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Clay Bennett Chattanooga Times Free Press Oct 9, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

The Rules of the Sukkah According to Dr. Seuss

From a cyberfriend of mine, who forwarded it from an anonymous source:

Rules of the Succah (with numbered footnotes)

You can build it very small (1)
You can build it very tall (2)

You can build it very large (3)
You can build it on a barge

You can build it on a ship (4)
Or on a roof but please don't slip (5)

You can build it in an alley (6)
You shouldn't build it in a valley (7)

You can build it on a wagon (8)
You can build it on a dragon (9)

You can make the s'chach of wood (10)
Would you, could you, yes you should

Make the s'chach from leaves of tree
You shouldn't bend it at the knee (11)

Build your Succah tall or short
No Succah is built in the Temple Court

You can build it somewhat soon
You cannot build it in the month of June (12)

If your Succah is well made
You'll have the right amount of shade (13)

You can build it very wide
You can not build it on its side

Build if your name is Jim
Or Bob or Sam or even Tim

Build it if your name is Sue (14)
Do you build it, yes you do!

From the Succah you can roam
But you should treat it as your home (15)

You can invite some special guests
Don't stay in it if there are pests

You can sleep upon some rugs
Don't you build it where there's bugs

In the Succah you should sit
And eat and drink but never ...

If in the Succah it should rain
To stay there would be such a pain (16)

And if it should be very cold
Stay there only if you're bold

So build a Succah one and all
Make it large or make it small

Succah rules are short and snappy
Enjoy Succos, rejoice be happy.

Footnotes:
1. Maimonides (RMBM) Mishne Torah, Hilchot Succah, Chapter 4, Section 1.The minimum height of a Succah is 10 tefachim. A tefach is a measureof the width of the four fingers of one's hand. My hand is 3 1/4inches wide for a minimum Succah height of 32 1/2 inches. The minimumallowable width is 7 tefachim by 7 tefachim. This would result in aSuccah of 22 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches.

2. The maximum height is 20 Amot. An Amah is the length from the elbowto the tip of the middle finger. My Amah is 15 1/2 inches for amaximum height of 25 feet. Others say that 30 feet is the maximum.

3. According to RMBM the Succah can be built to a width of severalmiles. Shulchan Aruch also says there is no limit on the size of thewidth.

4. RMBM Hilchot Succah Chapter 4, Section 6.

5. RMBM Hilchot Succah Chapter 4, Section 11. RMBM states that one mayconstruct a Succah by wedging poles in the four corners of the roofand suspending s'chach from the poles. The walls of the buildingunderneath are considered to reach upward to the edge of the s'chach.

6. RMBM Hilchot Succah Chapter 4, Section 8-10 discusses the ins andouts of building your Succah in an alley or passageway.

7. There is a location referred to in the Talmud called Ashtarot Karnayim.According to the discussion there are two hills, with a valley inbetween where the Sun does not reach. Therefore it is impossible to sit in the shade of the roof of the Succah. I can't find thereference...hopefully next year.

8. RMBM Hilchot Succah Chapter 4, Section 6. You can go into a Succah built on a wagon or a ship even on Yom Tov.

9. RMBM Hilchot Succah Chapter 4, Section 6. OK, RMBM says a camel but dragon rhymes with wagon a lot better, don't you agree? Anyway, RMBMsays you can build your Succah on a wagon or in the crown of a tree,but you can't go into it on Yom Tov. There is a general rule against riding a beast or ascending into the crown of a tree on Yom Tov
.
10. Chapter 5 deals with the rules for the s'chach. Basically, you can use that which has grown from the ground, and is completely detached from the ground. So, for example, you cannot bend the branches of a tree over the Succah to form the s'chach. But you can cut the branches from a tree and use them as s'chach.

11. This would be a violation of the rule cited in the prior footnote.

12. Shulchan Aruch, Hilchot Succah, Perek 636, Section 1. The Succahshould not be built sooner than 30 days before the Chag. However, ifthe structure is built prior to 30 days, as long as something new isadded within the 30 days, the Succah is kosher.

