Chassidishe Meiselach

The chassidim of the great Rebbe Reb Bitterrenaissance tell over the following story:
Once, when the rebbe was getting ready to go to bed, as was his custom at night, his young daughter began to cry.
Now the crying of the rebbe's daughter certainly resonated in the highest worlds, and that is how Reb Bitterrenaissance heard it, for his room was down the hall.
He made his way to the room, hoping to vanquish the evil that caused the innocent child to cry. As he approached, the girl vomited, all over her crib, her blankie, and even on the floor.
The Rebbe quickly called the holy Rebetzin to help him clean up.
As they worked, the rebbe's child, by now appeased, pointed to the throw-up and asked, "Dis is da mess?"
The rebbe took his daughter by the hand and said, "Yes mein kind. But Tatty and Mommy are cleaning it up."
The Rebbe paused, in deep thought, then continued. "And not just this mess, mein kind. Whenever you make a mess, no matter how big, the Tatty can clean it up.

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R' Moshe Eisemann relates that on a visit to a member of the Levovitz family, he saw a picture on the wall, of their grandfather, R' Yerucham (Mashgiach in Mir). In the picture, he was surrounded by bochurim. All of the bochurim were facing to the left of the picture, but R' Yerucham looked straight ahead, R' Yerucham's eyes, though, were pointing to the left as well.

R' Eisemann asked the family what the picture was. They said that the bochurim had gathered along the side of the road to view the retinue for a high ranking official who was visiting the town. The bochurim all looked down the road to see if the official was coming. R' Yerucham, being an intense ba'al mussar, did not turn to look. However, he did shift his gaze to where the official was approaching.

R' Eisemann said, we see two things from this story.
1. The intense self control of a ba'al mussar, and
2. Ba'alei mussar are also human.

Walls Around Nothing

After Five full posts on this blog, just as I had suspected, I began to run out of things to write. And then, wouldn't you know it, "Something happened to me on the way to work this morning!". No, not really, it happened over shabbos.

In my house, on the second night of Pesach, we always have the same discussion. we start counting the Omer, and we mull over whether the women should count with a bracha. The logic for a woman not counting with a bracha is, that if she's going to forget somewhere in the middle, according to some poskim, the prior brachos were all in vain.

Lest you think that I have some bias against women, I should make it clear that I myself would have asked the question, because my wife probably davens Ma'ariv with a minyan more often than I do.

So we were deciding what we would do, and I said to my wife, "Y'know, I don't like this defeatist attitude. Maybe we won't make it all the way to shevuos with a bracha, but if we gonna go down, sugar, we're goin' down swingin'!" (End of story: We both made it to shevuos with the bracha. Alert Pesach Krohn!)

We spent this past Shabbos at the home of an old friend. Their kids go to the same school as the kids in my previous post, "Real Jews". The wife had heard the story of "Shimmy", the abandoned foster child who now sleeps in a yeshiva dorm, and at the table, she asked me if I knew anything about him. Her husband was shocked at the story.

"There's really a kid like this in our school? We should switch our kids to another school!"
I was livid. He was unperturbed. "I don't have anything against this boy," he said. "But I don't want my children to be influenced by someone who has no one being mechanech him."
(And as if to illustrate his point, his little son piped up with the story of a troubled kid in his own class, who one day cut off his peyos and ate treif. The story sounded fishy, so I did a little research. Turns out it's only partly true. What happened was, the kid switched from Shearis Hapleita to TA.)

He's very proud, this friend of mine. He's proud that his children never miss minyan. He tells me all the time, "When I was a kid, there was no such thing in my house as missing minyan. It just didn't exist. I don't want my kids being exposed to influences that give them these choices."
He always says, "If I could afford to quit my job, I'd home school my kids." He doesn't let his kids play with anyone who has a VCR in their home, because he can only regulate what they watch on his own VCR. (I made that up.)

I’m glad he’s very protective of his kids. But at what cost are they being protected? At what point is it too defeatist, to say “I’m not going to try, because I may lose something if I fail!”?

When I was younger, there were two kids in my school, (younger than me) who would constantly pick fights with everybody. Nobody in my family ever met an argument they didn't like, but these kids were beyond that. They really had no place in the school, and after countless fights, my brothers were desperate for my mother to convince the principal of this.

