Midwest2

Whole grains – low glycemic index.

And exercise. That helps a lot too. Eating right alone won’t do it. Let him get a gym membership. A walking program helps too (but not if you live in Brooklyn – the car fumes will cancel out the benefits).

Oy l’rasha, oy l’scheinav. We live in the most materialistic country on earth, so why shouldn’t it rub off?

Half a century ago, when I was a curious kid, I noticed that people who wanted to be “real Americans” got nose jobs and changed their names from “Greenberg” to “Greenhill.”

Now, we spend on granite kitchens and thosand-dollar suits and sheitels that look better than any real woman’s hair could. then we brag about how we insulate ourselves from the tumahdik society around us by not having TV or internet.

It’s not a matter of beds or hotels, it’s a matter of wanting to make others jealous of what we can afford. “Don’t you deserve the best?” The best olam hazeh or olam habah?

Aries – same here.

Aided by the fact that my browser keeps crashing since my ISP changed their virus protection program.

Another slant – why don’t yeshiva guys respect the rest of us enough? After all, one of the things you’re supposed to learn in yeshiva is respect for other people. If the yeshiva guy looks down on the working guy who’s paying the bills because he is studying Torah and the working guy is only kovea ittim, then maybe the working guy has a taineh.

Something else I’ve seen – a bachur is home for Shabbos, and corrects his father at the Shabbos table in a very superior manner. Since when is it even permitted, much less simple derech eretz, to “correct” your father/mother openly in public?

Maybe the shoe is really on the other foot, and it’s the yeshiva bachur who needs a little musar.

YW Editor: Yep, he sure must have been, since Obama has been continuing most of Bush’s policies. Or maybe Health is just a little confused about what “liberal” means.

Could anyone give me a good definition of what the average CR poster means when he/she says “liberal?”

Pascha – agree with you 95%. Thek other five percent – yes, maybe there are a small percentage of people with actual neurological problems with attention, and they don’t grow out of it.

BUT – a lot of kids with the diagnosis don’t have it – they just, as you said, can’t sit still for 12 hours a day. I sure couldn’t. I ended up studying standing up with my book on top of a low bookcase. It worked. I even wrote computer programs on top of that bookcase :-). I now have a specially constructed shtender which is even better. And – a friend of mine who was doing research on the neurology of ADD screened me with an EEG (goopy electrodes and all). Guess what – no ADD. Just need lots of exercise.

But I’m an adult. What about the kid who really needs exercise and gets stuck at a desk with half an hour recess a day? No wonder he/she drives the teacher crazy. And eventually gets expelled and goes OTD.

I think sometimes that our yeshiva system is equivalent to a factory for the production of emotional and social problems (except for the lucky 10% who fit the “mold”).

There seems to be some confusion here. I checked my copy of DSM IV and nowhere does it use the term “mental illness.” The term was dropped years ago because it’s very imprecise and misleading, and very stigmatizing on top of it.

DSM talks about “disorders.” Mood disorder with depressed affect, or attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. Causes aren’t given – just lists of symptoms that can point to a useful therapy.

Why? Because we really haven’t the foggiest about how to even classify these kinds of problems, let alone understand what causes them. Some are related to biochemical imbalances, some to parenting, some to a combination. We really don’t know for sure.

The best thing to do is go to a good therapist – clinical social worker or psychologist, preferably frum, and get advice and treatment. Unfortunately, we’re still so hung up over the “stigma” that people are afraid to go.

Don’t think of “illness” – think of problems in living. Who doesn’t have problems? And like most problems, there are at least partial solutions. Don’t feel badly about it and put yourself down – just get help.

Things have definitely changed, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. The generation one up from me – survivors and refugees – had a certain depth to them, an ability to engage with reality without slogans or “ideologies.” Also a feeling that “we’re all yidden” and a dislike of machlokes.

That seems to be lost now. The volume is up, in speech, in dress, in the whole mode of “Look at me! I’m FRUM!”

The words may be different, but the “tone of voice” that I’m reading here and in other places is strident in the same way that some of the revolutionary types of the ’60’s proclaimed their moral superiority over everyone else.

Why there should be this change of tone I don’t know. Perhaps because people growing up here have never known real anti-Semitism? I hear that cry over and over again, but where else can a Jew sue over being fired for wearing a yarmulkeh? We have rights here that we never had before, and we take them for granted, or as an entitlement. People seem to have forgotten that we’re still in Golus.

Simple genetics: Each person has two of the relevant genes. A carrier has one healthy and one Tay-Sachs gene. On the average, half thecarrier’s children will get the healthy gene, half will get the TS gene. So if a carrier has 8 children (not unusual in frum circles), that means that 4 will be carriers. In other words, the gene itself will never go away.

What will go away is Tay-Sachs as a medical condition. If a child can ch’v only have the disease if they inherited a TS gene from each parent (both parents are carriers) then if carriers never marry each other then no one will have the disease. But the TS genes will still be around, so we will still need Dor Yesharim or something similar.

