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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
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Nov. 19, 2009
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Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 11, 2005 / 9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766

iGeezer Generation

By Lenore Skenazy


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When I was about 9, my grandfather saw me using a push-button phone and exclaimed to my mother, "Kenahora!" which roughly translates as: Move over, Einstein (and, while we're at it, Golda Meir). "So young and she can push the keys!"

I'm sorry to say that my eyes rolled at this geezerly observation — same way my 9-year-old's eyes roll now when I am amazed that, kenahora, he knows how to program my cell phone. So young and he can push the keys!

And, ahem, I can't. At least, not to program the thing. No, I simply stop on the sidewalk, pull out my little phone book and proceed to dial the number, often while crouching on the sidewalk, because it's hard to juggle everything.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing, except I'm acting like an 80-year-old (with good knees). Like my grandfather before me, I have become a technogeezer. Only I became one back in my 30s. There are plenty of us — folks whose bodies are still firm, minds still keen and iPods still in their original boxes. We are 40-year-old virgins when it comes to anything combining the words "down" and "load," not to mention "zip" and "drive," as well as "Ti" and "VO." As my friend Laura puts it: "I couldn't burn a CD with a blowtorch."

Who needs to adapt anyway? We are happy with our current cell-phone ring — "Lick My Lollipop" — simply because we're used to it. Okay. Simply because we have no idea how to change it.

Nor are we in any hurry to download pictures from our digital cameras, because any minute now Michael Dell is going to walk through the door and do it for us. We hope. We don't need an MP3 player because we have all these newfangled CDs. And if we never figure out how to instant-message, so what? We know how to instant-pudding and that's enough.

I guess the official definition of a technogeezer is: One so unwilling to embrace new technology that he or she will do pretty much anything to get around it.

"I used to take my cell phone back to the store and have them retrieve my messages for me because I didn't know how to do it," says Tracey, 48. Thank goodness she's past that phase now. She gave the phone to her daughter.

My friend Gigi is learning Spanish because it's too hard to figure out how to get her TV back to broadcasting in English.

And legion are those of us who will never record a TV show because that involves programming a VCR. Or does it? Maybe now it involves a DVD player. G-d knows, because the VCR itself was many a geezer's Waterloo: We tried, we failed, we never tried again.

That's where we're at until Steve Jobs invents a Chiclet-sized device that lets old people bend their knees. And with any luck, my son will program mine.

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JWR contributor Lenore Skenazy is a columnist for The New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.

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