San Francisco Is A Tough Place To Be An Orthodox Jew

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Luke Ford

Heshy Fried blogs: “San Francisco isn’t like other cities, for a city its size it has a dismal amount of Jewish services for the observant folks. It has two kosher restaurants and a butcher, one of the kosher restaurants is not under a widely accepted hashgacha even though it is vegan and the other restaurant is what I and anyone else who has ever bothered trying it out a chillul Hashem (IE worst kosher restaurant in the world) which only stays open because of tourists. Sure there’s a mikvah, a couple of Jewish schools and now an eruv, but it isn’t a vibrant orthodox community by anyone’s standards.”

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Don’t Ignore Rabbi Rabbs!

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Rabbs posts on FB: As those of you that I tagged are probably already aware, and many others of you reading this might also know, Heshy Fried a.ka. Frum Satire, posted in his blog today about how I deleted him from my friend list on Facebook. Here is what he wrote:

http://www.frumsatire.net/2010/10/24/someone-un-friended-me-on-facebook-and-i-actually-took-notice/

I see that he along with some of you have already speculated as to why I deleted him, so I will now respond to his article and clarify as to why I did it. I would prefer contacting him directly to discuss the issue with him in private, but it seems he ignores my efforts to contact him, and that is why I deleted him in the first place. So, instead, I will reply to him publicly here on Facebook, and those of you who are friends with Heshy are welcome to forward this note to his attention, although I would not be surprised if he never sees it.

I also want to point out that it is Heshy and not me that made this a public spectacle, because he could have written to me privately or called me to discuss the issue, but instead, he chose to post a blog to air out our dirty laundry. In his blog post, he wrote that he wanted to send to me a message last week. Well, that is news to me, because I never received anything from him, and unlike Heshy, I stay on top of who is contacting me, and read all of my emails and messages in a timely fashion.

So, it appears he chose not to contact me even though he could have messaged me on Facebook to ask me what happened. It is not as if I had blocked him. Or, he could have written to my email, or even phoned me. But, instead, he chose to go public.

The last time I saw Heshy, I walked him to his car down the street from me, and the last words we shared were about his stand-up comedy career. We agreed that he needed a strong MC/host to warm up his audiences for him, a service that normally costs substantial money, and as a friend, someone who cared about his career, I volunteered to do that for him for free. He seemed very positive about the prospect of sharing the stage with me at an upcoming show.

That was in February. Fast forward to the summer, when someone here in Los Angeles that books events for a local Jewish organization approached me because they wanted to have me perform a show for that organization during one of the nights of Sukkos. I do not like performing for Jewish audiences, and normally, I would turn the invitation down. However, I saw their offer as an opportunity for Heshy and I to work together. So, I agreed to perform there but only if I could share the stage with Heshy, with me being the MC hosting the event, performing a little time on stage, and then introducing him. The booker agreed in principle.

On Aug. 19, I called Heshy to invite him to do the show with me, but I went into voice mail, and I left a voice message asking him to call me back. I then followed that up the same day by sending to him an email to his email address telling him about the show and asking him to contact me so that we could discuss it.

My feeling at the time was that if he didn’t receive the voice mail, he surely received the email. And, if he didn’t see the email, he surely heard the voice mail. I didn’t bother writing to him on Facebook, because he told me on the phone one night that I should always write to his email account instead.

Whatever. It is now more than two months later, and he still has not contacted me. Sukkos came and went already, and our show would have been held during the last week of September. Had he contacted me in a timely fashion, we could have accepted the offer, worked out the contracts, and prepared our show. But, instead, he left me holding the bag, forced to turn down the entire gig, making me look like an absolute fool.

It is unprofessional for a comedian to not return emails and calls for a potential gig. If Heshy is too swamped by emails and calls from his friends and fans, then he needs to create a way for people in the entertainment industry who want to book him for shows to contact him. Otherwise, he has no one but himself to blame when he doesn’t get booked and has no money. I had a gig that would’ve put money in his pocket, and when he posted on his Facebook that he was starting a fundraiser for himself, and that people should contribute money to him to help him buy a car, I immediately responded to his Facebook status with a comment saying that if he would just call me back, I had a way for him to make money. But, he ignored that as well.

So, he lost.

Rabbs doesn’t tolerate being ignored. I can withstand a lot of criticism, but one thing I can’t put up with is when people don’t respond to me. That applies to everyone, not just Heshy. There are a few individuals that likewise ignored my emails, messages, or calls, and I gave them all until Yom Kippur to contact me. On the day after Yom Kippur, Sept. 19, I deleted from my Facebook friend list those that had still not contacted me, Heshy included.

