Bible rewritten - Aussie style (August 22, 2003):

"The 23rd psalm includes the stanzas:
'God is the Station Owner, and I am just one of the sheep.
He musters me down to the lucerne flats, and feeds me there all week.
'When I'm feeling poorly, and at something less than my peak,
He leads me to the restfulness of a coolabah shaded creek...
'Although there are dingoes in the hills
And the paddocks are full of snakes,
God serves up a barbecue
Of beautiful T-bone steaks.'

Daniel Pipes puts a post on his blog referring to the Hitchens piece that I wrote about in Jewsweek and earlier in this post. In response to Hitchens' assertion that Pipes was ignoring the possibility that Palestinian refugees exist, I showed how he was quoting out of context and totally undermining what Pipes really meant. But it turns out that Pipes' position was even more nuanced than that, writing:

Actually, I was not commenting on dispossession at all - typical sloppy Hitchens style to make a faulty assumption and then go on the rampage against it - but on the peculiar and specific United Nations definition of a "Palestinian refugee" that differs from the definition of any other refugee.
That happens to be the topic of my column today, "The Refugee Curse," which I hope Hitchens will keep quiet long enough to read and learn from.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees applies this term worldwide to someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted . . . is outside the country of his nationality." Being outside the country of his nationality implies that descendants of refugees are not refugees. Cubans who flee the Castro regime are refugees, but not so their Florida-born children who lack Cuban nationality. Afghans who flee their homeland are refugees, but not their Iranian-born children. And so on.

It's probably worth noting that over the past month Protocols has made it to the top Google search page for "protocols." Though we're still somewhere way in the back when searching for "protocols of the elders".

Parsha Senryu, Parshas Re'eh
Only got through part of it this week.

"Blessing and a curse."
If you do things right, the former;
If not, then the latter. (11:26-28)
(SIW)

"Mountains, hills and trees."
Lofty gods, middleweight gods,
Even shady gods. (12:2)
(SIW)

Inside, the rules change:
No more lone sacrifices --
Bring them in one place. (12:8-11)
(SIW)

Oh, the Levites, too --
I don't think I mentioned that.
You take care of them. (12:12)
(SIW)

"Don't worship their gods...
After I've beaten them up."
Who would be that dumb? (12:29-30)
(SIW)

Write your own parsha senryu! Senryu are three-line poems that follow a 5-7-5 syllabic structure. Send yours in for Parshas Shoftim by Thursday night, and they may be included. To receive senryu by e-mail, send a message to parsha-senryu-subscribe@yahoo.com.
Senryu are also posted at Mimaamakim.

The latest film from Project Greenlight is called "The Battle of Shaker Heights" which is where my Pops grew up in Cleveland. When he was 13, his shul there got bought out by the Young Israel of Beachwood, and each member was given lifetime membership and a cemetary plot. At that point, my father was often the minyan man. I think he was the only unmarried congregant among a bunch of old men, so when he eventually did get married, my mother earned a cemetary plot, too.

washingtonpost.com: Artist's Auschwitz 'Souvenirs' Spark Controversy:

A Polish artist has sparked controversy in the Netherlands by selling 'Auschwitz souvenirs' -- from crematorium fridge magnets to 'Arbeit Macht Frei' key rings -- to remind people of the horrors of the Nazi death camp.
"Taking a souvenir and hanging it on your keys is a way to remember the evil inside all of us. It (Auschwitz) is the symbol of the ultimate evil," Siwek said

Reader Poupko sends in a link about the new Israeli Hasidic Soap Opera:

"Ironically, the subjects of the soap opera, Hasidic Jews, probably won't be watching: Their rabbis do not allow them to own television sets.
Orbach said he expects word-of-mouth to change that. 'Maybe they'll find good neighbors to let them see the program,' he said. 'They will not be able to resist temptation.' "

Church can make you ill: :

Irish Roman Catholics have been warned that churchgoing could pose a threat to their health because incense contains potentially dangerous chemicals.
A minister in the Dublin government has said that altar boys and girls could be particularly at risk.
Dr Jim McDaid, a transport minister, highlighted the threat in the context of plans to ban smoking in the workplace from the start of next year, which he supports.

