My Feelings

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

Friday afternoon, I had two beautiful women paying attention to me.

One, however, was about to call Kavel.

"How can you call Kavel when I’m talking about my feelings?" I wailed to Kris.

She smiled and gave herself to me completely.

She wore a filmy cream top and she had long black hair and she was tall and slim, just how I like ’em.

She had a sweet smile.

"I’m just starting to open up here," I complained.

Ally Yoga Mint ate another spoonful of lentils.

"How can you call Kavel at a time like this?" I continued. "Guru Luke is in the house!"

"It can wait," said Kris.

"All I need is a little female attention," I said. "That’s all. Just a tender act of random kindness like you’d give to some drunk in a gutter. Just talk to me for five minutes. It’s not wrong. It’s what Guru Ram Dass would want you to do. Sat nam."

"You get lots of female attention!" they protested.

"I see you at the back of class, you’re always talking to girls," said Ally.

"I just want a little attention, just a little conversation, just a touch of tenderness. That’s all! Give me a little female attention and I’m the happiest man in the world. I’m the easiest man in the world. So pliant, so kind, so considerate, so other-directed. Just give me five minutes of your time and then go on with your day heedless of my needs. Take no further care on my account. Give me no consideration. Make all the calls to Kavel you want. Wahe Guru it up. I’ll be fine. All I want is now. All I want is for you to listen to me. All I want is for you to pay attention to me now!

"My needs are simple and the day is long. Let us now praise great men."

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Envy

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

"I had lunch with these great people," said my friend. "You know them. They seem to have it all. They seem to have a great marriage. They have a beautiful home. They have beautiful children. They have a great dog. They have thriving careers. They have an honored place in the observant community. I envy them. I want to be like them. What should I do?"

"Place yourself in a position where you can spend as much time as possible around these type of people," I said.

"But isn’t envy a sin?"

"Don’t worry about that. You’re aspiring to be more. They’re showing you a way. Watch what the people you admire do and become like them."

I turned away and walked home. I’ve been trying to follow my own advice for 15 years, since I came to Pico-Robertson. The primary reason I am an Orthodox is that most of the great people I know are Orthodox Jews. I want to be like them. And yet I am so far from them. I am so far removed from the people I want to be like. I am so scorned by the people I admire.

Oh well. I have competing values. Following the demon of my writing is even more important to me than creating bonds with my fellow Orthodox Jews. When community and blogging clash, I choose blogging.

Hari har.

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That Great Smell In The Bathroom

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

At yoga this morning, I ran into author Tony Rafael (The Mexican Mafia). He’s working on a new book about the Mexican drug cartels and their cooperation with the Mexican Mafia (American born Hispanics who control gang activity in Los Angeles, and take particular delight in driving blacks out of certain neighborhoods).

Tony’s wife brought him. She’s a certified instructor of Kundalini Yoga.

An old woman comes up to me while I am lying on my back with my legs going up the wall and immersed in memorizing the Hebrew blessing after a snack (al hamichya).

"Excuse me," she says. "I smelled a smell in the bathroom that smelled so good, I have to know what it is. It smelled like cedar."

"Split pea soup," I want to tell her but I say nothing.

"Was it you?" she asks.

I shake my head.

She leans in to me and starts sniffing under my arm.

I’ve just started using "Swagger" deodorant and the crone was excited. "Hmm, it wasn’t that," she says, "but it’s a great smell."

Then she moves on to question someone else about the great smell in the bathroom.

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Should One Say Gut Shabbos To A Member Of The Opposite Sex Who You Don’t Know?

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

In my experience, saying "Gut Shabbos" to a member of the opposite sex who you don’t know too often leads to the grossest forms of immorality. As I walk down Pico Blvd on a Shabbos, I only say hello to Jewish men. I completely ignore women unless they’re really hot and I’m willing to risk my soul for them (or unless they’re shiksas or friends of mine).

