When Do You Leave A Relationship?

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Luke Ford

David Deida says in a chapter for men: "If it is time for your intimate partnership to come to an end because you have outgrown it, then you will most likely feel a mixture of pain, grief, sadness and love, as if your lover had died. If, however, your intimacy ends with much conflict, hardness, emotional closure and and lack of communication, then you have probably not outgrown your relationship, you’re just bailing." (Pg. 143 of Intimate Communion)

From page 169: "Whereas the Masculine is either going deeper or pulling away, the Feminine is either opening or closing."

From page 171: "To tell a man with a Masculine sexual essence that he is lost — to question his direction, whether it is his financial, creative or spiritual direction, or even just his ability to find his way in the car — has the same depolarizing effect as telling a woman with a Feminine sexual essence that she is drab, wrinkled or not very radiant. It causes an almost tangible collapse, repulsion or contraction to occur."

Posted in Dating, David Deida | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on When Do You Leave A Relationship?

The Elephant Man

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Luke Ford

I identify with The Elephant Man. Sure, my flaws are more moral and psychological than physical, but I know what it is like to be a freak.

Here are some painful memories from the set of Taboo 22, shot in 2007:

Throughout the day, Ava [Rose] says to me, "Luke, you’re not an animal."

DCypher: "Despite what other women have said."

Luke: "Despite what Holly says."

I first saw The Elephant Man at Pacific Union College around 1980. They presented a specially edited version with some of the naughty bits cut out. I was not sure what was redacted, but I told my friends that night that in the real version, the Elephant Man had sex with the Anne Bancroft character.

Tonight I got to see the real version for the first time. There was no such sex.

I wonder what my dirty little mind was so preoccupied with when it was only 14? How could I have imagined such a monstrous thing?

Anyway, despite my flaws, I am not an animal.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on The Elephant Man

The Odor

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Luke Ford

"I’ve got everything," he said to her. "I’ve got a weirdly comfortable bed. I’ve got chocolate almond milk. I’ve got a big bag of parsley in the frig. I’ve got a candle going for the Maccabee children."

"What?" she said.

"Just kidding," he said. "It’s not a religious candle. It’s just a candle.

"I’ve got groovy yoga tunes playing softly on my computer. I’ve got a foot vibrator and an air purifier. I’ve got a table to do Alexander Technique. All I need is an odor."

"What?" she said.

"A fragrance. What smell do you want here? I’ve got everything else you need. It’s clean."

"Prison clean," she said.

"What do you want it to smell like when you come over? I could burn incense."

"Don’t. That would make me sneeze."

"Well, what odor do you want? I won’t put up any idols but I’ll provide the smell you want."

"I just want it to smell like it does now — of you.

"What is it you like about sex? It is the smell?"

"It’s not the smell," he said. He hated the smell of sex. "It’s the penetration. I feel like I’m entering your heart. It’s the control. The power. I feel like I have power over you when I’m inside you. I feel like I can pick you up and move you around and make you scream.

"Why am I so obsessed with power? I told you the two key components to my fantasies — that I feel powerful and that I can inflict pain. Why would someone be obsessed with fantasies of power? Because they felt so powerless as children.

"A powerful man does not fantasize about power. He’s more likely to seek a release from power. When I’ve dated powerful women, they’ve wanted to be relieved of their power. They wouldn’t let me drive their fancy cars, but they would let me drive them around the bedroom. They wanted me to take control and force them to experience pleasure, to open themselves up. That makes me feel like a Greek god."

Posted in Personal, Sex | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Odor

Michael Jackson’s Jewish Dream

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Luke Ford

The greatest interview ever of Michael Jackson?

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes:

This coming Friday night, Sept. 25, NBC will air a one-hour, prime-time “Dateline” special hosted by Meredith Vieira, featuring a book I am publishing on the 30 hours of conversations I conducted with Michael Jackson. The book, “The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Private Conversation,” contains the most insightful, raw, painful and authentic conversations for public distribution that Michael ever had. It was Michael’s desperate wish that our conversations be produced and the book be published so that his heart might be known to a public he understood was greatly suspicious of him. He wanted to share a deeper side of himself that our friendship had begun to uncover. The depth and searing honesty of the conversations contained in the book are sure to change the public’s perception of Michael forever.

