Dying peacefully or fighting?

NYTIMES

By the time she was 38, Dr. Desiree Pardi had become a leading practitioner in palliative care, one of the fastest-growing fields in medicine, counseling terminally ill patients on their choices.

She preached the gentle gospel of her profession, persuading patients to confront their illnesses and get their affairs in order and, above all, ensuring that their last weeks were not spent in unbearable pain. She was convinced that her own experience as a cancer survivor — the disease was first diagnosed when she was 31 — made her perfect for the job.[...]

Vatican Priest:Criticising Church in abuse cases is like anti-Semitism

NYTimes

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.

The remarks, on the day Christians mark the crucifixion, underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and criticism over how it has handled charges of child molestation against priests in the past, and sought to focus attention on the church as the central victim.[...]

White Shul: Shir HaShirim

This Shabbos afternoon between  6:15 & 7:00  I will be talking about Shir HaShirim at the White Shul in Far Rockaway. I will being discussing the issues of the relationship between physicality and spirituality as well as reality and metaphor.

Child abuser: Jail or therapy?

Cycling & Parkinson's disease

NYTImes

The man had had Parkinson’s disease for 10 years, and it had progressed until he was severely affected. Parkinson’s, a neurological disorder in which some of the brain cells that control movement die, had made him unable to walk. He trembled and could walk only a few steps before falling. He froze in place, his feet feeling as if they were bolted to the floor.

But the man told Dr. Bloem something amazing: he said he was a regular exerciser — a cyclist, in fact — something that should not be possible for patients at his stage of the disease, Dr. Bloem thought.

“He said, ‘Just yesterday I rode my bicycle for 10 kilometers’ — six miles,” Dr. Bloem said. “He said he rides his bicycle for miles and miles every day.” [...]

Tom Kaplan successfully invests in gold

Forbes

This March two of the world's biggest investors became believers in a company with next to no revenues and $352 million in losses over three years. Funds run by billionaires George Soros and John Paulson invested a combined $175 million in NovaGold Resources. Both Soros and Paulson are seriously bullish on gold, but why did they bet on a Vancouver mining company with an unimpressive history?

They were following the lead of Thomas Kaplan, 47, a little-known New York City billionaire investor who thinks gold's bull run is far from over. An Oxford-trained historian, Kaplan believes that the last 40 years, when gold was not the world's reserve currency, were an aberration and that gold will revert to the top store of value as it was for 5,000 years. He means it: Kaplan's family office, Tigris Financial Group, manages close to $2 billion in gold assets. [...]

Politics & Happiness Research

New Yorker

In 1978, a trio of psychologists curious about happiness assembled two groups of subjects. In the first were winners of the Illinois state lottery. These men and women had received jackpots of between fifty thousand and a million dollars. In the second group were victims of devastating accidents. Some had been left paralyzed from the waist down. For the others, paralysis started at the neck.

The researchers asked the members of both groups a battery of questions about their lives. On a scale of “the best and worst things that could happen,” how did the members of the first group rank becoming rich and the second wheelchair-bound? How happy had they been before these events? How about now? How happy did they expect to be in a couple of years? How much pleasure did they take in daily experiences such as talking with a friend, hearing a joke, or reading a magazine? (The lottery winners were also asked how much they enjoyed buying clothes, a question that was omitted in the case of the quadriplegics.) For a control, the psychologists assembled a third group, made up of Illinois residents selected at random from the phone book.[...]

Child abuse: R' Gartner Calling police

The full article is in the current Yeschurun

Child abuse: R' Shafran force payment for therapy

The full article is in the current Yeschurun

Child abuse: Baruch Lebovitz sentencing

Baruch Lebovits Sentencing Put Off Until Monday, April 12 « FRUM FOLLIES by Yerachmiel Lopin

Sentencing of Baruch (Mordechai) Lebovits for eight Class D Felonies of child sexual assault was originally scheduled for Monday, March 29, Erev Pesach. Supporters of both the defendant and the victim requested a postponement because this is a very difficult day to get to a court house with all the necessary work preceding Passover.

