Alexander Technique & Revolutionary Road

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Luke Ford

I’m reading this novel by Richard Yates and I’m struck by the number of allusions to Alexander Technique.

I have no reason to believe that Yates ever heard of the technique, but here’s a profound insight from his novel: "And he was gradually aware that she felt it too: there was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications. They stood that way for a long time."

The characters in Revolutionary Road seem beaten by life and they hold themselves that way, stiff and constricted and awkward. They sit hunched and slumped. Their shoulders sag or ride high. Either way, they are contorted. Consequently, their thinking is similarly constricted and they feel like they have few options. They don’t know freedom in their bodies and thus not in their minds or souls either.

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Training Women To Become Orthodox Spiritual Leaders

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Luke Ford

From a JTA blog (link):

Rabbi Avi Weiss announced last week he was creating Yeshivat Maharat, "an Orthodox Yeshiva of Higher Learning … [to] train women to become Orthodox Spiritual Leaders – full members of the Rabbinic Clergy – in Synagogues, Schools, and on University Campuses." The products of said yeshiva won’t be rabbis, though, they’ll be Maharats…

Hurwitz told me the school is planning to open in September and will train women to "function as rabbis" — that is, it will provide a full complement of religious and halachic instruction, including pastoral duties and a synagogue internship. The instruction will be part-time to start and the entire course of study will take four years. After that, she hopes to help place women in positions much like hers — the only problem is, there barely are any positions like hers.

"You have to start somewhere," she said. "We have to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward and I think that the community will follow."…

Ben Bayit writes Hirhurim: If you read the subtext of all these articles it’s pretty clear that there is nothing really spiritual about this movement and it is really just an issue of job opportunities and aligning pastoral tax benefits amongst men and women.

Jaded Topaz posts: Ben Bayit, if you read the subtext carefully i’m not quite sure what this Maharat position even is.

Can Maharats lead synagogue prayers,serve as a judge on a bais din (conversion/monetary/matrimonial), officiate at a wedding.

If they cannot, what precisely can they do with their semicha.

If they can, wonderful.

Is there a yadin yadin and yoreh yoreh track at Yeshivat Maharat.

Is there a Dayanat track for the more intellectual liking individuals as opposed to the rabbinic social worker track.

MAHARAT POSTS: The big deal should be pushing YCT to call their Rabbis Maharat, not that the women Rabbis should be called Rov.

The point of YCT is not to train Talmide Chakhomim, but rather to train communal workers with who are somewhat familiar with Rabbinic sources. In a similar vein, a Maharat is not objectionable; it is claiming a pastoral rather than religious role. I merely suggest that for the sake of consistency, the YCT men call themselves Maharat, and leave the Rabbi-ing (pesak Halakha, serious Torah writing and teaching) to others. Of course, this is no impediment to them sharing their limited knowledge with bale battim, women, or children. Or for them to lead a congregation pastorally.

READER POSTS: stern, for a while now, has had the graduate program in talmud. other modern orthodox synagogues, for a while now, have had women participating in many areas of religious and jewish communal life which are not "synagogue prayers,serve as a judge on a bais din (conversion/monetary/matrimonial), officiate at a wedding". many of these women, in fact, are graduates of the stern program.
it seems to me that in its simplest form, this yeshiva is just putting 2 and 2 together (i.e., advanced religious training for women + communal leadership roles for women). as much fun as everyone seems to be having with their clever reading between the lines for subtext, etc., the reality remains that this ‘yeshiva’ is nowhere near the chiddush everyone would like to pretend that it is.

LAWRENCE KAPLAN WRITES: The key question in my view is whether they will pasken shaylot and have the functional equivalent of Yoreh Yoreh. As for Yadin Yadin, most rabbis only receive Yoreh Yoreh. That does not mean that these rabbis are only spiritual social workers.

REJEWVENATOR POSTS: There are a collection of egal solutions to issues around gender and sexual orientation. For example, having governments recognize only civil unions, be they hetero or homosexual, and leaving marriage to religions. Or having men insist on there being ten women present for a minyan (ie the men would stop andd not say barchu if ten women were not present).

I think the suggestion that men refuse to style themselves as rabbi, but instead embrace the title of Maharat is similar, and I think it’s a great idea.

ROCCO POSTS: It seems that this was likely result on the insistence of Talmud study amongst the women. The newsworthy element is the fact that it took so long to come into fruition.

