Without Wearing Neckties, Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'

Even though the ordinary Israeli who attends synagogue does not even own a necktie, a social scientist has "proven" that "Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'"

In fact the researcher involved already knew the answers before he even conducted his "studies." Professor Jeff Levin has spent his career "proving" the health benefits of religion for the world. There is zero chance at this stage of the game that he would come up with a conclusion to disprove his base assumptions.

We are shocked by this discovery though for a specific reason. We've been criticized for discussing in our "Dear Rabbi" column a rule requiring tie-wearing by Jews in a local synagogue if they want to receive a Torah-honor on Sabbaths and Holidays.

Here's a nugget from a letter to the editor of the Jewish Standard that fervently defends the wonderful meaning of the tie-wearing practice by Dr. Reuben Gross:

Rabbi Zahavy takes a strong stand with the congregant. He labels the shul’s dress code as “nonsense.” This is hardly appropriate language coming from a rabbi about a shul’s policy, which follows the dictates of no less a person than the prophet Ezra (6th century BCE), who enacted the rule that individuals should give special “kavod” (honor) to the Sabbath, marked by their change of clothing.

Truly we did not know that Ezra the Scribe (usually not called prophet) knew about neckties in the 6th century BCE.

And so we wonder how Jews in Israel who attend shul regularly can be happier and healthier even though they do not own or wear ties.

Or let's be positive here. Can you imagine just how happy and healthy these synagogue attenders would be in Israel if they wore neckties?

Perhaps we can start a new program to promote even greater health and happiness in Israel: Neckties Without Borders for Religious Sabras.

Here is a news report on the impressive research on the health benefits of attending synagogue:

Israeli Jewish adults, who go to synagogue regularly, pray often, and think of themselves as religious are much healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts, two new studies have suggested.

Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D, said that commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being.

One study used 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey and has been published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, an official journal of the American Psychological Association.

The other study used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Programme's Religion III survey and has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (ANI)

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JStandard: Was the Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting good for the Jews?

Yes, the Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting is good for the Jews.

As the Jewish Standard science correspondent (and our sister) Dr. Miryam Wahrmann observes, "That case could have a dramatic impact on the development, cost, and availability of [life-saving] genetic tests."

See her in-depth cover story "Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting changes the landscape for BRCA testing" here.

And her related stories:

New website educates the Jewish community about genetic health issues

Sharsheret’s genetics for life addresses hereditary breast and ovarian cancer

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Jewish Times: Are Hebrew National Hot Dogs Really Kosher?

Yes. Hebrew National Hot Dogs have been kosher since 1905.

We eat them. But we know lots of more-kosher-than-thou types who don't partake. Those are the Jewish folk who answer to an even "higher authority" than Hebrew National.

Kenneth Lasson, writing in a Baltimore Jewish Times cover story in 2009, weaves together reportage about the hot dog industry, the kashrut supervision industry and baseball parks to come up with a fascinating fabric of a story, "Hebrew National and Kosher Politics - What’s kosher about answering to a higher authority?".

For years there have been some super-glatt-orthodox who whisper about whether the supervision of Hebrew National was "reliable." Lasson covers this controversy and says for instance,

...As to Triangle K, Rabbi Abadi wrote on the kashrut.org Web site, “Rabbi Ralbag is a G-d-fearing man and if he says it’s kosher, you sure can eat it. I can’t say the same for many of the other labels out there.”...more...

The Talmudic question is of course, can we trust the writing of Kenneth Lasson. Is he reliable? Is he glatt kosher? /repost from 7-9-09/

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Was Marc Rich Jewish?

Yes, Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich was a Jew. He will be buried in Israel.

JPost reports on Rich's controversial life:

LUCERNE, Switzerland - Jewish-American billionaire Marc Rich, who invented oil trading and was pardoned by then US president Bill Clinton over what had once been the biggest tax evasion case in US history and busting sanctions with Iran, died on Wednesday from a stroke in Switzerland at 78.

Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from US justice, enjoying decades of comfortable privacy at his sprawling Villa Rosa on Lake Lucerne.

Belgian-born Rich, whose trading group eventually became the global commodities powerhouse Glencore Xstrata, died in hospital from a stroke, spokesman Christian Koenig said.

At the villa, with views of the nearby mountains and grounds sloping down to the banks of the lake, security guards and other staff could be seen but there was no sign of family members.

"He will be brought to Israel for burial," Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, said by telephone. Rich will be buried on Thursday at Kibbutz Einat cemetery near Tel Aviv.

Many of the biggest players in oil and metals trading trace their roots back to Rich, whose triumph in the 1960s and 70s was to create a spot market for crude oil, wresting business away from the world's big oil groups.

To his critics, he was a white-collar criminal, a serial sanctions breaker, who they accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, Fidel Castro's Cuba and Augusto Pinochet's Chile.

In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, The King of Oil, the normally obsessively secretive Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Clinton's regret

Rich became a fugitive in 1983, fleeing to Switzerland to escape charges of exploiting the US embargo against Iran to make huge profits on illicit Iranian oil sales. He was also indicted for wire fraud, racketeering and tax evasion.

He remained under threat of a life sentence in a US jail until Clinton pardoned him during the last chaotic days of his presidency, a move that provoked moral outrage and bewilderment amongst some politicians.

Clinton later said he regretted granting the pardon, calling it "terrible politics."

"It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he told Newsweek magazine in 2002.

Rich, who was born Marcell David Reich in Antwerp on December 18, 1934, began his career with one of the biggest trading houses of the time, Philipp Brothers, subsequently Phibro, aged 20. He left in 1974 with a fellow graduate of the Phibro mailroom, Pincus "Pinky" Green, and set up Marc Rich and Co AG in Switzerland, a firm that would eventually become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

"We are saddened to hear of the death of Marc," Glencore Xstrata Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said. "He was a friend and one of the great pioneers of the commodities trading industry, founding the company that became Glencore."

