For my birthday Rebecca got me a betta fish. We went to petco today so I could pick the one I wanted. Now comes the big question – what do I name him? Being the nerd that I am, I will of course open it up to the readers of my blog for votes and suggestions.
Things that have come up so far:

I went to see the caps game last night with some friends. As a Flyers fan, rooting for the Caps did feel a little wrong, but I had no strong allegiences to either the Caps or Thrashers, so I decided to go with the home team. Ultimately I cared little about the final score, what I cared about was Alexander Ovechkin. The Caps rookie sensation has been the single bright side in an otherwise dismal season. With 105 points heading into the last game of the season, Ovechkin is third on the list for most points by a rookie all time, and ranks third in the league this year for both goals and assists. When you consider that he has few other players on offense who can create opportunities for him, it makes his stats that much more impressive.

After seeing him in person my review can be summed up in one word: fast. On several occasions Ovechkin had breaks where he had more than one defender between him and the net. On each of them he managed to deke out at least one or two defenders to get a good shot on goal. At one point he got the puck just inside the blue line in his own zone with a defender right next to him. He went back into his zone, around the defender, and streaked down the ice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player manage to go around another quite like that in my life. Ovechkin truly has a great career ahead of him. (hmmmm….. maybe the Flyers can pick him up).

This year for Pesach, I used the Arzei Halevanon haggadah, featuring commentaries and personal customs from rabbis Chaim Shulevitz, Isser Zalman Meltzer, Yaakov Kenievsky (The steipler), Moshe Feinstein, Aharon Kotler, and Yaakov Kamenetsky. As haggadahs go I’d have to give it a fairly decent rating (they could have picked some more interesting commentaries on some sections), but it was good. One interesting thing I did notice though, is that the entire haggadah is translated into English, except for Shir Hashirim is left mysteriously untranslated in true artscroll fashion.

On a related note the rabbi in Connecticut (where I was for Pesach), went off on a little anti-artscroll shpiel on shabbat, which made me feel right at home.

The recent events in Boro Park have taken me somewhat by surprise. The most shocking thing is not that the protests have occured, it’s the feelings that have been expressed by the residents of boro park (more), Crown Heights and the police. All of the above can only be described as “disturbing”.

update: After watching a CBS 2 report on the incident, I was reminded by the reporter (well, not me personally, but you know what I mean), that this is not being classified as a riot. There is no person-to-person violence, and no vandalism which usually defines a riot. It is technically a “street disturbance”.
Now back to your regularly scheduled post.

Well the blog subject did promise something good (the bad and the ugly are more than covered by the above links), so here it is. The Star-K has released a Passover guide, and apparently it’s normal. This is in great contrast to the Blumenkrantz book which makes so many false assumptions, misrepresentations, and statements that fly in the face of the previous 2000 of halacha that I can’t believe anyone takes it seriously. (And yet, people do).

Although I usually avoid chaptzem like the plague, if you want to see coverage of the Boro Park riots from the inside, that’s probably the best blog I can think of. Please note that you will have to put up with some of the worst grammar you’ve ever seen.