Ayecha -- Where Are You?

Parenting by the Book

2007-06-13T23:08:00.000-05:00

I have two friends who I look up to as mothers. They have kids who are older than mine and kids the same ages as mine. They are very well connected to their older children, and their younger children are well behaved and good, respectable people. Their kids are by no means "easy" kids -- there are challenges, to be sure.

But recently I found out something these two mothers have in common.

Neither one has ever read a book on parenting.

I've given up on parenting books myself. I've also stopped watching shows like Supernanny and the like. My husband and I never had the stick-to-it-iveness to stay with the programs those parenting books and shows required. (There would be no poster board schedule in our living room, a la Supernanny, that's for sure!) The books seemed to require even more, not to mention a level of consistency that mere mortals are incapable of living up to. Life's hardly consistent anyway.

The pressure I was putting on myself (and my husband) to live up to the standards and procedures and routines required by these books just wasn't healthy for anyone in the family.

I try to keep an old teaching by my rabbi in mind when dealing with my children, though.

The verse is a famous one, Leviticus 19:18: "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"/
וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹך

My rabbi taught that a legitimate reading of this verse is that you should love your neighbor because he is yourself. There is no difference between us and the other. Recognize and value the common denominator of humanity. Within my children is the holy spak of the divine, and it's my job to shepherd that child so that the spark is honored and is encouraged into full life. If I can just keep that at the front of my mind...maybe there should be a book about that!

On Death

2007-06-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

Last week a friend was reminiscing about her sixth grade science teacher, who had recently died. "We used to incubate eggs and have all kinds of birds -- chickens, ducks, geese -- running around the classroom at the end of the year. Sometimes they didn't survive, but it was a good life lesson. You can't have life without death. It's two sides of the same coin."

At the risk of revealing something intensely personal (but, hey, it's anonymous, so who cares?) I have a huge problem with mortality. Not just my own mortality, as many folk do, but death in all its forms. Especially the deaths of my own parents, who, thank God, are still alive and doing fairly well in their early 60s.

The older I get (I'm mid 30s) the more people I run into my age who have one or more parents who have died. And the older I get, the more deaths I hear about are in my parents age range. In not too many years, my parents' deaths would not even be thought of as "dying young." My grandparents all died in their 60s or early 70s.

I know that my refusal to accept the imminent mortality of my parents is stupid. I will have to deal with it some day, but until that day comes, it is really so awful to live in denial?

I have even had this awful thought: I hope I die first...before my parents, before my husband, before my children -- so that I don't have to deal with their deaths.

How terrible of me, to want to consign everyone else in my family to that kind of pain just do I don't get a well-needed reality check.

How, though, to imagine a world without my parents in it? I admit, I have an especially good relationship with my parents. I have absolutely no complaints and no regrets about our relationship. It really is all good.

It sounds stupid to say it out loud, but my parents were the first people I ever met. They have always just...been there. The world as I conceive it did not always include my husband or my boys. It always included my parents. True, for a time in my life, it always included my grandparents as well, and I "dealt" with their deaths (or I haven't and I'm in denial there, too), but my own parents...that's just different.

As I'm doing more and more in my life, I'm looking to my Judaism to find some sort of answer here.

Here's a quote from aish.com and "The Jewish Way of Death"

Death is the crisis of life. How a man handles death indicates a great deal about how he approaches life. As there is a Jewish way of life, there is a Jewish way of death.

First reaction -- at least they admit that it's a crisis!

Second reaction -- uh oh. If how I handle death indicated how I handle life, I'm screwed. What does my complete incapability of dealing with death say about the way I view life and live life? I feel as though I live a fairly full life. I love many people, and I feel loved.

Third reaction -- so, tell me about the Jewish way of death!

Unfortunately, this is where the aish.com article is completely unhelpful. It's all about prohibitions against cremation, preparing the body for burial and the funeral service. Definitely not the kinds of details I want to contemplate at this point in time. There's nothing about the Jewish view, the philosophy if you will, about death.

