For $12.17 you can have the best school in the country.
TD Bank is the best bank in the country. Here’s why, including how I think we can use the information to build better religious schools.
About a year ago, while I was in the process of refinancing my home, I had a small line of credit from TD Bank; it, too, was secured against my home. I only needed the line of credit for a month or two until the paperwork was completed on the refinance, and I only used about $3,000 of the line.
After the first month I got a bill for $12.17 in interest, which I promptly paid online from my Citibank checking account. Unfortunately, Citibank didn’t process the transfer (I still don’t know why), but also didn’t tell me until the day I was about to leave the country, which was also the day the payment was due.
Knowing I would be paying off the loan in a month or two anyway, I had already (foolishly) thrown away the mortgage statement, so I didn’t know who to call about the loan. I didn’t even know my mortgage number. I started to panic. I had visions of a destroyed credit rating, foreclosure proceedings, and who knows what. Certainly I would be unable to refinance the house with a loan in default.
The only phone number I had was the TD Bank branch where I signed the papers.
So I called them. Could they accept payment by credit card? No. Could they take a check over the phone? No, not from Citibank. How about an electronic transfer of some sort? No, only between accounts at TD Bank. I explained the whole story and pleaded for help.
The woman at the other end of the phone gave me a solution. She would pay the $12.17 from her own account. Then, when I returned from traveling, I could stop by the branch and pay her back. Now, I didn’t have a TD Bank account. I was going to be paying off their loan. I lived 30 minutes away by car. And the women had never met me. But she gave me $12.17.
And the result is that I’m writing a blog entry about how good TD Bank is, and, when I can, I’m going to move my accounts there.
Here’s my question: how does your religious school measure up to TD Bank?
After all, wouldn’t it be truly awful if a bank gave an anonymous customer better service than schools give parents, teachers, and children in what is supposed to be a holy community?
More specifically:
1. Do you require dues to be paid in full before children can attend school, or do you let children attend and hope that parents will want to pay for a job well done? What about bar/bat mitzvah?
2. When parents say that their schedule doesn’t permit them to bring their child to a particular class/event/service, do you try to accommodate them or do you chastise them for not caring enough about Judaism?
3. When children say they don’t feel well, are you more likely to believe them or to assume that they’re trying to trick you?
4. Is it the school’s policy to pay teachers as much as possible, or to get away with paying them as little as possible?
5. Is your school an example of the best possible customer service?
Some planets need Hebrew names, and you can help – Haaretz – Israel News
By way of Haaretz:
For more than 1,000 years, when Hebrew speakers looked at the sky, they saw five planets — Hama (Mercury), Noga (Venus), Maadim (Mars), Tsedek (Jupiter) and Shabtai (Saturn). The five planets closest to earth all have ancient Hebrew names, some of them dating back to the time of the Talmud.
On the other hand, the two planets that are further away — Uranus and Neptune — were not known in ancient times, and are therefore referred to by these names in Hebrew, too. Now the Hebrew Language Academy is inviting the public to help choose Hebrew names for the solar system’s farthest flung planets.
Accidental Mutineers
With Rosh Hashanah less than a week away, our thoughts turn to starting a new year, and, we hope, improving on the old one. The theme of asking for forgiveness is a common one. But we pay less attention to the other side of the same coin: have we created an environment that lets others apologize to us?
We usually find it easier to see the faults in those around us than to recognize our own. The shortcomings of family members, coworkers, and friends leap out at us in vivid detail, while our own imperfections remain obscured behind veils of psychological obfuscation.
So what do we do when we see that a parent is needy or a boss insecure, a spouse jealous or a friend unsupportive, a child ungrateful or an employee combative?
Like all instruments of power, our knowledge of other people’s faults — so clear to us and yet invisible to them — can be a force for betterment or for destruction.
In this regard, the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny is a brilliant study of how we deal with what’s wrong with other people.
Captain Queeg, in command of the U.S.S. Caine, is a well-meaning and capable commander, but years of combat have taken their toll and he is also nervous, obsessive, and prone to paranoia. As is frequently the case, those around him see his faults right away, while he himself remains practically unaware of them.
What, then, do his shipmates do?
Rather than try to work with their captain, rather than accepting his failings and trying to help him overcome them, rather than compensating for what he cannot do, the officers of the ship antagonize Queeg. They scoff him. The provoke him. They follow the letter of his orders even when they know it’s a bad idea.
In this combative and unsupportive environment, Queeg’s insecurities worsen and his paranoia becomes more pronounced. “Sometimes the captain of a ship needs help,” Queeg pleads. But his subordinates use his weakness against him. “Look at the man. He’s a Freudian delight,” one officer tells another, hoping to make a case that the captain is unbalanced.
Eventually the ship finds itself maneuvering around a typhoon. The crew no longer trusts their isolated captain, and they relieve him of command.
The key to the movie is the trial for mutiny. The crew are found not-guilty, because by the time the typhoon hit, Captain Queeg was unable to make sound decisions. But they are also found morally culpable, because they paved the way to the captain’s demise, in the process almost destroying the boat and ending their own lives.
What will we do next year when we see the shortcomings in those around us?
Like the officers on the Caine, we have a choice. We can try to create a tolerant, forgiving environment. Or we can use other human beings’ flaws to our own short-term advantage and amusement.
Will we choose well?
Or we will become accidental mutineers?
Count On It
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
Numbers pop up in the most amazing places. Today we’ll look at a few. And we’ll start with one of the Hebrew words for “few,” because almost paradoxically it’s the plural of the word for “one.” One way to say “a few words” is milim ahadot, literally, “words ones.” While in the singular, “one” means “one,” in the plural it means “some.” Leave it to Hebrew to have a plural for “one.”
Haviv Rettig Gur on Israel and America
Haviv Rettig Gur has an essay in the Jerusalem Post in which claims:
Here’s a theory: Israeli society has a profoundly different and deeply moving way of defining the very notion of Jewishness. [read the essay...]
The essay sets the stage for his theory and expands on it. It’s well worth reading.
Video of 3,700-Year-Old Jerusalem Wall
CNN has a video of the wall that’s well worth watching. (You have to put up with a brief commercial.)
Jerusalem Wall from 700 Years Before King David
From the Israel Antiquities Authority:
An Enormous 3,700 Year Old Fortification was Exposed in the City of David
The fortification rises to a height of c. 8 meters [26 feet], and it seems that the Canaanites used it to defend the path that led to the spring.
The excavations are being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park and are underwritten by the Ir David Foundation.
A huge fortification more than 3,700 years old….
Side by Side
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
What do apples, oranges and tomatoes have in common in Hebrew, as opposed to mangoes, bananas and carrots? Let’s find out. (Here’s a hint that won’t surprise you: The difference between the two groups has nothing to do with the foods themselves; it’s a matter of grammar.)
To get started, we look at a construction called smichut in Hebrew – literally, “closeness” – translated as “the construct” in English (creating the unfortunately alliterative phrase “construct construction”).
It’s The Little Things
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
It is not unusual to hear Israelis yelling “die!” at each other. That’s because, in Hebrew, dai literally means “enough,” and it’s a common way of telling someone “that’s enough already; now please quit it.” (Two American parents took their children to Israel for the year. One day the five-year-old daughter came home from her new Israeli school and reported that she’d learned a Hebrew word: dai. She reported “it means ‘stop fighting.’”)….
