Years ago, before my kids were born, I adopted the customs of the Saphardim under the tutelage of a kind and patient teacher, To this day, I ask many questions about the intricacies of my chosen path. It suits me, and I am perfectly comfortable with the decision. In this fashion, my children have the tradition that I am lacking and also feel a certain comfort in our minhagim.

The Rabbi mentioned in his Erev Pesach drash that a woman who marries can change her custom to follow her husband’s tradition. Since I was recently engaged, my Callah was excited to do that very thing. Her family eats a vegan diet and welcomed the opportunity to eat rice, beans and corn during Pesach. Turns out, however, that it is not so easy as just making a choice. Here’s the rub.

Since my adoption of Sephardic customs is a matter of choice, It is a matter of custom rather than tradition. The Rabbi’s position is that a convert is bound by the customs of the Beis Din that performed the conversion. Well, I was strongly practicing Sephardic customs and fully considered myself Sephardic at the time of my conversion. My first teacher who set up my initial meeting with the Beis Din was Ashkenaz. For a while during my conversion, our community did not have a rabbi. Finally, we hired one and he set up my final meeting with the Beis Din fully knowing that I had adopted Sephardic customs by then.

Whew! What a tangled mess!

So, it looks like my Callah is out of luck in that her tradition trumps my custom when it comes to eating kitniot on Pesach. Guess this is my last year eating BBQ corn…

This is all well and good. Historically, we are a most hated of people and our continued existence is a miracle that defies all logic and reason. I was asked more than once during my conversion why I would want to join such a people and place myself in obvious danger. My answer then, and now, points to why we remain a people in the presence of threats from every side.

While learning all those years ago, it became apparent that there was no life for me than one of Torah and Mitzvot. My search for God up to that time was, for the most part, very unsatisfying and ineffective. That I loved God was never a question. The problem was service and how to do it in a way that would affect all parts of my existence. One day of worship weekly was just not enough and the freestyle prayer of the other nations simply didn’t work for me.

Upon discovering the Jewish method of constant ritual and organized prayer, there was no turning back. Being weak of character myself, it made every difference to me that the system of mitzvot would reach into every aspect of my daily life from the most mundane to the incredibly sublime. Finally, a path of action that could result in refinement was found and has been satisfying beyond explanation.

Thus, is the strength of the Jewish people and the secret to their survival at times when all their enemies of old have faded away to become a footnote in a dusty historical text. Our Torah and Mitzvot bind us at all times to a larger picture that renders the world around us a mere stage on which our timeless story continues to play out.

Today, on Purim, we give thanks for this continuity as a people and acknowledge that it simply would not be if not for the countless miracles that our God performs for us. Still, we should see a personal angle in all of this. Hashem act for the individual as well as the nation. Our task is to see the countless kindnesses in our lives and give thanks for them as well.

Be it financial struggles, unemployment, home foreclosure, illness, woes from our children or a lack of focus, it is important to remember that Hashem cares for us as individuals and is working for good through our many daily challenges. We may not understand his ways, but that should not shake our emuna (faith) that there is a bigger picture and that even our suffering is ultimately for our betterment.

So my wish for you on this Purim day is that you be strengthened by the knowledge that Hashem is still at work in this world, as he was in all of our historical moments of oppression and salvation, and will provide for each and every need on a personal basis if we only ask and believe. Miracles still occur, if only we take a moment to see it in the little things that come our way continually.

We see an example of this in Parshat Beshelach where Klal Yisroyal are complaining that Moshe brought them out of Mitzrayim simply to die of thirst in the desert. As the very exodus from Egypt was brought about by the many public miracles of the plagues, so too was the solution to the lack of water a huge public miracle. Hashem told Moshe to strike a rock with his staff and water will come forth from it and the people will drink.

It would be perfectly normal for one with the limited understanding of humanity to doubt such a possibility. To counter this, Hashem tells him “Omaid lefanecha sham al hatzour b’Choraiv” (I shall stand before you by the the rock in Horeb). Meaning, don’t worry about others will say or how you actually feel about the matter, I personally will bring it to pass regardless of how nonsensical it seems.

There is an important lesson to be derived from this pasuk. By telling Moshe that he will be found in this lowly rock in the wilderness, Hashem made it clear that the potential for spiritual elevation is everywhere. The Yalkut Smimoni sums it up succinctly with the words “Wherever you find the mark of human feet, there I am before you.”

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler brings insight to this concept in his wondrous work, Michtav Me’Eliyahu and reprinted in the incredible series Strive for Truth. He compares the rock at Horeb to the burning bush where Moshe heard the voice of Hashem commanding him to return to Egypt and bring the people from slavery to freedom. He was told “remove your shoes from your feet because the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

R. Dessler draws from this comparison the idea that wherever a person stands, that is his holy place; the place where he can begin his spiritual regeneration. This idea is referred as his bihira point, the place where his free choice can bring significant elevation to his thinking and life. However low it may be on the scale of spiritual values, this is the very place from which he can begin his ascent.

