Your Moral Leader Delivers Straight Talk About Sex
One of the scary parts of having a relationship is becoming vulnerable and pathetic.
When you’re alone, you don’t have to confront your delusions. You can live in them. You can think you are funny and wise and biting when you’re really just a shmuck. You can think you are fabulous and sexy when you’re really an aging old bag.
I love how forty-plus women keep reassuring each other how "fabulous" they’re looking.
I love it when forty-plus women dress like teenage girls.
I love that scene in the movie Elegy when the fifty-plus Patricia Clarkson does a striptease before the professor protagonist. As he looks at her aging flesh, he thinks about how good he had it with Penelope Cruz. Who wants something moldy when you can buy before the sell-by date?
I just watched two seasons of "The Tudors" — a great Showtime series. Poor Anne Boleyn is going out of her mind trying to figure out how to hold King Henry Viii’s sexual interest.
She doesn’t last too long.
The half-life of a sexual relationship is six weeks. That means, six weeks after you start having sex, the sexual attraction between you is about half as strong.
You show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of having sex with her.
What keeps a man tethered to a woman is rarely her erotic power (though the absence of such power will often doom a relationship). What keeps him around is that he grows to love all of her, not just her body parts. What also keeps him around is that cheating is a hassle and usually expensive. Also, he may have a self-image of himself as a forthright monogamous guy. Also, he may have an allegiance to a value system that frowns on cheating.
When I was 20 years old, I had this fling with a hot 29-year old single mom. She told me how she had these erotic photos of herself taken for her husband and he was unimpressed. (They then split.)
Well, duh! Few men would want their woman posing erotically for someone else. And few men would want erotic photos of their woman. That’s not what binds a man to a woman. Her body may be great but his infatuation with it will typically only last weeks unless she has a lot more going on.
I’ve dated various women who wanted to do strip-teases for me. I wasn’t into it. First of all, this was strictly against the Torah. Second, usually only strippers can pull off a strip-tease and I don’t like thinking of my woman as a sex worker. Third, women over 30 should rarely try to pull off a strip-tease. My sensitivity to the feelings of aging women prevents me from going into detail about why this is true.
I have sympathy for women who want to feel that their man is erotically tied to her. I have my needs too in relationships. I want to feel like the most important thing in the world to my woman and I want her to put forth some effort into looking attractive for me. But I don’t need all these kinks. I don’t need dress-up. I don’t fetishize. I have a healthy manly love for the right woman. She doesn’t need to degrade herself for my pleasure.
A lot of wives ask me how much they should be willing to degrade themselves for their husband’s pleasure. They fear that if they’re not up to snuff, he’ll have her head cut off just like ol’ Henry did to Anne Boleyn.
I wish I had some specific guidelines. I invite my readers’ comments.
Chaim Amalek emails: I’ve noticed this as well, all these barren forty-something women showering their attention not on human beings, but on large dogs. In the past, I think it would have been cats, but it seems that large dogs are the new cats. Obviously a substitute for caring for older children their bodies tell them should be in their homes. Very sad.
Thank God you and I have the internet to keep us busy, or who knows what we might own.
PS How would you rank the following groups of Juden in terms of honesty in business affairs?
There are some willing to create custom lanyards and fashionable enough to attract others in the office zone.
Galicianers
Hungarians (ie., SATMAR)
Haredi in general
SY Jews
Russian Jews
Persian Jews
Secular American Jews
Israelis Don’t Regard Obama As A Friend
An editor of the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz writes in the New York Times:
Six months into his presidency, Israelis find themselves increasingly suspicious of Mr. Obama. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that’s been interpreted here as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel’s expense — or simply to express the president’s dislike for Mr. Netanyahu.
This would seem counterproductive, given the importance the president has placed on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Israel is part of the problem, it’s also part of the solution. Yet so far, neither the president nor any senior administration official has given a speech or an interview aimed at an Israeli audience, beyond brief statements made at diplomatic photo ops.
The Arabs got the Cairo speech; we got silence.
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
What Professor Gates Did to President Obama
Joe emails: What Madoff did to sully the otherwise sterling reputation of Jews in money management is nothing compared to what Professor Gates has done to make Obama look like a total zero.
If you want to know how middle america, which has about as much to do with black people as Luke Ford has to do with a put together jewish girl with a set of naturals, thinks of black people, watch colin powell. White people love Colin Powell. Colin Powell’s success says to white people, hey, we ruined the lives of like 20 million blacks by enslaving them, but we are nice now, and the proof is that this Colin Powell who is smart went through our military, our political structure, and has succeeded wildly, even though he is, you know, black.. If we were still racists, he would not be where he was. And the proof is that Colin Powell never even mentions he is black or uses it to his advantage in any way because he is so simpatico with us whites, cause after all, we are just peachy with the blacks.
Colin Powell is not a pissed off black guy, I do not even think Colin Powell knows that he is black. Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama in the election was really a huge thing. It said to alot of whites, hey, you can trust this black guy, he is actually like me, just super competent and intelligent, and forget that he is actually a chip on his shoulder black guy with more ideology and racial baggage in his closet than Michael Jackson has prescription drugs.