The custom in Pico-Robertson Orthodox life is not to greet Jewish members of the opposite sex when walking down the street.

One thing I can’t figure out is when you see someone in the distance walking towards you. Do you stare at them until you pass (that can be 20 or 40 seconds, a definite violation of my parole terms) or do you do as I do and look off to the side and pretend to be absorbed in a tree or a billboard until they’re right up on you and then turn and greet?

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Orthodox Life In Northern California?

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

Michael emails: I stumbled across your site today, and got a sense that you have a good feel for Jewish life in Northern California. Is there no Orthodox life to be found north of SF and Berkeley? Seems so beautiful on the coast, and my wife and kid are looking into discovering the Cali Northern frontier. Any suggestions?

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Synagogue Self-Defense

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

From Huffington Post:

The New York Post reports that a group of "badass rabbis" is teaching a synagogue self-defense course to terrorist-wary temple-goers. Lessons include "how to take down a terrorist by the neck, how to use a table as cover from gunfire and how to execute a nifty running somersault while drawing a gun."

The group, known as the International Security Coalition of Clergy, is lead by Rabbi Gary Moscowitz, a former NYPD cop, who says things like "Jews are not like Christians… if I turn my cheek, I’m coming around to make a kick."

With gems like that, this is simply one of those news stories that could equally be at home on The Daily Show or in The Onion.

Watch the video below to see the rabbis in action. Gothamist nails it, saying it’s a mix of "Wes Anderson, Adam Sandler, and the ‘Sabotage’ video."

 

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Jane Fonda, Danny Glover Support Destruction Of Israel?

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5 (UPI) — A Los Angeles rabbi says movie stars Jane Fonda and Danny Glover support the "destruction of Israel" if they boycott the Toronto International Film Festival.

TMZ.com reported Friday that Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center opposes a letter sent to festival officials announcing a boycott of the Sept. 10-19 film festival because it will include a program about Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary.

The letter states the program honoring the Israeli city "ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants."

Fonda and Glover, along with playwright Eve Ensler, are among those who have signed their names to the boycott letter.

Hier, who has earned two Academy Awards for his documentaries, applauded the festival program and criticized those who oppose it.

"Whoever would sign on to a campaign like this would support the complete destruction of Israel," Hier said.

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Using Keynes As A Crutch (get it?)

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Yisroel Pensack

In a long piece in The New York Times Magazine called "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?", Nobel Prize-winning economist and Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman tries to "explain" the current crash without analyzing the macroeconomic impact of land speculation and land monopoly or mentioning "Progress and Poverty — An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth…The Remedy" by Henry George. That’s like trying to explain why objects fall to earth without discussing the law of gravity or mentioning Sir Isaac Newton.

Krugman writes:

The birth of economics as a discipline is usually credited to Adam Smith, who published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776. Over the next 160 years an extensive body of economic theory was developed, whose central message was: Trust the market. Yes, economists admitted that there were cases in which markets might fail, of which the most important was the case of “externalities” — costs that people impose on others without paying the price, like traffic congestion or pollution. But the basic presumption of “neoclassical” economics (named after the late-19th-century theorists who elaborated on the concepts of their “classical” predecessors) was that we should have faith in the market system.

This faith was, however, shattered by the Great Depression. Actually, even in the face of total collapse some economists insisted that whatever happens in a market economy must be right: “Depressions are not simply evils,” declared Joseph Schumpeter in 1934 — 1934! They are, he added, “forms of something which has to be done.” But many, and eventually most, economists turned to the insights of John Maynard Keynes for both an explanation of what had happened and a solution to future depressions.

To learn the truth about neoclassical economics and why it was invented, read "Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem against
Henry George" by Mason Gaffney, a professor of economics at the University of California, Riverside.