You know the annual "did [fill-in-the-Jewish-Holiday] really happen?" questions that always come up. Well, seems Christians have them too (via Crosstalk):

"Must we believe in the Virgin Birth? In his recent column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof pointed to belief in the Virgin Birth as evidence that conservative Christians are 'less intellectual.' [see this week's WebLog entries] Are we saddled with an untenable doctrine? Is belief in the Virgin Birth really necessary?"

Wild. Check out this story at UnbrokenGlass by blogger Sweet Rose. We'd had some discussion going on before in the comments about how myths persisted in the Jewish community, even among thoroughly educated people (Tolany shared something about a guy who rejected a shidduch because the woman had a relative with Downs Syndrome, a thoroughly non-congenital situation); I don't know where it is, but will post the link if anybody finds it.
Meantime, She comments on SweetRose's story:

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods?
I don't know. I personally would love to get some stories from men, but they simply don't write.
I don't think they like me.

Hilarious. NYT: Islamic Militant Groups Say Truce Is Dead After Israeli Strike
As Jarvis said some months ago, "It's bad when you can fisk a headline."

Theological Implications of Multiple Universes:

One reason for believing in God is that our own universe seems improbably fine-tuned for life. It's as though a cosmic designer had carefully adjusted the physical laws to ensure that beings like us would eventually shimmer onto the scene. But if our universe is one among a vast ensemble of universes with randomly varying physical constants, then it is only to be expected that a few of these universes should be life-fostering. Add to this the fact that if we exist at all, we are bound to find ourselves in a universe that is congenial to us—the so-called "anthropic principle"—and the presumed fine-tuning of our universe seems wholly unremarkable. No need to invoke the God hypothesis to answer the question, why are we here?

The Jews need tort reform ASAP! Reader ESBL sends in this link, found via Jonah Goldberg at the Corner. So, some Egyptians are asking for compensation for the property taken by Jews on their way out. Goldberg's response is quite liberal:

Of course, if we’re going to play this game, the Egyptians owe the Jews some shmundo too. After all, they held Jews in bondage for generations. The average, say, Jewish accountant or surgeon, makes a very nice living these days. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, $100,000 a year. Multiply that times the number of Hebrews forced to make bricks from straw, times the number of generations in bondage, including overtime and paid vacation – plus night work – compounded over 5,758 years and we’re not talking baklahvah either. Plus, what about the Jews cut of Egypt’s tourism industry? Since the Jews built a lot of that stuff – without compensation – shouldn’t they get a cut of all that too?

On one occasion the Egyptians lodged a complaint against the people of Israel before Alexander the Great . They said to him : Is it not written: 'and the Lord gave the people favor in the eyes of Egypt' and they complied? Now give us back the silver and gold which you took from us ... He said to them: I too will bring you proof from the Torah, for it is written: 'And the sojourn of the Israelites who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years'. Give us compensation for the labor of 600,000 men whom you enslaved in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years ... They searched but could find no answer

Be against terrorism of any kind and condemn it as much as you can since there is no end to the man’s stupidity.

"Officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad say the blast does not mean an end to the cease-fire announced by militant groups in late June." The concept of truth has no meaning to these kinds of people. They can't even agree on the meaning of words like "cease-fire"

This could well be the strangest search engine referral we've gotten yet: apparently we're the third google result for "information about sex for a chosson and kallah". Then again, the Commie is the top result, which means that 2 of the top 3 are at least marginally connected to YU. Coincidence?

Jewish "Sex and the City" character sets off philo-nerd love-wave. (via Gawker)

Shmuly Boteach's got the most strident response to Dr. Laura out there (to date -- we're just bracing ourselves for the next stage in her spiritual journey) (via mberkow), both in terms of the force of the response itself and how afield he goes to get his material:

The late Yeshayahu Leibovitz pointed out that the quintessential symbol of Christianity is Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of mankind, indicating that God serves the purposes of humans. But Judaism's quintessential symbol is Abraham prepared to slaughter his son, Isaac, by God's command. Man is created to serve the purposes of God, and not the reverse. God is not a drug by which we get high.