MECHY RESPONDS: no. i’m sure mr. rocco is wrong about that. i’m convinced it all started when they abandoned the tzenoh renoh in favor of those new fangled educational theories which, afroh l’fumeh, ignored our mesorah and the rov minyon and binyon of g’dolim to teach some women to read hebrew ouside the siddur, r"l. and now look at where we have, entirely predictably, snowballed into. talk of a slippery slope.

Y. AHARON POSTS: Rocco, the real antecedent for womens’ advanced torah education and knowledge is to be found in the authorization of formal Jewish education for girls and women by such figures as the Chofetz Chaim and the Belzer and Gerer rebbeim. Once you start teaching Chumash and Rashi to girls, look where it can lead. To my knowledge, Satmar still doesn’t teach girls from a sefer, and the late rosh yeshiva of Ner Israel didn’t approve of their learning Mishpatim with Rashi(too much TSBP). Too bad the latter views have not gained ascendancy in Jewish education. We could have kept women totally dependent on men for spiritual and halachic guidance. Of course, the attractiveness of the modern world would have insured that such loyalty to holy tradition would be fairly uncommon. A traditional world without traditional women is kind of limited in longevity.

ROCCO RESPONDS: You reiterated the previous fellow’s argument with the addition of the rationalizations for its existence. Like I said before, the Beis Yakov system never evolved into a Taulmudic format. Only the educational formats that took stressed Talmud and gender equality have produced Maharats. The distinction is clear.
The obvious question was whether the promoter of Talmud studies amongst women foresaw such an evolvement and what his opinions on it where.

MJ POSTS: 1) R. Avi Weiss is not the right person to establish this kind of program. The problem is that he is viewed as a political rabbi, in the fullest sense of the word, not as a rabbi’s rabbi. So, I imagine that many people will be thinking, "oh, here goes Avi Weiss, making another statement." Statements can be good, statements can be important, but they are not self-evidently substantive.

2) What’s missing from these discussions again and again is the recognition that the what motivates feminist discourse within Orthodoxy is the fact that the traditional position of women within orthodoxy is a) theologically problematic and b) practically untenable within the ranks of the modern Orthodox.

People occasionally mention b), but very few, not even R. Avi Weiss as far as I can tell, seems interested in making a) an explicit part of the discussion over creating parity in the structures of religious authority.

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‘For Me, The Essence Of Judaism is…’

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Luke Ford

That’s my least favorite phrase particularly when it is followed by "asking questions."

Danielle Berrin writes about the creator of the Showtime show Weeds:

For her own part, Jenji Kohan’s refusal to limit herself in her show’s creative content has made moral ambiguity a “Weeds” trademark. No topic is too grim, no character too depraved, “No one is allowed to be politically correct,” she said. Even some Jews have a place growing among the weeds.

“I think everything is available for laughs, no matter how tragic,” Kohan said about pushing the limits of entertainment.

Probe for questions, mine for humor and go deeper. It’s exactly how she likes her Judaism.

“For me, the essence of my Judaism is to ask questions — ask why, ask more. And in a way, the show allows me to follow that path of Judaism,” she said.

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Jews Love Life

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Luke Ford

Jeffrey Goldberg writes in the New York Times about this new book by leftist Israeli academic Benny Morris:

Morris’s gloom sometimes leads him to inflammatory conclusions. He recently suggested to an Israeli journalist that perhaps Ben-Gurion “should have done a complete job” of removing Arabs from the land that became Israel. “If he had carried out a full expulsion — rather than a partial one — he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations,” Morris explained.

In “One State, Two States,” he argues that this most enduring of conflicts is primarily cultural, not political. Between Arabs and Israelis, “the value placed on human life and the rule of (secular) law is completely different,” he writes, “as exhibited, in Israel itself, in the vast hiatus between Jewish and Arab perpetration of crimes and lethal road traffic violations.” But might the differences also be explained by higher rates of poverty among Arab Israelis?

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Museum Terrace Apartments

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Luke Ford

Here’s some background to this story.

A tenant emails: Another pipe burst last night @ 11:00pn. Alarm rang for 30 minutes throughout building. Flooded the garage again. And once again it’s a “mysterious van” that hits a pipe that’s never to be seen again. Or could it be 25 year-old pipes that they are too cheap to fix? Tenants were gathered – 4 Fire Trucks – some even got the whole thing on video cuz they’re sick of the bs. A tenant on the 6th floor moved out last weekend, lived here less than a year and said to another tenant, ”Be careful living here you’re going to get sick.”

