Franken has a whole bag of “shush” with Lieberman’s name on it
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December 18, 2009
Multi-Tiered and Multi-Scammed
There are two kinds of people in the world: those that send you a birth announcement with a catalog and order form from their multi-tiered pyramid business, and those who do not. I would just like to meet more of the “do nots.”
I am beginning to think the world is not round, but in fact, muti-tiered instead. I don’t know how many friends I have left that are not trying to sell me Arbonne, Tupperware, kitchenware or some high-potency energy drink and vitamins. I am starting to wonder if they truly see me as a friend or a potential tier on their great big pyramid.
Almost every stay-at-home mom I come across sells some product earning her promotions and free items. For once, I would like to walk into a mommy group where moms do anything but belong to a pyramid scheme. I am afraid to even get close, not knowing if I am the next potential victim tier.
It is happening across the globe (the multi-tiered globe). Even my own family members are trying to sell to me. Just for the record, I am not biased, just victimized more times than I can count on both hands and feet. For once, I would like to know that I am befriended for reasons other than being a potential money-making friend. I am not perfect, but I make a better friend than a salesperson, trust me. And it is not saying that I am such a great friend, rather just a poor salesperson.
Even when I was single I was approached. Maybe there was a sign taped to my back that read instead of “kick me,” “mutli-tier me!” that I was unaware of. But, whoever put it there…haha, it is not funny.
I must have even had this sign on my back when I met a guy one lonely single night at a bar in Beverly Hills. (If I knew then what I know now, I would have realized that meeting a man at a bar was probably not a man that I would want to date, anyway.) But, of course, I gave him my number- he was handsome (in the dim lighting and after a few sips of my drink); what else do you need to know when you are single. We agreed to meet for drinks at a hotel in the east valley the next night. In the lobby, of course. (Why I agreed to meet at a hotel, I am not quite sure, but know it had something to do with being single, young and out of my mind.)
I showed up at the lobby and there he was along with the rest of the “Pre-Paid Legal” scheme convention. And yes, he was part of it. I thought we were meeting for a date, but apparently so did the two other girls that showed up right behind me for their date as well. Of course I left soon after, realizing that he had brought us there to join in the pyramid scheme. Pre-paid legal services? What will they think of next? Pre-paid music services? I would probably sign up for that one, though. Maybe I will even start my own pyramid scheme. You never know when you could use a live band. But, I am getting off topic here…
I have come to the realization that I have MTSD (Multi-tiered Stress Disorder).
When I received my friend’s birth announcement with her mulit-tiered catalog attached, I had no clue how to respond. “Hey, congrats on your baby and I will take two stock pots and a seller’s home starter kit.” Maybe it is just me and I haven’t joined the new movement of BAHM (Bored-at-Home Moms).
Now I would just like to meet more moms who don’t sell multi-tiered products. I have no problem with mothers that sell things, just not when it involves sabotaging friendships, or friendships under false pretenses.
Business and friendship truly do not mix. If I am ever looking for a place on a tier, I will let you know. But right now…I’m just looking for more mommy friends…tierless ones.
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Happy 2009, Ben Bernanke
No one was surprised to see Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recommended for another term by the Senate Banking Committee today. But I imagine some people were surprised to see Time magazine name Bernanke the 2009 Person of the Year:
So here he is inside his marble fortress, a technocrat in an ink-stained shirt and an off-the-rack suit, explaining what he’s done, where we are and what might happen next.
He knows that the economy is awful, that 10% unemployment is much too high, that Wall Street bankers are greedy ingrates, that Main Street still hurts. Banks are handing out sweet bonuses again but still aren’t doing much lending. Technically, the recession is over, but growth has been anemic and heavily reliant on government programs like Cash for Clunkers, not to mention cheap Fed money. “I understand why people are frustrated. I’m frustrated too,” Bernanke says. “I’m not one of those people who look at this as some kind of video game. I come from Main Street, from a small town that’s really depressed. This is all very real to me.”
But Bernanke also knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic. There’s a vast difference between 10% and 25% unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. He wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street. He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall. “We came very, very close to a depression … The markets were in anaphylactic shock,” he told TIME during one of three extended interviews. “I’m not happy with where we are, but it’s a lot better than where we could be.”
As I’ve mentioned many times before, Bernanke is Jewish and was a favorite target of anti-Semites certain that the global financial crisis was a Jewish conspiracy.
Though his middle name is Shalom, Bernanke doesn’t broadcast his Jewishness. This 2008 New Yorker profile mentions “Jewish” once. But he is, apparently, proud of the heritage, and has been since growing up among a sea of Christians in South Carolina.
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Unexpected Miracles
Last weekend, my two-year old daughter Hannah lost one of her shoes. These shoes were her favorite, and she refused to wear any other pair. My husband and I searched every nook and cranny of our house. We scoured our cars. We checked her stroller. We looked in the garage – in case they had fallen out of the stroller. We searched everywhere until finally, we stopped and played outside with the kids.
An hour later, I opened one of Hannah’s drawers to grab a sweater, and there was the shoe – right on top of the clothes.
This incident reminded me of a story by Rabbi Levi Isaac ben Meir of Berdichev of Eighteenth-century Spain. The story is retold in Noah Ben Shea’s The Word (Villard, 1995).
A man was running down the street looking only straight ahead.
The rabbi in the community saw the man and asked him: “Why are you in such a rush?”
“I’m trying to make a living,” said the man, hesitant to even slow down to answer the question.
“Do you think,” asked the rabbi, “that it is possible that the living you are trying to make is not ahead of you but behind you and all that is required
of you is to stand still?”
The Talmud echoes the sentiment of this story. The rabbis teach that “From one who runs after greatness, greatness flees. But one who runs away from greatness, greatness follows. One who forces time is forced back by time. One who yields to time finds time standing by his side.”
The holiday of Hannukah commemorates the miracle of oil in the ancient Temple that was only enough for one day but lasted for eight. The miracle was not that more oil appeared, but rather that the existing oil lasted longer than people thought it would. In essence, the holiday celebrates how things can turn out better than expected.
We often worry about worse-case scenarios but forget that things can also work out even better than we imagined. In economic crisis, our natural response is to rush with greater urgency to make a living – like the man in the story – never pausing for even a moment to reflect. In our frantic search, we can easily lose hope and perspective.
In these uncertain times, the holiday of Hannukah reminds us to take heart and yield to time. Because you never know: miracles can happen when you least expect. You may actually find what you’ve lost, just as soon as you stop looking for it.
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Rabbi Asher Lopatin’s Political Positions on Israel
A Summary of Rabbi Asher Lopatin’s Political Views
1) Israel is the historic and eternal homeland of the Jewish People, and Zionism is the modern expression of that national, religious and moral expression of the Jews’ connection to the Land of Israel. The State of Israel is a Jewish State, with all the moral, ethical, national and religious responsibilities that term calls for.
2) The State of Israel is the bulwark defending Jews in Israel and all over the world: its existence and security is critical to the survival of Jews everywhere.
3) No part of the historic Israel should be off limits for Jews; Jews should be allowed to live and build communities wherever feasible in the Land of Israel.
4) Jerusalem has been the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish people since the days of King David. It has been reunited and restored as the Jewish capital and will, God willing, remain so for all time, under the sovereignty and protection of the State of Israel.
5) A strong Israel Defense Force, stationed everywhere Jews live or can live, is the best strategic guarantee of peace and security for all the inhabitants of Israel.
6) Zev Jabotinsky, the great Revisionist Zionist, laid out goals which are true and necessary today, and I adapt those goals to today’s situation:
a) The State of Israel needs to be a refuge open for Jews from all over the world and encouraging aliya
b) The State of Israel needs to maintain a Jewish majority – ideally built from gathering Jews from around the world
c) The Arabs living in the Land of Israel, and everywhere, need to know clearly that the Jews are in Israel to stay, that we intend to remain the majority and that the State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to provide for the security and continued existence of the Jews in Israel.
d) The needs – social, economic and national – of the indigenous Arabs of Israel must be addressed, but only within the framework of the security and continued existence of the Jews in the State of Israel.
7) The best thing for Judaism in Israel is to look into the separation of “church and State” which works so well in America to allow for passionate religion while maintaining religious diversity. The free market of religion is a power engine to provide for people’s spiritual needs.
8) The free market in general, including free trade, is the bulwark of a strong, innovative and diverse economy.
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Auschwitz’s “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen from camp
The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign was stolen from the memorial at the Auschwitz death camp.
Polish police reported Friday that the 16-foot long metal sign with the words meaning “Work will set you free” (work will free you) was gone. A hunt for the perpetrators is under way, and a reward of $1,700 has been offered for information leading to the sign’s return.
A spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, Jaroslaw Mensfelt, told AFP, the French news service, that the sign must have been removed just before sunrise. He called the theft “a profanation of the place where more than a million people were murdered. It’s shameful.”
The sign was the original one that prisoners were forced to make, and it hung on hooks from the gate, according to Mensfelt. He said it was the first major theft at the memorial, which has watchmen posted round the clock.
The theft occurred one day after German announced it would contribute $87 million to the new Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which earlier this year launched a campaign to raise $172 million to preserve the remains of the death camp as a memorial and museum. There are about 450 buildings and remains of buildings at the site, including the ruins of gas chambers. There also are 80,000 pairs of shoes of victims, and 3,800 suitcases, according to a report in the Deutsche Welle.
According to AFP, former Polish President Lech Walesa decried the theft of the sign and said he hoped it was only “a sick joke by scrap-metal thieves who didn’t know what they were doing.” And Avner Shalev, director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, told reporters the theft “constitutes a true declaration of war.”