My parents, still in town for a couple more weeks, have taken to shopping a lot in Brooklyn. They were someplace where they got a two-chicken, two-kugel, two-coleslaw $13.99 special when they got a little extra gift in the bag -- the Flatbush Jewish News. More of an advertisement circular than a newspaper, it contains a large number of ads with articles about and by rabbis tossed in. A surprising number of the articles have no byline, including my favorite:

Rabbi Yosef Wikler Offer Tips for Vacationing Out of Town
Rabbi Yosef Wikler, the highly respected editor of Kashrus Magazine, spoke at the July 4th Independence Day Morning Yarchei Kallah, sponsored by Hakhel ,at the Agudath Israel of Madison in Flatbush. The subject of his lecture was "Vacationing Kosher (And Other Halachos for City Dwellers).
Among the many points that Rabbi Wikler highlighted was the need for a frum Jew from Flatbush to develop a sensitivity to the halachos of the places that he or she is planning to visit. One must understand ,in advance , the level of kashrus that exists in those places and whether or not these standards are acceptable to you.
This also entails being aware of what shul(s) are operating and their zemanim (schedule) for services. Unlike mikvahs for women in Flatbush and other parts of New York City, mikvahs out of town are ,usually ,on demand. That means the wife must call ahead to make a reservation. Otherwise, a rude shock might occur when the woman comes unannounced and discovers that the facility is locked.
Rabbi Wickler also warned that when traveling away from the city, be careful of gas stations owned by goyim that have a carton of Chalav Yisroel milk next to the coffee machine. Think to yourself, "How did this "nice and considerate" gas station operator in this out of the way location just happen to get a fresh container of milk for the benefit of the many Jewish motorists ,in this season , who are driving to the country?
Is it possible that perhaps he fills up this container with regular non-kosher milk whenever it runs out? You might just want to pick up the container and read the date of expiration for the milk.(Editor's Note: This suspicion also has validity in the City. A reader of this newspaper recently reported observing in a certain donut shop in Flatbush that is operated by non-Jews and which has a haksher (kosher certification), a goyish female employee casually refilling a empty carton of Chalav Yisroel milk with non-kosher gentile milk).
Rabbi Wikler also issued a warning to beware of major supermarkets out of town that have "kosher bakery and meat departments." There was the case, he uncovered once, of a bakery with a major national hashgocha (kosher certification) that sold bread that was Pas Yisroel (baked by a Jew), but which was also baked on Shabbos.
One has to be concerned that, in the baking and meat departments, switches can be done by the non-Jewish staff. One has to inquire as to who is supervising the kashrus in the supermarket. How reliable is the "mashgiach" and what protection exist at all to make sure that non-kosher items are not substituted when the mashgiach isn't present.
Rabbi Wikler also spoke of the need to be aware of certain halachos when staying over Shaboos in bungalow colonies. For example, if most of the members of a particular bungalow colony bring in Shabbos early, this could have major implications for the other minority that doesn't.
He also noted that laws governing the kashrus of eruvs in bungalows (that allow one to carry items in the public domain on Shabbos) are complicated and that many times, people are, unknowingly, transgressing Shabbos because they are unaware of conditions that have rendered the colony's eruv invalid.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" could be the subtitle for this week's excursion through the Jewish Press Letters Section. Two weeks ago, you might recall, Brooklyn's own Rachel Weiss was a runner up Stupid Letter Of the Week for her endorsement of the no "Good Shabbas" status quo in her neck of the woods on the grounds that if we all say "Good Shabbbas" to each other some strange female might come to say "Good Shabbas" to her husband, causing them both to suffer untold spiritual damage. This couldn't go unresponded to, and last week, Soll Zeller opined in a S.L.O.W. winning letter that Rachel Weiss' halakhic reasoning had discredited any woman's ability to really claim knowledge of how halakha works. And now, this week, Rachel herself wins the S.L.O.W. distinction for her response to the response to her original response. Again, she's supporting not saying "Good Shabbas" to people you meet on the way home from shul. The actual letter is quite long, but some excerpts.
In response to Sol Zeller's story about how Rav Moshe Feinstein, who was staying at the same hotel as him, used to visit his sick mother:

Do you deem to compare yourselves to our gedolim, such as Harav Moshe Feinstein, zt"l? As leaders, teachers and mentors to the community at large, our rebbes are the shepherds of their flock and guides to both male and female alike. In Mr. Zeller`s narration, it is obvious that Rav Moshe Feinstein was fulfilling the mitzva of bikur cholim — which entails not only visiting the sick, but inquiring of their welfare — as well as offering prayer on their behalf.

