Birthright’s Ties To Haredi Judaism

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

The Forward reports:

Many of the young people who pass through the Jewish Enrichment Center in Lower Manhattan view it with great affection. It is often the first time they have come in contact with a Judaism that is engaging and accessible. The rabbis responsible for the center’s educational and religious programs are charismatic and approachable people who, participants say, have had a large impact on their lives.

As the official New York follow-up organization for Taglit-Birthright Israel — which sends young people on free trips to Israel and lately is trying to keep them Jewishly engaged when they return — there could hardly be a better model.

But there are also those Birthright alumni who have been turned off by the JEC, sensing that it has a hidden, religious agenda that clashes with Birthright’s declared nondenominational and pluralistic stance. Their suspicions have now been substantiated with the revelation that the JEC’s rabbis were trained at Ohr Somayach, a Jerusalem-based ultra-Orthodox yeshiva with international branches and a publicly declared goal of turning secular and nonobservant Jews into ba’alei teshuvah. The JEC, it has emerged, was launched as an outreach arm of the yeshiva.

For some Birthright alumni who spoke recently with the Forward, this confirmed what they had already surmised.

The realization for one person came when he was asked to memorize lines of Talmud and encouraged to wrap tefillin every day. For another, it was the weekend he was required to spend with a Haredi family on Long Island if he wanted one more trip to Israel. And for a few, it came only after an all-expense paid month at a Jerusalem yeshiva, where they were presented with a stark choice of abandoning their current life for a more religious one.

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Facebook Addiction

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

I’ve never spent even an hour on Facebook during a 24-hour period but I have a friend who confesses she drank a bottle of wine last night by herself and spent six hours on Facebook. This does not seem good.

I have spent hours chatting on my live cam, but that was with a hot chick, so it doesn’t count as a sin.

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Who Do You Love More?

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

When I was a kid, some time between age eight and 15, I asked my mother who did she love more? Me or dad?

She said dad.

Should you put your spouse or your kids first? Dennis Prager tackled the issue on his radio show today. He said you should put your spouse first. It is too easy to forget each other through your preoccupation with the children.

I would put my spouse first and I would want her to put me first.

Usually it is wives who say their kids need more of their attention and usually husbands are more likely to say that they’ve lost a significant amount of their spouse’s attention since the kids arrived.

Women are more ruled by their emotions, so whatever they decide in theory before marriage may not matter much once their emotions of motherhood click in.

Dennis: I have all men calling in and they’re all saying that they put their wives first. Perhaps it is easier for men to put their wives first before the kids?

Luke: I remember John Gray (Men are From Mars) saying that men find it easier to appreciate their wives than the other way round.

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Feeling Like An Outsider In Orthodox Judaism

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

I have a several close female friends who’ve flirted with Orthodox Judaism but not finished conversions to it. They look obviously goyish. They feel like conspicuous outsiders to the Jewish community, and they fear that they will always be viewed with suspicion, distrust, and dislike. So they wonder if this is really the world for them? It has become very clear to these friends what born-Orthodox Jews think of them and it is not good.

I understand their feelings, but I believe they will will diminish once my friends prove themselves by completing an Orthodox conversion to Judaism and then shouldering their share of the load in the community.

To convert to Orthodox Judaism is easier and quicker — in most instances — than completing an AA degree at a community college, but it still tends to weed out those who are not up to the task.

I speak as someone who has been in three different Orthodox conversion programs — I never really got going with one in Sacramento because I left town in 1993, I was booted from the RCC in 2001 and I had one process I won’t go into right now.

Oh well, the honest man is always in trouble.

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Let’s Debate Fundamental Principles

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

Thomas Frank, who’s left of center, writes for the Wall Street Journal:

What’s dragging the Democrats down in the health-care debate isn’t confusion about details. On this the president and his supporters have proven themselves the ablest of technocrats, easily identifying each plan’s particulars and its shortcomings, laying everything out on nice flow charts.

It is the big questions that are tripping them up. Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.

In his first hour of today’s radio show, Dennis Prager talks to Jeff Stier, associate director of the American Council on Science and Health. They discuss Big Pharma, lead in toys and e-cigarettes.

Jeff: The Obama administration wants to pay for healthcare on the back of the pharmaceutical. They’ve already gotten $80 billion in givebacks (money Big Pharma have earned through innovation) and Congress wants a $100 billion. Why not take it all away?

The best way to lower healthcare costs is to provide new innovative life-saving medicine that keeps people out of hospital.

Yesterday the head of the Gates Foundation said that drug companies should give away vaccines. They shouldn’t have to. The reason we have so much innovative drug development in the United States is not because Americans are so much smarter than everyone else but because America has a free market where people can take risks and make profits. Almost all drug development takes place in countries with a free market.

Many Republicans agree that pharmaceutical companies should pay for more healthcare.

Is there a level of profit where you would save pharmaceutical companies are making too much profit? No. If they make what economists may call "excess profits," competitors will enter the industry and drive down prices. The more money they make, the better, because it means they are making new drugs.

