Tag: mussar

Rabbosai It’s Ellul

I used to like mussar, the self improvement stuff that gets you off your feet and makes you realize you’ve been a real shitty person your entire life. Great, make me feel like crap for having a short temper, not…

BT Mussar is an abomination

I can’t think of anything much worse than having a newly indoctrinated Baal Teshuva giving you mussar. As if several beautiful and inspiring shabbos meals, followed by some Aish discovery brainwashing gave them the right to rebuke me, don’t they…

Rabosai it’s Elul!!!

I thought when I left yeshiva I would never have to hear those words screamed at me again, yet every week for the entire Elul (and during the week too if I make it to shul) I’ve been getting Elul…

The mussar of hardcore porn

My friend Leah sent me this wonderful new article in GQ magazine by Shalom Auslander. It’s about his obsession with hardcore porn and the guilt he feels about watching and getting turned on by other people’s pain, embarrassment and whatever…

Make Love Not Porn

Porn is quite fascinating to me, not that I ever watched a whole movie before – but the few times that I was not able to be kovesh my yetzer and have stumbled I have always been curious to know…

Don’t think, Don’t feel, Don’t ask

Gone are the days where the Chassidic tales were understood though the lens of Martin Buber’s classic folktales.  Most people understood these fables were Buber’s romanticisms of Eastern European folk heroes.  And somehow things evolved into a new type of story: a fusion…

Shabbos in San Jose

The Rabbi was yeshivish, clearly so because he used words that most of the shul didn’t understand, caught himself, and then said the English translation afterwards. My host said he was a YU guy, but I couldn’t see it. Was…