13. Of course it's a well known rule that you must sit in the shadef rom the roof of the Succah and not in the shade that may be cast by the walls. It seems that this might affect the height of the walls,depending on the longitude of the location where you are building your Succah.

14. Technically, women, servants and minors are exempt from theMitzvah of Succah. In our day we hope we know better than to read outhalf the Jewish people from the observance of Mitzvot. Of course,that's just a personal opinion of the author.

15. RMBM ibid Chapter 6, Section 6 explains that you should eat, drinkand live in the Succah for the 7 days as you live in your own home.One should not even take a nap outside of the Succah.

16. RMBM ibid, Section 10. If it rains one should go into the house.How does one know if it is raining hard enough? If sufficientraindrops fall through the s'chach (roof covering) and into the food so that the food is spoiled - go inside!

RMBM = The Rambam, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides)
The Shulchan Aruch ("The Prepared Table") is a 16th century compendium of Jewish Law

If Broadway "Did" Kol Nidre

Baal HaBos links to a version of Kol Nidre which has simply got to win 1st prize for kitsch.

I hope the singers are going to do serious teshuva this Yom Kippur.

An easy fast, and גמר חתימה טובה to you all.

The Eternal Lice Problem

A confession: until I made aliyah, I'd never seen a louse. You might not think that odd, since lice are simply not one of the things middle-class Jewish American girls are supposed to be acquainted with. But I'm a nurse, and I studied nursing in a hospital which had a large percentage of poor Lower East Side Puerto Ricans, Santo Domingans, and Haitians, homeless people, etc. Yet, they seemed to be relatively clean poor people.

However, lice are absolutely ubiquitous among small children in Israel, and for new olim from the US, the discovery that their little darlings are infested is one of the most shocking discoveries they make after getting off the plane.

I'm not sure why lice are so prevalent here. Climate probably has something to do with it, although lice do not spontaneously generate from sand (!) as some Israelis believe. From the time a toddler goes to a playgroup, until he/she reaches an age where children sit at individual desks at school (often as late as 4th or even 5th grade), parents wage a constant battle against the lice. It's because the little heads are so close to each other, you see, that the lice can jump from one kid to another easily.

The life cycle of the louse takes about 10 days from the eggs (nits) being laid until the mature louse is ready to lay some more. The nits are so small that it is almost impossible to get them all, even assiduously combing and manually picking them off the roots of the hair, so whatever treatment option (and nits are almost completely impervious to chemical methods) the parents adopt, it has to be repeated. And repeated. And repeated. It's much easier to let them grow a bit before attacking them.

The simplest thing to do is to shave the kid's head. I suspect this is why you see so many Arab kids with barely any stubble on their skulls, but it's a problem for girls, or boys with sidelocks.
The next line of attack is usually an anti-lice shampoo or lotion, but these have two main disadvantages. The first is that almost as soon as a new product is marketed, the lice become resistant to it. And, two, the stronger the stuff, the greater the chance it will cause skin rash or ulcerations. If you tell a toddler or preschooler to keep his eyes closed as you rinse his head, he will immediately open his eyes. This happened to our son once, and the resulting inflammation was really very serious. If you must use a chemical product, buy some goggles for your kid--or you might later need to buy him a white cane. There is some controversy over whether the chemicals can be absorbed into the blood stream via the skin, also.

Two traditional "remedies" are rosemary oil or a mixture of kerosene and oil. The former does make the hair smell very nice, and maybe lice don't like the smell, but in my experience they are hardly deterred. The kerosene/oil (or margarine) mixture can cause ulcerations and you can smell your kid for days.

This leaves manual removal, which is time-consuming and which both parents and the kids generally dislike. Children have the attention span of gnats, so a method is needed whereby you get them involved. Herewith is Antigonos' Patented Infallible Lice Removal Method, which should leave you and your child (or children) clean and not wanting to murder anyone (other than the lice).