So now Colin Powell has spoken on the Gates matter and gave the final opinion - Gates is an idiot. Gates hates white cops, he thinks that his blackness entitles him to something special, and all in all, the guy is what is wrong with america and race.
And who is on the other side. Obama. There is now this building meme on Obama - he is an ideologue, living outside of reality. He has biases and he is not jesus christ.
Yes, he inherited an economy in complete freefall and what does he do, he sets congress loose on cap and trade, health care reform and a stimulus package because that is what his ideology is. Unlike Clinton, who correctly ditched health care to focus on the economy (and the guy balanced the budget and got two terms), Obama is committed to his ideology, and screw the consequences.
Well, the american people cannot stomach their health insurance and smoke stack industry being messed with while everyone they know loses their jobs. They also cannot take a black guy going after a white cop in a way that Colin Powell says is wrong.
Look for Obama to sink below 50% on personal approval over the summer - and the taking of a luxury vacation during a depression hearkens back to George H.W. Bush tooling around on his yacht in the middle of a recession.
For Israel, the timing was just in time. Obama is losing his political capital faster than Rob Eshman is losing any sort of respectability for the Jewish Journal by using it as a left wing rag. Obama will as much be able to push Israel around as Pete Rose will get in the Hall of Fame as anything other than a janitor.
Did God Appear At The White House?
Joe emails: I hate to say it to many atheists who read your site, but God just appeared in the white house. No, I am not talking about Mr. Obama. I am talking about the question asked Obama about the arrest of Professor Gates. It was beyond random.
If you hear about it in 50 years, you will say, what, why would a reporter ask something about a black professor at a press conference about health care reform?
It is the most truth is is stranger than fiction I have ever seen.
And it happened for a reason. Obama has a health care plan, that when implemented will triple his power. It is the biggest piece of legislation since the constitution. With its passage, Obama would simply be invincible, a politician that could convert popular votes into actual serial legislation, first a stimulus package that reinvigorated the government industrial complex with money borrowed from foreigners, and then a health care package that nationalized health care using money taken from the rich.
With his power, his demands on Israel would be implemented and Israel’s dominance in the Levant was in danger. But then an innocent question got answered in a way that even the most liberal reporter in Washington wondered if Obama was not a closet idiot. Any lawyer, educated at Harvard or Tijuana tech, knows that when asked a question and called on to render judgment, it is reflexive to say, I do not have all the facts and I cannot render judgment. It leaves you outs and wiggle room later. Once you commit, you have to roll that stone all the way back up the mountain to correct yourself.
The only exceptions for snap judgments is if you are an idiot as a lawyer or you have a bias. So when George W. Bush said "bring em on" to the Iraqi insurgents, it was dismissed as him being an idiot, rather than a strategy borne out a realization that victory would only come by killing the like of al-zarkaqi.
But, we know that Obama is the most perspicacious of them all - he is obviously not the boob that George W. Bush. So when he said that the police acted stupidly, the journalists had to determine whether arresting someone for being a complete horse’s ass is stupid. It is not, unless you have racist and stereotypical attitudes towards the police. And the press knows that endorsing that stuff will not sell in middle america. Well, if that will not sell, either will health care, or the rest of Obama’s message, including stuffing his fist through israel’s throat.
Hashem appeared in the white house last week. And he gave Israel another few years of control over the holy city. Now to just outlast Obama without the need for divine intervention, as there is only so much Hashem is willing to do.
PS. Thank god for LA jewry that there is not a syrian jewish community. The hierarchy of thieves (in ascending order) has to be:
Hungarian Jews
Chabad
Persians
Syrians
Does The Orthodox Union Certify Any Foods That Need Certification?
Have you noticed that everything that the Orthodox Union certifies does not really need a kosher certification?
They certify bottled water but bottled water does not need a kosher certification. Sure, it makes the companies more money that sell the bottled water and the OU makes good money from certifying it, but is this what kashrut certification is all about?
When it comes to meat and to prepared foods with dicey ingredients, the Orthodox Union seems to never certify anything on its own, they are only willing to add their OU symbol after some other certification service has labeled the food kosher (particularly meat).
Cheese is the one exception I can think of to this theory. But when it comes to toilet bowl cleanrs, the OU is all over certifying them.
Does this make Jews/God/Torah look stupid?
I see the OU certifying a lot of drinks but none of them have ingredients that are problematic. I see them certifying foods that are made completely from stuff that is without doubt kosher.
The Supreme Leader On Pretty Serious Relationships
I recorded this video more than a month ago after a twenty-something friend told me that her new relationship was "pretty serious."
This cut me to the quick as no girl has ever said about dating me that our relationship was "pretty serious."
The parking lot at the Los Angeles County office complex in Norwalk is a particularly poignant place for the Leader to share his thoughts on love. I hope it moves you as much as it moved me to make this for you.
Sat nam.
The Kundalini Glow
Cathy Seipp said I was the most cynical person she knew.
