I have come to realize that the gay community at large is a curiosity to me. No, I am not gay nor do I have any interest in being gay, but just like the Chassidic community intrigues me so does the gay community. It may have something to do with the fact that I will never actually be a part of either community as a full fledged member, or the fact that their looks and practices hold some sort of mystique. Whatever it may be, San Francisco is very gay, in a good way.

I hopped off my bike to have a closer look at The Castro section of San Francisco and suddenly everything struck me as gay. Rainbow flags hanging from the lampposts fluttered in the gentle breeze as I walked my bike down Castro Street, and I immediately began staring at people. I felt like I was in Mea Shearim in Israel, where I would walk and just stare at all the people as if it were the first time I was seeing their type. In Castro, I did the same thing because everyone seemed to become super exotic and interesting.

A poster for an event called Battle of Bulges made me laugh out loud, as I read the fine print that stated you could win $100 for the biggest bulge. Then I passed a store called Hot Cookie, which had skimpy underwear with hot cookie printed on the flies. I passed by a restaurant called The Sausage Factory and wondered if my mind was making all of these things into innuendo, or the names were actually intentionally chosen because of the locale. I looked at the menu and I started laughing to myself as I read sausage and meatballs.

I saw a butch lesbian with a green Mohawk wearing a leather vest. I saw a man with a handlebar mustache holding hands with a guy in a kilt. I saw a skinny little guy who walked like a girl and I wondered if he ever had trouble maintaining that act, or was it even an act? I noticed a guy that could have been a chabad Rabbi, had he not been wearing baggy jeans and a t-shirt. I saw a lot of men with facial hair. Though,  wait, in retrospect, maybe they weren’t even males.

I noticed that most of the men walking around were manly men. Where were all the femmes? Maybe the femmes all were working in their white collar jobs, or maybe pink collar is what they call it in the gay community, and maybe all the “bears” (manly men) were roaming the Castro at 3 o’clock on a Monday afternoon. Where were all the stereotypical gay folk, the guys in tight jeans with nicely groomed hair and wing tipped shoes. Why did everyone have a mustache?

No one gave me a second glance and I began to think that I was not good looking enough for these men. Maybe they could tell I was straight — even though I was wearing a dirty yellow shirt and spandex pants. Then again, no one looked gay (whatever that means) but almost everyone looked bizarre and the lack of women on the street, as well as the nail salon being full of men, could have been a clue. But still this was San Francisco and everyone looks weird in SF.

• I had my first missed connection yesterday
• The Mission Minyan: If Orthodox and Egalitarian were possible

Jewish Ethics and the Internet: How the Internet is Changing Human Relationships

Now, I know that many of you reading this aren’t going to be anywhere near San Francisco this Thursday night, but if you do know someone that will be, maybe you can pass on the information below to someone you know in the area that may interested.

Speakers

Deborah Schultz has been inventing and innovating for over 15 years in emerging technologies – where people, technology and media intersect.

David Pelcovitz, Ph.D. teaches Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education in Manhattan and serves as special assistant to the president of Yeshiva. He is a world renowned psychologist and speaker.

Auren Hoffman is CEO of Rapleaf, a social data provider that helps companies better understand their consumers.Rapleaf currently has social data about 375+ million consumers worldwide.

Heshy Fried is the creator of FrumSatire.net, one of the largest orthodox Jewish blogs with 2500 daily readers. He has built an active Jewish community online through blogging social networking and forums.

Del Harvey is the Director of Trust and Safety at Twitter. Harvey works to define policy and to ensure user safety in the challenging realm of modern social media.  Prior to joining Twitter, she spent five years as the law enforcement liaison for a 501(c)3 non-profit charity, working with agencies ranging from local police departments to the FBI, US Marshals, and the Secret Service.  She also developed a website to help preteens and teenagers deal with such issues as cyberbullying, stalking, and online sexual harrassment and another website to help women in abusive relationships find help resources.

