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Poisons and traps CAN work, but they are only solutions AFTER the fact, i.e. AFTER mice are already in your home.
The most important thing is to close up openings FROM THE OUTSIDE TO THE INSIDE OF YOUR HOME, -TIGHTLY!
That means that holes WITHIN your home (like where pipes under your sink go in the wall, are NOT important. If you closed a hole like that, and a mouse got UP TO where you closed the hole, he is ALREADY in the house, and will come out somewhere else.
Check to see that your doors seal COMPLETELY FLUSH with the floor.
Believe it or not, if you can slip a credit card under your door, a mouse can slip in. Go to a good hardware store and buy what is called a “door sweep” to attach to the bottom of the door. Make sure you attach it so it touches the floor, or you have wasted your time and money.
Sister Bear…
I remember RIGHT BEFORE the Yom Kippur War in ’73, gas in New York City was 35 cents per gallon. The arabs started an embargo, and overnight it went up to 98 cents per gallon.
Of course by comparison to today’s prices, that still seems very cheap, but for THEN, it had almost tripled in one shot! People were SO angry and upset! Imagine if tomorrow the price of gas went to $8.50 per gallon and you’ll get the idea.
If you remember Woodstock, then you should remember that summer was also famous for man walking on the moon!
I remember the big machlokes among the conspiracy-theorist types, that the moon walk never really happened, but was just staged somewhere. There are still those who believe that.
Where would we be if Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet?!? -LOL!!!
twisted…
I definitely DO remember glass milk bottles, and the aluminum (double layered) milk box that was by my back door.
My mother A”H, would put a note rolled up and stuck in the top of one of the empty bottles to tell George, our “milkman” ( I still remember his name!) what she wanted for the next delivery.
I also remember when they had glass bottles in Israel (pre-plastic bags!). The first time I opened a bottle and poured, NOTHING CAME OUT. I didn’t know that the milk in Israel back then was not homogenized, and all the cream came to the top! You had to scoop the cream out of the top of the bottle before you could pour the milk!
twisted…
Of course I remember phonographs and vinyl records.
I was telling my 11 year old grandson about them and he looked at me and said… “But Saba, how did you listen to your music when you were outside walking around?” I said “Well, we did have little transistor radios we could listen to.”
He said “But how could you listen to the music YOU wanted to listen to?”
I told him “we couldn’t”.
He looked at me like I was from the stone age.
Here’s a bit of trivia…
Why are record albums called “albums”? (even now)
The answer…
Because the first records that came out were 78 rpm records (remember that speed choice on your record player?) The records spun so fast that the record companies could only record ONE song on a side. To sell a collection of songs, they would sell 3 or 4 or 5 records together in ONE (album) cover with envelope type pages in the cover, for each record in the ALBUM (like a photo album). Hence the term ALBUM, which is still used today, even for CDs.
always here…
Yeah, asimonim was already the NEXT generation of Israeli phone “technology”.
Do you remember young people used to wear them around their neck on a string or chain as a “necklace”? – that, or a 9mm Uzi bullet!
In New York, pay phones used to be a dime for a call, and then went, in one shot, to 25 cents! Now of course, with everyone having cell phones, you can hardly find a pay phone at all (especially one that works!)
I remember…
-When someone gave me for my Bar Mitzva a little (about 6″ by 8″) REEL TO REEL tape recorder. – This was even BEFORE cassette tapes! Wow, was that “cool”!
-When people judged the kashrus of a product by reading the ingredients.
-When the New York SUNDAY Times (that weighed about 2 pounds) was 25 cents. – Now I wouldn’t read that rag if it was free.
-The absolute silence on the subway train on my way home from school the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
-When I spent my first summer in Israel and wrote home on those fold-up airograms, but didn’t call home the whole summer because the only way to make an international phone call was from the main branch of the Post Office on Rechov Yaffo.
-When people in Israel waited for YEARS to get a phone installed in their home.
-When I used to get haircuts at a barber shop near the Flatbush & Nostrand intersection for 60 cents, and was upset when it went up to 75 cents!
-When my great joy of the week was when my father A”H, would take me out on Sunday afternoon for a frank to the only kosher deli in our neighborhood.
Put it this way…
Everybody has a “ladder” to climb.
People start out (through no fault OR credit of their own) on different rungs of that ladder.