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Orthodox Bible Study

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Gil Student writes: Rabbi Hayyim Angel, an extremely popular Bible professor and the rabbi of a large and storied synagogue in Manhattan. He recently published his second book — Revealed Texts, Hidden Meanings: Finding the Religious Significance in Tanakh — and I would like to take this opportunity to offer some general thoughts on his approach and challenge a reader to compose a more detailed analysis, which is beyond my abilities.

Rabbi Angel’s first book was Through an Opaque Lens.

ANON COMMENTS: Contrary to how you began, no Orthodox Jew is unaware that other orthodox Jews, in fact the overwhelming majority of orthodox Jews, do not teach Talmud to girls. If one doesnt know even that, he can hardly be called an orthodox Jew. And please dont bring up everyone’s favorite blog charachter, the "True Scotchman". Orthodox Jews, by their very definition, are aware of traditional attitudes and teachings, whether they abide by them or not. If someone is simply unaware that the vast bulk of orthodox Jews all around him do not teach talmud to girls, he is either 1) completely clueless and thus not worthy of note; 2) an anomaly so rare as to be considered non-existent; or 3) not an orthodox Jew at all.

In a perhaps related note, I’ve read one article by Rabbi Angel, on the so-called New Schhol of Bible study. It was an interesting article, but one thing’s for sure: Nechama Leibowitz was only included because she’s a woman, and Rabbi Angel seems to have this obsession with women’s learning. The other commentators featured in his review are all creative thinkers; NL – and this is not to take anything away from that great woman – was not an original thinker with respect to parshanus, and she would say that herself.

ABE POSTS: Rabbi Angel’s passion for truth and his awesome respect for chazal and classical mefarshim are among the traits that make him one of the most popular professors at YU. He often teaches a medrash or a peirush that, at face value, doesn’t seem that impressive. He then teaches it in a light that reveals how profound it really is.

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Eliot Spitzer’s Hooker Returns

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Luke Ford

From the Huffington Post:

Ashley Dupre, the call girl entangled in former-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal, lashes out at critics and the media in a new blog post on Global Grind.

Dupre writes that while she’s happy that Spitzer, who will be an adjunct professor at City College in the fall, is seemingly moving on with his life, she has been unable erase the stain of scandal from her own name.

The struggling singer claims not have "made a dime" on the affair, and takes the publishers who had offered her book deals, only to rescind them, to task:

Did this hit too close to home for you because your husband cheated on you with an escort? I will write the book regardless and do it for the right reasons.

From the New York Post:

"Let me say this — most girls, to varying degrees, of course, want to be pampered and have nice shoes, designer handbags and gorgeous clothes," Dupre, 24, writes in a blog post on hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons’ Global Grind Web site. "I know many women who target guys with money and use them to get these things. They toy with them, flirt, go on dates, have sex and then drop hints about that new dress . . . or being short on rent money — and the guys deliver it."

Then takes a poke at all the women who pass judgment on her, but are engaged in "dishonest relationships" of their own. "I see this all over New York City. Some women aren’t as vindictive, but still dive into relationships with wealthy guys who they don’t love or even find attractive, but they stay in it because they have a nice home, a car and spending money," she wrote. "They would rather stay in an unfulfilling or loveless relationship than lose that security."………..

Fred emails: Oh, the shallow, meaningless cynicism of it all…. Give me a girl who pines after true love, preferably with blond hair and big boobs.

Joe emails: What you really need to do is get a blogging relationship going with this Dupre girl. You know deep in your heart that you agree with her. Think of the possibilities, you’d give her blog-respectability (bloggerspectability?) and she’d give you, um, you know. She even kinda-looks-Jewish, so you can take her from the hovel to shul. This would be bigger than Emma, bigger than Leah Kleim (lot less blood, for sure). And perhaps you can even get her to join you at Sex, Spirit, & Shadow: The Three S’s of Dynamic and Personal Evolution with Diane Musho Hamilton, Marc Gafni, and Sofia Diaz. I think this is a big opportunity. Don’t blow it

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