Bruce K. Taragin has 17 years experience as a venture capital investor, entrepreneur, technology investment banker and corporate attorney.  Prior to joining Blumberg Capital in 1998, Bruce co-founded and held several senior management positions within technology companies including Charles River Computers. Bruce also structured and managed early-stage technology transactions at Hambrecht & Quist, Mayer Brown & Platt and Bankers Trust Company. A native of New York, Bruce earned his BA in Finance and Communications, cum laude, from Yeshiva University, and his MBA and JD from Fordham University. Bruce serves as a member or observer on the Board of Directors of DoubleVerify, CaseStack, Insightix, LiteScape, Correlix, Nolio, Revionics and Sweepery. He also serves on the board and the investment monitoring committee of the Jewish Community Foundation of Northern California

Specific topics

Deborah Schultz: Has the internet changed the nature of relationships and community? Everything you need to know you can learn from Synagogue

Dr. David Pelcovitz: How the internet is changing Jewish life: Are we aware of all of the implications?

Panel Discussion: The Panel Discussion will discuss these issues and more:

1. Do internet companies think about the ethical implications of the technology they are creating?

2. Is the internet companies’ job to just create the technology and it’s the users’ job to determine what are ethical uses, or the companies have a responsibility as well?

3. What are the implications of the blurring between public and private life?

4. The Michael Phelps/Tiger Woods Issue: How does the quick proliferation and permanence of pictures, audio and video going to affect people’s reputations. Is repentance and salvaging one’s reputation now much more difficult?

5. What are the implications of high school and college students posting pictures and statements online that will later affect their reputations and employment possibilities.

6. Status Updates and Tweets: Does the constant update of our lives to others make us more narcissistic?

7. Avatars and Anonymity: Are people becoming less socially adept and more cowardly with the ability to hide behind avatars and anonymous screen names?

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I heard there’s a lot of hullabaloo around here about why people “go off the derech”, and anger, and backgrounds, and all kinds of naarishkeit.

Fine. Do what you’ve got to do.

Now, normally, I’d stay out of this kind of thing- but I was talking to Heshy the other day, trying to convince him that he needs me to cooperate with him on a certain project, and he asked me if I wanted to write a piece about why I went off the derech. So of course I said yes.

I’m not dumb.

It’s just that it sounds so juvenile- “off the derech”. I’m not sure I’ve heard that term used on anybody over the age of twenty. Nobody says it about me except for Heshy, and he only does it because he needs to slap a label on everybody. Kids go off the derech, not adults. Adults are free to make their own choices without some condescending putz leaning over their shoulder, reminding them that there is a derech in the first place. Right?

So it’s understandable why mature people who have worked hard to arrive at their philosophical conclusions take offense at being compared to rebellious teenagers who want to try Burger King. Of course, I’d have distanced myself from the “off the derech” terminology long ago, but that’s just me.

Having said that, let me get to my main point: I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t go off the derech. The perks are fucking incredible, if you do it right. The thing is, you can’t go too far. If you go too far, you’ll just be a regular sheigetz, and that’s no fun either. You have to go just far enough, and if you’re not full of angst and spite and all those other turbulent teen-agey emotions, you might land somewhere near me. I grew up yeshivish, and so I culturally identify as a frum Jew. Who cares if I don’t believe? My drivers license has the Jewiest name around, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I live smack in the middle of one of the biggest frum communities in the country. Gevaltig!

Alright, I’m an apikorus, big deal. Ninety percent of the frum people I know are sensible enough not to hold that against me. “Why are you doing this,” they’ll ask me, “it’s because you want to go eat bacon and shrimps?” Frum people always call them “shrimps”. And they always act surprised when I tell them that I don’t eat bacon or shrimps. I’ll eat a shtikele milchig treif, maybe, but nothing hardcore. Odds are, some of the families at the local Young Israel do the same thing.

Of course, you and I both know that eating milchig treif is probably just as bad as eating bacon and shrimps- if not because the cheese contains rennet, then because the keilim are treif, and the same pan that’s used for the bacon is used for your pasta. I guess it could be argued that the bacon is batul b’shishim, but really, you don’t have to be in the restaurant in the first place, so that might be a stretch.

Oh, here’s another one they ask me: “What, so you want to go out to the club on Friday night? Is that what this is about?” I don’t go to the club on Friday night. I don’t go anywhere. I love Shabbos. Most of the time my friends and I have nice, big, leisurely meals, get drunk, and play some sort of board or card games. The only difference is that I can write down my scrabble score instead of using the pages of a book like a schmuck. I can also find out playoff scores on Shabbos, surf the internet, or watch a movie on those never-ending summer afternoons. But go to the club? Never. It’s not Shabbosdik.

So the frummies think I have some sort of pintele Yid.

