2morecents

I found this to be one of the most brilliantly written descriptions of a person’s yetzer hora. Giving him a simplistic name of “Jerry” was genius. I would love to buy a book written by this author.
Anyone that dismisses it with nasty comments like he should see a therapist, is missing the picture here.

I’m married for 20 years longer than you are. Take it from me, it’s not worth giving it a second thought. Smile and pay for the cleaning lady. No guy in the whole world will ever fully understand why a wife needs to have a cleaning lady. It doesn’t matter if you or I understand it. when the solution to your sholom bayis is as simple as saying “sure, hire a cleaning lady if you need one” take that solution with both hands and thank H’ for making your sholom bayis solution so simple to achieve. To fight for otherwise is just being an idiot. Stop being an idiot my friend.

Regarding all the other arguments you find yourself having with your wife and the resulting resentments, understand this: Your either going to adopt the idea that your wife is always right no matter what and have sholom bayis or your going to think that somehow your opinion is more right than hers and suffer hell in your marriage because of it. It’s as simple as that. Your wife is always right. The sooner you get used to that the sooner the 2 of you will be happy and be stress free.

But what if she’s wrong??? So what? If your opinion happens to be more right than hers once in a while and you go with her opinion anyway, probably the world won’t come to an end and the resulting sholom bayis and happy, healthy home will more than make up for the occasional lack of choosing your more right opinion in that specific case if it should ever happen.

Besides, women have binah yesairah and usually happen to be right. When they’re not, they usually figure it out on their own and eventually say so. So in the end, the best outcome will play out ok anyways.

A person with a weight issue is showing to a degree their personal, emotional issues as well. Most of the time extra weight is the direct result of certain middos that could use some serious fine tuning. Therefore, beyond the aesthetics which may or may not be an issue, the extra weight on a potential spouse should be a serious red flag regarding the persons middos.

Also, having extra weight could very well have a direct impact on a persons ongoing mood and ability to exercise calmness and other nice, quality middos so the bottom line is, extra weight and good / bad middos are not really 2 separate things to consider when going out.

I’m hard pressed to think of another device in the Yetzer Hora’s arsenal as damaging as cell phones. They give a person the ability to Privately view unlimited pritzus 24/7. They enable people to connect with the absolute worse types of relationships that would otherwise be unreachable. They have an addictive quality to them as shown by the fact that people can’t stop using them even on Shabbos or Yom Tov. This is also evident by the fact that people routinely nurse their cell phones in their hands and hold them up to their faces even when not using them. Just take a look and you see this all the time. Cell phones, having so much power of privatized nisyoinos built in make them an emotionally attached device.

To walk around openly using a cell phone b’farhesia is blatant chuzpah & a disregard for sensitivity to basic avoidos Hashem. This is true for all adults. All the more so for children who don’t have the advantage of fully thinking for themselves yet. Children follow the examples of their parents, adults and teachers. How disturbing is it that principals and teachers and parents walk around openly using cell phones with all the inherent taivos associated with them in front of the same children they suggest shouldn’t use them? So much hypocrisy is tantamount to psychological abuse to the children.

Billam Harasha is one of the most evil Rashaim in the torah. not because he was a Navi who failed to use his nevius for good. Not because he took the job from Balak to curse the Jews. He is and always will be despised as one of the biggest Reshaim in Tanach for inciting the Bnos Midyan against the Yiden handing the Yiden over to the terrible nisayoin of pritzus and arayois. Are we acting any better when we allow or set up the children under our care (children, students, campers) with cell phones? They may be too immature to realize the inherent dangers involved in the long run of having cell phones but we should not be. What are we doing this for? What are we getting out of giving the children cell phones?

I for one do not and have not carried a cell phone and do not have any of my children carry cell phones. No one in my family misses it one bit. We all survive very nicely without this horrible device that most people think they couldn’t live without.

A wife / husband has no business whatsoever being the other spouses referee in life. He / she is not the other one’s mashgiach. If one has good midos and is married with a normal healthy mindset based on simple, common love (yes, I said the dirty L word) there will naturally be respect, caring and unconditional acceptance of one another.

The very fact that this wife feels the need to ask what she should do about her husband who is sleeping late or missing daavening or learning clearly shows that she doesn’t understand what marriage is really supposed to be like. Marriage is not supposed to be a way to propel your own self image to greater heights of satisfaction based on the others accomplishments. If that’s all that its really about for you then you got it all wrong. Your being a self centered, selfish, egotist that demands those closest to you to perform in ways that fill your over-sized ego issues.