Instead. she urged them to bring the kids home with them. If they are so troubled, she reasoned, then it's our job to do what we can to help them. They did come one day after school. And the next day, and the next.

Turns out, their father was raising them on his own, trying to make a living as a handyman, while hiding his kids from his ex-wife, who had gone crazy and was trying to kidnap them. For two years, they came to my house after school, while Daddy worked the long hours he needed to to make ends meet. My parents even sent them to sleepaway camp, a far more expensive one than me or any of my siblings could have hoped for.

After about two years of this, ex-wife shows up on our doorstep. But don't fret, she’s with the father, who suddenly remembered that she wasn't all that crazy in the end, and they should get back together.

They moved out of town, and we've never heard from them since.

I wrote it concisely, but you can imagine that the two years had some rough spots. My siblings are all feisty, and these kids were obviously going through a rough time. But there was never any question about helping people who needed help. If your frumkeit doesn’t tell you that, of what value is it?

Perhaps my mother got this attitude from my grandparents, who have taken in countless neglected children over the years. Perhaps I should stop boring you, and get to the point. I have a number of stories that demonstrate my points, and you can see them here.

There were all kinds of people coming and going in my house over the years. For arguments sake, let’s assume they exposed me to the concept of missing minyan and that's why I have trouble sometimes pushing myself to go. Maybe, my children will see me, and have the same problem.

But I envision my friend, my host for shabbos, building a wall. The wall gets bigger and bigger, taller and stronger. By the time his kids are grown up, it will be impreganable. A wall of unchanging ritual, of davening with a minyan for a respectable amount of time, of wearing a hat and jacket in the street, of covered magazines in the supermarket, of tznius and shmiras halashon.

An infinitely protective safeguard, protecting nothing.

Supplementary Stories

These stories demonstrate point I was trying to make in my last post, but they didn't fit in, so I'm posting them separately.

A few years ago, on Sukkos, me Momma was so taken with the bounty she was preparing that she couldn't resist sharing it with someone. So she called a local tzedaka organization, and asked if there was anyone they knew who needed a place for Yom Tov. They suggested a woman who had just given birth two weeks previously, and was escaping an abusive relationship.
We made plans to accomodate her. About ten minutes before Yom Tov,(the woman still had not arrived) someone who knew her called to tell us, just so as to save us from any embarrassing situations, that the abusive relationship she was escaping was with a non-jew.
Shortly before sunset, after we had already lit candles, the girl arrived. At that point it became apparent that she wasn't escaping anything, as it was her Latino boyfriend who dropped her off.
Over Yom Tov, she went to Shul for every minyan possible, despite the fact that she had obviously not recovered from the birth of her baby. (Her baby's name was Elisheva Maria). She even lectured us a bit on the importance of davening. By the time Pablo came to pick her up, even the small children in my family had pieced together her story.

My parents had been worried that if they found out, it would be eye opening to my innocent siblings, and not in a good way. But the final outcome is, that my sister will never, ever, as long as she lives, become pregnant with a teenage mexican boy.

Here's a story that I do not like, as it doesn't fit in with my thesis.

A man once came to the Brisker Rav, and proclaimed his intentions to visit the Kotel every day, and thereby, according to some, have a mitzva min hatorah of the four species throughout the seven days of Yom Tov. The Brisker Rav asked, "Are you so sure of the kashrus of your lulav and esrog that you are willing to be subject to a mitzva min hatorah?"

The story does fit very well with the Brisker tendency of pessimism.

Bells of Bigotry

Here's a confession. I don't have internet access at home. I'm online all the time in other places, butI'm just too damn frum to have it in the house (Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!).

One place I frequently work is the library. I don't know what your local library is like, how they enforce the rules, but I hope for your sake it's not like mine.

In my library, a major method of enforcement is the hollering Lunatic Librarian Lady. She's a middle aged woman with broken glasses, who has absolutely no clue how to modulate the tone of her voice. She just yells everything. When I'm down and out, I cheer up by trying to envision her screaming sweet nothings in her lover's ear.

