Category Archives: personal

Link to a hesped for Revuen Kirshner a’h

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Yesterday, Reuven ben Menachem Mordechai, the grandson of Rabbi Harry Maryles was niftar.  His body had been fighting cancer for 6.5 years and it was time for his neshama to return to the creator.  Like many others, I davened, learned, and did mitzvos in his zechus.  The levaya was very emotional, as you can imagine.  Rabbi Maryles delivered a hesped and it’s posted on his blog, here.

Shout-out to Mordechai HaYehudi

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I was recently visiting a friend whose mother was sitting shiva and we were talking about the fact that we didn’t have each other’s cell numbers in our phones. Now, our family has been to him for Shabbos lunch and we have davened together every Shabbos Kodesh for the past six years. So, the question comes up why didn’t I have his cell number? Because, we daven together ever Shabbos Kodesh, so why would I need to call him. I do have his email address and we’re friends on Facebook, so if I needed to I could get ahold of him. However, despite the term “social”, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are really not so social.

Being social means that when you see a guy in shul and don’t know his name, you find it out and say, “Hi”. Being social doesn’t mean (and I admit, I am a shtickel guilty of this) that because we have 223 friends in common that we should become friends or linked into a professional network.
On Purim I got up to daven at 5:30am with my son, heard megillah at 6 and then worked 4 hours, so I could rush home. I gathered my kids and our shaloch manos and drove around two different neighborhoods double parking and finding creative parking spots to be social. My kids went up to people that they don’t exactly know and gave out our very creative (thanks to my wife) parcels. We gave to friends, teachers, acquaintances, and some classmates of our uber-kinderlach. Since giving is the precuror to love, as taught by Rav Dessler zt’l, I have to give a shout-out to Mordechai HaYehudi for having the chachmah to creat a real social network for Klal Yisrael.

Goldfish and good times

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Photo from here
Growing up as a “traditional” Jew, Purim was always fun. Mostly because of the potential to win a goldfish and see how long they would live. My congregation’s Purim carnival was not only fun (even when I had to help run it as an NCSYer), but brought our members out of the sanctuary and the social hall and down into the basement. Aside from throwing ping pong balls into cups filled with goldfish, we played musical chairs, the fishing for a prize game, and if you had enough tickets you could put someone in “jail”. There were other games too, but these come to mind. The whole “Shaloch Manos” thing was pretty much confined to Sunday and Hebrew School.  It, for sure, wasn’t on our family’s radar.  All in all, it was a fun holiday when I was growing up.  Good time…good times.
I wax nostalgic and remember being surrounded by the people my family was close with as we celebrated what I understood as a victory for the Jews.  The feeling of being part of a community was overpowering.  Looking back now, it was a feeling of achdus.  Maybe because we were a massive minority in Wichita, KS, but we had such pride (especially on Purim) about being Jewish.    
I think about this now, as an adult, because the value of having fun in Judaism is something that I that I feel is important.  The mitzvos ha yom all involve connecting with others and giving, but we have to make it fun. It’s often easy to focus on our costumes, d’vrai Torah, and rushing around assemble and then deliver Shaloch Manos.  I know that sometimes I’m running around so much that I forget the simcha shel mitzvah and the simchas ha chaim.  Those are two things are worth giving over to others on Purim.
 

An inspiring evening

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Art found here

Monday evening I attended an informal dinner meeting hosted by Chai Lifeline to hear about a proposal for bike riders from Chicago to join in the amazing BIKE4CHAI 150 mile ride in NJ that ends at Camp Simcha. It’s an interesting idea that I’m really considering, since this year’s Bike the Drive event is on Shavuos.

That night I met two very inspiring people.  The first person was also attending our meeting.  He’s a 75 year old businessman who has joined the ALYN ride six years in a row.  ALYN’s ride is an intense 5 day ride in Eretz Yisrael along some serious routes. His biking chevrusa (and gemara chevrusa) also was at the meeting and related that this 75 year old man doesn’t get off his bike to walk up any of the inclines on the ALYN ride…amazing!  To be 75 years old and have that much koach is something to admire.

After our meeting, a man at the next table in the restaurant came over and asked the Chai Lifeline representatives, Rabbi Sruli Fried (director of Chai Lifeline NJ) and Rabbi Shlomo Crandall (director of Chai Lifeline Midwest) about their program.  As introductions were being made, it turns out that this fellow (a medical doctor visiting Chicago for a meeting) is, in fact, the founder of www.dafyomi.org.  He started the website in the mid 1990’s and doesn’t solicit donations or have advertisements on the site to help offset the maintenace costs.  He is one of the most l’shaim shamayim people I’ve ever met.

