I Just Cannot Understand It. Seriously.

You Give Them a Lift...and You Owe Them!

I was stupid enough to pick up a hitchhiker on 18th Ave & 45th St. The chasid spoke in Hebrew. Odd I thought. Even odder that he needed a ride for three blocks. A mere thirty-seconds into the ride and I was already regretting my nicety - he hit me up for tzedakah..he was from "Eretz Yisroel..." You know the deal. Well, I pretended not to understand but he repeated himself - this time rather clearly.

Why do some people have to take full advantage of every favor? I'm the idiot for even stopping. Shortly after he tried to schnorr, I politely told him that he is better off walking - the traffic is "crazy this time of day." Hatzlacha!

"Sheik" Shlomo Amar Not Much Different than the Imams in Iran

What the hell is wrong with people and why is MBD submitting to this Sephardi terrorist? (Go Avraham Fried! He is supposedly ignoring the ban).


Rabbis issued an edict on Wednesday barring men and women from attending mixed theaters even though most facilities have segregated entrances and seating.


The edict took effect as early as Thursday when a concert in honor of 82-year-old cantor Ben-Zion Shenker at the Wohl Center in Ramat Gan was canceled....


more...

A little desperate, aren't we?

This is from an email I received. The subject line read "Jewish Love, Jewish Gossip, Jewish Money."

Are they for real? I just hope that the ultimate goal is not to dissuade bright young students from completing their university curriculum, as such kiruv organizations have been known to do. Paying people to learn about Judaism has a cheapening effect and a great potential to backfire. I guess the kiruv pros are running out of ideas. It's hard to engage today's youth in what many of them consider an archaic and rigid form of Judaism. The pull of the secular world is greater than $250 and a couple of movies on the "Aish Cafe Movie Player." "Whatever Works" must be the new mantra.

Four-year-old abducted and people don't care.

Just witnessed a chasidishe mother of (at least) three, pushing a stroller containing an infant, while another child was walking alongside them. The woman, yapping loudly on her cell phone, was oblivious to the fact that a third child of hers - a two-year-old girl, was walking at a leisurely pace, at least 40 feet behind her mother. Maybe she realized but just didn't care. Or perhaps she was too busy placing her gefilte fish order. What will it take for people - especially "heimishe" people to realize that children have one, unexpendable life, that if not constantly guarded, may be scooped up by a sicko in a black car. What the hell is wrong with people?!

Shabbos at the beach?

Before I headed home this afternoon, I said goodbye to a colleague who was off to the Washington, DC area for a weekend with friends. Good for her. It's going to be a gorgeous weekend...and DC sure is nice.

As I stepped out of the elevator and waved a final goodbye to Linda, I thought to myself "It must be nice to go away for the weekend without having to stay indoors and eat cholent." Well, staying indoors isn't a religious requirement, but many who don't hold of (or even acknowledge) an eruv are pretty much stuck inside, especially when they have children too small to walk.

“Nah" one often hears, "the non-religious Jews/goyim don’t know what they’re missing when they don’t have shabbos...."

Really? On the contrary, many frum Jews don’t know what they are missing. Which makes me give credit to those who pine for a "Saturday at the beach" but refrain, betting on an eternity of sunshine and breezes in the world-to-come. They are the ones making a real sacrifice – not those who equate shabbos with paradise...have a good one and enjoy the kugel!

Think Jews are Stingy? Try Italians!

We get a bad rap for our supposedly stingy ways but "ain't nobody" cheaper than an old Italian. There's an old ginzo couple near where I live with both a "No Parking in Driveway" sign and a "No Trespassing Sign" prominently affixed to the entrance of their weed-filled driveway. The kicker is, they do not even own a car!

I remember an old "Mussolini-type" that used to live across the street from me. I did not know his name but referred to him as "No Blocka" because he sat all day in a wifebeater in front of his driveway on a white plastic chair and whenever someone would park and encroach on the curb cut in front of his house he would yell, "No blocka! No blocka my driveway!" He would literally call the police and try to have a car ticketed if it was even an inch too close. He too did not drive. And when it came time to sell his house because the block "got too Jewish" he wanted blood - from the very people he harrassed. And guess what? Some sucker who couldn't afford a better neighborhood gobbled up the house and gave Mussolini top-dollar like it was the last piece of property available on the Italian Rivieria.

The above anecdotes might explain a territorial or selfish, rather than a cheap attitude but did you ever see the inside of an old Italian home? Mirrored walls and brown shag carpet (or the occasional generic white tile) in the living room and faded yellow linoleum in the kitchen are bad relics of the 70s. And then when they want to retire and buy a condominium in a 55+ South Jersey community so they can get away from all the Jews, they try to weasel top dollar for their eyesores from eager young Jews who plan to gut the crypts anyway. While Jews often renovate (for vanity or necessity) these old crows don't even slap a coat of paint on their houses for decades. They might say "I didda all the worka myself," but in reality it would kill them to have to hire a contractor once in a while.

Try doing business with these people. They'll squeeze every dollar out of you and if you are a business owner, God forbid you make a profit. They always think you are "one-upping" them and even if you give them a fair deal, they'll walk away in their old Members Only jackets and call you the cheap shylock!