If your cellphone so much as whimpers in the library, she will holler so that ALL of the people on the computers, and the fiction section, and the diner next door can hear, saying "EXCUSE ME SIR, WE DON'T ALLOW CELLPHONE USE IN THE LIBRARY!" And you, abashed and blushing, will long since have turned off your cellphone. But that doesn't stop Hollering Lunatic Library Lady. She continues to disturb all the library patrons. "IT DISTURBS OTHER PATRONS OF THE LIBRARY WHEN YOUR PHONE RINGS!" she condescendingly continues, "PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE, AND TALK OUTSIDE!"

Another enforcer whom I hope you never meet is the fat obnoxious security guard. He's there when the library opens in the morning, and hogs the "Daily News"for the rest of the day. Every now and then, he hoists his bulk out of his chair and bellows at a random person engaged in a random misdemeanor, like quietly showing the guy at the next computer how to use a mouse.

I'm always tempted to drop a feedback slip in the suggestion box, but I don't want to be responsible for someone losing their livlihood. Also, another problem at my library is feedback slips. They never have them.

What these heroic pursuers of justice never do, is enforce anything worthwhile.

Each afternoon, after school lets out, the library is filled with tweens and adolescents of various minority groups. (I'm probably bigoted still, since I specified, but I'm working on it.) They sit and message each other from one computer to another in the library.

Honestly, but for the vulgarity and utter disregard for rules, I don't think I'd have anything against them. But these kids behave exactly the way you'd expect gutter kids to behave when nobody's watching them. Several times, an extra daring kid even made comments about the wonderfulness of Hitler for my listening pleasure. So while I struggle to remain unobtrusive as I teach the guy next to me how to use Google, the conversation around me goes something like this:

Kid A (sitting at computer 6): Hey Shauntay!

Kid B (sitting at computer 11): (Doesn't hear)

Kid A: (louder, so Kid B will hear) YO SHAUNTAY! YOU GET MY MESSAGE?

Kid B: Shit! I don' see no message!

Kid A: Ah sent you a message!

Kid B:I di-int get no fuckin message! (scrambles over to computer 6) Lemme see dat!

Kid A: It say dat Carlos say Latisha you girlfriend!

Kid C (on computer 2 with four friends): Latisha whose girlfriend?

Kid B: Fuck dat shit. Ah aint got no girlfriend!

Kid A: A di-int fuckin say dat Latisha you girlfriend. Ah say dat CARLOS say Latisha you girlfriend!

Kid B: Fuck. (scrambles back to computer 11) I'ma send YOU a message!

Hollering Lunatic Library Lady: (pointing to me) EXCUSE ME SIR! YOU HAVE TO STAY ON THE COMPUTER YOU WERE ASSIGNED TO! OTHERWISE YOU"LL LOSE YOUR TURN!

Five kids on computer 2: (snickering and pointing)

"This is what happens," I think, "When your culture makes no demands of anybody, when bitches and hos be your career aspiration (Latisha) or most desired possession (her various boyfriends)."

Now that summer is here, I see these kids even if I'm there in the morning. Today, I saw some of them again. They turned on the volume on their computers, a big library no-no, and compared songs they knew, sometimes singing along. I was thrilled when their Momma came to pick them up, because it finally got quiet enough to read the news.

When I walked out of the library a while later, there was a posse of police cars sprawled through the parking lot. The kids were standing around, just staring, and Momma was being put in handcuffs.

One eight year old kid was a little daring. "Asshole!" he yelled at the policeman making the arrest.

Momma gave instructions to the older girl. "You call Timmy and tell him where I'm at. He'll bail Ma out quick."

"Fuck dat shit," The girl murmured, listening. "Fuck dat shit."

While several of the kids were trying to display bravado, one girl just turned to wipe her eyes.

They ushered Momma into the car.

And I thought "There, but for the grace of God, goes my mother."

Send not to know,

For whom the bell tolls

It Fucking tolls for thee.

Real Jews

"What Area do You Think Torah Jews Need to Improve?" It's a topic on hashkafa.com, and it ought to get any thinking person, well, thinking. Here it is: http://www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=26307.

On hashkafa.com, my response was: Nothing. I honestly don't think that there is any one way in which we as a society need to improve. Perhaps that's because I believe that nobody can expect to be perfect, which is why we need to all contribute. But that's fodder for a future post.

Anyway, I've finally found a deficiency. It's not a problem unique to judaism. Bono, Bill Gates, and Angelina Jolie can learn from it too. But as Jews, we don't have any excuse.