Maybe they’re right. Who knows?

The main thing is that I can do whatever I want to, and they still love me. They’re convinced I have potential. And you know what? They’re the greatest people I know. I get free Shabbos meals, and people fawn over me, and listen to what I have to say- they even listen to my kefirah if I do it respectfully enough- and when I make a good point, they nod, and then continue to try and make a kiddush Hashem, hoping that their hashpa’ah will cause me to eventually be chozer b’teshuva.

Keep up the good work, guys- I can’t say it’s not working!

And here’s the kicker- I’m sending my kids to yeshiva. And not just any yeshivos, but good ones. They don’t have to go to Philly- but Scranton would be fabulous. Such menschen come out of that place.

Anyway.

I’m sending them to school to get the Jewish education that they deserve. They deserve to know who they are and where they come from. They deserve to be able to rightfully identify as Jews, unlike the poor souls who sat there scratching their heads and wondering why Hitler was sending them to die in the camps. My kids deserve to speak just enough Yiddish to seem authentic, like me.

Look- if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m not angry. Never was. If you’re going off the derech because you’re angry, you’re making a mistake, because you probably still believe.

Now, I’m not gonna expound on the dozens of scientific and sociological facts that nudged me towards my apikorsus. I’m just going to tell you that I find it all a little hard to believe- you know, the miracles, and wonders, and prophecies and all. And if you want to go ahead and believe that, gezunter heit.

I’m the kind of guy who’s probably gonna make peace with the Palestinians in the end (sorry to stir up that pot), and I’ll keep on having my cake and eating it too over here on the periphery of the frum community, and I’ll probably find the perfect Beis Yaakov girl who’s just going off the derech, and we’ll raise a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael, and we’ll send our kids to yeshiva, and she won’t refuse me blowjobs because she won’t be afraid of spilling seed. And for now, I’ll just keep on taking you guys up on those generous Shabbos invitations.

So, to sum up: going off the derech = free food.

You know, I kind of like the term “going off the derech”. I think I might start using it more often.

• Off the Derech: Where are they now?
• Are you undercover off the derech?
• The high cost of yeshiva tuition sucks…

Srugim was a really popular show in Israel that was about the modern orthodox singles scene of Jerusalem, and now you can watch it on the Jewish Channel – it looks super interesting and very funny, albeit a bit complicated. Finally someone is starting to realize that hava nagila and manishevetz just won’t cut it anymore.

• Non-generic Jewish sects
• Jew In The City: Making Orthodox Judaism look normal
• Saw You At Sinai adds categories to combat singles identity crisis

Until the recent press release from Rabbi Yehuda Levin announcing that the gays were the cause of the Haiti Earthquake, no one had heard of him or his organization the Rabbinical Alliance of America. In response to RAA and Agudath Israel getting all the media attention for announcing the reasons for the recent earthquake in Haiti, the Rabbinical Council of America, not to be outdone – put out the following list of reasons that they think caused the earthquake in Haiti and if you thought Avi Shafran or Yehuda Levins theories were shocking, you are in for a real shocker.

Other reasons that the Haiti Earthquake may have occurred:

There has been a proliferation of guys wearing blue shirts on shabbos

Frum girls going to colleges other than Touro or Kingsborough

The shidduch crisis

Non-white tablecloths

Just when we thought YU was becoming frum they went and held a Toeva symposium

The framing of Leib Tropper

Tefillin dates

Women who secretly held onto their sheitles made from Indian hair

People who don’t drink kosher water

Women that wear red

Men not wearing black hats of the right size and brand

Girls wearing denim skirts

Guys wearing denim

People that break shabbos because they don’t know how to remove the cholent without cooking it

Chabad

Lipa Schmeltzer concerts

NCSY and their coed kiruv conspiracy

Sheitle hookers

Public embarrassment of frum child molesters

The local UJA’s unwillingness to fund frum organizations

The appointing of yoetzet halacha

Women wearing pants

People eating triangle-k

Men leaving kollel to support themselves when they could do fine with the women slaving day and night

Women’s megillah readings

Kipah srugahs

People who say hallel on yom haatzmaut

People who acknowledge the state of Israel

Cashiers that don’t slam the change down on the counter

Low mechitzas

The Internet and Blogs

All of the actions of the following groups have been proved to directly cause earthquakes and other disasters including the 1906 fire in San Francisco, the destruction of Pompeii and the eruption of Mt. St Helens.