I have urged all of you concerned about molesting in our community to write letters to the judge and to show up in the courtroom. If you are sympathetic but have not yet committed to either of these courses of action you have another chance to act.[...]

CNN East Jerusalem neighborhoods

A Pesach story

Shlomo Singer wrote:

As an Assistant Prosecutor in Essex County, New Jersey, I get to see and hear many “interesting” things on a regular basis. Newark, is not a dull city.   However, something happened to me this week which I will remember for years to come.

Felix is a 60ish year old defense attorney. I had the opportunity to prosecute a case against him previously, and I found him to be a pretty good guy- as defense attorneys go. This Monday, I was doing some bail hearings when, lo and behold, Felix shows up.   He motioned to me and said, “I’ve gotta tell you something…”   so I came along, we found an empty courtroom, and Felix told me an amazing story.

“I grew up around Jews,” he started.   When I heard this, I immediately became suspicious.   I’ve spent my whole life being an identifiable Jew.   I’m the guy who people say “shalom” to in the elevators because it makes them feel better.   I’m the guy who has to hear observations from everyone who believes that my Yarmulka is some lighting rod for confessions about religion.

Nonetheless, Felix continued “I grew up on the Lower East Side.”   I had to smile.   When one thinks of the Lower East Side of Manhattan that existed in the 1940’s, one can’t help but smile.   Felix gave a big smile too and, while making motions that made me think that he was giving a closing statement to a jury, said “I’ve got a story for you!” And so it began…

Felix told me that his father immigrated to the US from Puerto Rico in the 1930’s.   When he arrived, like many immigrants, Felix’s dad came by himself with hopes of earning money that would bring his family over to the “ goldenda medina .” However, as his first holiday season approached, pops became lonely.   He missed his family and his wife.; So Felix’s dad did what he could to remind him of his family at the holiday season- he went out and purchased a Christmas tree.   Now, when he got home, he looked around and all he saw was lights. So pops said to himself: “I’ve got to be a real American!” He went out and purchased some lights. Pops felt so happy, he was both reminding himself of his family and being a “real American” at the same time.

Felix’s dad continued this practice with the tree and the lights for the holiday season.   3 years later, a friend came to the apartment during Christmas-time and looked around in horror.   “What the heck are you doing?!” the friend asked. “I’m being a real American!   I have my tree and my lights!” dad answered.   The friend laughed and replied “You fool!   That’s a menorah!”

Felix continued and told me that he has continued on his dad’s tradition of having both a tree and a menorah come holiday time.   This tradition continued to the extent that when he moved to the suburbs, a neighbor asked Felix- who has a most un-Jewish surname- whether he was Jewish.

I knew that there was a point to hearing this story before pesach .   (Aside from the fact that it was funny.) The haggadah tells us “ chayiv adam l’rios es asmo c’ilu hu yatsa mi’mitzayim .”   Translated, “a person is obligated to see oneself as if he left Egypt.”   When we sit down for the seder , do we do all the motions, do we recline, do we hide the afikomen , because our dad did them - like Felix?   Do we just do things because they remind us of prior generations?

Or worse- do we do things because we look out the window and see what the Joneses or Goldsteins are doing - like Felix’s dad?   Do we say, “their seder went until 11pm, I bet we can beat that!” Do we turn Maxwell House or Artscroll into our source of all our pesach customs?

I know that the job of every pulpit rabbi (which I am not) is to take a quasi-hilarious story and to turn it into a serious discussion. I’m guilty!   (How often to you hear a prosecutor say that?)   But, in all reality, please laugh like Felix and I did when he recounted this story.

Realize what some people do with their holidays and traditions. Acknowledge that we can bastardize the rituals that are most closely related to our service to G-d.   But recognize that if we don’t turn the pesach seder into a real, living, process, we might as well pull out the Christmas trees and the electric menorahs….for our children and grandkids.
 
A Kosher Pesach
-SYS

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Rav Sternbuch: All Jews are one