Don't be fools - vaccinate your children

 

משוט בארץ ומהתהלך בה. . . .    

From flitting about the earth and traversing it (Job 1:7). . .

 

http://acsh.org/2015/04/rfk-jr-equates-vaccinations-to-a-holocaust-yes-he-went-there


The American Council on Science and Health, a watchdog group that ferrets out junk science and overhyped claims in the media and in the utterances and writings of public figures, released a report recently about a speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a public screening of an antivaccine film.  The ACSH report states as follows: 

 

Well-known vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the Sacramento screening of anti-vaccine “documentary” Trace Amounts on Tuesday and gave a speech to the audience, and as expected, it was filled with dangerous and unscientific misinformation. In light of the upcoming hearing for California Senate Bill 277, which eliminates the personal belief exemption for vaccines, RFK Jr. told the audience that public health officials and policy-makers can’t be trusted.

“They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it,” he reportedly told the crowd. “[Children] get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.” Kennedy left the stage to a standing ovation.

“Trace Amounts” tells the story of filmmaker Eric Gladen, who believes he suffered mercury poisoning from thimerosal after receiving a tetanus vaccine in 2004. RFK Jr. has long been spewing out misinformation regarding thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that was used in vaccines up until 2001. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Institute of Medicine have all determined that thimerosal is safe, it was removed from vaccines (with the exception of some flu shots) as a precautionary measure due to backlash by misguided parents and the anti-vaccine hysteria fomented by advocacy groups and dangerous demagogues like RFK Jr.

Yet he and his followers are still vehemently against vaccines, even though this preservative that was determined safe was removed from childhood vaccines almost 15 years ago. In response, Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician, and author of SB 277, called Kennedy’s continued activism deceitful. “I think it is dangerous that he is spreading misinformation about something that’s very important for public health,” he said. “Autism rates have continued to rise even though we are not using thimerosal in vaccines for children. We still haven’t figured out exactly what causes autism. We do know it’s not vaccines.”

Despite the facts, “Trace Amounts” and RFK Jr. are unfortunately still making an impact on the vaccine “debate.” Kennedy has credited the documentary with helping to stall Oregon’s mandatory vaccine bill. And although RFK Jr. has no scientific credentials, people continue to listen to him because of his name. 


This is astounding and infuriating, in part because the son of our martyred Senator stated that the alleged damage done to children by vaccines amounted to a holocaust (in fairness to him, the "h" was not capitalized).  The real Holocaust snuffed out the lives of one and a half million Jewish children and their future progeny to the end of time.  Today the Orthodox community seems to be experiencing more than its share of outbreaks of totally preventable childhood diseases like measles and mumps. Rumors fly thick and fast through Jewish media whose editorial staffs are, to put it mildly, not well versed in science, that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism.  Many haredim seldom if ever avail themselves of secular media that might disabuse them of that notion.  Most of the hysteria originates with a report in a medical journal supposedly documenting a link between vaccines and autism.  That report has since been thoroughly discredited and retracted from the journal.  Such retractions rarely happen, but here it turns out that the authors of the discredited report were in cahoots with lawyers who were ready to sue vaccine manufacturers  for millions; the authors presumably were to share in the proceeds (yes, scientists, physicians and lawyers can have a taavah [unwholesome craving] for money).  Of course, many children are vaccinated, some children contract autism (we don’t know why) and the two sets have a small intersection, but that is to be expected.  It does not prove that the two are in any way related.

  We do know that our present situation of most children living to have their own is unprecedented in human history.  The normal human condition was for childhood mortality to be horrendously high.  Some of our siddurim contain selihot l’tahaluei yeladim, penitential prayers to be recited during an epidemic of a children’s disease.  I cannot recall those prayers ever being recited in our community or in any American Jewish community.  But I have visited old Jewish cemeteries in New York and have seen large sections containing little tiny gravestones for little tiny children.  Most of these children doubtless died of childhood diseases that have since, praise God, been conquered by vaccines.  I might add that those vaccines were developed by people, many of them Jewish, who attended college and studied science.  Some of those gravestones are in the process of sinking into the ground; the parents of the deceased were too poor to pay for perpetual care and are long since gone.

