Lose the Battle, Win the War?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

March 1-2, 2024 • 22 Adar 1 5784 • Ki Sisa (30-34). 

The goal of this email is a gold-medal dinner conversation ... please print & share.

Imagine you're having a fight.

With your spouse, your parent, your child, your sibling, your neighbor....

You know that you're right and they're wrong.

This is not just a matter of opinion – you know that you're right.

Let's say it's about a controversial topic. I'm willing to bet that you have clear and strong opinion about at least one of the following:

- Should abortion be illegal?
- Is Mr. Trump fit to serve in the White House?
- Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?
- Should Barbie win Best Picture at the Oscars?
- Is it wrong to drive at the speed limit in the left lane?
- Are latkes better with sour cream or apple sauce?
- Are hamentaschen better with poppy seed or chocolate filling?

Pick the topic that you are most clear and convinced about.

So imagine that the person on the other side of the argument is your spouse, your parent, your child, your sibling, your neighbor.... 

Remember, we're talking about a topic where you know that you're right. You have unassailable arguments, evidence, proofs — give you enough time, and you'll surely win your case. You will surely be able to show them that they're wrong. You are going to win.

The question is, will winning bring you closer in the end, or will you wind up even more distant?

In one of his "Comedians Getting Coffee" routines, Jerry is shmuzing with David Letterman, who is describing his challenges in raising a child and asks Jerry what he would do in a hypothetical situation.

Jerry's response is classic:

— "I support whatever position my wife takes."
— "Because she knows more about parenting than you?"
— "It doesn't matter what you do. But why have a fight with your wife?"

Question for your table: Is he right?


Shabbat Shalom,

Alexander Seinfeld

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Why Did the Teen Quit Skiing?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

February 23-24, 2024 • 15 Adar 1 5784 • Tetzaveh (Ex 27-30). 

The purpose of this blog is to slalom smoothly through the dinner conversation ... please print & share.
In memory of Menachem Mendel ben Yisroel, who passed away this week. 

Why Did the Teen Quit Skiing?

Because she was snow-bored!    

That one earned me my "dad" card for the week. Maybe even a lifetime achievement award.

My daughter was especially appreciative when I used it while sharing the chair lift with other father-daughter pairs.

But to make it interesting, I tried to come up with a new ski joke for each trip up the mountain.

Question for your table - How many skiing jokes can you come up with?

I think I petered out after about seven.

How would you guess the trip went overall?

[pause to let them ponder that for a moment...]

It was uplifting at first, but went downhill after that!

Speaking of snow boarding, do you remember back in the Eighties when you first saw people experimenting with this new sport?

To me, the appeal wasn't obvious, other than the sheer novelty. It appeared to attract the same kinds of guys (specifically guys) who were attracted to skateboarding.

(Not knocking skateboarding nor snowboarding, just not my cup of tea!)

Fast forward to this week... at the ski resort, there appeared to be as many snowboarders as skiers. Of all ages. If not more.

The strange thing is that most of the snowboarders I saw were spending a lot of time sitting on the snow - all the way down the slope. 

It's apparently a lot harder to learn than skiing.

So what's the great appeal?

My daughter had a grand time on her skis, really enjoying herself while dodging all of those snowboarders falling all over the place.

At the end of the day, what surprising comment did my daughter make?

"I think I'd like to learn how to snowboard."

Question for your table: Where did that come from?



Shabbat Shalom,

Alexander Seinfeld

PS - Today is Purim Katan and tonight is Shushan Purim Katan - and you know what that means about the countdown to Purim and Pesach...

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The mission of Jewish Spiritual Literacy, Inc. (JSLI) is to foster a paradigm shift in spiritual education to enable every human being to access and enjoy the incredible database of 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom.

Yarmulke or Not?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

February 16-17, 2024 • 8 Adar 1 5784 • Terumah (Ex 25-27). 

The purpose of this blog is for some honest talk at the Shabbat table ... please forward/print/share.

Happy to report that our new amazing iPhone app is now updated with even better performance, so please try it out (and make sure to allow Notifications).
 

As a spinoff on last week's "Onion or Not", here's an interesting discussion that came up in a Jewish forum this week.

First, we all know that since October 7 we've been seeing new expressions of antisemitism around the Western world, such as this Jewish man stabbed in Paris yesterday and this poster reported at Macquarie University in Sidney....
​

But wait... that's like Nazi-level stuff, right?

Are there really people in Sidney, Australia in 2024 who hate Jews so much that they would design and distribute such stuff? 

Well, yeah, that's not new, unfortunately.

But, but, but - acting brashly and violently isn't the same as the laborious and deliberate creation and distribution of a poster or sticker? Doesn't that go way beyond the pale?

As easy as it would be to decry this as a classic neo-Nazi surge, it turns out that the story isn't quite as simple as that.

That ugly poster is based on this very ugly video of a Jewish man saying those exact words to a Palestinian woman who accused him of stealing her home....

So as ugly and painful as it is, it's a little more complicated than the Nazis, right?

Try asking your table - What's your take? Antisemitic or legitimate criticism?

Now for the online forum....someone posted the following question:

Would be ok for a non-Jew to wear a yarmulke? In this case, I’m playing a Jewish character in a musical, (Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors), and I want to wear a yarmulke to improve characterization. I’m going to pitch this idea to my director, and I want as much evidence backing me as possible, so I figured I poll a place where I know I could find people who knew what they were talking about, when it comes to this detail. 