AN UNHAPPY TENANT WRITES THIS REVIEW ONLINE: Living here a long long time unfortunately. Not always easy to relocate when one is self employed or a new job or small children. So many of us have been stuck here and I mean stuck for a long time. Power goes out about 2x a year and its NEVER their fault. Water is shut down for a day monthly with no reimbursements. Elevator breaks down weekly. Horrible smell in the building. Manager, Arnali, is the most stubborn unpleasant manager you will ever face. Many… just evade her because she is so nasty and controlling.
Now MOLD has infested the building. People are getting sick and most are symptomatic. Truth be told we are building a case against them and hope to get the building shut down. It needs to be rebuilt. 25 years of not maintaining a building can lead to these problems. Doctors have even called this building, "Sick Building Syndrome."
Most of us are miserable just miserable. We feel so sorry when we see people moving in and we want to warn them, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE."
Pipes in garage break out of no where causing mass flooding and they make up some sort of excuse as to why it happened.
They try to make the outside look nice to manipulate people to come in but no one has any idea what they will endure once living here. Most brake their leases or get out after 1st year. We weren’t that lucky.
They dont give a damn about us – we are just a rent check. The owner Jonah Goldrich has lawsuit after lawsuit pending against him by many of his buildings. Seems as though mold has infested most of his buildings. You can google Goldrich & Kest & Mold and catch up on previous lawsuits.

HERE’S A REVIEW FROM LAST YEAR: If you enjoy third world conditions you will adore these apartments. No lights and no hot water along with a garage that is in total darkness. Management cannot explain why at random times this happens and she has managed this location for years. Using the stairs is a must because the elevators are totally unreliable in addition to being very slow – not to mention the bad smell which permeates the building. The keys you are given for the common areas (such as stairs) do not usually work because the locks are in need of repair. If there is an earthquake or fire, there is absolutely no chance of escape. The elevators do not work on a regular day so imagine running for the stairs in a stampede.

I rented there because I was impressed with the two bedroom floor plan, the open area hallways and they accept dogs. Upon moving in I noticed the difficult location of the elevators and stairs in the garage plus the elevator in the lobby was not an option because it was even further my apartment. If you ever need security, they are not at the front desk. You will have to search for them only to find they don t care and have no answers.

More reviews here.

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Tears For Fears

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

Kundalini Yoga class.

I arrive five minutes early. I put down my stuff, take up my cross, roll out my mat, sit next to the wall, lie down on my back while simultaneously sending my legs straight up in the air against the wall (so I am posed at a 45 degree angle), then pick up Betrayals: The Unpredictability of Human Relations by Gabriella Turnaturi and read such insights as:

Furthermore, if it is true that not only in every relationship but in every interaction parts of ourselves that we were unaware of come to light, we cannot even be sure that we will never betray. Betrayal, both as an act on our part and as an action we undergo, is always relational and always possible. When we enter into relations with others, a step that is necessary for the construction of our own identity, we put into play our desire to be with the other — but also our desire not to lose ourselves in the other. (Pg. 4)

As Robert J. Avrech wrote in the foreword to my book, Yesterday’s News Tomorrow: Inside American Jewish Journalism:

Betrayal fascinates Luke Ford. It’s his life.

Luke betrayed his father, a prominent Seventh Day Adventist minister, when Luke converted to Judaism.

Luke betrayed his second "father" when he sacrificed his friendship with Dennis Prager to work on an unauthorised biography of his hero.

Luke betrayed Judaism when he became lukeford.com, the preeminent journalist covering LA’s sordid, mob-infested porn industry. Luke betrayed his Orthodox synagogue when he lied about his work and told the rabbi that he was a "freelance journalist who writes about crime for a Japanese magazine."

A smoldering brunette walks in while I am preoccupied by these lofty thoughts and rolls out her mat three feet from mine. Then she takes her bag and puts it against the back wall.

Baby, I’d light your fire but you are already ablaze! Sugar, I must quench your flames or we’ll both die! Honey, it is a mitzva to love the convert! Sweetie, who took the stars out of the sky and put them in your eyes?

She must be a stripper. Or a porn star. Wow. I know I told my friend that I don’t pursue women for sex, but maybe oh maybe baby I could make one small exception in your case. I keep most of the mitzvos, particularly the ones against incest and homo-sex. Considering the enormous service I do for humanity on this here blog, surely the Almighty won’t hold this sin against me in the True World.

I’m with Susan Boyle. I want to dream the impossible dream.