This, from jewishencyclopedia.com, is detailed, perhaps too much so, and still not very helpful:

The ancient Hebrews expected to "be gathered to [or sleep with] their fathers" when death befell them (Gen. xxv. 8, xlvii. 30), and feared only the idea of going down to Sheol mourning (ib. xxxvii. 35). To sleep and be at rest was the desire of the distressed (Job iii. 13-22). To die "in a good old age" was regarded as a blessing (Gen. xv. 15, xxv.8); to be cut off from the land of the living in the noontide of life was dreaded and looked upon as a misfortune (Isa. xxxviii. 10). Only occasionally the stings of death and the stroke of Sheol became terrors, from which the Lord was petitioned to redeem man (Hosea xiii. 14; Ps. xvi. 10, xlix. 16 [15], lxxxvi. 13). Nowhere, however, in the Bible is death regarded as a real evil, except from the point of view that man, being of divine origin, should have had, like any other heavenly being, access to the tree of life and have lived forever (Gen. iii. 22). Accordingly, the eschatological view found expression in such phrases as that "the death will be swallowed up forever" and "the dead shall rise again" (compare Isa. xxv. 8, xxvi. 19).

Would imortality be so awful? I like to think I could appreciate life even if it lasted forever. Why, then, would God not create humans to be immortal? Even if you accepted the idea that the sin of Adam and Chava created death for humans, it was part of God's plan, this mortality thing.

I'm not dumb or obtuse. I know what the obvious lessons of a mortal life are. Appreciation for living. A limited amount of time to do good in the world. Valuing those around us and living life carefully. If only my heart could just understand all these benefits.

Someone at Salon Agrees, Anyway

2007-04-20T15:46:00.000-05:00

Over at (Salon) there seems to be lots of agreement with my opinion about creative writing, below (Thoughts on a Massacre)

NBC was Right

2007-04-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

I know I began my last post by decrying the media. I stand behind what I said, but the beating NBC and other media outlets have taken the past two days over showing the killer's manifesto is ridiculous.

I had a three hour drive yesterday and spent the time switching between talk radio outlets, including Air America (Ed Schultz) and the local right-wing station. I didn't hear talk show host or caller come out in favor of NBC's decision to make the manifesto public. Not one.

Is it just me?

I heard two assertions over and over again.

Argument 1: The tape has no news value.

First, since when did our definition of "news" in this country get so strict? How much time did all of the networks devote to Anna Nicole Smith these past months? Who's her baby's daddy?? We have to know! It's news. And this isn't?

Even without the hyperbole, it's difficult for me to see how this killer's manifesto isn't news. Certainly the fact that it was sent at all is newsworthy and perhaps important to the investigation. What was the killer doing between shootings? Running errands, apparently. No one is questioning whether NBC should have kept the package a secret. It's obviously "news" that Cho sent the package and NBC received it.

So what of the contents?

Several talkies and their callers suggested that NBC could have summarized the contents of the package without showing the photos or the videos. But NBC knows this about news: a picture is worth a 1,000 words, and a video of the killer speaking is worth a thousand times that. Would it have served the story to simply describe Cho posing like a thug with his guns and hammers? Would that have conveyed the truth of the matter? Would the public have been able to really understand what was being described? Those pictures are chilling -- I can't imagine any description that can convey the viesceral reaction so many of us had to them.

It's also inconceivable to me that the contents of Cho's package could have been kept secret forever. News agencies leak. Law enforcment agencies leak. No matter how hard NBC and the FBI and local police tried to keep the contents of the package under wraps, it would have gotten out. Better to have it presented as part of a newsbroadcast than to appear as a vial e-mail or on YouTube.

Lastly, part of the "news" formula is "why," and the American public is always desperate to know "why" after a tragedy like this. Who better to answer the question of "why" than the killer himself. It's certainly more palatable to me than the hundres of psychiatrists and psychologists who were trotted before the camera Monday and Tuesday to speculate on "why."

Argument 2: It was insensitive to the families of the victims

I don't usually think of myself as a callous person, but I don't see how releasing the manifesto is insensitive to the victims and their families. Releasing security camera video of the shootings themselves would have been insensitive, as were some of the pictures of people being carried out of the building, that I can see.

One talk show caller said airing the manifesto was insensitive because it gave the killer a platform. Did it really? He's dead, and everyone know's he was deeply disturbied and crazy in the deepest sense of the word. How is this a platform? Someone compared it to the manifesto of the Unabomber, but that was different. The Unabomber was still on the loose when his ramblings were published. (Unabomber Manifesto on Wiki).

