My rebby Reb Elyah Baruch!

This is the news from Yeshiva World:

NEW TIMES POSTED BELOW: Sudden Petira Of Rav Elya Boruch Finkel ZATZAL
March 30, 2008
(NEW LEVAYA INFO POSTED BELOW) We regret to inform you of the sudden Petira of Rav Elya Boruch Finkel ZATZAL, one of the Roshei Yeshivos and Magid Shiurim in Mir Yerushalayim. Rav Elya Boruch was Niftar a few moments ago after suffering a cardiac arrest at the age of 60. The Levaya will take place in Mir Yerushalayim on Monday - exact time will be announced on YWN.

Rav Elya Boruch ZATAZL will always be remembered by his thousands of Talmidim, as someone who devoted himself to each and every Talmid, and was always seen with a smile on his face.

UPDATE: The Levaya is scheduled for 4:00AM EST (11:00AM Israel time) at the Mir Yerushalayim. Two telephone numbers have been set up by duvys.com and YWN for those wishing to listen to the Levaya.

(712) 432-1001 Access Code: 423452599#
(712) 432-1001 Access Code: 425164792#

Yehi Zichro Boruch……Boruch Dayan Ha’Emmes.

Its a sad night. My rebbi (teacher), Reb Elya Baruch Finkel passed away tonight at the age of 60 right after suffering a heart attack. How long was he my rebby? Officially, he I was in his shiur (lecture) for a year and 7 months. But in reality he has been walking with me through life for 14 years ever since I met him. He had a profound impact on me by making me feel like I was really part of the Torah world to which he belonged. He constantly tried to build me up and realise what a ben Torah I was, like all his talmidim. http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/ebf.jpg

history repeats itself

History repeats itself is really true. Since the founding of our country we have been fighting over whether we should be helping those in need and how to do so.
The Federalists favored the elite while the Republicans (Jefferson's Republicans) favored the simple farmer. (Actually they favored the large plantation owner but it sounded nice to claim they favored the yoeman farmer.)
Then we had the Abolitionists who wanted to free the slaves and the Southern Democratic Party which became the Confederacy. Not much feeling for the oppressed over there.
After the war we had our Laissez Faire Social Darwinists who would let the poor starve in the streets. Then came the Progressives who tried to help the poor.
FDR puts an end to Laissez Faire policy. The Republicans under Ronald Regan do what they can to bring back the idea under the new name of trickle down economics.
And now we come to the Mortgage Crisis! Homeowners are going to default on mortgages. And mortgage brokerage firms are going to lose money. The Democrats want to "bailout" the poor homeowners. The Republicans want to help the mortgage brokers. Looks like nothing has changed!

Grandpas Yahrtzeit

A Yahrtzeit is an anniversary of a person's death. It is commemorated in Judaism as a sollemn time when the deceased is remembered and praised for his good deads. Special mitzvos are done to give merit to the departed.
Tonight is the first yahrtzeit of my beloved maternal grandpa. He passed away last year at the age of 96. Grandpa was born in the Bukovina province in Romania. He survived a short stint in a fascist anti semetic labor camp and, with G-d's help, escaped to America. Here is raised a daughter, my mom, and continued the transmision of Judaism that conects us all the way back to Mount Sinai. My grandpa used to tell me about his grandfather, Chaim Yankel Wurnbrand. One day I will tell my own grandchildren about my own grandpa. The chain will continue as we are forever linked.
It is a tradition for relatives to light a candle on a yahrtzeit and my mom lit a candle tonight.
Grandpa, May Your memory Be a Blessing

Google's new addition

The NY Times had an article about a new Google feature. It is search within a search. Say, for example, you search for Queens College. In the past you would have only gotten results for Queens College. Now you get sub results too. For example, you get links to Academics, Admissions, Schedule etc...
Here's a screenshot:
This has upset some websites. They want users to enter their site as soon as possible. The longer they linger on Google, the better the chance they could end up on a competitors site.
This could heat up as a major battle. Lets see where it goes.

I now have a counter for my blog!

How many people have been viewing my blog? I don't think too many but now I can know for sure. If you look at the top right of the blog you will see that I now have a counter. I went to blogpatrol.com, signed up, and got this free counter. Part of the point of my keeping this blog is so that I can learn more about technology and the Internet. I now know more about counters. It was very easy installing it. All I did was copy the javascript code. Everything should be so easy.

