DID YOU FINISH YOUR DIET

Pesach was a long time ago, giving you enough time to diet. Back when I was in kindergarten they made us make charts, with 49 day on it and every 7 days was a different color, I can only think that it was a healthy chart, or a diet one, where every color reprsented a fruit. The end of the chart was on top of a mountain, of which i can only think represented success, and there was a figure that had two sides and a round top on it, that must have been the award for losing the weight.

Recently it has become a new phenomenon, everybody is counting these 49 days, every day losing another pound. There are a few people I know who got out and didn't count anymore, obviously they couldn't take the 49 day diet. I can see why people would go on a diet; its after pesach where you ate tons of matzoh, you have some healthy foods at the seder (maror, karpas), but the rest is loaded with calories , so you go on a diet for 49 days. That's besides the fact its right before the summer.

After you finish the diet you can relax and enjoy yourself, with some mouth watering cheesecake, that with every bite you take into it you can feel your blood clotting and your stomach widen, and you can put cherries or any other type of sugary filling on it so you don't feel guilty eating it. Enjoy your Shavous.

YOUR COUNTING ON IT

It was the second night of Pesach when you decided to embark on this mission. You thought to yourself, "This year is going to be the one, I'm going to make it all the way, I am going to count sefirah all 49 days". So the first night you are as pumped as people are for megillah leining. You make that brachah loud and clear so that everyone, within a 3 mile radius, should hear. You felt so great that you counted with such a geshmak that night, you wished you can count every night.

From then on you made sure to keep with every halachah and minhug that their was. You made sure that if someone asked what day it was, you can answer with "last night was this and this". Every time they told you to daven for the amud, you jumped at the chance for everyone to hear your brachah. You would go with a fire, and scream "Baruch....... Hayom yom..... Ba'omer!!!!", you didn't care whether anyone was shouting at you that you said Ba'omer and not La'omer, or that the brachah took 12 minutes altogether, you went on.

But it came the closing days of sefirah, and you were wondering what would happen if you said it everyday, with a brachah. You asked your local rabbi about what would happen. He told you that you just were mikaim a mitzvah, and then its over. That night you were thinking about it "I am counting for something, right? then the counting must end, soon. The rabbi is right it will be over. No more counting till next year!?!". But you loved counting so much, you could have been hired by sesame street to be the count, that this hurt you. Instant fear gripped your mind. You run out of shul screaming in the street "yidden yidden!!! you cant count sefirah in a few days, these are precious times don't waste them!!!". You go over to one fellow and say "Tonight is the 46th night, don't forget that and don't stop counting!!!". You leave the fellow thinking your crazy, then you realize you just said sefirah one night without a brachah (saying tonight is whatever, is considered counting and you cant make the brachah that night).

If you thought you lost it before, now you really did, you missed a night with a brachah!!!! Your heart begins to pound, you start sweating, as if someone is about to kill you. Your panicking, what will you do? "All is lost" you think to yourself "All those nights I kept up with it and now I missed it, everything sucks!". You pass out from all the tension you have caused yourself.

You find yourself days later in a hospital, hooked up to an IV. You ask the first Jewish person you see what day it is, they tell two days after Shavous. "AFTER SHAVOUS" you say, "But that means I completely missed 3 whole days of counting!!". You take a few short breaths, the pressure of not counting now plus missing counting before, creates the flat line sound of your cardiac monitor (in other words, your'e dead).

MUM

After realizing that there wasn't enough labels for people, they decided to come up with a new one, Modern Unorthodox Machmir. These people are not like the modern orthodox machmir, like anyone really knows what that is to begin with, or like regular unorthodox. They are a group of people that decided that they are unorthodox, but are machmir in some cases, making them the new, or modern, unorthodox and machmir.

Well not anyone can just be Modern Unorthodox Machmir, you have to keep to a set of rules from that are derabanan and ignore the rest of which are deoraisah. For example; they will drive to shul on shabbos, they only eat the shmurah matzoh, but dip their McDonalds french fries in saltwater, they eat only chulent that was heated on the blech, but yet turn on and off lights on shabbos.

But they aren't just machmir on the derabanans like saying sefirah, they are also machmir on environmental issues as well. They are warned about the 11th commandment "though shall not have a massive carbon footprint". Weekly sermons from Rabbi Rebecca, and her husband Reverend Davis, at the local shul, are constantly reminding the kehillah about the need to keep the planet clean, and are putting bans on new products that falsely claim to save the environment, every day. Therefore the community of MUM's will only have one child, use recycled paper and strap themselves to trees all over the world.

The life of an MUM is a tough one, only the most Machmir of Jews are zocheh to enter their sect of Judaism.

A.K.A. PELLA

I was passing a car stopped at a red light. The windows were rolled down on this SUV, and Jewish music was blasting from its black exterior. I noticed a Jew in the front seat (seems obvious). Then I thought "hey its sefira he shouldn't be playing that". I could have thought he holds of the second half, but instead I didn't. I tried to think of how this could tie into a post; why is he breaking sefira with Jewish music? if you really were going that far, listen to non-Jewish, or worse Lipa (you don't hear them banning non-Jewish concerts).

After a while (or 3 hours), I was in my friends car blasting music down the road, to one of the A.K.A PELLA CDs. Then I understood what that first guy was listening to, and dropped the post. I must admit they do a great job with their music, it sounds really good, and perfect for sefirah. They have some of your favorite knock offs, Lecha was done well. Its a Sefira CD for people who don't like Sefira, so go and buy it.