To all those who are overly preoccupied and obsessed with the “greeting” issue, when is the last time you called on an elderly parent or grandparent, aunt or uncle, to greet and to offer some comfort and warmth? And have you spent some genuine quality time with your child(ren) today, demonstrating a sincere interest in what is important to her/him? Charity, after all is said and done, begins at home. So you`ve been there and done that, you say? Well, then, you can always call on your neighbor. But should s/he fail to receive you with the enthusiasm you seek and expect, you can always take a walk and feel at home when you find someone to greet.
Our Avos admonish "al tadin es chavercha ad shetagiya limkomo" -- “Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place.” The sage words speak volumes — loud and clear.

Naomi Chana daydreams about tenure while blogging while putting off syllabus-writing. That can so be me in a few years its scary...

A James Bennett (NYT) Classic:

It was a mystery to many how the bomber, a 29-year-old Palestinian from Hebron, managed to reach the heart of the bus unsuspected, let alone why the bomber — the father of two, the husband of a pregnant woman — would choose to strike among so many children.

Benyamin Cohen bares his balls.
In another Yada-related note, an IvyJew compliments my writing, probably unwittingly.

Lemrick Nelson gets maximum sentence of 10 years.
I went to the meeting of Yankel Rosenbaum's parents and Gavin Cato's father yesterday (these are the two who were killed during the Crown Heights riots). There was really no pause at all when a reporter asked Rosenbaum's mother what sentence she thought Nelson should get, and responded, "Life."
I disagree, but seeing her and her husband and remaining son up-close, I got something of an understanding of where she's coming from.
Some additional thoughts on the meeting, which made all the TV broadcasts but seemed to get skimpy coverage in the newspapers:
Cato said, "I was always ready" to meet the Rosenbaums, and they said they hadn't been avoiding a meeting either, just that it simply hadn't happened. Cato, a spokesperson announced beforehand, wouldn't be answering questions about the trial or the sentencing.
When Cato walked in, he gave Mr. Rosenbaum a big hug, that wasn't really returned -- most likely a cultural difference between old & young, Australia & NYC.
They met for a few minutes inside Mendy's, then came outside to answer questions. Of course, among the first questions was, "Tell us about the meeting," and other such things. It immediately came to my mind that these people had no way to respond to these questions -- they'd just met for a few minutes. In this way, it seemed a bit staged.
The Rosenbaums aren't of the type you'd think of when imagining Crown Heights -- he was wearing a light-blue suit & a tie with a matching hat, she was wearing a short-sleeved sundress. Pretty big contrast with their remaining son, Norman, who was Oreo-ed out.
Norman, despite the plain reality that the maximum sentence could be 10 years, continued to insist, as he did in legal papers, that a life sentence would be reasonable. He said, "the legal basis is well-founded." When asked what he honestly expected to see happen, he said, "I don't pre-estimate what a judge or jury may do." He mentioned that he was a lawyer, trying to establish credibility with that -- leveraging his professional credibility to gain ground in this personal battle...giving the image of the boxer who keeps swinging when everyone knows he's lost.
Norman said that Cato sat with him throughout the recent trial, noting that Cato "had no other reason" to be there than to provide him with comfort.
Here's Dickter's piece.

Diane thinks that Howard Dean's wife (nee Steinberg) may become a liability. I think she's just jealous.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, like the other books, comes off as somewhat ridiculous after far too many instances where the action is saved by a preposterous deus ex machina, and its structure is hopelessly weighed down by the massive, ponderous blocks of outright ham-handed exposition used to fill in the blanks where normal narration ought to do the trick.

Tomorrow:

11:30 a.m. -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations leads vigil for victims of the Jerusalem and Baghdad terror bombings; expected participants include former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke, Israeli Consul General Alon Pinkas and Congressman Jerold Nadler; Isaiah Wall, 43rd Street and First Avenue.

Interesting:

7 p.m. -- U.S. Fund for UNICEF holds Candlelight Vigil in honor of UN humanitarian staff killed and injured in Iraq; Ralph J. Bunche Park, First Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd streets.

Weisburd posts a breakdown of fatalities by combat/non-combat and similar categories in the Israel/Palestine conflict. The phrase "moral relativism" comes to mind.

Ephraim's upset that he didn't get the job at YU's Student Services. I'd think having a Bachelor's degree would go a long way towards getting him the position.
UPDATE: Ephraim says that kids without BAs were interviewed for the position...by David Himber.

Interesting religio-political stuff at TomPaine that asks "Who Would Jesus Tax?" Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth is complaining that Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has Jesus all wrong.

