Very Busy and all in a Tizzy

So I got an apartment, I got a car and I got busy. That's right, grad school has started and based on what I have seen so far I am going to have no time for this 'blog. Which saddens me. Because I was really starting to enjoy this. Until now, I attempted to post approximately once a week. (I think it averaged out to something close to that. Most of my posts were between 5 and 10 days apart.) My philosophy is if I don't care about this 'blog neither will my readers. So I tried to produce periodic content. It wasn't easy for me. I can be a bit of a perfectionist and tend to revise the gehenom out of my writing. But I persevered and somehow came out with entries around the time of my self-imposed deadlines. Now it looks like once a week is going to be too much for me. There is just too much work for me to handle right now, without me placing more on myself. I am trying to get out of school as soon as I can and that means overloading. Overloading means I will have no time to eat, sleep or 'blog. I'm hoping that I will have time to keep shabbos. So what does this mean for you? It does not mean that I am going to stop blogging (rachmana l'tzlan). It means that I will probably be posting less frequently. I'm going to shoot for once a month. If I can do it more often, I definitely will but it looks like this is going to be a hard year. Next fall it should calm down a little. At that point, I will make an effort to bring it back to once a week. Until then, I hope you'll be patient with me. Thanks ;-) What can you do about it? Simply put, you can comment. Studies show that posters that receive replies are much more likely to post again. (I am not making this study up! It's true.) So if you like what you have been reading the last couple of months, do me a favor and reply. Even if it is a trivial response, such as "I agree" or "This line was very amusing/insightful/depressing to me." And while you are at it, tell a friend about my 'blog. Get him or her to read it. The more encouragement I get, the more likely I am to post again. It's in the statistics...

The Voices of our Youths

I have a very important announcement to make. I want to make something very clear to you. Do not bring children who can't sit quietly to shul. Maybe that wasn't clear enough. Let me rephrase that... Don't EVER bring your noisy children to shul again. Especially not to the shul that I daven at. This shabbos I had the occasion of having not one but TWO sets of rambunctious kids sitting near me. They whined, complained, laughed, giggled, squirmed, questioned and horsed around. And they did none of it quietly. Whenever their fathers were not too busy with their own davening to quiet the child, they replied to them and did a good job of raising the noise level even further. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... Leave your kids at home. If this means you have to stay at home too, then please do so. I know, I know... that's easy for me to say. After all, I am single and don't have this problem. You have wives and your dear son or daughter, if left at home will disturb their precious beauty sleep. That's understandable. However, that does NOT justify bringing a noisy kid who doesn't know how to sit still into shul. Let him or her play outside in the hall. Find a babysitter or youth group run by a fourteen year old who him/herself is not mature enough to sit still in shul. I don't care what you do... Just don't disturb other's davening. This may require some creative thinking on your part. For example, one of my rebbis goes to vasikin. He then returns and takes care of the kids while his wife either gets to sleep or attend shul. Maybe there is some sort of imaginative solution that can be arrived at. Or maybe you are just going to have to stay home. I would anyway question the level of kavannah you can have while your offspring is carrying on like that. Ask your rav... Ask him what he thinks... You davening betzibor and distracting half the shul, or b'yichidus without the destruction of other's kavannah on your head. Maybe it isn't as black and white as you think...

My Drinking Problem

People drink for all sorts of reasons. Mine was to make me feel good. Every once in a while if I was upset or depressed and an opportunity came where there would be drinking, I would just let go. I liked the feeling that it would deliver. The elixir, so sweet on my tongue would erase all unhappiness in the world. For a while I would be free. Free of all the pain, free of the anxiety, free of my mad obsessions. And I liked the feeling of freedom. The feeling that I could do whatever I wanted, because no one cares what a drunk does. The introversion changing to extroversion. Suddenly finding that I could be the life of the party. That those inhibitions that kept me from acting as I would like would disappear. That I could now be as bold as I wished, as silly as I desired. It's a feeling that is far and away from any other. I was never an alcoholic in the clinical sense of the word, but there were definitely some times that I felt it was too much already. I was drinking for the wrong reasons. Quite frankly, it was a bit worrisome. Last Friday night, I was at a very festive meal. Between fish and meat, the host brought out the drinks. He had beer, scotch, bourbon... A pretty nice assortment. So I had a beer. If there had been more beer on the table, I might have had some. But there wasn't, it was safely in the fridge. After the customary post-fish l'chaim, the others proceeded to refill. I did not, since I had not yet finished my beer.. When I had polished it off, I didn't really feel the inclination to continue drinking and declined another. It was only later on, when everyone around me was “feeling no pain” that I realized that I never even had a desire to drink. That it wasn't even a battle. It was a total non issue. I wasn't interested in alcohol. Here's why: With all that has been going on with getting ready for graduate school, I have had a lot to do. I have been working really hard and it has paid off. I have started feeling productive. Now, when I lay down in bed, I feel good. Tired, but definitely good. I'm not mad at the world anymore. I'm self satisfied. I don't listen to songs about death and dismemberment any longer. Because I don't have a death wish and I don't have anyone I want to dismember. I've grown up. I feel alive. I feel... happy.And that's why I wasn't drinking last Friday night. Will I drink if I come across an opportune situation? Sure! But it will be because I like drinking. Not because I am trying to escape reality. Not to escape the here and now. Because once life becomes worth living, it becomes too valuable to waste on inebriation.

