07 Feb SPEAK YOUR VUES

OFFERING HELP TO A
BAALAS SIMCHA

Dear Editor:

As a busy working mother who Boruch Hashem has made a few simchos this year, I have been asked countless times by family and friends, “What can I do to help you?” I know that most of the time the people are just saying it to be polite and don’t really have the time or interest to help me out. However, there are some people who genuinely are offering to help out in any way they can. Here is a great idea for those who are in the position of knowing someone busy preparing for a simcha. Just make and deliver for supper for your friend and her family! It will be greatly appreciated. I can say that in my situation, I am busy running around trying to get things done and I do not have time to cook for my family. They are being totally neglected in that area. It would be so nice if I would know that there would be a square meal ready for my famished family members after a long day. Alas, I am not in the position to be the one preparing it at this time! I also am not going to ask people to do it, but if they offered, I’d gladly accept. May Klal Yisroel only know of simcha!

Busy Mom

Editor’s Note: That sounds like a great idea. I guess you can order in food if nobody’s offering to cook for you!

COUGH CORRECTLY

Dear Editor:

This is a funny incident about a serious issue. I sit in the rear of my Shul to avoid getting coughed upon because many people don’t cough carefully/correctly. With my heart condition, I can’t risk getting the Flu.  Recently, as the congregation turned to welcome the Sabbath Queen (guess what), the man who was in front of me, was now standing behind me coughing !!!

Editor’s Note: There is no escaping people who are coughing. Let’s hope you build enough of immunity to deal with the germs and cold of the season.

CHAMISHA ASAR B’SHVAT

Dear Editor:

Do a little investigation before condemning chamisha asar b’shvat rebbishe tishen. Pineapples do fall under the fruit category. And you may make a hadamo and be ‘yotze’ chamisha asar b’shvat fruit. Dig into the inyan, like I did years ago. Enjoy the ‘fruits’ of your learning.

Editor’s Note: This gives new meaning to “be fruitful and multiply,” since there are new fruits to be used for Tu B’Shvat!

SURVIVED AND THANKFUL

Dear Editor:

Thank you for sharing the fact that the Reb. was born to her parent later in life. I and many other  women married older men after the travesties of the holocaust bereft of any family. Thank  Hashem  we are grandmothers and there are some great grandmothers among us. Daters should be more people open to age differences. This will help alleviate the older singles predicament in our communities. I am an eyewitness to this fact. I, with BSD, survived  Siberia and death marches.

Respectfully, 

Sally Grossman

Editor’s Note: May she be a melitza for all of Klal Yisroel.

ECONOMY TANKS

Dear Editor:

Where is Trump now to boast about the economy? The stock market really dropped to pre 2018 levels. Is this a correction or is this an omen of things to come. Time will tell Mr. Trump. Our taxes will go up as we live in a place where we pay a lot of city and State taxes plus real estate tax, which are now only deductible up to ten thousand dollars.

Yankel G.

Editor’s Note: Hang in there! The stock market goes up and goes down constantly. Just give it a little time.

RABBI’S INPUT

Dear Editor:

Is a Jewish magazine without a rabbi like a restaurant without a Mashgiach or are words different and we don’t need rabbis to tell us what kosher reading is?

Moshe M.

Editor’s Note: I think it would be important for every magazine to have rabbinical advisors although it may not always be feasible. Just like it’s important what goes into your mouth, it is just as important to be careful about what goes out of your mouth.

SUPER BOWL

Dear Editor:

With all the hoopla of the Super Bowl I wanted to share with you the following:

Rav Avigdor Miller on The Meshugas of Sports and Super Bowl

Q: May a yeshiva bochur listen to sports on the radio?

A: I’ll ask you a different question: May a yeshiva bochur stand on his head? Yes, if he wants to. But he’s a meshugenah if he does it.

What is sports? It’s so silly! The Yanks and the Mets hitting the baseball. It’s so meshugah. It’s an American goyishe meshugenah velt. It’s headlines – Yanks, Mets. It’s so silly.

What sports does is the following. The headlines show us how empty the gentile world is. And therefore, we take a lesson from that. These foolish people who can make headlines from the most silly things – we have to say, “Can they be an example for us at all?! In anything?!”

Boruch Hashem that He has separated us from these lost neshamas.

TAPE # E-210

(December 1999)

Q: A lot of Jewish youth – and even adults sometimes – have an interest in playing sports and watching sports. What do you say about this phenomenon?

A: It depends what you mean. If sports are played for the prestige of the uniform, for the prestige of being a sports player, then it’s as silly as could be. It’s a silly gentile thing. Here’s a boy, strutting down the street, in a lacrosse uniform. Did you ever see a lacrosse uniform? You don’t what it is? It’s a game that high schools and colleges play. So he’s strutting down the street in his uniform, all covered with helmets and padded things all over him, and he walks down the street like a hero. He has a halo of sanctity around him. That’s what they think. They think that sports is something noble. So this garbage we have to get out of our heads. There is nothing noble about holding a stick and smacking a baseball. There’s nothing noble about that; nothing heroic about it.

However, if it’s something done for exercise, then there’s no question – you don’t need me to tell you that exercise is important. If it’s not too strenuous, then exercise is very good. But it would be even better if you would take a brisk walk for forty-five minutes. Not in the night time. And not on lonely streets. But a brisk walk in the fresh air is the best sport and the best exercise. And while you’re doing that, you can be thinking over all of the important ideas that a Jew should be filling his mind with. There’s no end to the thoughts that you must be filling your mind with that will prepare you for the World to Come. Whereas, if you’re banging around a ball or some other thing like that, that keeps your mind busy on small unimportant things, and the precious time is entirely wasted.

But watching sports?! That’s a one hundred percent waste of time! You should forget about all the ideals of sport and the glamour about sports. Because actually, it’s nothing at all.

Tape # 48 (January 1975)

Yakkov Schwartz

Editor’s Note: If we would only listen to the wise all the time!