Grab Bag
I love the romance of the picture, but the only place I fit into that time is as a street sweeper way in the background... I'm not alone, most of my friend's grandparents were the ones sewing their clothes.
On the subject of clothes: I like wearing suits... Quote: Suits are full of joy. They're the sartorial equivalent of a baby's smile.
Jewschool gets the hat-trick on the recent NYTimes article on the Rubashkin scandal; but I enjoyed Hirhurim's take on the issue more than the "we collectively must atone for their sins" position taken by R. Herzfeld.
All minorities reflexively feel the need to excuse or abandon an offending member in the face of disgust from the majority community; I can remember my small chevra of "brown boys" people in Memphis doing this very same thing when one of us was found guilty for some school-yard offense. But the interesting facet of this case for me is that the liberal and conservative wings of orthodoxy (already a niche within a minority) seem to be taking opposite avenues to placate the masses and themselves. The right wing says, "they were illegals... it's no big deal... why are you picking on us!?!" While at the same time the left wing cries, "Please, we didn't know, they're the bad ones, not us... we can change, I'm so sorry."
Why do we as a group "need to express shame and embarrassment" (line from the op-ed) because someone who happens to have violated both halacha and secular law? The fact that someone eats a cheeseburger in Chicago or cuts someone off on the freeway in Texas doesn't mean that I should run to the nearest non-Jew and say, "I'm so sorry". We already have groups who work for food cleanliness, immigrant law, and kashrut stringency, and they all seen to be "on the case" already. True, the OU isn't taking the lead role in working on the immigration issues; but why should they be, it's not their purview!?! Rather than clothing ourselves in sackcloth and calling for collective guilt, a christian concept if there ever was one that doesn't accomplish much, we should try to strengthen the existing structures that let these people down rather than have kashrut organizations dip their toes into the murky waters of immigration, labor law and OSHA policy.
Don't know where I was going with this... But I think I feel a story coming on.
unpublished Different Derech stuff from "the bad time":
I've been asked before
To make an example of myself
to inspire the uninspired
uplift the fallen,
if you will.
this kli isn't holy enough
and even if it was
I'd rather sit
in the back of the shul
and make the angels quiver