Purim Friday Night

So last night was Friday night post Purim. I went to a really special rabbi in my neighborhood. His name is Rav Schor. when I came in he blessed me "that I should soon wear a talis." That was another way of blessing me that I get married soon.
Later on he passed me a cup of wine. I make a blessing for everyone, they answered amen, I drank, and wished the rabbi lchaim ("to life".)
The rabbi spoke very inspirational. In one piece he spoke about how bad giving up hope can be in life.
I got to the gathering around 10:30 PM and got home at 12:30 AM. It was a really uplifting experience.

The Jewish view on America

Barak Obama has come under fire for comments made by his pastor of 20 years. So I thought, what is the Orthodox Jewish view expoused by rabbis about America.
Orthodox Jewish rabbis have spoken positively about American kindness but have warned their followers to be wary of American materialism.
It was Jeremiah who first exhorted Jews to pray for the country in which they reside during their exile. America has given Jews freedoms that they have not experienced since the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry during the 12th century. In reality, we have way more freedom and oppurtunity now than they had then.
It was Rabbi Moses Feinstein, the foremost acknowledged posek (decider of Jewish law) of American Orthodox Jewry during the 20th century who described the US a medinah shel chesed, a country of kindness, because of the way Jews have been treated in America. America has been a haven for the survivors of Hollocaust, a financial supportor of yeshivos (together with other institutions) and a supporter of the State of Israel and an advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews during the Cold War. The Jewish American experience has been much more positive than the African American experience and that is refflected in the different attitudes of the respective communities. Thousands of blacks were lynched. Only one person lynched was Jewish.
On the other hand, some members of the Mir Yeshiva saw American materialism as contradictory to an intensly religious life that focused on the spiritual over the material. Two rabbis come to mind. Rabbi Chatzkal Levenstein, mashgiach of Mir after the war spend three years in America. He moved to Israel to avoid what he saw as the excesive luxuries America afforded. Reb Shmuel Berenbaum, too, used to speed about the need for a person to devote himself to Torah study even though this meant forfeiting the materialism one could attain in America. Both Rabbis Levenstein and Berenbaum heralded from a past in Europe where they were used to living on a much lower standard of life and felt American materialism presented spiritual danger. But neither of them "hated" America politicaly. In fact, Rabbi Berenbaum was from the first rabbis in his community to hang a flag in his window during the Gulf War.

Hamantashan!

Hamantashan are the pastry associated with Purim. They are 3 cornered pastries made from dough. The are either filled with apricot, prune, or poppy.
Mon is the Yiddish word for poppy. In Yiddish Tashen are pockets. Hence Mon tashen are dough pockets filled with poppy. The name was changed to Hamantashan because, as we mentioned in our last post, Haman was the evil guy who tried getting the king to kill all the Jews.
Why do Hamantashan have 3 corners? Some say this corresponds to the three cornered hat Haman wore. I don't know such a hat is mentioned in rabbinic sources or just a legend. I will look into that.
Every year, at MIT, there is a famous debate over what are better, Hamantashen, or Latkes, the oil fried potato pancakes served on Chanuka. Wikipedia has a great entry on this. My favorite argument is that of Allan Dershowitz. He argued in favor of Hamantashen blaming US dependence on foreign oil on Latkes. :0

Purim is coming!

Purim falls out on Thursday night-Friday this year. That means it is a shorter than usual holiday because it must end before Shabbos starts at sundown Friday night.
Purim celebrates G-d's saving the Jews from anihilation at the hands of the Persians and the evil Haman. This story is written in a scroll called the Megila.
For those curious, here is what my Purim will be like.
Thursday is the Fast of Ester. The Jews fasted in repentance to be saved from the evil decree. We fast in commemoration. Thanks to Congress, we get an extra hour of fasting this year since we fast untill night fall. :-)
Thursday night we read the Megila in shul (synogouge). (Shull is Yiddish for synogouge. In German it means school. Synogouges often doubled as schools in the Middle Ages.) All the cute little kids come dressed up. I should really find out what my neices and nephues are going to be. Everytime Haman's name is read a lot of noise and booing is done to "blot out" his memory. A friend has invited me for a post Megila get together.
In my next post I'll describe more on Purim.

what is a permalink?