One of my own personal campaigns is to "de-monster-fy" evil. One of the greatest disservices we do as humans is to label other humans who perpetrate terrible acts as "inhuman." We call them monsters. We say their acts were inhuman. We separate them from our very own species. We insist that they are not us. When you watch Cho's video, you remember that he, indeed, is us. He was a human being, a kid really. He was not an alien dropped onto this planet to commit horrible crimes. He was not a monster. He was a severely troubled kid who did a vile, disgusting thing. Make no mistake -- I am not excusing one single moment of his crime. But turning him into a monster serves no real purpose, except to exonerate ourselves, because we are not monsters. It's not an easy thing to face, that another human being perpetrated such a crime, but we need to face it, and the insight Cho himself provided into his self is important to that end.

Personally, I am glad that I saw the photos and watched the snippets of video on the news. Those photos hammered home how easy it is for teenagers and college kids to hide entire lives from their peers, their professors, and their families. Other VA Tech students said the background in the pictures was clearly that of a dorm room. Those photos and those videos were shot within feet of other VA Tech students, and no one suspected. How easy is it, in our digital society, to hide entire lives? You don't need a photo lab to process pictures. You can e-mail video around the world in a second and burn DVDs on a laptop. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris hid their lives in similar ways -- writing anonymous screeds on the Internet and taking digital photos of themselves in tough guy poses.

If nothing else, maybe those photos and videos will scare us all a little more, and right now, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Or maybe it will get us all to pay a little closer attention to the world around us, especially if we share part of our world with young adults.

Who knows? Maybe the release of these tapes and photos and the "manifesto" will prevent another tragedy. Isn't that worth it?

Thoughts on a Massacre

2007-04-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

It's times like these when I deplore the media. Yes, they do us a great service in bringing us important news about tragedies such as the VA Tech massacre. But then the real news stops, but the media coverage goes on.

Random thoughts:

These kids at VA Tech are so camera-ready, so willing to talk to reporters and be interviewed in the minutes and hours following tragedy. It's not a surprise, really. They've grown up in front of the camera in a way previous generations didn't. Camcorders recorded their births, their first steps, their birthday parties, their entire lives. Reality TV encourages the "confessional," speech, the pouring out of emotion while looking directly into the camera's eye.

I'm very sick of the argument that if more people carried guns this would have been prevented. You can't possible know that, so don't get all self-righteous about your political position on guns on the back of a tragedy like this. There's no guarantee that a person with a gun would have been in a position to kill the shooter, and there's no guarantee that he or she would have been able to do it, physically or mentally.

The recent media coverage is focusing on Cho's creative writing assignments. The insinuation is that the content of his assignments should have been a red flag that he was a mass murderer waiting to happen. Shall we lock up Stephen King? What about Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez? Their new movie, Grindhouse, has all kinds of inventive violence and blatant disregard for life. Yes, obviously, in hindsight Cho's writings were the product of a disturbed and dangerous mind, but the insinuation that something should have been done earlier based on these works is grasping at straws.

Lots of talk in the past two days about whether or not college campuses are "safe." First, anyone who wants to perpetrate this kind of crime can do so today if they wanted, at virtually any high school or college. VA Tech less safe than it was on Monday? Is any campus more safe? If you haven't been to a college campus recently, I encourage you to visit one. You can probably walk into any building and any classroom at virtually any time of day. Libraries are usually open until midnight or later, and students and professors often spend late nights working alone in old buildings with little security.

May God comfort those who lost loved ones, friends, students, teachers, and colleagues. Is

Yom HaShoah Reflection

2007-04-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, the day we as Jews set aside to remember the Holocaust of WWII and the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. Our JCC held a wonderful program for families that included a special presentation by a survivor directed at kids between the ages of 9 and 12 (where most of my kids fall) and memorial service that included readings by the children and the lighting of 6 memorial candles. I'm sure many synagogues and JCCs across the country had similar programs today. Like many other times in Judaism, there is something special added to the day just knowing that millions of other Jews are right there along with you, if not in your own physical space, in your spiritual space.

When I was in Hebrew School, we weren’t privileged to hear may Shoah stories from survivors, even though more were alive at the time. It was the1970s, and all the survivors we knew were silent. There were men and women in my synagogue with numbers tattooed on their arms, but they certainly didn’t get up and speak about their experiences at a JCC event. The members of my family, thank God, mostly came to the States in the early 1900s during the Russian pogroms. Our connection with the Shoah are the uncles and brothers who fought in the US military against the Nazis. And they didn’t talk much either.

