Wedding Fury...

At a wedding an old man sits off to the side,
Grinning and beaming with apparent pride.
An uncle or grandpa, came on the last flight,
Unaccustomed to any sort of true Yiddishkeit.

But wait! What is that that he's wearing,
That someone gave him without even caring.
A beanie, a kipa perched atop his bald head,
So that he'd fit in wherever he tread.
Does nobody notice, doesn't anyone see?
That thing sitting up there looks like a tepee!
Is no one bothered that it's kind of cruel,
To make the old man look like a big fool.
Why didn't they give him velvet or suede,
Instead of white fabric with edging that's frayed.
Nobody even gave him a chance,
To blend in with the crowd when it came time to dance.

Would it be so hard to go out and shop,
For something that would make him look normal on top?

Learnin' Yearnin' Burnin'

The Yeshiva Zman is drawing to a close. This is a bittersweet occasion for me. Sweet because it is the beginning of a new and exciting period of my life. Bitter because it marks the end of what I consider to be an unsuccessful learning career. I have been trying to succeed in learning for years. I have made an effort to stay in a Yeshiva environment while I was going for my undergraduate degree. Somehow it just never took. I'm not dumb. I b”h have quite a nice head on my shoulders. I am not lacking the skills either. I can pretty much “make a laining” on Gemara, Rashi and Tosfos unaided. The problem is more one of attention-span and perseverance. I'm a little ADD-ish. I have trouble sticking to one subject for a long period of time. I get frustrated easily. I space out constantly. Learning becomes hell. I can't do Bikiyus (where the emphasis is on breadth) because the tendency is to cover a great deal of ground in one sitting. This guarantees my failure because as soon as I space out, I am lost. The class is already lines further and I have no idea what they are talking about. While B'iyun (emphasis on depth) is somewhat better, it clashes with one of my other bad habits. When dealing with complicated issues, it is easy to get frustrated and give up. Without the necessary perseverance, one is doomed to failure. So the system doesn't work for my unique psyche. I have tried many methods to make it work for me, but none ever worked. Every Zman I think, this is the one. This is when it is all going to start clicking for me. But it doesn't. So I end up whiling my days away. Wasting time. Filling it up with useless junk. Reading a lot. Picking up hobbies that I never would have given a second glance if I had been learning. Doing all the things that Yeshiva guys do when they are not learning. Just with me I was doing those other things more of the time than I was actually learning. And the time passed. I told myself I was here for a reason. I told myself I was enduring this torture, having these experiences to make me a better person. But I'm not even sure that is true. Now it is over and I look back on my long Yeshiva career and sigh. I could have been great. Rebbeim had high hopes for me. Why shouldn't they? I certainly have more aptitude for success in torah than many of my peers. Why should they have success and not I? Do I not deserve it? I don't know how many of you have experienced this, but it is very painful to see someone who you know is less capable than you succeed at something that you keep failing at. Rebbeim have told me that I don't want it enough. But that is not true. I have put in effort for 5+ years (post high school) to make it work. If I don't want it enough, I don't know how to want it any more. Other people have told me that I AM succeeding, that I should look at the small accomplishments. To them I reply, an ant may build an anthill and a beaver may build a dam but neither one is large enough for me to fit in. You could say that I know more than the average working Jew who didn't have the opportunity to sit and learn. But that is not where I placed my yardstick. I placed it next to the image of what I could become, what I had the potential to be. Or at the very least I measured myself up against others in Yeshiva. Even that, I fell short of. I watched as my friends became bnei torah, as they became mentchen. To my dismay, I sorta just stayed where I was.

Now it is over. I am going to graduate school. I'm not going to have time to learn. Every hour of learning is going to take work and sacrifice to arrange. Even if I wanted to learn now, I would never be able to accomplish as much. People don't become talmidei chachamim from learning daf yomi. Don't let anyone tell you any different. It takes years and years of breaking one's head over the gemara for hours at a time. And if I can't do it when it is set before me on a silver platter, what will happen when it becomes harder? Will I learn at all?

So yeah, I'm excited. I really can't wait to go to graduate school and join the “real world”. It feels really good to have a goal to be working towards. But a part of me laments the loss. I could have been a ben torah. I could have had a good couple of years of learning under my belt. Maybe I could have even become a talmid chacham. That didn't happen, though. Success will come from elsewhere. I'm going to graduate with a fancy degree from some hifalutin graduate school. Hopefully, I'll get a good job, a nice house and a wonderful wife. Life will be a whirlwind of responsibilities and goals. There will be work due, bills to pay, dishes to wash and diapers to change. Perhaps, somewhere in the middle I'll find time to learn. Perhaps not. Either way, I will always know that I had a chance to succeed and somehow never managed to. And I'll probably feel bad about it too. But at this point, there is nothing I can do other than feel remorse. The future is coming, and I have to prepare for it.

Goodbye, Yeshiva.

It's been nice knowing you.

Men are from Mars... but are Women from Venus?