Your “score” derives not from the rung you started at,
but where you are when you “finish”, i.e. how many rungs
you have climbed up (or, chalila, descended) on your own.
crdl…
So if you must have web access, IF you can put together a family plan similar to what I mentioned above (and it does NOT necessarily have to be your immediate family, i.e. you could make it with friends or children-in-law, or whomever) as long as you work out who will be responsible to pay the bill, you could pay (for your share – your phone) about $60 per month INCLUDING web access.
Ask yourself if you really NEED web access on your phone, or is it just a luxury you can do without (and wait to get home to use your computer for web access.)
I have a family plan with Verizon for about $190 per month for FOUR phones, NO web, unlimited texting, 3,000 shared (among the 4 of us)peak minutes.
BUT – you also have TEN numbers (shared among the 4 phones) that you have unlimited calling to (they are NOT part of the 3,000 minutes cheshbon) AND free nights and weekends AND unlimited calling to other Verizon phones.
That comes to less than $50 per phone per month and the only thing missing is the web (which you CAN get for an extra $10 per month per phone).
Plus I do think Verizon’s service is the best.
Do you have any frum mishpacha in Eretz Yisrael you could spend the summer (or part of it) with?
Then you would just have to pay for the airfare.
You can usually do better with a family plan.
Figure out how many “peek-time” minutes you really need, and you probably dont need a plan with unlimited anytime minutes.
I once had bad vibes about someone, but it turned out
it was just that my cell phone was in my back pocket
set on ‘vibrate’!
YES, If you legitimately need them.
The only reason to be embarrassed about using food stamps, or about taking ANY type of help, is if you are acting fraudulently.
HaSh-m determines parnassa both for the gevir and for the ahni. No one should have gaiyva because he makes a lot, or boosha because he has little.
HaSh-m can, and often does, reverse either matzav in the blink of an eye.
Tell your kids to stay away from them if they see them. Unlike the cuddly way they are portrayed in cartoons, they can be very dangerous and often carry rabies.
Do NOT try to confront them yourself. Call an exterminator who is experienced with raccoons or a licensed trapper.
NOTE: This DOES get expensive, so I would not rush out to do that if you only saw them once. If they are rountinely seen by your house, you may have a problem that needs attention. They do look for ways to get INSIDE your house (usually through hole in the roof or openings by damaged gutters).
The same applies for possums, also in Brooklyn, and very nasty critters!
Antelope.
Put an earphone in one ear with WINS radio playing.
By the time you’ve heard the same news for the 5th time,
you’ll be “blowing zzzz’s” (i.e. fast asleep).
Make aliyah!
Nefesh b’Nefesh will then pay for the flight (and more!)
Make aliyah!
Nefesh b’Nefesh will then pay for the flight (and more!)
B.P. Girl –
If you hear the “gist of it” you will miss out on gist of it.
The gist of it is, how each individual element of what could have been a very tragic story, instead, through chasdai HaSh-m, through HaSh-m orchestrating every detail, every twist and turn of the story, ends up being a huge yeshua.
Don’t cheat yourself by hearing or reading a synopsis. The story takes about an hour and you will love every second.
An example…
“One dramatic instance of the use of the Gra Goral was in the identification of the bodies of 12 members of the Lamed Heh (the Convoy of 35, with the Hebrew letters lamed and heh being equivalent to the numbers 30 and 5, respectively ). The 35 fighters, members of the Haganah pre-state militia, were killed in January 1948, during the War of Independence, at the foot of the Arab village of Tzurif, during their attempt to reach the Etzion Bloc of Jewish settlements, south of Jerusalem. The bodies of the fighters were mutilated by the Arab attackers who killed them, and only in 1951 were the corpses gathered. By that time, it was possible to identify only 23 of the bodies conclusively.
The chief rabbi of Jerusalem at the time, Tzvi Pesach Frank, ruled that the identification of the remaining bodies would be determined by the Gra lottery, and the task was assigned to the revered Jerusalem sage Rabbi Aryeh Levin.