In later years, Rich's fortune dwindled after his property portfolio was hit by the Spanish housing crisis.

"I invested a lot of money there and because of the crisis also lost a lot, at least on paper," he said in a rare interview, with Swiss economic magazine Bilanz. Forbes put his wealth at $2.5 billion.

Rich once told Fortune magazine he was a normal person with an image problem.

"I've been portrayed in a horrible way," he said, "as a workaholic, a loner, a money machine. It's not a true picture."

Ken Hill, a US Marshall who hunted Rich around the world for more than a decade, once said Rich profited from greed.

"The smoking gun is greed," he said. "This is what Marc thrived on - the greed of those who had commodities and were in positions of influence and power."

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Is Nik Wallenda Jewish?

No Nik Wallenda is not a Jew. He is a Christian. And he leaves no doubt about his religion in the soundtrack to his high-wire daredevil crossing of the Little Colorado River Gorge, near the Grand Canyon, as this humorously edited video dramatizes.



New York Magazine sums it up:

One thing was clear by the time Nik Wallenda reached the other side of that canyon last night: He is not a Muslim. Throughout the 22-minute tightrope walk, Wallenda, who was miked up on live television, invoked the name of Jesus 63 times, "Lord" 34 times, and "God" 12 times. He calls out to "Father" six times, praises the "King of Kings" twice, and makes one mention of a "sorcerer." If that seems like a lot of heavenly references for a 22-minute span, it seems like even more when condensed into a 87-second video.

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Non-Congratulations to the New Non-Rabbis

Thirty years ago, in 1983 we were happy to start sending our women Jewish Studies major graduates at the University of Minnesota to train to become rabbis in the Reform movement. We told them to go out and become full head rabbis of synagogues, not assistants or educational directors. Some did. We were proud.

This week we read of the non-ordination of three females by an Orthodox institute. We sadly shake our heads and dejectedly shrug our shoulders. This is a milestone of non-progress.

This non-event is a rare mixture of chutzpah and cowardice on the part of these women and their teachers. Their mentors dared to give a "degree" and "title" to the women and yet they fearfully refrained from ordaining them with the accepted titles "rabbis" or the feminine of the term, "rabbahs" to be more grammatical.

All of this is too perplexing for our Talmudic CPU to process. Our Talmudic processing system has short-circuited and crashed and cannot analyze this conflicted non-event any further.

Hence we can at best non-extend our non-congratulations to the new women non-rabbis.  We heartily offer our non-applause to them on their non-ordinations.What a bewildering religion.

Here is the story from JTA.

(JTA) — Yeshivat Maharat, which trains Orthodox Jewish women to be religious leaders, held its first graduation ceremony.

Ruth Balinsky Friedman, Rachel Kohl Feingold and Abby Brown Schier graduated Sunday in a ceremony in New York City attended by some 500 people.
The graduates are set to work for Orthodox synagogues and institutions.

Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for Manhiga Hilkhatit Rukhanit Toranit, or leader in legal, spiritual and Torah matters.

Each graduate of the New York yeshiva will use the title of maharat rather than rabbi or rabba — the title given to Sarah Hurwitz, the dean of Yeshivat Maharat, when she was ordained by Rabbi Avi Weiss.

The movement to confer religious authority on women in the Orthodox community, which began in 2009, remains controversial in the Orthodox community.

Last month, the Rabbinical Council of America reissued a 2010 statement that said, “We cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.”

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Was James Gandolfini Jewish?

He was such a powerful acting persona, sure we'd like to claim him as a member of the tribe. But no James Gandolfini was not a Jew. Shockingly, he passed away at age 51. He was a superlative actor who made his biggest hit in the Sopranos on HBO, considered by many critics to be the greatest series of its kind of all time.

The Times tells about him:

James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was born in Westwood, N.J., on Sept. 18, 1961. His father was an Italian immigrant who held a number of jobs, including janitor, bricklayer and mason. His mother, Santa, was a high school cafeteria chef.

He attended Park Ridge High School and Rutgers University, graduating in 1983 with a degree in communications. He drove a delivery truck, managed nightclubs and tended bar in Manhattan before becoming interested in acting at age 25, when a friend took him to an acting class.

Gandolfini's father worked as the head custodian at Paramus Catholic High School in New Jersey, and we assume the family was Catholic.

Haaretz wrote about his characters' Jewish links. Gandolfini  made a humorous Israeli ad for yes.co.il.

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Am I dead yet? NYTimes Warns of Dire Consequences of "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep"

From The New York Times, a poorly argued article, "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep," concludes that, "Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life."

I shared the article with a friend who knows that often I do not get enough sleep and the response was that based on this article I ought to be dead by now, several times over.

Here are some phrases and then snippets from the awful alarmist article, in order but without context, showing how little hard logic, science or medicine underlies the claims in the article about your health from the prestigious New York Times. 

Note the use of blurry terms like "chances are" "most people" "can compromise" "may even" "can profoundly affect" "are negatively affected" "a risk factor" "tend to" "can be harmed" "linked" "may ultimately result" "risks...are higher" "may also be" "risk may also be elevated" "risk may result" "increased risk" "can also experience" "may be more susceptible" -- the connections between lack of sleep and all of these potential health conditions are just plain blurred and conditional and none of them is causative. Nowhere does the article give any hard numbers or actual percentages of anything bad caused directly by diminished sleep.

Yes if you don't sleep enough it is nearly a certainty that the next day you will feel tired. I don't know where and how the Times concluded that less sleep "may even shorten your life." 

That's going way out on a limb. As I read this foggy article through a few times I could see nothing that proves too little sleep will cause you to die more quickly.

Here are the shoddy sentence snippets for the above hazy phrases.

• Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are...
• ...most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. 
• ...can compromise your health and 
• ...may even shorten your life. 
• ...can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health.
• ...a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep
• ...a risk factor for depression and substance abuse
• ...People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep...
• Dr. Germain is studying what happens in the brains of sleeping veterans with PTSD in hopes of developing more effective treatments for them and for people with lesser degrees of stress that interfere with a good night’s sleep.
• ...myriad bodily systems can be harmed by chronically shortened nights. 
• ...linked insufficient sleep to weight gain. 
• ...may ultimately result in Type 2 diabetes. 
• ...The risks of cardiovascular diseases and stroke are higher in people who sleep less than six hours a night.
• ...(In terms of cardiovascular disease, sleeping too much may also be risky. Higher rates of heart disease have been found among women who sleep more than nine hours nightly.)
• The risk of cancer may also be elevated in people who fail to get enough sleep. ...The increased risk may result from diminished secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. 
• ...an increased risk of potentially cancerous colorectal polyps in those who slept fewer than six hours nightly.
• ...Children can also experience hormonal disruptions from inadequate sleep. 
• Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York University, recently described evidence associating inadequate sleep with an erroneous diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. In one study, 28 percent of children with sleep problems had symptoms of the disorder, but not the disorder.
• ...short sleepers may be more susceptible to everyday infections like colds and flu. 
• ...During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.
• With insufficient sleep, thinking slows, it is harder to focus and pay attention,...
• ...In driving tests, sleep-deprived people perform as if drunk, and no amount of caffeine or cold air can negate the ill effects.

Some Talmudic points of complexity to consider:

1. If you sleep less, you have more waking time, so in effect you definitely are living awake longer. There are no hedges about that fact.
2. That assumes that being awake is preferred to being asleep - because you can produce more and experience more of life. If you are unproductive and idle - sleep may be no less preferable to waking.
3. The article does not even begin to delve into the value of dreaming while asleep. At the very least, dreams can be interesting, entertaining and dramatic. I've done some impressive things in my dreams and also have confronted some true nightmares.
4. I've solved numerous problems while dreaming and have come up with innovative concepts and ideas.
5. Aside from the alleged health value of sleep - of which I not convinced - it is hard to assess what has more value - waking life or sleeping life. And your mileage may vary. Some people never remember their dreams. Some people dream in black-and-white - nothing at all colorful or vivid.

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Forbes: Waze Will be the Wikipedia of All Maps and the Search Bar for the Real World

Forbes has a background article on Waze in the aftermath of the news that Google will buy the company. What Waze Adds To Google: A View From Waze's CEO

It turns out that Waze is not just a GPS app for your car on your smartphone. Waze is a community of users who will contribute to the indexing of the physical world. It aspires to be to the actual earth, what Google is to the Internet. Or something like that.

After reading the interview with the CEO of Waze, it seems to me that Waze wants to be more the user edited Wikipedia of the real world of roads and traffic. And keep in mind that the crowd-sourced quality of Wikipedia information is not always the greatest.

Bardin said the new user interface for search was the map. But how did Waze build its own maps, which are thought to be just as good, if not at times better, than the ones $410-billion-market-cap Apple produced? By crowd-sourcing GPS data, and “combining the algorithms of people.” It sounds straightforward in theory, but it involved building a hierarchical structure of passive users and editors, a self-managed community like Wikipedia. The community has country managers who oversee area managers, who then oversee the editors, with each level having a greater level of permissions to alter Waze’s maps.

And the big brag from the CEO that earned the company a bid of over $1 billion: “Whenever you’re going onto the web, you start with a search bar,” he said. “Wherever you’re going in the real world, you’re going to start with Waze.”

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Is John Oliver Jewish?

John Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart this summer, 2013. He is one funny dude.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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On 2/6/2011 we wrote:

We laughed out loud at the latest video clip that the Jewish Humor Central Blog posted (hat tip) from the Daily Show's John Oliver.

And then we thought, he is so funny, yes, John Oliver is Jewish. (But he isn't.)

We base our conclusion in particular on his ability to invent a new Jewish holiday for the purposes of celebrating a political victory in Texas as you will see in the hilarious clip below.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jewish Speaker of Texas State House
www.thedailyshow.com
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Is Edward Snowden Jewish?

Okay, fine. New Yorker bloggers debate whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain:

• Jeffrey Toobin: Edward Snowden Is No Hero
• John Cassidy: Why Edward Snowden Is a Hero

But what we want to know: is Edward Snowden Jewish?

We will go out on a limb here and, even lacking firm evidence, based on his bio, we will say, no, Edward Snowden is not a Jew. 

US News on NBC news reports: "Born June 21, 1983, he grew up in Wilmington, N.C., but later moved to Ellicott City, Md., he told The Guardian. His mother, Wendy, is the chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology at the federal court in Baltimore, a court official told NBC News. His father, Lonnie, is a former Coast Guard officer who lives in Pennsylvania, the Allentown Morning Call reported. A neighbor said he has an older sister who is an attorney."

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Google Will Buy Israeli Waze App for > $1 Billion

Google is buying Waze - an excellent GPS and traffic app that I have used on my Samsung Galaxy S3. I use it as a second source of traffic information as I make my way across America's worst road - the Cross Bronx Distressway. It's fairly accurate and offers creative alternative routes when needed.

Join 648,000 others. Get Waze from Google Play.

This is great news for the Israeli high tech sector.

This is bad news for United Jewish Appeal and Federation fund raisers. Even though there is poverty and need in Israel, it gets harder to raise money in the US for destitute Israelis, each time another Israeli company reaches a billion dollar valuation.

Google said to be close to buying Waze, developer of crowdsourced map app
By Elizabeth Heichler, IDG News Service

Google is close to a deal to acquire Waze, maker of the eponymous crowdsourced mapping app, for at least $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal and others.

The potential deal was first reported by Israeli business site Globes which said it would be worth $1.3 billion, citing sources.

Started in Israel, now with offices in Palo Alto headed by CEO Noam Bardin, the company says it has about 45 million users in 193 countries, according to the Journal. Waze originated in 2006 as an open-source mapping project led by CTO Ehud Shabtai; the company formed two years later with venture-capital backing, according to information on its website.

