Why is it that someone else talking on a cell phone in public is impolite, and when you’re the one talking on a cell phone, it’s an important call? I find it curious that people will pass judgment on someone without knowing the caller’s situation.

Recently I went to an urgent care appointment at a very large group medical practice. I was irritated by signs in the waiting room telling you to turn off your phone when you enter the building. There are many legitimate reasons to be on the phone in the waiting room:

• Your spouse dropped you off at the front door since your foot was hurt, and you need to tell him where to find you once he parks the car.
• You need to tell a babysitter that your appointment is running late.
• To tell your boss a family emergency has come up, you’re at the doctor, and you’ll miss that meeting it took two months to set up.
• You need support after a bad diagnosis. (Or, you got a good result and need to tell your mom to stop worrying.)

Whatever the reason, it’s more important to you than anything going on in the waiting room. Yes, you should respect other people waiting, but is being considerate to strangers really more important than showing respect to people you know by keeping them informed as you deal with a medical issue?

(Maybe this is “sign inflation”–they don’t care if everyone turns off their cell phones, so long as it keeps the volume down, and they can point to the sign if they have to tell someone to be quiet. Not my idea of compassionate care, though.)

There’s an idea that medicine is such a serious matter it must be more important than whatever you’re talking about; some hospitals have banned cell phone use for fear of radio interference with medical equipment. Today, major hospitals use mobile phones, and even WiFi, for communication among doctors and nurses, and recognize that patients and families need to keep in touch. As with anything, the technology isn’t the problem, it’s a question of how you use it.

We are living in historic times, those of us here in 2008. Up until now our society has, basically, been in the shadow of World War II. Increasing globalization, advances in electronic communications and medicine, highways and aviation, improvements in human rights, literacy and nearly universal college education, modern national borders–these are the forces that have shaped our lives and have, in general, have been constants since the FDR administration. But that hasn’t been true for all of human history, and there’s no reason to think things can’t–as Barack Obama says–change.

An op-ed by Gary Hart in today’s New York Times expresses this better and with more experienced insight than I can.

Today is Fathers’ Day. With two young children now, fatherhood is in full swing. I figure I at least can take the time to write a blog entry.

I finished my Paternity Leave post a few weeks ago with a vague mention of a “great challenge out there for me” and I want to go into a little more detail about what I was thinking.

Specifically, I was thinking about a professional challenge. Over my career, I have found myself solving the same problems again and again. This experience has given me a couple ideas for new software, and more recently an idea for a book. I don’t know that any of these ideas is going to get me rich, but these are problems that more than one company has paid me a decent salary to solve, and people less smart than me have started businesses and published books with less qualifications. And, even if I didn’t get rich developing any of these ideas (getting rich has never been for me a goal in itself) doing so might help me advance in my career, or achieve some recognition, or at least prove an interesting intellectual challenge and fodder for this blog.

So, what’s the problem? It could take a serious commitment of time–prime daytime included–to take any of these ideas very far beyond the napkin-sketch stage. It would sound a lot cooler to say I wrote the next great Web 2.0 application on a free weekend while drinking beer in my pajamas but that’s not going to happen (though there might be something to the idea of advancing in short, creative bursts). I have a job; setting aside the obvious conflicts of time and money, I think that with a full-time job, there is only so much else I can do. More importantly, I have a family, and (though they’ll say I ignore them to play with the computer) I make a conscious effort to spend time on activities that will enrich all of us. Plus, I just fall asleep. Some people may get ahead by working or studying when other people are sleeping, but avoiding sleep will not be my ongoing plan for success.

I’m reading the book Good to Great which says that great organizations and their leader embody the Stockdale Paradox: they confront “brutal” reality without losing hope. Paternity leave was my reality check: I’m not going to learn and create everything I want to in my spare time. It’s going to take a real plan.

Today is my last day of paternity leave. Thanks to a great employer who paid 60% of my salary while I was out, I was able to spend eight weeks away from the office, taking care of Max and being a stay-at-home dad.