The identification took place in Levin’s beit midrash, in the presence of representatives of the bereaved parents. Twelve candles were lit, the Bible was opened at random seven times and Rabbi Levin ruled that as they stood in front of the remains of each of the fallen fighters, the last verse on the page had to include the name, or an allusion to the name, of each of those whom they were trying to identify. “How amazed everyone was when one of the verses that first appeared was ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein,’ a verse that [in Hebrew] begins with the word ‘to the Lord,'” which is abbreviated in Hebrew with the initials lamed-heh. “Moreover, to everyone’s amazement, every page spoke unequivocally. In the first verse they reached there was a specific name that clearly identified one of the fallen … One after the other … the identity of the fallen was determined.” (Quoted in “A Tzaddik in Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin,” by Simcha Raz, who also provides the official minutes of the lottery. ) While a lottery was often used for private matters, here the lottery was conducted for the purpose of a decision of great public significance.”
It is something done very rarely, for very special purposes, by very special tzadikim.
The whole thing was AMAZING.
You could NOT turn it off in the middle.
One of the “best” lines in it where was where, I forget if they were non-Jewish or non-frum, medical techs in the ambulance ask one of Rav Firer’s guys how much they get paid for what they do, and they answer that they don’t know.
The other medical techs look at them and ask ‘How can you not know what you get paid?’
They respond that they don’t get paid in olam hazeh, and don’t know what they’ll get paid in the next world.
I think this is a very good question, – to be asked of a posaik, not to be resolved here in the CR.
The reality is that shidduch dates ARE expensive, and (since boys in the shidduch parsha are generally in yeshiva and/or college, and NOT working) they are usually paid for by the boy’s FATHER.
The question IS then, can he (the boy’s father) pay for his son’s shidduch dates from HIS maaser money?
If anyone has gotten an answer from a Rov on this question, I would be very interested to hear it.
shlomozalman…
and do you think the average Yid has the zechusim that those tzadikim had, to be able to out-weigh the forces of poisons in tobacco smoke???
LemonySnicket…
Would you sit behind the exhaust pipe of car “a couple of times a week” and breathe in the fumes? I doubt it. The fact that New York air is dirty is ALL THE MORE REASON to refrain from any smoking to not add EVEN MORE poisonous shmutz going into your body.
Aizeh hu chacham? Ha’ro’eh es ha’nolad.
LemonySnicket…
“Tobacco smoke from a pipe is not inhaled so it’s not so terrible as people make it out to be”.
The only sense it which it is “not as terrible” as cigarette smoking is that the fact that most pipe smokers do not inhale PROBABLY (but not definitely) will spare you from getting lung cancer.
However, – will that REALLY be of any comfort to you when, chalila, you have to get part of your tongue or lips cut off because of cancer in THOSE areas, and/or have to have your larynx removed because the machla strikes there. Of course even these scenarios are assuming it is caught in time before it spreads to other parts of your body.
Truly “cool, sophisticated, refined, and awesome.”
not I…
Try smelling a pipe smoker’s breath! Feh!
Try visiting a pipe smoker in the hospital when he is being treated for the very “refined” machla of throat, or tongue, or lip cancer. It doesn’t look so “refined” then.
I used to be an occassional pipe smoker back in my college days. The smoke (with the right tobacco) smelled great, but my breath didn’t.
When my first child was born I gave it up and never smoked again. I figured being around to see him (and eventually his siblings) grow up, marry, and have their own children, was more important to me (and FOR them) than any taiyvah for smoking.
That was over thirty years ago.
To: Pashuteh Yid – and others:
What makes “kiddush” chulent taste the way it does, are (I believe) two ingredients…
1) Caterers tend to put in more salt than many of us do at home. It’s not healthy, but try putting in a bit more salt than usual.
2) When we buy our chulent meat, many of us are turned off by meat that looks too fatty, so we buy something more lean. Though (again) the fat is not healthy, the meat fat is also one of the main factors that creates that “kiddush chulent” taste. If you don’t want to clog up your families arteries, but still get that good taste, get an only moderately “marbled” (i.e. fatty) piece of meat, and then add 1/4 – 1/2 cup of olive oil to your chulent. That will give it more of that “meaty” taste but olive oil is a good-for-you healthy fat.
To strengthen emunah I highly recommend Rav Lazer Brody’s CDs as well as his translations of Rav Arush’s seforim (or the originals in Hebrew for those who can).
I can’t see where there would be anything INHERENTLY wrong with it, BUT you MIGHT be opening up the possibility for 2 problems:
1) Maaras Ayin – Some people, seeing you looking at the BB while davening, not knowing you are davening, might (obviously, wrongly)think, “hey it’s OK to check a BB while davening”.