In my last post I commented on an article in the NY Times and linked my millions of readers (yeah I wish) to the article. But NY Times articles are only available for free for 7 days. After that you must pay to read them. How will my millions of readers (ok, thousands) be able to read the NY Times article next week?
For that we have permalink. The NY Times allows a blogger to put what they call a permanent link to an article on a blog and then the article can be accessed even after it is archived. Isn't that good to know? You can find this in the amoung the share options on the right side of NY Times articles. I'm wondering if a permalink can be used in an email. Or does permalink only work in blogs. I guess I'll have to send myself a permalink and check in a few days. I'll let you all know the results.

What is therapy?

Can anyone just do psychotherapy? Is talk therapy mere talk? Many people who have never been in therapy think so. I often here people say, "What is so hard to be a therapist? You just talk," or, "does talking really help?"
This Tuesday's NY Times Health section played into that myth. It spoke about how there are virtually no therapists in India's rural areas and studies find that developing countries have as much anxiety and depression as afluent developed ones. A new project has taken people with no psychological background and are trained for a week in how to be good listeners. They then go out and serve as therapists.
Let me quote a little from the article:

Instead of doctors, the program trains laypeople to identify and treat depression and anxiety and sends them to six community health clinics in Goa, in western India....
Dr. Simon, a psychiatrist who studies mental health in the developing world, said the Goa strategy grew from a crucial idea. Unlike, say, heart disease and stroke, which can require expensive interventions, depression is relatively simple to diagnose and treat. Many studies have shown that talk therapy and antidepressants lead to significant improvement in most patients.

I disagree. Depression is not so simple to treat. Many cases are resistant to treatment. Many people who recover from depression relapse. And its not that simple to even diagnose. It can be confused with the depressive part of bipolar disorder. All I have wrtitten is just for starters. If depression was so easy to diagnose and treat psychologists wouldn't make $150 for 45 minute weekly sessions. Psychiatrists wouldn't make $400 for a first time diagnosis.
There are many modailities of therapy. We started out with psychoanalasis, many now practive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, others take a psychodynamic aproach. There is a reason these people have PhDs.
Having someone to talk to in a local health center is always better than nothing. And a week of training can't hurt. But lets not get confused about what real therapy is.

my thoughts on Spitzer

It is sad to see a person ruin his career and perhaps, his marriage. His wife is standing with him right now but I have no idea why.
But we should remember that the career a person picks says a lot about them. When a person decides to be a prosecutor one has to wonder why. Does he love putting people in jail? True. We need the rule of law. But do you want to be the executioner?
Politicians, prosecutors, we are dealing with people that are often in it for the spotlight and power. In those cases its not a surprise when they think they are above the law.
Of course there are others who are truly out to perform public service. Regarding them I do not speak.
Musar is an aspect of Judaism that speaks of character improvement. One of its main concepts is empathy. When I turn on the radio I hear just the opposite. I hear gloating over someones fall. In the end we are dealing with a sad story on many levels. (Think for a moment about his wife. What did she do wrong?) There is nothing to gloat about.

NYTimes and hasidim, once again a little off target

The NY Times never seems to really understand the orthodox or hasidic world. Once again they tried but only sort off got it right.
Today, in the City Section, the Times wrote about what Boro Park is like on Motzy Shabbos. The article, titled, In the Land of Black Coats had this too say:

TAKE the D train to 55th Street in central Brooklyn, and you feel as if you have set foot in a different world. The station sits at the junction of New Utrecht Avenue, 13th Avenue and 55th Street in the heart of Borough Park, home to a quarter-million Orthodox Jews, one of the largest concentrations of Jews outside Israel. To travel to Borough Park is to journey through both space and time.

OK. So far, so good. Now that we are off the train I wonder who we will meet.

There you may meet David Sondik, an exuberant Orthodox Jew who sings as he walks. Speaking very fast, he stops a visitor and pulls out a picture of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, based in Crown Heights.