You will need:
One lice comb. The best is Innomed, it has by far the finest teeth.
One regular comb, to comb out tangles and to separate the hair into sections.
Conditioner. Any brand is good, if you want, use one of the ones with rosemary oil, which may possibly be a deterrent.
Clips, to keep the combed hair sections from falling over the uncombed sections (and vice versa). The kind hairdressers use are very good.
A chair for you, and a lower chair or stool for the child, who can sit between your knees
Paper Towels. This is an essential, you'll understand why, in a moment.
A towel or bib, to put around the child's neck.
At least one video or DVD that the child likes. I used to use Disney's Fantasia, which is good because it's long. This will prevent the rapid onset of sitzfleisch.
A child, or children, in need of treatment.
Something for you to drink, preferably alcoholic. Alternatively, some form of calming medication.

And now, we're ready to begin:
[1] Wet the child's hair and liberally slather head with conditioner. Do not rinse.
[2] Put the child, with towel around neck ("just like Mommy at the hairdresser's") on the stool. [3]Insert video or DVD into machine. Inform child that if he's good, and lets you take care of him without undue tantrums or squirming you'll allow him to squash all the lice you collect at the end. This is very important: it is the major incentive for good behavior. Kids LOVE to do this. If you have more than one child to treat, make it into a competition to see who has the most lice. The winner will brag about this for months.
[4] Using the regular comb and clips, divide the hair into sections, starting with the hair on the neck. Comb out each section with the Innomed comb, and you will see the lice--usually still alive, caught in the conditioner and comb. Wipe the comb on a paper towel and put to one side (don't worry; the lice aren't going anywhere). Between their favorite video and the spectacle of the lice (white paper towels are best for contrast), the kids will be entranced.
[5] Don't forget to let them squash the lice. You can use a flat bottomed glass for this. If you forget, they'll never trust your word again and you'll have a devil of a time convincing them to let you comb them out again. Bloodthirsty little beasts, children.
[6] Shampoo hair with regular shampoo and rinse.

You'll have to repeat this every two or three days for two weeks, to get all the eggs of the original infestation, since they will probably only be caught by the comb, even the finest comb, once they hatch. The joker is that the child is probably constantly being reinfested. Lice cannot live more than 24 hours without human blood, so it isn't necessary to constantly change pillowcases or hair brushes. But those little heads are touching every day in class...

Sometimes parents can actually convince the other parents in their child's group to all treat their children together. But it is usually in vain, because the children are infested from other siblings, who are in turn infested by other play- and classmates in other classes and schools. While Americans are shocked, Israelis seem to take lice in stride as "one of those things" that happen to children...think of Treatment Time as Family Quality Time if it makes life easier .

A Political Cartoon I REALLY Don't Like

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Elena Steier Center for American Blogress Sep 9, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Generally, I will put up cartoons I find humorous or am in sympathy with. This one really turns me off.

I'm no friend of the evangelical Christian Right. But this one is not only extreme [note the "tattoo"], it is also far too misogynist, and demeans both McCain and Palin.

I find it interesting that the cartoonists are focussing a lot on Palin as a real bitch now, when a good many of my cybercorrespondents are focussing on pledges by both Presidential candidates to lower taxes. As always, the American voter [and voters in most other places, to be honest] is swayed by the state of his/her wallet more than almost anything else.

Notice: Important Change Pending

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Stephen Rustad Petaluma Argus-Courier Aug 23, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

This should have been done a long time ago....

Only About Two Weeks More Until The Season Begins....

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Ed Hall Artizans Syndicate Aug 19, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

This year the Redskins take the Superbowl! Yeah! [Well, stranger things HAVE happened...]

The Destruction of A City

Sunday is Tisha b'Av, the day when Jews mourn a lot of things. The destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Expulsion from Spain, Hitler's Final Solution was promulgated--it is an all-round National Catastrophe Day. There are those of us who feel that Holocaust Day is redundant, and should be remembered, in its historical context, along with all the other disasters Jews have suffered throughout the ages.

