The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
From here
Nebach case...
The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
I've been avoiding this blog a while. I've been avoiding it for 3 months. I avoided to post about unexpected meetings of other bloggers such as meeting Childish (MAZAL TOVVVV!!!!) by Moshe's son brith and meeting first blogger in my life (I knew Moshe from long before so it doesn't count), upd Jacob da Jew who helped me to find what I was looking for so much desperately on that day, and getting stuck in the Marriott elevator with Chana. I wanted to post funny keywords people come with to my blog from search. There was my blog's anniversary not so long time ago and I avoided writing about it too.
There been a reason for it and no time for it. Now it's time to break the ice...
This Sunday I also broke the ice - I AM ENGAGED NOW!
To prevent many questions. She's The one. She's Russian (so am I). She's frum for few years, BT. We are same age. We share same views on many things.
I guess that's it for now. :)
I hate ranting. I try not to discuss what happens in Jewish world. I ain't an angel myself. If I want to vent there's enough stuff I can vent about myself. But...
But there's one day in the year when I get depressed not because of myself. It's the day when I go buying lulav, esrog and whole lots of stuff related here.
While esrog is what usually makes the price it's pretty easy to get through this challenge. All you have to do is to find an appealing, good looking, right color, nice/ideal form and shape, no black dots, no scratches from leaves, pitim/no pitim and so on. With these simple rules you have almost found good esrog. It's harder to check all boxes and to find one but at least you can take every one and look at it yourself first. After you found something you like, just go to the man checking esrogim and show it to him:
- Ummm, nice esrog! Really perfect one!.. {short pause, looking at esrog with magnifying glass} This would be expensive one, are you ok with budget?
- Yeah, how much is it?
- Where did you find it?
- There {pointing at the box aside from the main table}
- Look, I really can't give it for less that $$
- Sure no problem
This little conversation doesn't take longer than 1 or 2 minutes and both are happy: one got what he was looking for, another sold it for good money and helped a fellow jew.
Now you move to lulavim. The law is the law - don't touch the top two inches or you will have to take it regardless of it's quality. Accepted. You stand aside waiting for your time, not touching anything. Consider these two conversations:
First:
{sales guy stands, holds a lulav in his hands, looks at it's top, looks at your esrog}
- How much are you paying for it?
- $$
- {half second pause} this is a very good lulav {hands you lulav he's holding}
{both are happy - one got what he was looking for, another didn't take much time and helped a fellow jew
Second:
{sales guy stands, holds a lulav in his hands, looks at it's top, looks at you, hands you lulav he was looking at}
- Here's good one for you! It's kosher O-U, O-K, Star-K - it's kosher!
- but...
- Don't look at it too much you'll get ain horah at it!
Obviously every year I get into similar situation described in the second conversation. Both take less than a minute, but second one make's me feel everytime like I am less Jewish than people around me. Look - I am not getting esrog for $10 although even here you can make nice conversation. I am paying $80 which is much higher than regular price in the store ($50-60). I didn't just to be upselled - I am paying for expensive stuff, obviously I don't need anyone to run around me, but at least treat me as everyone else in the store. If I wear jeans and color shirt it doesn't tell you much about me. Well, I can understand you are tired, but I was not hanging out the whole week with girls and going to clubs nor did I not come hour before Sukkos starts - I came in advance and I am also tired, I also just came from work.
What bothers me most is that it doesn't take you much effort to say something nicely, regardless of what you think. It doesn't take you longer either. In fact you may get rid of me faster as I will feel that you didn't just give me the first more or less kosher lulav, but that you gave me something good compared to when you make me feel like I am not given good stuff and you make me want to argue with you!
I just wanted to add that I really feel bad saying all this stuff about a yid, esspecially two days after Yom Kippur, but it's not my fault that Sukkos comes right after it...
So over the past week a bunch of bloggers decided to speak up about superpower they would want to have. While some others decided to skip... (this is not a full list so sorry if I didn't link to you)
This erev Rosh Hashonah I was sitting in the bus on my way to Lakewood and I was rethinking many things that happened in the past few days. And for some reason I remembered about superpower memes that were going around.
While it is clear that my superpower was 100% evil driven, most of other people had their wishes based either on simple self-related topics or on better-to-be ones. So I was thinking about bunch of similar better-to-be superpowers which were intended to be able to better understand people, or to know what could hurt someone and get around that and so on. And that brought me to realization why we don't have these simple and so-great-have abilities which we could use everyday for good of the world. Why didn't Hashem give us something what we could use to help people around us, to be better people ourselves? Why did He decide that what we have is good for us and we don't need any better?
I think the answer is simple. Because as we could easily use these powers for good, we would have a bigger yetzer hora pushing us to use there abilities for bad. Do you realize how easy it would be to hurt a person when you know painful topic for them? Do you realize how easy it would be to do so many bad things knowing so much about surrounding us world?
So what I thought was that we should thank Hashem that neither we nor others have these powers that could bring more harm in to this shaky world! Thank You, Hashem, for not letting to sin more by limiting our abilities to what we have!