“A person who discovers his lowest point can draw from this discovery the spiritual impetus which he needs for aliya,” R. Dessler writes. According to this concept, “remove your shoes” means “remove the covering that which is hiding your defects from yourself.” Only when this is done will “the place where you are standing” become “holy ground.” Conversely, the failure to seek spirituality in our hardships renders them to a worldly outcome. In the absence of growth lies stagnation, and that is the very source of our life’s travails.

We see this in everyday life in things like strained finances and relationships, physical limitations and illness, or confused thoughts that we can’t make sense of. Thoughtless individuals can see these occurrences as something out of their control, which leads to thoughts of worry, frustration and a feeling of being a victim of a cruel world.

The person of Emuna, a deep and sure knowledge that Hashem is calling the shots, accepts the challenge and works through it to reach a higher level on the other side; a place where conscious action brings about desired changes that resolve the issue once and for all.

Thus, we see the double-edged sword. Let’s use strained finances as an example. It is tempting to assume that poverty is a gift from Hashem to foster a sense of compassion and humility, and it is. Such a person should learn to pray that they be given the proper means of support and trust that it will come to them.

So, do they lay around in bed and wait for it to come? Of course not! Instead, they should hustle to make a living and follow up on their ideas that can bring them the income they need. Additionally, it will help to reduce their needs and bring them in line with reality. A person of Emuna believes that their current struggles will be resolved when the lesson has been learned and just keeps on trying until they do.

The opposite of this is worry and fear. These attitudes amount to second-guessing Hashem and doubt in the divine providence that fills the world. These people become depressed victims of life who say things like “why bother” and “I’m not worthy of receiving blessing.” They are defeated before they even begin.

A more extreme example can be found in strained relationships. If a person is plagued with a nagging spouse, it is easy to think that they are wrong and ignore the growth opportunity in that they just may be right. Rabbi Shalom Arush, in his book “The Garden of Peace,” brings us an important counter-concept that your spouse works as a mirror of yourself and that whatever comes from their mouth points to a deficiency in yourself.

This radical perspective allows a person to pick up the challenge and resolve it. If accused of being lazy, then do something. When called a jerk, then try being nice. Then, the nagging ends and true personal growth will be achieved. Seems simple enough.

One must move past a blind acceptance of their hardships into a path of action. This is where Emuna comes into play. If one does what they feel is necessary and still do not gain the desired result, then they must not have performed the correct action. If so, then they need to pray for a new idea and follow up on it. In this way, they will eventually reach the proper soul correction and achieve a place of true happiness and contentment.

It is a real challenge for us not to judge others based on what we see because of all the factors we do not know. It is our way to give the benefit of the doubt, even when circumstances seem perfectly clear. A modern-day example of this is popular media culture. I’ll be the first to admit that it is a bunch of junk. TV and radio bombard us with an overwhelming amount of useless information that skews our thinking and makes distortions appear true. So, because of this, should we ban all media? Blanket choices like this can throw out the good with the bad simply because it is easier.

Similarly, it is easy to consider Rifcah’s scheme to have Yaakov blessed rather than Eisav as a sneaky trick because she had a proper reason that wasn’t truly disclosed in the moment. While pregnant, she noticed that when she walked past a place of idol worship, part of her womb pulled in that direction. A different part of her womb pulled in the direction of holy places when they were encountered. She found out that each of her twins had a different inclination and that one would serve the other.

The difficulty arose because she chose not to tell her husband about it and he believed that Eisav was something that he was not. Issac assumed that he was within the realm of teshuvah and wanted to bless him with the strength to overcome his inclination.  Rifcah, on the other hand, knew it would be a wasted blessing and that it had to rest instead on Yaakov. Her actions were for the sake of heaven, and to save a life we can do almost anything.

In Yaakov’s righteousness, he objected to the plan and feared that he would be cursed, to which his mother said “any curse will fall on me” because it is the way of women (Ibn Ezra) to be compassionate and ready to suffer for their children. (Yohel Or) Besides, she was confident in the prophesy that the “older will serve the younger” that came to her directly from Hashem.

Thus, the younger took the blessing and the birthright from the older and, in the end, it turned out that it was clearly a case of “mama knows best.”

Sometimes, just figuring out what you want to accomplish is the real task

Since the Panda update to the Google search algorithm, most websites are scrambling to get back to where they were with placement, popularity, relevance and pageviews. Cancer Answers, a site that runs on my server, was hit particularly hard and I have been looking into how to fix it.

