Regarding the way people run after pesach for bread and pizza as if a week without bread was the worst possible thing that could happen, I heard the following story about Rav Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l:

Every year on motzai Pesach the Rav would look from his window (he lived across the street from Angel's Bakery) and see the long lines of Jews lining up to buy bread and say to himself  "is this what's important to am yisrael, that they are willing to stand hours in line just to have bread after a week". 


Until one year he realized "mi keamcha Yisrael"- obviously these people love bread enough that they are willing to stand hours in line, but when the Torah forbids it, they willingly forego it for Pesach.

A modern day Berditchever...

Britney Spears is a bit eccentric. Either that or she is converting to Satmar Hassidut.

She made the news again the other day with her new haircut - a completely shaved head.

I guess she has the right to style her hair whatever way she wants, and plenty of people shave their heads nowadays (most of them men, but what's the difference anyway?), so no big deal. No skin off my back, as they say.

When this was the breaking news on every news site the other day, I commented to my wife how unusual it is. The site we were reading (I think CNN) had a couple of pictures of her, one with her long hair and one with the shaven head. My wife suggested that maybe she donated her hair to a cancer organization or something like that. We were fairly impressed that we could be "melamed zechut" (find a meritous way of explaining the situation), even though she has a reputation of being a bit hasty and freaky.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I said that could not be. These celebrities live for PR. There is no way she cut her hair and donated it to charity. If she had, that would be the most prominent part of the article.

We joked about maybe she did it anonymously to fulfill the preference of charity being anonymous. Maybe, being the kabbalist that she is or at least used to be, that was important to her and she donated anonymously. We still doubted it though.

A Bisele Babke's post on the topic prompted me to write about this here. Babke links to an eBay auction in which Britney's hair is being auctioned off for about $100,000,000. There goes the theory that she might have donated her hair for a good cause.

I clicked on the link and found that the auction had been removed. It might indicate the whole auction was a fraud/prank, or maybe the owner pulled it for other reasons.

Again, the theory of the hair donation is back on the table.

But now I see this in the news - it is really true. Britney is selling her hair for $1,000,000. Captialism at its best. Or maybe she thinks her talent has limited earning potential now that she is a single mother of two and perceived as an unstable person, so she has begun to sell body parts in order to generate income.

What's next? Will her kidney go up for sale on eBay?