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. 30, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America Oct. 29, 2009 Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity? JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes) Oct. 28, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes) Oct. 27, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes) Oct. 26, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 23, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure? JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes) Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us Oct. 22, 2009 Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes) Oct. 21, 2009 Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies' JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes) Oct. 20, 2009 Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes) Oct. 19, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Is nepotism kosher? JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 16, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes) Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost Oct. 15, 2009 Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process' JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Sept. 30, 2005 / 26 Elul, 5765 Keep your ‘machisma’ out of it By David Gelernter http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During the John G. Roberts Jr. confirmation hearings, Sen. Dianne Feinstein had an interchange with the nominee that many conservative commentators noticed. They accused Feinstein of criticizing Roberts for acting like a judge, which wasn't fair because he is a judge. But the real problem goes deeper. Feinstein asked Roberts how he would handle right-to-die cases. She told him to answer "as a son, a husband and a father." She wanted a personal, emotional response, not the cool logic of a jurist. Contrary to instructions, he answered dispassionately and not as a son, husband or father. She was displeased. Her question was offensive on a human level, for reasons having nothing to do with the judicial context. She demonstrated a disturbing and widespread phenomenon: A powerful person insists that someone's private feelings must be spread out for public viewing, like rugs in a Mideast bazaar. Roberts' feelings as a father, son and husband are none of the country's business. Years ago, this nation invested much energy in anguishing over and mocking machismo — male swagger, a menacing virility, an air of aggression. Women could be macho too, but the pioneer sinners were men. Feinstein has given us a beautiful demonstration of a female counterpart. "Machisma" (a silly word, but I don't know a better one) is one plausible name for the urge to make strangers tell the world about private emotions. Although anyone (male or female) can practice machisma or be the target, no rational person would deny that this sin was pioneered by women. "Macha" characters delight in emotional disembowelment; in ordering their victims to let it all hang out. But lots of people have no desire for heart-to-hearts with strangers in public, much less on national TV. Macha is just as toxic as macho, or more so, because it's harder to laugh off. "How do you feel?" has become a standard media question, a substitute for eliciting actual information. Oprah and her imitators use it; news reporters covering hurricanes use it. Macha helps demolish the emotional walls that protect people, just as hurricanes demolish their physical walls. In the long-ago age before macha, you called a person Miss Hepburn, say, until explicitly invited to use her first name — which helped English recapture the ancient distinction between "thou" (once the friendly, easygoing form of address among friends) and "you" (for addressing strangers or superiors). Lacking this distinction, English is all sweatsuits and no tuxedos. When two people were not on a first-name basis, that fact indicated what kind of behavior was suitable and what wasn't. No child presumed to call an adult by his or her first name; no doctor did so with a patient. Friendships moved forward in small, graceful steps instead of lunges. Keeping a respectful distance and recognizing authority made the world not cold and forbidding but comfortable, reassuring. In school, my boys have often been harassed by macha teachers demanding that they tell the class their feelings. One teacher had the nerve to tell one of my sons that his book report must "critique without judging" — and she marked him down for trying to analyze what was good and bad in the story instead of saying which passages got him all choked up. (How many teenage boys do you know who like getting all choked up — or talking about it?) Granted, the demand strikes different people in different ways. Some students welcome it. My boys don't. Lots of people don't. For a person in authority to insist that lower-downs reveal their emotions is an abuse of power, a form of emotional groping that can leave the targets feeling violated and mad as hell. Machisma flourishes all over the landscape. Two thoughtful, dignified women I know went together to a house of worship. (Church, synagogue; details don't matter.) Soon after arriving they learned that the service would center on the congregants "sharing their feelings." Self-revelation would start in front and continue around the room. They looked at each other and stood, walked out and have never been back. Their feelings are not topics for public discussion. In this case, a macha man made himself obnoxious to two women. All sexes can play. SOUNDS INTRIGUING? Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). The sorriest of all macha manifestations is the way grief counselors descend like carrion crows on any site of public disaster. (Again, the recent hurricanes provide a sad example.) People who are grieving generally want and need to speak to friends and family — not to strangers or professional busybodies. Some post-9/11 studies suggest that grief counselors do no good anyway. "There is simply no evidence that sharing one's deepest feelings with a stranger of dubious qualifications does any good," write Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel (a policy analyst and clinical psychiatrist, respectively) in their recent book, "One Nation Under Therapy." Sen. Feinstein thought she was doing the nation a service. She's a sensible person who usually says sensible things. But on this occasion she has reminded us that, ironically, a civilization in which strangers boldly quiz each other about their deepest feelings is a civilization growing colder all the time. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Yale professor David Gelernter is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem. To comment, please click here. ARCHIVES © 2005, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works