Recently in Quickies Category

A few odds and ends today from non-work life:

• Last night I posted my Rosh Hashana derasha which was a fun challenge to write and deliver. R. Schnaidman gave me a time range of 30-35 minutes which is normally beyond how long I can talk, so for the first time in many years I had written out most of it beforehand and spoke both from the sheets and extemporaneously. Feedback was positive, though one person asked if it was intentional that I didn't cite any Zohar or Ba'al Shem Tov.
  
  I said yes, and politely explained that I was following my mesorah. After all, it was Rosh Hashana...



• As certain individuals know, we had some now resolved issues with my landlord. Apparently, lots of other people had worse experiences: there's a class action suit against them.



• I know this is late for Rosh Hashana, but this song seems relevant (music starts at 2:18) even if it doesn't count as an official zemer.



• Speaking of simmanim, the line between what is an innocuous simman and outright avoda zara is somewhat complicated. I gave a shiur on it some time ago, and based on far too many conflicting sources, couldn't reach a definitive conclusion. I did conjecture that the degree of seriousness which one takes these simmanim is likely proportional to the potential issur, with the litmus test being how one one would feel if the simman wouldn't be performed. For example, R. Tendler once told us that a woman came to him Erev Yom Kippur looking for a chicken to do kapparot because if she didn't, she would die that year. That, he said, was avoda zara.
  
  Regarding the simmanim of Rosh Hashana, I'm beginning to think that most are fine given that most are simply puns - some even bilingual puns. In other words, they seem more for entertainment purposes rather than a magical act. For another R. Tendler example, I first heard from him the one "lettuce, half a raisin, celery" = let us have a raise in salary.
  
  If you still take these seriously, then in addition to avoda zara problems, you likely have no sense of humor - which could pose problems when people start calling you an idol worshiper.



• In what should some as no surprise, I don't do kapparot following Shulhan Aruch's admonition that it's darkhei emori. I also have never been a fan of tashlich especially since a former Hindu co-worker once asked me, "what was that thing where you pray to the river."
  
  However, for efficiency's sake I suggest that next year we could work on combining the two practices during the asseret yemei teshuva by simply flinging chickens into the water - perhaps even feeding them bread first. I'm sure God would really appreciate that much more than doing them separately as it would double the mehillah power.



• And on a more serious note, through a great set of hashgachic circumstances (and the ubiquitous chords directory I will soon be teaching an Introduction to Jewish Guitar. Even with some nervousness, I'm really looking forward to the entire experience which I hope to recount afterwards.

If I don't post before Yom Kippur, Gemar Tov to all. Looking back at what I last year I don't think I can even hope for less erratic blogging given my new work schedule. Despite the infrequent or sporadic posting, we still had an eventful year with preliminary thoughts and detailed rebuttal of the Conservative Teshuva on Homosexuality and the aftermath, a conflict and conversation in Washington Heights, the RCA's gerut policies, and of course, the Negiah.org fiasco. However, I can and still will ask forgiveness if I have inadvertently or unnecessarily offended people through carelessness or laziness. Although I do stand by what I write I freely admit everything could use more editing, not just for typos, but for tone or imprecise syntax.

Naturally I have no idea what the next year will bring, but I do hope to at least maintain the status quo of quality (if not quantity). Thanks again for reading, commenting, and reminding me why I'm still at this nearly five years later.¹

Shana Tova,
Josh

Update: I will be sans computer for a few days while it's being repaired, and as such may be slower in responding to e-mails or the like.

1. Yep, it's been that long; the forthcoming retrospective should be fun.

Nothing major today, just a few interesting links and thoughts:

• Page Six reports that a movie is in the works covering the rise and fall of electronics retailer Crazy Eddie. Aging New York couch potatoes no doubt remember Eddie's frenetic commercials - our prices are innnsaaaaaaaaaaannnnne. As it turned out that Eddie Antar was crazy like a fox, fled to Israel and eventually was sentenced to 8 years in prison for massive fraud and assorted SEC violations. Page Six reports that Danny DeVito will play the role of Eddie.
• Apparently if you try too hard to get out of jury duty, you might wind up facing one yourself. A Cape Cod man is facing charges for making up excuses in the hopes of an exemption. What's interesting here is that we have a real life case of the classic Liar Paradox
  

  "I'm frequently found to be a liar, too. I can't really help it," Ellis added.

  "I'm sorry?" Nickerson said.

  "I said I'm frequently found to be a liar," Ellis replied.

  "So, are you lying to me now?" Nickerson asked.

  "Well, I don't know. I might be," was the response.
  

  Ok so he doesn't know if he's lying but even if he was, how could he have answered the question? The exchange continues:

  "I have the distinct impression that you're intentionally trying to avoid jury service," Nickerson said.

  "That's true," Ellis answered.

  Or is it true? There's just no way to tell. And for the coup de grâce:
  

  Ellis could face perjury and other charges.

  In other words, Ellis is facing perjury for lying in court when he said he was a liar.