So get tested. And save yourself some potential heartbreak – do it BEFORE the first date.

Divorced_Guy – what’s wrong with a lady your own age? Why should a girl be interested in someone so much older? What do you have to offer? Be realistic.

I once tried to redt a shidduch for a guy who was so well-padded that his gut lapped out over his belt. His first question about the girl was, “Is she skinny?” My reaction was to say, “If she were skinny why would she want somebody with a spare tire like yours?” but I bit my tongue and was silent. However, she returned the compliment. He was a “working boy” and her seminary teachers would never have approved.

There’s another name for cutting off another car. It’s called “attempted suicide” (or “homicide”). Cutting in front of another car isn’t just impolite, it’s extremely dangerous and can get you, the other driver, or someone else in the same area killed or permanently disabled.

Careful driving is polite driving so as the saying goes, you’ll “arrive alive.”

For those kvelling over the prospect of octogenarians marrying 20 somethings. Check out the details. You will find that in many cases the kallah was a widow with children to bring up and married an older man rather than have no chance of remarrying.

A story I heard – it may or may not be true, so I will not give the name that was mentioned to me. A European Gadol a hundred plus years ago approached a young woman as a shidduch for his son, citing the boy’s yichus as the Gadol’s son. The young woman reasoned, why should I settle for the son? Why not the father? So they married and had children, but the Gadol was so much older that he could scarcely be a father to them. As a result, one of the sons went off the derech and became a fervent Maskil, doing untold damage precisely because the maskilim could say, “Look at his father, and now he’s seen the light and joined the Haskalah.”

So – consider all the angles before you jump to judgement.

A more important question: why are there so many guys who remain immature into their late ’20s? If a 26 year old man (not a *boy*, a *man*) is on the same maturity level as a 19-20 year old girl then he has got some very serious problems and shouldn’t be getting married at all until he gets his head on straight, peferably with some professional help.

Another angle: women significantly outlive men of the same age. A man who marries a woman 15 years younger than he is will leave her a widow for at least 20 years. And, if they have children, most likely she will be left with the youngest one or two to marry off. That isn’t romantic at all, that’s just cruel selfishness, both to the woman and to the man’s own children.

Found a school where kollel guys who are going to enter the job market can study for a degree and/or a licensed profession without leaving Lakewood. Give stipends while studying as interest-free student loans. Provide remedial classes for anyone who needs them in science, math, writing, etc. Have a good English library, too, with standard English literature and lots of good technical literature in programming, etc.

All with a Bais Medrash on-site so the students can maximize their kovea ittim while studying for parnassah.

I tried learning to speak Yiddish and eventually gave up, because everybody I met had a different pronunciation. That includes Loshon Kodesh. BP is an absolute mishmash because everybody pronounces things the way they think they did back in their own part of Europe – which is a pretty big place.

When I lived in Israeli I knew a genuine Teimani family and loved just listening to them talk in the Teimani accent. Why can’t we all talk like them? Well, everybody would have a fit because they’re not like back in Lvov/Brisk/Vilna/Minsk/….

Rather than worrying about pronunciation, and whether yours is as good as mine, let’s worry about keeping the Torah. Like maybe all that bein adam ‘chaveiro stuff about not looking down on your fellow Jew, and not being gaivahdich about how frum you are 😉

One word: lightning. Look at the warranty on your surge protector. It specifically excludes lightning strikes to your local electricity network. Ask me. It happens.

So I got a nice roomy external drive. Then one day my air conditioner shorted out and blew the fuse and everything else, including my hard drive. No sweat. Bought a new hard drive, took my external out of the back cupboard and – good to go.

I don’t know how this works with laptops, but of course there’s rain, spilled coffee 😉 curious kids, thieves and all sorts of other good stuff.

I wouldn’t worry about knocking down the houses. The real question is, did he eat them afterwards? Houses can be replaced, but piggies once eaten can’t be un-eaten. Not to mention to question of what kind of hechsher they had, and whether the shechitah was Litvish or Chassidish. (Glatt? Don’t ask 🙂

Derech eretz kadma l’Torah.

If someone is davening so loudly that they’re keeping other people from davening with kavana, isn’t it only mentschlich to tone down a bit? If asked quietly and politely?

Proud of my family? I’m very proud of my family – who they were and the things they did. You may not have heard of them, and they may not have Artscroll bios, but *I* know about them, and that’s what counts. They left me a yerushah of character, not of fame, and I thnk that’s the ikar.

A sidelight about Ms. Rand. Her first book, which launched her career, was “Anthem,” about a regimented society. This book was forced on me by an enthusiastic friend, so being amiable about such things (what’s another book to read?) I read it. Surprise. It was an out-and-out plagiarism of a book I had already read.

“We,” a futuristic novel by a Russian named Evgeny Zamyatin, was written in the 1920’s as a cautionary story about where Communist society was heading and what it would do to the individual. Zamyatin was an extremely influential writer, so Stalin y’sh couldn’t just have him shot or sent to Siberia. Zamyatin was “permitted” to leave the Soviet Union and go to Paris, where he died in exile, a martyr to his courage in defying Stalin.

So Rand’s philosophy also included “get ahead however you can,” including stealing from a courageous man who was dead and could no longer defend his authorship.

Considering that this was the person from whom Greenspan got his inspiration, it’s no wonder he didn’t think there was anything wrong with legalized theft.

You doubt it? Get both books and read them side by side. You’ll also notice that Zamyatin was by far the better writer, and his novel is well worth reading. It’s also the grandfather of all the anti-utopian novels since, like “Brave New World” and “1984.” You can probably find it in your local library.

TMB – I still don’t see what non-Jewish marriage practices (and for the US pretty weird ones at that) have to do with Yidden giving or not giving alcohol to underage children. As far as I can see, there are two separate issues:

1) Is it legal? In most states giving alcohol to someone underage who is not your child is illegal. Since dina d’malchusa dina, we therefore can’t do it.

2) Is it advisable? As many posters have pointed out, alcohol is a potential hand grenade for a teenager. Some people may know their own children well and feel that a small amount won’t hurt. Certainly a non-parent like a Rebbe shouldn’t have that choice. One factor that has only recently been shown by research – the parts of the human brain that deal with judgment and impulse control don’t mature until the person is in their late teens, even early twenties. So not only may a teenager not be able to judge whether/how to drink, it could also in excess interfere with the brain’s functional development.

And, of course, a teen who drinks alcohol is much more likely to try other “good stuff” like marijuana and cocaine.

So what do we need it for? When I was a kid grape juice and soda pop were fine. What’s changed?

Frumladygit – it’s wise not to take midrashim too literally. They were meant to be metaphorical statements about hashkafah. Check out R’ Aharon Feldman’s “The Juggler and the King,” where he interprets the Vilna Gaon’s short work on the nonliteralness of Aggadata. BTW, he’s definitely mainstream, as he’s Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore. i’m pretty sure the GRA was also mainstream, but I’m sure there are those that would dispute that too 😉

Hey guys (and gals) read up a bit. Socialism isn’t about supporting the poor or giving charity. Socialism is about who owns the means of production. Who owns the steel mills? Who owns the farms? Who owns the apartment houses in the city?

The idea is that the State, as a representative of the people, owns these things, determines how they’re used, and spreads the wealth around fairly equally. “Giving charity” isn’t discussed. The idea is who owns what so that everybody gets a fair cut of the pie. In a large, complex economy socialism doesn’t work. A centralized economy is just too clumsy and unresponsive.

You can have a system which is out and out capitalist and which gives plenty of help to the poor. There is no rule that poor people have to starve to death under capitalism. In a capitalist society there will always be people who – often through no fault of their own (like children) – don’t have enough income to have a decent standard of living. It’s simple decency to make sure that such people have a reasonable standard of living – “reasonable” here of course not meaning a BMW and a Jacuzzi, but adequate food, adequate housing, health care, etc.

And as far as “communism OR capitalism” goes – most governments in rich countries are a mixture. The US is an example. The closest we’ve come to pure capitalism in the last century was under Greenspan, and the result was the mess we’re in now. NO system works by itself. It has to be supervised and tinkered with on a constant basis, because the only unchanging thing in economics is change itself.

TheGoq – evidently Jews, Blacks and guilty-conscience white folks make up the majority of voters.

Reading fairy tales that are labeled as fairy tales, as long as the specific content is unobjectionable, seems OK. What distresses me is to see Midrashim and Aggadot taught / read to young children who cannot yet understand the point of the Midrash – which is usually implied or a matter of hashkafah. Midrashim are not cute stories which are even better the less logical or realistic they are.

When midrashim that are “non-realistic” in the daily world are taught to small children as literal happenings, this can create serious problems when the child grows older. He/she feels a demand to believe literally something which is meant on a symbolic level. The result is that the child starts believing the midrash is “just a bunch of fairy tales” which they don’t dare contradict in front of the rebbe/parent. This attitude can then spread to the rest of Torah observance and hashkafah. I’ve seen children (and some grown-ups) struggling with this very issue.

There waw a letter to the old Jewish Observer asking about the Harry Potter books, and the reply was that yes, it’s dangerous, because our children could transfer the idea of fantastic fiction to our midrashim!

Mirashim are not entertainment. They should not be read to children as such. The definitive book on midrashim is “The Juggler and the King” by R’ Aharon Feldman, shlilta, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel. He expands on the dictum of the GRA that aggadata are not to be taken literally. Chazal didn’t waste their time telling cute stories. They were leaving us a hashkafic legacy for the ages.