This year is especially poignant if you live in Jerusalem. In the name of "urban renewal" and "improved mass transit" our Gracious City Fathers seem bent on finishing what the Romans started in AD 70. (A note for the finicky: the actual destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans actually began on the 17th of Tamuz, in the Hebrew calendar, three weeks before Tisha b'Av, when the first breach in the walls of what is now the Old City occurred. But I'm allowed some literary license)

Well over a decade ago a decision was taken to create a network of above-ground light rail lines that would connect some of Jerusalem's more distant neighborhoods with the city center. Jerusalem is a rather odd city. The population is about 700,000, but it is spread over a very large area. Further, as it sits on top of a bunch of mountains, neighborhoods are often defined and separated by deep valleys. There was never any attempt at city planning, indeed, the topography dictates where streets will run, and in the older parts of the city, the streets are narrow and often not straight. Here is a rough city map from 1993; and here is a better one, but you will have to zoom in for the detail. The commercial center is largely defined by the triangle formed by King George Street, Ben Yehuda Street, and Jaffa (Yafo) Road. But it is Jaffa Road that is the real lifeline of the city, running from the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway at the city entrance (where the Central Bus Station is) to the Old City.

Jaffa Road isn't a particularly splendid piece of "high street". In fact, considerable bits of it look pretty much as they did in the years of the British Mandate, and even the Ottoman period, tarted up with neon signs and sporting shop windows selling everything from sports shoes to tourist twat and religious articles. Most of the shops are "key money", a kind of protected tenancy whereby the owner sells a leasehold to the purchaser for a one-time price. The purchaser cannot be evicted, but any improvements he puts into the property are at his own expense but are owned by the owner. So there's little incentive to make any real improvement to the property. Consequently a lot of the shops are quite delapidated.

Ben Yehuda Street is a pedestrian mall, and many of the small streets off Jaffa Road have been so converted also, but both Jaffa Road and King George Street are extremely busy thoroughfares, with about 20 bus lines traversing the city's two axes -- from entrance to Old City, from the neighborhood of Gilo to Mt. Scopus. (It was at the intersection of King George and Jaffa that the suicide bomber struck the Sbarro Pizza outlet with such devastating effect). A little farther from the city center is the Machaneh Yehuda open-air market, which has also seen its share of terror attacks, as it is usually crowded with shoppers, especially in the run-up to Shabbat. It is a much-beloved Jerusalem institution.

The light railway was supposed to have its first line open in 2006. To no one's surprise, the date is now some time in 2010, and the cost has escalated exponentially. Not only did all the streets using it have to be dug up in order to put down the necessary infrastructure for the electrical cables, etc., they now have to be dug up a second time to lay the tracks. Further, the railway lane will be slightly raised, except at intersections, so that cars cannot drive on the tracks and impede the progress of the trains. The construction has been inching forward at a pace that would put a snail to shame, largely because the track-laying machines, which were supposed to do everything at once, have turned out to be an untested technology (from France) which is a great disappointment.

This week the City closed the entire length of Jaffa Road from near the Central Bus Station to almost the Old City, except for one lane barely wide enough for a bus, traveling in one direction only, instead of doing it in bits. All the bus lines have had to be rerouted, at least partially, onto narrow streets that were already jam-packed with vehicular traffic. All parking on these streets has had to be prohibited. People have to walk long distances from the nearest bus stop to where they want to go; and since a great many of the usual patrons of the downtown shops are the elderly who don't drive (and thus don't go to the shopping malls on the city periphery), this is quite a hardship. They can't do their shopping, and hail a taxi because taxis can't use the now-restricted bus lanes--they have to retrace their steps, shlepping all their packages, to a bus stop on a street on which traffic backs up for blocks every time a bus comes to a halt. And the current "timetable" for the work allows two years for its completion. More like six, the way things have been going so far.

Forget terrorists: if someone has a heart attack in downtown Jerusalem now, no ambulance, rescue vehicle, or paramedic on a motorcycle can get around the blockages caused by back-to-back buses. The buses themselves cannot keep to any schedule. It normally takes me between 20 minutes and half an hour to get to work; since Jaffa Road has been closed it takes me an hour and a half. Each way. And my son-in-law the policeman has noted that, should a grave, or even a bone, or anything of archeological interest be turned up during the street's excavation, all construction comes to an indefinite halt. By law, all archeological finds must be thoroughly excavated, and the ultra-Orthodox go on a rampage every time they decide some rock or geological formation is a "grave" (because the assumption is it is the grave of a Jew). The opening of the Begin highway was held up for three years because the ultra-Orthodox decided a boulder was a grave (in spite of all evidence to the contrary), and the road had to be rerouted, a section torn up and resited so the "grave" is now in a median strip)

My SIL has told me the police have met with City officials and told them frankly that they cannot guarantee the safety of the city center with the entire length of Jaffa Road affected the way it is currently. The merchants have met with City officials and told them that nearly all of them will be bankrupt within 6 months; I've noticed some "For Sale" signs appearing already on some of the smaller shops. Eventually we'll have rapid transit to the downtown area but the downtown area will be a ghost town.

