I Beg to Differ

For a while now, I've been friends with myself on facebook. Today I was messing around a bit, and tried to poke myself:


Hmmph. I'm sure I could poke myself if I gave it the old college try.

Breaking News

Seeing as it's been over a month since I last posted anything here, and since Purim's just around the corner, I offer a post for general consumption.

The following is an article which I wrote for the Purim edition of the YU Commentator. It's not clear whether it will actually be in the paper, since I submitted it pretty late (today). So if it is, you get a sneak peek here. I think it's safe to assume that what I write on my blog stays on my blog, relying on the halachah that lashon hara told to less than three people is not considered to be in the public domain. Oh, and it's funnier if you've learned messechet kiddushin.

YU Student Pretends to Be Kohein, Found to Be Leivi
Marriage Called Off
by Dunn Itagen

Drawn faces greeted visitors to the apartment of Ester Eisberg last Monday, as Eisberg recovered from the shock of discovering that her fiancée, YU Student Yoni Sheinenblatt, was not a kohein, as he had claimed.

"If he lied to me about being a kohein, what else has he been hiding from me?" asked Eisberg, wiping tears from her eyes. "He told me that he was a ba'al korei, but now that I think about it, I've only ever heard him lein two pesukim."

Sheinenblatt's friends were also stunned to find that he was not, in fact, a kohein. "I really just can't believe it. All those times that he was the only 'kohein' in shul... and how he was always makpid to get a haircut every thirty days... now I just don't know what to think," said bewildered friend Asher Baharbanu.

Whether the Sheinenblatt-Eisberg marriage will take place as planned is far from clear. On March 2, Sheinenblatt offered Eisberg twenty-three dates as kiddushin, but it is not known if Eisberg intended to accept all of the dates, or only the last one. The kiddushin was originally to have taken effect thirty days after that time. However, Sheinenblatt has since gone overseas, and his current whereabouts are unknown.

Incredibly, this is not the first such tragedy to strike the Eisberg family. According to Ester's mother, Elaine Eisberg, "My sister-in-law, Ella, had a boyfriend who proposed to her with a bundle of vegetables in the middle of a grocery store. Needless to say, that relationship ended abruptly. And our cousin, Erin, had this crazy mixup when she came over from Ireland with her two servants. I don't know how or why, but there just seems to be something about Eisbergs that attracts these kind of titanic tragedies."

Not everyone was sympathetic to Eisberg's plight, however. Says fellow Stern Student Tsippy Statsenstein, "I'd actually rather marry a leivi than a kohein. After all, who needs a shoe that's bigger than their foot?"

Also, via wiggin, a very important development in the field of military outreach.

To make things more fun, I have included a number of Purim Eggs in the article. How can you find them? Well, I will give you one pointer: It's really easy. Yes, there was a word italicized in that last sentence. I will say no more.

One last thing. I certainly couldn't miss this opportunity to publicize OnlyTzaras, which is back this year for another round, including a few tzaras by yours truly. Truly. See if you can figure out which ones I made. What's that? You want a prize? Well, here's the best I can do for you: If you correctly name two out of the three tzaras I wrote, I'll either 1)single you out for praise 2)mention your achievements or 3)pick on you in a future post. What more could you ask for?

Chag Purim Sameach!