Secret identities and blogging

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T-Shirt found here
In my youth I collected and read comic books.  Part of my interest was rooted in dichotomy between the private life of the hero and the public life of his/her crime fighting (and usually masked) alter ego.

The freedom to do what you say and do what you want without it potentially affecting your private life must be someone liberating.  Because of my own self-imposed system of checks and balances I decided to post under my own name, instead of using a pseudonym.  For the most part this works for me and keeps me fairly true to myself and honest.  It does, however, mean that some of my thoughts (or rants) about things get pushed aside for more “lofty” writing (insert smile here).

In the past few weeks I was tempted to actually start another blog, under a fake name.  The idea would be that it would give me a platform (without anyone probably ever reading it) to get things off my chest and attempt to offer solutions to the many problems facing Jewish society today.  I know that I don’t have all or even a few of the answers, but I strongly loathe blogs where someone rants and raves about an issue, but even with dozens of comments, a resolution or real-world suggestion is never reached.

Hot Topic issues would be brought up like:  The trend of public blogging about the conversion process in America (within all camps of Judaism), what’s going on in RBS, self-perpetuating issues within the chinuch system, and the social pitfalls of making other feel you are “frummer than thou”.

I went so far as to make a real blog.  I even came up with an awesome blogging alias and a name for the blog.  But, there were two major problems. 
  1. The pseudonym was both revealing and also would have labeled me.
  2. I didn’t feel like having two separate identities, because maintaining this blog is hard enough.

Don’t get me wrong, please.  If you blog and don’t use your real name, it doesn’t bother me.  Some people have very sound reasons for doing this.  However, the secret identity thing just didn’t sit to well with me.  You see, this is personal blog.  I’m not Spider-Man, Superman, or even a pubic member of the Fantastic Four.  There might be some so-called mussar and a dvar Torah thrown in once in a while, but at the end of the day, it’s a personal blog and nothing more.  That being written, there are things in my life that I don’t write about and really don’t feel like sharing even if it’s in the form of a pseudonym, which is why I decided not to get past an “about me” for that other blog.   If you find the blog out there and the initial entry then great.


In the meantime, here is an edited and not so revealing version of the “about me”:

This isn’t isn’t my actual name, it’s fake.  I wasn’t born into an observant family and read a lot of the Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in high school.  I became frum in high school before CDs were sold in record stores and then, ten years afterwards, before getting married, I discovered something about myself that gave me food for thought about my own Torah observance and Knesses Yisrael.  So, without adding any more details, let’s just say that life goes on.  Back in public high school my hair was often streaked with peroxide and different lengths and shapes (thanks to Aqua Net).  By eventually I chopped it off so that I could look more clean cut for my interview at Yeshiva University (the things we do for Torah).  Back then, I spent my free time listening to hardcore punk and college radio.  Today, I have very little hair and when I do catch myself listening to Husker Du or Bad Religion on my iTouch my kids roll their eyes and call the music “complete chaos and a ruckus”.  They are somewhat correct, having been raised on Uncle Moishy, Piamenta, and YBC.  In the end, I am zoche to have a wife and children to love me and rock.  My children, fight a genetic dislike for cleaning their rooms and display a strength of self and independence that sets them apart from many of their peers.  There is nothing more hardcore than going against the grain and doing what Hashem wants each of us to do.

By the way, what is written above it a total rephrasing of what’s on the blog, so don’t bother googling any of the phrases or sentences.

Looking at my outlook

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I was asked by someone this week to define my hashkafah (outlook). Ok, that’s easy.
I’m modern-mussarnik-yeshivish-lite-neo-chassidish/yekkish-YUish-uberdox.
I know, that really doesn’t say much about my outlook.


