Archives for September 2007

15 Minutes of Fame- No Thank You

September 25, 2007 by Jack Steiner 3 Comments

They say that everyone receives their own 15 minutes of fame. This is NOT how I’d want mine to go. Talk about grounding. Ouch.

AN Croatian motorbike rider was knocked unconscious when lightning struck his penis during a roadside toilet break.

Metro.co.uk reported Ante Djindjic, 29, escaped relatively unscathed from the incident, suffering only light burns to his chest and arms.

He said: “I don’t remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.

“Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis.”

Worth A Post of Its Own- Jewish Weddings

September 25, 2007 by Jack Steiner 3 Comments

A post that ran last week called Robbing The Bride and Groom has provided a lot of food for thought and a reasonable discussion about a topic that could easily degenerate into name calling. The following comment by Kol Raash Gadol made a big noise and got my attention. I thought that it was worth highlighting.

Bringing comfort to the parents for the wedding? Do you think that dual clergy will do that? Or will it just make each side equally unhappy?

As I mentioned, it’s not possible to do a jewish wedding if one of the partners aren’t Jewish; any rabbi who says it is, is acting in ignorance – or lying. Jewish weddings are a contractual arrangement between two Jews according to the laws of Moses and Israel.

If one of the parties is not subject to the laws of Moses and Israel, then how can the marriage contract be effected? It can’t.

There’s nothing wrong with people who aren’t Jewish. They’re just as lovable as anyone else, just as lovely and noble, and kind and smart -that’s why it’s the dating stage where one has to be careful about who one is with. By the time you fall in love it’s too late.

If it matters enough to someone to be Jewish, to have a rabbi at the wedding, then it should matter enough to have a Jewish home. To have a Jewish home, it’s very verydifficult if one partner isn’t Jewish. The study that came out last year reconfirmed what we already knew anecdotally: how Jewish you are depends almost entirely on who you have around you. If you want your kids to be Jewish, it’s important to have a jewish spouse and for them -and you- to have a Jewish friends and a community.

The rabbis were no fools; they were right about the necessity of a minyan.

BY having dual clergy, you aren’t making people feel better, you’re lying to both the people who are being married by saying that there isn’t really any difference between one marriage ceremony and another.

IMO, if you can’t decide it would be wise to put off the ceremony until someone picks, or have a civil ceremony, which is essentially the idea underlying dual clergy; that the marriage is a civil act, and not a religious one.

I know this sounds harsh, but I understand Judaism to be something that the world needs to continue, that we have a mission, and that that mission cannot be fulfilled if we disappear, and I also believe that it’s evil to lie to people and give them to understand that it doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t think that people who are intermarried are evil – in fact, if one doesn’t commit to the idea that Judaism matters, than I agree that it’s foolish to insist on not marrying out. If you don’t think Judaism matters, staying a Jew out of nostalgia or some misplaced guilt over Hitler is a waste of time, but then I don’t think that one should want a rabbi there. And I do think it’s a darn shame for any children who might come along later, as they often do.

I Really Should Sleep More

September 25, 2007 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

Reuters reports that lack of sleep can be deadly.

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released on Monday.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleeping from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk in mortality from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

British Teach Foreign Students How To Stand In Line

September 24, 2007 by Jack Steiner 6 Comments

I know a whole group of people who could use these lessons, not that I think it would work.

LONDON (AFP) – Foreign students visiting Britain are to be educated in the etiquette of queuing for buses, after local users complained about them not observing the conventions of standing in line.

Southern Vectis, which operates buses on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, said it was to contact local language schools following several complaints about the behaviour of young students over the summer months.

“On the Isle of Wight we get lots of foreign language students staying with families,” said operations manager March Morgan Huws.

“In their cultures, they do not queue for buses where they live and there is a scrum every time a bus turns up, while in British culture there is a nice orderly queue.

“We have had quite a few complaints from residents who queue up in an orderly fashion then all those foreign students push past them.

“What we have said is that we will work with the language schools to provide some instructions on the etiquette of queuing. We won’t be marching the students up and down showing them how to queue, we will just leave it up to the group leaders to pass on the information.”

Orderly queuing — as seen during the recent Northern Rock banking crisis — is seen as a quintessentially British convention. One social anthropologist believes Britons are even capable of forming one-person queues at bus stops.

A Shack Round Up

September 24, 2007 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

If you enjoy Gematria you might be interested to know that this is post 5,060. Here is what ran here today.

