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From a purely business perspective the shadchan has to consider the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
But ultimately what the parents want is of secondary importance. A dutiful son or daughter honors and listens to their advice. But it’s the kid, not Mom and Dad, who are getting married.
Does the yeshiva have a policy forbidding other sorts of non-emergency medical care during business hours? This is no different.
There are also legal issues if the yeshiva is in the United States. Many emotional conditions are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Schools and workplaces are required to make accommodations for students and employees. If the restrictions are unreasonable or pose an undue hardship on the boy the yeshiva may be exposed to legal troubles.
QFT, Mod-42. But how many of us are really honest with ourselves, let alone with other people?
Difficult, especially when you’re a third party who doesn’t know the people involved.
It’s even harder to the degree that what they tell you is filtered. Is what they say what they actually mean or what they think you want to hear? Do they tell the truth of their hearts or subordinate that to their public faces?
Depends how hard you want to push yourself.
I happen to like the Israeli techno/trance band Infected Mushroom
My point about fish is that all fish are subject to parasites. The contention that certain sorts of salmon were not is false to fact. I made no statements about the halachic status of these fish, but used it as a plea to cook them thoroughly before eating.
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truthsharer, let me see if I can parse that a little more clearly…
- “Corn” is a term for the local staple grain crop. The 19th Century British “Corn Laws” were about all wheat, oats, rye and barley, not maize.
- What we call “corn” in the United States is a grain properly known as maize. In earlier days it was called “Indian corn” which was shortened to “corn” in popular usage.
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Mod-80, Amaranth would have been unknown among the Ashkenazim at that time. The Spanish Catholics had done a pretty thorough job of suppressing its cultivation and use.
Mod-80, according to the Wiki:
The word comes from the Greek amarantos (????????? or ?????????) the “one that does not wither,” or the never-fading (flower).
Ooomis,
The Amaranthaceae are a large family of plants, about 100 genera and a couple thousand species, in the super-family of the Magnoloids. The genus Amaranth includes dozens of species which exhibit wide variability in form and color. You may be familiar with several species referred to as pigweed.
Botanically, morphologically and genetically they are very distant from the grasses – which include all chametz. They are very slightly closer to the legumes. If we were talking about animals the distance between amaranth and chametz would be, say, dogs to sea urchins – both animals with circulatory systems. Amaranth to peanuts would be cockapoos to cockatoos – same number of limbs, both have a backbone.
The species which are normally eaten are native to Central and South America but are now cultivated all over the world. The leaves are normally eaten although the seeds have become popular again due to their high protein content – particularly rich in lysine – and ease of digestion for celiac disease sufferers.
YW-Mod80, Amaranth has the additional property of being eaten primarily for its greens, not its seeds. That makes its seeds somewhat safer for Pesach.
Texting is one of the biggest rip-offs in the business world. In terms of bandwidth used a text messages should cost, conservatively, about a thousandth of a cent.
The mechanic calls my car Shabbos. He won’t work on it.
haifagirl, what hello99 said. All regular OS’s come with mouse drivers. Unless you’re doing some very special applications why don’t you have a mouse or the equivalent?
Bombmaniac, Microsoft seems to go in cycles of Eh, Yuck, Nice. Windows 98, WinME and Vista are definitely on the bottom of the cycle.
Ageless mobility might, but there are others which don’t.
Scott’s a very obliging and helpful guy. If you email him and explain your needs he’ll certainly tell you which ones are appropriate.
Scott Sonnon’s material is excellent, innovative and generally only has him in the shots. He’s got everything from graduated body-weight material (Into Flow) to weights (any of the clubbell material), flexibility, balance, strength and endurance training. You really can’t go wrong.
oomis, those measures won’t get all the bugs let alone the eggs.
I haven’t, but I’ve had a friend and relative who did. Both got good results after one course of treatment. Their acne went away, never to return. They didn’t experience any terrible side effects and used multiple birth control methods while they were on the medication.
In fact, any woman who takes it must use at least two forms of birth control until a fair while after the course of treatment.
It works very, very well. But you shouldn’t even think the word “pregnant” within ten feet of the manufacturer’s brochure.