I work with kids a fair amount. I tutor, work in summer camp, and even teach now and then.
In summer camp last summer, one of my kids was named Baruch*. Nice kid, by all accounts. Short, but a good athlete, which is pretty important in this camp. Peppy kid, dimples, and a smart mouth.

Sadly, a few months ago, Baruch's mother died. She'd been sick, but nobody knew quite how seriously. Terrible, terrible, tragedy, we all mouthed, and asked around what we could do to help. The shiva came and went, and by the time the shloshim was over, everybody was finally comfortable with the Dad cooking supper every night. I guess that's why they stopped volunteering.

Anyway, Baruch goes back to school. Now he's a celebrity. Everybody shares their snack with him, everybody picks him at recess, and even the teachers are afraid to discipline him.
Although it's been a tough situation, we can all breathe a sigh of relief, because we as a community circled the wagons, and because of us, Baruch will have a chance at a normal happy fulfilling life.

I probably shouldn't be thinking about it Shimmy* now. After all, it's not Baruch's fault. But I can't get this other camper out of my head. Shimmy is a big kid. He's only in seventh grade but he could pass for fifteen. He probably shaves already, if he can find someone from whom to borrow a shaver.

Daddy gone, and Momma missin a few screws. Been that way for a while. When he's living at home, he don't do nothing. Stays on the couch and watches TV. Unless his mother got the remote first.

So he don't live at home. Been in and out of foster homes. One he ran away from. One says he's a bad influence on the kids. Now he lives in a yeshiva dorm. He gets up in the morning to a chherful good morning from nobody, goes to school if he's in the mood, (which he usually is, why stay in a yeshiva dorm?) and comes home to...Nobody again.

And when I see him, wandering the streets, I can't help thinking, "Can we peel some lips off Baruch's behind to help Shimmy?"

There are two ways one can perform "chesed". The first way, the more juvenile way, is performing it in a purely reactionary way. You see Hungry Man. You walk by. You realize you will not enjoy dinner, thinking of Hungry Man. You give Hungry Man quarter.

The other type is more mature. You see Hungry Man. You feel that society has a duty to support those in need. You are part of society. So you give Hungry Man quarter.
Dude has the same quarter. Still gonna take four more to buy a beer. But the second way is better.

Sometimes, it's not hard to muster sympathy. A tremulous ten year old voice saying kaddish in the back of the shul will always keep the hearts melting, and the donations rolling in.
But a Real Jew sees beyond that. A Real Jew doesn't care about the dimples, doesn't need a puppy to make him sympathetic.

And sadly for Shimmy, there aren't enough Real Jews.



*Loser. What did you think it was going to say?

Quick note

I didn't realize comment moderation was enabled. I have un-enabled it.
The links on Link-to-blogs come up automatically. I put them in by mistake, and I have no idea what they are. I will try to get rid of them.

Roman Toothpaste

My last post was supposed to be about Atlantic City, but I got off subject. So here's a little on the actual trip.

In Atlantic City, we stayed at Caesars. Caesars is a hotel/resort/casino, that is designed with an ancient Roman motif. In the (entrance hall?) the walls are lined with tall corinthian columns. Off the main lobby, there is a fountain surrounding a statue of Augustus Caesar. The hall is decorated with random other statues. (Side note: The statues are all white, reminiscent I guess, of the way the ruins appear today. But from from what I understand, back in the day, the Roman statues were actually painted.) The ballrooms and arenas have names like "The Colliseum" and "The Palladium". A restaurant is called "Bacchanal". One sign, lettered in ancient looking print directs you "To the Vomitorium".

To me in particular, it was somewhat enlightening, because I had just finished reading "The Seven Wonders of the World- A history of the modern imagination" by John Romer (which I highly recommend to any readers of overly verbose paeans to structures of dubious existence). In it, he describes the statues and structures of Greece, which long ago was also ancient. Did you know that in those days good sculptors were revered for their skill the way perhaps actors and athletes are today? And the number one sculptor in ancient Greece, the Michael Jordan of the Mausoleum, was a dude named Pheidias. Perhaps he was the inspiration for this famous limerick, which I found in "Milton Berle's Private Joke File"(which contains ten thousand jokes, most of which may have been funny in ancient Greece, or at least in the fifties.)