I got into an argument with my friend's wife about staring at the opposite sex. She was standing with her husband and I when a couple of girls walked by. Naturally, we both turned to look. She proceeded to comment on guys and how easily their eyes get led astray. I asked her if she ever looks at passing men. To which she replied, “Of course I do. But it is different. I am not undressing them in my head.” So I called her a chauvinist or something like that. If this had been the first time a remark like this had been made, I would have remained quiet. But this came hot on the heels of a couple of other comments and reflections made by women who clearly abide by a double standard. So let's lay it down upon the table. Guys are generally the baser sex. They are more likely to act lewdly and think lustful thoughts. That much I agree to. Here is where the waters get a little muddy for me. The woman I was talking to said to me that when she looks at a guy, the only thing on her mind is that he is cute. So where does the automatic assumption come in that when I look at a girl I am thinking anything other than how cute she is? I can't speak for all men but I will tell you my thoughts straight out. Most of the time when I see a pretty girl I am thinking about whether I am attracted to her, not what she looks like naked or how I can get her into bed. This could have something to do with my personality or possibly my (mostly) religious upbringing. I can't tell you WHY it is this way, all I can tell you is that it IS this way. Obviously, I can only speak for myself. I know that there are many guys whose first thought will be about relieving the young woman of the inconvenience we call clothes. But that is not me and I take offense to the apparent abundance of women out there who are quite ready to believe that all guys are pigs. Give us some credit! Now this is not to say that I never think about the girl later on. But we all have our fantasies. Can any woman honestly tell me that she has never fantasized about any guy she ever saw? There are a broad spectrum of people out there. I think that most frum women would concede that the gadol hador is probably not mentally undressing every woman who comes to ask him a shailoh. Where do you draw the line? There are many guys who have worked on themselves immensely in order become better people. As a spectator, how can you know what any one male individual is thinking? Before feminism it was all about how women belonged in the kitchen. They were inferior and weren't able to do “a man's work”. And now? Are we any better? We have relieved ourselves of the wrongful thinking that our fathers had. Instead, we deal with another phenomenon, women denigrating men, calling them something akin to animal and writing them off as a lower, baser creature. So what do I want? I want the women who are reading this piece to keep one thing in mind. Both you and I are human. We both look and we both fantasize. We also both have free will. I would like you to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, not all guys are sickos. And next time you see a guy look at a girl, give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he is just thinking about her gorgeous smile or nice figure. Maybe he is not thinking about how he would like to see her slip into something a little more comfortable. Then again, maybe he is. But that is not for you to judge. Show him a little respect and treat him as more than just a beast. I would like to hear your opinion about the previous piece. Ladies... if you deem something I wrote to be unreasonable, please let me know. Guys... what is your take on this? Honestly speaking, is the first thing that comes into your head something that you would be ashamed of if your mother knew? Or is it much more benign?

Od Alos Hashachar...

I really try not to brag but I am making an exception this time. Shavuos is usually very hard for me. When I was younger I used to just go to sleep. As I got older I started making an effort to stay up. But anybody who knows my ADDish, ants in my pants antics, knows that I can't sit for very long. If I am lucky, the night goes something like this. One hour of learning then fifteen minutes of hanging out in the hall and inhaling caffeine. One more hour of learning followed by another quarter hour of cake consuming and soda guzzling. And so the night goes. This year, for the first time ever, I went straight through without stopping. I did get up once or twice to use the restroom or pick up some soda but I headed straight back into the beis medrash without pausing to battel and shmooze in the halls. I went practically four and a half hours without stopping. I was asking Tosfos' questions and answering Rashi's answers. We went through Gemara, Rishonim and Achronim. It was unbelievable. This was an unparalleled success in the history of ME. So maybe this is not such a big deal as far as others are concerned. Maybe “they” stay up all night long every year. But everything is relative. And for me, this was one of my greatest learning successes ever. (We will talk about why learning doesn't usually work well for me in future posts but for now, take my word for it.) So I am going to give myself a big fat pat on the back. Because Im Lo Achshav, Aymasai? If I don't congratulate myself now, then when will I? If this isn't a victory, then what is?

A Shark's Tale

I swim gracefully beneath the waves eyeing my prey above. My cartilage quivers in excitement as I lunge to devour the splashing figure on the surface. The inky cloud of black blood only fuels my lust to taste it's flesh. My rows of pointy sharp teeth are ready to guttle the poor creature. But there is something wrong. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. I can't smell the blood. It's not as if it is not there. I can see it quite clearly obscuring the light of the sun. For some reason though, the aroma of fresh blood, the smell that should whip me into a frenzy is just not there. There has got to be something I can do about this. I see it. I know it is there. I want to smell it. But no matter how hard I try I can't. Why oh why can't I smell the blood?!?

The Lemonade of Life

Personalities are like making lemonade. In my experience, there are two ways to squeeze the juice out of a lemon. The first is to cut the lemon in half and put pressure on it until it is devoid of juice. The second is to use a juicer. A juicer is a device that is used to squeeze lemons by depressing them into a conical center. It usually contains a filter of some sort that stops the seeds and excess pulp from getting into the juice. You end up with a lot purer mixture containing more juice and less pulp. In day to day interactions people use personality juicers. They don't put their whole being out there for fear of rejection. They hold back certain aspects of their personality and act in the way that think they should act or that they feel the situation warrants. While this results in a “purer” more polished self, it is not who the person really is. He or she is missing the raw part that makes them human, the true, unique facets of their personality, the pulp of life. It's only when you are with someone who loves you with completely unconditional love that you can let your guard down, that you can just be you. Then the unfiltered pulpy you comes out. And then, life feels so much fresher, so much more wholesome. Everyone wants to be validated for who they are. No criticism, no jokes, just appreciation for what and who they have developed into. The worst time in a person's life is when they feel that they have nowhere to turn, no one who cares, no one who will just listen and sympathize. Some people don't like pulp but for me it is what gives life its flavor. Here's to hoping that we all find that special someone who will appreciate us whether we are Original, Grovestand or Homestyle.