth will survive and triumph, dominates the entire narrative of this first book of the Torah. Bereshith sets the pattern for everything that will follow.”
* Rabbi Wein writes: “From all indications in the Talmud and in Geonic literature, borrowing books for studious use was very commonplace in Jewish life. In fact, the rabbis spoke out against those who refused to lend their books to others, seeing in this protectiveness of ownership a hindrance to the spread of the study and knowledge of Torah. Rabbinic responsa is replete with issues and liabilities regarding borrowing books and the respective problems that surely emanate from such a policy of liberal lending of books to others.”
I’ve always been careful to return borrowed books in good condition. It shocks me that if you lend a book or anything to somebody, most of the time you don’t get it back. I remember lending some movies to a guy after shul, a fellow Australian, and he never returned them! I appeared in one of the movies! It was my only copy. And every time I would run into him, he would joke about being sorry for not returning the movies and by this time, I did not want to be reminded that I had ever lent him such movies. I was ashamed. And to have lent them to him after temple! Oy vey!
Rabbi Wein writes: “The greatest book borrowers from the Jewish people have been the two other major monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. Christianity borrowed the so-called “Old Testament” whole cloth from the Jews. It is ironic in the extreme that the gratitude shown by the borrower to the lender of this basis of monotheistic belief and worldview has been expressed in unending centuries of enmity, discrimination and persecution. While Islam never borrowed our book totally it certainly borrowed its contents.”
“The Koran and Moslem beliefs generally – as distinct from its practices and rituals – are based almost entirely on the values and ideas of the Torah. It has also, over the centuries, shown a great reluctance to acknowledge that a large part of its library consists of borrowed books. In fact, this is true about a great many of the principles of Western Civilization. There is nothing wrong in borrowing books, ideas, culture and knowledge. The wrong comes when the borrowing is not acknowledged, recognized and/or appreciated.”
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Sometimes in life, the greatest gift and blessing that a parent can give to a child is the criticism of that child’s traits and weaknesses so that these faults may yet be corrected and improved upon.”
That’s what I appreciate about Rabbi Rabbs. He’s not afraid to point out to people their faults.
* I had a girlfriend. I always wanted on Friday nights to make the blessing over her that fathers make over daughters but she was not into it. Nor would she call me daddy. She wouldn’t let me tickle her either. No wonder things didn’t work out between us.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “One of my great teachers in the yeshiva that I attended long ago defined success in life to us as follows: If your grandparents and your grandchildren are both proud of you and your accomplishments, then you can claim success in life.”
I guess we’re cooked.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Reporting from Tel Aviv —— When the season finale of the Showtime thriller “Homeland” ran last month, it didn’t just cap Claire Danes’ triumphant return to series television — it marked the latest milestone for a small country that lately has become an improbable player in Hollywood.
“Homeland,” which broke Showtime’s ratings record for a first-year series finale, is adapted from the Israeli show “Hatufim” (Prisoners of War). It’s one of a host of U.S. programs that began life as a Hebrew-language series in this Mediterranean nation of only 8 million people. “Who’s Still Standing?,” the new NBC quiz program in which contestants answering incorrectly are dropped through a hole in the floor, is also an Israeli import. So is the former HBO scripted series “In Treatment,” which starred Gabriel Byrne and ran for three seasons.
In my first year investigating the industry, I met AVN publisher Paul Fishbein. He was very kind to me. He gave me two hours of his time and all the back issues of his publication.
Many years later, after I became known as a scandalous blogger, some journalist called me up and interviewed me. At some point, he said to me, you really don’t like Paul Fishbein.
I demurred. I like Paul, I said.
“Well,” the journalist replied, “You certainly have a funny way of showing it.”
I’ve never forgotten that remark. It cut me to the quick. There have been a lot of people I’ve liked who I’ve written critical things about. To me that was the job of the writer. You try to portray life as keenly as possible and sometimes feelings will get hurt. What’s important is not that all feelings are protected but that I use my talents to try to cut to the core of things.
Still, as I lie on my bed tonight, those words come back to me. I have high anxiety right now. I’m frightened. I’m really frightened. I’m trying to develop my business and I’ve never had a private practice before and my future scares me to death. I am filled with anxiety.
I’m tapping my contacts and turning to my friends and seeking to reach as wide a circle of people as possible and as I do this, I keep seeing people and wincing and pulling back. Intimacy scares me. It’s hard for me to get close with people. I’m much more comfortable at a remove, except for certain folks, like Amy Jill-Levine, I just felt immediately drawn to her. Ninety nine percent of the population I feel far from, but there’s that one percent I want to bond with.
But how do I show my affection for those I love?
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
Ouch! Often strangers have such cutting insights. They nail things that I try to dance around and fool myself over. You could look over my life and the people I’ve loved and you would say to me, “You have a funny way of showing it.”
Amalek emails: “I’m afraid that Luke might end up a highly compensated male prostitute of the conventional approach fails to produce the necessary client stream.”
Concerned writes: “I’m afraid Luke’s Twink appeal has faded like all those unsold copies of his bio laying in the sun-scorched landfill.”