Modern orthodox – because they are posing as frum when they aren’t, don’t be fooled by their white shirts and black velvet – they are imposters

Open Orthodox – since when is orthodoxy open – that sounds oxymoron

Conservative – the only thing they are conservative about is eating milk out and appointing women rabbis

Reform – it’s been known for years that they cause disasters

Egalitarian – women have only had rights for the last 80 years or so, the torah has been around for thousands of years, cease your equality or watch as fellow humans will die in horrible disasters.

• Anti-kiruv comic strip causes Haiti Earthquake
• Lipa Schmeltzer vs. Britney Spears
• You aksed for it: My two cents on the Lipa concert ban!!!

Rabbi Yehuda Levin made this video to get attention and it’s working, it is also a huge Chillul Hashem. Rabbi Yehuda Levin is not the first to claim that homosexuality has lead God to destroy random innocent people. Some of you may remember some Rabbis claiming that Hurricane Katrina was caused because of Immoral behavior.

In the video Rabbi Yehuda Levin claims he is part of the Rabbinical Alliance of America – has anyone heard of this organization. It sounds like the Kennedy Fried Chicken version of the RCA. Rabbi Levin was in the news last wek for speaking at a pro-life rally in Washington.

I understand that most folks in yeshivish communities would agree with most of this video, but I am sure most of them would agree that to make it public, on You Tube no less (you tube commenters are notoriously anti-Semitic and dumber than Vimeo or Metacafe) is completely insane.

Anyone who went to yeshiva knows that what is said at the shabbos table or in the beis, stays in the community. If all of the mussar shmuzim I heard during high school were put on You Tube, a mob would surely fire bomb my yeshiva.

Tropper merely forced a woman to have phone sex and while that is a pretty cruddy thing to do, the outside world doesn’t really look at it as such a bad thing. This guy on the other hand, is basically giving people another reason to hate us and someone better shut him up real quick.

Read his Rabbi Levin’s press release here.

If you want to be funny about it – this may just be his way of coming out of the closet.

Hat Tip Vos Iz Neias

• Rabbi Leib Tropper – finally a frum scandal involving sex
• Lipa Schmeltzer concert causes Haiti Earthquake
• Rabbi in Israel: Returning lost cell phones is assur

We walked in during pisukei d’zimra and there was already a large crowd of people gathered. I took a seat all the way to the right of the room and looked around. A few people said “Good Shabbos“, asked me if I was a cohen or levi and then left me alone to observe.

I was seated in the men’s section. A table with Birnbaum siddurim acted as the mechitza between me and a bunch of women and men sitting together. A woman davened for the amud and I couldn’t help but wonder if they had picked her because of her manly voice (In San Francisco you can never be sure). Let’s put it this way: if I wouldn’t have looked up or around I would have mistaken the minyan for a traditional orthodox one, but it most certainly wasn’t.

Farther to the left, past the mechitza and the group of women in talesim that looked like scarves with the men pretty much looking the same, was another table separating another section of just women – most of whom were wearing skirts and not wearing talesim.

The woman finished her prayers at the amud and a man in white shirt and black pants took the helm for baruch hu. As he let out his first words of shochane ad, I couldn’t help but hear his distinct chassidish accent. He shuckeled mildly and sang beautifully, but his suf’s and oy’s were very blatant. I watched as I wondered if anyone else knew that they had a full fledged tuna beigel in their midst.

Based on my keen observational skills, I could pick up on the few men and women who were brought up orthodox, or were orthodox knowledgeable. I could tell who knew what they were doing instantly based on when people stood up and sat down, and what pose they held during the prayers. The chazzan picked an obscure Carlebach tune for kel adon and everyone sang so beautifully. I was really kind of amazed since most of the other shuls I had visited in the Bay Area were really lacking in their choral abilities, i.e. they sounded more like dead cows than anything else.

While the chazzan sang beautifully, he also paid attention to speediness. He didn’t drag things on and we weren’t standing for ages during kedusha. I wondered what his story was; We were a long way from KJ or Skvere or from wherever else he may have hailed, yet he looked like he could be the model be used for a modern orthodox yeshiva advertisement.