Moore complains that Alabama Gov. Bob Riley calls it his "Christian duty" to raise taxes to help the poor. Instead, he says, "free enterprise is a Christian economic system" and that "involuntary charity" (taxation) is more akin to Mao's China or the U.S.S.R. Furthermore, "Jesus was anything but a fan of tax collectors." (That's funny. According to popular accounts of that era, Jesus chose a tax collector, Levi, as one of his 12 disciples.)

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.

The Bible does indeed call for us all to act charitably and aid the poor — this is the essence of living a Christian life. But an act of charity is by definition an action that is voluntary. Taxes aren’t voluntary. (Try not paying them, and see what happens.)

Bus Bomb Killed Five Americans

Ultimately Pataki at fault for the blackout in NY

Wayne Barrett argues that there is something OJesq about Governor Pataki’s insistence on finding the culprit to last Thursday’s blackout. The governor should look no further than himself, says Barrett in a semi-convincing argument.

Thanks to reader Menashe for the link, Elder I. should have scooped it though.

Yoshev Al HaGeder is never better than when he's discussing shiddukhim. It's in Hebrew though, so be ready to read from right to left.

Missing the Point?

An alleged fraudster charged in a $170 million corporate rip-off raised a holy stink when the feds demanded that the Hasidic Jew be put on an electronic bracelet - claiming the monitoring goes against his religion...
An attorney for the orthodox Jew said the bracelet would create problems for Jacobowitz every Sabbath because it is connected remotely to a phone line and automatically triggers a call to authorities when a defendant leaves home.

Kabbalah Games. According to MSNBC, Madonna spent $300,000 cash (see how chareidi she's getting?) on a house for Eitan Yardeni, her Kabbalah guru. In the meantime, one wonders how aware she is that:

Rabbi Itzhak Kaduri, Israel’s top Kabbalistic expert has said whoever supports that [Yardeni, Kabbalah Center, etc.] group, “financially or otherwise. . . .is endangering his soul.”

Mystic Meg, the UK Sun's house astrologer, responds to the discredit of astrology I blogged about yesterday:

"At best, these findings are just a matter of opinion — after all, science is not the same as fact.
Think how one week you read a scientific report saying coffee is bad for you, followed, a week later, by an equally scientific report saying that coffee is good for you.
Astrology is more of a belief system. "

More than 350,000 people, from all the 12 star signs, filled in a special questionnaire about their love lives. In all the categories the star sign made a real difference....I think these results have more relevance to you than the conclusions of a bunch of scientific spoilsports.

Uh-Oh: check out what's happened to Instaconfused. What do you think this means...?

Its about time, but Michael Weiner, aka Michael Savage, is back on the New York airwaves. Or is that God help us all? Either way, this shouldn't last long, given his track record...

Blame Canada: A telling observation by TMQ:

"Plus, here is the news that absolutely made TMQ's week. During the blackout, there was looting in Toronto and Ottawa, while in New York City and Detroit, civic order was maintained. New Yorkers and Detroiters patiently abided by the law while Canadians engaged in pillaging! Time for our neighbor to the north to take a look in the mirror, it would seem."

The LAT religion section is currently listing a bevy of stories from August 16th.

Yuter's got fun tales about YU's trumpeting its USNews rankings, of which the latest have just been released.

Breaking News: astrology doesn't work. Still:

Some of the most popular figures in the field, such as Russell Grant, Mystic Meg and Shelley von Strunckel, can earn £600,000 or more a year.
A single profitable astrology website can be worth as much as £50 million.

Now that his MA in Talmud is all finished, Yuter seems to be transforming himself into a Islamic scholar recently. First, his blog now features a discussion about Muslim headcoverings. Then, and much funnier, he IMs me an article about the Arab world's version of American Idol.

WHEN THE Lebanese frontrunner was eliminated in the semifinals last week, angry fans in the audience pelted each other with chairs or anything else they could find, and the two remaining contestants fainted. Scores of people took to the streets in Lebanon to protest.
And when a 19-year-old Jordanian, Diana Karzon, won the crown in Monday night’s finals of “Superstar,” hundreds poured into the streets of the Jordanian capital, Amman, cheering, honking car horns, even shooting guns into the air, and fireworks illuminated main squares.

I wonder if these people are Jewish...'Who wants to marry my daughter?'