A Violent Massage- Marriage Counseling & More
This is Not Haveil Havalim #135
Useful information Regarding Pigeons & Mario
I Want to Go To India
Unetanah tokef
Red Sox Fan- I Present Bucky Dent

And your blast from the past includes the following posts:

Minnie The Moocher- Cab Calloway
Altruistic Behavior and Public Service
A Test of Wills Between Father & Son
My Grandparents, Stress and Stuff

A Violent Massage- Marriage Counseling & More

September 24, 2007 by Jack Steiner 6 Comments

In case you are wondering here are the last five songs on my iPod:

Vincent
Don Mclean
Without You
Harry Nilsson
What I Have Done
Linkin Park
Lux Aeterna
Clint Mansell
Hard Hearted Hannah
Ray Charles

Sunday evening. I am recovering from a busy, busy week and a very rough fast. I have a pinched nerve in my neck that acts up periodically, most often it is noticed during stress. Or should I say that when I am stressed out it is one of three physical signs of my stress. For the past several weeks I have tried to power through it. More often than not I am successful, but not today.

Today it got to be too much and I went and got a massage. Due to poor planning I had to a different vendor. The man who did it was nice, but I swear that he beat me up. It was like a sick scene from a sitcom. He turned me upside down and inside out. My muscles were battered…relentlessly. This experience taught me a valuable lesson. I need to learn how to cry in Chinese in as many dialects as possible. I am pretty sure that I stammered a sentence that included pain…ani bocheh, crying, fuck, damn, ouch, crap and hey that tickles.

It is entirely possible that I might have even begun speaking in tongues. It wouldn’t surprise me. Fortunately there is a happy ending. My pinched nerve was beaten into submission and I feel substantially better…physically. Mentally is a different story.

A short time ago my friend Tom asked if he could speak to me about something of a personal nature. Which I always take as code for making some stupid crack about bodily functions. It is an old joke between the two of us, but from the look on his face it became apparent that this was not something funny. The look on his face alarmed me. For a moment I was certain that he was going to tell me that he is dying. And that is something that I have heard too many times in my life. Somewhere in the archives you can find a post where I speak about the two people I know who are dying. You’ll notice that I don’t write about them very often. Eventually I will, but right now it is too hard.

Anyway Tom relates to me that he is having what he calls severe marital problems and asks for my counsel on this. Over the course of several pots of coffee and hours of conversation he relates a very sad tale and one that I find very troubling. Excuse me while I take a moment to relate the next five songs on my iPod. I need a moment to think.

In the Ghetto
Elvis Presley
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
CCR
Steppin Out With My Baby
Tony Bennett
Tougher Than The Rest
Bruce Springsteen
Dr. Feelgood
Motley Crue

Tom and his wife have been married for ten years now. He and I have known each other for more than a couple of decades so FWIW I can say that I know what he was like in various relationships as well as the marriage. From an outsider’s perspective it looked alright. I never thought about them being madly in love, but that is not a prerequisite for being married, not to mention that it is not my place to judge.

Anyhoo, old Tom tells me that for a number of years he has been very unhappy. For a while he kind of just went along with it. To quote him “I thought that somehow we’d find a way to work it out.” For one reason or another it didn’t happen. He wanted to go to counseling and she didn’t. Time passed and he grew more discontent, more upset and less interested in trying to save a love that seemed to be dead.

Gradually their relationship evolved from man and wife into something that was closer to roommates who just happened to share a room. At some point in time he met someone online. They became fast friends and found that they had quite a bit in common including unfulfilling marriages.

Since they lived in different parts of the country their friendship was limited to email and the occasional telephone call. But over time they fell in love and for the past two years they have tried to figure out a way to be together. As I understand it the major dilemma has been their respective children as neither one of them wants them to be hurt.

Are you following along? Good.

Last Tuesday night Tom showed up on my doorstep and asked me to get some more coffee. He looked like hell. Tom said that they are convinced that they have found their besheret and asked me what I thought. I told him that I didn’t think that every relationship was meant to last and he nodded his head.

With something that sounded like a muffled sob he asked me how long he had to subjugate his own happiness for that of his children. I took my time answering. If ever there was a pregnant pause, this was it, but I felt the weight of the question. It deserved an honest answer.

I said that I didn’t know what to tell him. I can’t yell at him and say that he did the wrong thing. I am not in the marriage and frankly to the best of my knowledge he tried to make it work and she didn’t. Anyway, I asked him if he wanted to save his marriage and he said no, but at the same time he is afraid for his children.

Trapped.

That is how he describes himself. It is an awful thing to hear. He is fully cognizant of how he get to this place. Now he is at a loss for how to get out of it. You can understand why his story made me think of Unetanah tokef especially this line:

Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued,

Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented,

Yesterday as I davened I thought of him. During my shmoneh esreh I pulled my tallis over my head and asked for a solution for Tom. Some challenges are easily overcome and others are more complex. This particular one perplexes me. I keep seeing the look of anguish on his face. So to quote Hebrew National I went looking for help from a higher source.

Conversations like this remind me that I am closer to middle age then teen age. Sometimes I miss the simplicity of those days.