The person leading most of the show looked like he was straight out of the Upper West Side singles scene: good looking, decently dressed and eyes wandering over the women across the tables. (Editor’s Note: Heshy has lost his mind if he thinks one of the defining characteristics of a stereotypical guy out of the UWS is “good looking”) The mechitza situation reminded me of frummy concerts where you can sit separately or with your family. In this case, everyone appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, but still couples seemed to sit together. I wondered if the tables were placed there on purpose to act as mechitzas or it just happened that way.

The women did pesicha and paraded the torah around the room so everyone could kiss it. They set it down and started giving aliyahs out like any regular shul, except that one of the “bimah hocker mistake catcher people” (coined term, copyright pending) was a woman. She was the nicest mistake catcher I’d ever seen. Whenever someone would make a mistake she would whisper the correction very nicely, a strong departure from the traditional way of publicly embarrassing someone who makes a mistake during laining. It was also my first time seeing so many people lain. Every aliyah seemed like it was a different lainer, the men took the first 3 and the last 2 aliyos with women take those in between. Apparently there are sources that say back in the day there weren’t even middle aliyos, so women laining and getting middle aliyos may not actually be a problem – whatever the case may be, it did seem that they were trying to keep things as close to within the parameters of halacha as possible.

The Mission Minyan is known as a partnership minyan. This means that in order for a minyan to be called, they required 10 men and 10 women to be present – which is cool because that means we actually had a minyan. I was wondering what I would have done if they had no halachic minyan but started doing minyan type of stuff — would the brachos be considered livatalas, or taking Gods name in vein? I also wondered how I felt about shaking women’s hands yasher koach – I try not to shake women’s hands unless I have to, because if I am going to break negiah, I might as well save it for the good stuff.

I declined hagba, so I didn’t have to have any awkward shomer negiah moments. I did get to watch in horror as I realized that I was watching a first time gelilah by a woman who was having a heck of time getting the torah cover on the torah. This did nothing to change my longstanding belief that geililah is one of the most embarrassing shul jobs – but not the worst, the worst is when you get stuck holding the first torah.

When announced on various social networks and my website that I was moving to the Bay Area, the first thing that my friends and dedicated readers told me was to check out the Mission Minyan, because I would like it and get some good fodder.

Their Friday night davening attracts many more people, but I enjoyed the Shabbos morning prayers because I got to see the regulars, those who founded and run the minyan and who make it possible. And it’s really different from anything I had ever seen.

I would even venture to say that the Mission Minyan can be categorized as ‘orthodox egalitarian’. The prayers are all in Hebrew, the service is distinctly orthodox and the people who daven for the amud know their stuff. The singing is great and there is no preaching or kiruv going on. The Mission Minyan founders have built a new Jewish community from the ground up. If you attend without meal plans, someone is sure to invite you over. Guests are pounced upon with a friendliness that should be an example for other shuls. There is no rabbi, but the folks that grease the gears make sure to be as welcoming as possible and that combats what is my main pet peeve with regards to going to new shuls as a guest.

While many right wing orthodox folk may scoff at the idea of the Mission Minyan being orthodox, I would challenge them to show me that any of the progressive practices are against halacha, rather than just against the norm. Although I myself can’t relate to women who want a part of rituals they are not commanded to do, I don’t see a problem with it. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why women who don’t keep the rest of the mitzvos seem to want to just do things that the men do – I could understand it if they did all their requirements and then figured out that they want to do extra. Maybe it’s good that women want to do extra, beyond what they are commanded to do – something kinda like a male wearing tzitzis at night.

In my mind, Progressive Orthodoxy or Post Orthodoxy as Gil Student calls it, is changing the image that orthodoxy has for many people. It is opening the hearts of people who would have never stepped foot in an orthodox establishment, so while the Mission Minyan is not orthodox per se, their orthodox style combined with more Egalitarian inclusiveness really brightened up my day, and opened my mind.

• I went to my first Egalitarian minyan and it was interesting
• What exactly are women doing behind the mechitza?
• When the mechitza is too short

There is a little discussion going on over at Off The Derech’s blog about me and who I am. The author of the blog is mad that I referred to off the derech folks as angry (I indicated that I find that many of them are angry at the system – hence, one of the key reasons they went off the derech) in a post I wrote about Boulder Colorado. A  lot of people have it wrong so I felt the need to explain to everyone where exactly I come from and how I grew up. While I am sure some of you think you can judge me and my roots,  even I have no idea how to really categorize myself or my background. This may act as a shortened biographical essay and an attempt to respond to those who wrongly categorize me and for all who read this to understand the context of my writing.