Yet another example of the Israeli Secular Left's being so right and so wrong at the same time:

Shahar Ilan's op-ed in Haaretz exposes the flaws in the compromise position developed by the Israeli Supreme Court regarding Haredi work and military exemption, but also shows him to be guilty of nasty generalizations about Haredim.

In one disturbing paragraph, he notes that the new law, which allows Haredim to work part-time while maintaining their exemption only if they spend time in yeshivot as well is flawed because:
"Since the yeshiva students will have to be
present at the yeshivas, it is a sure thing
that in most cases they won't develop careers,
as the treasury hoped, but various types of
part-time jobs and rackets."

The rackets business disturbs me. Does he suspect that work-studies in college are also going into small-time crime operations? Maybe that explains the recent explosion in Israeli Organized crime....

His nastiness aside, though, it would make more sense to get the haredim working full-time. Of course, that would mandate their being given blanket army exemption, which would raise a new hew and cry over such "discriminatory" laws. Of course, this objection by ideologues like Ilan brings up the embarrassing fact that for all their bitching and moaning, the nisht frummer don't want the Haredim in the army. They want them to be the straw man in Israel's social debate. So how to solve the problem?
Ilan doesn't say, and my guess is, he doesn't know either.

Balagan wants to have an Isra-blogger meet-up.
Any chance it could be in the States?

Josh Cherniss has one of the funnier responses to being added to our blogroll:

Thanks, guys. If there's ever a pogrom against bloggers, I'll now be on the hit list.

From the Times: "Israelis Worry About Terror, by Jews Against Palestinians". Interesting bit of moral equivalence, but if you read the article carefully you realize that nobody knows if any Israeli vigilante gangs even exist in the first place, and, if they do, what atrocities they've actually comitted. I mean, when the caption for the accompanying picture says:

Samar Tamaizi and her daughter Amira on Monday in the village of Idna, near Hebron, with a memorial erected to three members of their family who were killed two years ago, the family believes by Jewish settlers.

CLASSIC NYT picture and caption. The article's ok too.

Well, it took a few days: WorldNetDaily: Al-Qaida claims power blackout?

Bangitout's Tu B'Av Party Pics. Interestingly, there's a notice about how to complain and have a picture removed, but no information about how to add pictures -- that says something, for sure.
Besides the obvious fun of seeing people you know there, there's also the interesting chance to see how broad Bangitout's readership is -- and it seems really, really broad.
Getting less broad, here are some people I'm glad to see were there:
Republican UWS Council Candidate Josh Yablon (with brother Jason)
Kids I know from Atlanta
YU-grad Asher Dordek
Poet Baruch November
A guy my mother once set up my sister with
The twins themselves
Rebecca Steltzer, who used to live below me on Washington Terrace -- she's on the left
No Elders were in attendance; for shame.

Parsha Senryu - Parshas Eikev

I got some done on the plane and couldn't upload them before. I quit some part of the way through because the United States was in crisis mode. I won't e-mail or cross-post this week's version, because they're so late. BTW: I wrote these down on an air-sickness bag.

No sterility!
Male, female, livestock:
All very virile. (7:14)
(SIW)

Sniffling man in shul.
Reads passage, "Ward off...sickness."
Harrumphs; is angry. (7:15)
(SIW)

"Eat" or "destroy" them?
Depends on your reading here.
Cannibals/fighters? (7:16)
(SIW)

If God will do this,
Kill these as the Egyptians,
He'll need a big river. (7:18)
(SIW)

Entering Israel,
Do not be worried at all
Yahweh is with you. (7:20)
(SIW)

"You shall almond them."
Wait, it's "sha'ketz," not "sha'ked."
I'm reading it wrong. (7:26)

God was testing us?
No, it was all our dads' faults!
Feeling Oedypal. (8:2)
(SIW)

Write your own, and so forth...

Yuter sends in another link, this one to a NYT Magazine article about a Jewish bookie now living in Costa Rica.

Still, it was a tough way to make a living. K.C. was forever trying to evade the police. More troubling, he had been raised by traditional Orthodox Jewish parents in Chicago, and the fact that he was now a criminal in the eyes of his family as well as of the law deeply affected him. The guilt wasn't enough to make him quit bookmaking -- K.C. was a gambler and a sports nut through and through -- but his feelings gnawed at him, especially when he would come home for Thanksgiving and have to sneak away from the dinner table to an upstairs phone to take bets on a Dallas Cowboys game.