Babies’ graves at Union Field Cemetery on the Brooklyn-Queens border

 

  

  Before my granddaughter was born, my daughter told me to get a “T-Dap” shot; pertussis (aka whooping cough) was making a comeback and the vaccine we received as children loses its effectiveness as we grow older.  This was not optional; either I got the shot or I would not be allowed anywhere near the baby.  I got the shot – a very minor inconvenience for my granddaughter’s and other babies’ well being.  Since then, I had my blood tested for antibodies for measles, mumps and rubella.  I still have adequate antibodies against all three and will not need boosters.  I do not want to see tragic sights like the one in this picture in newer Jewish cemeteries and there is an easy way to avoid it: EVERY CHILD MUST BE VACCINATED AGAINST CHILDHOOD DISEASES AS PER PROTOCOLS OF PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITIES.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Year - A New Mayor

   An era ended two weeks ago for New York City.  Twenty years of Republican mayors are over and for the first time in a long time this city, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, is being governed by a Democrat, a Democrat for whom I voted with much hope and confidence.  When I vote for Republicans, which I do more often than I’d like, I vote for them with a heavy heart, knowing that if they win I and other liberals (there, I just said the L-word) would have to watch them like a hawk.  We are coming off eight years of Rudy Giuliani and twelve of Michael Bloomberg.  Their record is mixed, but far more positive than I would have expected from Republicans.  Giuliani entered City Hall with a city awash in crime and a deteriorating infrastructure whose middle class tax base was leaving in droves.  We all were resigned to double locking our doors, driving our cars in summer with windows locked and gas-guzzling air conditioners at full blast, and not letting our children out of our sight in a city which we simply assumed was ungovernable.  After Mayor Giuliani’s first term the city had done an about face.  Crime rates were the lowest in memory, children played outside, and we still double locked our doors but more from force of habit than fear of actual danger.  The city was never ungovernable; it was merely ungoverned for too darn long.  Giuliani appointed several get-tough police commissioners and a novel “broken windows theory” of policing; sweat the small stuff and you don’t get the big stuff.  Arrest petty vandals, grafitti “artists,” turnstile jumpers and such and they don’t graduate to armed robbery, rape and murder.  At the first sign of any trouble in Crown Heights, which suffered a terrible pogrom a year and a half before Giuliani took office,  a phalanx of riot-equipped police with a mobile command post and the whole nine yards descended on the neighborhood and did not leave until the trouble was over.  Cynical New Yorkers pooh-poohed the new policies but they worked.  Serious felonies took a nose dive and there were no Crown Heights riots in Crown Heights or anyplace else.  The City became a safe place to live and work, the exodus to the suburbs ended and people who had fled actually started coming back; there is little to recommend a long automobile commute on snowy highways and with gasoline prices sky high.  Freshly minted energetic and creative college grads flocked to New York and reinvigorated deteriorating neighborhoods like North Williamsburg, the Lower East Side and even Harlem.

 

   Giuliani’s second term brought still more reduction in crime, but there were stirrings of too much of a good thing.  Law-abiding people were being gratuitously harassed by the police, some of whom seemed to actually enjoy harassing them.  Being a teacher in an inner-city school, I would overhear the horror stories of students and teachers of color about being randomly stopped by cops and asked for ID (which no American civilian is required to carry), thrown up against a wall, invasively searched without a warrant, and the like.  Certain neighborhoods in the City were turning into a police state and affluent New Yorkers who held the power didn’t seem to care.  You did not even have to be black to be harassed by Giuliani’s cops; it happened to me.  I was attending teachers’ meetings in a high school in Bensonhurst, and was running north at lunch time to a kosher Dunkin Donuts to grab a bite when I was stopped by two people.  They asked me what I was doing in the neighborhood.  Being Jewish I answered their question with another question: What’s it of your business?  They showed me shields that identified them as police and resumed their intrusive questioning.  When I told them that I was in the neighborhood for teachers’ meetings at the high school, they told me the schools were closed for Election Day.  I replied that the schools are closed for students, but teachers have meetings and they can check that with the Board (now the Department) of Education.  What do you know about drug dealing over there (pointing south toward Coney Island)?  I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Why are you running?  I like to run.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  Never mind that I was wearing a baseball cap emblazoned on both sides with “New York City Marathon” and it was the week before the Marathon.  What freaking planet were those guys on?  They asked me for ID and I gave them my driver’s license.  What’s your address?  I told them.  That’s not the address on your license.  I recently moved; that was my old address and I filed the required form with the Department of Motor Vehicles.  One of them took the license into his car and ran it through the computer; of course it checked out fine.  Then one of them told me to open my mouth, and when I did so he swept the inside of my mouth with his finger (I don’t remember if he was wearing a rubber finger cot or rubber gloves), “checking for drugs.”  Of course he didn’t find a thing.  Only then did they let me go my way.  Several years later I recounted my experience to a lawyer acquaintance who told me that if the statute of limitations had not run out he would advise me to hire a lawyer and sue the city and the police department, as I had been subjected to an illegal and invasive search.

 

  Then came Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire Manhattanite aloof from New Yorkers in the outer boroughs who actually had to work for a living.  Never having had to deal with unions in his businesses where he made his billions, he made an art form out of demonizing the city’s unions and not bargaining with them in good faith, when he bargained at all.  At the end of his tenure he deliberately forced the unions into time-consuming and unwieldy impasse procedures so as to “kick the can” to the next mayor.

