Kill him first...

In the Gemara Sanhedrin, 73a (Hat tip, Back of the Hill), there's a discussion over what one should do if he knows that someone is coming up against him to kill him. The final answer: Kill him before he kills you! So...us little people don't have a way to kill Mr. Ahmadinejad, even though he wants to kill us and our people. So what should we do?

Sara Yoheved Rigler at Aish.com looks into our history for when we were in a similar situation, and gives some pretty good ideas for what we can do. Highly recommended.

Warning: This site under construction

Alas, the dangers of modern technology....

So I upgraded my template into the easy Google beta mode, and thereby lost all my past template items...which I can't find anymore. So excuse the mess while I try to remember all the links I had up there. If I linked to you, please email me to remind me, and I'll put you back up. It's not that I don't like you, I'm just very forgetful, and it took me a really long time to make those lists...I'm annoyed. Plus I have to find all the little icons I had and put them back...

If anyone knows how to see the old template (I don't really want to restore it for good, I just want the old stuff...), please please let me know so I can bring it back to normal..

Thanks.

Twain on Jewish Women

I'm reading this fascinating book (now that the semester's over and I have tiiiiime ;) ), called Mark Twain's Jews, by Dan Vogel. I can't say I love the writing, but the content is really interesting - it's about Mark Twain's perception of the Jews, based on his writings. I really liked this quote (p. 32), written during one of his many travels through Europe, after seeing lots of paintings of Mary:

"The Italian artists painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the Virgins of the French painters were Frenchwomen - none of them ever put into the face of the Madonna that indescribable something that proclaims the Jewess, whether you find her in New YOrk, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem, or in the Empire of Morocco."

What do you think is that "indescribable something"? ;)

TRT Observations

Or as a far away friend would call it..."mind dump." Each of these lines deserve their own blog post, but I think that's a bit overwhelming...and I DO have other things to do...so you'll get the shortened version :)

The slightest smile makes the biggest difference.

Before you call a helpline for anything, make sure that everything possible is plugged in. Otherwise you sound really stupid after talking to customer service for two hours...

Russian sounds like a very unhappy language.

There are so many different people in New York. It's absolutely fascinating. And terribly lonely.

Chewing gum in public, especially with an open mouth, is disgusting and should be banned.

Is setting a mousetrap צער בעלי חיים?

It's very nice to see people learning Torah on the train.

The more people, the more intense the peer pressure.

You know you're living in a Jewish neighborhood when they put a huge menorah up in your apartment lobby (and no tree...)

My Conspiracy Theory

It's very rare that I comment on politics on this blog. The things that I would comment on, everyone else has already said, so I don't think it's necessary. Today, however, I can't hold back - and I don't think this has been said before:

I believe that the Neturei Karta who went to the Holocaust "conference" are not real Jews. I believe that they are people who are dressed up as Jews because they want to make Chassidim specifically, and Jews in general, look bad. Because it was one thing that they were saying that Jews shouldn't consider E"Y the be-all, end-all. But there is no possible way for them to twist Torah to validate their thinking about this. I mean, they're basically condoning, straight out, the murder of thousands of Jews by collaberating with Ahmadinejad. And they're clearly doing it for media attention. So my theory is that they're doing it to get an impression of Jews on TV. Either way, I'm exceedingly disturbed.

And the newspapers that I read over everyone's shoulder on the train are sooooo inflammatory...it's frightening.