Jeff’s articles:

News Center
  Something to Chew Over (from the Wall Street Journal)
  Bitter pill for FDA: law on herbal supplements
  New Lead Law Poisons Housing (from New York Post)
[ List All ]
Health Issues
  The Drugs Do Work (from the Guardian)
  Healthcare Reform That’s Hard to Swallow (from Los Angeles Times, Detroit News, and Twin Cities’ Pioneer Press)
  Putting Organ Traffickers Out of Business (from the Guardian)
[ List All ]
Health Facts and Fears
  Congress Votes to Ban Genetic Discrimination
  Sick Kids Misused in Smoke Ads
  Mandatory Calorie Counting Struck Down by Judge
[ List All ]
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Anatomy

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

Reading between the lines on my blog, you’d expect that anatomy would be my favorite subject.

You’d be wrong.

Sure, when it is made personal I can find it attractive, but as an academic subject, it bores me.

I have to take anatomy as part of my Alexander Technique teacher training, but I find the topic puts me to sleep. I was never any good at studying stuff I wasn’t interested in.

I’ve never been interested in science.

Knowledge of anatomy does not necessarily add much to your Alexander Technique. You can be a great Alexander Technique teacher without knowing any anatomy but it sounds better if you know some. You sound more authoritative and professional.

When I am stuck in a class where I have little interest, I tend to slump and pout and vege out. I lie on the floor and nap. I do yoga poses. I feel frustrated and bored and depressed. I want to flee. I feel like my primary relationships are failures and I want to make that my Facebook status update.

I feel like I am going downhill. I want to go to bed. I want to curl up into a ball and disappear.

Today we each had to draw a scene from our childhood. My drawing was the only one that nobody could understand. They didn’t even know which side was up. The only part of it that spoke to me was the hairy hole in the middle of my picture that was supposed to be a rock garden.

My secret garden.

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‘Shame On You’

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

Jane Doe emails:

I was trying to google shalhevet school for my son and came up with all this "stuff" on your blog? website? about information about lawsuits etc

I worked at shalhevet during the time of those situations you mentioned and i know a lot more details than you do with regards to those situations.  despite that, i make it a personal policy to know all the facts before i put things in print and i decided discretion was the better part of valor.

i was deeply offended that you consider yourself an orthodox jew – you are in fact what i call a "loshon Whore" an opportunistic voyeur and if in fact you do consider yourself frum, I suggest you take the time before rosh hashana and yom kippur to do some serious teshuvah and stop your salacious gossiping and spreading dirt about your own people.  we have enough people who hate, mock and shame us.

you caused me to inadvertently see and read loshon hora – you caused me to sin and you dont even know me and won’t even be able to ask my forgiveness this year.  how many other people have you done the same to?

I hope you don’t have a family. if you do, you have shamed them all. i wonder what your parents would think of you now?

i am embarrassed to call you a brother.

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Men Are Motivated By Criticism, Women By Praise

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

A male acquaintance of mine wrote a book on fat after he was yelled at by a stranger, "Hey fatso, get out of the road."

Women don’t seem to be motivated the seem way. I’ve told a lot of women that they were fat and needed to work out. It’s never worked out. They haven’t appreciated my advice and they haven’t dropped the pounds.

I’m listening to "The Way of the Superior Man" by David Deida (born Greenberg) and he explains the different ways that men and women are motivated. To motivate a woman to lose weight, for instance, say how beautiful she looks when she’s covered with sweat after working out.

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19 Reasons To Blog And Not Just Tweet

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Luke Ford

Adam Singer writes:

Twitter is popular because it is easy.  It is easy to setup, easy to copy-paste links into, and easy to write 140 character bits.  But, having your own blog remains the strongest platform if you’re serious about sharing ideas and having a continued dialog with the world.  Blogging is the antithesis of easy, however it is far more rewarding.

I’m not saying Twitter isn’t a useful and interesting service, because it certainly is.  But it does not negate the real opportunity that is actually made more useful by the popularity of microblogging:  having your own blog.

Are you just using Twitter but not blogging?  You’re missing out.  Here’s why you should make a blog your home base and consider Twitter an outpost:

1.  Blogging demonstrates true commitment and passion to your industry that you really can’t fake long-term.  Most won’t be able to sustain it over long periods of time with frequency, but those who do so are rewarded in spades and stand out from the crowd.

2.  Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines.  Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.

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‘But I Wear A Yarmulke…’

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Luke Ford

D. emails: You whingeing little ponce! You write, "I wear a yarmulke and tzitzit and a beard and people still ask me if I’m Jewish." You’re NOT Jewish. A self-administered conversion doesn’t count. Rabbi Union was right. You’re a deceitful whelp. If I, your dear old dad, donned a bloody mitre, it wouldn’t make me a fair-dinkum Catholic bishop, would it? You’re just playing dress-up like you did with your dead mum’s clothes and makeup. That didn’t make you a girl, did it? Well, at least physically it didn’t. Your romps with your childhood mate Wayne Cherry lead me to believe that you believed it did. Sickening.

And keep up with your fair-dinkum Alexander Technique. It seems as fraudulent and specious as everything else you undertake.

The next time I see you, Sunny Jim, I’ll give you a wallop you won’t soon forget.

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