The app allows users to tap into shared traffic and navigation information. Data on road obstacles, rush-hour snarls, accidents and the like can be shared with other drivers in real time. The most recent version of the app delivered last month, Waze 3.7, includes integration with Facebook that places Facebook events in users' navigation lists and allows them to see the progress of Waze-using friends travelling to the same event. Users can also join the community of map editors to improve data on the maps themselves, which use TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) data from the US Census Bureau. The app is free, supported by location-based advertising.

How to use waze.

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Is Sigourney Weaver Jewish?

Now it is far-fetched that anybody would think that actress Sigourney Weaver is Jewish. No, Sigourney Weaver is not a Jew.

The tall actress who we know and love from Alien, to Working Girl to Avatar, and who we once met and told her how much we liked her work, is a Christian of Scottish-English extraction.

But it is noteworthy that IMDB reports that when she was young after graduating from high school in 1967, she spent several months on a kibbutz in Israel. /repost from 7/16/10/

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Are dirty tricks in negotiations kosher?

Day after day we see ill will and bad faith in the negotiations in our marketplace and workplace.

No, dirty tricks are not kosher.

But you ask, exactly what are dirty tricks and how can you deal with them?

Several years ago we took one course in Negotiations in the MBA program at Rutgers. Each year the brilliant professor who taught the course, Daniel Levin sends emails to his former students to remind them about how to respond in a negotiation to the prevalent issue of distributive tactics or what we normally call "dirty tricks."

According to Levin, the top ten dirty tricks in negotiations are:

1. Good Cop/Bad Cop
2. Emotional Intimidation
3. Lowball (or Highball) Offer
4. Opening with a Take It or Leave It Offer
5. Exploiting the Trappings of Power
6. Increasing an Offer's Appearance of Legitimacy
7. Pretending to Have Limited Authority
8. Playing a Game of Chicken
9. Lying about Priorities
10. Nibbling

Levin gives us his priceless suggestions for responses in his Talmudic analysis here. Study it and study it some more, because everything you need to know about dirty tricks is in that grid.

We've said many times that in all of the years of our education through college and rabbinical school and graduate school at Brown, Levin's negotiations course in the MBA program at Rutgers was the most valuable course that we ever took.

We use the skills that we learned there every day.

Thank you again Dan Levin.

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Is Economist Nouriel Roubini Jewish?

Yes, famous economist Nouriel Roubini is a Jew.

He was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1959 to Iranian Jewish parents. He moved to Tehran, Iran, when he was two.  He is currently a U.S. citizen and speaks English, Farsi, Italian, and Hebrew.

Roubini spent one year in college at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Italy and receiving his B.A., summa cum laude in Economics from the Bocconi University  in Milan in 1982.

He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988.

June 7, 2013 he predicted that gold prices will drop 30% to below $1000.

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The Daily Beast: Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women?

It happens. When you practice irrational thuggery in the name of religion it does not take long for an impressionable young person to get a really wrong idea. On the Daily Beast we read, "Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women of the Wall?" by Sigal Samuel on Jun 6, 2013.

Fortunately (did we reach rock bottom yet?) there was no violence today as women prayed at the wall under a heavy police guard. It's getting clearer every day that Orthodox Judaism has decided to resort ever more often to bullying and thuggery against what it sees as weak Jewish opponents - women who want to pray. Not brave; not heroic. But the legacy of bullying vulnerable women via rabbinic decree goes back a long way to illustrious roots.

The Daily Beast reported, "In a disturbing QandA session, a 17-year-old Jerusalem yeshiva student asked a rabbi in an online forum whether it’s permissible under Jewish law to shoot and kill members of the liberal prayer group Women of the Wall when they gather at the Kotel. The boy was arrested today after Rabbi Baruch Efrati alerted police to the question—which, true to the rabbinic tradition of she’elot u-teshuvot (responsa literature, literally “questions and answers”), he nonetheless deigned to answer...."

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JStandard Letters Continue Dear Rabbi Debates

JStandard letters continue the debates on issues raised by Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy in his column, Dear Rabbi.

Jeff Bernstein • Letters
Many thanks for Rabbi Zahavy’s and Mr. Sutton’s thoughtful responses to my May 24 letter on the issue of the efficacy of prayer, particularly the Kaddish (“More on angels,” June 2). I would be grateful if any reader would care to respond to my question concerning the Kedusha: Why, in the Kedusha, does the Creator of the Universe need to hear words of praise from angels, beings who have no free will, and therefore no choice in the matter?

Jeff Bernstein
New Milford

Shel Haas • Letters
“Our great minds are equally sure that God hears our prayers” illustrates how irrational those “great minds” were (“More on angels,” May 30). “Official theology”? According to a group of men of long ago that were unaware of the information regarding all aspects of life that is available today. The great Saadia Gaon’s writings illustrate his great reasoning powers. He could examine a problem from all aspects and then proceed to a conclusion. He professed that the Earth was the center of the universe. He obviously did not have the knowledge possessed in later years. Prayer answers a psychological need in humans. Sound from Earth is not heard in outer space. God is not limited to a particular place in a particular time. We do not listen to God’s messages. If God saw fit to enable the Temples built in Jerusalem to be demolished, finding them faulty in many ways, why do our people venerate what God has destroyed? God gave us the ability to think for ourselves. We have the past upon which to base our present and future. If the past has proven to be faulty in many ways, isn’t it time to acknowledge that conclusion and move on to approach the real path God has set forth for us. Justice, righteousness, and charity were the three themes expressed by our prophets as to God’s desires of mankind. All else, God said many times, is meaningless.

Shel Haas
Fort Lee

Emile Pincus • Letters
Thank you for printing the stimulating exchange between Rabbi Zahavy and correspondent Jeff Bernstein (Letters, May 24 and May 31).