One key incident that I didn’t even know about until my research discovered it occurred within my host environment. They made some big changes to their PHP and cgi-bin practices that caused parts of the site to simply quit working. It was easy enough to change the permissions to my get.cgi script and get the homepage pulldown menu to work again.

So fine, pageviews could have been down because the site was broken. But, since the repair, traffic has not bounced back and still hovers at around 30% of where we were this time last year. My strategy to clear this up is pretty radical. I am going to give away all my content.

When the site was built, the idea was to sell cancer treatment information to end users. In 1997, that idea was viable since content was slim and the need was great. Since then, information is much more available and reputable while ours has become stale. Thus, transcript pricing was reduced again and again. Now, a full transcript is only $3. If I put all that content onto the public site, that will probably go a long ways toward freshening the site and increasing traffic.

Since the site is static html, that is going to be a huge GAK. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Yitzchak loved his mother and relied on her and never really got over her loss, so it was decided to find him a wife from the family of his father, Abraham. Eliezer, the trusted leader of the household, was dispatched to find a suitable partner and enroute he devised criteria that would reveal to him a proper match. She would need to be kind, generous and energetic to step into the role of a matriarch.

Immediately upon his arrival in town, Rifcah was there and she satisfied every wish he had for a mate. She kindly offered him a drink of water and generously watered his camels as well, running back and forth from the well to the trough with 140 gallons of water! He was struck with the indelible impression that this girl was everything he desired and rushed to seal the deal with gifts and the permission of her family.

Since she was Yitzchak’s true besheret, the deal sailed right through and she jumped onto the camel and accompanied Eliezer to her awaiting husband. When she first saw him davening in the field, she was modest and shy. When he brought her into his mother’s tent, the blessings resumed! That’s all it took. When he saw that she possessed the proper characteristics, it was plain to see that a worthy successor was found.

And such is the way of Hashem. If we are open to it, we will find that he will bring us everything we need in the proper time. All we need to do is our part, and we will be rewarded for our faith and efforts. And as for our happy ending? It will be even better that anything we could ever imagine.

Try as I may, I can't get my HP PSC-1510 to scan...

I remember when I bought my iMac years ago, an HP PSC 1510 was purchased along with it and I wrestled with the config to make the two hardware pieces see each other and play nice. Since then, the hard drive crashed and now it’s the whole thing all over again.

Like most things these days, the troubleshooting began with a Google search and there was a wealth of information from others with the same problem. Turns out that HP and my iMac simply don’t play real well together.

There was lots of funky advice about unplug, power off, uninstall, reinstall, blah, blah, blah… What finally worked was to download much older drivers than the ones on the HP website and install those. Turns out that the manufacturers improvements to the drivers broke them.

The midrash, cited by Rashi, famously relates that if a person merits, his wife will be a “helper;” if not, she will be opposite him.

This does not mean that the undeserving are punished with wives who constantly battle them, in the sense of the opposition offered by an enemy or competitor. Nothing in the text supports or demands such an explanation.

Rather, it means that she was created to be opposite him, to offer a different voice and perspective from his, particularly when he acts out on some deficiency.

A person whose behavior at a given moment is shaped by some character flaw might enjoy and appreciate the full support of his wife. This, of course, is short-sighted and counterproductive. His real interests are much better served by a wife who is critical of him, when her criticism is delivered for a constructive purpose.

He won’t learn unless someone is there to point out his errors and deficiencies. He might wince in pain at her opposition, but by preventing him from acting inappropriately, she acts as his true helper. Her opposition is the best assistance he can receive; it is no genuine opposition at all

This is precisely what Chazal mean. If he merits, her opposition itself will help him. If he does not merit the good wife, she will not oppose his baser behavior, but go along with all he does, including activities that are harmful to him.

The cheerful assistance of the yes-woman may bring a short-sighted smile to his face, but it gets him nowhere in the long run. Her apparent help and assistance are inconsistent with his best interests.

She is the wife who is truly “opposite” him. (from “The Timeless Rav Hirsch”)

Hand coding legacy .html files

I built the Cancer Answers site back in 1994 when there were no WYSIWYG page building tools at all. Pages were built in a static manner and each was separate, as opposed to the database approach we see in most new sites developed today. With database sites, like the WordPress stuff installed for clients on my server, a small change in the site template propagates to the site and are seen globally on every page served. The cancer treatment information site, developed in partnership with an oncologist writer, needs to be edited page by page. Thus, adding Facebook like and share buttons would have involved hundreds of pages of edits.

Over the years, I have adopted a developer’s toolkit. Way back when I was coding the pages I designed at Bein Logic, one of the programmers there turned me on to BBedit. With this tool, I can replace a string of text from every file in a folder. In this case, a table cell was added within an existing footer that is on every page in a singular format. Once I coded a page to work, I copied those results to all of the other files in one fell swoop. Sweet!