Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Vaad L'Kedushas Shabbos
With all the mess going on with El Al, I thought I'd take a different track, and pass on a seemingly unrelated chain email joke I received today from mi prima tia. Think about it.
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Two astronauts land on Mars. Their mission: to check whether there is oxygenon the planet."Give me the box of matches" says one. "Either it burns and there is oxygen,or nothing happens."He takes the box, and is ready to strike a match when out of the blue, aMartian appears waving all his arms..."No, no, don't!"The two guys look at each other, worried. Could there be an unknownexplosive gas on Mars? But he takes another match....And now, a crowd of hysterical Martians is coming, all waving their arms:"No, no, don't do that!""It looks serious. What are they afraid of? But - we're here for Science, toknow if man can breathe on Mars".He strikes a match, which flames up, burns down, and..... nothing happens."Why did you want to prevent us from striking a match?"The leader of the Martians says, "Today is Shabbos!"
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Two astronauts land on Mars. Their mission: to check whether there is oxygenon the planet."Give me the box of matches" says one. "Either it burns and there is oxygen,or nothing happens."He takes the box, and is ready to strike a match when out of the blue, aMartian appears waving all his arms..."No, no, don't!"The two guys look at each other, worried. Could there be an unknownexplosive gas on Mars? But he takes another match....And now, a crowd of hysterical Martians is coming, all waving their arms:"No, no, don't do that!""It looks serious. What are they afraid of? But - we're here for Science, toknow if man can breathe on Mars".He strikes a match, which flames up, burns down, and..... nothing happens."Why did you want to prevent us from striking a match?"The leader of the Martians says, "Today is Shabbos!"
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Parasites
I'm so liberated. I don't think women are baby machines. I mean, they should all be blessed with the ability to reproduce, but I don't think that in and of itself makes for a full life. I've taken heat for that statement in the past, but for a change, I think I'll explain myself. Now I should probably leave a qualifier that this is just a generalization, and obviously there are exceptions and different individual preferences. But I'm not going to.
Whether raising a family plays a large part or a small part of a person's life, it can't be the entirety of it. Similarly, making a living can't be the sole purpose of a man's existence. (This whole rant is not sexist - it applies vice versa as well.) If all we are doing is reproducing another generation, why? Why should we have kids? Just so that they can have kids too? To what purpose? Isn't our aim to contribute to the world, and raise kids to continue the process of building that better world, even if only in a miniscule way? So there has to be more than just raising kids, whether work, community, academically, etc...
Unfortunately, it seems that so many people try and reinforce the importance of family in the frum world that girls set up blinders to putting energy into other realms. And in my mind, that ends up hurting the true integrity of the Jewish nuclear unit...
Whether raising a family plays a large part or a small part of a person's life, it can't be the entirety of it. Similarly, making a living can't be the sole purpose of a man's existence. (This whole rant is not sexist - it applies vice versa as well.) If all we are doing is reproducing another generation, why? Why should we have kids? Just so that they can have kids too? To what purpose? Isn't our aim to contribute to the world, and raise kids to continue the process of building that better world, even if only in a miniscule way? So there has to be more than just raising kids, whether work, community, academically, etc...
Unfortunately, it seems that so many people try and reinforce the importance of family in the frum world that girls set up blinders to putting energy into other realms. And in my mind, that ends up hurting the true integrity of the Jewish nuclear unit...