My introduction to the Shoah was the awful pictures in a Time-Life volume on WWII that I found in the “big kid” section of my elementary school library. I was fascinated by those pictures, and I remember looking at them again and again, trying to make real what I saw on the page. I’m not sure it ever really happened. Can anyone make something like that “real” unless they’ve experienced it? You can try to go deep, to really imagine yourself in such a place, imagine your family and friends in such a place, but then you open your eyes and you’re safe in your real life, and you know that there are no Nazis outside the door poised to make your worst nightmare into a reality. God willing it will never become a reality for any of us reading this.

Last year I saw a documentary on PBS called, “WWII: They Filmed it in Color.” The documentary included color footage taken by the American military as they liberated concentration camps. I couldn’t bear to watch it. There’s such a nice, comfortable distancing effect with black and white photographs. I know it is selfish of me to want to keep that distance, and I would be ashamed to admit such a thing to a person who lived through such tragedies, in full color. But am I the only one who worries about my personal state of mind, my own sanity even, when encountering the Shoah?

Perhaps there are others out there better equipped to deal with the inescapable realities of the Holocaust. I know there are. They are working hard to preserve the stories of the remaining survivors. They are running education programs for the next generations. They are supporting survivors in their efforts to age gracefully. They are fighting against current anti-Semitism and other hatreds. Perhaps they will excuse my absence from some of these noble works.

Before I became a parent I was much more willing to be an active participant in Shoah work. I read many memoirs, wrote papers about it in college, and encouraged myself to feel deeply. Having children of my own has created an entire new dimension to the Shoah that I didn’t anticipate before it occurred. The contemplation of evil as a non-mother has its limits. I was the potential victim. I could own that. Now my children would have been potential victims as well. Human beings (not monsters) did terrible vicious things to children, without remorse, and the parents were powerless to stop it. As a parent, I find those circumstances so unfathomable that I can’t even hold the thoughts in my head.

I am in such pain for the survivors who live with such memories. May they find peace. May we never forget, and may we never face such times again.

Would you shun him?

2007-04-16T11:42:00.000-05:00

I heard an interesting story on NPR's "Morning Edition" this morning on the way to work. A Haredi man from B'nai Brak has joined the IDF, and has earned the scorn of his family and former neighbors and friends as a result.

You can hear the story here: NPR

So I'm listening to this story and I'm feeling anger rise against his family, against his mother and father and his 11 brothers and sisters. (One sister does have him for Shabbat on the sly, so she's somewhat excused.) How could they? This is their flesh and blood. This is their son. Is his choice really so awful that he should lose his entire family over it? His sister's shidduch almost fell apart because of his choice. A suitor was so concerned about his brother-in-law being in the IDF that he almost broke off the engagement.

This young man stands by his choice, but his grief at his ostracization was obvious and painful to listen to.

I could not stop asking, "How could they?"

And then I asked myself this: Ok, Chaya, you have children, what would one of them have to do to earn such a reaction from you? My first gut reaction was that nothing my sons could do would earn a shunning from me, but that's too pollyanna for real life. What if my sons turned their back on everything I value and believe in, turning to a life that I could not, no matter how hard I tried, support and justify?

It's so hard to imagine what that would look like. We're talking extremes here. Pedophilia. Murder. Blatant disregard for the sanctity of life.

If I'm honest with myself, and I try to be, even something like (God forbid) accepting Jesus as their personal savior would not lead to a complete shun from me or my husband. If we give our children the power to make their own decisions, then we have to live with those decisions. And let's face it, the power is already theirs. We're just kidding ourselves as parents if we think differently.

I suppose for this young man's family the line of "turning your back on what we value" is an easier line to draw. Does it have to be so inflexible, though? I understand that his family faces real-world consequences of they do not shun him, such as the possibility that none of their other children will find matches. But why doesn't this cause them to question and leave the system instead of shunning their son?

I am hopeful that this young Haredi man eventually reconciles with his family, that they come to realize that his choice to live a life differently from theirs does not mean there is no value to that life.

Note: the photo is a generic IDF photo, not the soldier in the story.

All hail deep dish pizza!

2007-04-12T11:41:00.000-05:00

I admit it freely. Pesach is my favorite holiday of the year, for about 3 days. The seders are wonderful, the food is unique and once-a-year-yummy, and then the reality of packing three lunches a day for a week settles in. My kids can only suffer cream cheese and jelly on matzah for so long, and my creativity runs out way too early for them. It's worse for the youngest, who also needs two snacks a day packed for preschool. Who would have thought a pre-k kid who end up Jonesing for animal crackers?