The first hard evidence that offshore betting would not be tolerated by the feds came in 1997, when Jay Cohen, the outspoken founder of World Sports Exchange (wsex.com), one of the first offshore books, was charged along with 19 other bookmakers for violating the Wire Act

Our first mention in a Russian publication...to my knowledge.

Okay, I'm online...finally. Expect stuff soon.

Europe Suffering Values Crisis, Pope Says:

The pontiff in recent weeks has decried what he calls a movement away in Europe from its Christian roots.
"You can't deny, that in these times of ours, Europe is going through a crisis in values, and it is important that it recovers its true identity," John Paul told pilgrims and tourists in the courtyard of his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, a town on a hill near Rome.

So I go analog for the weekend due to the whole power shutdown, and when I get back, I discover that two of my posts from last week have generated an extreme volume of response. Something like 45 comments on my bangitout.com addendum, a hissy fit from some guy named Albert, plus an extremely well-deservedass-kicking in response to a rather off-the-cuff rant that I wrote hung over (I promise not to pull Larisa's pigtails anymore, teacher....); I've had a LOT to read today, and most of it was my fault.
People, I hate to put myself down, but you're taking me WAY too seriously....

Anyway, just a thought before my life descends into med-school hell (AGGGGHHHHH!!!! They have class at 9 AM. Who the hell is up at 9 AM????):

The times has a wedding society article in today's Sunday Styles section, where the chosson and kallah are obviously not of the Mosiac Persuasion (anyone know yidden named Salisbury?? Was Terrence a biblical character?). Remarkably, though, the article reads like a Woody Allen piece on kooky Jewish New Yorkers tying the knot. Every now and then, the Times has a wedding notice that HAS to be satire. But it isn't, which really makes life worth living.

Read it and laugh.

Don't attack me too harshly, though. I'm about to have a shitty week.

I don't think we ever posted the link to the Jewsweek piece on the superfreak lubavitcher. So here it is. Enjoy, y'all. One small comment of my own. When Elder I posted a teaser for the article, there was a line that went like this:

"I did a Snickers commercial and it was like dueling rabbis ... we had a chuckling contest," he told Jewsweek

"I did a Snickers commercial and it was like dueling rabbis. They had a fellow who didn't understand Yiddish who was pretending to speak Yiddish to me and everyone else in the room," Marks tells Jewsweek. "Then we had a shuckling contest because he just started copying everything I would do. It was very funny."

Pat Robertson's crew has an article on Close Calls: Divine Protection for Christians in Israel:

Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in September of 2000, more than 800 people have been murdered in terrorist attacks. Two are known to have been Christian believers.
The Christian community here talks about "close calls" with death. Numerous times, believers have been close to a suicide bus bombing, but were not hurt. They speak of God's protection over their lives, and their thoughts are on those Israelis who died in a terrorist attack.

Well, I'm alive, just in case you were wondering. Flying with my family from Laguardia to LAX via Detroit, we took off in New York minutes before the blackout, only to land in Detroit completely unawares. The airport, as well as everything else in Detroit, was powerless; we deplaned from the aft stairs and crawled under propped-up emergency gates through a darkened baggage terminal to the curb, where we sorted through piles to find our luggage. We called an Atlanta friend's son's wife's father, who lives in Detroit, and asked to stop by. We took cabs there and stayed there for the night, trying to figure out where we could go and when. Long story short, we ended up on a flight to LA, after waiting at the gate for a couple of hours.
Most interesting part, for me: I noticed as we were heading through security for our flight that I'd left my copy of James Kugel's The God of Old on the plane the day before, as we hadn't expected to have to leave it before taking off for LAX. My mother just happened to be snooping around the gate agent's desk on Friday, and found my copy in it. What a wild, wild, world. Anyway, read more of it over Shabbos, got told it was apikorses at shul, and look forward to discussing it this week. Meantime, our wonderful freak of nature has left me behind on senryu (as Avraham noticed), an article for the Forward that was due Friday (I can only assume I've got an extension until at least Sunday), tons of research, oodles of blogging, and a helluva lot of sleep. I expect to get to all of this in turn. Meantime, I can't plug in my laptop here at my cousins' house in LA, so I guess I can't hope to get too much done before I return to NYC...hopefully, tomorrow.
Here's a senryu I composed in the lovely state of Michigan:

Flying to LA...
Power's out, stuck in Detroit.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!