Athletic "skills"

I have to take some consideration and write this.  I was watching the final four tonight and I have to admit, there is little intellectual acheivement and a major amount of sweat and groaning on the court.

Are these talents we view classified as skills?  I would suggest that they are meerly reactions.
I admit that the endeavor of a special athlete is nothing to be sneezed at, but really, are we educating our public with these types of experiences or are we just buying time to the next paycheck?

Either or, I find I view fewer sports, though I am certainly 100% in favor of the sports scene in this nation.
I am simply amazed that people turn out in such number (well its clearly good for the sports economy and noone will complain and keeps the trouble off some of the streets), but really, this is not a skill in s much that it is a visio spatial reaction to a evolving physical dilemma.

But disagree as you wish.
This is not heresy, but the idea of invigorating our soul with the pride of a skill that is not lifelong and really can only be defined as a talent of the cerebellar dominated reaction, I must digress that I find sports to be less than entertaining and more of a pry to assume that I must spend a 3 hour block watching.

Football of course is a skill.  It requires the physical contact of an adversary.  To put up with that pain you have to be skilled in the aggressor-collision interaction.  I have my hats off to those guys.

Im ain ani li mi li...?

If I am not for myself who will be for me?

This was actually the topic for my reform judaism confirmation class.
It comes from Hillel.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me.  If not now, when.

I was just today told by an acquaintance that I am "pushy and blurt things out".  I make them nervous. 
I was in an altercation with an individual or a few who were exactly the opposite of justice and righteous conduct. 
I spoke my word and I continue to speak.

So If I am to be "pushy and blurt things out", perhaps I am following Jewish LAW that I must be for myself.

Noone else is going to step up.

Who are the Sabbath Blasters?

I wish to express my own chagrin with the contemporary way of Jewish activity today in the ultra religions communities... well, with a few of the people.

There exists a category of jewish personna called the Sabbath Blaster.

These are the people who ensure you undergo an inquisition as to what you do on sabbath and if you violated any of their number of regulations.

I must say that I took this seriously at one time and even kept the ultra orthodox shabbas for a full year.
No electricity and I even ripped toilet paper and had a years worth of mother prepared Cholent.

It was nice, but in the final analysis, I did not regard this to be the future for myself and I do think that those who do this have their right to do so, but in fact, many impose their belief on many of us.

This includes driving on shabbat which many will inquire about and in some cases will make assertations to your quality as a jew.

Another topic involves working on the sabbath. 
I do think this is a personal matter and if you are so close to someone who may be violating sabbath by working in a trinket store or otherwise nonessential pathway for faithful endeavors on the sabbath, maybe you might want to say something.  What this comes down to is if it is your best friend or your family member.

Otherwise, I take great offense that someone is 'looking out for me' and wants to tell me to do something otherwise on sabbath.

This includes the dinner party that you go to of a highly 'religious' person who comes across as intimidating when they tell you "do not look that information up on sabbath on your computer".

Another one that got me was the person who attacked a family member of mine who is a medical personell (essential) for working on a few occasional Saturdays. 
I mean, who would you think would do your blood work on saturday if you were in the hospital in Tel Aviv?  The total arab contingent of Israeli workers?

So this becomes a heresy.

I have this policy.  I do my shabbas as I enjoy it.  It today involves some computer experiences as well as television.  I do turn on and off the lights and I will no longer be ripping the toilet paper the day ahead of time.

I am sad to say we no longer have Cholent though perhaps we could resurrect that once in a while.

But all in all, I feel that the Torah is on my side on this matter and If you think I am the heretic, go read my interests in heresy.

Disparaging childhood and future relationships

http://www.vosizneias.com/103799/2012/03/29/brooklyn-ny-school-admin-explain-ban-on-facebook-says-violates-orthodox-code-of-modesty

Twice now, I have tried to post my dissent to the idea that facebook is our evil enemy on the 2 jewish web sites which are discussing how it is being banned by the ultra religious in their schools.

Whereby I do agree that even the 13 year old minimum is a little early to be on facebook, still, at 16, it should be fair for anyone to use this service.

They assert that it is an affront to modesty.
Do people post nude images of themselves online?

