Bagel Dropping

Bagel Dropping: To make conspicuous reference to common Jewish cultural items.

This is generally done in order to reaffirm one's standing as a member of the "tribe". For example using words like "oy yev" as an exclamatory or referencing bagels as a uniquely Jewish cultural affect. No one who is frum* thinks of bagels as particularly Jewish; it's just Sunday morning breakfast, that's it.

*note the conflation of frum with Jewish, but anyhow...

ברוך דין האמת

Rabbi Yaakov Kret (zt"l) died this past Thrusday. He was 97.

I knew him as my father's rebbi--probably the single greatest reason that my father is frum today. In lieu of a grandfather, he was the closest I knew from age three, always greeting me with a great smile ("Zeyv, how are you?") and indulging my pedantic strings of questions. I loved him.

For the Torah world this loss reverberates as the deafening silence of nothing, the sound after the felling of a great oak. Rabbi Kret was the Sgan Rosh Yeshiva of Nevardik at Bialystok in 1939 (at some ridicules age of 29 or so--he was giving the second heighest shiur at 22) when the Russians were approaching on the eastern front and the Germans from the west. Many of the talmidim fled the towards the Germans, who had been kinder to the Jews in the Great War, but he returned from Lithuania to be with his mother and the ailing Rosh Yeshiva to be captured by the Russians and sent to a forced labor camp. The Russians were the good guys. They did not butcher their captives, they just starved them. When the war ended, Rabbi Kret was placed in charge of a small yeshiva for DPs and eventually moved to NY, receiving a pulpit in the Old Broadway synagogue in Harlem, which he occupied for more than 47 years.

With his passing passes Torah. He was, to my knowledge, the last surviving member of a European Yeshiva hanholo. With his passing passes the last surviving link to Voloshin, Nevardik, Slobodka and Bialystok. May his neshomo serve as an advocate for am yisroel in shomayim.

Why can't we just all get along?

Because you're a shmuck, that's why! The NYT ran a strange article last week about the feeble and misunderstood R. Yisroel Dovid Weiss and the Neturei Karta movement. What the article oddly neglects to say is that Iran is calling for Israel to be wiped off the map while simultaneously seeking the means to make good on the hope. Generally, a position which compromises millions of (Jewish) lives in looked upon with derision amongst normative Judaism (sometimes called a moser, a distinction better to avoid). I am thus puzzled why neither he, nor the good article's author, appear to grasp this rather rudimentary principle. The article further neglects to mention that similar treatment is not bestowed on all Jewish anti-Zionist, but reserved for ones who support the current Iranian regime. I doubt, though, that acute (or even accurate) sociology was Ms. Santos's motive.

S'iz Shver Tzu Zein a Yid

If I can't look pretentious, I will have to look pretentiously. Mmmmmm, baby squid and fried chickpeas.....

Seriously tough, the number of artistic pleasures denied to orthoprax Jews is quite large. Restaurants, for starters, the vast majority of wines, architecture of great churches and the great art therein, fashion (as it relates to men looking at women), opera/musicals. I wonder what people with taste do in the afterlife?

Never Happened

What a wonderful publicity stunt for the State of Israel. Generally I tip my hat to the crafty nature of Ahmadinajad for his carefully balanced political act, but I think he has made a true miscalculation here. Israel, to a large degree, exists because of the crimes of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitic rhetoric of the 19th century panned out in the worst way and the Nations of the World understood, for a brief moment, that the Jews needed Israel (I am waxing poetic, and will desist shortly). By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust, you are setting yourself up for every survivor, every historian, every archivist with a passion for mid-20th century affairs to dig up every shred of support to the myth (and there are quite a few such shreds). This is not like the heliocentric model of the universe, it is the most well documented genocide in the history of the world.

By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust you only cause that myth to grow and entrench itself into the consciousness of the welt. Those who forget or become dispassionate suddenly see a call to action. There can be no greater aid for the State of Israel than to give cause for the world to reexamine how truly awful that episode really was.

Go shorty, it's your bat mitzva, we gonna party, like it's your bat mitzvah

A bas-mitzveh that cost over 10 million dollars! It included such "artists" as Tom Petty, Aerosmith, and 50 cent and had goody bags that included ipods and digital cameras. The goody bags were so successful that one 14-year old guest said that they were the "coolest" part of the part-ay. According to the Jerusalem Post, "The guest asked that her name not be used because she didn't want her friends to think that she had only attended the party for the bags." She added that she also liked the music.

One need not think that such an expensive bar or bas mitzve is necessary, however, and the Jerusalem Post lists a couple of tips on how to keep it affordable:

1. Plan the event yourself. This can save thousands of dollars you would otherwise spend on an event planner.


2. Make the tables' center-pieces yourself, this will save a $200/table fee for renting them for a night.


3. Don't have famous musicians. This could save millions.

No matter what you do to keep down the costs, "at the end of the day there will always be the pressure to compete with other bat and bar mitzvas."

Even though my bar mitzveh had none of these gimmicks and cost somewhat less than the recommended minimum of $20,000, I still think I had the best bar mitzveh in town. I am also completely certain that those who came for the goody bags were sorely disappointed.