 

   This analysis would not be complete without mentioning a sea change in quality of life in New York’s public places, besides the dramatic reduction in crime.  A city that was choked with pollution from automobiles now encourages people to ride bicycles, both for fun and to travel to and from work.  Bike lanes and even bike rental stations are now a common sight.  Herald Square and other heavily trafficked public places now have protected areas where pedestrians can sit down and enjoy a snack and unrushed conversation, weather permitting.  We no longer have to inhale poisonous cigarette smoke as a condition of holding a job, shopping for groceries, waiting on line in a bank or being in any other indoor public space.  Prospect and Central Parks are free of automobile traffic much of the time; Transportation Alternatives is trying to make that all of the time.  Organized running and bicycle races are now common in those and other parks on weekends and summer weekday evenings.  Children and adults now enjoy the parks without having to inhale automobile exhaust and dodge speeding automobile traffic.  New Yorkers resisted all of these improvements at first, but eventually got used to them and even began to like them.  

 

   After 20 years with the same party in power, Americans usually vote for change.  So it was in New York, as Democrat Bill de Blasio was sworn in January 1.  He lived in Brooklyn (as mayor, he will live in Gracie Mansion) and has a son attending prestigious – and public – Brooklyn Technical High School, “Brooklyn Tech” to New Yorkers.  Like most Democratic public officials in New York, he is union friendly.  He can be expected to drive a hard bargain, but he will bargain in good faith.  Perhaps the greatest change we can expect to see – and soon – will be in the quality of policing.  One of the major issues in de Blasio’s election campaign was Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” policy, whereby police could detain anybody they deemed suspicious and frisk him for weapons.  Very few weapons were found or arrests made, but very much distrust and animosity was created between the police and the people they are supposed to protect and serve.  In theory the police had to have “reasonable suspicion” (a lesser standard than the “probable cause” required to obtain a search warrant) to perform a stop and frisk.  In practice “reasonable suspicion” could mean that the cop didn’t like the way somebody looks, the way he is dressed, or that he walks with a swagger (they should have seen me in the summer of 1967; I walked with the granddaddy of all swaggers).  In other words, breathing while black was enough to get you stopped and frisked in majority-black neighborhoods.  The new mayor pledged to end all that, and we have the technology to do so without sending crime rates into the stratosphere.  Policemen can be outfitted with cameras on their uniforms (the courts have held that there is no right to privacy on a public street) that can show a suspicious bulge in somebody’s pocket, gang signs or colors and similar bases for reasonable suspicion.  Another likely change will be “community policing,” whereby cops are taken out of their patrol cars and put on their feet, getting to know the area and its people, who the troublemakers are, who bears watching and so forth.  It works in most places where it was tried.  I don’t place much credence in fears of a return to the crime-ridden 1970s and ‘80s; New Yorkers simply won’t allow it.  For example, before Mayor Giuliani took office, “squeegee men” would hang out at key intersections offering to wash motorists’ windshields for a fee and harassing them if they declined.  Giuliani cleared them out.  During Bloomberg’s administration they tried to make a comeback.  The news made headlines in the tabloids, and the next day the squeegee men were gone.  We like our safe, people-friendly city and no official who values his political hide will allow a return to the bad old days.

 

תכלה שנה וקללותיה.  תחל שנה וברכותיה.

May the old year with its curses end, and a new year with its blessings begin.

 

Orthodox Tumult Over the Internet

    In the past two months the Orthodox community in New York went “meshuga” [crazy] over the Internet.  The usual suspects had been busy for a number of years manufacturing a problem not unlike the problem they manufactured over television when it was introduced in the 1950s.  Posters went up in Jewish neighborhoods, signed by a slew of prominent haredi rabbis (we still called them khnyocks) warning us of the terrible dangers of television and forbidding the presence of the new medium in our homes.  Even today on occasion those posters go up, and rabbis attempt to purge Orthodox homes of television.  Some families possess “closet TVs,” that are hidden away when haredi guests or, worse, spies for yeshivot which the children attend, visit.  Some yeshivot to this day threaten to expel children whose homes contain a TV.

