The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for December 2005

Five Years Ago

by 12 Comments

On December 29, 2000 my life was changed forever because it was on that day that I became a father for the first time.

In what could only be deemed foreshadowing the little man showed up 2.5 weeks prior to his due date. His grandmother insists that I was born almost four weeks after my due date so maybe there is something to be said for his taking after me, we do things in our time.

Initially I hadn’t planned on blogging about this, not because it was unimportant but because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to say so I was going to opt out of saying anything and write about other things. Sometimes I find myself speechless and I learned a long time ago that in those moments sometimes the better part of valor is silence.

About 25 minutes ago he wandered out of bed and climbed into my lap. “Tomorrow is my birthday,” he said. I smiled and picked him up in my arms. For a moment we danced around to Matisyahu (King Without a Crown- I love that tune) and enjoyed the moment. I told him that I loved him and told him about how when he was a baby I would take him in my arms and dance to whatever was playing.

He smiled and asked me if I would still do that when he was five. I said sure and then he wanted to know if I could do it when he was ten. I told him that I wasn’t sure he would want me to do it then but we had time to worry about it. He smiled and told me that I should plan on it.

I carried him to bed and gave him another hug and a kiss. With great care I lowered him into bed and gave him one last blessing as a four-year-old. He was almost asleep before I could finish. I was happy that it was dark because I unexpectedly got a little choked up in there.

My baby boy is not a baby anymore. He is not a toddler, he is a little boy. We have a long way to go before he becomes a man and goes out into the world but for a moment I could have sworn that he looked more like a man than a boy.

Tearing Toilet Paper on Shabbos

by 11 Comments

This post here led to some interesting comments and questions both online and off. One of the questions that garnered some attention was this one.

“Um? Could someone please explain the tearing of toilet paper comments to me?”

As an answer someone provided this link which I reviewed as I do all links that come across my blog. Now I find a lot of this to be interesting, but I have to admit that trying to explain somethings such as this and the reason that they are encouraged or discouraged to be tough.

Let’s look at this section:

What about tearing toilet paper when there is no option?
Obviously one must prepare toilet paper before Shabbos. The problem arises when one has depleted the supply of tissues, torn toilet paper etc. or one is in a place where there is no pre-torn paper.
For obvious reasons we will not discuss the various technical options that are on hand when there is no toilet paper available, but when those options are exhausted and/or one’s only practical option is uncut toilet paper, the following is the correct procedure:
One should tear the toilet paper by resting one’s elbows on the sheet of toilet paper and tear it with one’s elbows. This is called tearing kilachar yad – in a backhanded manner, and is only an issur d’rabanan. [6]

This is one of those things that I cannot explain without shrugging myshoulders repeatedly because it just doesn’t make sense to me. Now perhaps I am missing something but this is a necessity that you cannot do without, unless you are in the woods and all you have are pinecones in which case you are in big trouble.

Ultimately what I find is that there are areas such as this in which I cannot provide a reasonable explanation as to why they are necessary. Some of these things are acceptable to me and some are not. Yes, I am picking and choosing but that is part of life and when it comes to matters of faith I think that we often reach places in which we are forced to use our gut instinct instead of our heads.

That is not a value judgement but an observation.

Munich- Spielberg Your Prayer Wasn’t Heard

by 6 Comments

Munich mastermind spurns Spielberg’s peace appeal

GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg’s new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.

The Hollywood director has called “Munich,” which dramatizes the 1972 raid and Israel’s reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his “prayer for peace.” Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film.

He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused Spielberg of pandering to the Jewish state.

“If he really wanted to make it a prayer for peace he should have listened to both sides of the story and reflected reality, rather than serving the Zionist side alone,” Daoud told Reuters by telephone from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Daoud said he had not seen the film, which will only reach most screens outside the United States next month.

But he noted that Spielberg arranged previews in Israel, where some have accused “Munich” of lacking historical accuracy.

Several Israeli historians have also complained about what they see as a moral symmetry in the film between slain Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by the Mossad spy service.

“Spielberg showed the movie to widows of the Israeli victims, but he neglected the families of Palestinian victims,” said Daoud. “How many Palestinian civilians were killed before and after Munich?”

MOSSAD ASSASSINS

The Munich attack was “one of the pivotal moments of modern terrorism” he told Los Angeles Times in rare interview last week.

Daoud used different terms.

“We did not target Israeli civilians,” he said.
“Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier.”

Indiscriminate murder. That is what this was. If there were intellectual honesty here he would admit it and just leave it at that, but instead he tries to hide and spin it.

Not every soldier is a combat soldier. Some are nothing more than janitors/ secretaries with a military rank. You can’t make peace with people who have this kind of mentality.