Both of us were raised to pay our own way. Not that we haven’t gotten help from family, but the rule has always been “If you can’t afford it make do or do without”.
Cheap junk furniture? When we started out everything was thrift shop, consignment store or hand-me-down. Over the years we’ve replaced things, and they’ve gotten nicer. And yes, sometimes nicer has been put-together. I don’t think we ever bought a room at a time and probably never will. But our house is safe, comfortable and attractive. And we’ve never had to ask for money to furnish it.
I’m REALLY going to disagree with you on the Linux bit. I currently have state-of-the-art graphics cards on my system at work. I’m using them for some very experimental parallel processing which I can’t talk about unless you sign an NDA. Suffice it to say I can make them sit up and beg with the available drivers. My wife’s artwork is done entirely in FOSS graphics tools on her home Debian machine. For the average or even above-average user it works better than well enough. If you want Photoshop or InDesign in particular or are doing high-end pre-press stuff with proprietary Pantone combinations you’re out of luck. But even then, WINE is getting close to running those in Windows emulation.
For the other applications most people use – movies (viewing or making), vector drawing, painting, photo-editing and -sharing, and so on the alternatives really have come far enough that they are viable alternatives for most users.
And for the hundreds of dollars you save by neglecting the Microsoft tax you can get more RAM or a better card and make up the difference.
If you like Macs – and I’m personally indifferent to them – the cost is a little higher, although even then the difference isn’t as great as folks in Redmond would want you to believe. But the underlying OS is built on the most rock-solid base available, the OpenBSD and NetBSD kernels. Security is better. Benchmarks are excellent. Stability? There’s no comparison. Upgrades are a snap. Ease of use is vastly superior. Number of software titles? Not so great.
We don’t currently have a Mac except for the Hackintosh I built just because. But my 80 year old father has one. It gives him what he needs and more, and I don’t have to worry much about it. It just works. And that’s worth something.
arc, I completely disagree. If you take a close look at what you buy and go with the stuff that is what it looks like you can do quite well at the Big Yellow and Blue Box. If the description says “Birch” or “Stainless Steel” you’ll do well. If it just looks like that but doesn’t say so, not so much.
I’ve always believed that Hashem should give us direction. That bit where He told Adam “By the sweat of your brow will you eat until you are in the ground” is a pretty clear indication that none of us is exempt from earning a living. If our greatest Sages include day laborers, woodcutters, shepherds, vineyard workers – they are being completely accurate when they call it “backbreaking labor” – and doctors we shouldn’t be too proud to do the same. Nor fail to listen to them when they say “A man should first learn a trade, plant a vine, build a house and only then seek a wife” or “He who fails to teach his son a trade teaches him to steal.”
If one is fortunate enough to spend a life in full-time Torah study he should thank his Maker for the privilege.
If you can’t? There’s no shame and a great deal of honor in honest work and fulfilling mitzvot like feeding your family and making them happy. And there is a great deal of shame in forcing your wife to beg and your children to go hungry when you could have provided for them.
If you are there for your children and give them the time and attention they need to become good Jews and menschen can you really say your time was wasted? If your labor allows you to give tzedakah that changes or saves a life shouldn’t you thank Hashem that you were allowed to serve in that way?
If the hours you can spend studying Torah are few it makes them all the sweeter. There may not be as many lessons learned, but I can guarantee they will be learned more thoroughly and with greater devotion.
Once you’ve bought an application you can delete it and then re-download for free if you change your mind.
I’m not sure if I posted this, and it was removed, but…
Lifehacker and Gizmodo both link to free/cheap apps every day and round up the best of breed on a monthly and yearly basis. I got indispensable things like Dropbox, Evernote and Dragon Speaking, (centralized file storage, excellent note-taking, voice recognition) for free by looking there as well as a metronome, a carpenter’s bubble level and a bunch of really useful work-related reference material.
You can also go to the iTunes store and search the free section or search for what you want. The free stuff that satisfies the search will be listed separately
The National Film Board of Canada makes all of their content available for free. Bargain of the decade, that.