   But these people are much more worked up over the internet than they ever were over television.  The internet is portrayed as a Trojan horse that will sneak foreign ideas into our camp and irreparably contaminate it.  The rabbis making that argument usually do not use the term “Trojan horse” since they never studied Greek mythology and don’t know a Trojan horse from that other “Trojan,” or how the two are related.  A while ago they formed a group called “Va’ad ha-kehillot l’tohar ha-mahane” (Conference of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) to combat the perceived dangers of the Internet.  As with television two generations ago, some communities attempted to forbid Jewish families from owning computers, certainly computers that were hooked up to the internet.  The big stick they would wield was a threat to expel their children from yeshiva.  But the internet proved too essential to ban.  Today few people can make a living or keep up in their fields without it.  For instance, scientists can now, with a few clicks of a mouse, access material for which I had to spend hours in the library searching the Biological Abstracts 30 years ago when I was researching my doctoral thesis.  Physicians store their patients’ medical records electronically, on their office computers, thereby reducing the likelihood of catastrophic medical errors.  Questions about a diagnosis?  Search a website to review what is known.  Since the internet has become a necessity for almost all of us in just one generation, the rabbis decided to devise ways to keep people, especially children, from accessing “inappropriate material.”   Of course, and contrary to what these rabbis would wish, we are not a monolithic community and we differ widely on what constitutes “inappropriate material.”  Some in the haredi community are experts in information technology (IT), which they could not have studied without access to the internet.  They would devise “internet filters,” that would keep the forbidden material out of our homes.  The Va’ad rented Citi Field, the stadium in Queens where the New York Mets play baseball, for a mass communal rally resembling a revival meeting, where various “gedolim” would address the crowd on the terrible dangers presented by the internet.  God knows how much money that could have been used for urgent communal necessities like paying yeshiva teachers on time and educating children about the dangers of sexual abuse, was squandered for this meeting.  They did fill the stadium, in part by coercing parents of yeshiva children to purchase tickets for the whole “mishpoche” [family], at least the men and boys.  If anything good came out of this rally, it was that some of these children were seeing a stadium for the first time.  As it turned out, the rally was long on fear-mongering and short on practical “solutions.”  Those would be offered community by community.  Midwood (haredim still insist on calling Midwood “Flatbush,” though they wouldn’t set foot in most of Flatbush for fear of their black shadows) had its own rally in an Aguda synagogue not far from where I live.

   I have a confession to make here.  My family was one of the last in Midwood to get a computer and get wired to the internet.  We tend to lag behind in adopting technology; we were one of the last to get a color TV and we didn’t have a VCR until it was about to be replaced by DVD.   A relative of mine, at the time married to a haredi man,  asked me if I had a computer.  I replied in the affirmative.  Do you have the internet?  Again, yes, of course.  I would not deprive my children of such a powerful research tool and place them at a competitive disadvantage relative to their peers both now and later in life.  She couldn’t believe her ears.  The internet was so dangerous; do you know what your children can see with it?  I had an idea – the kind of stuff we used to access in magazines like Playboy secreted in our rooms or even under the floorboards of yeshiva bathrooms.  Adolescents have a healthy curiosity about such things, always have, always will.  Maybe the Rambam’s Moreh Nevukhim, for which our kids might be zokhe to be expelled from yeshiva.  Really now, the internet is merely a tool.  A very powerful one to be sure, which, like any tool, can be misused and abused.  Matches are used by arsonists to start fires.  I don’t see anyone trying to ban matches.  We just do our best to catch and prosecute arsonists, and accept some arson as the cost of being able to use fire constructively (one of the developments that set our ancestors on the path to becoming human, but what would haredi rabbis know about that).  And by the time I acquired the tool in the mid-1990s, technology was available to prevent most of the “arson.”  AOL parental controls were more than adequate.  If anything, they were too strict.  All filtering suffers from the trade-off of blocking good   material along with bad.  How do you block "sex" without blocking "sexually transmitted diseases, how do you block "breast" without blocking "breast cancer," and so forth.  I had to ask AOL  to unblock The History Channel so that my son could use it for a school project.  The sky did not fall, and, praise God, both my children turned out fine, thank you.

   The rally in the Aguda synagogue reportedly (I did not attend it, or the one in Citi Field) featured all sorts of filtering technology, as well as spyware that allows parents to monitor their children’s every keystroke if they so desire.  I preferred to trust my children’s judgment and respect their privacy, telling them to close the browser if they see anything that makes them feel uncomfortable and assuring them that if they needed my advice I was always available.  Most of our kids are a lot more tech-savvy than we are; why challenge them to a cyberwar that most of us cannot possibly win?  Another, more pernicious twist was a filter for which a third party had the password and we would not, and spyware that sent all our online activity to a third party.  Supposedly we were more likely to stay on the straight and narrow if someone we knew was privy to our keystrokes.  Well, I have news for them.  I am a dyed-in-the-wool, liberty-or-death American.  I am also an adult, and I refuse to be treated like a child by Aguda rabbis and their camp followers.  My home is my castle.  The world’s knowledge is welcome inside.  Haredi threats and tyranny are not.