The choice to air the TV special launching the book on a Friday night, although it unavoidably demands that the normally live program will have to be prerecorded in deference to the laws of the Jewish Sabbath, goes hand-in-hand with a recurring theme in the book. Michael and I always dreamed of introducing a national family dinner night, an evening when parents would prioritize their children without distraction. Friday night was the natural choice since Michael, a non-Jew raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, loved the Jewish Sabbath meals he ate at our home with his children. A superstar whose life was frenzied and harried, he welcomed the utter serenity of an evening where cell phones and TVs were off and the only sound was that of intimate conversation and gentle laughter.

Posted in Shmuley Boteach | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Michael Jackson’s Jewish Dream

The Popularity Of Peace

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Luke Ford

Joe emails: For the first time since I can remember, the Prime Minister of Israel is more popular, and wildly so, in Israel, than the President of the US. Netanyahu, who is now presiding over a country unified in its determination to shove the iranian bomb down the throats of the rug merchants who created it, is more popular than Obama, who wants to appoint a special envoy to Iran to show them how to create green jobs in Natanz. Netanyahu has done what no Prime Minister of Israel has done since the handshake on the white house lawn in 1993, namely, kill the concept of a 2 co-equal state solution which the world has obsessed over since before the advent of the wheel. Obama, even with his famed perseverance, has just about given up any hope of any real peace talks.

Netanyahu realizes that the agenda must be shifted for the reality based world to realize that no new nation in the fertile crescent can be created that will have the wipe my butt with a rock cultural attitudes of the middle ages that the Palestinians have combined with the 20th century know how of a short range missile that the Palestinians are so fond of. The problem is that it is politically incorrect to state that the arabs need a state like Michelle Obama needs a more surly face.

What the world needs to be shown is that the Jewish state intends to stay. When Netanyahu said that what the arabs will get is a demilitarized country, with final status issues such as jerusalem and refugees to wait, he told the world that Israel had the intestinal fortitude to tell the world that it would not rush to a peace agreement and that its prime minister had the political backing to wait the world out. A demilitarized palestinian state is kind of like MSNBC doing a hit piece on the Obama administration. It is not congruent. For Netanyahu to even state that that is a solution is so ridiculous that the world said, holy sh&t, this guy is actually able to stand up and tell the arabs to piss up a rope.

On the other hand, Obama is completely delusional. Unlike any american president since Carter, he is simply reviled in Israel. He is not hated by one part of the population, he has simply completely turned off the entire state. Israel sees in Obama a complete fool, aka a "frier" or sucker. Israelis hate suckers – they have no respect for a president who wastes his time making speeches in cairo about mutual respect from an arab/persian world that takes the position that they will inflict on the jews a second holocaust to make up for the job left undone by the first one, which by the way, never happened. Even george bush sr., when he tried to domesticate Yitzhak Shamir and his right wing, managed to keep the israeli left happy by supporting Rabin in his bid for election.

For obama, he would not spend a plug nickel of his eroding political capital on anything Israeli. His abject tone deafness to any plea for succor against Iran is simply too much for Israel. When Zbigniew Brezinski, an obama advisor nee of Carter foreign policy fame, advises US planes to shoot down israeli planes en route to and from Iran, a visceral survival instinct in israel awakens. Israel now realizes there is only one acceptable way to deal with Obama, and that is pray that the republican party wins control of part of the congress in 2010 and nominates someone else.