I’m supposed to say what I liked best was the time to bond with Max, but what I really appreciated was the change in routine. I never set out to have a 9-to-5 job in an office. I set out to be creative, and make an economic contribution to society, and society seems to have said that working on a computer, at a desk, is where I do that best. I started my first full-time job in 1996 and haven’t taken much of a break since 2001, when I took a semester to finish grad school and move to Boston. In high school and college I was doing something different every year: I was a musician, then an artist; I could work with my hands, then with my intellect; I could travel the world. I knew I would grow up and settle down, but I never expected to get quite as settled as I’ve become. These eight weeks at home were a time to do something different, with the reward of spending more time with the kids, and not too much risk.

The Jewish holiday of Passover fell during my leave. This is when we remember that God freed us–emphasis on “us,” not some ancient people–from the slavery of the Egyptians. In recent years I’ve come to see the message of Passover as being that we are still slaves–hopefully not in the literal sense, but we are not completely free from economic forces, social issues, and our own limitations in accomplishing our potential to do good. I won’t say paternity leave is like forty years of wandering in the desert, but I did find the time to be freeing and it helped me reflect on these things.

I’d like to say I have all the answers about what I want to do as a father and a professional but eight weeks is not that long. I did learn to bake a pretty decent challah and figured out a recipe for pareve chocolate chip cookies without trans fat. I think I bonded just fine with Hannah without taking time off when she was born, but this time around we did spend time with both sets of grandparents that we wouldn’t have done otherwise. I’ll probably never be a professional child care worker, but if I had to stay home more with my own kids, I’d be very happy with that. I’ve hardly looked at a line of code in the past eight weeks, although I’ve continued to think a lot about software. I think there is some great challenge out there for me, but I haven’t quite found it yet.

There are a few stereotypical use cases for mobile phones and similar wireless devices. The younger generation needs to text their friends. The older generation needs a phone only for emergencies. And, of course, the professional needs their “crackberry” to check office e-mail. I think a lot of people have a need for mobile communications without falling into one of these categories. I’ve always had a pretty basic cell phone and I finally decide to buy myself a Samsung SCH-i760 Windows Mobile smartphone from Verizon Wireless. I see my needs being somewhere in between the texting teenager and the e-mailing executive. I do need to keep in touch with work, at least by phone for emergencies, but simple e-mail isn’t a killer app for me. (By “killer app” I mean “application,” some restaurant recently used the term to refer to their appetizers.) Somewhat like the teenager, having a more advance mobile data device is largely a personal investment, although with somewhat different uses. The killer app for me is probably going to be online search, maps, and note-taking and web browsing.

The device does a little bit of everything. It has all the functions of a traditional PDA, with a stylus and capability to sync with a computer via a cable. There’s also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, without which typing messages, for me, would be a non-starter. The unique feature of this model is a separate telephone keypad with physical buttons; with the keyboard closed, you can use these to dial the phone; and with the keyboard open, you can use these when you need to enter numbers as well.

The phone supports Wifi, for faster/cheaper data when that’s available. There are a few options for e-mail. First, I was able to get to my company’s Outlook Web Access interface, it’s clunky yet might be the best solution for the times I need this. I was also able to sync with my office using the built-in mobile Outlook application, but I disabled this as it isn’t really what I wanted, and it seemed to keep initiating a data session, which, even though I’m on an unlimited data plan, definitely wasn’t what I wanted. Verizon also includes their own wireless sync system that I haven’t tried.

This is where not fitting into one of the stereotypically use cases presents a challenge. Want office e-mail pushed to your device, Blackberry-style? Fine. Want to be able to get access to all your information, personal or business, as you need it, combined in one place? Not so easy. I need to be able to keep my family and work calendars somewhat separate, but may need to access both of them. Similarly for e-mail, tasks, and contacts. So, I’ll probably keep doing a lot of the via mobile web browsing until I come up with a better solution; I’ll probably look at OggSync as I seem to be it’s target use case. I’d also love to find a program that gives me a “prettier” view of Outlook Web Access on a small without requiring my company to do anything differently on its server, or storing message on my phone.