   Actually, as soon as I became aware of the anti-Slifkin posters going up, the blinders came off.  It’s been a while since I gave a rat’s ass about Aguda and its Mo’etzet Gedolei Torah.  Slifkingate, you see, is not going away.

Mayhem in Midwood

Last Friday, residents of Ocean Parkway between Avenues I and J in the Midwood section of Brooklyn were awakened before dawn by sirens and the sound of burning cars. Vandals had set three automobiles afire, apparently by placing gasoline-soaked rags under them and igniting the rags. Swastikas, "KKK" and anti-Semitic slogans were scrawled on the sidewalk as well. This occurred the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous pogrom in Germany that presaged the Holocaust; authorities believe it was not a coincidence. This afternoon, it was discovered that vandals defaced a sign at the Avenue J subway station, renaming it "Avenue Jew."






















Torched cars along Ocean Parkway



























Sign at subway station, defaced to read "Avenue Jew"






















Two days ago was the Yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane hy"d. When attacks like these happened 40 years ago, he knew what to do and didn't hesitate to do it. Young, strong, tough members of the Jewish Defense League would fan out over the neighborhood beat up anybody they caught attacking Jews and Jewish property. The language of Eisav is the only language these goons understand. We will never be comfortable with it, I hope, but sometimes we have to "speak" it. The police promised to do what they can, but they cannot be everywhere at once, and their numbers are sharply curtailed because of the bad economy. Thank God, nobody was hurt in these incidents, except Holocaust survivors who probably suffered severe emotional trauma at the sight of swastikas on the sidewalk. These were crimes against property, which the police usually assign low priority. Murders, rapes, armed robberies and such get first dibs on the limited resources of law enforcement.



Here is what we can do:

1. If you're strong, take care of yourself and stay strong. If you're not strong, get strong. We know how; we're just lazy or we have our priorities screwed up thanks to two millenia of that crime against nature known as galut.

2. No Jew has any business smoking. It is a one way ticket to sickness, weakness, a miserable life and an early death.

3. Be alert, but follow your normal routine. Show no weakness and no fear. Walk with your head held high, and your hat (black or otherwise), kippa sruga or whatever securely on it. The people who do these dirty deeds want to instill fear in us. Let's instill a little fear in them. Don't be the rasha, the wicked son who lives in the generation of redemption but refuses to be redeemed.

May we all live to see the redemption come to its glorious conclusion.

Amalek Comes to Itamar

Last Shabbat at Itamar, a Jewish settlement near Shekhem (aka Nablus), there took place a horrific, stomach-turning multiple murder, particularly brutal even by Arab standards. Arabs burst into the Fogel family home at night and stabbed three children, the youngest only three months old, and their parents as they slept. One child was stabbed through the heart; another had his throat slashed. A daughter who was outside at the time returned home to the bloody scene. The perpetrators escaped and, as of this writing, are still at large. The Fogel family released several pictures of the bodies so that we could grasp the true horror of the deed.



Click here (WARNING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH)



As always, the mainstream media are babbling about a "cycle of violence," "illegal settlements" and such. I don't recall Israelis ever sneaking into an Arab village and murdering little children in cold blood, but for Arabs it's their stock in trade. The question now is: Where do we go from here? The counsels of surrender would tell us that the Fogels, and all the other halutzim (the only ones left!) would have been safer behind the Green Line. And their forebears would have been safer going to America instead of Eretz Yisrael, which the Gentiles preferred to call Palestine. And the Jews would have been safer staying in Egypt than traversing the wilderness and then taking on seven hostile nations (six if the Girgashi left on their own) to claim their patrimony. As if the territory behind the Green Line was ever safe from terrorist attack - anybody remember the seder in Natanya, Sbarros, the Dolphinarium, ad infinitum ad nauseam? As if Israel was safe when there were no "occupied territories." Israelis woke up on June 5, 1967 and decided to go to war for the fun of it - right?

This Shabbat is Shabbat Zakhor, when we remember the cowardly attack of Amalek on the Jews coming out of Egypt. They were not after booty in the manner of all Bedouin tribes; the booty would have been up front, well guarded. They went after the weak and the tired in the rear. Their motive was hate, and their objective was simply to kill Jews. Today's Arabs are Amalek's ideological descendants. They hate us simply because we are Jews, and - Kahane was right - they will not accept an Israel of any shape or size. Remember that - and remember what Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook taught us about the Green Line. It has no halakhic significance. Eretz Yisrael was deeded to us by God and we dare not surrender a square centimeter of it once it comes into our possession. What's more - the Green Line has no legal significance either. It was never a border, only a concatenation of armistice lines. Once the armistice was broken in 1967, the lines became null and void, with the possible exception of the one with Lebanon.