I am often hypocritical…but I’m aware of it, I go to minyan, have a television, spend a few nights a week learning in a beis midrash, have internet, I am not a fan of talking during davening…but I am not a fan of “shushhing”, I wear a black hat on Shabbos Kodesh, wear black “Non-Fiction Unlimited” baseball cap when it’s raining, if I listen to the radio it’s only the news since the one station in Chicago I actually liked went off the air, my iPod has: Carlebach, Diaspora, Piamenta, Yosef Karduner, D’veykus, YBC, Shalsheles, Pitom, Bad Religion, Husker Du/Bob Mould, Echo and the Bunnymen, and old R.E.M., I aim to be a giver in the “Rav Dessler” sense of the word but I am open to receiving mussar, my three kids attend a seperate-sex day school (with girls and boys under one roof, my wife covers her hair, my black “Knitting Factory” kipah covers mine (ok, it’s really not from the Knitting Factory, but it’s a black knit kippah), kavod ha’brios is something I view as important, some say I yell and others say I don’t yell enough, I really enjoy it when a baal tefilah is leibidig, I have no problem sitting with a sefer and an iced latte in a cRc acceptable Starbucks kiosk, I thought I knew what Hashem wanted from me until I read Mesillas Yesharim in 1990, thought I knew what love was until I married my wife in 1997, I’ve sold a bunch of hardcore punk and alternative tapes and CDs so I could have money to purchase seforim… which is a rather punk thing to do, my kids like a majority of the Jewish music I listen to, no one in my eruv seems to like the few secular bands I listen to, I usually read a fiction book during each Chol Hamoed,  I say the tefillah of the Chofetz Chaim prior to kiddush on Shabbos so that I will be more aware of what I might say during kiddush, while I find being able to quote Rishonim to be impressive…I also find those who say “please” and “thank you” to be just as impressive, and I have this bumper magnet on my vehicle:

Prototype-not available yet for consumers

My 40 minutes as a 6th grade substitute

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Graphic from here

Every year, as part of our day school’s “give/get” program, I volunteer as the “room mother” for my son’s class.  The last time I blogged about this was when he was in 2nd grade.  My duty was really just to watch the class eat lunch and hang out in the room while their Rebbe enjoyed the faculty Chanukah party at school.  Last year, I said something that totally embarassed my son.  This year I had the intention of keeping myself under the radar.

As it turned out, that morning I drove “minyan carpool”, so I was in the school for shacharis.  I observed something for 2 minutes that made me very sad.  During davening one of the boys thought it would be cute to take a siddur from another boy who was davening.  What surprised me was that these boys are actually really good friends.  I kept waiting for the siddur to be returned, but it didn’t happen, so I went and retrieved it myself.  I am not that friendly with the family of the boy to took the siddur, so I wasn’t too hip to saying something to him about what he did.  I did mention to the boy who was left without a siddur that behavior like that isn’t the way that Hashem wants us to treat our fellow Jews and if someone does something like that again to him then he really should say something.  I am very close with him, so he totally understood what I was saying.  Knowing that I would have time in the classroom that afternoon with both boys (and the rest of my son’s class), I started thinking about how I could get the message across that taking a siddur from someone is totally uncool.

As I walked into the class, I realized that I had to tell over Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s story of “The Holy Hunchback”.  If you are not familiar with it, go here and then continue reading.  I had played it for my son the week before and I knew that this was the vehicle to, hopefully, get my message delivered.  I let the kids have their lunch and schmooze among themselves and then offered them a story.

Even though my son hoped I would sing it, Carlebach style, I simply said it over, slowly repeating the catchprase, “Children, precious children, just remember the greatest thing in the world is to do somebody else a favor“.  Then I said that by doing a favor to someone, we’re doing what Hashem does.  He did us the biggest favor by creating the Torah, creating the world, and creating us.  I mentioned that we don’t have to be street cleaner to do people favors.  By simply smiling at someone, saying hi, or asking how someone is doing, you following Hashem’s example.

Then I said to them that by making fun of someone or being mean you are doing the opposite of  “the greatest thing in the world”.  I told them, locking eyes for half a second with one boy, that even something that they think is harmless, like taking a siddur from a friend who is davening, is, like, far from the greatest thing they could do in the world… it’s not a favor to you, your friend, or Hashem.

I ended my 40 minutes, as their next teacher came in, thanking them for their time and reminding them that “the greastest thing in the world is to do someone else a favor”.

A thoughtful gift

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In the sefer Da Es Atzmecha, the mechaber writes that the essence of giving is that you are aware of what a person really needs or is lacking.  To properly give someone a gift, you have to understand them.  You shouldn’t, for example, give someone a sweater because you think it looks good.  Since it was my birthday recently, my wife and son came up with an awesome gift for me.

Last year for my anniversary, my wife got me a digital photo frame and it’s been sitting in the box, unused.  Over the summer, while at someone’s home, I saw such a frame displaying family pictures and commented, “Wouldn’t it be cool to just load a frame with with photos of gedolim?”

Well, thanks to my wife and son, my living room is currently rockin’ a digital frame with photographs (culled from the web) of:

The Chofetz Chaim, Rav Dessler, Reb Moshe and Rav Hutner (talking together), Rav Gifter, Rav Hirsh (illustration), Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Piaseczno Rebbe), Rav Freifeld, Rav Moshe Weinberger, Reb Yaakov and Rav Ruderman (walking), the Rav, Reb Aryeh Levin, Rav Kook, and the Alter of Slabodka