Amalek emails: Luke’s pitch is simply terrible. Nobody wants to give money to a man who whines and apologizes and appears to be on his knees. Nosireebob, they want to give money to and follow a leader, a man who tells them what to do instead of apologizing for what he has done.
He might still monetize his old connections, but he needs to stop kneeling like a yeshiva bachur trembling in front of his rebbe and change his execution. Instead of whining about sex addiction (which, simply put, DOES NOT EXIST), he should be offering AT as a means of becoming a better and more successful performer in films.
But what if the AT simply does not pan out? What if Luke just does not have the salesmanship to make a go of it? He has other options. For example, Luke could work as a twink even now. All he need do is focus on much older women — I’m thinking seventies on up. The benefit there is that he’d have less competition, and more chances for big paydays whenever any of his clients leaves this world for the next.
Jane* emails: “My neighbor is an orthodox Jew (I’m Jewish as well, though not as religious) and he told me that his beliefs prohibited him from “talking business in front of [his] wife.” Knowing some strong and financial astute Orthodox women, I’ve had trouble believing that. If this stricture is true, where does it come from in the Bible or Talmud? Thanks in advance for your response.”
Leonard says: “Luke – your hunch is bang-on. Orthodox Jewish women have been working and earning and managing $ throughout history, they are frequently the main wage-earners of their family, and almost always managing the household budget. There is no religious reason to prevent women’s involvement in financial and business discussions, though there may be specific considerations in the case you describe that we’re not aware of.”
Mikal says: “Dude doesn’t want his wife to know how much money he is making, because then she will wonder where all of the money is going. Hint hint: to the girlfriend.”
So I’ve been sending out pitches about my Alexander Technique practice to various pain clinics in Los Angeles and I have this fantasy that some doctor is going to email me back and say, “Come see me!”
I’ve never done well chasing business. I’ve always been best suited to a job with a regular pay check. I have this fantasy that some pain clinic is going to snap me up and I’m going to have an office to go to every day with a regular pay check every two weeks.
It’s like I have this fantasy of somebody taking charge of my practice and saying, ok, you’ll do things this way.
All my life I’ve been chasing father figures. I like men in authority. I like to learn from them. I like to follow them.
Then eventually, I go my own way. This often looks like betrayal, but “betrayal” is just a dramatic term for when other people don’t have the priorities you expected.
I live around many kids.
Some people find children annoying. They’re too loud and rambunctious.
I love the sound of kids playing. It’s the sound of happiness. They get so much delight out of a box, for instance. They can transform it into a hide-out or a cubby hole or a fort or almost anything of their imagination.
I’m suffering from high anxiety these days as I launch my business (Alexander90210l.com) but it never ceases to make me feel happy to hear children playing.
I often wake up to the sound of children screaming as they chase each other.
No matter what time the adult go to bed, it seems to me that the kids I know are always up by 8 a.m. at the latest, usually earlier.
Let them stay up to midnight on occasions like last night, and they’re thrilled. It’s a grand adventure.
On the other hand, seeing a lonely child is just heart rending. Sometimes kids are cruel and they’ll exclude the socially uncoordinated kid. That was often me. I know the pain of exclusion and I empathize with the poor kid going it alone. I know what it is like to be uncool.
I reacted by retreating into a fantasy world where I was an amazing man who ruled the world. Grandiosity is my defense against shame.
I won’t be depressed if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. I much prefer him to John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate.
Over the past eight months, I’ve swung from rooting for Michelle Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich and now I’m rooting for Rick Santorum to become the conservative alternative to Romney.
Dennis Prager has said on his radio show that Santorum is the candidate who most mirrors his own views.
I think Santorum could unite all three factions of the conservative movement — economic, social, and strong military.
I noticed that earlier versions of the Wikipedia entry for “Alexander Technique” listed it as an “alternative medicine.”
I do not agree for many reasons. For one thing, the Technique is not a medicine. Nor is it a therapy. It does not fall into the medicinal model. You don’t go to an Alexander teacher and get cured or fixed. Instead, you get taught a technique that will help you do the tasks of daily life more easily. If you are having problems that come from a poor use of yourself, then diligently pursuing Alexander Technique will help you reduce and even eliminate those problems.
If you have pain from other sources than your own use of yourself, Alexander Technique lessons may or may not help you. If you are unable or unwilling to do the mental, emotional and physical work required by the Technique, it is not going to help you.
Despite all these rational reasons for not lumping the Technique in with “alternative medicine”, I accept that many people will still do just that.
I don’t see anything “alternative” about the Technique. It is mainstream instruction at all of America’s big acting and music schools.
In her sociological analysis of parts of the London world of Alexander Technique, LSE’s Jennifer Tarr found that Alexander pupils loved the Technique for being a form of alternative medicine while Alexander teachers had a more positive relationship to the medical world and preferred to think of the Technique as complementary medicine.