Zakhor. If we leave out the vav of the holam, it can be read zakhar, male. As the Torah predicted, in the exile we had our manhood sucked out of us. We ran from our enemies, but they always caught up with us. We were a people bereft of strength and courage. We are back on our own land now. The ge'ula is already in progress. We are reclaiming our manhood with a holy vengeance. We can hold on to Itamar, and all the Itamars already on the ground, and all that will spring up in the future - and we will. The residents of Itamar already gave us - and our enemies - their answer. They celebrated a wedding yesterday, as if the attack had not taken place. And they celebrated it in Shekhem, at the tomb of Yosef (Josh 24:32), with special permission of the army, since the tomb of Yosef was closed to Jews since the second intifada. Shekhem means "shoulder" - symbol of manly strength. Several years ago I took my strong shoulders to Yerushalayim's Sha'ar Shekhem, stopped at the Young Israel synagogue, and continued on the straight path to the kotel. Before I'm a lot older, please God, I hope to take those broad shoulders of mine to the real Shekhem.

Itamar residents celebrate their wedding in Shekhem

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Okay fellaz, it's my favorite time of year. SUMMER! And it's a hot one. I'm a hot weather nut; sue me. I'm not walking around in a haze of depression. My body, mind and spirit are open to the sensual pleasures of the season. The simple pleasures that you don't experience in your air conditioned room. The feel of the wind against your chest. The sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. The sight of people in parks and playgrounds, all sizes and colors, having fun. The feel of my chest heaving and muscles pumping on a run, of sunshine on my shoulders, of my body glistening with sweat. The ethereal spiritual experience of davening minha in Prospect Park, dressed in running clothes, surrounded by natural beauty and children at play. Rav Nachman of Bratslav [Bratislava, Slovakia] used to leave town to daven in natural settings; maybe he knew something that today's uptight gedolim don't.



You can't run in Brooklyn without straying out of your immediate neighborhood, in my case Midwood. Go to the north and east (Crown Heights, Prospect Park, Brownsville, East New York) or south (Coney Island) and you see a commodity that is increasingly rare in Midwood - real men. Men who respect themselves enough to take care of themselves. Men who are strong and vital. Men like the one you see here are not at all unusual outside the frum community. They refresh my soul, and provide a needed antidote to the ever-increasing number of poor excuses of men I see in shul, men with fat bellies that resemble those of pregnant women. Call me a Hellenist, but these people offend my esthetic sensibilities and, along with the building being overcooled, sabotage the experience of tefilla. In my peregrinations outside the frum community I see men after my own heart; they enjoy the season and are not above having a little fun. And guess how many times I was physically attacked or threatened by any of them? Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. We pass each other and no words need be spoken. A wink, a nod, a gesture communicates the message. We belong to the fraternity of the fit, the brotherhood of real men. We're better than all those weaklings cooped up in their air conditioned rooms letting life pass them by.







And yet I'm surrounded, as I never am in the bleak winter, by people whining and kvetching. Oh, it's soooooo hot. It's boiling. It's gross. And the government chimes in with its "heat advisories." Let the temperature break 90 F and the public health authorities are telling people to stay inside with the air conditioner, don't go out, don't God forbid do anything strenuous. This in a society where more than half of all people, children included, are overweight or obese; I suppose the fat pigs outside the frum community heed these warnings and stay indoors when the weather gets hot. When you're writing heat advisories for the majority in New York, you're writing them for the fat, the weak and the self-pampered. So let me take a stab at writing a heat advisory for strong, fit men - and any females who actually use their bodies instead of merely inhabiting them (I think of them as "honorary men").





1. Stay away from air conditioning as much as possible, except on fast days when you can't drink. In about two weeks you will acclimatize to the heat and actually feel cold in temperatures you consider warm in the winter. Our ancestors made their living chasing down big game on foot in a tropical climate; our genes have not changed much since then. Going in and out of air conditioned surroundings confuses the brain; it doesn't know what temperature regime to adjust to.


2. Hydration, hydration and hydration. You need water, and also salts (sodium and potassium) to replace what you lose in sweat. Carry money on your runs so you can stop in a convenience store and get something to drink. Powerade and now Gatorade are certified by the Orthodox Union.


3. Sweat is not ucky, yucky and gross. It's the precious gift that nature and nature's God gave us to cool our bodies in hot weather. If you're a kohen in the Beit Hamikdash sweat is a bad thing (Ezekiel 44:18); otherwise it's just fine, thank you. Expose as much skin as you dare; the more surface area for sweat to evaporate from, the better. If you should stop sweating during a run, that is cause for concern.


4. Take it easy in high humidity since humid air impedes evaporation of sweat, but don't retire to your room unless you're feeling really bad. Just go slower and shorter.