As for Obama’s attempt to pressure Israel, he had better watch his rear flank – his commander in Afghanistan has threatened to quit unless Obama spends some time promoting the welfare of his troops getting shot at instead of promoting health care for everyone. His domestic agenda which for the moment consists solely of a lame health care plan devoted to the memory of his dead mother who died, in his mind, because she had to spend time on paperwork qualifying for insurance, when in fact she died because anthropology professors who decided to live in Indonesia because they hate America take the burden of having their uterine cancer misdiagnosed as an upset stomach.

Posted in Barack Obama, Israel | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Popularity Of Peace

The Modern Orthodox Get A New Prayerbook

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Luke Ford

Yoel Finkelman writes in First Things:

The prayer book includes a prayer for the State of Israel, not as an afterthought or a way to sell more books, but because this siddur celebrates Zionism. Where Artscroll’s commentary cites only those commentators deemed adequately kosher, Sacks unabashedly cites the decidedly un-Orthodox Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (who first used the expression “Creation, Revelation, Redemption” to describe the central themes of Judaism). While Artscroll remains silent about the Talmudic dictum that allows women to lead the grace after meals, Sacks mentions it proudly. Where Sacks includes a ceremony for welcoming a newborn female baby, no such ceremony appears in Artscroll.

Compare the introductions. In both, fear plays a role in religious life and in prayer. For Artscroll, the religious person is fearful of various forces that mount “attacks on his faith.” Prayer provides the “inner strength” to fend off those attacks. For the new Sacks siddur, fear is inherent in the religious experience and in prayer, since one approaches God despite the inadequacies in one’s personality, despite the inadequacy of language, despite the inadequacy of what we can offer God.

According to Artscroll’s introduction, the Jewish liturgy is fixed in an unchanging text because the mystical juxtaposition of words and letters has a profound and inscrutable influence on the supernal worlds. Individuals have little room for self-expression, since they do not understand the mystical and cosmic power of the fixed liturgy.

Shaul writes: I never used artscroll because there’s no sephardic version and because I don’t particularly like the artscroll typeface (actually, I think it’s terrible). Sephardic shuls still largely have a jumble of assorted siddurim for all shapes and sizes, and looking at any one as a broad political statement is kind of a lost cause.

Posted in Modern Orthodox | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Modern Orthodox Get A New Prayerbook

Conservative Movement Joins Fight Against Kapparot

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Luke Ford

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Masorti (Conservative) Movement will join forces with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – Tel Aviv to fight against the Jewish custom known as kapparot that involves slaughtering chickens as a way of atonement for sin.

Rabbi Jeff Cymet of Congregation Adat Shalom Imanuel in Rehovot said that he would accompany the society on Tuesday when it visits the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, where the custom is observed publicly.

"I’ll be providing rabbinic support to the people from society," said Cymet, a native English speaker.

"I’ll be telling people at the market that there is an alternative to the kapparot custom that does not involve cruelty to animals."

Quoting from the Shulchan Aruch, the definitive codex of Jewish law written by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the 16th century, Cymet said that the custom was considered a type of idolatry.

I did this once because I’ll do almost anything once. A chicken swinger was in my back yard and I gave a $20 donation.

Lisa posts on Gil Student’s Facebook page: If someone does kapparot and thinks it gets rid of their sins, they’re probably oveir on darkei emori, at best.

BB POSTS: And for those who feel the need for rituals with their teshuva there is always the custom of tashlich as well as the alternative custom of swinging coins over your head which can then be given to tzedaka.

SARUK POSTS: First I should go on record as saying that I do not practice the custom of Kapparot.

Second, I believe that the Rabbi is sticking his nose where it does not belong! How many Chapters of the Shulchan Aruch does the good Rabbi crush underfoot, in HIS manner of serving G-d?

If he were to argue against the custom on logical or general religious reasons, I might be more inclined to be lenient where his opinion is concerned. By quoting the same book that he himself regularly trespasses against though, he is treading too close to the line of hypocrisy, to get away with accusing others of doing the same!

Yisrael, the idea is not that Kapparot actually removes sin, but that this act at one and the same time reminds us of the need to repent and directs us to accept that G-d is the true Judge and our King!