2) Leefnai EEvair – People, knowing it’s wrong to be scanning your BB during davening, but NOT knowing you are using it to daven from, might condemn you, in their own minds or to others, for not being able to tear yourself away from your BB even while davening.
TO: “dunno”
I disagree.
I don’t think there are many things that are AS MUCH of a distraction while driving as texting is.
Don’t forget, – to text you have to be LOOKING at the keypad (NOT the road) AND using your hand/s on the keypad (NOT the steering wheel). – Not to mention that your mind is distracted as well.
Also, unlike the distraction of adjusting a radio, for example, which is just for a second or less, texting can keep your attention for several seconds (at least) – definitely long enough to cause an accident.
IF you are right, and there ARE other activites equally distracting, then the answer is not for texting to be legal, but for those other things to be illegal as well.
You wear your glasses too – 😉
Obviously I do not know the specifics of this case, but being a loooooong time BT myself, let me give this bit of advice to BT parents…
Many times baalai teshuva are much more intense and fiery about their newly acquired frumkeit than a FFB. There is nothing wrong with that, but you must realize that your children are NOT you.
If they were born AFTER you became frum, and went to yeshiva with (mostly) FFB kids from FFB families, who, for better or worse, are more “use-to” a frum environment and more “moderate” in their frumkeit, than the “fiery” way you may be, your kids may find you to be fanatical.
Now I realize that YOU do not feel you are a fanatic, but it may seem that way to them. If you are are pushing (what seems at least to them to be) a higher than normal level of observance than they see among their friends, this may turn them away from observance completely.
This is even MORE the case if you became a BT when your kids were already pre-teens or teens. They may greatly resent the idea that just because YOU decided to change your way of life, that they have to also. Of course you want your kids to go in the Torah derech. The key to success is gentleness, s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s, and lots of love. Force will only push them away.
How will you find the pager?!?
You will never get any guarantees about numbers 1 & 2.
Just pray for help to be a baal bitachon. If you are a true baal bitachon, everything else will be fine.
I am a lefty (when it comes to writing and using a fork), and regarding tefillin I was told by my Rav (way back when) there are 3 factors…
1) In general putting tefillin on the left hand is, as a general rule, the preferred way.
2) You put Tefillin on the weaker hand.
3) You put tefillin on the hand you do NOT write with.
In my case since #1 and #2 apply, i.e. according to 2 out of the 3 determining factors I should wear on the left hand, I do wear tefillin on the left hand (the way righties do).
Shticky Guy…
I guess that would be “Hearty Appetite!”
Skullcaps n’ Switchblades is a GREAT, easy reading book for teens (AND adults) to make one really appreciate being a Yid. Ashrainu!
I find it very interesting that one language can have a single word that might require four or five or even six words in another language.
Machutan and machataynesta are good examples of that.
Can anyone think of other examples?
The best translation I’ve heard for “fargin” is to begrudge, which is sort of a combination of resent and envy.
I NEVER do.
I think it is very close in severity with DWI.
Personally I feel if someone is caught driving intoxicated, even the FIRST time, they should lose their license for at least 6 months to a year, and if caught a second time should lose it permanently.
I think a person caught texting while driving (and it would have to be PROVED (cops DO lie – and might say for example, that you were texting just because a phone was in your hand) – but if proven, the fine, even for the FIRST time should be HUGE, like $350 to $500.
I think THAT would make most people think before doing it again.
Back in my kibbutz days (a looooong time ago) I used to get the glorious job, every few weeks, of cleaning the chulent pot on Motzai Shabbat.
Now you have to understand that this was a chulent pot unlike yours or mine. It held enough chulent for about 500 people.
It was truly big enough to climb into. It was mounted on a stand with a wheel on the side (like in a submarine) that you would turn to tip it.
I would have to use a big paint scraper to scrape off the burned-on chulent. As great as chulent smells when it’s fresh, that’s how bad it smells when it’s burned on to the walls of the pot on motzai Shabbat.