5. Monitor your body. Pay attention to the color and volume of your urine. Copious amounts of clear or pale yellow urine means you're okay, just keep drinking. Scant and deep yellow urine means you're dehydrated; drink plenty and slow down. Every so often, taste your sweat; just lick a fresh drop from your shoulder or above your lip. If it tastes salty, slow down, have a sports drink and/or eat a salty snack. You might find yourself craving potato chips. If you're on a low salt diet consult your physician, preferably an athletic one. If your sweat does not taste salty- good news! You're acclimatized! A hormone called aldosterone kicked in, and it's keeping the sodium in your blood where it belongs. It's also washing away potassium, so drink some orange juice (o.j. on ice is one of the simple pleasures of the season) and/or eat a banana when you get home. If you're sweating profusely and feeling okay, it's all right to push yourself a little.


6. Use sunscreen but don't obsess over it. When I was a kid suntan lotion had SPF numbers of 4 to 8; anything over 15 was considered overkill. Unless your skin is extremely fair, melanocytes (cells containing dark pigment) will rise to the surface and protect you, but blocking out the sun completely blocks the signal for this response to kick in.


7. If you feel dizzy, lightheaded or cold (!), or you notice that you stopped sweating, do not push yourself. Stop running (or other vigorous activity), seek shade (or air conditioning) and drink lots of fluid. If you don't feel better in a few minutes, seek medical attention. If you do feel better, call it a day and take it easy the next day.


8. When you get home, drink l'chaim on a sports drink and enjoy a cool shower. Let yourself go. Whoop and holler if you feel like it. Revel in the irony. Savor it was you would good wine. You've earned it.


All Jews to the showers!

YEEEEE-HAW!




9. Seek the company of other athletes and avoid that of whiners and kvetches. They just make others as miserable as they are. You deserve to get every last bit of enjoyment out of the summer. It does not last nearly long enough in these parts.

10. Repeat after me: SOFT LIVING NEVER DID ANY MAN OR ANY NATION ANY GOOD!

Stonewall means fight!

For New Yorkers and most Americans of a certain age who aren't living in a cave, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village represents the struggle of gay Americans for basic human rights other Americans have long taken for granted. It all began 40 years ago in June. Gay Americans, even in a sophisticated and cosmopolitan place like New York City, lived closeted lives of constant fear. They got together in gay bars that were connected with organized crime and were constantly raided by police, who would rough up and arrest patrons. The Stonewall was one such bar, and was routinely raided one evening in late June 1969, only this time it would not be routine. The patrons decided they had had enough. They resisted, sparking three nights of confrontations between young gay men and the police. I'm deliberately not calling them riots, because they were very mild compared to the racial rioting that was tearing American cities apart in the late '60s. One thing led to another, and here we are today.



I recently ran by the Stonewall Inn. For me it represents a piece of my city's history and a piece of Americana. You don't have to be gay to appreciate the universal struggle for human rights. It resonates with me as an American and more so as a Jew because of our history of being denied the most basic human rights in unhappy lands of persecution. When one man's rights are taken away, all men are diminished. I'm not talking about changing the definition of marriage now - though who would have dreamed 40 years ago that we as a country would be debating that today? I'm talking about the right to live anywhere one can afford, to hold a job whose duties one can perform, to be served in a place of public accommodation, and the like. I'm talking about the right not to have to live a lie - whether that means going to the company picnic with a kippa on one's head or with one's gay partner (or both - click here!). Above all, I am talking about the right to walk the streets in safety, without fear of being set upon and beaten because some thugs perceive you, rightly or wrongly, as gay, black, Jewish or whatever. Both gays and Orthodox Jews suffered from a stereotype as sissies (or, to quote R. Meir Kahane hy"d, patsies) who can be physically attacked and beaten with impunity. Many of my friends were beaten on the street growing up identifiably Jewish in the '60s, though praise God that changed in the aftermath of the Six Day War. And it did not change because of the goodness of thugs' hearts. It changed because the Israeli army and air force showed the world another image of the Jew, that of a strong Jew able and willing to stand up for himself. And that is what Stonewall did for gays. One Matthew Shepard is one too many. And the solution for gays is the same as it was for us Jews - an ability and willingness to teach hoodlums a lesson with Jewish or gay fists.