If you know someone that used to be on my friend list, and suddenly they were deleted, chances are they were part of the group that got axed during the Sept. 19 massacre.

Heshy wrote that “de-friending one of your facebook friends is seen as a real back stabbing thing to some people”. I strongly disagree with those people, and I would counter by saying that to me, the real back stabbing thing to do is to ignore someone. 

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How Come Viking Fans Mix Without Trouble In Green Bay?

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Luke Ford

I am watching the Green Bay – Minnesota football game and wondering why the visiting Viking fans can mix unmolested with the home town Green Bay fans?

Is it mid-West civility?

The crowd looks lily-white but I don’t think whiteness is the reason for the civility as plenty of white crowds in Europe are vicious.

The game is clean too. There’s no fighting.

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The Cognitive Elite

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Luke Ford

Charles Murray writes:

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven’t ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn’t count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don’t count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn’t count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody’s business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn’t intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn’t get America, there is some truth in the accusation.

Part of the isolation is political. In that Harvard survey I mentioned, 72 percent of Harvard seniors said their beliefs were to the left of the nation as a whole, compared with 10 percent who said theirs were to the right of it. The political preferences of academics and journalists among the New Elite also conform to the suspicions of the tea party.

Fred emails: Thanks for the link. I just read this article. I also read Murray’s book of about 15 years ago, The Bell Curve.

I agree with Murray that there are big fault lines through America. Murray thinks that the big fault line is the cognitive elite (people from elite universities and really smart people) vs. people outside the cogative elite.

There are other fault lines, e.g. religious right vs. people outside the religious right; rich vs. not-so-rich.

Murray thinks the real unbridgeable chasm is cognitive elite vs. those outside the cognitive elite.

There is some merit to what Murray has to say. People do self-segregate based on education or intellectual ability. I don’t think a Harvard grad is going to spend his free time with assembly line workers. What would they have in common?

There is, however, a substantial correlation between being in the cognitive elite and being irreligious. There is a substantial correlation betwen being outside the cognitive elite and being religous. There is a substantial correlation between being in the cognitive elite and being rich.

Murray focuses on cognitive elite vs. others because he thinks that fault line is becoming intransmutable and unchangeable. People with high-powered academic backgrounds wed and beget people with high-powered academic backgrounds. Non-college grads rarely beget offspring destined for high-powered academia. If you read his book The Bell Curve, Murray suggests that in large part heredity may be at play.

I suppose if you are just a traditional leftie, the real fault line is rich vs. poor.

If you are a religous nut, the real fault line is true believer vs. those of us wallowing in doctrinal error.

Since all three of these fault lines correlate with one another, they are all proxies for one another. Murray thinks that the key fault line is the cognitive elite vs. other, and this fault line is responsible for the rich vs. poor fault line.

JEFF EMAILS:
Charles Murray. Back in the 80s, when being a Repub meant snappy bowties and round glasses and being smarter and snarkier than everyone, he wrote, in Commentary, how the Smart People needed to rule the world. However, now, that being Republican means being on the lower parts of his curve, he writes a hate piece against them derned Elites, and we know exactly who he means, those same Elites Controlling the World:

“They can talk about books endlessly, but they’ve never read a “Left Behind” novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn’t be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.”

We know who them are, them rootless Cosmopolitans who won’t read a good ole Christian book, if ya know what I mean. Them smartypants Jooz and their Asian friends at Stanford.

I remember the original Bell Curve article in Commentary. At that time, the George Will led Reupblican party was where the smart, snarky people were (myself included), and his argument was that the smart people should lead. Now he’s advocating the opposite, because the Republcans have become the home of his lower part of the curve?

Charles Joseph emails: “One solution would be to have more singles mixed dancing between New Elite and proletariat. Because the elite men can go at least one up lookswise if they choose from one social class lower, many of will take this option. Their progeny will not so easily become New Elite lacking the racial purity currently reflecting New Elite mating. Thus, the gene pool of the New Elite will be diluted, the classes mixed to some degree and this new class problem ( but wait, this doesn’t sound like a class but rather a meritocracy) slowed.”

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Call Me Senator

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Luke Ford

From Jerry Zucker:

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

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Most Of What You Want Isn’t Good For You

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show Oct. 22, 2010, Dennis said: Most Of What You Want Isn’t Good For You. It will not make you happy. The list is so long that I could spend the rest of the show just listing common things we want that aren’t good for us, such as food.