I have many friends who have "gone Sepahrdic" for this one holiday, and I think they're completely ridiculous and their great-grandparents are rolling in their graves. What's the big deal, wimps? Living without rice for a week. What's so tough about that?

And then I start thinking about that deep dish pizza somewhere on day 6 of Pesach. Dreaming about it. With a side order of breadsticks, please. And I realize that we all have our personal limits. I can live without chametz and kitniyot for a week, but not without feeling deprived. My friends apparently can't live without kitniyot for a week. We're all "create-your-own-Judaism" Jews, so who am I to get on some self-righteous soap box about their weeklong Sephardic conversion? And yet...and yet...

My was that pizza yummy.

Matzah with JibJab

2007-03-29T09:41:00.000-05:00

Take a break from cleaning to enjoy this classic:

Jib Jab Matzah

Parsha Pathways -- Vayikra/Tsav

2007-03-26T11:16:00.000-05:00

Let's start this way: I hate Vayikra/Leviticus. It starts off well enough. The first line of the book is quite beautiful, and when you see it in the Torah is can be a cool experience because of the little aleph at the end of the first word. (More about that here: The Little Aleph)

But I'm (still) struggling to find any sort of personal connection with the slicing and dicing sacrifices listed in grisly detail in this book. Aaron has to pinch the heads off dead birds and rip their wings off. Blood gets poured all over the altar. The choicest animals are given up to these sacrifices, and the purpose of all of them isn't clear from reading the parsha alone. (OK, the sin offering makes sense, but still: eww.)

And the phrase repeated over and over again is that the sacrifices are to have an odor that is pleasing to God. Apparently, God likes a good BBQ.

Some questions:

1. I think we assume that these animal sacrifices were easy for our ancestors because they lived in an agrarian/farming society. I wonder if Aaron and his sons were ever squeamish or grossed out by what they had to do in their service to God.

2. How was this sustainable? You have 3 million people in the desert. How many animals are being offered up as sacrifices? The requirements for the sin offering seem pretty broadly drawn. Heck, I'd probably run out of unblemished sheeps and goats within a week.

3. Why the intermediaries of the priests? It seems so, well, un-Jewish.

I'm not completely ignorant of how these books have been spun to make them more palatable to the modern reader. We don't have sacrifices these days; we have prayer. The Israelites needed ritual they could identify with, having been surrounded by pagan culture for so long. This is evidenced by that whole golden calf mess. God didn't want his people building golden idols, but he recognized the need for some sort of paganish worship, so he instituted sacrifices?

Sacrifice Today

My grandfather is fond of saying that my generation (I'm 30-ish) has no idea what it really means to sacrifice. We have been given everything on a silver platter, and we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if a true sacrifice were necessary. When WWII began, the American people were told that they would have to sacrifice, and many of them did. Basic goods were rationed. Everyone chipped in, gave up something, and moved toward a common purpose. (That's how my grandfather tells it anyway.)

When 9/11 happened, we weren't told to sacrifice. We were told to go shopping. Take a vacation. Visit the mall. Spend! Acquire! Sacrifice? Never heard of it.

My generation is mired in its own inability to sacrifice. Can't afford something? No need to suffer or sacrifice. Charge it! I've tried to help several friends make budgets that will get their finance back on track. They balk at the mere suggestion that cable TV is a "want" not a "need," and they speak of being unable to "sacrifice" their dining out or the morning latte.

The religious school line that we teach our kids is that prayer has taken the place of sacrifice. I'm sorry, but it's a poor substitute. What kind of sacrifice is prayer as most people perform it? What do you give when you pray? What do you offer up? What do you sacrifice to God with the intention of pleasing him? How does saying a prayer measure up to sacrificing the best of your flock, or your purest oil or flour, which you worked and milled with your own hands? Even with the greatest kavanah and intention and a thrice daily time commitment, how can prayer measure up?

And if prayer can't measure up, how is the book of Vayikra anything more than mildly interesting history?

As a 30-something American, I feel no compunction asking, "What's in it for me?"

Making Accomodations for Modesty -- Why?

