The Dallas Cowboys, no matter the coach, have been a finesse football team for about 50 years now. By contrast, the Pittsburgh Steeler have always been a brutal force team.
Why has this never changed? The teams have been successful. They’ve been losers. But they never change this identity.
It makes sense that stadium and weather will be the primary determinants for a football team’s identity. Pittsburgh has lousy weather and an outdoor stadium, so power football makes sense.
That’s a great line from one of John Updike’s final stories.
I know what it is like to feel close to someone, to not want to live without them, and simultaneously feeling an urge to destroy it all so one can be free. Independent. Non-needy.
David Deida says in his book: "There is only one way for a man to give a woman what she truly wants, and that is through his strength of loving when he is not compromised by fear. A man who lives in fear — of losing his woman, of failing in his career — is weakened in his expression of love. His core is compromised. He is unable to ravish his woman because he is unable to let go of the clench in his gut." (Pg. 261)
I find the "If you want to be taken seriously, then you must do X, Y, Z" rhetoric obnoxious.
I don’t know how many people have asked me, "Do you want to be taken seriously? Do you want your blog to be taken seriously?"
I loathe it because I don’t have a snappy comeback to it. I don’t worry about being taken seriously. Even before i started blogging in July 1997, I had full confidence that if I did good work, it would be taken seriously.
There’s no need to worry about being taken seriously. Do good work and the serious attention will follow.
J-Street does not need to worry about being taken seriously. As soon as people start writing Op/Eds questioning if you want to be taken seriously, you’re taken seriously.
When people proclaim publicly that you don’t matter, you matter. When people take the time to tell me they don’t read me, I know I’m making an impact. Why put effort into fighting something insignificant?
Returning home from Rosh Hashanah services around 2 pm Saturday, I spied a friend walking off in the distance.
My normal greeting to my friends these days is "Marriage Equality!"
This day I just yelled her name.
She didn’t answer.
She was walking in distinctly non-Rosh Hashanah attire — shorts and a t-shirt.
I knew her from Orthodox life. I’ve never seen so much of her flesh.
I ran to catch up.
She was with her shaygetz boyfriend and she was walking her shaygetz dog. They were all having about as much fun as three Gentiles can on Rosh Hashanah. They felt blithely unburdened by any obligation to crown God King and for all I knew, they were all going home to commit the great sin of premarital sex.
As I spend my days engaging with the sacred texts, I often jot down my insights.
This is just part of my communication with God and His Torah. It pains me to think that these private musings might be made public one day, perhaps after my death.
Do my Torah thoughts belong to me or do they belong all of Israel?
Dr. Marc B. Shapiro blogs (his first post in seven months!): "Even if it is true that the Chazon Ish never intended to publish his notes, is that any reason for them not to be printed? Didn’t the Netziv tell the Wuerzburger Rav’s son not to pay attention to his father’s wish that his writings not be published, since the Torah thoughts that he developed were not to be regarded as his personal possession to the extent that he could prevent others from studying what he wrote?[4] Furthermore, is there any evidence that the Chazon Ish was opposed to his criticism of R. Hayyim appearing in print?"
Dennis Prager says: “Were all the great moral thinkers of history haters? There isn’t a single great moral thinker in history of which I am aware who advocated same-sex marriage. There is no parallel to this. Every great moral idea has been advocated from the beginning of moral thought. The idea that slavery was wrong did not begin with the abolitionists.”
“Human nature aches for irresponsibility. Human happiness aches for responsibility. The more you are responsible for your life, the happier you will be.”
When President Obama announced that kids can stay on their parent’s health insurance until they were 26, college students were ecstatic. They could prolong the age at which they were dependent on their parents another five years.
If there was a student there who did not applaud, he was a happier student that those who did applaud.
As I pointed out in my previous post, Rabbi Marc Schneier was not engaged in illicit behavior when he was photographed in Israel kissing a comely speech pathologist not his wife.
Rather, the good rabbi was engaging in routine and wholly appropriate speech training and did not enjoy it one bit. The rabbi was learning to enunciate more clearly so he could better teach the Torah.
If, and I do not believe for a second that this is true, the rabbi was doing something wrong, it is only because he is sick and needs help. Instead of castigating him, we should be encouraging his personal growth. Science shows us that promiscuity is not a moral failing as much as a genetic predisposition. I don’t know why G-d would program some men to want to bang as many hot chicks as they can and then condemn them for adultery. This makes no sense. It is a real dilemma for a very religious man such as myself to understand why a compassionate and loving G-d would make such a world.
Frankly, I don’t see the appeal in multiple sex partners. I would much rather spend my energies studying Talmud and listening to the Miami Boys Yeshiva choir.