And even if HaShem does hold it against me, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. Cast me into the eternally burning lake of fire! I’ll pay the price. I want to know! I want to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil! I don’t care if I don’t live forever. Holy rabbis, if we had world enough and time, this coyness would be no crime, but at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near and yonder all before me lie deserts of vast eternity, so let me tear all my pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life, thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.

What I am saying, rabbosai, is if I could just get the opportunity to drop all my pretenses and step heroically into the abyss of intimacy, losing myself and my fears in someone holy, then that would be tikkun olam and how could that be wrong?

Holy, holy, holy, hell!

Rabbi Union was right!

Halfway through the class, the teacher has us chant (progressively louder): "God and me, me and God, are one!"

I refuse. This is horrible. This is pure heresy. This is pantheism. Where am I? How could I have sunk so low? I have abandoned all that Dennis Prager holds sacred. No wonder the good man said: "He was neither a pupil nor a friend. I think I appealed to something good in him at some point, and I hope I did. But I don’t know."

Oy, why the Jews? What is the reason for anti-Semitism? It is horny hebes such as myself preying on vulnerable shiksas. Why must I be such a shark?

In too much moral turmoil to exercise, I ride out the class on my back, where I usually do my best work. The teacher talks about heartbreak. The other day in the middle of meditation, he started crying.

This bloke in the front row interrupts class for the second time to tell us all that he’s never cried in his life, except once when he was six years old.

Well, thank you!

I’ve read books about heartbreak and seen some movies, listened to a few songs, and talked about my fears of abandonment in therapy. I’ve even shed a few tears since I was six.

Class is virtually over. We only have time to do the "Long Time Sun" song. The teacher asks us if we’re willing to stay a little longer tonight.

I hear people say they’re ready to leave but the teacher must’ve heard something different and he’s pairing us up for a final exercise.

PAIRING US UP! Sweet baby Jesus! Oh Christ! There is a God who intervenes in our daily lives!

The teacher is pairing  us up! Pairing! Bringing together. Taking one sad lonely old Jew and connecting him to another human being who happens to be young and gorgeous and all woman.

I bet you anything this one doesn’t have a penis.

Oh please, oh please, oh ppppleeeease sweet Jesus, let it be! Let it be! Let it be!

She and I are the only two possible partners for each other. Everyone else is all over the room. They’re just not worthy of her.

  And did her feet in ancient time
        Walk upon England’s mountains green?
    And was the holy Lamb of God
        On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
    And did the Countenance Divine
        Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here
        Among those dark Satanic mills?

I want to turn to her to see if she feels the same way but I am afraid. I am afraid of rejection. I am afraid of intimacy. I am afraid of abandonment. I am just so afraid. So alone. So sad. So old. So sore. So sleep-deprived and love-deprived and sex-deprived and so very very alone, oh please, sweet Jesus, heal me!

I return to my Alexander Technique directions and rise up, letting my neck be free and my shoulders lengthen and widen, and my spine elongate and my knees release forward as my hips unclench and the hammer of Thor’s wrath stands up.

Once poised, I turn to her to find she’s turning to me. We exchange uncertain smiles as the teacher instructs us to say hi.

"Hi, I’m Luke," I say.

She says her name.

The teacher tells us to kneel across from each other.

Did he say that? Or did he say to kneel across from each other with the knees touching? The last time I had this much physical intimacy I had to pay for it — with my soul!

She’s moving her yoga mat to mine. She’s passed the halfway point between us. She’s not playing some stupid power game that leaves me feeling like a dick for wanting to be close to her.

"This is hard," she says.

If you only knew…

My face has changed from joy to uncertainty to neutral to acknowledgment to intimacy.

I scooch myself forward a few inches and then we’re looking in each other’s eyes and I’m losing myself in her sweaty brown face and we’re gliding into easy pose and our knees are touching and she feels so damn good that I am sure the Talmud has ruled that what we’re doing is illegal and will send the blogger to Hell.

She doesn’t shriek and and she doesn’t complain to Rabbi Gordon Bernat-Kunin and she doesn’t run away. She keeps smiling but her smiling is changing with mine as we experience the frightening emotions of intimacy with a stranger not blessed by either secular or ecclesiastical law.

Hari Har!

We’ve locked eyes and I’m determined not to blink. I’ll show her who the Alpha Male is. It is Levi Ben Avraham! Never again will a high-achieving woman find me lacking in gonads! Never again!

The teacher tells us to place our hands against each other. Hers are tiny and mine are long.

I go back to my Alexander directions and tower above her, morally and physically. Our knees are touching and our hands are touching and our eyes are locked and our two hearts beat as one.