Wait. In Boro Park I'll meet a Lubavitcher? Whose group is based in Crown Heights? Then shouldn't I expect to meet him in Crown Heights?
I think the press thinks all chasidim are Lubavitcherrs. Otherwise, why would a Lubavitcher pop up in an article about Boro Park.
I'll tell you who you will meet in Boro Park. Bobovers, later mentioned in the article. Belzers. Skverers. Satmarers, Gerers, Stoliners, Papas, Spinkas, and many more. And yes. You will meet some Lubavitchers. But the article gives one the impression that Boro Park is full of people carrying around the Rebbe's picture.
It makes me wonder if the Time's gets it wrong when it reports on the ethnic groups I know nothing about.

Day Light Savings Time

Day Light Savings Time starts Motzy Shabbos (Saturday night.) In the middle of March?! Thats right. According g to the Navy (and I'm not going to argue to people with those guys...(http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/daylight_time.php)
Congress pushed it up this year from April 2 to March 11.
But why?
According to the San Fransisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/03/07/MN8OVEV9P.DTL) it is just another example of how we serve the interests of the evil capitalists.

"There's a reason that the first and most persistent lobby for daylight-saving was the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of retailers and merchants," says Downing, a lecturer at Tufts University outside Boston. "People really bought more goods after work when they were given light. And that effect persists. As recently as 1986, when we went from six months of daylight saving to seven, that extra month, according to industry estimates, was worth $200 million-$400 million to the golf industry alone, and $150 million to the barbecue industry."

Oil companies also lobbied for daylight-saving time because they predicted - correctly - that it would lead to more leisure driving, Downing said.

What is the Jewish perspective on Daylight Savings Time?
Practically speaking, starting Daylight Savings Time is a problem because Orthodox Jews can not daven shachris (pray in the morning) until it gets light (thats the short explanation) thus pushing day break an hour later can really cause problems for people who have to pray before they get to work. Also, we will be fasting on Taanis Ester (the day before Purim) and will not be allowed to eat until after megillah reading. That could be at 9 PM. Looks like it will be a long fast.
Good erev Shabbos everyone!

24 hour librarian chat

Gee, the things you learn in library school! Until last night, I never knew that I could chat with a reference librarian 24 hours a day.
I have an assignment which requires me to ask a reference librarian a question via email, text messaging, on the phone, and in person. The assignment deadline is approaching so last night I went looking for an on line reference librarian to instant message. I assumed they would all be offline late at night. At best I expected to find one based on the West Coast where they are 3 hours behind us. But lo and behold I found one on the Brooklyn College Library site. The actual librarian may have been in California because it wasn't a Brooklyn College librarian. I was connected to a librarian service. 24 librarian service is cool. What was my question? thats for another post...

how spell check can lag behind technology

In class we have been learning about how fast technology keeps developing. One place this is evident is in spell check. Many spell checkers still can check for technological words that are common today but didn't exist when the spell checker was invented.
Here are some examples.
I use Word 97 on my home computer. It recognizes email and Internet but not ipod. It recognizes Encyclopedia Britannica but not Wikipedia. It doesn't recognize the word blog.
It recognizes Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google or Firefox. (Hard to believe Google didn't exist in 97.)
Just goes to show how new technologies and the words that describe them, are constantly emerging.

NY Times and gender differences in learning

This weeks Sunday Times magazine caught my eye because its cover story was, “ Should Boys and Girls Be Taught Separately.” I went to an all boys yeshiva and live in an all man’s world. As most know, the right wing orthodox Jewish world believes in separate education and roles for men and women. Now the NY Times is considering it too.(Well I exaggerate but you get the point.)
The main point of the story is that there are a small number of single sex education public schools in the country (they number in the 40s) and they all seem to have shown scholastic improvement.
But why? I assumed it was that the boys would no longer be distracted by the girls, or the girls would no longer want to attract the boys. According to the article it’s a lot more than that.
The pioneer behind single sex education is a Dr. Sax. He believes boys and girls are fundamentally different. For example, according to Sax, girls have a better sense of smell. They also hear better than boys! And he claims to have the brain imaging to prove that boys and girls think differently. Boys solve mazes with their hippocampus while girls do it with their cerebral cortex.
If boys and girls think differently then it is understandable that they are expected to study different subjects. Boys study the Talmud while girls study the Prophets. This is just but one difference. And they study in separate schools.
I know a rabbi who has a folder called “Science catching up.” It is a collection of scientific articles confirming Torah ideas that had previously been considered in conflict with science. I think this rabbi should add this NY Times article to his list.