EZ Reads 2/16/11

A surprising number of y'all actually seem to like these, which is a nice bonus. Thanks for reading!

• A great, inspiring piece on RSA/Chofetz Chaim alumnus and Ottowa Rabbi Yehuda Simes, who was nearly killed in a car crash last year, in the Ottowa Citizen called Accident of Faith.
  
• Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic properly enjoys Nir Rosen's forced resignation and loss of fellowship at NYU after tweeting gleefully about reporter Lara Logan's rape while covering the happenings in Egypt. Rosen was virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic, and Goldberg wonders why it took this long for NYU to cut ties.
• An excerpt from this week's Mishpacha magazine, "Pressing Reset on the Recession":

  Since the current recession took hold in December 2007, the employment landscape has changed dramatically across much of America. According to a June 2010 Pew Research survey, roughly a third of adults in the labor force have been unemployed for a period of time during the recession. Furthermore, 55 percent of adults in the labor force who were surveyed reported that they had suffered financially during the recession, be it a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours, or an involuntary spell in a part-time job.
  
  “Young adults have taken the biggest losses on the job front,” the Pew staff concluded. “Middle-aged adults have gotten the worst of the downturn in house values, household finances, and retirement accounts. Men have lost many more jobs than women. And across most indicators, those with a high school diploma or less education have been hit harder than those with a college degree or more.”
  
  Among the frum community, these trends have spelled disaster for all too many families. The basics costs of running a Torah-observant home are challenging even for gainfully employed householders. Pay cuts or spells of unemployment can transform that challenge into an unattainable feat. Family after family has been crushed and demoralized by the ongoing recession, which the Pew team described as having presented the most “punishing combination of length, breadth, and depth” of the thirteen recessions experienced by America since the Great Depression of 1929. Despite talk of recovery, this recession stubbornly refuses to cede ground to optimism and rebounds.

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