Mr. Bernstein’s comments reflect a major tension inherent in modern religious life. There is an impressive intensity that he invests in solving the mystery of what to believe. However, his need to go beyond the emotional position — which, I submit, is a spiritual position — expressed in prayer, to an urgent need to find a factual type of reality seems misplaced.

The issue is not really whether the angels pray in Aramaic, or whether God needs our prayer, or indeed whether we really do intercede with God when we say prayers in memory of the departed.

There is a deep beauty and need that we humans experience when we try to give to others. When we remember the dead, and when we believe that they might actually need us to help them by doing so, in a way that they are unable now to help themselves; when we think of whatever they have given us, and how can we really express that to them today — religion gives us a means of expressing that. Others may believe they have found more meaningful ways of expressing that gratitude and debt. However, religion gets us started in the right direction, and provides a real reminder that we need to give something of ourselves to remembering those we owe to ourselves to remember on a recurrent basis.

What Judaism and prayers offer is an opportunity to adopt a posture toward life that is ultimately helpful for ourselves. A favorite image I have, on family yahrzeits: they are depending on me to remember them, to “do the right thing,” that just might help them. They’re cheering me on from the silent grandstand. Knowing that I might be doing something for them and that they need me and that actually I need them to need me makes the occasion and the observance “make sense,” which Mr. Bernstein insists upon. Perhaps these thoughts and imaginings will help.

Emile Pincus
Teaneck

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Please continue to write in to Dear Rabbi to agree or disagree. Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy looks forward to reading more of your questions, insights and challenges. His monthly column is on page 47 - link.]

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Times: Israel Trying to Fix the Broken Haredi Community

Haredim in Israel are held captive from their birth by communal leaders who keep them from general and advanced education and bar them from socialization into the streams of Israeli cultural and commercial life.

The Times' Jodi Rudroren writes "Israel Prods Ultra-Orthodox to 'Share Burden'": "...Because of Orthodox men's commitment to full-time Torah study and a fear of assimilation, only a little more than 4 in 10 of them work, less than half the rate of other Jewish men in Israel, and their average salaries are 57 percent of other Jewish men in the country. Nearly 60 percent of Haredi families live in poverty, and by 2050 they are expected to make up more than a quarter of Israel's population..."

The Haredi community needs help.

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JStandard: Dear Rabbi on Standing for the Sh'ma and Wearing a Tie in Synagogue

Your Talmudic Advice Column by Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy

Dear Rabbi,

I don’t understand why we Jews in most synagogues sit when we recite one of our most important prayers – the Sh’ma. I have heard that it is permitted to recite this core affirmation of our faith either sitting or standing. Why then do we most commonly choose to sit when reciting it?

Wants to take a stand

Bergenfield

Dear Wants:

Other rabbis offer social and historical reasons to explain the postures that we prefer for praying. I prefer to listen to the contents of each prayer and understand how its distinct personality dictates its proper postures.

Consider, by contrast, that because of its personality we do stand to recite the Amidah. That prayer is a formal set of rabbinic blessing-declarations, containing praises and petitions that express a mixture of theological, personal, communal, political, and national beliefs and aspirations.

When I recite the words, to me it seems as if I am a priest performing a repeated ceremonial rite at the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. Just as a priest stands up to perform his official public actions, it makes sense to me that I stand up and perform this prayer.

I find in the Sh’ma an altogether other form and personality. It’s easy to see that this expression of beliefs and values comes directly from carefully chosen Torah passages that emphasize a special subset of Jewish values and beliefs. The texts emphasize that we should love our one God, who keeps accounts and rewards and punishes us based on our actions. The passages further underscore that we should patronize our scribes — that is, we should wear their t’fillin on our bodies and affix their mezzuzot to our homes.

To me the Sh’ma encompasses the personality of Torah study and the values of the scribes who write our texts and who keep our accounts. Study, writing, and accounting are done almost always while sitting down at a table or desk. And so, since the contents and personality of our prayer dictates the posture of our prayer, I find it altogether fitting and proper that we should sit down like scribes and students to recite the Sh’ma.

Dear Rabbi,

I am sad for my good friend, a respected community leader and a member of a local Orthodox synagogue for many years, who does not like to wear a tie. His synagogue follows an idiosyncratic rule that no matter how nicely dressed he may be, a man who does not wear a tie cannot receive an aliyah to the Torah on a Shabbat or a holiday. So my friend has not received an aliyah to the Torah on any of those days for many years, even on the special occasions of his parents’ yahrzeits. It hurts me to see him suffer this arbitrary form of petty ostracism and humiliation. What should I do?

Fit to be tied

Teaneck

Dear Fit:

Common sense would dictate that you and your friend not go to places where you feel uncomfortable, even if it is a mere trifling practice that creates a sense of annoyance and intimidation for you. You know that an Orthodox synagogue must follow the many laws and customs that govern who should receive an aliyah. For example, a Cohen receives the first aliyah, and a Levite gets the second. A man who has a yahrzeit often gets precedence, and so does the father of a newborn child and a groom before his wedding. Major donors to a synagogue get some preferential treatment, as do important rabbis. I’ve noticed also that the gabbai who allocates aliyot gets his fair share of them too. And a woman is not called to the Torah at all.

You may know that some non-Orthodox Jews find the exclusion of women from this process of public honors to be troubling or even offensive. Orthodox spokesmen point out that women receive due respect and honor in their community, just not by receiving aliyot.

Forty years ago, when I asked Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik about the possibility of women receiving aliyot in an Orthodox minyan, he quipped to me, “When women write the checks, then they will receive the aliyahs.” The Rav dodged my inquiry. I understood his reply to be a clever observation or a social comment, but not any halachic guidance.

Now, the synagogue that you describe in your question definitely created for itself a heightened odd character when it adopted an additional “tie rule” to further govern its members’ roles and aliyah-rights. Even if its eccentric practice is an approved requirement of synagogue committees, officers, and boards, it still fits the category of a socially undesirable “because-we-say-so” intimidation.