I grew up on the Upper West Side, but, unlike many of the folks that grew up there, my life was not one of privilege. In fact, I would venture to say that we were upper lower class, or lower middle class based on the fact that I never got an allowance, heard my father constantly groaning about not being able to afford things and hearing him say say he would be using some my bar mitzvah presents to pay the caterer. I got a total of $2700 for my bar mitzvah, the highest of any check being $125 and my grandmother from my mom’s side gave me $36 – while the rest of the people I knew were getting in the tens of thousands. It seemed like we were the only people in my neighborhood that couldn’t afford name brand items so we went to places like Conway or random stores in Boro Park.

The reason we lived on the Upper West Side was that we bought the apartment 25 years before the real estate boom of New York City. A reason shared by many people who live in neighborhoods like the UWS and Park Slope in Brooklyn but cannot afford them. I learned early on to be a frugal shopper and what the words “we can’t afford” truly meant.

I paid for all of my own schooling, cars, insurance, health insurance, rent etc…as did my brother.

My mom died when I was 6. They do say that most comedians suffer traumatic event in their youth. I also had a terrible stuttering problem, and a Yiddish name. I went to Manhattan Day School for most of my elementary school career but did brief stints at Bruers, Yeshiva Katannah of Manhattan and Providence Hebrew Day School. I was made fun of during most of my youth. I also hung out with the other bad kids from broken homes, and none of them were religious. I felt like the most religious kid in the world, because we went to shul every shabbos and holiday.

My elementary school education is directly inverse to my family’s religious practice. As stated above, I started out in Breuers, than Yeshiva Katannah, MDS and finally Providence Hebrew Day School – and while each of these schools were less religious than the one before it, my family became increasingly more religious in the years after my mom died. My father started going to shul every day and taking us with him. We stopped eating out at non-kosher places in the city and we began to watch fewer cartoons on Saturday morning.

My brother and I went to coed camps and were never forbidden from bringing girls over or anything in that department. My father was always very anti-separate seating at events like weddings and bar mitzvahs, always ranting about how it was back in the alter heim of Boro Park in the 40s.

Even though we ate non-kosher and watched TV on shabbos, we always considered ourselves religious. Even as late as 11^th grade, I remember driving with my dad up to yeshiva in Rochester and always stopping at this Italian Place we liked in Corning. We only ate milchig there but in my old age I have come to realize that treife French onion soup is most likely has a meat base and pasta sauce usually has meat ground into it. Keep in mind that the irony of the fact that this tradition of ours took place as we were en route to dropping me off at a black hat yeshiva is not lost on me.

I got to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I always remember watching the Smurfs, eating challah with butter and then going to shul. I cannot recall if my father watched TV on shabbos, but on shabbos afternoon when he was learning b’chavrusa, we used to watch Knight Rider, A-Team and Baywatch. I remember wondering what we would do all yuntiff at my cousins homes if we couldn’t watch TV or use electricity.

My father was always an old fashioned one so certain things stuck. We never went to the movies as kids and he instilled in us a love of the outdoors and disdain for television and pop culture in general. My father is the type of guy who takes the scenic route without telling you and makes random stops to look at historic markers — my brother and I are both built the same way. Neither of us owns a TV, watches movies or likes to do indoor activities.

Of course while we weren’t that religious for orthodox people in general, for my neighborhood, we were super religious. Almost all of my friends’ families didn’t do much in the way of shabbos or holidays. But my father forced us to be in shul at certain times, wear tzitzis, put on tefillin — all of that good stuff that kids hate to do. He did run a ” this way or the highway kingdom” but it didn’t lead us to reject what he was selling – we just didn’t start questioning his iron fist until we moved out.

My father’s side of the family is frum all the way back, despite some folks’ presumptions that my parents were BTs. All of his siblings are frum to some degree with his sisters being charedi. We have a very large family and we are direct descendants from Rav Shlomo Ganzfried – so we even rock some yichus.

My mother’s side is a bit more complex. While she grew up religious and attended Bais Yakaov of Detroit, most of  her side of the family is only mildly affiliated. They grew up religious and went their own ways. Like my father’s side, they are all pretty conservative when it comes to politics. Unfortunately, I am not so close with my mom’s side since they mostly live in Michigan. I remember those Styrofoam heads for sheitles when I was a kid, but all of the pictures of me with my mother have her looking like a woman without any of the frum effects.