• Shaya sends in an AP story from today covering the declining state of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge which we recently visited. The article implies that the marsh is deteriorating due to increased levels of nitrogen from the city. It would be a shame to lose the marsh, even if so few people know it exists. If you're in the NY area, try stopping by one nice Sunday while it's still there.

A few bits of bookkeeping today:

• My father has been posting some articles on UTJ Viewpoints. Despite the erratic typesetting, you may find it worthwhile.
• Jewess has a very good report of the Mt. Sinai Town Hall meeting from a few weeks back, and delivers a fair reporting of what transpired.
• While the new commenting policies have largely been a success there have been some complications with lost comments. If you forget to comment in the new field, all you need to do is hit "back" on the browser or the link provided and the text of your comment should be saved for resubmission.
• Finally, this Shavuot I will be giving shiur on Halakha V'Ein Morin Kein at some point in Washington Heights. I don't have the schedule yet and to be honest I don't have the shiur finished, but I'll keep you posted when I know more.

Every now and again there are a collection of stories which I find interesting, but not enough to write something substantive (not that I do anyway). Anyway I created a "quickies" section for this purpose, but I'm looking for a wittier title. Suggestions welcome, puns encouraged.

Here's today's list:

• This excellent editorial by Dinesh D'Souza attacks the "atheist hubris" that religions are the primary cause of evil in the world. We wrote about this a few weeks ago, demonstrating that some atheists function similarly to religious fundamentalists. SIW had something on this recently, but his site is down at the moment so I cannot provide a more detailed link.
• I doubt many of my readers were or are big fans of professional wrestling, but a not uncommon storyline was when a title match had a controversial ending and the official loser (a bad guy in this case) declared himself the "real champion," carried around a fake belt, and generally get in the good guy champ's way until the blowoff match on pay per view. Why does this matter? Because the exact same thing is happening in Mexico with the presidential elections. No word yet on the steel cage match.
• At the NJDC phone conference someone asked if there was a concern regarding Keith Ellison being the first Muslim elected to Congress. The NJDC said that they were encouraged by Ellison's positions on Israel and in general were not worried. Yesterday Ellison delivered a video address to a CAIR fund raiser. His remarks were typical Democratic talking points which is to be expected, but there could be some concern based on CAIR's track record. In fairness there were other Representative who spoke (notably all Democrats) and addressing a crowd does not indicate total agreement with its policies. Still, the political world does place a value on which organizations merit appearances. It might be something, it might be nothing, but it will probably be fodder for someone.
• I used to live in Spring Valley NY. Back then we didn't roll this way.

I'm in a very strange place right now where the most interesting things going on in my life are things I'm not at liberty to discuss publicly at the moment. On the whole, life is pretty much the same as it usually has been, but there's still some catching up to do.

Enter the bulletted list:

• This may sound surprising coming from me, but we're sorely lacking in good accessible poskim. To paraphrase R. Tendler, calling something a safek, throwing up your hands and being mahmir isn't pesak, but the avoidance of pesak. Thankfully I have some numbers in my cell phone, but it's still a problem and it's going to get worse.


• Speaking of cell phones, mine is literally falling apart and it's depressingly difficult to replace. Since the current expectation these days is to replace your phone every two years, manufacturers are making cheaper phones. I can understand my model doesn't exist anymore, but the new ones are flimsy and actually have less functionality than the one I have which I purchased for the same price two years ago.


• Should you ever need to get a non-Mac laptop, get a Thinkpad. Best quality and service out there hands down. Personally I think I'll be making the switch when my current one dies, but hopefully that won't be for another few years.


• It's elections like these which make me proud to be a registered independent.


• I recently signed up for Spertus College's Feinberg E-Collection and I highly recommend it. It works very nicely and gives you significantly cheaper access to several wonderful resources, accessible from almost any computer. I happen to own the latest Bar Ilan CD, and I still find it worthwhile. Check it out.


• If you're in the Philly area, try to spend a day at Wissahickon Creek. It's really close by and gorgeous on a nice fall day.


• From the Ironic Errors Department, if you go to Israeli Government's offical website for aliyah, the links on the page produce a "Runtime Error." On the Facts about Israel page, the "History" link returns a "Security Error." (At the time of this posting at least).


• And for some blog notes, as a followup to our earlier post on the matter, the Bitachon people have since added attribution.


• Also, you might have noticed that I've included a "Printer Friendly" link at the bottom of each post. Should be self-explanatory.


• Finally, and this one is important, due to the exponential increase in blog spam I've had to make an important change in the site. Until now I've been filtering spam messages by manually approving valid comments, but the inundation of spam has made this solution far too tedious and time consuming on my part to continue. I have experimented with creating my own CAPTCHA, but completing it will take way more time than I have right now. (There is a plugin for MT3 but the load it puts on the server makes this option implausible). In the meantime, to post a comment on this site, you now have to register with Movable Type's authentication service TypeKey. Registration is really simple and safe from what I can tell. We'll see how this works for the time being, or at least until I find a better solution (or someone codes a CAPTCHA for me).

Hopefully we'll have some more thoughtful posts coming soon.