That said, you and your friend may be able to ignore and rise above this nonsense if you keep in mind that Moses, King Solomon, Jeremiah, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, the Vilna Gaon, and many other great non-tie-wearing-Jews would not be offered a Torah honor if they somehow, via time and space travel, showed up in your suburban shul.

The Dear Rabbi column offers timely advice based on timeless Talmudic wisdom. It aspires to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the month. Send your questions to DearRabbi@jewishmediagroup.com

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Is it kosher to bring a gun to the swim club?

Unless we are talking about a super-soaker toy, no, not in my backyard. It is not kosher to bring a gun into my swim club. I don't really care what the gold old boy yahoos in West Virginia do - see the story below. Just don't bring any gun to the Teaneck Swim Club or the JCC where my friends and relatives go to swim in safety.

And by the way even the toys are getting downright dangerous. Consider you can "ice" your friends with the NERF SUPER SOAKER ARCTIC SHOCK Water Blaster - about which we are told by Hasbro:

This powerful soaker lets you freeze your friends with icy blasts of water! The ARCTIC SHOCK soaker’s Ice Drum has a large 25-fluid-ounce capacity and you can fill it with ice for a super-chilled soak. Fill the drum and pump for a freezing blast of water at targets up to 30 feet away! The Ice Drum works with other Clip System SUPER SOAKER blasters (sold separately) and SUPER SOAKER Water Clips work with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker. Fill additional Water Clips (sold separately) and use them to refill fast. Put the competition on ice with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker!

From ProPublica, some dangerous summer news.

Now, You Can’t Ban Guns at the Public Pool
by Lois Beckett, ProPublica

If you feel unsafe at a public pool in Charleston, W.Va., you may soon have the right to lie there on a towel with a handgun at your side.

For 20 years, Charleston has been an island of modest gun restrictions in a very pro-gun rights state. But its gun laws — including a ban on guns in city parks, pools and recreation centers — are now likely to be rolled back, the latest victory in a long-standing push to deny cities the power to regulate guns.

Since the 1980s, the National Rifle Association and other groups have led a successful campaign to get state legislatures to limit local control over gun regulations. These "preemption" laws block cities from enacting their own gun policies, effectively requiring cities with higher rates of gun violence to have the same gun regulations as smaller towns.

Before 1981, when an Illinois town banned the possession of handguns, just a handful of states had preemption laws on the books. Today, 42 states block cities from making gun laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Even Illinois, which has long allowed its cities to pass gun control measures, is about to invalidate local restrictions on concealed handguns and ban any future local regulation of assault weapons.

Gun rights advocates argue that allowing cities to have their own gun laws creates an impossible situation for law-abiding gun owners, who cannot be expected to read ordinances for every town they might pass through.

The preemption campaign has racked up so many victories nationwide, it's now focusing on holdouts like Charleston, population 51,000.

Charleston's current gun restrictions include a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and a limit of one handgun purchase per month, as well as bans on guns on publicly owned property, such as parks and pools.

West Virginia Delegate Patrick Lane crafted an amendment to an unrelated state bill, now passed, that will likely force Charleston to erase those restrictions.

"Crime could happen anyplace. You obviously want to be able to defend yourself and your family if something happens," Lane said, when asked why anyone would want to bring a gun to a public pool.

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment, but its website calls Charleston's restrictions "misguided" and "unreasonable." Its site has closely tracked the progress of the repeal of the ordinances, which it states "would have no negative impact whatsoever on Charleston." The site has repeatedly criticized Charleston's Republican mayor for "speaking out publicly against this pro-gun reform."

It's not clear what effect the spread of preemption has had on public safety. "It's very hard to determine what causes crime to go up and down, because there are so many variables," said Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

But in Charleston, Police Chief Brent Webster says he's worried about losing the city's current restrictions, in particular the law banning guns at city pools, concerts and sporting events.

"You will have some citizens say, 'I can do that now, so I'm going to do that,'" Webster said. "I am greatly concerned."

"When they're diving off the diving board, is that [gun] going to be in a book bag? Is that going to be lying under their towel and an eight-year-old kid is walking through the pool area and picks it up?"

Two of the city's former police chiefs also say they're worried about losing the ban on guns in public places that attract kids.

"That has nothing to do with the Second Amendment right. It has to do with public safety," former Chief Dallas Staples said.

Charleston's mayor, Danny Jones, who's fought to keep the gun restrictions, said the city now has no choice but to do what the state legislature wants and roll them back. The state legislature packaged the rollback requirement with a popular measure giving Charleston more leeway in how it raises taxes.

"I'm still reeling from all this, because it's going to affect us in a very negative way," Jonestold reporters after the law passed.

Keith Morgan, president of the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League, a gun rights group, said the group been pushing for an end to Charleston's ordinances for years, and that the change would protect law-abiding gun owners from a "minefield" of conflicting local laws.

Lane, the West Virginia delegate, also said that gun-owning commuters were put at risk as they traveled through different cities with different rules.

But neither Lane nor Morgan could cite an example of a gun owner being prosecuted for accidentally breaking the law during their commute, or by accidentally wandering into a city park. When Morgan himself once showed up at the Charleston Civic Center with a gun, he said, he was simply asked to leave, and he did. In lawsuits the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League filed against gun ordinances in Charleston and Martinsburg, the plaintiffs cited their fear of potential prosecution.

The main burden of Charleston's laws for gun owners has been the inconvenience of waiting three days to purchase a handgun, and only being able to buy one handgun at a time — something that can be particularly troublesome "if you're buying a present for your family and there happens to be a Christmas sale at the retailer," Lane said.

Former Charleston law enforcement officers say the handgun restrictions, passed in 1993, helped the city tamp down on the drugs-for-guns trade that was rampant at the time. But since then, gun stores have sprung up right at the city's borders, said Steve Walker, a former Charleston police officer and now president of the West Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Police.