For specifically Jewish apps I’ve gott iTehillim, iSiddur, Jewish Music, Rambam’s commentary on the Mitzvos and a couple others. The Talmud app was a little bit too expensive, but I may get it later.
HiE, Pandora isn’t just for “goyish” music. If you tell it what you want it will very quickly give you what you’re looking for. My Early Music, Klezmer and Classical channels are frighteningly good at picking out exactly what I like and nothing else. That’s the whole point of the Music Genome Project. You train it, and it will learn. Similarly, if you know people who have music channels you like on last.fm you can listen to their collections and them alone.
I wouldn’t go that far, bombmaniac. Macs are good, easy to use and rock-solid. Ubuntu Lounx really is ready for the desktop; does everything except high-end gaming. If you don’t like either, then for the first time I’d say a Windows product is a perfectly good alternative.
I hate to say it, being a hard-core Linux-FOSS True Believer, but Windows 7 is a good product.
You’re right oomis. I meant what you said, not what I wrote 🙂
Aries, I feel we were well-compensated by seeing people we love get married to one another and to hear their children refer to us as “Auntie” and “Uncle”. That is something more precious than gold. And I note that at least one set had their first ten months to the day after the wedding. So Someone didn’t mind that nobody cut us a check.
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Aries, Bemused says what I’m trying to express with a lot more sensitivity and wisdom.
And with forty years of this being presented there’s some evidence that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People expect that they will go through these stages in order, neatly and cleanly. So they feel worse when they don’t or put themselves through extra pain forcing themselves into the mold.
I recently lost someone who meant more to me than all but a few people in the world. My sorrow was genuine. I loved her deeply and will miss her terribly for a very long time. But I wasn’t angry. I didn’t bargain. There was no denying what was going to happen. She had lived a very long, full life and simply came to the end of it at an improbably ripe old age.
In our case we ignored my parents and got married anyway. Twenty years later we are very happy together.
We’ve introduced people. Some of them have ended up together. Some of them have not. I’d guess our success rate is at least as good as the matchmakers’. That’s because we didn’t rely on the amateur equivalent of a Q-clearance background check. We relied on the fact that we knew the people involved. We’ve never been paid other than being invited to offer a toast after the wedding or when my wife was given the signal honor of calming the bride down before the ceremony (and tackling her if she bolted).
The tools of the professional match-maker are different than those of the friends and family. So are the expectations. I am more inclined to trust former because I know their primary concern is the happiness of those close to them. The professional is most interested in a good batting average.
Aries, your explanation is appreciated. But the way you treat a naive formulaic reading of Kubler-Ross as if it were engraved on stone tablets by the Finger of G-d is not as helpful. In the forty years since she wrote Death and Dying we’ve found that not everyone experiences these stages. Certainly not in a strict order – which you have consistently gotten wrong exchanging Depression and Acceptance. And not in all cases. There is research which indicates that she may well have gotten it wrong and that the expectation that one is supposed to go through these stages in order and as prescribed may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her later attempts to extend it to all traumatic events is a case of making too much stew from one oyster.
I have experienced great personal loss which did not fit her prescription at all as has almost everyone who has lived long enough to see a number of tragedies.
It’s a rough guide, not a Law of Nature. I’d hate to see grieving people take it too seriously and believe they are “stuck” or abnormal because they don’t follow the steps as laid out.
Aries makes a very good point. There is often friction between a woman and her daughter in law. The mother wants what’s best for her son and doesn’t believe a girl young enough to be, well, her daughter can possibly get it right. The bride has a tough enough job setting up her new household and resents the interference. That’s when the courtship has gone well. If the girl has been put through the wringer it’s going to be even worse. The level of resentment on her part and nit-picking on the part of the in laws make a happy marriage very unlikely.
Me? I was lucky. My parents were dead-set against us getting married, especially my mother. Afterwards she warmed up miraculously. I asked my wife what happened.
She said “We had a territorial fight. I won. She accepted her defeat graciously.”
Like the insightful observer of human relations that most young men are I wittily replied “Huh?”
“You were the territory, honey.”
The family a man came from is his past. The family he makes and the woman he makes it with are his future. Parents do not always accept this simple truth.
Jewishsoul…
Palmistry? Phrenology?