I miss Israel. I miss the kibbutz. I do NOT miss that job!
real-brisker…
and if I don’t even wear jeans in the summer.
and if I don’t even own jeans right now.
and if I haven’t worn jeans in 15 years.
and if I don’t even expect to wear jeans in the near future,
BUT…
IF in a few years I moved out of this city to a place where wearing jeans was more the norm, I WOULD wear jeans because I don’t feel there’s is anything, in principle, wrong with it!
SO, AGAIN, the question is NOT (only) DO I wear jeans, but the IKAR question is WOULD I wear them, I.E. is there anything INHERENTLY WRONG with wearing them.
This is an OLD question.
–Those that are wealthy obviously have no financial worries (though they may have other nisyonos).
–Those that are in extremely dire financial straights (or who pretend to be) get all types of government assistance.
–Those of us who are in the middle, and live a frum life style, with all the yeshiva tuitions, Shabbas expenses, Yom Tov expenses (especially Pesach) – not to mention the year round greatly higher prices of most kosher (as opposed to traif) foods, etc., etc., etc. are in a VERY tough financial crisis because by secular government standards we make too much to merit assistance, and the government does not understand or care about the great expense of living even a modest frum lifestyle. The reality is that even making what, by goyish standards, would be considered a very decent living, as frum Jews, with all the additional expenses we have, many of us are living at, or even below, the poverty line, but do not qualify for any help.
I do not know the financial circumstances of this woman you saw in the store, and you probably don’t (REALLY) either. We should not judge her.
All I can suggest to you is to do a very careful analysis of your spending and see if there are any areas where you can cut back. A few examples that may or may not apply for you… Maybe you can find cheaper insurance for your home and/or car. Maybe you can buy store brands of food and paper products instead of the name brands. Maybe you can find a better deal for your phone and internet service.
Aside from this analysis, as Rav Arush says, do your Hisbodedus. Talk to HaSh-m specifically about the financial nisayon you are going through. Ask Him for help. Tell Him that if this struggle is what He wants you to be going through for your benefit, you are mekabel it, but that perhaps if it was not so severe you could have more yishuv ha’da’as and more time to spend with your children and on other Torah oriented activites. Tell Him you’d like help because your children see your financial struggles and you do not want your children to see a Torah life as a burden.
I am not trying to be simplistic. Believe me, I empathize and sympathize with your situation. Be strong, don’t judge your situation by that of other people, keep telling yourself that HaSh-m is ONLY a mayteev, and GAM ZU L’TOVA, GAM ZU L’TOVA, GAM ZU L’TOVA. When HaSh-m sees that you really believe that, He will (so to speak) say “you think THIS is tov?! I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT TOV IS!” and then, be”H, your tefilos will be answered.
Hatzlacha.
To Know that all my children and grandchildren have proper Torah values and priorities and have increasingly strong emunah and bitachon that will be needed for the times that must be faced before bee’at Mashiach, may he come very soon.
real-brisker…
It DOES make sense to ask DO you or WOULD you.
It may be that someone DOES not wear (or even own) jeans right now, because he is away at yeshiva or in other circumstances where he can NOT wear them. However if and when he will be in different circumstances (next summer, next year, or whenever) then SOMETIMES (obviously not constantly) he WILL wear jeans.
So, when YOU say the question SHOULD be “DO you wear jeans?” the answer to that question would NOT necessarily reflect one’s attitude about wearing them, it would ONLY answer if one wears them NOW (in their present matzav). To know IF one WOULD wear them, if/when they will be in a different matzav, which IS the question that needs to be asked if we are trying to find out if people think there is anything INHERENTLY wrong with it, you DO have to ask (not only DO YOU, but also) WOULD YOU?
One of the most important things parents can do is to NEVER let your kids hear you say (or see you act in a way that says…)
“Shver tzu zein a Yid”.
When kids grow up hearing (or feeling) that, though they may not express it, they develop the feeling “so then who needs it?”
Kids have to grow up in an atmosphere that teaches them “Ashrainu! Ma Tov chelkainu!” Being a Yid is the most wonderful fortune a person could ever have!
Although I strongly agree with the idea above, of always having answers to questions available, a kid has to first have the interest to ask the questions. If he or she grows up in joyous Yiddish environment, they will ask the questions when they arise, but if they grow up in an oppressive environment where they feel that the Torah life is a burden, they wont care about answers to specific questions, they will just want to throw away the whole package.
What definite sign to know the person is lying (IF their name is Clinton) is that their lips are moving.