I had a great aunt who was frum her whole life. Her husband did not keep shabbos (in the early days of America, this was unfortunately very common) she continued her entire life living peacefully with him while she remained completely frum. Of course this had to be difficult for her to manage but from what I understand, despite the difficulties they had a happy marriage.

The point is marriage is not meant to be a list of expectations from one to the other if those expectations do not interfere with the responsibilities from one to the other. Not that providing a living for a wife is necessarily the greatest mitzvah in the world or not, but this would be an example of where the husband does have a direct commitment to the wife and he should keep it. On the other hand, he does not have a direct commitment to her that he go to shul on time or learn torah daily and as such, it’s simply none of her business to even keep track of it.

I hesitate to even suggest that a normal wife should be overly proud of a husband that gets up on time every day as that would suggest otherwise there’s a lack of respect. Marriage is not about pride.

Physical & spiritual; they are intertwined. what’s harmful for one will ultimately harm the other. You see it pretty clearly with unhealthy people. They unfortunately become compromised in their middos due to the physical suffering. The Rambam points this out that one can not be spiritually successful when his health is an issue. I think that long term consequences of spiritual sickness invades a persons physical health as well.

That said, I get so tired of hearing how smoking is the quintessential definition of unhealthy living. government sponsored anti smoking campaigns have been a part of everyone’s life for so long that we are in a state of mass hypnosis on the subject. Sure there’s truth to the fact that smoking is detrimental to a persons health but it’s not the only thing bad for you and it’s not the worse thing either I suspect. We get bombarded with advertisements that smoking is so evil and bad that most people fail to think for themselves objectively. I believe that being 25 pounds overweight is a much bigger health issue than smoking and yet even with the fact that extra weight is an issue, most people have a much kinder outlook at overeating than they do to smoking.

I don’t smoke and never have and I’m not overweight either. If I had to suffer the ill effects of one of those 2, I would take my chances with smoking and a lean body over being a non smoker but living with a load of extra weight ruining my cholesterol, blood pressure, joints and hormones any day.

They are very harmful for people in many ways. They have been proven to help cause cancer. They operate with radiation. there are numerous studies that prove that just carrying a cell phone in your pants pocket will decrease a mans sperm count by 28%. Talking on a cell phone is akin to pressing your ear against a microwave door while it is on. There are long term studies still going on to prove the long term consequences for brain cancer (20 year long studies take a while) In the meantime, the multi billion cell phone industries have the clout and power to keep things hushed up for the most part but every single cell phone sold must by law come with a booklet (that nobody reads) explaining the possibility of cell phone radiation being able to cause cancers.

There are 2 type’s of families that make Bar mitzvah celbration’s, whether they be ostentatios or even “just a shabbos kiddush”. The one’s that can afford the expense and the one’s that can not afford the expense.

As long as making a Bar mitzvah celebration is very popular and the norm, the families that can not afford the expense have a severe problem with each time their boy hits 13. They can not afford to make anything. In many cases they can’t afford basic neccesities in their life as it is. The burdon to keep up with the rest of the world is devastating. They can’t not make anything because they as it is, have issues that they aren’t able to provide well enough for their failies like they see others do. for them to take the first stand and not make any celebration at all is asking too much from already broken down financially strapped parents / Almonos or out of work fathers’. The one’s that have to make the first stand against all Bar mitzvah celebrations are the well to do families that can afford all the basic expenses in life and choose to not spend money on Bar Mitzvah celebrations. When a well to do family spends money on even just a shabbos kiddush, they are guilty of perpetuating a tremendous amount of pressure on all of the poorer familes in our khal. Who should be bold and couragous enough to stand up and say, I will be the first (or the 2nd or 3rd)family in town who will not make a Bar Mitzvah celebration? The poor? That’s not fair and it wouldn’t work to extend over to the richer families anyways.

I can easily afford to make a very extravagant affair for my children by the way and chose to not make even a shabbos kiddush for my 13 year old. I explained to him my thoughts and asked him his opinion on the matter. I was not surprised to hear him gladly say he wasn’t interested in keeping up with anyone else or being part of a burdon on people who couldn’t afford to keep up with us. He’s a great kid and I believe the experience (or lack of celebration experience rather) helped mold him into being a much more mature and sensitive individual. I never once saw his not having any celebration hurt his yiddishkeit or ahavas Yisroel in any way at all. He’s 15 now and everyone in klal Yisroel should have a boy with such good middos like him.

good middos doesn’t grow on tree’s though. you have to teach it to your children. No child learnt good middos because he had an expensive affair in his honor or a shabbos afternoon kiddush in shul where everyone fresses away on cholent and kugel. Middos don’t come from fressing bouts.