Groundhog Day

It occurs each year on February 2. Its origins seem to be in a relatively minor Christian observance, but as far as I know only in America is any big deal made over it. Supposedly, the groundhog (a small burrowing mammal) emerges from its burrow, looks around and goes back in. If it sees its shadow there will be an early spring, and if it does not there will be six more weeks of winter weather. Or maybe the other way around. The whole story is probably apocryphal, and the Torah takes a dim view of trying to tell the future by such means (see Dvarim 18:10,11). But that's beside the point. The legend, if that's what it is, expresses another idea much better than ordinary prose can (ha-meivin yavin). I AM SICK OF WINTER. SICK SICK SICK. I am sick of bundling up like an Eskimo whenever I go outside. I am sick of slip-sliding on the sidewalks and streets; I am a runner, not an ice skater. I am sick of the thought of becoming an invalid if I fall and break something, however unlikely since my male bones are not made out of peanut brittle (barukh shelo asani isha). I am sick of not knowing each day if my wife will make it home from work with her ankle in one piece (I know, the spouses of police officers, firefighters and soldiers don't know if their loved ones will make it home alive). I am sick of looking at ugly sooty snow on the ground. I am sick of either being cold in my own house or paying through my nose (and burning precious fossil fuel) to keep warm. I am sick of the teaser snowfalls we've been getting, not enough to cancel work or school but enough to send me out to shovel when I'd rather be doing other things. I am strong and healthy barukh Hashem and I wouldn't mind shoveling snow if I didn't have to do it in the freezing cold. It all must be a Communist plot; for Russians this weather is positively balmy. I know I'm not the only one thoroughly disgusted with winter, though there are people that actually enjoy it, and not only Russians.

Groundhog or no, I don't know what kind of weather we will have beyond four or five days from now. But I hope and pray for an early spring.

Good ban in the works

Our community is cursed with a plethora of nonsensical and self-defeating bans. It is comforting that a good ban is in the works, but it is coming from the secular world and not from our community. I will hazard a guess that many in our community will protest loudly against the proposal of the National Safety Council to ban the use of cell phones by drivers. A number of states including New York have enacted bans on hand-held cell phones, but allow the use of hands-free phones. In New York City this law is poorly enforced, and even better enforcement would not solve the problem. The problem is not the driver's hands; it's her head. A driver talking on the phone is a distracted driver who is not paying attention to the road. Studies have shown that her risk of crashing is comparable to that of a drunk driver. It is only recently that we have really gotten tough on drunks behind the wheel, but many lives have already been saved.
Note my tongue-in-cheek use of the feminine pronoun generically. I was in a car once that nearly crashed because the driver was talking to another lady about the latter's new baby. Her mind was not on the road. At the time I thought that the Saudis were onto something; they do not allow women to drive. Now I know that the problem cuts across the board. It's not just women's idle chitchat; it's also men full of their own self-importance who have the wherewithal to vigorously resist any attempt to encroach on their deadly privilege. I'll grant that cell-phone conversations in cars sometimes really are important: the Chief of Neurosurgery taking a call from his resident about a difficult case, for instance. But I submit that that is just too bad. If your call is so all-fired important that it cannot wait for you to pull over to the side of the road, then hire a chauffeur. You have no business behind the wheel. You're probably not concentrating on your driving even without the phone to distract you. Given my libertarian bent, I am sensitive to nanny-state concerns, but drunk, drugged or distracted drivers endanger not only themselves. They are a menace to their passengers and anybody else with the misfortune to be sharing the road in the immediate vicinity. Thank you, National Safety Council. Consciousness has to be raised and laws have to be passed. No talking on the phone while driving except to call 911, Hatzala or the like. The lives we save may be our own.

Yahrzeit

For Gentiles tomorrow, Tuesday September 23, will be just another day, perhaps marked as the first full day of autumn (in the Northern Hemisphere, spring down under). For us it is 23 Elul, the seventh yahrzeit on our calendar for some 3000 good Americans whose lives were snuffed out by Islamic barbarians who still seek our destruction. A time to reflect on the blessings that accrue to us in a land of freedom, blessings that are not without cost; as President Kennedy said, "The price of freedom is always high and Americans have always paid it." As Rosh Hashana approaches, we must ask ourselves if we made maximum use of the freedom and security that we have in this country, and if we demonstrated the appropriate hakarat hatov for the brave men and women who keep it free. If you see a soldier, police officer or firefighter, take the time to make him or her feel appreciated. Observe basic safety with all the candles, hot stoves and such that will be in use during the coming holidays. Our firefighters and Hatzalah volunteers work hard enough; they don't need extra business and they do deserve to spend time with their own families.

אל מלא רחמים שוכן במרומים המצא מנוחה נכונה תחת כנפי השכינה במעלות קדושים וטהורים כזוהר הרקיע מזהירים לנשמות אלפי אנשים נשים וטף שנהרגו ושנשחטו ושנחנקו ושנשרפו ושנקברו חיים על ידי הערבים הרוצחים ימח שמם בעבור שאנחנו מתפללים בעד הזכרת נשמתם בגן עדן תהא מנוחתם לכן בעל הרחמים יסתירם בסתר כנפיו לעולמים ויצרור בצרור החיים את נשמתם ה' הוא נחלתם וינוחו בשלום על משכבם ונאמר אמן.