the american end of freedom

The Impossibility of it All.

I'm going to complain a bit. And why shouldn't I? Not everything is prefect. There are many issues and challenges in the frum world, BH, we all have our stories. I want to focus on credit card debt. I believe this issue one many of us struggle with, rely upon and many times feel like we are being buried under it.

A young man and woman get married, at times with not much idea how to make a living and find themselves with a bit of wedding money and a few months to figure out a parnasa. Many times the lady will conceive a baby BH and take herself out of the workforce. Now the young man has a few years to figure out her how in the world he's going to cover not only food, rent and clothing which is no small feat in one of most expensive cities in the world to live in which is Crown Heights, BH, but also to start covering the never ending and always growing tuition. There have been plenty of articles about tuition lately so no reason to keep beating a dead horse and speak it again at this point.

There quickly comes a point when there is simply not enough cash to cover everything. Again, we are working with a single family income, usually not too much higher education and plenty of children, may they multiply further. How do you cover the deficit? Very easily, cover it with credit card debt. And why wouldn't you? Low interest rates, points to fly for free, it sounds like a great deal. It is in fact a great deal if you have the flow of money coming in every month to cover the balances. But in our case the couple took out debt to cover monthly expenses that they don't have any other way to cover otherwise. Fast forward a few years and the debt has climbed to ten, twenty or thirty grand. The monthly interest and minimum payments are a between $200 to $600 dollars and it has become impossible to keep up with maintaining the credit card debt. So the way to get out of it at this point I’ll leave for the comment section to discuss but there is no easy way out as far as I know of.

In my humble opinion I think that Jewish Schools should not accept credit cards as payment for tuition. If someone doesn’t have cash to pay for schooling that means there is not enough money to cover rent and food expenses at home and have to supplement tuition with credit card debt. Schooling is important but so is eating and having a home. This is a recipe for disaster.

There is much to say about all this but I would like to ask G-d Almighty, for who impossible doesn’t exist to bless the Jewish people with plenty of money to cover all the expenses and then some, as well as health and children. We should all see Moshiach come and take us out of golus this Elul so we can spend Rosh Hashana with Moshiach in Jerusalem.

Josh Greenstein

(Not the author’s real name)

David Berlinski—Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

The Lie of Higher Education

the case of the dl

He went to one tonight. A wine tasting. To make wine we crush grapes and the inwardness comes out. Similar when a person drinks wine his inwardness is revealed.
What’s my inwardness I’m frustrated with my situation.

What the way to fight it
with joy and happiness abound.

The case of the driver’s license, it’s a long story and I am not sure if it’s worth telling
to make very short in a few points. I went to the bank and they informed me that my dl in expired.
I decided to get a new license from NY State where I live.
I went once to the wrong office
next time the right office had a two hour wait in line.
I diced to come back the next day late in the afternoon
a few hours later I get a call that my friend is looking at my dl sitting in a store
I must have dropped it there last week and had no idea.
I could have stood in line for nothing. Without it they wouldn’t have given me a NY license so fast.
That evening I went to pick it up from the store. But wait I have the store owners silver cup sitting in my house all these years. I moved into his old place and found it in the apartment. I asked him once if he wants it back and he said yeah. So I took the cup put it in a bag and went to get my license. The guy at the register starts making a scene that it doesn’t look like me and what not. A customer sees me and says I was here when they found your license last Sunday. I said oh good was there anything else lost with it< he said no. that the last time I was there. He said what are the odds that I was here then and I see you here now again? That’s God's hand in the world. I said yeah you’re right or we must both like shopping here a lot, ha ha. He was quite amazed and so was I. so I guess I had to return to the owner his cup and his store had to return to me my license.
What does this story mean, I don’t know. But for some reason it sits well with me.

Glen Beck – “And The Press Will Continue to Lie”. Who’s behind the Boston Terrorist Bombings?

There is something wrong with the current American climate that won't acknowledge bombings as terrorism and evil. They want us to believe that when evil men bomb innocent people it’s the fault of the innocent for not having given enough love to the evils of the world. They would much rather harass good people at airports than go after groups which spew evil doctrines. Evil wins when good men do nothing. (DC)

National Geographic’s video about the lives of a few Chassidim.

This is a pretty interesting watch.

Israel VS Palestine