shul seat stealer

It seems like all I ever write about these days is my time spent in synagogue. I'm not sure what that means. In any event, I will now record a completely true and somewhat disturbing incident that occured right before my very eyes this past shabbos.

I was in western hempstead, and decided to attend the "teen" minyan, b/c the "young adult" minayn did not meet this week. I'm not sure when I'm gonna have to start going to the old adult minyan...i wonder what the cut-off is. I say that under 30, you can still go to young adult minyan, but over 30 you should never be seen there. In addition, if you are bald or have grey hair, you should go to the regular adult minyan. I would make some type of married-rule and say that all married people should go to a regular adult minyan, but it seems that people like to get married as young adults these days, and thus belong in the "young adult" minyan. Then again, if you don't live in west hempstead, you probably don't have any clue what the hell I am talking about and you can just pretend you didn't read this whole paragraph.

Anyway, sometimes there are strange adults that sneak their way into these younger-generation minyans. I'm really not sure what these guys are doing here. The "leader/founder" of the minyan is an older fellow and he belongs. Same goes for parents that are drifting in to hear their kids leign and s like that. U know...to "shep nachas". But there are also alot of parents who come by to spy on their kids and make sure they r in the minyan. Those parents annoy me. I am going to start coming to their minyan and spying on them and make sure they are davening properly and what not. I'm also gonna come to their office and spy on them and make sure they r doing their jobs. But even worse than these parents, are the parents that come to the minyan with their kids and sit with them the entire time. This has to be torture for the kids. I think the whole point of these minyans is to give the kids some freedom and time to develop their own davening feelings and skills. Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about and I don't really know what the point of these minyans are. If anyone does, please tell me. The point is that the parents that come to the minyans with their kids are annoying to their own children, and more importantly, to me.

And this weekend in particular was dificult. I got up from my seat to tell my friend yoni wiesel what happened in every MLB boxscore that I had read at home. Naturally, on shabbos, no matter how late I wake up, I still go through every box score in the paper 900 times so that I can be even later to shul. Now then, telling all the boxscore details to yoni during torah reading can be quite a long process b/c you can only say them in between aliyahs, and that is a minimal window of time. So I must have been standing next to him for about 2 aliyahs, when I large balding man decided to take my seat. This is bad b/c he clearly saw me sitting there 6 minutes ago, and he clearly saw me standing in the back discussing important baseball pitches, like chris capuano's increasing # of quality starts. It would be one thing (a misdemeanor) if he would have stolen my seat while I went to the bathroom. It is a completely different thing (a felony, for which hot malten lead should be poured down his fat throat) to steal my seat right in front of me. And to top it all off, it was an aisle seat.

The guy spent the rest of davening harrasing his own children and ruining their day. I was angry for a few hours about this, but now I realize that his children probably hate him, so that is enough punishment.

Happy Father's Day you seat stealer.

top 12 list

I went to synagogue services this past saturday morning, and much to my chagrin or dismay or any other word that you wanna insert here, I realized that I was in for the longest Torah reading of the year - Parshas Nasoh. Don't be a wise ass here and tell me that the double parshos are longer, I am only talking about single parshos. To make matters worse, Parshas Nasoh is really long AND repetetive, b/c it goes through all 12 of the Nesi'im and the gifts they brought to the Tabernacle's Inaguration party. Now, that was a party! In any event, it is very hard to sit through this part of the Torah reading, b/c you cannot really even entertain yourself by reading the english notes in the bottom of the stone chumash. Luckily, however, I am distrubed, and was able to entertain myself by compiling the following top 12 list: And before I present you with this list, I just want to say that i am kind of stealing this from Dave Letterman, and I probably won't make any more lists again, but I figured I should give it a shot, so thanks Mr. Letterman...

"Top 12 Nesi'im":


12) Achirah ben Aeinan, from Naftali: Does anyone know this guy? he seems to constantly slip through the cracks
11) Achiezer ben Amishaday; from Dan: his name is a tounge-twister, knocking him down on the list.
10) Pagiel ben Achran;Asher: Nickname "pag", not very popular
9) Gamliel ben Pidatzur; Menashe: Was Menashe the son that was supposed to get the Bracha, but Yakov switched his hands? I think so.
8) Elishama ben Amihud; Ephraim: Or maybe it was Ephraim...can't really remember.
7) Avidan Ben Gidoni; Binyamin: I associate him with a Professor Giloni I had in YU. Our personalites clashed.
6) Elyasaf Ben Diuel; Gad: Brought one silver plate as part of gift.
5) Shlumeil ben Tzureshaday; Shimon: It's not everyday that one man bring a Par, Ayil, and Keves to the Tabrernacle!!!
4) Nesanel ben Tzuar;Yissacher: His tribe learns alot of Torah, so that is nice.
3) Eliyav ben Cheilon; Zevulun: his tribe supports Yissacher's tribe, so he is the man.
2)Elitzur ben Shdeyur; Reuven: I moved him up to #2 b/c he comes from Reuven and Reuven was the oldest...so why not #1 u ask?B/c...
1) Nachshon ben Aminadav; Yehudah: This was an easy choice. He jumped into the ocean and put his life on the line...Respect.

And I'm done.

wireless distractions

Did you all have a nice Shavuos? It is also known as Pentacaust, which doesn't sound nearly as nice. The Rabbis also refer to it as Atzeret, and that just confuses me. I think there are 6 other names but they escape me at the moment. Speaking of Pentacaust, I just got my grade back for a class I took called Law and the Holocaust. I got a B; I might have simply gotten a B because my final was a bit on the short side. I simply wrote "The Holocaust was against the law, just like Darfur." (Cr: Abba) (Mom- don't be upset...the professor is an anti-semite) Seriously though, I had a very difficult time paying attention to anything in this class. Perhaps it is because I have heard and been educated about the Holocaust since I was little, so the material in this class seemed very repetetive to me. Or perhaps it is because we have wireless access in the classroom (which I think every school has except for YU) and I have mlb.com, which means I can watch baseball games during class instead of listening to the professor. As a side note, maybe it is great that YU does not yet have wireless because absolutely no one would pay attention in shiur if you could go on espn.com. I had enough problems paying attention as it was, and I had to have this guy kick me whenever I fell asleep. But here is the kicker; sometimes, the "kicker" himself would fall asleep, and this was trouble, b/c Rav H. would just pull me up by the back of my hair. I think this was his way of simply insisting that I get a haircut.

Although Law and the Holocaust seems depressing, I can tell you all one funny story that occured in this class: One time my friend (also Jewish) was watching a game, while the professor was showing us a video on Nurenberg Trials or something. Then his sound suddenly went off, and everyone knew that he was watching a baseball game instead of watching the informative Holocaust video. I found this humerous, but I think I would have been mad if it happened to a non-jew b/c I would have thought that it is insensitive for him/her to watch sports instead of paying attention. Even more insensitive and offensive would be if a guy was on a pro-nazi site during the law and holocaust class. That would not be nice.