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Watching “Basterds” in a Roomful of Jews
Just two weeks after producer Lawrence Bender and The Jewish Journal held a screening for Jewish leadership of “Inglourious Basterds” in LA, he did the same in New York, at the Jewish Theological Seminary. A smart blog called “The Candler Blog” describes the event:
Dr. Kalmanofsky, no stranger to Judeo-Chrisitian-pop deconstruction, opened the discussion with some fascinating points about the concept of the revenge fantasy, positing that the Jewish bible, specifically the story of the exodus from Egypt, indulges the concept of violent revenge. Besides the ten plagues brought down against their aggressors, arguably deserved, the Israelites break out in song and dance after they cross the parted Sea of Reeds, which closes and drowns the entire Egyptian faction that was chasing them. This punishment goes well beyond the tit-for-tat measures of the plagues, and remorse is not really discussed until the Rabbinic era of Judaism several hundred years after the fact. In other words, while the modern Jew may be morally inquisitive and emotionally conflicted, in the bible, living out the revenge fantasy was something very real.
Rabbi Moline proffered that the Jewish people have become mired in thought for so long that the idea of physical redemption has been lost. The saying “two Jews, three opinions” comes to mind on this point. As the concept of Talmudic discourse has proliferated, especially in the wake of the Holocaust (Why did this happen to us? Is it our fault?), Jews may have lost the instinct of revenge, which Moline points out is in fact a basic human instinct. The film provides that for a generation of Jews who view the holocaust in a new light. Inglorious Basterds represents a voice for that generation.
Bender made many of the points he made at the LA screening, and I like that he added the perspective of a historical arc to Holocaust movies, ” from Schindler’s List to Life Is Beautiful to Inglourious Basterds… from drama to comedy to fantasy.”
All in all it was a fascinating evening. Kudos to JTS for putting together such a relevant program. I don’t really believe that there is all that much specifically Jewish about the film, but Rabbi Moline kept harping on the fact that the film has awoken something in the Jewish community. Not a call to arms, but a call to deconstructing the meaning of the inner vengeance of a people. Polemics have always been an important pillar of Rabbinic discourse, but visceral nature is something often pushed to the side in favor of academics. Perhaps, says the Rabbi, it is a time to finally confront that urge we have to murder Hitler, to root out our enemies. Not to indulge it, but to question it. Hell, if one little film can bring out all that from the leaders of one of the world’s major religions, it must be doing something right.
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Agreed. The blogger’s high praise for the event, like Danielle Berrin’s take on the first event here, makes me think this provocative movie could be a roadshow attraction at Jewish communities around the world. Syllabus? Talking points? “Basterds” is the most educational and thought-provoking Jewish movie since “Waltz With Bashir,” but a lot easier to watch…..
Bonus blog item: Read Danielle Berrin’s profile of “Basterds” producer Lawrence Bender here.
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The Rule of Law is critical to the Survival of the Jewish State, by Rabbi Asher Lopatin
This morning I posted my underlying political views re. Israel. I wanted to add one major point. And it is so important that it is the one time, that I can recall, that I have talked what can be viewed as politics – Israel politics – from the bima, from the pulpit. It is regarding the rule of law in Israel, and, specifically, following the law when it comes to the IDF. I believe that in the case of Israel, not only is the rule of law critical to the moral, ethical and national fiber of the state, but it is crucial for the very survival of the Jewish State. Therefore, it becomes a religious issue of “pikuach nefesh” making sure that the best defense of the Jewish People – the State of Israel – can operate safely as a state of laws. That applies to soldiers in the IDF, even if their rabbis tell them otherwise, and to those building communities all over the land. I would push hard to allow the greatest freedom of expression the law will allow – free speech is important – and for the greatest latitude in letting Jews live everywhere in Eretz Yisrael, the land that God gave us, but we need to follow the laws of Israel.
Our rabbis had an ambivalent – to say the least – attitude towards the Hashmonaim who did not always stick to Jewish law. They are still heroes, but their state did not last. I hope, and pray and plan to work hard to make sure the the Jewish state that we have in our days lasts a lot longer, and one of the key ways of doing so is by making sure that all those who live in her holy boundaries, heroes or not, obey the law.
Shabbat shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chanuka same’ach,
Rabbi Asher Lopatin
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Enough of the Pundits!
This past weekend I had it. I’ve given up watching the time-killing Sunday morning talk shows and their endless supply of “all-knowing” pundits.
Last weekend I suffered through the bloviating of Arianna Huffington on George Stephanopolous’ This Week where every one of her ” title=”The Frontal Cortex”>The Frontal Cortex, my son ” title=”written”> written of a seminal study done on pundits and their accuracy by Enough of the Pundits! Read More »