Please, please tell me you’re joking.
The 2009 Soups and Stews issue of Cooks Illustrated has some excellent ones including a delicious, easy, not-fiddly version of coq au vin.
jewishsoul, as always, the burden of proof is on the one making outlandish claims. In this case the outlandish claim is that handwriting analysis tells you all the deep and significant things the True Believers say it does.
First, there is no theoretical basis for the belief. I mean that in the strict scientific sense where theory means an explanation with predictive power that is so well established in evidence that it can be assumed accurate for most purposes and which gives insight into the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon.
Second, it’s been trashed and thrashed for decades by the usual skeptic crew from Martin Gardner and James Randi on. The apologists have never done, say properly designed blind studies with controls. Like most cranks they’re long on anecdote, short on evidence.
The kind of money a “professional” charges for something like this could pay for a date or two and a couple drinks poured into a relative of the girl or boy in question. That would give actual useful information like a few hours of direct experience with the person and an alcohol-loosened opinion from someone who has known the subject for his or her entire life. That’s inteligence you can actually use.
Handwriting analysis is a less-than-worthless bit of pseudo-science with no theoretical or quantitative basis.
I say “less-than-worthless” because it causes believers to place credence in it when they could pay attention to things that provide useful intelligence.
bombomaniac I dont’ think the Powers that Be would be foolish enough to let me moderate anything.
PY, eventually the dielectric in any capacitor will physically break down, and the current will find somewhere to go. Often in a spectacularly exothermic display.
Iranian-style rice cooked with a dill and a little bit of butter, then mixed with a few lima beans is delicious. And the beans and rice make a complete protein.
Actually frogs aren’t slimy. I’ve taken care of quite a few over the years.
bombmaniac, I take serious offense at the “slimy” part.
Do they also want a cavity search, blood samples, lie detector sessions, phone intercepts and an interview with waterboarding and sodium pentathol?
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For $19.95 a month you could have enough cats to take care of an army of mice.
Turkey is a wonderful place. I would have no hesitation about visiting let alone spending a couple hours in the airport.
There’s a knot I learned years ago from a very old electrician for joining wires. It’s a lot like a True Lovers’ Knot. Holds pretty securely and can be put into one of the splicing nuts. Does anyone younger than about 90 still use it?
Mine is the way it is because the goblins stole a small child years ago and left a large frog enchanted into human form in its place. Over time the spell has begun to wear off. So I’m just telling it like it is 🙂
It’s all about experience with techniques, familiarity with ingredients, the ability to follow directions and a willingness to make mistakes.
Watch Ratatouille. Repeat to your mantra “Anyone can cook. If a freakin’ rodent can become a chef, I can serve up tasty meals.”
To start from zero go to Amazon and snag one of the used copies of The Impoverished Student’s Book of Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery. It can save your life. It saved mine. You will learn everything you absolutely need to know and how to do it on no money.
Get yourself a Kitchen.
Then learn to cook.
Start off simple and work up. Build on what you know.
For instance, first you learn the simplest things like boiling. Now you’ve got spaghetti, rice if you don’t have a rice steamer (who doesn’t have a rice steamer?), dumplings, eggs, mashed potatoes and a few other basics.
Then learn how to stir fry/saute. That lets you make a huge variety of quick, simple tasty meals from whatever is at hand. Take a diversion into actual frying with side trips to pancakes and blini.
From there it’s a tiny step to braising. With that you have nearly infinite soups, stews, chili, ragouts and so on.
Learn the basics of your oven. There’s your cholent, roasts, baked squash, casseroles, pies, and whatnot. At the very least, baked goods are a lot tastier when they’re heated up in the oven. When you’re feeling overconfident you can try your hand at baking bread. Watch out for Rapture of the Yeasts.
After that it’s just a matter of experimenting and practice, practice, practice.
Keep a copy of The Joy of Cooking in your kitchen. Yes, a lot of the recipes aren’t kosher. Just avoid them. You will have reference material to last a lifetime.
OK, I had to add this one…
A very good Gentile friend said “If Hebrew is the original source of all languages, how come your people’s menus are all in Chinese?”
😀