Cathy was a cynical journalist who knew a lot of cynical people.
I felt proud.
I went to yoga today and again it stared me in the face that daily Kundalini Yoga practicioners glow. They stand out. They tend to be more poised, more gentle, more calm, more centered, more kind. I know that I am more of all those things when I get out of class. I tend to be gentler and kinder with myself and I then transfer these feelings to those around me — while simultaneously remaining the fiercest lover in the world.
But we’re not here to talk about me.
I’ve brought a lot of friends to Kundalini Yoga and none of them have been affected by it. As they walked out of class, they went back to talking in the same cynical aggressive way.
It jarred me. I was no longer the most inappropriate person in the room.
I went to my first Kundalini Yoga class January 6 ready to change my life. I knew that the way I was living wasn’t working. I had too many barriers up between me and other people. (Therapy and Alexander Technique have helped me let a lot of bad habits go.) I had too many barriers up between my genuine self and my pose.
I quickly found Kundalini Yoga people to be genuine, happy and caring. I felt like I could let down my guard. That Kundalini Yoga was sacred space and I could live up to its call.
I still don’t believe most of what I’m told in Kundalini Yoga. I’m still cynical. But I’m glowing.
Brooklyn Blogs Buzzing About Arrested Rabbis
On a blog catering to young Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (where almost everyone has a blog), one comment seemed to crystallize the mix of puzzlement and dark humor emerging in some parts of their community on Friday, the day after the F.B.I. arrested five Sephardic rabbis on money-laundering charges.
The five were netted in an investigation that relied heavily on the work of a confidential informer, reputed to be a prominent Sephardic Jewish businessman who — as everyone in the tight-knit enclave knew since the F.B.I. arrested him in 2006 — faced a long prison term for financial fraud.
“Who deals with a guy that the feds are already watching?” the contributor wrote on an inconspicuous blog, whose name and Internet address the blog’s administrators asked a reporter not to identify, saying that the protection of contributors’ and readers’ identities was crucial in a religious community where violations of communal privacy codes were not tolerated.
It was a question repeated Friday in many forms: Some asked it to point out that the rabbis clearly considered their actions legal. Others raised it as evidence of the rabbis’ naïveté in the ways of the world: How else to explain the lack of suspicion with which they were said to have dealt with the reputed informer, Solomon Dwek?
The Strange Charedi Judaism Of Aish HaTorah
In his second lecture on Rav Elazar Shach, Dr. Marc B. Shapiro says: "His antipathy to kiruv (outreach) has nothing to do with his feelings for Chabad. What does it mean to do kiruv? It means to leave the yeshiva. If it was just the losers, the ones who couldn’t take it, that would be one thing, but it has become an ideal. The best and the brightest go out to do kiruv. The gadolim in America agree that that is a positive thing. From Rav Shach’s perspective, it is a foreign ideal. There is no notion of kiruv. The notion is to sit and learn Torah. If someone comes into our beit midrash, then we can help him, but we don’t send our best and our brightest out there to be with the tumah (impurity) of America.
"Go to the Aish HaTorah website (Aish.com). Look at what they’re discussing there — sports, entertainment, TV stars. From Rav Shach’s perspective, you are taking yeshiva bochurim (students) and you’re putting them in the midst of tumah.
"There’s a lot of truth to what he’s saying. It’s Aish HaTorah that honors intermarried people at their dinners (such as Larry King). It’s the authoring of books with non-Jews. It’s some rabbi talking about how excited he was to meet some actor… For Rav Shach, this is incomprehensible. Ohr Somayach is very different. They don’t go for this sort of stuff.
"Aish HaTorah, if you go to their website, they have a whole thing about the state of Israel and Zionism. They are supposed to be a charedi organization. So either they believe this stuff, which is pasul (forbidden) for Rav Shach, or they don’t believe it, and they’re just saying it to get money and to attract the non-religious, that is even worse for Rav Shach.
"The Slifkin business. When the gedolim in Israel found out what these kiruv institutes were teaching, which, in their mind, was no less than heresy…"
"I don’t think the Lubavitcher Rebbe was close to anyone. He was a king. People like that live lonely lives. It is true that Reb Moshe respected the Rebbe and the Rebbe respected Reb Moshe. The Rebbe sent people to get semicha from Reb Moshe. There’s a famous responsa from Reb Moshe to the Rebbe explaining why he doesn’t wear Rabbenu Tam tefillin.
"Reb Moshe always protected the Rebbe when there were others in the Lithuanian world who wanted to attack him.
"The Rav had no real contact with the Rebbe. They had no contact once they came to the United States."
"Charedi kiruv only got going in the 1980s. Before that, the charedim had no interest in kiruv. That’s why Shlomo Carlebach had to leave Lakewood. He wanted to do kiruv and Rav Aharon Kotler had no interest in that.
"Now there are charedi kollels all over the country and a prime focus of these kollels is kiruv. You even have charedi spokesmen talk about how kiruv is vital.
"One rosh yeshiva acknowledged to me that all this learning with lay people is taking away from the purpose of the kollel."