There once was a sculptor named Pheidias
Whose manners in art were invidious:
He carved Aphrodite
Without any nightie,
Which startled the ultra-fastidious!

Anyway, after reading about all the thought that went into the Greek, and later Roman temples and statues, it was fun to see a portrayal of how some of them may have looked. But the Casino/Hotel taught me more than just that, about life in ancient Rome. (Warning: This post is about to take a decidedly gross turn.) Did you know that in ancient Rome, people would brush their teeth with urine? Apparently in those days yellow teeth were a fashion statement! (Rim Shot/groan) I found this out when I tasted the complimentary in room little tube of toothpaste!

Our language and culture today owe a lot to the ancient Romans. So sp many of our words are rooted in Latin. For instance, the word diabetes comes from the Latin "Diabetes Mellitus" which means "sweet flow". Since the body of a diabetic cannot process glucose, it leaves the body in urine without entering the blood. So the urine is sugary. And now we know how they came to find this out.

I bet in those days diabetic urine was found in the exclusive toothpaste section, maybe next to Rembrandt and Tom's of Maine. But from what archaeologists can gather, the RDA (Roman Dental Association) wouldn't approve it, because it contained too much sugar.


Random Observations: After Going to Caesars and Bally's Wild West, it seems clear that the theme has no real role in the casino. When I went from Caesars to Bally's, it took me fifteen minutes to notice that the music had switched from Harp to Country. The wretched looking old ladies stuffing money into three machines at once were identical.

You know how in childrens books every class has a whiny goody-two-shoes little girl who always makes sure to point out who got the answer wrong and who wet the bed? Well one of them grew up and got bitchier. (But not any funnier.) Her name is Ann Coulter.

Random Limerick of my own composition:
There was once a fellow named Gump
Whose pajamas got glued to his rump
'twas a task Herculean
To undertake peein'
And never mind takin a dump!

From car seat to Kids at Risk

So I just got back from Atlantic City, which leaves me much to muse about.
Actually, the first musing has nothing to do with Atlantic City. On the way there, my two year old daughter sat in her car seat (we bring her along because she's better than me at craps). It was getting drizzly, and she began to sing (if you're ever around two-year-olds, you can envision this enunciation) "da raineen da pouween" (If you're not around two-year-olds much, that's her version of "It's Raining It's Pouring", MBD's famous early hit.)
I'm not usually a sentimental guy. I rarely cry at all, (although since I've had a kid, I find that I tend to lose it more and more, like Paul Vitti in "Analyze This"), and certainly not of happiness. But something about my daughter singing contentedly makes me well up, as I see her so happy and content, and think of all the problems she'll inevitably have one day.
And I wonder. When she's a teenager, there's no doubt that we'll have our disagreements. Her generation will be different than my generation. I won't understand her, and I'll make mistakes.
But does my love for her count for anything? Can anyone who has not yet been a parent even remotely understand what being a parent is like? What it means to truly care for somebody?
We've all, at least those in my generation, heard the saying "You'll thank me one day". I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. But instead of one day having thankfulness for bad decisions, today I have an appreciation for (I hate using these words) true love.
So all you people out there who will never read this, take heed. Your Mommy and Daddy are stupid and antiquated. They don't understand what your life is like. They do things that alienate you and hold you back. They make you resent them, and then they complain that you don't appreciate them.
But when your mother shrieks wildly in front of all your friends "I carried you for nine months! and suffered through four days of labor! and stayed up all night with you when you had smallpox! And you're not wearing that skirt to the mall!" She may be missing a few screws. You didn't ask her to carry you for nine months, and anyway, it doesn't make her any more right about what you should and shouldn't wear.
But possibly what she means is to whisper, "I loved you so much that I wanted to carry you for nine months. I cared for you so deeply that when you were sick, I only wanted to hold you, and wished I could make you better. " And maybe she's still wrong, but shouldn't it be worth something?
And so, when that day comes, and my daughter and I are engaged in a shouting match over some triviality, instead of pounding my fist on the table and yelling forcefully "You'll do it MY way!" I think I'll just put my fingers in my ears and sing "Da raineen da pouween". Heck, she's gonna think I'm crazy anyway.
Looking back, the above has been my bombastic statement on "Kids at risk".