Interesting Posts and Articles #114

1. At Kankan Chadash, part four of a conversation on whether to teach the Chassidic idea that Hashem gets pleasure from our doing mitzvot, or the Maimonidean idea that such is kefirah, to the opposite audience.
   
   
2. On the Main Line about the teshuva of Arnold Ehrlich.
   
   
3. In Mol Araan -- is Barack Obama too skinny? some dietary advice.
   
   
4. HaEmtza on mistreating Baalei Teshuva by not giving them full reign when teaching.
   
   
5. JNUL now has Sefer HaChinuch, which I might include now in my "sources" roundups on the parsha. And HebrewBooks.org has Maggid Meisharim.
   
   
6. Wolfish Musings complains of a made-for-TV-movie on CBS tonight (Sunday) called Loving Leah, where the plot is a woman (Leah) who undergoes yibbum. We don't do yibbum nowadays! Pesky Settler gives video of the actress who plays Leah's mother, on the View, where she displays a lack of knowledge and a dislike for Lubavitch Jews, e.g. saying they are all ugly, and talking about the backwards ways and attitudes of Chassidic Jews.
   
   
   
   Meanwhile, Debbie Schlussel also complains about that interview on "The View".
   
   At the NY Post, you can get a review, which includes a bit of plot summary. Apparently, the initial plan was to do chalitzah, but the irreligious brother refused. And yibbum is apparently presented as the first option.
   

   Right off, he's distressed to find that he has to rip the lapels (the traditional sign of Jewish mourning) on his good suit. Worse, he finds out that he is also required by Jewish law to marry his widowed sister-in-law if she is childless.

   Jake is already engaged to a WASPy fellow doctor, Carol (Christy Pusz). He's relieved to discover that he can get out marrying his sister-in-law if he waits two months and 28 days and participates in an ancient ceremony.

   At the ceremony, he is told to lean against a wall wearing a special shoe. Leah then kneels down, unties the special shoe, lifts up his leg, removes the shoe, throws it across the room, while Jake loudly denies his brother's existence.

   Wearing the shoe is one thing, denying his brother's existence is another. So he and Leah get married instead and she moves - wigs and all - with him to DC.

   He would not have to deny the brother's existence in a chalitza ceremony; that is a misunderstanding of what goes on... And regardless, yibbum would not be practiced by a frum Lubavitch woman nowadays. She would sit as an agunah, not able to marry, until they figured out a way to compel the brother to participate. See here, on zikkah le-yibbum. And see here is the Rif where he lays out the order of a chalitzah.