Apologies

They are always a good surprise.
I accept them with more pleasure when it comes from Hasidim. :-)

In the past, some persons behaved very badly with me and, they have no shame to contact me years after without apologies, talking to me like nothing happened.
Yesterday, my ex boss sent me an email to congratulate me about my new adventure in Uèsses* (*US pronounced in a French way).
I chose not to reply, to ignore his email, and to block him on Facebook. Why? He and his business partner harassed me during 5 months before firing me. I sued them and i won.
Honestly, what does this kind of people expect from me? I have no 'friendship' to save, i am not into arrogant and pretentious persons. I love humility, even if you have a gift, remain humble, that's a beautiful quality.
He was the creative director of a company he created. He was a very bad creative, clients told him many times. I felt sorry for him many times, but he should have had to figure out what to do with his life instead of persisting in something he was not good. But that's not my business! He has been insulting enough with me many times. I threw him away just once, and he has been very hurt. He didn't show up the day after.

Last Sunday, the narrow-minded Hasidic man i already posted about him, sent me an email.
http://meshiksahasidicroots.blogspot.com/2014/02/rabbi-lazer-brody.html
"Hi, I apologize if I offended you last time!"
I explained him in return that it was difficult to have an informative conversation with him without being judged. He understood that he was too much the last time to attack me harshly.

We resumed the conversation, talking about me, him, the community. He has dreams of doing something with his professional life. I am totally supportive. He would like to leave the community but he knows that he will encounter hard times. He already has been to Footsteps. He is trying to find an exit with his issues. The positive things about the religious life style is the 'continuation: it's based on a solid tradition of thousands of years of teachings, e.g. take the laws of  'Yichud', which means rules regarding being alone with person from opposite gender. There's nothing like this in the secular world. In (Halachik) Judaism, these rules are very deeply ingrained and it's backed up by teachings that go back from milenia. Now, ask yourself honestly: would you want your significant other freely allowed to intermingle in a close manner with a member of the opposite gender?"
That's another cultural question. New Yorkers like what you call 'flirting' all the time. But it doesn't mean that they want to sleep with you. I don't say that they are innocent but most of the time, they do that because they expect something from you. That's business. I am totally hermetic to 'flirting business', and unfriendly when they persist with unsubtle manners, i close my door to them definitively.
Now in a daily life, New Yorkers flirt too.
When i started to meet Hasidim, i forgot this New Yorker characteristic. I was not into this flirting game
because they make you understand fast they want to get into your pants. The ball was in my court.
Then another question from him: "But, are you saying that it's not risky to be put in a room alone with a married man who is very attractive?" :-)
Attractive or not, i am not into married men. I have morals. If they have lied, and once i knew the truth, i stopped immediately.
"You realize that in Judaism Adultery is one of the greatest sin and is punishable by death! Now to avoid being put in a compromising position and to thwart temptation that my lead to the most abominable of deeds certain safeguards were put in place.
That's what I mean that the general culture is corrupt! Don't you agree that a woman who commits adultery should be punished severely?"
Why woman? I don't know if there is a reliable survey to know if men cheat on their wife more than women on their husband. Flesh is weaker in men's brain, right? :-)
Why during wars or not, women are victims of rapes more than men? His reply: "But men are also victims from domineering and manipulating women." Poor men! :-)
He might talk about his own experience, i didn't ask. I just know that his arranged marriage didn't work out a long time. He had issues to experiment the women world later.
Nobody has been punished by death in Willy or Boro Park so far because he/she cheated on his/her partner.

And to end, we talked about our favorite book. I expected from him a Hasidic writer, but it was Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger. I asked him the reasons why he liked this book "It depicts the adolescent mind and for the no bull-shit attitude in portrays". I told him that i disliked deeply this book for the same reasons he liked it and i added that Holden is a bourgeois end his bourgeois issues bothered and bored me a lot. I know that many people love this book, and i never understood why. I read other books about adolescent thoughts much better. But anyway, his reply to that, was very funny: "I guess we have differing views, can we still have sex?". And then, he felt 'guilty', "I guess I should instantly apologize:)".
Differing views about books can be fixed on pillows…