So first and foremost, try polling your table on this question - does everyone agree one way or the other, or is it debatable?

My personal take:

Mr. Mushnik is described here as the "grumpy, stingy owner of Mushnik's Flower Shop" and here as "...given to cursing in Yiddish. He is a man who seldom smiles and often yells."

So you put a yarmulke on this grumpy, stingy, cursing small business owner to emphasize that he's not only Jewish but religious? That's an overt anti-Semitic trope, if you ask me. Even without the yarmulke the character is offensive and all Jewish references should be changed.

(Mind you, I didn't know anything about Mushnik before doing a quick search. But the info wasn't hard to find.)

Now, in the online example, 53% voted "OK" and 47% voted "Not OK." 

That's out of 170 Jewish (or mostly-Jewish) people.

Second question for your table: Does that poll result surprise you?


Alexander Seinfeld

PS - Do you know how many days until Purim and Pesach?

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Onion or Not the Onion?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

February 9-10, 2024 • 1 Adar 1 5784 • Mishpatim (Ex 21-24). 

The purpose of this blog is for an augmented Shabbat table ... please forward/print/share.
Do you know how many days until Purim and Pesach?
Happy birthday shout-out to Marc A....!

...that is the question....

Did you ever read a headline and think, "Wait a sec, is today April 1"?

Here are a few bona fide recent headlines that you may have missed:

Tesla owners told not to wear Apple virtual reality headsets while driving

Man who spent years building Eiffel Tower with 700K matchsticks may be denied world record for using wrong matches

3 million smart toothbrushes were not used in a DDoS attack after all, but it could happen

GOP congressman admits to doing pull-ups at top of Capitol Dome and insists ‘there was nothing unsafe’ about it

Britain has seen an alarming rise in poetry sales

Northern Ontario pizza shop’s 'unforeseen circumcisions' typo goes viral

It's sometimes good for the soul to read something a bit less serious... and today is Rosh Chodesh Adar so tis the season....

Regarding the first headline above ... a friend was telling me this week about his experience with these new Apple so-called "AR" goggles.

For the uninitiated, that stands for "augmented reality". The idea is to have a lightweight device over your eyes that feels comfortable and shows a realistic image of your surroundings with your inbox or youtube channel or whatever you want floating in the air. So you could theoretically walk around the room while wearing it and interact with internet stuff by simply turning your head or flicking your finger.

This is leading to a question for your table. But to make the question "sticky," let's say for the sake of discussion that the goggles work as advertised - that the image inside really looks exactly like reality, with the augmentation.

(By the way, because it's just an image, it's possible to create an artificial scene instead - instead of the actual basement room you're sitting in, you could have the goggles make it appear that you are sitting in a sunny garden, or on the beach, or wherever.) 

So here's the question I think I'd like to ask everyone at the table – Is this truly augmented reality, or is it actually virtual reality? How do you relate to it?

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Adar (1),

Alexander Seinfeld


PS - Our new amazing iPhone app has had a few bug fixes, so if you haven't tried it yet, there's no time like the present! (just make sure to allow Notifications).

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The mission of Jewish Spiritual Literacy, Inc. (JSLI) is to foster a paradigm shift in spiritual and moral education to enable every human being to access and enjoy the incredible database of 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom.

Barn Find of the Century?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

February 2-3, 2024 • 17 Shevat 5784 • Yisro (Ex 18-20). 

The purpose of this blog is for an ascendent Shabbat table ... please forward/print/share.
Do you know how many days until Purim and Pesach?
Happy birthday shout-out to Irv!

Have you ever seen those headlines about the discovery of a secret classic car collection?

Like a few years ago in France.

Or after that in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Or the one last year in the Netherlands.

Or soon after that in Alabama.

Or this Ferari Daytona discovered in Japan.

Apparently, barn finds are more common than you'd think (click the pic). 

The Alabama collection was so interesting because the cars were literally brand new. As in less than 50 miles on the odometer.

That's the key to keeping stuff new - don't use it.

Law of nature, right?

Did it ever occur to you that the human body works in the opposite way to this law of nature?

If you leave a human body to sit in a barn for 50 years, or even on a couch for 5 days, it will begin to wither away.

Want stronger muscles? Use them.

Want stronger bones? Use them.

Healthy, long-lasting joints? Move around a lot.

A stronger immune system? Let it be tested with some bacteria and viruses.

Better mind and memory? Study something.

Do you see the beauty that I see in this arrangement? Other than hormonal childhood growth, all other growth is put into our hands - if we want to work at it, we'll grow. 

All of the above is literally true, it's a description of reality. 

But that leads us to a conundrum. 

In our book, Body & Soul, the body is likened to a sophisticated automobile and the soul is the driver; or the body is like a horse and the soul is the rider.

But if the body is growing and adapting in response to environmental stressors, then isn't it more like the driver than the car?

What do you think - is the body more like the car or like the driver?

And what about the human soul – is it, too, strengthened through stress like the body or weakened through use like a car?

Bonus question: If they do finally discover you in your barn one day, would you want to be restored?

Shabbat Shalom,

Alexander Seinfeld


PS - One of the cool things about our new amazing iPhone app is that no matter when you install it, you join the party on the same page as everyone else.

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The mission of Jewish Spiritual Literacy, Inc. (JSLI) is to foster a paradigm shift in spiritual and moral education to enable every human being to access and enjoy the incredible database of 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom.