I know a lot of you may not want to admit this, but frum people may actually have sexual preferences. It also appears that sexual preferences are quite important, but there’s no way that this sort of thing could make it into the shidduch resume template for some time – because frum Jews are typically squeamish when it comes to sex. Heck, most rabbis don’t even use the word sex and when frummies espouse their homophobia they use words like “disgusting”. So of course mentioning your sexual preferences may seem to be a bit drastic for many people, I’m willing to bet that there are some people to whom it may even be one of the basis for the relationship in the first place. For instance this one fan of mine is looking for a marriage partner who is into BDSM and Math…

I relatively little experience with this sort of thing, first off I’ve been shomer negiah for my entire life, but before I was reincarnated into my current self I dated someone who told me she had handcuffs, whips, chains and one of those red ball gags – being the regular old frum guy that I am – I called the shadchan and had her blacklisted for her obvious illness and obsession with violence in the bedroom. Since then my mind has been opened, I’ve become immoral and joined the liberals in the fight for freedom of expression in the bedroom and have adopted the mindset of live and let live.

So how do you go about finding a girl someone to marry when one of her preferences is so unfamiliar to many in general society. Luckily she’s not asking for much, just someone to be open to BDSM, but of course the most important thing is that he’s into math, another thing that is probably not common on shidduch resumes. I have noticed that many frum people, especially girls tend to leave out the things that make them unique – like willingness to be dominated and the ability to use a Texas Instruments calculator efficiently. Telling me that your friends think you’re a baal chesed and that you want a learning guy is too generic these days.

With all that said and done, thank God this girl in mind is not frum. She grew up frum, but she needs a dude who’s into math and abstract politics. She told me that she’s so hard to set up because of all this, but in my mind it makes it easier to weed out all the regular old folks. She’s in NY and looking for a dude between the ages of 26 and 36, wondering why all the interesting people get married last. This is because the generic people don’t need anyone specific and tend to get along better than us weird and interesting folks. She is 5″6, wants a dude with blue eyes and she’s not so into overweight, though big dudes are fine.

If you do know of anyone please send me an email…

Find more shidduch resumes at 4torah.com

The Shidduch Crisis and the Tyranny of Narrow Mindedness: A Single Girls Perspective (but what the heck can I possibly know, I’m not married…)

Guest Post by Deena Sasoon

Here is what you need to know about me. I’m female, frum, and single. I am probably older than most girls still in the parsha. I would tell you my age if I thought that it mattered. Suffice it to say, according to women like Yitta Halberstam, I should probably just put myself in a nursing home already. If only she had written her article Purim And The Tyranny Of Beauty: A Plea to Mothers of Girls in Shidduchim 5 years ago, perhaps I would have already managed to trick someone into being my husband. How selfish of her.

I exercise regularly (ran a half marathon), I eat healthy food. I moisturize my skin, have regular doctor appointments, and wear make up occasionally. I dress nicely and take great pride in my appearance, because it is important. We all know it is a mitzvah to take care of ourselves. I even use a Crest White Strip every now and then. I also have freckles on my nose, which is larger than most. My left foot is bigger than my right. My hair tends to get frizzy if I don’t blow dry it. Thank G-d I am also respectful, kind, compassionate, and giving, to name a few character traits.

I have dated many men, met many shadchanim, and been to many singles events. According to Ms. Halberstam’s theory, being single at the age that I am, I must obviously have a hook nose spotted with warts, and be a morbidly obese hunchback. However, I am happy to report none of those descriptors suit me. I refuse to believe that the “problem” (huge quotes) lies solely within me and my outward appearance. Partly because of the facts: 9/10 times it was me who decided not to pursue the relationship (a whole other article). And partly because my parents have taught me better. Self esteem is apparently not something that Ms. Halberstam grew up with, and for that I am terribly sorry.

Dear Ms. Halberstam,

I respect you as a fellow Jew. I have never heard your name before, and probably would not recognize you if I passed you on the street. I feel an obligation to express my feelings regarding the recent article you had published. This is not a personal attack, rather a supportive response for all of the singles girls out there.

I find the fist few sentences to your article the most intriguing.
“if the appeal below helps even one girl in shidduchim, it would be worth all the fury and outrage”
Fury and outrage you have received. You sound sincere, however abhorrently misguided. Forget about someone you think you may have helped, what about all of the girls that you may have hurt? Now I don’t mean feelings….let’s look beyond that. And I don’t mean myself either. Baruch Hashem, I have been blessed in many ways. I would like to speak on behalf of ALL the young, impressionable, fragile girls in the parsha who have had the misfortune of reading your article. Who asked you for your unsolicited, unprofessional, and dangerous advice?

While I quite strongly disagree with the overall message of your article, there are points with which we agree upon. For example, you wrote “…the experiences of boys in shidduchim-in contradistinction to their female counterparts-is vastly different”. Isn’t that the truth! Ever wonder why? Anyone in the shidduch parsha, related to someone in the shidduch parsha, or just plain religious knows that the playing field is unequal. Way more girls than guys, yes, but more importantly, the average dating girl is more educated, refined, respectful, and ATTRACTIVE then their male counterparts. Perhaps that’s because there are more girls than guys and I guess one can view it as a competition of sorts….but all the more reason to celebrate each female’s unique character traits and middos. You write:
“even the most temimasdika ben torah is looking for a wife whom he finds attractive”
but fail to end the sentence correctly. The most temimasdika ben torah has a VERY different idea of what is attractive, than you do (thank G-d).

I can’t help but make the comparison to the currently popular “Hunger Games” phenamona where the characters are forced to fight to the death simply because some crazy woman decided so. Ms. Halberstam, is this your version called the “Shidduch Games: Lose Yourself to Find a Man”? If guys have tens and hundreds of shidduch resumes falling all over them, it is for no other reason than there are less of them. Not because the vast majority of guys have something in particular that hundreds of girls want. When your typical guy shteiging away in yeshiva gets 10 resumes a day, the spirit of the matches begins to lose their meaning and one may forget that these girls are actually PEOPLE. If Chaim Schwatrz can have any girl he wants, of course he’s gonna want one with a perfect nose (which I happily do not have). Guys have been given the option and are encouraged by people like you to be superficial, when there are myriads of girls who have settled for greasy payos. Dating is difficult within the confines of this absurd “system”, and what I describe is only the tip of the iceberg. We should support each other, not make one another more insecure as you do, and perpetuate a vicious cycle. We need to change the “system”. i.e., we need to change how people like you, Ms. Halberstam think, go back to appreciating ben adam l’chavero as the most important, and pass that heritage to our sons.

Speaking of shidduch resumes, in your article you quoted one of the organizers of the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law mixer (which again deserves its own article….what a ghastly thought for a guy and girl to actually meet and make their own decisions) as saying:
“can you really get a sense of who the girl is from a resume? What does it tell you about her personality, her character, her intellect, her neshoma? It is demeaning to reduce a girl to a few sentences.”
I wish you (and the woman who said this) had really understood those words and taken them to heart. Ms. Halberstam, I need to correct you, for you seem to think that the way to really get to know a girl’s personality, character, and intellect is in the OR of your local plastic surgeon. I myself can think of nothing more demeaning than reducing a girl to the sum of her physical parts, and suggesting plastic surgery.

The term “shidduch crisis” is thrown around and used so often I am surprised it hasn’t yet found its way onto urbandictionary.com. Yes, today there are many more single people over the age of 21 than there were when my parent’s, your generation, Ms. Halberstam were growing up. Maybe that’s because boys and girls were not as segregated. Who knows, and to discuss that point would be a digression from my current objective. I can’t help but think that the “shidduch crisis” is perpetuated by people who view suitable marriage partners in terms of “is she pretty? Can she support my learning son while she works full time and raises the family?” or “my son’s kallah is so beautiful she has the perfect figure”….and not a hopefully lifelong supportive and healthy union between two complementary personalities and neshomos. I see the shidduch crisis not only as many single people, but the staggering divorce rate among frum couples, let alone unhappily married ones due to the circumstances in which they met. I see the shidduch crisis as parents, individuals, and shadchanim who view a shidduch as a way to keep up with the Jones’s and not two people uniting to build a home and raise children together.
If the “deal breaker question” as you put it is “is she pretty”, the way I see it there are two options for how the marriage can turn out.
Option A: Unless you’re Cindy Crawford, for 99.9% of the population looks inevitably fade be it with age or childbearing. If a husband married a woman for her looks, all heck is going to break lose once that’s gone, and the marriage is doomed.
Option B: Said trophy wife will feel incredible pressure to maintain her looks and spend her years obsessively looking in the mirror, getting Botox, lip injections, and plastic surgery to try and make her insatiable husband happy. She will begin to resent him, and he will begin to resent her for the mounting bills.
Well, seems like there is only one option after all.
Call me crazy, but I want my husband to find me attractive from the moment I wake up in the morning, with bed head hair, creases on my face, and the old T-shirt I wear to sleep, because he fell in love with ME. Not what I wear or the make up on my face.

If there can be something more disturbing than the message of your article, it is how you used our rich and holy heritage as proof for your argument.
“Whether we like it or not, appearances do count (I completely agree). And no Yom Tov demonstrates that reality more than Purim”
Seriously? Is THAT the message of the holiday? Is THAT why we fast on Taanis Esther? Because she was pretty? What ever happened to Queen Esther having green skin? Perhaps she should have used some sort of bleach to lighten it….oh wait, she saved the Jews anyway. You bring an example of a society’s emphasis on beauty in how “Vashti incurred Ahachshverosh’s wrath because he wished to parade her beauty and she refused (bad skin day)”, WHAT?? Since when is Achashverosh the role model? You continue: “The women of the kingdom who vied for the Queen’s throne were given twelve months to prepare for the beauty pageant”…again, not sure why you are using an idolatrous nation that wanted us DEAD as examples. Achashverosh was a wicked man who only saw the superficiality of women, probably taught to him by his mother…

Another unfortunate is the story of the Satmar Rebbie zt”l that you mention. While I had not yet heard that story myself, I think it is noble of a great sage to provide money for a woman who was left completely edentulous after the ravages of war. I’m really not sure how you make the leap to use that as proof to support your faulty argument. SURVIVING A CONCENTRATION CAMP and left toothless vs. a young healthy girl who was born with a small bump in her nose or a slight overbite. My money still goes for the dentures.
I hate to say this Ms. Halberstam, but the real korban of your article is your son. My bracha to you both is that you find a girl that can look past what you believe in and see your son for the individual he hopefully is. I am glad that you were able to find peace and happiness with the physical changes and surgeries that you underwent. That could not have been an easy process. But please don’t push your experiences or agendas on others.
I myself would never misrepresent the good deeds of a gadol as proof for such fodder. Instead I bring the words of the heligah Beyonc’e (who has some pretty thick thighs but a millionaire, wife of a millionaire and mother of a baby none the less) as advice for all the dating guys out there: Ignore all the insanity. If you meet a great girl, and it’s her imperfections that you love the most “PUT A RING ON IT”.
Woah oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Woah oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

Find out more about the shidduch crisis at 4torah.com

Now that I’m not trying to score with the ladies, Facebook has gotten kind of boring. I used to be clever in my status updates and pretty much use Facebook as a tool to get girls. I’m sure that most people aren’t as shallow as me, but besides for bragging about my awesome life, marketing my blog and talking to people I don’t want to give my number to – Facebook is pretty much useless. Unlike most people who utilize Facebook for so many great thing instead of wasting time wandering the internet aimlessly, I never used it for much more than girls and with that era over with I’m wondering what to do with all the time that is suddenly opened up for me now that I don’t need to spend hours looking at all my hot fans on Facebook.

I’s harder than you think, Facebook girl watching took up so much time that now I almost feel like doing something constructive with my “every stalkers dream Facebook profile” like getting shidduchim for friends and doing some sort of Facebook chesed, like chatting with friends who seem to have no life outside of their fake reality. I guess it’s a good thing that no one’s clever enough anymore to write their own status updates and they just re-share pictures with funny quotes on them.

Find out more on 4torah.com

Come up with a good caption for that one and thank Hashem for creating such beauty.I now know why the Charedim are going to fight to the death against going to the army, if they saw stuff like this they may never want to marry their local shprintza or faigy.

Hat Tip Forward Blog

Dear Rabbi X,

I would like to personally thank you for bringing the issue of tznius to the public. Since I read your letter, it has opened my eyes to a problem that is surely bigger and more severe than anything else facing our community. I myself have grown up very naive about tznius. It wasn’t discussed much at all in my home, my father who wrote articles on every topic never seemed to address the crucial issue of tznius. I went to a yeshiva that not only didn’t talk about tznius, they never mentioned the existence of girls in general! Even in my Choson classes I dont remember being taught what and what not my wife can wear. I was told you’ll know it when you see it.

After getting married, I took for granted that my wife, who I admired and respected, grew up in a frum home where she was taught how a bas melech should dress. I seemed to have been proven right because I don’t remember ever discussing tznius with her except when she asked me if a dress that she bought looked tzniusdik. I myself wasn’t sure what to answer, and even more I wasn’t sure what the right answers was. Did she want to know if she looked attractive in it or was she looking for a psak halacha. Either way I wouldn’t win so I just told her it seems fine and she should use her best judgement.

It wasn’t until we decided to open a girls’ camp that I began asking rabbonim about the standards of tznius, this way we could set our camp rules according to proper halacha. Any questions about tznius issues though, was my wife’s department. I would never tell a girl if I thought something she was wearing was inappropriate, for that matter I never commented on anything a girl was wearing. I would just feel uncomfortable doing so and I thought she would too.

Throughout my 35 years living in Brooklyn, visiting many diverse Jewish neighborhoods, and my 7 years involved in an all girls’ camp, I never paid much attention to the issue of Tznius. It’s not like I never noticed an improperly dressed girl, I just never paid that much attention to the massive problem at hand. Maybe it was because of the non-jewish world that I was unfortunately exposed to and from all the pritzus I saw around me, be it the magazines, billboards, and TV. And so I have desensitised myself to what tznius is all about. But yet somehow I was always able to tell a modestly dressed girl without a second glance, no matter her dress code.

But now after reading what you wrote and how all the terrible things that happen today are because of our lack in tznius, I see everything in a new light. I started paying much closer attention to the same woman I have seen in the past. I now notice the length of her skirt before I even say hello. I can tell you how many inches below or above her knee is covered within seconds, and just like you I’m appalled. This isn’t just when they stand, but as you pointed out that when they sit down it gets even worse. I notice that some women who wear snoods don’t cover their hair completely, I have found a range of about 1 – 3 inches and even one woman that was nearly 4 inches! And while I was sure everyone in our community covered their hair with a shaitel, I have learned the skill to tell whether a woman is really wearing a shatel or not and I’m very disappointed that there are still many who don’t (unless I’m still not that good at this yet).

Rabbi X, you have opened my eyes to a subculture I never new existed amongst our frum community, a community that I was once very proud to be amongst. I guess until I read your insightful letter I never looked at the extreme details of every woman I met, and I guess I just saw them more as a person and not a dress code. I was judging them favorably, something I was taught to do. If I just knew the tumah they were projecting on to the community, I would have been much more judgmental. You have B”H changed the way I look at women and girls and it is very different than the way I was brought up. And so now I understand your concern why you felt this issue of tznius is what is holding back moshiach.

I would also like to add, that just like you, I also noticed this past purim these girls hanging out like zonas on the street corners talking to guys. And while in the past I felt it wasn’t so much their fault as there was no other program for the girls on purim night except to watch the guys getting drunk and having a blast, now I feel just like you, that girls should be kept in their rooms, saying tehillim or school work, as you explained so well “A Jewish woman belongs in the house.” Purim is just not a yom tov for them! We need to install more Vaad Hatznius, like in Eretz Yisroel to patrol our neighborhoods. Eggs, bleach, whatever it takes to get rid of these immodest girls. We could even hire professional spatters at every corner, it seemed to have had a very positive effect in Beit Shemesh.

The Rambam that you quote goes on to say that if a community is not living according to halacha and there is a lack of tznius one is required to leave immediately, even to a remote island to live all by himself. I believe this community is not adhering to the tznius guidelines you set forth and there is pritzus all around I think it would be best for you to leave.

Your number one fan,
Dovid Teitelbaum
Director, Camp Sdei Chemed Int’l

Please note: For those who don’t get the point of this letter. I believe, we as men, need to stop putting out these ridiculous tznius letters, they are making us all look like a bunch of perverts. We need to educate tznius on a more personal level and it shouldn’t be all about rules and inches.

Find out more on 4torah.com

Guest post by Yonatan Sredni

Panui?” the stocky, sweating, balding guy in the un-tucked white dress shirt and tiny knitted kippah atop his head, asked me over the blaring modern Chassidic dance music.

At first I thought he was asking if I was ‘free’. I was weary of people who approached me at weddings asking that question. They all seemed desperate to make a shidduch between an unsuspecting guy like me and some perennially single woman they knew (usually a distant relative of theirs), but then I realized he was only asking about the chair. I nodded and he sat down.

“Ravak,” he said, extending his hand – not to shake mine but to reach for the Diet Coke across the table – “Guy Ravak.”

I chuckled to myself. By loose translation his name would be ‘single guy’. I had a flashback to the mid 90’s sit-com ‘The Single Guy’ starring Jonathan Silverman. I recalled that the recently deceased Oscar winning actor Ernest Borgnine played the doorman on that show.

“Yeah, it’s a funny name,” Guy Ravak admitted as he downed his drink. “What’s even worse is being single in your late 30’s with that name.”

He had a point. Guy Bachelor? Guy Singleman? Of all the possibilities, Guy Ravak was the worst.

“So here we are at the singles table,” he sighed as he gestured at the six other temporarily unoccupied seats. “I’m guessing all our tablemates are younger single friends of the groom, off somewhere waiting for him and his bride to emerge from their private ‘yichud room’ so they can dance up a storm.”

I nodded. This was certainly not his first wedding. And the two of us were well past the ‘can’t wait to dance with the groom’ stage of our lives.

“Nu?” he asked after surveying the room. “What about the talent?”

“Talent?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“The women. The single women. A nice big modern-religious wedding like this, there’s got to be a lot of single women around. So, what’s the scoop on the ‘talent’?

“Oh,” I said, squirming in my seat. “Well, it’s kind of hard to say.”

“Come on, I know I got here late, but surely you checked out some of the bride’s single friends during the chuppah?”

“Actually, no,” I stuttered. “It was separate seating. I mean really separate. I couldn’t see any of the women during the ceremony, except maybe the bride – and her mother.”

Guy shook his head in disgust as he scooped some hummus with his bread roll.

“Well, what do you expect these days,” he muttered. “Modern orthodox weddings are getting more Haredi by the year. It’s bad enough that the chuppah and dancing are separate, but the seating at the meal too! Look around. You’ve got men seated in the front of the hall and women in the back. It’s like one of those Mehadrin buses. And don’t get me started on that! I’m telling you, after the main course, I’m out of here.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, suddenly getting defensive for no good reason. “What’s so wrong with being separate? If that’s what the families want, why not?”

“Listen,” he moved his chair closer to be heard above the thundering music. “You were brought up modern orthodox, right?” I nodded. “Your parents were probably in Bnei Akiva.” I nodded again. He had me pegged. “When your parents got married everyone sat together at the chuppah – unless maybe it was in a shul – but we are here at some kibbutz event hall called ‘Gan Ha’toucan’ or something like that, so that’s no excuse. When our parents were young they had mixed dancing, even in Bnei Akiva! You and I grew up with mixed seating at simchas, right?”

I couldn’t disagree.

“Ok, maybe we had separate dancing,” he continued, “but it was two circles, men and women in full view of each other, separated by just a few meters – not like this!” He pointed in the direction of the dance floor where the men were dancing in plain view while the women were dancing behind an enclosed moveable partition as formidable as the Berlin Wall. The way things were going, the women should have considered themselves ‘lucky’ to still be dancing in the same room as the men.

I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse over the wall.

“Don’t bother,” Guy groaned. “I’ve tried to sneak a peak at other weddings like this. You can’t see anything – trust me.”

“Still, if that’s what they want,” I reasoned.

“But it’s not good,” Guy said firmly. “I’ll give you the separate dancing. Heck, I’ll grant you the separation of sexes at the chuppah. But what’s so wrong with mixed seating at the meal? How are single guys like us supposed to meet single women if we’re seated at the singles table with only other men?!”

He had a point. Traditionally weddings always had some element of mingling. How could one wedding lead to others in the future if singles had no chance to meet eligible members of the opposite sex?

“It’s the whole system that’s the problem,” Guy explained as he refilled his glass. “When we were kids, not so long ago, we had co-ed classes throughout elementary school. Nowadays many national-religious schools inIsraelare separating the boys from the girls in third grade, sometimes even from first grade!”

“Maybe that’s because it’s harder for teachers to control mixed gender classes. Or maybe that’s what the parents want now.”

“Nonsense!” Guy bristled as he fumbled with his glass. “Mixed gender classes were good enough for our parents and for us too, so why change now? I’ll even take it a step further. Take the last four years of elementary school, add junior high and high school, and suddenly you realize that you have been in same-sex classrooms for a whole decade. Maybe you were in a mixed gender youth group like Bnei Akiva, but that was only once or twice a week, and although it was co-ed, it started getting stricter as the years went on. Then many national-religious kids take a year or two to go to a pre-army academy or yeshiva, and then go on to the army or national service, all gender separate, for the most part. By the time you get to university, where you might actually sit next to someone of the opposite sex, you’re already well into your 20’s.”

“Ok, but-”

“But, nothing,” Guy was on a roll and nothing could stop him. “You’ve missed your prime dating years. You spend the next decade going to singles events, speed dating, and endless shidduch dates. You have a profile on every Jewish dating website known to man. You have hundreds of single friends on Facebook whom you’ve never even met in person. You end up renting a flat with other single people of your age and gender in Katamon or Givat Shmuel. And then where do you end up?”

“Sitting at a same-sex singles table at some kid’s wedding?” I replied sheepishly.

“Exactly.”

He raised his glass in mock L’Chaim and took a long sip.

Realizing I had struck a nerve, I said nothing.

After a long pause, Guy asked, “Do you know what today is?”

“Thursday.”

“No, I meant the Hebrew date. It’s Tu B’Av. You know how many couples want to get married on this date, the 15th of Av, ‘the ‘so-called’ holiday of love’? I am invited to two other weddings tonight. In fact, I think I’ll split soon and check out the next one. With any luck, they’ll have mixed seating over there.”

I wanted to say something biting, but thought better of it.

“Here’s the thing about Tu B’Av,” Guy began to lecture me as he wiped his brow with a cloth napkin. “It says in the Mishnah: ‘There were no greater festivals forIsraelthan the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur. For on those days the maidens ofJerusalemwould go out, dressed in white garments that were borrowed, so as not to embarrass those who were poor, and dance in the vineyards.’”

“I know that story.” I assured him, picking up where he left off. “And what would they say: ‘Young man, raise your eyes and see which you select for yourself. What would the beautiful ones among them say? Look for beauty, for a woman is for beauty. What would those of prestigious lineage say? Look for family, for a woman is for children. What would the unattractive ones say? Make your acquisition for the sake of Heaven.’”

“Very good,” Guy smiled, pleasantly surprised at my knowledge. “So, you see, Tu B’Av was traditionally quite an important day.”

“Yeah, I guess all the guys back then were busy checking out ‘the talent’, as you say,” I smirked.

“Don’t laugh, my friend.” Guy Ravak got very serious all of a sudden. “Notice how many times the passage uses the words ‘see’ or ‘look’: ‘Raise your eyes and see’, ‘look for beauty’, ‘look for family’, etc.” He jerked his head in the direction of the women dancing behind the wall. “Back then the single women may have danced in a vineyard, separately from the men, but they were meant to be seen by the eligible bachelors at some stage in order for the men to be able to choose a bride. Otherwise what was the whole point? Maybe the men weren’t supposed to stare and leer at the eligible women, but they were certainly supposed to look. Spending Tu B’Av eve at a wedding where you can’t even see ‘all the single ladies’ is missing the whole point of this holiday! Think about it.”

I thought about it. In fact, I was still thinking about ‘all the single ladies’ (including a fleeting image of Beyoncé) as he got up to leave. Not wanting to be the only one left at the table, I accompanied him.

Guy Ravak lit up a cigarette as soon as we got outside the hall.

“So,” I said sarcastically, “what do you really think about all this gender separation business?”

He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled, and put his arm around my shoulder.

“The trend at some of these weddings reminds me of a story,” he began. “There was this young man about to get married. He goes to his rabbi to get some last minute counseling before his wedding.

‘Rabbi, I realize it’s tradition for men to dance with men, and women to dance with women at the reception. But, my bride and I would like your permission for the two of us to dance together.’

‘Absolutely not,’ says the rabbi. ‘It’s immodest. Men and women must dance separately.’

‘So after the ceremony I can’t even dance with my own wife?’

‘No,’ answers the rabbi. ‘It’s forbidden’

They move on to other subjects regarding married life and eventually the groom asks about having relations with his wife.

‘Of course!’ replies the rabbi. ‘It’s a mitzvah.’

‘What about different positions?’ the groom asks.

‘No problem,’ says the rabbi.

The groom asks about all sorts of different positions and the rabbi answers ‘yes’ each time. Finally the groom asks, ‘What about standing up?’

‘Absolutely not!’ says the rabbi.

‘Why not?’ asks the groom.

The Rabbi leans forward and whispers to the groom, ‘It could lead to dancing!’”

Find out more on 4torah.com

Gender Bending

by Chaya Miriam Fried

I, like everyone else, pretended to be shocked when the halachic ruling was released today allowing select couples to choose the gender of their burgeoning babies with the help of a rav, of cour$e. Naturally, all the reasons cited had to do with folks choosing to have boys, not one example being given for girls. In addition to the requisite cursing and spitting of frum ladies the world over, some are joking that it’ll solve our shidduch crisis (Oh yeah, what ever happened to that crisis anyway? Ah yes, I got married). Now unless there are plans to churn out instantly 28-year-old male babies any time soon, I don’t see that happening. What will ensue, though, can be seen below:

Easier to get a minyan – living in a one-horse, Chabad-only town can be difficult, just waiting for tourists to happen by. Never again if you can all choose boys. Heck, you might even manage a breakaway minyan.

Greater number of Ambit salesmen – men seem to be far more naturally drawn to joining frummy hocks than the ladies do, but that’s a whole other article altogether.

More urine in the mikvah – you do the math.

Faster global warming – the amount of gas given off post-cholent is sure to spell doom. And the trees cut down to print more seforim? Don’t get me started.

Longer skirts, longer lives – maybe with less of a heightened sense of competition among the girls, skirts chance to once again reach the knee. Daycare for the elderly industry set to skyrocket.

More rabbis – and likewise more heters to go around. Soon we won’t have to do a damn thing to be considered frum.

Lower chances of being molested – I mean what with the wider selection and all. A pervert only has so many laps and so many hands, know what I’m saying?

Acceptable percentage of ma’aser raised – because we’ll be forced to shell out more in yeshiva tuition money and churn out more salaries for learners. This shouldn’t sound far-fetched in the least. Rabbeim make ridiculous “perfections” to the Torah all the time, why not in this case? But I don’t mean to make this article about the self-nominated creating standards for the rest of us, especially in cases where the burden falls largely upon women. It’s just not a woman’s place to do such a thing.

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I’m not sure how they do it in Baltimore (the person who sent this to me informed me that the kollel has a policy against mentioning women’s names), but when I was in yeshiva and someone got engaged, they always used to say who that person was engaged to. I totally understand that frum publications can’t show pictures of women, lest we have some sort of hirhurim, but I guess we’ve become so tznius that names now cause us to jizz in our pants. What’s next? Maybe we could stop mentioning the girl on wedding invites…maybe the women won’t be invited to the bris for fear that women may be in the same room as a penis that is not their husbands chas v’shalom.

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Hippie Tznius

by Chaya Miriam Fried

With the torches-and-pitchforks rhetoric aimed at Pop Chossid’s article on tznius still hammering in our ears, The Husband and I entered into the anything-goes wonderland of Rainbow Gathering last Friday, several hours before shabbos came in. I now think of the moment we pulled up to the Welcome/Info booth (i.e. two punkers with horrid body odor and questionable sounding directions sitting under a tarp) as the last moment of innocence I can claim in my life. All I’d known about hippie events up until that point were from movies and TV shows, and all that included was vague references to marijuana, music, and bathing in public fountains when the moment called for it.

My background is not rich, but I do come from a neatly laundered and carefully pressed family, with a healthy amount of pride in our fairly modest appearance. Basically I come from 9-to-5 people; and we jobniks tend to keep our clothes in good shape and on our bodies. The same could not be said for our fellow Gatherers. Not just dirty clothes; rather, the lack thereof.

Baruch Hashem, I do not feel easily threatened by other women, even when their stuff is all out in the open, even if that stuff looks like our similarities parted 25 lbs. ago, but this nudity didn’t even register. At all. There was no blip on the scandal radar whatsoever, it was just natural. There was nothing titillating, nothing sexual about it.

Now this was interesting, what with the Modesty Article War still being fought everywhere, finding myself in a situation where the word “tznius” was a truly relative term. There was no ticky-tacky standard of how thick your stockings are; we’re talking “do you hold of wearing a bra?” and even that would go way over most Gatherers’ heads. By stark contrast though, the women in our Jewish camp were strict in their tznius. Not a knee, not an elbow, not a married woman’s hair in sight!

I only occupy my husband’s tent, so I don’t know if the readily offered skin sightings caused any man to sin that weekend. I didn’t see anyone or any group descend upon the camp on horseback with emergency blankets for women, nor did I hear any battle cry of “Cover up!” from the Jewish camp outward to the Gatherers passing by on the road, or even to the topless woman that lingered within our own camp for a short time one day. I actually asked myself at one point, “Why am I still dressed tzniusly? I don’t think anyone even in the Jewish camp would treat me any differently either way, so…?” but I maintained my standards, because the question isn’t that simple.

Some Jewish communities (albethey temporary communities) can handle nudity, or near-nudity, to roll right past their homes, maybe even stop in for a smoke, and the brush with the outside word doesn’t rattle anyone. Other communities do things like painting over bicycle lanes so that scantily clad summer cyclists will know they’re not welcome. Some families have a standard of modesty they like to see kept because they’re trying to protect their women; other families have a standard they employ to protect their men.

If the way you’re expected to dress makes you unhappy, maybe you’re in the wrong camp. Heck, maybe you’re at the wrong gathering altogether.

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Being married has its advantages, laundry more than once a month, home cooked meals, and not having to get tested for STD’s every time my crotch starts feeling the fire, but one of the biggest disadvantages is that shul is infinitely more boring. It was a very hard thing for me to live up to, but I recently figured out that one of the only reasons I went to shul was to look at girls. Don’t worry folks, I still look at girls over the mechitza, label them, stereotype them, and place into neat little judgmental boxes for my personal enjoyment, but now I don’t care if they catch me ogling them during the lecha dodi look back – because the ogling is about as far as it can go. Being married has taken one of the joys of frum life and has made it almost non-existent.

Thank God all is not lost, I still find those extreme BT’s shuckling like violent old washing machines very entertaining, Artscroll continues to make good gadol novels, and the rabbi of my shul speaks for so long every shabbos, that some of it actually sinks in long enough for me to get some good chizuk out of it (usually in the form of blogging)

I remember when going to shul was almost a sport in my mind, especially when it was during singles shabbatonim, now it’s supposed to be all serious because I’m wearing a talis and have to knock over people at kiddush while trying to juggle two plates of cholent instead of one. Of course, one of the joys about being married is that I’m one step closer to becoming a dirty old man. Already, I have people in shul who’ll come up to me and say things that they could never say to me until I was married and “understood” some of their sorrow.

I should mention that kiddush becomes a more casual affair when you aren’t trying to “run” into girls or give them the eye throughout the whole affair. I can focus on the food and getting more guests (hachnasos orchim is my only strong point in life)

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The Sternberg Hot Dog story is one of those frum Jewish urban legends that has never been confirmed. It goes as follows, a girl at Camp Sternberg (a large frum girls camp in upstate NY) was playing around with a frozen hot dog and it broke and became lodged inside her. From a yeshiva guys perspective the story is very believable, to us, the vagina is this cavernous playground that is endless (how else could those giant penises from the porn industry fit in there) and obviously a hot dog could get stuck. Besides, it makes for good shabbos conversation and debate.

This past shabbos, we got to talking about the Sternberg Hot Dog story at the table and one couple actually knew the girl who it happened to. The guy knew her and the girl was actually in Sternberg when it happened. Then a debate ensued about whether or not such a thing was possible. I remember in 8th grade hearing about a girl who got a marker stuck inside her and began to ponder about what other things women put in themselves. After years of shmiras ervah, I’ve seeneverything from foot balls, to cucumbers, but nothing ever got stuck.

Even though the story and name of the girl were confirmed at the shabbos table, I’m not sure I believe the story. Not only does it seem logically impossible, it also seems that girls from frum families aren’t usually making such displays of their masturbatory tactics. Sticking hot dogs inside you to pleasure yourself isn’t exactly bais yaakov material and I doubt she went showing off her broken hot dog, but who am I to judge. I even know the girls name and apparently she’s married now. Snopes has a different theory.

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I’m not exactly sure what mixed martial arts and a bunch of random pictures of a bunch of hot frum girls have to do with each other, but yesterday, there was an article called “Have you ever BEEN with an Orthodox Jewish girl” posted on a forum about mixed martial arts. There does happen to be an MMA fighter in my shul with a pretty hot wife, but she’s not even Jewish yet, so I’m not sure what prompted this, but around the web it has been raising the ire of many frum and not-frum ladies. Of course, I’m angered as well, I feel for these people, especially since one of the pictures was taken by me of two hot chanis at kosher fest years ago. I now know the mixed feelings of being taken advantage of and pride at having your very own picture stolen without so much as a hat tip or link.

As A. Nuran has pointed out, anything can be fetishized and I’m all for the publicizing of sexy and tznius ladies on the internet, I should point out that many of the girls are not even frum. I noticed that some of them are obviously wearing pants, modeling for wigs, or just not Jewish looking at all. If you’re going to post a bunch of pictures of hot frum girls, make them all frum will ya.

As one can imagine, there is a lot of disgust coming out of this and I view this as a good mussar lesson for all the girls out there that use the internet. I’m not sure how often I have to repeat this, but NOTHING posted on the internet is private or can ever really be erased. Once you post it, no matter how many privacy settings or anonymous routes you take, it can be found, used, abused, and posted on the internet for all to see. Based on the postings I see day in and day out by frummies about how “freaked” out they are about the ads on websites catering to them, I’m fairly certain that no one realizes that internet privacy is a myth. I’m kind of looking forward to facial recognition search, because then things will really get interesting.

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Let me preface this post by saying that I probably would have learned most of the things had I not gone to yeshiva, but going to yeshiva definitely provides an education that is seldom matched elsewhere. Yeshiva graduates are definitely light years ahead of modern orthodox kids in terms of street smarts, ruthless business tactics, and how to get around policy, whether it be parental, rabbinical, or governmental. I can’t say I learned much in the ways of emunah, bitachon, gemara, or other Torah pursuits, but the other things I learned make up for it. Plus, most of the things I write about wouldn’t have been half as real had I gone to a modern orthodox school. 

Things I learned in yeshiva:

1)How to address the Rosh Yeshiva: When addressing a respectable person in the frum world, you’re supposed to talk in the third person. I witnessed this only before my school took the downward spiral into reject yeshiva. Even when speaking directly to the Rosh Yeshiva, one would say “can I get the Rosh Yeshiva some coffee”. Instead of speaking directly to him. I never did this, because I thought it was absolutely insane, until I read about it the Yated.

2)NCSY is assur: I never knew that NCSY was mamish evil until I came to yeshiva, not only were there girls there, but they used the excuse of kiruv to allow boys and girls to study together and be in close contact. In Rochester NCSY was pretty big and one time my roommate and I got caught going to a convention and we got a pretty long mussar session from this beis medrish guy about the dangers of girls and how they only lead to sin. Later on in life, I realized that NCSY was probably one of the most successful small town non-chabad kiruv tools in all the land.

3)Talking to girls is assur: I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but until the middle of 9th grade, I was certain that the yeshiva policy that girls were assur, was merely a yeshiva policy. I had no idea that parents themselves would prevent growing teenage boys from conversing with the opposite sex. I only learned this during a shabbos afternoon discussion about who’s parents would do what if they caught them talking to girls. I was shocked, I had never heard such narashkeit before.

4)Chabad is not real Judaism: Do you ever hear about kids who grow up not knowing about race? Well, that’s kind of how I grew up with chabad, there were no distinctions of them beingany different than we were. Well, yeshiva changed that, in yeshiva they liked the individual chabadnicks around town and chabad was the only shul that the yeshiva really got along with, but they weren’t as good as we were. Chabad was the closest thing to Judaism we had.

5)Learning Nuvi is for girls, gemara is for boys: I always wondered why we never learned anything interesting like navi and I was told that only girls learn it. I was told that men learn gemara, but I hated gemara and many of my fellow classmates may be frum today if we would have learned navi, but I’m guessing that the sex, war, and betrayal were a bit too much for a bunch of horny teenagers. When I asked why women didn’t learn gemara, I learned that it was because it made them pritzus.

6)Yeshivish Cars: I always thought yeshivish people had shitty cars because they had a lot of kids, but in reality it was a past time to work on your car and hold it together with bungee cords and duct tape. If you had a nice car you were that much closer to being modernishe.

7)Jeans are evil: One of the first things we learned upon entering the yeshiva was the dress code, jeans were a big no no. I felt kind of weird at that moment, because just the day before, my father had dropped me off and he was wearing jeans. In fact, the only thing my father ever wore during the week was jeans, so I now wondered if I had some demerit of sorts for having an evil father who was polluting me with his goyishe ways. Apparently shorts were also not allowed except inside, but outside and inside jeans were very prohibited. Jeans were so assur, that kids would hide their jeans and put them on at the airport or bus station at the start of out shabbosim. Now you see how you can repress something so much that it becomes desirable, I guess my Rabbeim would be happy to know that I just bought my first pair of jeans in my adult life.

8)Girls wearing pants are naked: It wasn’t enough to tell us to try to not look at untznius girls, they weren’t merely untznius, they were naked. I wonder if the Rabbis realized that all we really wanted to look at were real live naked girls, rather than crumbled pages of them hidden in our cereal boxes and shoes. Basically, if a girl wore pants or short sleeves, our Rabbis would say they were naked. Men in jeans or shorts were also considered naked.

9)In d’hoisin: The only Yiddish I really learned was “in your pants” to which I figured out how to say what’s up in your pants in Yiddish. The Rabbis would tug on your untucked shirt and say “In d’hoisin” really loudly.

10)Compliment your hosts: It wasn’t all about issurim, some of the things I learned were timeless and apparently other yeshivos taught it too. In the middle of the meal, it was important to say “everything is delicious” and I’ve noticed that on cue every yeshiva guy I’ve ever had over will throw it down in the middle of the meal.

11)Standing for Rabbis: I had never stood for a rabbi until I went to yeshiva, the truth is I still don’t really stand until I actually know I respect the guy. There are too many phonies running around claiming to be Rabbis and I don’t want to be caught standing for the wrong guy. In yeshiva we did the full stand, in adult life people do it half assedly.

12)Vecker: I learned about the vecker, just like in the shtetl they had a guy waking you up, in yeshiva we had someone slamming open our doors and yelling at us to get up shachris like we were in boot camp.

13)Kishke: I didn’t really know from kishke until I went to yeshiva, there was this dude who made it in his room on Friday afternoon and sold it. I was a big fan, I still am a big fan, if only I could get the real stuff.

14)How to get meals and invites: Until the tenth grade I didn’t get so many meal invites, then I figured out how to just ask. Sure, it takes some balls to just invite yourself out, but the opportunity to look at girls in shul and eat something other than yeshiva food was too good to pass up on. Little did I know that this skill would serve me well in my formative years and it still does.

15)Double head covering: I always thought that the rule to wear a hat and jacket for davening was merely a uniform, I never knew that it had real tradition. I learned early on that one needed a double head covering for davening (I was told that this is why black velvet yarmulkes are all the rage). No one has ever been able to actually prove such things, but it sounds good. I also learned about hats, gray hats, straw hats, black hats, blue hats, big brim, wide brim, narrow brim, up hats, down hats, up brim down brim. I basically learned how judge someone based on their hat. My first hat was from sears, it was black and had a red feather in it. My second hat was olive green and cost 10 bucks at marshalls. We had initially gone into Kova Hats because apparently we’re related to the guy, but we took one look at the prices and out to sears we went.

16)Yarmulkes and stereotypes: Up until yeshiva I had just assumed that there were those who wore black velvet yarmulkes and those who didn’t. I wore knitted at that point in my life and I switched between knitted and suede and reform satin ones as well. I was considered weird, I also learned that switching is uncommon and those who switch have to deal with a lot of politics. For instance, I was in yeshiva during the whole kids at risk thing and those kids always wore small flat black velvet yarmulkes that needed bobby pins. Apparently bobby pins were frummer than clips, but both were assur because if you needed them, your yarmulke wasn’t big enough. I probably would eventually learned about this, but yarmulke style is such a big deal in a more left wing yeshiva like I went to, that I had lessons about shine vs no shine, 4 piece vs. 6 piece and the only truly assur yarmulke were those that had sports teams because you apparently put them between you and God. Only did I learn later on in life that you really can’t judge someone by their yarmulke alone, you also had to see where on their head it was placed.

17)Women don’t celebrate purim: I always remembered purim from my youth as spent eating with cousins in Monsey, pounding my face with nosh and watching yeshiva guys knock on the door and dance with the men for money. It took me sometime to realize that besides for the little girls dressing up, women didn’t really do purim. I guess it probably has to with the fact that honey pot missions aren’t really flaunted in the frum community and we don’t want women reinacting the story of purim from their dealings. The women came to watch the men get drunk and throw up on each other.

18)Frum girls were worse for our neshama’s than goyishe ones: We were all excited to have a girls school open in Rochester, until we realized that wherever they went we had to avoid. We wondered why a bunch of “naked” girls at the ice rink were fine, while the frum girls in skirts made the place assur. I later learned that the Rabbis had faith in us that had no shaychis to the goyim and so we wouldn’t want anything to do with them. I’m fairly certain they wizened up to that shtick.

19)Rush is kol isha: Secular music was assur, but kol isha was downright evil and it turns out that my dorm counselor considered Rush and almost all 80′s hair metal to be kol isha, he simply didn’t believe me that it wasn’t.

20)Mettalish, Piamenta, Instrumental Rock: Yeshiva guys needed music and they found it in ways that were frum, because no one wanted their tape and cd collections burned. So they had all sorts of instrumental stuff like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai and all sorts of not so frum Jewish music. Black Hattitude was also big and thanks to yeshiva I had a love for crappy frum music. Though I think I never got into Shweky because he went to our yeshiva and his girly voice at melave malka’s was a bit much. I also learned that boys choirs existed to replace kol isha and that kind of freaked me out, it still does.

21)The N word: Until yeshiva I had only heard the N-word used in anger, in yeshiva it was used in everyday speak, it wasn’t so strange to me, because I hadn’t been exposed to liberals as of yet. However, some of the more modernishe kids would respond to the N word by asking people not to use it and some of the more Brooklyn types would call them N-lovers.

22)Cheeseburger Moshel: When it came to speaking in mussar, it always came back to the cheeseburger, like this was the ultimate sin. They made the cheeseburger so lofty that when my classmates finally tried them, they were very disappointed. I’ve never had one, but it makes sense, I’d prefer to try real seafood if the treife tayva hits me. What do modern orthodox yeshivas use as the “tayva moshel”?

23)Goyim all secretly wanted to kill us: I was brought up with the scary fact that the Nazis would regain power in the US, but in yeshiva it was drilled home. The goyim all wanted to kill us and we could not trust them.

24)The government is not to be trusted: Another thing I was brought up with that yeshiva intended to instill us with, a true fear of the antisemitic government. Cheating on government things was allowed because they forced us to pay for public schools and pay for programs we didn’t need.

25)Modern Orthodoxy was a wolf in sheeps clothing: When it came to modern orthodoxy, we were taught that it may even be more assur than blatant breaches of Judaism. At least if one drives to shul on shabbos you know where he stands, but one who appears to be orthodox but has an immorally low mechitza, coeducation, untznius clothing, and sends their kids to college is harder to recognize.

26)Yeshiva University is worse than non-Jewish school: We weren’t encouraged to go to college, but we were definitely discouraged from attending YU, once again it was passing off as a frum school but really wasn’t. I didn’t really know all the politics back then, I merely thought it was because they had a Gay Club and allowed girls to learn things other than Navi that it was assur. The only kids who went to YU were the in-towners, everyone else ended up in Touro, community college, or getting a BTL and then going to state school.

27)Klepping and Charter Oaks: I never knew about graduating high school without actually going to high school, but there were a lot of these mail order diploma scams and klepping that people looked into. A lot of folks just wanted out, they hated yeshiva and wanted to get on with the drinking and sex portion of their youth.

28)Alter Bachur: There were single guys in our yeshiva who were almost middle aged, in the yeshiva world they wouldn’t give you semicha until you were married and so you had these 40 year old’s learning with 20 year old guys, it was a bit odd and those guys were always odd. I wondered how a guy who’d spent his entire life in yeshiva could move into a healthy marriage, but one of those guys we never thought would marry, did in fact get married.

29)Porn is bad, but selling it is the worst: It was one thing to go watch a movie or get some porn, it was a whole other thing to share those dirty deeds. I learned about the sin of dragging others down with you. Actually I learned it first hand because I sold some kid a bunch of Maxim Magazines and he in turn hid them in his freezer and when he was caught he snitched on me.

30)Don’t be a snitch: I now understand when Dr. Dre talks about killing snitches, because that’s the absolute worst thing you can do in yeshiva. Nobody likes a snitch, even the Rabbis have ill feeling towards the snitch because he is going against his supposed friends and stabbing them in the back.

What did you learn in yeshiva?

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I’m pretty sure that the frum world is on high alert at the possible infiltration of Open Orthodoxy to our heimishe institutions such as SAR and Ramaz, who have decided to allow women to don tefillin. Ramaz took it one step further than SAR and said they will allow girls to put on tefillin in coed minyanim. Although there is no word as to whether or not the girls will be counted in the minyan, sources tell me that many folks are fearful that this is the beginning of the end. Apparently the more medrnishe Bais Yaakov’s are next. In my opinion, breaking tradition is perfectly acceptable when there are valid reasons to do so. Allowing girls to experiment with tefillin is akin to letting kids smoke that first cigarette.

1) It’s easier to classify women who wear tefillin: Instead of trying to figure out what stream of Judaism a certian girls or woman comes from, you can now just ask them what they think of women who wear tefillin. This is far easier than asking them what their tznius levels may be. It’s also easier than judging women based on their methods of hair covering or whether they wear pants or not.

2) Upper arms are sexy:  There’s nothing like some good upper action to look at during pisukei d’zimra, I’m all about ervah in the morning, especially when some BT is up there taking all day. I assume that Orthodoxy, no matter how open it gets, will keep the whole mechitza thing.

3) It prevents intermarriage: In a world where there are girls who literally have no idea what tefillin is, imagine the zechus to have girls not only know from tefillin, but they know how to scam that guy in the airport selling them by asking them where the other arm is. The more Jewy things they do, the less likely they will be to marry goyim.

4) Maybe they will one day be frum: Maybe by taking on extra mitzvos for the wrong reasons (in the frum community they seem to think every girl who wants to go beyond the letter of the law is a raging feminist) they will eventually see the beauty of miitzvos they have to do, like shabbos candles and supporting their husbands gemara habits.

5) Safrus Industry boost: If enough frum girls started wearing tefillin and since they were frum, they needed it to be kosher, this could mean a boom for the safrus industry. The safrus industry has taken a serious hit in the internet age where every sefer is online. I do fear that many sofers may sell passul tefillin to girls in the hope that they make bracha livatala’s because of their obvious lack of tznius.

Dear Mishpacha,

My family and I read your magazine on a daily basis, we get them as hand me downs because the subscription is quite pricey and since we live out of town, the old news is never really that old. We enjoy the advertisements for upscale apartments in Yerushalyim, the kosher vitamins, and the yeshiva dinners. Along with readers digest, consumer reports, it is the only secular periodical allowed into our home. I wanted to say that I love Mishpacha Magazine, I love that you provide such intellectual, superb writing on a variety of issues in a fair and balanced way. I rarely see any bias and I rarely see anything that rubs me the wrong way and that’s why I decided to write to you.

I was settling into the November 27th 2013 issue when I noticed something that made me choke on my tea sense. On page 98 there is an ad that features an untznius girl showing her elbows. Not only was the first time I’ve ever seen a female in any of your publications, but I can’t remember the last time I frum publication was so careless as to include an untznius girl which could clearly lead to hirhurim. Baruch Hashem my husband doesn’t like underage girls, but many of his colleagues in chinuch struggle with this taiva and almost everyone we know reads mishpacha.

Do you realize the repercussions that this ad may have caused. We are not the only family that gets hand me down copies of your magazine and most of those families are those who are involved in chinuch. The amount of thoughts caused by this ervah are unknown to us, but it’s doubtful that you can ever take back all of the zera livatala, broken marriages, and evil thoughts.

I searched around the internet to see if anyone has complained and there are none. Does this mean that this advertisement is still up? Has no one in your editorial department scanned for breaches in tznius. You are so quick to prevent women from being in your magazines, but you have been lax in the children department. The halachos are similar, a single man cannot be in yichud with this girl and she is required to cover her ervah, which she clearly did not in her ad.

Shame on Mishpacha for misleading our husbands, sons, and men with their lewd advertisements.

Find out more on 4torah.com

For some reason I got in a mood to write classic frum satire stuff this week.

Apparently there is a crisis within the shidduch crisis that many of us are not aware of, I was speaking to a girl who is in the parsha as the more yeshivish people like to call someone who is dating and she said that many guys she has dated simply use the brim of their hats to avoid eye contact which they probably use as a tznius excuse, but are simply afraid of the big bold eyes of 19 year old bais yaakov girls.

This issue got me thinking again about bend down hats in general. For all of the uninitiated, “Bend Down Hats” refers to the hat variety worn by the yeshivish, yekishe, litvishe and general black hat crowds, Chassidim wear something known as the Beaver, Streimel, Spudick or pancake hat, and they even call non Chassidim- “bend downs” in some circles. Bend downs are called this because the brims of their hats actually bend down, some say its for streamlined wind resistance, providing good fuel economy from bowls of cholent that are becoming scarcer and scarcer as we have to rely on Chassidic sources for this product, since the more modern yeshivish crowds have gone to sushi as their source of popular fueling foods. Some say that the brims are bent down to give a more gangster look to the hocker in each of us, who doesn’t have the balls to turn their walky talkies volume to max when entering shul during mincha. As if to say we know we don’t have the Bluetooth in our ear when we are putting tefilin on, or the cool Acursa MDX because our kollel salaries aren’t as good as a shomrims, but we can still be cool with our hats by putting them sideways and adjusting the brims every now and then.

I also thought of another insight into the bend down hats ability to modernize, while the beavers and fur hat varieties are more frum. The bend down brim allows the user to walk on streets filled with scantly clad women, because they can merely bend the brim down and avoid the horrors that meet the eyes on a casual stroll down 13th avenue, the long sheitles and real live women specimens are so distracting and uncalled for that the brim can help you on your way.

The problem is that no one really knows if your brim has been put down to keep the sun from your eyes, to allow a more efficient shuffling walk due to the streamlining abilities of the bent down brim, or if you are trying to prevent yourself from spilling seed because of all the pritzus that is walking past you.

On the other hand Chassidim, while not enjoying the benefits of the bend down brim of their hats, they can rest in piece that when a women walks in front of them, their arm can go up in defense of the filth that riddles the streets of Williamsburg and Spring Valley. No one will mistake a downed brim as a sun visor because there are no brims, just quick gestures, that can tell you, aha, there goes a fruma yid who shields his eyes.

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So I was having a chat with one of my fans about where I was going stay in Israel, and that happened to be at a random girls house whom I had never met- but had several good friends in common. The person I was chatting with comes from a more “frum” for lack of better term environment, and asked me if I had felt uncomfortable with staying at single girls houses. Of course not was my answer, I just never felt weird about staying at girls houses, the only problem with staying at women’s houses in my view, is not being able to walk around in your underwear and trying to find normal shampoo amidst a sea of hair care products and razors.

But it did get me thinking about separation of the sexes, you see contrary to what some of you may think- I grew up in the kind of home that felt it okay to have girls sleep over and visa versa- I never did have a girl sleep over until I was 20 years old or something, but still it wasn’t an issue. While my high school was the exact opposite, you couldn’t even talk to girls. In fact we were encouraged to look down and gaze away from Victoria’s Secret billboards- which we never did listen to.

I can remember having the “frum people against coed schools” argument versus the “how will they ever learn to talk to their wives” argument posed by the modern orthodox people, this was talked about at countless shabbos tables- with the same results. Happens to be that I don’t think it makes a huge difference, the can’t concentrate on studies argument posed by frummies who claim that girls distract you (I know they do because in college whenever a girl would sit down in front of me and have her thong sticking out of her little jeans I couldn’t concentrate) seems to go out the window with the fact that kids who go to coed schools almost always do better in school then the kids in single sex schools- thats of course usually based on the subject material.

This argument can go on all day- but basically I have no issues with staying at girls houses, in fact they make better hosts and you aren’t freaked out by their bathrooms and kitchens. SA special thank you to Rivkah Naditch and Chana Leaf for hooking me up with their couches in Nachlaot- it was very appreciated.

I expect some good discussion over this one.

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I haven’t posted my search terms for some time- I used to do it quite often because it was funny- especially that frum porn is searched for so much. I wonder if thats a good thing? I just hope no one is looking for nude pictures of me.

Today

Yesterday

2008-09-02

2008-09-01

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It doesn’t leave much room for the imagination, and it doesn’t allow for a strategy for looking over without being too obvious. Case in point- I was in Riverdale this past shabbos and on Friday night we davened at RJC (Riverdale Jewish Center) and their mechitza isn’t that short, its height is low because it runs flat along the mens and womens sections while both sides have seats that rise along a gentle slope- which mean s you can see everything above a certain point. Furthermore, the seats are sort of facing each other which makes matters worse.

So of course this whole crew of women walks in and plops down right next to each other on one bench. It kind of looked like the wave every time they got up. In fact every time the shul had to stand it looked like the wave. I always wonder if certain shuls do the wave just for fun.

So I’m trying to look at the girls, but unfortunately I never wear my glasses besides for movies or driving and couldn’t see a darn thing. All I could see was that there was one redhead, they were all skinny and that they shuckeled very slowly. In fact I came to an observation about shuckeling over shabbos. The more modern a shul is the slower the shuckeling is. It just seems to me that in modern shuls there is less moving about. People sit and stand, and walk out- thats it.

So in a nutshell I prefer a taller mechitza so it allows for covert operations that let me sneak in close and chop a little staring action. Oh and it helps my kavanah too- because I can’t multitask, so I have to wait for a lull in davening to try and hone my mechitza peeking skills.

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