"Honestly, I don't know whether with them repealing it, it is going to help them or hurt them," Walker said of the handgun restrictions.

State legislators said that city officials are overplaying their fears.

"I don't see everyone with a concealed carry permit deciding to go to a pool and carry a gun," said Democrat Mark Hunt, a state delegate, "So what if they do? They're law-abiding citizens."

Charleston’s mayor said he has a plan if somebody brings a gun poolside: “We're going to close down the pool."

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Is the New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich Kosher?

CBS reports that there is a New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich.

It's made from a glazed donut, fried egg and bacon. And it has only 360 calories.

No, it is not kosher? It has bacon.

It's also a violation of improperly mixing up the distinct categories of the universe. Desserts, must not be mixed with real foods.

I mean what next? Cupcake burgers? Fries with whipped cream?

And lastly, yuck.

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Discover Mindful Jewish Meditation

The benefits of Jewish meditation are accessible to every type of Jew through acts of Jewish piety.

People tend to think that the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are really pious, the Conservative Jews less so, and the Reform and Reconstructionist even less.

Not so. Piety is individual. You decide how pious you wish to be. Some may argue that the Liberal Jew who makes a decision to engage in piety every day is more pious than the Orthodox Jew who rarely pauses to decide for himself what endows his structured life with meaning.

If you want it to, piety can fill your life as a Jew and endow it with transcendent meaning. Piety can overshadow faith at the central defining core of your Judaism. You can bring it into your daily, weekly and annual routines, and life cycle events.

"Mindful" is a term made popular by meditation guru, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others through their writings and teachings. They brought the concept into Western life from its origins within Eastern cultures. These teachers instruct us to meditate on the here-and-now. As if this was some new idea to us in the West. Done properly, religious practice affords us this mindfulness constantly in any number of ways.

We describe some elements of the religion of the Talmudic rabbis. If this is a form of Judaism that fulfills your needs, go with it! If not, we suggest you discover and then extract the major concepts of classical Judaic practice and apply them to your circumstances. In that way you will develop mindful piety for yourself, for your community and your calendar.

The Judaic Roots of Mindful Piety

Long ago rabbis prescribed, for example, that each Jew recite one hundred blessings each day. The recitation of a blessing prior to the performance of many basic rituals helped make a Jew mindful of his every action.

R. Meir used to say, "There is no man in Israel who does not perform one hundred commandments each day [and recite over them one hundred blessings] . . . And there is no man in Israel who is not surrounded by [reminders of the] commandments. [Every person wears] phylacteries on his head, phylacteries on his arm, has a mezuzah on his door post and four fringes on his garment around him . . . [Tosefta Berakhot 6:24-25]."

From the first stirring every morning, the mindful Jew began his day with acts of religious significance.

Waking up: Washing hands upon arising took on a special meaning. The individual conducted the washing according to a simple but prescribed practice. Water had to be poured on the fingers of each hand up to the joint as specified by the masters.

Bodily functions like elimination are not ordinarily considered in the realm of religious ritual. Yet the rabbis of old said that one had to recite a blessing after that normally profane physical process as thanks for continued health.

And speaking words of wisdom, Praying. In rabbinic Judaism morning prayers were literally clothed in piety. Often they took place in a special spot. And of course, they were repeated regularly.

Dressing for prayer: The man put on the tallith (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) while reciting the respective blessings. Each pious male obtained and maintained these prized and essential objects of piety in accord with the prescriptions of the rabbis and scribes. The man wore these objects to show compliance with the prescriptions of the verses of the Torah recited in the shema (Deut. 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and especially Num. 15:37-41). Each knot on the four fringes of the tallith garment was tied in accord with age-old tradition.

The tefillin were crafted of select leather, made into cubical containers to hold the small parchments of biblical paragraphs written by trained scribes. The head-tefillin had to rest on the worshiper between the eyes on the forehead, neither too high on the head, nor too low on the face. The leather strap that held it in place had to be tied in accord with known custom. The wearer understood that the knot of leather that sat at the base of his skull was a representation of the letter yod, the third letter of Shaddai, one of the divine names.

On the leather box of the arm-tefillin was inscribed the letter shin. The wearer knew that the knot that held it fast on his left biceps--opposite his heart--was a form of the letter dalet. Thus as he recited prayer, the Jew was bound head and heart to God, Shaddai. He wore these appurtenances each weekday from the time he reached 13, the age of maturity, the age of Bar Mitzvah. Obtaining a pair of tefillin from the scribe was the most significant overt sign of achieving adult membership in the rabbinic community.

The standard practice was to wear the tallith and tefillin during the morning prayers and then remove them. To show extreme piety some few virtuoso rabbis wore them all day as they sat immersed in the study of Torah.

Congregating for prayer: An ordinary Jewish man could recite his prayers in a designated synagogue or study hall, in private, at home, or in any orderly place. For optimal piety he went to the synagogue to pray with the minyan, the prayer quorum of ten adult Jews. The formalization of the synagogue as a standard communal institution took place over a span from the first century through the middle ages. The emphasis in Jewish custom and law was always on prayer in a public gathering of ten or more men, not on prayer in a specified building or designated place for gathering. This aspect of rabbinic piety was thus defined mainly in terms of a societal association with a community of other Jews. The rabbis placed little emphasis on the need for sacred bricks and mortar to fulfill the spiritual needs of prayer.

Repeating the process: Rabbinic piety centered on stability and repetition. On weekdays Jews gathered for the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. Major elements of prayer were repeated with small variations at the three services. A person said the shema in the morning and evening services; the amidah (standing prayer of eighteen blessings) in the morning afternoon and evening services; the alenu (a sublime prayer proclaiming God king) to conclude all three.

To these they added a morning Torah service to the public prayer on Monday and Thursday and on any festival or fast day. For this part of the service they read the first section of the seven of the Torah weekly portion that was going to be read during the Sabbath morning service at the end of the workweek. This focused attention on the coming Sabbath celebration and gave the men gathered during the week an added opportunity to hear the inspiration of the words of Torah.