On the road, I go to grocery stores to pick up food to eat that is semi-healthy. The food available at 7/11 and airports is largely junk. There is almost nothing in there that I don’t want to eat. I want to be buried with M&M peanuts next to me. I love M&Ms.

Most of what we want isn’t good for our happiness and our bodies. Forget our character.

It is important to teach your kids early that what they want is likely not good for them.

As a kid, I did not want to go to school. The happiest days of my elementary school life were when at night, it started to snow and I would look out the window and I had one prayer — that it sticks. If it doesn’t stick, it doesn’t matter how much it snows, the school bus will pick me up because they can get through slush but they can’t get through a serious snow fall that sticks.

Ninety nine percent of the food we want is because it is tasty. Generally speaking, the more tasty the food, the worse it is for you.

If people asked — will this increase my happiness? — they would lead a different life.

I beat myself up for my lack of self-discipline regularly but my free-spirit comes with that price.

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Dennis Prager Speaks At Reform Temple

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Luke Ford

From Cleveland Jewish News:

Both Eisenberg and Prager have strong feelings about CUFI, a national organization dedicated to giving Christians an opportunity to speak with one voice in support of Israel. CUFI members are “among the most decent people I have met in my life and are genuinely as pro-Jewish and pro-Israel as anyone could be,” Prager says in a phone interview with the CJN.

Some members of the Jewish community marginalize the organization because of the “traditional Jewish suspicion of Christians, which is completely uncalled for,” Prager says. To saddle American Christians with the sins of Europe’s Christians is “literally immoral.”
CUFI members have conservative political and social positions, and most Jews have liberal social and political positions, “but so, what?” Prager asks. “The issue is Israel’s survival, not American politics.”

Speaking at a Reform synagogue, where you are considered a “religious heretic” if your political views aren’t liberal, Prager says, is a rarity for the highly public, outspoken personality. Although Prager has belonged to the Stephen S. Wise Temple (Reform) in Los Angeles for 20 years and teaches Torah there once a month, most Reform congregations “are not receptive to having a political conservative speak at their synagogue,” he says. This is a “sad commentary on the intellectual openness in Reform Judaism.”

However, Prager is a popular lecturer at Orthodox and Conservative conventions and congregations and spoke to a large gathering at Solon’s Chabad Jewish Center in 2008. “It will be a long time before the Reform movement will have a conservative speak at one of its conventions, because unlike Rabbi Matt (Eisenberg), they are not as intellectually open,” he adds.

Among Prager’s many concerns is the apathy of young Jews regarding Judaism and Israel. “Many of today’s kids have not been raised to be committed to either,” he says. “They are being raised as committed liberals, not committed Jews. It is up to the parents to figure out the hierarchy of their value system.”

During his talk at Temple Israel Ner Tamid, Prager will discuss how the Torah is the most transformational document in human history. Yet, “very few people understand or can articulate exactly how it transformed the world,” he says. “When Jews understand this, it causes them to reevaluate the Torah and ultimately ask the question, ‘Why do I not believe this is a divine document?’”

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Australian Compassion

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Luke Ford

Dr. Spielvogel, a man was sitting on a blanket at the beach. He had no arms and no legs.

Three women — an American, a Kiwi and a Australian — were walking past and they felt sorry for the poor man.

The American woman said to him, ‘Have you ever had a hug?’

The man said ‘No,’ so she gave him a hug and walked on.

The Kiwi woman said, ‘Have you ever had a kiss?’

The man said, ‘No,’ so she gave him a kiss and walked on.

The Australian woman came to him and said, ‘Have you ever been f**ked?’

The man broke into a big smile and said, ‘No.’

She said, ‘You will be when the tide comes in.’

***

I love grotesque humor. It delights me! My hee-hee personality gets very high and I become grandiose and I offend people.

I ran into a friend at a party a couple of weeks ago.

She said she hadn’t been feeling well.

“That’s normal after an abortion,” I said.

It would’ve been fine if it had been just the two of us but her boyfriend was along for the ride and it was not respectful of me to have said that, so I am very sorry.

I tend to swing between grandiose and ashamed. Grandiosity is what I use to fend off shame. Narcissism is my defense against shame. If I didn’t feel awash in this underlying shame, I wouldn’t need my grandiosity.

Guilt is what you feel for specific behaviors. Shame is what you feel for who you are.