The Alexander Technique is often categorised as a form of complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM), although this relationship is somewhat ambivalent. Coward (1989) includes the Alexander Technique in her study of alternative health because it shares similar ideas,
such as an emphasis on one founding figure and on being ‘natural’. Sharma (1992: 4), on the other hand, excludes the Alexander Technique from her own study of CAM because it does not purport to cure disease, but only to re-educate people to use their bodies more efficiently.For her, the defining characteristics of complementary or alternative medicine are that it claims to be curative, has some body of knowledge or theory about health and illness, and requires some kind of expert intervention on the part of a practitioner (1992: 4). Here, this study takes the position that although it is not curative or a form of medicine as such, the
Technique shares some characteristics with CAM as a health practice operating outside mainstream health and social care, making research in this area relevant to it.…Among teachers of the Alexander Technique, proximity to Alexander and⁄or the teachers he trained is considered a mark of distinction. A teacher who trained with someone who was taught directly by Alexander has higher status than someone who is more removed from him.
This is not simply because the former are likely to have more years of experience, but also because the work is seen as most authentic at its source. This is not only the idolisation of the founder which occurs in many forms of complementary and alternative health (Coward 1989:
36). It is also that the work is transmitted physically, and it is only through physical work on the body that it can be understood. If Alexander’s hands are believed to have held unique skills, then access to others who have been worked on by him ) that is, to whom the work
has been transmitted through his hands ) is a way of accessing higher quality work. This, however, ignores the ways in which the Technique has developed since Alexander’s time, and
the possibility that very experienced teachers may have skills as good or even better than those of Alexander himself. For instance, sedimented years of experience with a variety of
teachers might lead to a wider range of skills and abilities in transmitting the Technique to others.…Nature and evolution thus function as modes of subjection, or authorities, to which the Technique appeals to justify its practices. Alexander himself is presented as having unique
insight into these practices; Coward (1989) notes of alternative therapies more generally that there is often ‘a push to establish the therapy as deriving from a founding master, usually in the previous century. These founding figures then acquire … the status of one who understands and interprets natural truths’ (Coward 1989: 36). The critical role played by
Alexander as a founding figure further justifies the importance teachers place on lineage in teacher training.Being unwilling to let go of the authority of Alexander and his discourses of nature and evolution, where proper order will be restored through the application of conscious control to the self, inhibits the Technique’s more mainstream adoption. Further, while the Technique
may be ‘natural’ in the sense that it does not involve chemical or surgical intervention on the body, it is nonetheless a culturally situated technique which draws heavily on the historical discourses of its time for its self-justification.…In interviews, participants were asked about the relationship between the Alexander Technique, biomedicine and healthcare. In the responses, there was a clear division between
patients and practitioners, particularly those teachers who had been involved with the Technique for some time. Pupils tended to be attracted to its ‘alternative’ status, and to see it
as squarely outside mainstream healthcare because it addresses the whole person. Of the eight
pupils interviewed, none seemed to hold biomedical practice in high esteem. Many had suffered an injury or illness which the medical profession had failed to adequately diagnose
or treat. In some cases, this was what had led them to the Alexander Technique, as with one pupil and two teachers who suffered chronic pain while playing the violin which had drawn them to the work. As one pupil described, in relation to her disillusionment with biomedicine:“We’ve gotten too clever for ourselves haven’t we? We love mapping out things and deciphering things and this is caused by this, and what we’re doing is that we’re separating
everything, and we rejoice greatly in mapping out those things and diagnosing things, but sometimes I think the diagnosis becomes the aim rather than the cure. So we’ll rejoice in saying, ‘yes it’s this that’s wrong!’ Great, now what? ‘Eat some pills’, you know, wonderful” (Ingrid).On the other hand, teachers tended to stress the potential positive relationship between the Technique and healthcare, and to emphasise its complementary nature. Saks notes that ‘those practitioners most willing to adopt the term ‘complementary’ rather than ‘alternative’ medicine are those most likely to have political⁄ ideological reasons for co-operating with medicine’ (1994: 90), and greater co-operation with medicine would certainly serve the Alexander Technique well in terms of increasing its profile and attracting more pupils.
I got up at 6:30 this morning, took a shower, cooked some oatmeal and turned on my computer.
As I was reading the New York Times, my monitor shut off with the message, “Monitor is going to sleep!”
Nooooo! I had this problem a month ago. My screen would go crazy and then the monitor would shut off.
I have a Windows XP HP workstation xw4400. About six months, I got an HP S2331 23″ LCD monitor.
In early December, I used a system restore to go back about two weeks and then everything was fine for a month.
When today’s problem occurred, I went off to shul. I studied a page of Talmud with the rabbi. I said my prayers. And then I rushed home to wrestle with my computer.
Using my Blackberry, I Googled the problem. I did a system restore to ten days previous. I booted up in safe mode and changed the display settings. And for the past hour everything has been fine.
I hope all will be well for at least the rest of the day so I can watch the crucial Dallas-New York football game tonight to determine who wins the NFC East and goes to the playoffs.
My anxiety is slowly subsiding. I had these visions that my computer was done and I’d need to buy a need one. Or maybe it was not done, but it would need repair and I wouldn’t have access to it for a day or two and then they wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. So, yes, I was catastrophizing.
My left shoulder is tight. I was walking an old man the other day and he was holding my arm for support.
I feel better now that I’ve shared my anxiety.