So, the purpose of this custom is to ask G-d, in the advent that some decree has been made, to pass the punishment on to some other lower life form.

You would be correct to wonder at such an idea, that the true Judge can be swayed into acting against some other life form, a judgment that is supposed to be passed onto this person.

The answer lies in the fact that the original custom had to do with actually buying the animal and then giving the meat after slaughter to the poor!

In reality, it was a form of Charity, and that is an act that brings with it great merit.… Read More

Today, many people do not actually buy the animals, and so this is a corruption of the custom and kind of foolish, if you ask me…

Posted in Conservative Judaism, Judaism | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Conservative Movement Joins Fight Against Kapparot

Yisroel Pensack: Leonard Cohen Should Have Been In Shul For Rosh Hashanah

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Yisroel Pensack

The next time you want to persuade your friends or your kids to go to shul on Rosh Hashanah, you can tell them what happened to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen on Friday.

According to a Reuters report in The New York Times,

Singer Leonard Cohen is expected to return to the stage on Monday after he collapsed during a concert in Spain on Friday and was rushed to hospital.

The Canadian, who turns 75 on Monday, was halfway through a performance of his hit song "Bird on a Wire" at a show in Valencia when he fainted.

A clip from the concert posted on YouTube showed him…on the stage before keeling over.

His manager later told media that the singer had suffered a bout of food poisoning but had been reluctant to abandon the show.

…Organizers of his tour told the BBC that he was expected to be well enough to perform in Barcelona on Monday…for the final show in his nine-concert Spanish tour.

…Cohen has been on tour since May, performing in Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, after coming out of retirement.

He quit the music scene in the early 1990s and became a Buddhist monk but was forced out of retirement five years ago after losing his retirement savings.

I hope he didn’t get food poisoning from eating Spanish kosher food. 

According to the UK Guardian,

Later this week, Cohen is scheduled to appear in a contentious concert at Tel Aviv’s Ramat Gan football stadium…

Cohen had originally planned to perform in both Tel Aviv and the West Bank city of Ramallah. But, after Palestinian rights groups protested against both concerts, the Ramallah performance was cancelled and Amnesty International withdrew their support for the tour.

Posted in Buddhism, Yisroel Pensack | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Yisroel Pensack: Leonard Cohen Should Have Been In Shul For Rosh Hashanah

I’d Never Seen So Much Of Her Flesh

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Luke Ford

Returning home from Rosh Hashanah services  around 2 pm Saturday, I spied a friend walking off in the distance.

My normal greeting to my friends these days is "Marriage Equality!"

This day I just yelled her name.

She didn’t answer.

She was walking in distinctly non-Rosh Hashanah attire — shorts and a t-shirt.

I knew her from Orthodox life. I’ve never seen so much of her flesh.

I ran to catch up.

She was with her shaygetz boyfriend and she was walking her shaygetz dog. They were all having about as much fun as three Gentiles can on Rosh Hashanah. They felt blithely unburdened by any obligation to crown God King and for all I knew, they were all going home to commit the great sin of premarital sex.

When I got within a block, I stopped running and put on my cooly debonair exterior.

I yelled her name until she was forced to acknowledge me.

I hated it when bitches gave me the cold shoulder.

I waved. She stopped. What else could she do? She had a madman after her. He demanded recognition. He had to have his blog post, his pound of flesh, his trophy of shame.

The goyim turned towards me.

"Are you coming back from shul?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Obviously I’m not," she said.

"I’ll walk with you," I said.

"I was telling **** about your story and she said it was an amazing story. She was raised Orthodox and she hates Orthodox Judaism. I so want to tell your story on my blog. I’ll keep everyone anonymous."

I wanted to tell her story even though I was so mixed up in it. I don’t know how much I had to do with her expulsion from the RCC conversion program. Maybe it was 90%. Maybe it was 60%. Either way, I inadvertently played a big role in ending her dreams of becoming Jewish. After almost three years with the RCC conversion program, she was out. And now she was all the way out of Orthodox life.