I don’t like sitting with who I am when I don’t like myself, so I imagine myself to be someone grand. I start feeling good and I don’t care if other people are offended by what I say.

Then they hurt me when they become sufficiently offended and I feel ashamed and cast low.

I’ve gone through this rollercoaster all of my life.

I love to do shock humor without regard to the feelings of those around me and then I don’t like the consequences and so I resolve to do better, to become more considerate, so that others will embrace me rather that shun me.

What helps with my shame is by shining a light on it. As I am able to articulate my shame, it diminishes in severity. Shame needs isolation and secrecy to thrive.

I’m going to need surgery to fix my deviated septum. And that made me reflect, who would I get to give me a ride home from the hospital? There was no obvious person to turn to. That made me sad.

In 1998, I broke my wrist. I ended up walking to the Century City hospital for surgery. Coming out of anesthesia, I had a panic attack. I had never felt so alone in my life. I got a taxi home.

Afterward, I used that question as an interviewing technique — who would you ask to give you a ride to the hospital? Half of the people I interviewed said they’d take a taxi. They were that disconnected from others.

Now I look at my life and I realize I am one of those disconnected ones. I am no more bonded to others than I was in 1998.

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I Want Your Money

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Luke Ford

From IWantYourMoney.net:

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National Left Radio

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show today, Dennis Prager says: “I remember when I was a kid, a left-wing magazine had a headline – ‘250 Psychiatrists Declare Barry Goldwater Mentally Ill’.

“I remember thinking, isn’t that an abuse? How do these psychiatrists know his mental state? Has he been a patient of theirs?”

“I’ve never written G-d in my life. I even wrote an essay against it in a big Jewish magazine. I think it is utterly irrational. God’s name isn’t God. It’s Jehovah.

“It’s another one of these added stringencies that I don’t support.

“Some terrific websites publish my column and spell it as G-d.”

Dennis said he wouldn’t spend his hard-earned money to get his kid the best defense if he knew his kid was a mass-murderer.

From Dennis Prager.com:

Friday, October 22, 2010 Radio Show
H1: National Left Radio
Prager H1: The masquerade, if there ever was one, about NPR being an objective news source is over. With the Juan Williams firing, they’ve finally and fully exposed themselves… George Soros has just given $1.8M to NPR for a bunch of new reporters. He only gives to Leftist organizations… The public service union is now the biggest spender in this election. They are drawing on a special fund to save Democrats.

Friday, October 22, 2010 Radio Show
H2: Happiness Hour: Good and Plenty
Prager H2: Most of what we want is not good for us – cheesecake, potato chips, TV, sleeping in, and other dozen other things we can all think of. But if we give in to our “wants” we will make ourselves unhappy. Personal discipline, as difficult as it can be, brings us more happiness than yielding to most temptations.

Friday, October 22, 2010 Radio Show
H3: Open Lines
Prager H3: Per usual, callers set the agenda. Issues raised include: is there really an afterlife; how do you teach a child not to have an inflated opinion of himself; can you reject the American Trinity and still be an American; is Left obsession with equality based on a false premise; should a parent let her young child where clothes with the peace sign on them.

Who’s Spending More Money than Any Other Group on in this Election?

Friday, October 22, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:25 PM
Who’s the biggest spender in this election? Care to guess? Clue: No one has a bigger stake in who runs the government than they do.

Soros, NPR, and $1.8M

Friday, October 22, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:15 PM
Not that you needed any more smoking guns, but does George Soros giving $1.8 to NPR for new reporters convince you that NPR is a Leftist organization. Soros certainly thinks it is or he wouldn’t give the money.

Nan Hayworth: Mother, Doctor, Businesswoman, and now Republican Candidate, New York

Thursday, October 21, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 2:00 PM

Dennis talks to another great Republican candidate, Nan Hayworth, running for Congress in the 19th district of New York. A doctor (opthamologist), mother and businesswoman, she knows why Big Government is the problem, not the solution. She’s in a race where every dollar and every vote will count. This one will go down to the wire. Here’s an article about her recent debate. You can help her here.

Dennis Prager emails:

My Dear Listener:

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for responding to my invitation to “sign up” with what I call the Prager Rational Guard (aka “Dennis’s Menaces”).

I apologize for not getting back to you much sooner. Aside from not having a staff to handle mail, as you may know, I had two surgeries this past summer to finally solve my sciatica problem (and a third surgery on a finger that had developed a staph infection!). I was in quite a bit of pain for the first six months of 2010, and while I somehow did the radio show, wrote my weekly column, and travelled to all my lectures (while being wheeled through airports), I could not do much more than that.