The teacher has us say hi again. We do and it has a very different quality. Much softer and more intimate. The other has penetrated our soul and changed us.

For all the girls who shared my life and now are someone else’s wives, I’m glad they came along…

The teacher gives us the mantra, puts on the groovy tune, and we shoot into space.

This is more fun than Yom Kippur!

This is the first time in yoga class that I’ve been instructed to touch someone. Normally I do it out of my own volition and it’s created some very unfortunate incidents. But this is legal!

Who can call the police on me now? Where’s the tznius patrol?

If you want to say I’m guilty, then I’m guilty of love in the first degree.

We pump our arms back and forth, hands and eyes glued to each other, as we chant. I’m leading.

When I screw up the mantra too severely, I make a wry smile and her face acknowledges me.

She’s not blinking. My eyes are crying out. She does a half blink. We pump. I do a full blink. And then another. I can’t believe she’s more of a man than I am.

Her eyes sport growing dots of red and now they’re swimming with tears and we’re pumping back and forth and she’s in great pain but she’s taking our pumping to the next level, she’s taking over our pumping, she’s leading our pumping and I’m keeping up with her stroke for stroke and now a big fat tear is streaming down her face. And another!

I’m ecstacy! I’m pumping a hot chick in yoga class chanting some bit of Hindu idolatry and she’s balling!

I’ll never betray her. It would be so wrong to blog this. I must stop now before I hurt someone.

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The First Night

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

"Would you marry a girl who only had a Conservative conversion [to Judaism]?" my friend asked over lunch. "Or if she was only half-Jewish. Only her dad was Jewish."

"I wouldn’t rule it out," I said.

"When you find a great girl, you don’t look for ways to disqualify her.

"I was dating this girl who was raised Orthodox and absolutely hated Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Jews but she was completely respectful of and accommodating towards my observance. It wasn’t that she didn’t get in my way, she knew what I needed and she didn’t give me any trouble. She even seemed to enjoy it.

"She was sleeping one morning and having a nightmare that I was gay, and she woke up to my yelling at her, tied up in my tefillin, ‘shel lo asani goy… shel lo asani isha.’ (Thank you God for not creating me a Gentile. Thank you God for not creating me a woman.)"

I was feeling happy and had so much wisdom to dispense.

"I don’t get it," he said. "You’re Orthodox, right?"

"Yeah."

"But you date non-Orthodox women. You date non-Jewish women. Why waste your time chasing sex? Shouldn’t you be looking to get married."

"I am looking to get married. I am looking for a great girl. I am not going to disqualify one because she says she’ll never do without turning on lights on Shabbat. It’s been a decade since I chased sex. Now I look for a great girl, Jewish or goyish, and I try to connect with her and see if we can build a future together. I would not marry someone unless I could build a Jewish home with her. We’d eventually have to get on the same wavelength about Judaism."

I went on and on with my explanations until we’d come to his place and it was time for me to trudge on alone and wait for my shiksa guest.

Her phone broke so she had to knock on a neighbor’s door to use the internet to find my number to call my phone so I could hear the ring and look at the caller ID and come out to the street to get her.

We’d talked for years but never met in person. I figured the thing to do was to walk her around Pico-Robertson. What more exciting way could there be to spend a Saturday night?

Back at the hovel, I gave her socks and a smile. I poured her a glass of filtered water and put on a Holocaust movie. I lit a candle and whispered my intention.

We lay down on the floor and got under my comforter.

I smelled something strange burning. My head was next to hers and I didn’t want to move. She smelled good. This strange fire did not. Oy, but I forced myself to join — temporarily — the reality-based community and I finally saw that my wooden food shelf was alight.

I gracefully paused the movie, doused the fire, apologized for my incompetence, moved the candle to a safer place, and resumed losing my tawdry identity in the great sweep of Jewish suffering.

After five straight minutes of not thinking about myself, it was time for my medication. I popped a clonidine and a melatonin. I wanted to be black tonight.

"What are you taking?" she asked.

"Something for ADD," I said, "and melatonin for sleep."

"Can I have some? How big are they?"

"Three milligrams."

"Give me three. I need them to get over my Ambien addiction."

I poured them into her hand and brought her a glass of water.

U b mine tonight bitch!

11 pm. When I exclaimed about a plot point, she said, "What’s that? I closed my eyes for a minute."

"Perhaps we should go to bed," I said. "You can crash here. Let’s rearrange things."

I pulled the pillows from under her head and put them at the top of my bed of blankets. Then I brought her and the comforter over.

