The Writers' Cafe

The Writers' Cafe: "The other thing he taught was some kind of pseudoscientific predictive science which he simply called turkey or chicken. the way this game worked is that you would place your thumb and forefinger around one of these flowering grasses that were everywhere at most descriptively simply looked like wheat. Then he would ask, in his special little kid accent (he had to be maybe 3 or 4 tops) ”turkey or chicken”, I would predict and answer either turkey or chicken and then, he would run his closed finger hold up the shaft of the grain, and it would come up eitther as this short compact little tuft-chicken, or this longer kind of more disorganized tuft, and that would be turkey. Of course there was no money involved in this silly little past time, but we must of done it at least hundreds of times."

http://thewriterscafe.org/

Passaic Dating

Passaic Dating: "100 Orthodox Jews, with an intermarriage rate of 3% and an average 6.4 children per family increased their numbers to 2,588 Jews after 4 generations. 100 Modern Orthodox Jews, with an intermarriage rate of 3% and an average of 3.23 children per family also increased their numbers to 346 Jews"

Courtesy of: Will Your Grandchildren be Jewsih

Passaic Dating

The Writers Cafe.org

From Aharon Moshe's Notebook

The site took weeks to write...

Tediously coded into HTML using notepad as my text editor, then one day, without any explanation, it was gone. Taken down by the folks at Tripod/Lycos with very little fanfare. It had been picked up by search engines. Noted by other writers, bloggers. It got many hits (not mega hits mind you) but it was much more then I am getting now.

It had a good run though.The site was in development starting after August 18, 2001 and was completed right before the tragic day, September 11, 2001. It stayed up and was viewed often up until I believe April of this year, 2008.

Here is an excerpt:

http://tiger_bythe_toe.tripod.com/seagull3.html

Today too many of us live life like the flock.
There is no sharing in the flock, and constant pushing and shoving. From the little research I have already done on Chekhov, he was greatly concerned about the rights of man, as mentioned in The Seagull.

My personal belief is that there is no shortage of wealth in this nation, as well as in the world. Political theorists would have us believe that the economy of our country has taken a major downturn simply because perhaps a handful of the wealthiest have lost a few poorly placed bets on the great economic roulette wheel of "high tech stocks".

Our nation's leader would now have you believe the same "voodoo economy" nonsense that his party predecessors have promoted.

Many armchair critics have already sited the president's agenda as nothing short of class war.
I suppose I could go on with this thread but do not want alienate too many of my potential readers...

Stephen C. Sanders
editorial comment from the author of this piece (me) regarding what meaning can be gleaned from Chekhov's work today.
Written, edited, and coded into html by Stephen C. Sanders, September, 5, 2001

Editors note: After a brief but ultimately effective interchange of several e-mails, it seemed the folks at lycos/tripod found it prudent to actually reinstate my site's name, but along with it's apologies for the lost content. However, I did have some forthought to back up these pages. Also while I was so concerned about technicla rules and regulations, Tripod?lycos had actually not only allowed but actually encouraged my mirror site: http://catchatiger.tripod.com

In The Beginning

In The Beginning: "Come join us at Beis Menachem
for a Yud-Beis Tammuz Fabrengen
Celebrate the Release of the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe
Tuesday night July 15th, 2008 at 8:00 p.m.
@ Beis Menachem 104 Howard, Passaic NJ 07055
(Corner Park and Howard)
For more info call 973-249-9770

Drasha - Chukas, 5757 - Torah.org

Drasha - Chukas, 5757 - Torah.org:
Parshas Chukas
Chukas Pocus
Volume 3 Issue 41
by Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

...
"Shouldn't the mystical requirements of the Parah Adumah join its counterparts together with the laws of the Kohanim? Why is it placed in the Book that recounts the stories of human folly -the malicious uprising of Korach, the miscalculations of the spies, the unfaithfulness of the sotah, the complaints against the heavenly fare of manna?

What significance does the juxtaposition of these seemingly unexplainable rituals, obviously not congruent with mortal logic doing with the tales of error and miscalculation?
One evening during World War II, Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee could not sleep. As chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, he could not understand why he should the administration was requesting some $2,000,000,000 towards certain unusual scientific research.
He called Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and began to shout.

'Do you expect me to sanction this tremendous appropriation without any idea as to where it is going!'

Stimson kept quiet. He pondered and hesitated, then he asked, 'Can you keep a secret?' After McKellar assured him that he could, Stimson whispered,

'We are about to split the atom.'

McKellar exploded. 'Are you crazy? This is a war! We have men out there! We need guns! We need planes! We need ammunition! And you guys are fooling around with some hocus pocus -- splitting atoms!'"

The above excerpt can be read in its original form by following this link:
http://www.torah.org/learning/drasha/5757/chukas.html

Of all the explanations I have read so far on the web, the above is definitely an inspired explanation of Parshas Chukas.

For more comments go to Aharon Moshe's Notebook Parsha Chukas
http://thewriterscafe.org

Drasha - Chukas, 5757 - Torah.org

Drasha - Chukas, 5757 - Torah.org: "Volume 3 Issue 41
by Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

The laws of the parah adumah, the red heifer, have enraptured mortals since the day it was commanded. There was no reason or rationale given for it. The nations of the world, baffled by it, mocked our observance of it. Even King Solomon, the wisest of men, claimed to be stupefied by its reasoning. And Moshe was the only mortal that understood the essence of its every nuance.

Its laws are complex, its symbolism mysterious, and the logic of its repercussions quite enigmatic. The red heifer's ashes purify those who have become tamei (impure), yet the administrating Kohen who was tahor (pure) becomes tamei! There is no logic behind that occurrence; yet that is the law. So sacred was the red heifer that Moshe and Aaron sacrificed, that it ashes were saved from generation to generation. Each additional red-heifer offering was added to the remnants of the previous, so that the new ashes would mix with the vestigial ashes of Moshe's original heifer.

Hundreds of generations and thousands of Kohanim and Israelites who performed the mitzvah of parah adumah believed with unquestioning faith in the law's ritual divinity and power."


Courtesy of Torah.org

Aharon Moshe's Notebook- Parshas Chukas 2008
http://thewriterscafe.org

Adding a link.

Lets see if it works.