The cynic in me says that is exactly what the City is hoping for. As tenants abandon their "key money" premises, the owners can be tempted to sell to developers who will knock down every vestige of old "modern" Jerusalem and put up tower blocks for commercial and residential purposes. Currently Jerusalem is enjoying something of a luxury apartment building boom (there are those who say it has not only peaked but the newest construction sites will never even be completed) for the "two months a year residents", a great many of whom are French, and wealthy. When life is good in France, they'll stay there, but they want a foothold in Israel should the Moslems in France go on a rampage (many were pied noirs in North Africa; came to Israel penniless in the Fifties, decamped to France only a few years later because of the austerity conditions here then, leaving some relatives here, so they are not entirely strangers to the country)

I fear an essential part of the city is being undermined. Jerusalem already, because of its uniqueness, suffers from high housing costs, and has been losing residents to the satellite towns halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (it's a half hour/45 minute commute to Tel Aviv from Modi'in, for example, and maybe half an hour into Jerusalem). The downtown triangle, while it certainly could use a bit of fixing-up, has a very special atmosphere that has managed to survive nearly a century. It would be a tragedy if it went, and the Jerusalem city center looked like a hundred other places.

The whole light railway is a fiasco. Washington DC put in a trolley system that barely 5 years after its inception took out of service, when I was a child, and Washington is a town with broad boulevards, not two-lane streets that suddenly have kinks and curves. If a car that travels on rails breaks down, nothing can go around it. This weakness has had my SIL's unit, an elite one like a SWAT team, practicing various scenarios for several years already, but nothing is simpler than a terrorist suddenly driving onto the rail lane (in spite of it being slightly elevated, a car could drive onto it easily), blocking trains in both directions, and either he or a couple of confederates simply hurling a few grenades into the train compartments. This week the dangers of the raised lane were highlighted when it was shown that a bus lane in Haifa, 7 cm above the street level, but hardly noticeable in dim light, had caused several fatal accidents already, as motorcyclists fell off the edge into oncoming traffic. Since the Jaffa Road construction is now going 24 hours a day, there has been a need for a lot many more construction workers--it's not by accident that the two "bulldozer terrorist" incidents have happened right now. And the traffic rerouting, etc. demands a huge police presence (at a time of year when families schedule vacations). SIL gloomily predicts that once it rains in October or thereabouts, everything will go into abeyance until the spring: roadwork can't be done in wet conditions, and the City has lost about three months of dry weather this year.

We've got the Calatrava "string" bridge now, and it is very inspiring, there at the entrance to the city. So inspiring, in fact, that all the buildings around it look really dull and uninspired. I guess they'll have to be demolished at some point, and rebuilt in a grander style. Despite the removal of the scaffolding, etc. traffic at the entrance of the city still hasn't gone back to normal. It appears that the construction company that won the tender for track-laying has finally figured out how to lay the tracks. Apparently a couple of the cars have arrived from France and more are on the way.

All that the citizens of the city ask is that the work on the main street of the city be done in chunks so the rest of the length of Jaffa Road can function, or there's going to be a really nice rail system going into a deserted city center. I really don't know if the Jerusalem I know can survive this "urban renewal".

Very Dispiriting, but Not Surprising

The writer is an Israeli Arab who often writes for the JPost. He discusses the current infighting between Hamas and Fatah here. Anyone who thinks that Israel is the reason there's no peace in the Middle East doesn't understand the Arab mentality.

"Myself and my brother against the world; myself against my brother". (Arab proverb, quoted by Rafael Patai in "The Arab Mind")

Snorkle! #4

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Dick Locher Chicago Tribune Aug 1, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

The NFL is definitely more interesting than the Presidential election.