During the week a fourth service, the additional prayers, called musaf, were added to celebrate special days. On New moons, celebrants added several paragraphs to the regular services and read an appropriate passage from the Torah. They concluded the morning prayers with the recitation of the amidah the standing prayer of eighteen blessings -- of the additional service. Likewise on holidays, modifications were made in the regular prayers and the additional musaf amidah was appended.

Evening prayers consisted of the shema, amidah and alenu. A widespread custom was to recite the shema once more at bedtime. Many believed this added evocation of piety would also protect the person who recited it from harm during the night.

The Mindful Challenge

Simply put the challenge is how do we take these traditions and making them over into a template for our own lives? Rabbis often tell us their answer. However, deep Piety, especially mindful piety, cannot come from the outside.

How do we find meaning through study and reflection and make all this into our own piety? No one should presume to tell us that, though many will. But that must be our own - our most personal task. (Repost)

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Indian-American 13 year old wins Spelling Bee with the Yiddish word knaidel - but is that spelling kosher?

An Indian-American boy won the National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling a Yiddish word,

The original story said that a knaidel is a word for a food made of leavened dough. The corrected story below says that it is a "German-derived Yiddish word for a matzo ball."

Update: The Times says what we thought when we read the story. "Some Say the Spelling of a Winning Word Just Wasn’t Kosher" - namely that it should be spelled "kneydl, according to transliterated Yiddish orthography decided upon by linguists at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the organization based in Manhattan recognized by many Yiddish speakers as the authority on all things Yiddish."

N.Y. teen wins National Spelling Bee
by CBNews.com

OXON HILL, Md. As red and yellow confetti floated into his hair, the champ just stood there and cracked his knuckles, hardly the type of celebration expected from a 13-year-old. His smiles had come earlier, when he conquered ``the German curse'' on his way to spelling's top prize.

New York City has its first Scripps National Spelling Bee winner in 16 years. Arvind Mahankali has never had a ``knaidel,'' but he was able to spell the German-derived Yiddish word for a matzo ball Thursday night to earn the huge trophy and more than $30,000 in cash and prizes.

``The German curse,'' Arvind said, ``has turned into a German blessing.''

Arvind finished third the two previous years, eliminated both times on German words. He had everyone laughing two years ago when he pronounced ``Jugendstil'' as ``You could steal'' and saluted the crowd when he got it wrong. Last year he flubbed ``schwannoma'' and quickly proclaimed: ``I know what I have to study.''

``I had begun to be a little wary of German words,'' Arvind said Thursday night. ``But this year I prepared German words and I studied them, so when I got German words this year, I wasn't worried.''

When Arvind got the word ``dehnstufe'' earlier in the finals, the audience groaned. Milking the moment, he asked, ``Can I have the language of origin?'' before throwing his hands in the air with a wry smile when the answer came back ``German.'' He then spelled the word which means an Indo-European long-grade vowel without a hitch.

But after showing all that personality onstage, why didn't he have a reaction when he finally won beyond his familiar knuckle-cracking habit?

``He's matured a lot,'' said his father, Srinivas Mahankali.

Arvind, looking a bit overwhelmed, explained it this way: ``I actually do not have a proper recollection of what I did these past few hours.''

Arvind admires Albert Einstein and hopes to become a physicist. He's the first boy to win the bee since 2008, and the first champion from the Big Apple since Rebecca Sealfon in 1997. He's also the bee's sixth consecutive Indian-American winner and the 11th in the past 15 years, a run that began when Nupur Lala captured the title in 1999 and was later featured in the documentary ``Spellbound.''

Arvind's father is an IT consultant and his mother is a doctor. The family is originally from Hyderabad in southern India, where relatives were watching live on television as the event was broadcast from a suburban Washington hotel. His father cited a premium on education and language as reasons for the spate of Indian-American winners.

``At home, my dad used to chant Telegu poems from forward to backward and backward to forward, that kind of thing,'' Srinivas Mahankali said. ``So language affinity, we value language a lot. And I love language, I love English.''

The last three finalists were Indian-American, including 13-year-old Pranav Sivakumar from Tower Lakes, Ill., who was tripped up by ``cyanophycean'' and finished second. Sriram Hathwar, 13, of Painted Post, N.Y., placed third.

The week began with 281 spellers and was whittled down to 42 for the semifinals Thursday afternoon and 11 for the prime-time finals, with spellers advancing based on a formula that combined their scores from computerized spelling and vocabulary tests with their performance in onstage rounds.

The multiple-choice vocabulary tests were new. Some of the spellers liked the change, some didn't, and many were in-between, praising the concept but wondering why it wasn't announced at the beginning of the school year instead of seven weeks before the national bee.

``It was kind of a different challenge,'' said Vismaya Kharkar, 14, of Bountiful, Utah, who finished tied for 5th place. ``I've been focusing my studying on the spelling for years and years.''

The vocabulary tests were administered in a quiet room away from the glare of the onstage parts of the bee. The finals were the same as always: no vocabulary, just spellers trying to avoid the doomsday bell.

The crowd favorite on the final day of competition was fourth-place finisher Amber Born, 14, of Marblehead, Mass. Amber has wanted to be a comedy writer from the time she first saw the pilot episode of ``Seinfeld'' and had no trouble displaying her sense of humor, especially after she got to watch herself featured on an ESPN promo that also aired on the jumbo screen inside the auditorium.

After the promo was over, she approached the microphone and, referring to herself, deadpanned: ``She seemed nice.''

Vanya Shivashankar, at 11 the youngest of the finalists, fell short in her bid to become the second half of the first pair of sibling champions. Her sister, Kavya, won in 2009. Vanya finished tied for 5th after misspelling ``zenaida,'' a type of pigeon.

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
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Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
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