Finally, why not an iPhone? I could have done that, I suppose. For various reasons I chose to stick with Verizon, and Windows Mobile is something I still wanted to try out. Maybe next time.

I haven’t blogged in over two months, and there’s only one person I can blame it on: Max.

Well, I can’t really blame him for anything. He’s just a baby.

He is just over one month old and finally starting to be aware of things. He can’t say anything, of course, but if I look into his eyes, I can hear him. “Hi Daddy!” “I want to play with you and Hannah!” Or, when I was carrying him while putting leftovers from dinner in the refrigerator, “I saw a bottle in there, why don’t you give it to me?” The rest of the cleaning up from dinner would wait.

My daughter Hannah is three-and-three-quarters years old–don’t call her three! There’s something new at this age of three-going-on four where she’s finally competent with the basic skills of kid life: “Do you want to play?”, “I have to go to the bathroom really bad!“, “More macaroni, please!”, and so on.

As part of that she has started to use the computer. She can log herself in, use the trackpad, and do everything except type in the NickJr.com URL (I supposed I should set up a shortcut she can click) to find the Flash games she likes. I’ve even seen her intuit, without reading, where the “Print” or “Next” button is going to be in the bottom right corner of a window. (Isn’t there something inherently validating in seeing your work printed?) She gets frustrated and wants help, which I don’t mind in theory because playing together is better than just letting her watch TV (though not so useful when you need to get housework done) and because, eventually, I’m sure I’ll be concerned about what she’s doing on the Internet on her own.

When Hannah was born we knew she was being born into a different world than we were as far as computers go (we joked about her needing her own e-mail address as a baby), but, I don’t think Hannah’s experience is going to be so different than our own. I first used a computer in kindergarten when I was 5, and was instantly hooked. Maybe there is a certain (young) age at which kids are ready to use computers, and we didn’t miss that much. Of course, what she can do with a computer is going to be different (that kindergarten computer, a Commodore PET, was the single one on a cart that rotated among all the elementary schools in my town).

Every year when the Jewish New Year begins it always feels a little like a new beginning. I’m not sure if it’s a spiritual thing or if it’s just that the fall weather reminds me of new school years, but it seems like there’s always something new to reflect on.

This year there are a number of things. Within the past year, we have done a fairly significant construction project on our house, I’ve started a new job, and Cheryl has finished graduate school. And, we are expecting a new baby.

But, I feel like this year represents a change in a direction of sorts despite those accomplishments. I have a house I like, a car I like, and am a bona fide parent. Cheryl and I both have our master’s degrees, and I’ve reached a certain level of confidence of in my career. There is still a lot of work to do, but this is not going to be the year of the house. There is still a lot of parenting to do, and this will largely be the year of baby #2, but I’ve been a parent and will continue to be a parent so that’s not entirely new. Certainly I need to continue to work to pay the bills, but that’s not news.

Basically I’ve done everything I need to do to see myself as a real, grown-up adult, and now the question is how, as an adult, I’m going to leave my mark on the world (other than the obvious answer of through my children). As an IT executive, or as an engineer? As a local activist, or through accomplishments of Jewish learning? By starting a second a career as an architect or real estate mogul, or through new opportunities in the software field? I’m giving myself until I turn 40 to find myself on the right path which gives me a few years to figure things out. The one thing I know for certain is that the answer is probably none of the above, and the new year will be full of surprises.

Development (the real estate kind) and in particular development at the the former Omni Foods/proposed Chestnut Hill Square site in Newton is a topic that I tend to have interest in and opinions about. Last night I decided to put my “money where my mouth is,” or more accurately, put my mouth and the rest of the body where usually only my words go, and speak up at a public hearing on a zoning amendment being proposed in Newton.