The Tisha B'Av Blues

I find that most people don't know what to do with themselves on Tisha B'Av. When asked what they do, most respond that they sleep. A large minority report that they watch movies although they usually try to limit it to “any genre other than comedy”. While I can't say that yours truly has never engaged in the aforementioned, I have tried in the past couple of years to take a little of the sadness in. It's not easy. Being uncomfortable is something that most of us try not to do. We take pills to avoid being sad. Or blast raucous tunes to drown out the depression. We're taught that sadness is bad. It is unproductive and detrimental. A “healthy” person is not sad. Don't worry. Be happy. If sadness is there, hide it. Don't let people know. They will view you as troubled. You'll never get a shidduch that way.

So then we are told, it's okay to be sad. Horrible things happened on this day and so it is fitting. And we don't know what to do. What do you mean I can be sad today? What does that mean? Sad is bad, right? What should I do now? I can't listen to music and I can't watch movies. Hmmm... reading novels and going on the internet is probably just as inappropriate... Can't even learn torah... So what is there to do? It's excruciating... All the activities that we would usually engage in on a normal non-work day, are forbidden or “not in the spirit of the day”. But you see, that's the point. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. It is supposed to make you unhappy. You are supposed to think about the reason you are doing (or not doing) all of this. It is because the batei mikdashim were destroyed. Our connection to kedusha, our connection to G-d, it's in ruins. All because we had baseless hatred for our fellow man. We should want the beis hamikdash to be rebuilt and should make a commitment to try to be better to others. That's the idea anyway...

Me? I try to while the day away while staying as far away from frivolousness as possible. I do sleep a little. But I try not to watch movies. Last year I did my taxes. (When you think about it, it's probably an appropriate thing to do on tisha b'av. If there is one reason I want moshiach to come, it is so I never have to do taxes again.) This year I went to the tisha b'av video that they were showing around the country (featuring Rabbi Paysach Krohn). I figured it would keep me in the spirit of the day and out of trouble and for the most part it did. I still don't know what to do with myself on Tisha B'Av but I am getting better. Every year I try to feel the sadness just a little. Maybe it's working. I'm getting more and more serious about it (and life in general). Hopefully, by next Tisha B'Av we will be in Yerushalayim and no one will be left scratching their heads trying to decide between Schindler's List and Munich.

Going off the Derech

The girl sitting adjacent to me on the plane looked over at me skeptically. "Are you really worried about going off the derech in grad school?" She asked. "Yes. I mean I think so," I replied.Why would I, a presumably faithful and growing orthodox Jew be afraid of that? Until now, I have made a concerted effort to remain in a "frum" environment. That doesn't mean I haven't worked or had any dealings with the world, just that I have tried to keep the majority of my activities within the confines of orthodox circles. I have heard disparaging remarks made of people who do this. How do they expect to be able to live in the real world if they never step foot in it? They will be hit with culture shock when they do! Who knows what'll happen then. It is not so much unlike a body builder who would like to enter the Mr. Universe contest. He can't reasonably expect to be strong enough to compete without working out and bulking up, can he? He doesn't just traipse into the contest unprepared! He works on himself first. Keeps himself in weight training for as long as he needs until he decides that he is ready to compete. The years of yeshiva and keeping myself in a kosher environment were to give me some sort of fighting chance when I got "out there". I am not sheltered. Far from it. I know what goes on out there. Which is even more of a reason to try to prepare myself for it as much as possible. Now, I am emerging, ready for the next stage. And I am a little apprehensive.Ok. So that's the why. But what's the what? What could cause me to abandon my faith? The truth of the matter is this... As avid readers of this 'blog may have gathered, certain aspects of my Judaism are not working out all that well. There's the learning and well... you get the idea. Nevertheless, in my head, I know right from wrong and up from down. Nobody can convince me that Judaism isn't true or Torah isn't MiSinai. I'm totally sold on that. So I would not ever leave Judaism because I thought it was false. Not happening, no way, no how. Why would I, then? There is probably more than one reason but this is the one that I think is truest to the core. I'm curious. (They actually wrote a series of books about me and some guy in a yellow hat. Yes, I know the series is about a monkey! That's why it is called fiction! Of course, all the rest is true though.) Curious and mischievous. A volatile combination if you ask me. I took a personality test and it came out that one of the attributes that I score highly in is “Adventurousness”. I need adventure. Maybe it's partially ADD or something but I'm not content if something interesting isn't happening. So I could plan it out. I could make gedarim. Make sure I don't get into trouble. (And deep down inside I want to.) But that would take the fun out of it. It would remove the adventure. It would make life boring. The interesting situations happen when you just let the chips fall into place.The problem with college is that there are countless pitfalls lurking about. There are many “Tamars” waiting by the side of the road ready to lure horse and rider away. (Understandably, being unmarried doesn't help at all. It just makes matters worse.) And the thing that scares me most about it is that I want to see what happens. I want to see what kind of situations I can get myself into (and back out of (hopefully)). Because I have this sort of death wish, this self-destructive streak. I am waiting for something to occur. And like a bad traffic accident that you can't tear your eyes away from, I want to see what happens when it does. How many casualties there will be, whether the passenger was wearing his seatbelt and whether he will be able to walk out of the wreck unscathed. Because there is no winner in a car crash (except maybe the body shop). And even though I know that, I need to watch things slowly unravel before realizing that maybe something needs to be done. I'm aware. It's immature. It's stupid. It's foolhardy. But it's something that I need to do. Wish me luck. I'll let you all know how it goes.