I am going to suggest that the facts are that Judaism does not promote self-suffication.
And by mandating that you must cancel your own facebook account, this amounts to self- suffication to me.

Either way, this amounts to a lack of honesty on the part of the school administers to deal with the future and the way that we live our lives today.

And basically what they are removing from the children's experiences are the liklihood that the children will have more friends and memories.

Mezuzah Bans at Condo Clubs

There are many condo companies that ban religious expressions on their grounds.  Jewish people are bound by Jewish law to place a mezuzah on their doorpost.

The overzealots argue that if the jews can put up their display, that that welcomes many other displays.  Also they simply wish to keep their properties in their own way of visual displays and without any variance.  Either or, this is a major assault to Jewish life and marks discrimination.

This really should not be compared to a christian display.  This is not a jewish display.  This is a jewish ordinance based on Jewish Law.  A christmas tree is not an ordinance.  This is the arrogance of the gentile communities in which they assimilate themselves into their own right in order to claim religious discrimination when a Jew has a right that must be observed and they have a want that goes on their need and wish list.  Either or, this is a land of religious freedom and to disallow a requirement by Jewish law, one is basically violating the constitution of the USA.

http://www.vosizneias.com/103709/2012/03/27/stratford-ct-resident-says-condo-association-bans-jewish-symbols

Why Zionism Fails

I have to remark that I am a Jew, living in an age whereby the idea of zionism has brought of course many Jews to the homeland and we have a positive and natural community in many senses today living in Israel.  Zionism is not a failure, but it fails to continue the elevation of our nation in the face of today's dangers.

In essence, Zionism was a Charm.  A way to get the national consciousness moving.
It pulled us along, it guided us in times of trouble.

It brought us where we are today.

I do however, have an issue with the idea of zionism as the ultimate goal of Jewish existence and endeavor.

In truth, there is a new cause I will coin here which is Jewish Existentialism.
The hope and force that the Jewish Nation will exist and continue.

The difference is that while Zionism is a charm, Jewish Existentialism is a LIGHT.

The light of our people never stops shining and of course, our goals must be aligned with the true cause of future human interest as well as Jewish truth and Jewish law.


G-d is not a maker of mistakes.
By no means was zionism a mistake.

Zionism was a sign of the times, a harbor for children to find sanctity.

Today, there are some 5.5 million and up Jews living in the holy land.
We continue our existence.

Truly the zionist movement was a catalyst for changes that are happening even today.

But I say this. 

It has not gone far enough.

Zionism has not acheived the light of the nations unto which we can say we exist in cooperation in a whole today.

Sadly, the idea of zionism is capitulated as a hate cry against the Jewish nation today.

Let us now embrace the idea of Jewish Existentialism.

Let our cry be for a Jewish homeland which today is a composite of the future.

Let our cry be for outreach and endeavors to continue the existence of the Jewish people both in Eretz Yisrael and abroad.

The jews need not be confined to a small patch of sacred land by which we congregate ulitimately until of course the predicted messiah of the Jewish people is anticipted to arrive and change the future indefinately.

We must today endeavor to change our future and we must change the troubles in this world.

So today, rather than saying you are a Zionist, let us say we are Jewish Existentialists.

It might confuse the hatred and it might stay for our needs in the future.

Fiddler on the Roof

All this time, I never completely understood what a fiddler on the roof signified.
I knew it was something that represented some sadness at some extent.

What I state that this signifies today is the idea of living among people that hate you.

Such as in Russia.

Its not a figurative or financial poverty as I had thought perhaps it meant.
Its hatred.

Showing that Murder is still celebrated by others

At least 3 people noted that there is a reason not to be happy upon the day that a man who is a NAZI who killed jews died and left our future. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/JewishPhysician/john-demjanjuk-dead-dies_n_1355316_141821292.html
I am quite horrified that even in this day and age, a place like the Huffington Post has people with overt sentiments to the positive presence of a NAZI is in our day.

Judging them by their pocket or by their experience

http://www.vosizneias.com/102984/2012/03/16/jerusalem-meet-the-jewish-billionaire-who-studies-torah-every-morning

I wrote the commentaries on the above article anonymously, numbered 1, 4 and 7.