It was terrifying. I got confused about when to speak and fumbled through what I was trying to say. A reporter from the Tab asked my name so maybe I’ll find out what I actually said there.

I do feel like I had my “day in court,” so to speak (sorry for the mixed idioms, I know this is a legislative not a judicial hearing, but that might have made it even more terrifying). Blogs are a great source of ideas and letters to the editor have their place as well, but if you have a strong and different opinion on a topic such as this, it’s important to register it in the official public forum. More people should do so. Moreover it was good experience for me - maybe things like the height of office buildings isn’t worth staying out late over, but certainly next time there is a matter worth speaking out over, I will be more composed.

I wrote the following for a project at Temple Emanuel where is was published as one of 70 essays in a booklet titled Blades of Grass and Angels distributed to each family at Rosh HaShanah morning services.

Growing up, we “weren’t” kosher, although we knew other families who were. At some point, being an annoying teenager, I started to correct the other members of my household: food “is kosher,” people “keep kosher.” It’s a fine point, but Jewish learning is about questioning the fine points, and I think there’s a real difference. While knowing who “is religious” makes menu planning easier, observing mitzvot isn’t an ascribed characteristic or something to be treated as a shellfish allergy. Life is a journey, and mitzvot are the way God has given us to get somewhere. “Halakhah,” which means “Jewish law,” literally translates to something more like “The Way.” It’s ironic that we tend to focus on its limitations. I prefer to think of it as a highway: you are constrained to follow the road, but there is no limit to how far you go.

My own religious path has had many stops along the way. My mother’s family attended Reform synagogues in Connecticut since the Victorian era. My father converted to Judaism. I began to explore my own Jewish identity in high school and college. I participated in the March of the Living, traveling with several thousand young Jews to Poland and Israel. This experience opened my eyes in two ways: first, by seeing the range of Jewish practices among my fellow travelers; and second, by learning how traditional Jewish life was present in pre-Holocaust, twentieth-century Europe. Tradition hadn’t been incompatible with modernity; it was simply wiped away with the people who practiced it. In college, I started going to the Conservative minyan at Hillel, and, after a variety of twists and turns, majored in Jewish and Near Eastern Studies. I traveled throughout Israel for a semester, where I absorbed enough Hebrew and culture to feel comfortable anywhere in the Jewish world.

As an adult, my life is a little more stable, but I still find ways to grow. This year, our family is planning to build our own sukkah for the first time. It can feel like the Goldenfelds always build a sukkah (or some other observance) and the Rosensmiths don’t and when we’re in synagogue, we don’t ask about it. Well, I need to ask things. How do I make it so it won’t fall over? What do I use for skakh? Will you come and eat with us, even if our level of kashrut isn’t rabinically correct? What if we invite a family member who doesn’t keep kosher and they bring a dish? We Jews have always had questions, Halakhah is literally a book of questions (the Mishnah), and wrestling with our real questions can only be a good thing.

In fact, I think that’s what this project is all about. We say that the Conservative movement is a “halakhic” movement, but what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that other movements recognize our authority, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we all keep all the mitzvot. There’s a common myth that our grandfathers went to shul every day in Brooklyn, our mothers were scrupulously observant at home, and we all had a second-to-none Jewish education; we just lack willpower. But this underestimates the difficulty of doing mitzvot in the real world. Perhaps there’s a fear that if we talked about Halakhah, people would say it’s not for them. But this is a simple interpretation of mitzvot as something you feel guilty about. What binds us together as Conservative Jews is that we care about Halakhah; it is special and holy. Whether you are observant, want to be observant, or even if you just want to know the Rabbi and Cantor are observant, Halakhah and mitzvot are central. Discussing our relationship to mitzvot—including how we find them challenging—can only strengthen our commitment.

Marc Stober, along with his wife Cheryl, has been a member of Temple Emanuel since 2003 and you will most often find him with his daughter in Tot Shabbat. He lives in Newton Highlands and is employed as a software developer.