This was not the time for apologies. This was the time for a walk in the sun with my friends.

"I guess I’m goyim now," she said.

She had changed her name to something Jewish. She had covered up her cross tattoo. She had paid for private tutoring. She had only worn dresses for almost three years. She had done everything right but inadvertently made one enemy who brought her conversion to a halt.

"The will of Heaven," as the religious might say.

Monday afternoon, I call ****.

"I’m sick," I say.

"Do you think it’s psychological?" she asks.

"That’s so obnoxious. I’m suffering and you’re saying it is psychological. Psychological why? Because I converted to Judaism? Because ….? Because of Rosh Hashanah."

"Everything," she said. "It was very emotional."

"And so I couldn’t handle it and just collapsed in a pile before my TV? Because I’m so weak. If it’s psychological, why don’t you come over and make it all better?"

"You’re contagious."

"If it’s psychological, how could it be contagious? Huh?

"Anyway, I’m working out my psychological issues on my blog."

"Inflicting them," she said.

"Nobody is forced to read my blog."

Posted in Personal, Pico/Robertson | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on I’d Never Seen So Much Of Her Flesh

If You Want To Be Taken Seriously, Then You Must…

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Luke Ford

I find the "If you want to be taken seriously, then you must do X, Y, Z" rhetoric obnoxious.

I don’t know how many people have asked me, "Do you want to be taken seriously? Do you want your blog to be taken seriously?"

I loathe it because I don’t have a snappy comeback to it. I don’t worry about being taken seriously. Even before i started blogging in July 1997, I had full confidence that if I did good work, it would be taken seriously.

There’s no need to worry about being taken seriously. Do good work and the serious attention will follow.

J-Street does not need to worry about being taken seriously. As soon as people start writing Op/Eds questioning if you want to be taken seriously, you’re taken seriously.

When people proclaim publicly that you don’t matter, you matter. When people take the time to tell me they don’t read me, I know I’m making an impact. Why put effort into fighting something insignificant?

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes:

If J Street, the new left-wing Israel lobby, wants to be taken seriously by mainstream American Jewry, I suggest it immediately stop the patronizing argument that all those who disagree with the organization are ossified Jewish knuckle-draggers who see an anti-Semite behind every corner.

If accurate, the quotes attributed to J Street’s director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, in an article on his group in The New York Times Magazine this past Sunday, represent a breathtaking condescension toward ideological opponents that can only sow deep divisions within the Jewish community.

On why most of the pro-Israel lobbying groups support a hard line against terror, Ben Ami says they see "Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you." Ben-Ami added that these groups stifle dissent because they argue that "we’re still on too-shaky ground to permit public disagreement."

In Ben-Ami’s opinion, AIPAC is run by paranoid schizophrenics who fear another Holocaust may strike at any moment.

On Israel’s recent offensive against Hamas in Gaza, which J Street strongly criticized, "Ben-Ami acknowledges that moments of crisis for Israel tap into the ancestral impulses . ‘There’s their grandmother’s voice in their ear; it’s the emotional side and the communal history, and it’s the fear of not wanting in some way to be responsible for the next great tragedy that will befall the Jewish people.’"

So if you support Israel’s right to defend itself against missiles raining down on its kindergartens and nursing homes it’s not because you believe in a country’s legitimate right to defend itself against attack but because your reptilian Jewish brain has still not gotten over your great-grandmother being disemboweled by Cossacks.

Is this the way to conduct an honest discussion about Israel’s future – by painting those with whom you disagree as a bunch of loons who see Nazis about to storm Brooklyn?

The truth, of course, is that many people – myself included – who support the organizations J Street seeks to demonize – AIPAC, the ADL, the ZOA, and others – do so not because we fear the imminent mass extinction of all Jews but because we seek to prevent the cold-blooded murder of even one Jew.

Posted in AIPAC, Israel, J-Street, Personal, Shmuley Boteach | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on If You Want To Be Taken Seriously, Then You Must…