crisisoftheweek +++1,000
Great post!
There is one major difference though, between frum world hysterics and Italian pasta:
Italians have been cooking pasta for hundreds (over 1,000?) of years. Just a short while ago in historical terms, (definitely less than 100 years) the frum world, and the whole Jewish world for that matter, responded to crises with Tehillim, with tefillah, with teshuva & tachanunim. It’s our sophisticated generation that has decided to address every problem by throwing money at it and putting ads in the papers about it in the belief that this will cause the problem to hang its head in shame and slink away.