She’s completely dressed. We’re just friends. We’re just a couple of writers who discuss the finer points of our craft. There’s nothing to see here, rabbis, so just run along now.

"I don’t think I can sleep with someone in the same bed," she said after I clambered in beside her, sweaty and eager and old.

She turned away from me towards my cupboard.

I faced the refrigerator, a foot away from the toilet where my chances swam.

"One of us can go on the floor by the computer," I said, "if we’re not asleep in a few minutes."

Twenty minutes later, we’re not asleep. I felt anxious and took the hard floor at her feet.

I dragged down my two pillows and spread out a sheet on the floor and then wrapped myself up in the old comforter.

I tossed and turned. My shoulders felt compressed by the hard floor and my back shortened and tightened. At 2 a.m., I popped in a CD of the Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road and within an hour I was asleep.

I wake with the birds, before 6 a.m. and thought of God and putting on tefillin and taking a cold shower and how nice it would be to crawl back into my bed and take my fellow writer in my arms and hear her thoughts on T.S. Eliot’s objective correlative.

But I force myself to wait for her to move in such a definitive manner that there is no question she’s awake.

After she moved definitively three times and sighed loudly twice, I got up and slid into bed and wrapped my arms around her.

We lay side by side facing my cupboard.

She didn’t protest at my advance nor did she respond.

Better than her screaming bloody rape and calling the police.

When the shiksa said no, she meant no.

After half an hour, my left arm under her head went numb. I pulled it back into its socket and rolled over to the frig. It was largely white except for the large rust spot.

Later she washed her face and rubbed on vitamin C oil and anti-aging cream and gave me some and showed me how to apply it.

Then she gave me back the socks she’d borrowed and I promised her to never wash them.

"Do you feel like some brekky?" she asked.

On our walk to Pico Blvd, she talked about this guy Sean who platonically slept in the same bed as her at a party. And the next morning, he told everyone, "I slept her good."

"He tried to spoon me," she said to me, "but I wouldn’t let him."

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‘Make Your Enemy Your Teacher’

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

I got a call from a girl today.

"I was really mad at you for what you’d written about me," she said, "and then I was in this office and I saw a sign, ‘Make your enemy your teacher.’ And I thought I’d call you and tell you that."

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The Orthodox Way

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

I was having lunch with two Gentile friends this past week, and this really goyish goy asked me about the Jewish community harboring criminals from goyisha justice and whether that might fuel anti-semitism.

I replied that the rabbis in their written responses to these issues had considered every point he had raised and spent thousands of pages elaborating on these matters.

"But I want to know what you think," he pressed.

My response was that I didn’t care what I think. I wanted to know what the Jewish tradition says on this question.

Later that night, I pressed an Orthodox rabbi into a theological discussion. Did he believe that God intervened in our daily lives? Are good things more likely to happen if we pray for them?

He responded by citing various statements from the Talmud.

I got impatient with him. "But what do you think?" I pressed.

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Short Cuts

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Luke Ford

* About three years ago, I made the mistake of telling this nine-year-old girl that I smoke cigars (she had been propagandized at school that this was evil). I was kidding. I do not smoke anything. Ever since, however, she has grown a big frown whenever she’s seen me and she starts hating on me. "You’re a smoker!" I try to tell her that I was just kidding but she doesn’t believe me. She’s about to celebrate her bat mitzvah and she treats me like dirt. One of these days, I need to tell her, "It is not appropriate for you to talk to an adult that way."

* I was at a potluck the other day. The kugel looked particularly appetizing. As I opened my mouth, I inadvertently sent a fine spray of saliva over the whole thing.

* This past week, when I talked up Kundalini Yoga to people, they told me that it does not give them a strong enough workout. "If you’re primarily looking for a workout, Kundalini Yoga is not for you," I respond. "It is for people who want a total experience of chanting, meditating, lecture, stretching, workout."

* I had a delicious breakfast burrito at Schwartz’s Bakery on Pico Sunday morning. I ask my shiksa, "Have you ever had a boyfriend who cheated on you?"

"Once," she replies.

"How did you find out?"

"I saw it in my dream. I’m really intuitive and when something is going wrong with someone who is close to me, I feel it. I dreamed he was kissing this girl Sarah. I called him about it and he eventually confessed.

"He was really straight. He didn’t drink. He went to church every Sunday. All guys who don’t drink are cheaters. They are so straight in everything else, they cheat sexually.

"I have a Mexican friend who was married to an illegal alien. She told me, ‘All men who don’t drink are cheaters.’ She deported him."

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