This was the issue.
I am glad that a man studies Torah each morning.
This is a bright thing to do.

But this guy is not the fitting image of a Gadol.

So I see it this way.
The idea is that the news wants us to either highly respect the man being described for he is a successful business person and still takes time to read and work on his learning.

Or else, he is a great person who has yet to acheive what Torah really proscribes.

I was challenged for writing that I hope he Lives Torah too.  To that I wrote:

Many men read. Some stay for coffee and food. Torah is not an 'external sign' -it is a lifestyle. Black clothes are not the law. Beards are part of our law. I keep my side curls at about 7 inches. Most do not notice but it is against the law to round your corners of your scalp. The rabbis at din.org say that you need at least 0.5 cm of hair on your peyes. The longer the more effective is your blessing.

This fellow who has read Torah every day is to be commended. I have no intention to knock him in any sense. I sense that his fervor for understanding and keeping our interests as a Jew is to his total benefit. I personally would ascribe him as being true to Jewish ethics and that goes a lot further than a total Torah Lifestyle.
The concept I was discussing is that our G-d is True in all senses in all ways to those who adhere in totality to Torah. So this guy is a magistrate for blessings. I would just go further.

Torah Deal

Trusting in Torah.
Trusting in yourself.

There is a sense of humanity that extends from a human being to one another.  If you want to be in the vogue of a totally interesting and totally orthodox way of being, you must adhere to Torah in all of its complicits.  Either way, you can be trusted as a friend, you can be deserving of high honor and friendship, but if you do not keep Torah or miss by omission or by failing to study or failure to learn the facets of a True Jewish way of being, you are going to be amiss in the future as you are not entirely in the blessing of G-d in all of its ways.  That is what I am discussing.

The above comment was my reply to a man who asked me "Are you saying that a Jew is not trustworthy unless he adheres to the Torah? "

Repaging the doomed

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/JewishPhysician/can-jews-pray-the-gay-away_b_1339842_141145476.html

Interesting conversation regarding the considerations regarding gay and lezbian 'souls' in the Orthodox community.  Worth a read I think.

Original Article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacques-berlinerblau/can-jews-pray-the-gay-away_b_1339842.html

60 second culture

I hereby want to coin the term "60 second culture" as a way to describe the continued television airing of shows like the Bachelor and any other television production that requires a man or woman to make a life decision in a fixed time period for the edification of a viewing public.

Birth Control Debate and the Catholic Issue of Dogmatic Exception to Law

I found a little tid bit of heresy in this following editorial in the quotation of a bishop in the below remarks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-end-of-the-catholic-church-as-we-know-it/2012/03/09/gIQAB1jx5R_story.html

In his diocesan newspaper, Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, wrote: “The provision of health care should not demand ‘giving up’ religious liberty. Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship. Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. All of these were co-opted by the government. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society.”

This is heresy.  Heresy involves the idea that you can not get what you want when you are supposed to get what you deserve.  In reality, the truth lies in the fact that what you want is what you are going to get when your G-d wants you to have it.
I have an issue with the concept that your provisions of health care would demand giving up religious liberty.
Religious liberty is the right you have to believe and work and do what you wish within the confines of democracy and the civil law and order.
In reality, religious liberty does not involve taking eggs out of one basket and putting them in another.

So thus, when there is no constitutional issue with delivering health care and the law does not impede the health care to be delivered, it does not interfere with health care issued religious liberties to offer the services to the public that you are not involved with offering your own future presence in their own lives or in their homes.

In essence, the idea that you can not fund birth control needs of the population because your faith does not agree that their own children should be using this measure does not coincide with the adequacy of your own presence in the nation that you are being fortunate to be able to practice your own liberties of religious freedom.

If you have religious freedom and it is done under the auspices of a nation at large, you need to consider that the nations programs are in your interest to support and fund when it is a democracy.

When there is a national issue that involves all of the people in the nation such as birth control and that does not coincide with your religious argument and belief, you may choose to vote against the measure.  You may not exempt yourself from the funding of the measure just because it is your church's reason to do so.  This is a national debate and this involves voting.
If you choose to absolve yourself from the responsibility shared by other citizens from the entire scheme of the civil way of this nation, you are going to have to concede that you can no longer participate in this democracy at the level of a primary and first sourced citizen in the effect that the entitlements and work of this nations people is not going to be able to be offered to you at the same amount or the same priority as the rest of the community.