Are you beginning to understand that my background is a bit strange and doesn’t allow for quick judgments?

Since high school I have always been outspoken. It comes from my father – he is extremely outspoken and couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about him. He’s happy, as long as he has some good Scotch and a gemara. I’m the same – except I need some wooded trail and my bike. We are both easy to please and get along with most crowds.

In high school, I was a good kid. I started getting into spending time alone in the woods and extreme sports and reading. I prided myself on being able to carry on full fledged discussions with adults and having friends much older than me. Besides for having porn – because, let’s face it, JC Penny underwear ads just wont do – I wasn’t too bad in high school. I didn’t do drugs, never smoked a cigarette (still haven’t) and didn’t go to movies. I also showed up on time every day to shachris and wasn’t too into drinking. I wasn’t into my schoolwork and didn’t do well in the hard sciences but I excelled in social sciences and particularly loved economics, history and geography. I wasn’t much of a writer and I hated the thought of public speaking. Prior to high school, I didn’t speak much due to my stuttering problem and I was a terrible student.

Hashkafically, I was never my own person until I broke out of the bubble of yeshiva, though that didn’t happen until I left Rochester and realized that there were more than orthodox Jews out there. I lived with a BT for many years, and several of my best friends in college weren’t Jewish. But it was different being around Jews of all affiliations and opinions.

I am a skeptical cynic, or a cynical skeptic — but, then again, which thinking individual isn’t? So while I maintain my practices to a certain degree I am always trying to figure out exactly what I believe. I have become much more liberal and accepting over the years. I never thought of reform or pluralistic Jews as lesser Jews, but I definitely thought they were wrong and on their way to hell. In my mind, there is no true right way to practice. Everyone has a way and the beauty of Judaism is that everything is gray – there really isn’t black and white.

I started my blog because I had started to enjoy the outlet of writing and it felt cool to have it online – you read the story about that here and there on the site. I think a lot of people don’t really understand me, but humorists are rarely understood. My judgments are all for fun – I sit around and observe and try and figure people out – but, I would never take those judgments into my interpersonal relationships with those people. I don’t talk to someone and treat them a certain way because of who they are. Everyone is treated equally.  As a humorist and conversation starter, I write to provoke thought. If I just wanted to offend, it would be too easy.

There is no way I can please everyone. I learned that a long time ago. No matter what I write, someone will think it’s funny, offensive, terrible, loshon horah, true, false, etc…

Sure, some people think I’m angry but the truth is it’s very hard to get me angry and the people who know and love me think that is one of my virtues. Of course, you may get angry at things I write and that’s fine – I want you to discuss these things. Those of you that are longtime readers understand how I work; I write things for laughs or for discussion – and sometimes to be simply be informative.

• Do you consider shul hopping an acceptable practice?
• Where do you take your dates and how to judge them
• Woodbourne Memories

One of my biggest problems with shidduch dating is the issue of attraction. Guys who go on shidduch dates tend to reject girls after one or two dates because they aren’t attracted to the girl, IE they didn’t find them hot enough to think about marrying. I have heard many guys say that the only thing that gets the girl a second date is if she is hot or not, and this is where my serious issues come in.

You see, I am a firm believer that attraction isn’t an instant thing and that looks can be deceiving. I am a firm believer in letting things take time, but in the world of shidduch dating, time it seems, doesn’t exist. Everything seems rushed, and since everything is focused on the end results, people tend to be thinking about the things about the person they could never live with.

In normal a non shidduch dating atmosphere, things seem to stew a bit longer. People aren’t being asked after the third date if they think this could be the one. People can focus on actually getting to know the person, rather than thinking about what’s next and with regards to attraction – I know that if I were to hang out with a girl I didn’t necessarily find attractive, I can definitely become attracted to her.

The problem with shidduch dating is that you rarely become attracted to someone, because the dating is all for marriage, which gives you no time to hang out without pressure. I have no idea if this pertains to all of you, but since I find myself becoming attracted to girls I don’t necessarily find appealing in the first place, it is an issues for me.

• Would video conference Shidduch Dating work?
• Shidduch Vision: Video conference shidduch dating
• Do you know what a shidduch shabbos is?