As you presumably know, I regard the upcoming election not merely as an important election but as a referendum on America’s future.

I think that the most important action you can take in the coming days is to support any of the Republican candidates for Governor, the Senate, and House listed below. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it includes men and women who are committed to making our government smaller and, as a result, our country stronger.

By clicking on the links below (hold down the Control key and then left click buttons) you can make donations and support these candidates in a variety of ways. No contribution of money or time is too small. Even a $5 or $10 contribution to a candidate (or to several candidates) matters. Those small amounts multiplied by large numbers of contributors will make an impact. But please do act now as the election is less than two weeks away. Thank you for getting involved in these critical races.

Senate:

Sharron Angle (NV) http://sharronangle.com/

Ken Buck (CO) http://buckforcolorado.com/

Richard Burr (NC) http://burrforsenate.com/

Cam Cavasso (HI) http://camcavasso.com/meet-cam/

Carly Fiorina (CA) http://www.carlyforca.com/

Jon Kyl (AZ) http://kyl.senate.gov/

Joe Miller (AK) https://joemiller.us/goal/

Pat Toomey http://www.toomeyforsenate.com/

David Vitter (LA) http://www.davidvitter.com/

House:

Michelle Bachman (MN) http://www.michelebachmann.com

Joseph Cao (LA) http://www.caoforcongress.com/

Ken Calvert (CA) http://www.calvertforcongress.com/

Charlie Dent (PA) http://www.dentforcongress.com/

Charles Djou (HI) http://www.djou.com/

David Dreier (CA) http://dreier.house.gov/index.shtml

Nan Hayworth (NY) http://nanhayworth.com/

Jim Gerlach (PA) http://www.jimgerlachforcongress.com/

Leonard Lance (NJ) http://www.lanceforcongress.com/

Ruth McClung (AZ) http://www.ruth4az.com/

Star Parker (CA) http://www.starparkerforcongress.com/

Erik Paulsen (MN) http://paulsenforcongress.com/

Mike Prendergrast (FL) http://www.pickprendergast.com/victory/

Dave Reichert (WA) http://www.davereichert.com/

Jean Schmidt (OH) http://www.jeanschmidt.com/

Tim Scott (SC) http://www.votetimscott.com/splash/

Dr. Rob Steele (MI) http://www.robsteeleforcongress.com

Lee Terry (NE) http://www.leeterry.com/

Van Tran (CA) http://www.joinvantran.com/

John Willoughby (HI) http://www.willoughbyforcongress.com/Home.aspx

Joe Wilson (SC) http://www.joewilsonforcongress.com

Don Young (AK) http://www.donyoung2010.com/

Governor:

Tom Emmer (MN) http://www.emmerforgovernor.com/

Each of us has a role in trying to reassert the core American values – what I have labeled the American Trinity: E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust, and Liberty. My role has been to offer clarity and intellectual ammunition in this battle. I think this is very important because ultimately this is a war of ideas. For that reason I have also started Prager University on the Internet (www.prageru.com). If you have not visited Prager University, I ask you to do so and to forward the links to the five-minute video courses to as many people as possible. We have even dubbed two courses into Spanish.

I would like to be in touch with you first and foremost to help you get these ideas out both to those who share our values, but who cannot fully articulate them, and to those who do not.

I am attaching five recent columns:

For the Left, Opponents Cannot Have Decent Motives — The Ground Zero Example

Same-Sex Marriage and the Insignificance of Men and Women

Black Murders Eight Whites; Media Blames Whites

God, Liberals, and Liberty

ABC, NPR and PBS Hosts Equate Christian and Muslim Violence

I am asking you:

1. To forward any of these and other of my articles – and Prager University courses — to as many people as possible.

2. To donate time and money to Republican candidates.

3. To join a Prager Listener Group in your area. (In the unlikely event that there isn’t one in your area, please consider starting one.) Meeting fellow listeners is a very positive experience socially as well as politically, and you know the importance I attach to making new friends. In addition, many of these groups are highly creative. For example, some have made their own July Fourth Seders.

4. To go to my website and click on “Winning in November” (on the very top right of the page, to the right of my picture). There is no money involved, solely an attempt by my radio colleagues and myself to gather a million or more signatures to one or more of the pledges.

I am deeply grateful for your responding to my request to join with me in fighting for our country’s core values. Your doing so gives me strength to continue my work.

With warmest wishes,

Dennis

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