There is a group called the Amish that disavow the idea of using and paying into a social security system. 
They do not pay into social security and they are not eligible for benefits.

This befits their religious liberty in that it is their choice to abstain from an American Foundation and Freedom.

Health care is a different story.
Health care is a place of respect for ones self. 
Social Security is respect for your future.
In truth, our needs to be self respecting citizens outweigh our needs to preserve our religious integrity.
It is a fact that there is a consideration that self medicating with birth control by ones own choice and the discretion of a physician is a personal matter but that it trips perhaps on the ultimate governing structure of human survival as a pure soul based on the dictates and mandates of religious success in the true world and perhaps there may be a consequence in the world to come.
Either way, there is a religious remidy that is dictated by a higher power as we choose futures of pathways of justice and righteousness.
In all, G-d is in control. 
If you do not believe that G-d is in control, then your church needs to be in control.
So there in lies the heresy.

Confounding Liberty

This nation is divided into 2 political parties.  Either or, this should not confound liberty.  The actuality of today's culture is there is a bowl of treason that exists in the same dinner plate that the GOP likes to eat off of that says we must be fiscally conservative and have social structure.   In reality the GOP wants to eat that bowl of treason and it wants to bake its own cornucopia of insincerity in such a way that the children are given a tooth pick to enjoy their own dinner and not a fork or napkin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/woody-harrelson-republicans-game-change_n_1339388.html

They try to "intimidate me" again... :)

This was posted online today.
I wrote a commentary on what our Creator's face is considered to 'look like' on the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/JewishPhysician/seeing-gods-face_b_1335131_140613751.html

One person writes:
Are you sure G-d doesn't wear a burka?

My reply:
Only when he goes into the news room. 

Refuting the unrefutable. :)

I was told recently that I "put my beliefs on a pedistal" by a nice atheist on the Huffington Post in a discussion that I entered discussing the Israeli decision to not deliver christian bibles from missionaries to the Jewish people.

He told me I put my beliefs on a pedistal etc.

I replied:
We put our beliefs on a grand piano. It plays well.  

Thought that was a nice thoughtful way out of a really nasty antagonizing reply.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/JewishPhysician/israeli-postmen-refuse-to-deliver-hebrew-bible_n_1325216_140124347.html

Meager Disaster

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2012/03/neturei-karta-and-satmar-hasidim-burn-israeli-flag-123.html

A Jew who burns Israel's flag is without a soul.
A Jew who burns America's Flag is without a G-d.

Heresy: metzitzah b’peh

http://www.vosizneias.com/102334/2012/03/06/new-york-brooklyn-da-opens-criminal-investigation-into-infants-death-from-metzitzah-bpeh-at-bris-practice

This is the practice that some ultra religious jewish enclaves do to "suction" out some more blood from the wound of a circumcision.  Nowadays it is done by suction applied to a glass tube over the anatomy of the child.

I must say that this is one of the most frequently claimed assertions of people who want to paint a disgusting image of Jewish life as well as those who want to attack the jewish practice of circumcision.

THIS IDIOCY SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.

I guess maybe it will be as the above article discussing a case of a baby contracting a case of Herpes 1 Virus and dying was documented after suction from a mohel.

AS A JEWISH PHYSICIAN I ATTEST THAT THERE IS NO MEDICAL OR SPIRITUAL BENEFIT TO ANY SUCH PRACTICE.

This needs to be declared UNLAWFUL.

Hot Dog Mania

Another Day for Heresy and Good Fortune.  The following 'bible' verse was posted on Facebook today by a christian friend.  It struck me immediately as false, even before I learned of course that it came from the 'holy' NIV.  

Philippians 2:3 NIV Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

Jewish Teachings teach us a contrary notion.

We are to consider all people younger than ourselves to have sinned less and all persons older than ourselves to have more merit.

This keeps us in check.

The idea is to keep yourself in check.  Not to consider everyone "better" than yourself.

Give yourself credit.