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Dear Alice,

I always take your point of view seriously - and that has nothing in particular to do with anyone's gender.

I don't remember Metropolitan X extinguishing the cigar, but he certainly was not smoking it when he had his vestments on!

As to smoking itself: recently I've had to cope with a young parishioner whose father - a heavy smoker -has just died of lung cancer. The Church is often accused of seeking to deprive people of simple pleasures, but tobacco is one of those things which might provide a simple pleasure but at a terrible price. We cannot always succeed in giving a good example in everything, but we can at least try.

That said, I nearly keeled over in acute shock when a friend of mine was called "anti-social" because he neither smokes nor drinks! My friend is quite social, thank you, and is also excellent company.

Fr. Serge

Dear Father Serge,

Bless.



You are very kind and I thank you for that.

Humbly,
In Christ,
Alice

Father Serge:

Father bless!!

Just recently, Father John Corape on his evening program on EWTN spoke about this. In his opinion, given what we know about the dangers of smoking, the habit can be considered a sin against the commandment proscribing killing. Of course that is his opinion and he made sure people knew it as such, but he made a point that we are not to damage the temple of the Holy Spirit that we are. Certainly something to think seriously about.

BOB

That's funny. We learned from my (very learned, very Jewish) Judaism professor last year that Orthodox rabbis dress the way they do because in Poland in the 17th/18th centuries, that's how most men dressed. It just stuck.

Alexis

True. It is therefore even more interesting that the ultra-Orthodox, in both the United States and Israel, insist on this form of dress as "traditional"--as though King David wandered the Judean hills in a woolen caftan and wide-brimmed sable hat.

The custom of married Jewish women shaving their heads and wearing wigs also dates from the days of the shtetl. Jewish men did it to make their wives less attractive to goyische men with an itch that needed scratching.

Hi Alexis,

Actually, through the years I think that I have posted that trivia a few times and other trivia about the history of costume vis a vis ecclesiastical dress...(you just weren't paying attention!! LOL! )

Fond Regards,
Alice
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Stuart,

Although I am a native New Yorker, and therefore, I know a few Yiddish words, I am afraid that neither 'shtetl' or 'goyishe' are one of them..Can you please translate. Thank you. (Though I am assuming that 'goyishe' means a 'single man'?)

Alice