Archive for February, 2010

I have to be at work early today. Niko has to load his truck at eight and Mr. V. won’t trust a goy with the keys. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t trust me either. It would make my life easier.…

Strawberries, the Internet, Lipa Schmeltzer, and Track 5 on Michoel Schnitzler’s latest album have all been banned. So what’s a desperate rabbi to do? Ban salmon fish, it seems. Rabbi Moshe Karp from Modiin Ilit, Israel is seeking support…

I lay next to Heshy on the couch, comforted by the warmth of his body. As usual, the bachelor pad that Mendy and Heshy shared was filled with assorted members of the Monsey underworld. Most were ex-Chasidic, whether or not…

I’d smash a ten-year-old crappy Toshiba too, if I had one. But these people turned it into a religious ceremony. In a clip posted on YouTube, a rabbi holds an old Toshiba laptop and very ceremoniously announces his intention…

It’s scary, he says. Only two hundred thirty nine years left until the end of time. That’s not a lot of time, he says. And still he hasn’t come. It’s very scary.

My father waits for Moshiach. Year after year…

“What do the scientists know?” Ari greeted me in the morning with a triumphant smile. “All the technology in the world, all the atheists with all their machines, and nothing. They can’t even predict the weather.”

I looked out the…

Ladies, make sure to get your teeth straightened before you get married. Your ability to do so afterwards has now been severely limited. “After a thorough study of halachic material on the subject,” Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv ruled that
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Motel stands at the Milky kitchen sink and Ruchi at the Meaty one. Sleeves rolled up, both scrubbing pots, their lids and other paraphernalia.  Each investing elbow grease to glean a sparkling utensil.  The cheerful rivalry between them would have…

I enter our apartment. It’s noisy as hell, the same noises every evening. Koiles ivrukim. Children squabbling, Breindy yelling, the vacuum cleaner roaring, kids making milkshakes in the blender and spilling half of it on the counters and the kitchen…

The dybbuk is not real. Who would’ve thunk? An investigative report on Israeli TV claims to have unmasked the fraud behind the dybbuk exorcisms in Israel by Rabbi David Batzri and others. One woman, previously the subject of an…