Sunday, January 28, 2007

Mazal Tov


IT'S A GIRL
Spoucy actually wouldn't bring her home if she didn't get a pink outfit. Can you believe that?
Me: OK I'll bring the white sweater set that chasidyingele wore to his bris, and you can go shopping and buy the pink stuff later.
Spoucy: WHAT, WHITE? you're kidding me right?
Me: No, I mean you do wanna get chasidmaydele home, right? So use the white and I'll put the infant car seat and...
Spoucy:NO!
Me: Why not?
Spoucy: (rolling eyes)You don't understand, she's a girl.
Me: Yeah, and so?
Spoucy: Girls wear pink.
Me: But its just to get home.
Spoucy: Not my baby.
Me: Trust me, she wont remember.
Spousy: No.
Are male and female children that different? I think the only thing I found so far is the diaper changing, its a little more difficult cleaning a female after a big poopoo. Otherwise they both think the universe centers around them, especially at 3am. My wife says wiat till the kid is 3 then I'll see that girls have a way of wrapping daddy 'round their little finger.
Hummmm..... we'll see.
Anyway in case you wanted to know, the kid did get home, and yes in pink, long story.

Monday, January 15, 2007

YUP I stole another one.
This sorta reminds me of the famous 'purim fest' pronunciation by Julius Streicher. (Link provided for the nosy http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Nazi-Execution-Smith16oct46.htm)



Saddam was right – "Palestine is Arab"
By Charles M. Morseweb posted January 8, 2007
The noose inspires wisdom from Saddam Hussein
Moments before one of the world's last remaining hard-line socialist leaders faced his judgment in the form of a noose tightened around his neck, the former Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein blurted out "Palestine is Arab." And this may have been one of the few times in Saddam's blood soaked career that he spoke the truth.
The fact is that the former Palestine, known today as Israel since having achieved independence from Britain in 1948, is largely Arab today. The majority of the Arabs living in Israel today are Arab Jews. Israel, formerly Palestine, is Arab, Jewish Arab as opposed to Muslim or Christian Arab. This factor plays a major role in the ongoing conflict between Israel and its non-Jewish Arab neighbors.
Arab Jews had always lived in Palestine and in the rest of the Middle East alongside their Arab Muslim and Arab Christian neighbors. Arab Jews began immigrating in large numbers into Palestine, along with European Jews and Arab Muslims, in the later part of the nineteenth century. Jews had been native to the Middle East and North Africa for over a thousand years, centuries before Islamic forces thundered out of the Arabian Peninsula after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE.
After the seventh century establishment of the Islamic Arab Caliphate in the Middle East, in lands that had been Christian for centuries previous, native Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims sank into the humiliating status of dhimmi's or second-class citizens. Christians and Jews were forced to wear special articles of clothing that identified them as non-Muslims, were forced to pay a special tax, and had to contend with many dangers and indignities over centuries of Muslim rule. The non-Muslim experience in the Middle East was comparable to that of African-Americans living in the American south before the civil rights movement.
The emerging Jewish State of Israel represented the establishment of the first democracy in the Middle East. The Arab Jews of Israel, both native and those who immigrated from other Arab and Muslim regions, would achieve equal rights and would experience full emancipation from their dhimmi status in the new state. This fact, and the threat that it represented to the elitist Muslim-Arab effendi, was not lost upon certain Arab-Muslim elitists such as Amin al-Husseini, appointed from an elite Arab Muslim family as Mufti of Jerusalem by the British Governor of Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel in 1922. The Mufti, in his effort to strangle the newly emerging emancipated state, become a close collaborator with Hitler and spent much of World War II living in Berlin.
The emancipation of the Arab Jew from his dhimmi status in the newly established State of Israel threatened the entire authoritarian caste system that had dominated the Arab Muslim Middle East for centuries. The very presence of the free and equal Arab Jew living in his own country threatened to awaken dormant freedom movements from amongst Middle Eastern Christians and from amongst the Arab Muslim poor. This fear was most likely exacerbated in the minds of Arab Muslim elites as they drove Arab Jews out of Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab countries by the hundreds of thousands. These native Arab Jews were subsequently absorbed into the modern Israeli society in the years following Israel's independence.
Certainly European Jews settling in Palestine in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries spearheaded the modern Zionist movement. They introduced into the region concepts such as democracy, capitalism, and modernity. Many forward thinking and progressive Arab Muslim leaders at the time, such as Faisal, King of Syria and Iraq, scion of the moderate Hashemite clan, and the great grand uncle of the present King of Jordan, welcomed the development of a Jewish State in Palestine. Faisal believed that a Jewish Palestine, existing within "modest and proper" borders, as he wrote to Harvard Law School Dean and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, would assist the newly emerging post World War I Arab Muslim States enter the new century.
Today, as a result of the continuous and ongoing immigration of Arab Jews into Israel, as well as the high rate of intermarriage between Israeli-Arab Jews and Israeli-European Jews, Israel is more than ever before an essentially Arab society. Saddam was right to point out that Palestine, or Israel as it is now known, is truly Arab. The Arab- Jewish State of Israel is a prosperous, free, and successful society, one that stands as an example of the possibilities that freedom offers to Arab Muslim brethren in the Middle East who yearn for freedom.
Chuck Morse is a former Massachusetts congressional candidate and the author of The Nazi connection to Islamic Terrorism.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

I was cleaning old E-mails and came across this, and I still thought it was funny, so hey I'm gonna share.


A Bowl of Lifesavers

A teacher was doing a study testing the senses of
first graders, using a bowl of Lifesavers.
The children began to say:
" Red............cherry,"
"Yellow.........lemon,"
"Green..........lime,"
"Orange.........orange,"

Finally the teacher gave them all honey Lifesavers.
After eating them none of the children could identify the taste. "Well," he said, "I'll give you
all a clue; It's what your mother may sometimes call your father."

One little girl looked up in horror, spit her Lifesaver out and yelled:
"Oh My God!!!! They're assholes!"

Monday, January 8, 2007

Is this good for us?

The big news in the hiemisher velt
ELAL CAPITULATED!!

Rah rah break out the bubbly.

I'm not convinced that this is a good thing.
OK OK I hear all you angry sputterers "whaddaya mean, this is great, score 1 point for Shabbos!"
Yeah, trueish, but I'm thinking long run.
Is this really good do the charedim need to make Israeli companies subservient, will there be backlash against the orthodox, did the rabbanim do this under public pressure or out of their siyata d'shmaya from their hearts?

I think the employees of ELAL are happy, they get a definite day off. The financial people might be 'cause now they are pleasing %30 of their customer base (are the other %70 pleased too?)
Will this be a Kiddush Hashem? or just the opposite challila?
Will Elal now also havta provide a mikva and a mechitza of the planes after all you gotta make your customers happy.
I hope Elal has a stronger quarter coming next so the chilunim don't use this as a foil in their constant feeble attempts to justify their not being religious.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Colors

I sat in a Therapist's office waiting.
As usual, I look at the mags, not really seeing anything.
After a while I get up, stretch, look around a bit. I glance at the noisemaker protecting whoever is in there, from my being a yenta.
I look up at the wall and see an old framed newspaper clipping. Curiosity fueled by boredom encourages me to read it.

When was a boy of 6, my mother used to work with yarn.
Not sweaters or another article of clothing but those 8 by 10 pictures that needed different colors to form some nature or other scenery.
I would often play by myself in games that only 6 year olds understood. My mother would smile at me when I would go past where she sat with her supplies of thread, I in turn would watch her hands moving skillfully.
"Mommy, what are you making?"
My mother eyes appeared distracted as she responded. "Come back soon honey, and I'll show you."
This scenario would repeat it self with small differences as the time moved swiftly by.
After a while, I would stop pestering and just look a my mothers work. From my view, as a 6 year old looking up, I would see the bottom of the frame. Loose threads hanging, an assortment of color, not really anything coherent, just a mess of string.
Finally, after trying to determine by any stretch of my young imagination and coming up empty, I asked again, "Mommy?"
"Yes, honey."
"It doesn't look like a picture. There are light and dark colors all in a jumble." I contemplated the weaving. “I like the light colors better. Couldn't you only use the light colors?"
My mother put her hands down and looked at me the laughter dancing in her eyes "come back in 10 minutes when it's finished and then I'll show it to you."
10 minutes, does a 6 year old really know how long that means, but I walked away, back to my amusements.
Soon enough it came "honey!, come and see."
My mother had placed her work on a side table and reached out to pick me up. Sitting me on her lap, she spread out the embroidery over my knees so that I could see it.
It was beautiful, a wilderness scene with flowing water and assorted wildlife.
"See" said my mother, pointing them out. "There are your light colors and there are the dark. With out the dark threads, it wouldn't be as nice."

Now that I'm older, have gotten married, have kids, been on the road of life for a while, I realize the fact that as diminutive humans, we can't really see the big picture.
As life rushes past us we seem to dwell on the dark threads. Threads that at 'weaving' time, seem completely unnecessary.
How could such catastrophes happen.
And how could G-d allow them to happen.

There is a story told about the Noam Elimelech, that when he was on his deathbed, a student of his, who had children, asked that when the Rebbe got to heaven, he should make sure that the evil decree of the cantonist children, should be abolished.
The Rebbe said he'd look into it.
Not long after that, the Rebbe died.
A few weeks later the Czar's soldiers were tearing apart the town looking for new little boys to be drafted. The student was heartbroken, how could this be, after the Rebbe said he's take care of it.
That night the student had a dream the rebbe was glowing, looked healther than he had in years. On the Rebbe's face was a sad smile.
"Rebbe” started the chusid. "The czar’s men were here again…”The chusid sobbed.
The rebbe spoke “I know mien kind, I know, but know that heaven, this is planned and desired, therefore I won’t prevent it.”

So do we really understand what Hashem wants?
I can only guess that the mesiras nefesh shown by those boys in the czar army and in their later years, made it more valuable than all else. Or maybe it was their father’s tefillos or the mother bitter tears that was required in the place.
I have heard it said that the current Jihad suicide bombers, on the average, really mean it l’shem shomayim, which puts us in bad light. Would we have such mesiras nefesh, if CH"V called upon, not me.
So what’s Hashem to do, well, knowing heaven is l’maale min hazmaan, I think G-d ‘arranged’ some voluntary mesiras nefesh on our part from a generation, that could supply it. Say the Jews of York or from the years 'tach tat' or thousand of others that Hashem has in the bank.
I dare say the account is big enough.