2007-03-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

Let me be up front. I tend to believe that Orthodox Jewish standards of modesty are ridiculous and do a disservice to men and women, but mostly to men. Living with and resisting temptation builds character. Meticulously shielding yourself from temptation makes it more likely that you will obsess over what you do not have access to and turn the whole thing into a ripe opportunity for fetishization, and I don't mean fetish in only a sexual sense. I mean it as obsession, speculation, focus. Think Golum in "Lord of the Rings".

The justification I've heard for the requirement of modest dress is that men are weak. So weak that they can't abide the sight of a bare ankle or an arm above the elbow without their thoughts immediately turning said-dressed woman into sex object. Don't you men feel instulted by this supposition? There are millions of men who live perfectly normal non-adulterous lives who interact on a daily basis with "immodestly" dressed women. (As I was today -- short-sleeved shirt, capri pants, sandals -- yay spring!) Doesn't the supposition that you are weak just make you feel, well, weaker?

I'm off on this rant because of a post over at Orthomom about a YMCA that had put up frosted windows in its gymnasium to shield the Orthodox students in the synagogue next door from the sight of women working out in the facility. The Y has apparently decided to take down the frosted windows, put up clear windows and install blinds. Orthomom calls this move a "Lack of Accomodation." Frankly, I'm floored.

Here's what I wrote in the comment thread to that post:

"So let's assume that the women training at the YMCA are wearing the skimpiest of clothes normally found in a gym -- a sports bra and boy-short training pants. If the synagogue is having a problem with its students gawking at the women, the synagogue should, as someone said above, put up its own darn blinds.

I completely understand the irritation with frosted windows. Unlike blinds or shades, the transparency can't be altered. If classes at the synagogue end at 6:00 p.m. and the gym is open until 8:00 p.m. blinds would allow the Y to change the way light enters their gym.

I generally feel this way about matters of modesty and temptation. It's the responsibility of the person who is tempted/may become tempted to mitigate the circumstances. Even us more liberal Jews have such encounters. Since giving up pork, I stay away from my formerly favorite breakfast haunt, which always smells like bacon. It's not their responsibility to change their menu."

The synagogue has the power to shield it students from seeing the women at the Y. Put up shades. Put up frosted windows. Turn the desks away from the windows. But what good, really, do all these provisions and barriers do? Isn't it a bit like saying, "don't think about an elephant," or "don't look in the corner"?

I can't picture a teenage boy who, when told to cover his eyes, doesn't everything he can do to figure out a way to get a peek. Perhaps there's a better lesson for these boys? That despite the distraction, they can still focus on their work. Or that they do have the mental power to focus on their studies. Or that it's not the responsibility of the women to cover themselves up but the responsibility of the men to control their own minds.

This is what happens, methinks, when the ones who supposedly can't control their own temptations make the rules for the temptress. It sure would be nice if I could tell that old breakfast haunt to strike pork from the menu. I could write a code of law (there'an idea!) and strike the temptation from my life. Nevermind the effect on the establishment, of course. All that would matter is that the blasted temptation would be gone and I would be free to go about my business. If the restaurant were to dare serve bacon again, I'd shake my little law book at it and demand, well, accomodation.

You know you're a bad housekeeper when...

2007-03-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

Your seven-year-old says, while helping pick up for Shabbat: "Wouldn't it be cool if the whole house were clean at the same time? Abba would be so surprised, his head would fall off!"

Oy.

Shabbat shalom, everyone!

Spring Break Break from Daf Yomi

2007-03-15T17:52:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, spring break. The time when young college kids go wild and shed their clothes for slimy men with video cameras and free t-shirts to give away...and the time when mothers go crazy wondering when school starts up again. Can this break really just be a week long? Seems like much longer. My sons survived the four day trip to the beach without killing each other, and without witnessing college girls gone wild. Now that we're back home, though, they are going nuts, and so am I!

I try to take a daily break for some kind of Jewish study, and at a friend's suggesting, I've been trying (in vain) to do the Daf Yomi. For those not familiar,

"a Daf yomi, or a 'page (Daf) a day (Yomi),' refers to the system of Talmud study started on Rosh Hashanah 5684 (Sept. 11, 1923) by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, Rabbi of Pietrkov and Lublin, representative of the Jewish community in the Polish senate, and one of the foremost leaders of world Jewry. Although Jews have always studied the Talmud, Rabbi Shapiro's goal was to unite Jews all over the world by having them study the same page of Talmud each day, and to enable the Jewish layman to accomplish the great achievement of completing the entire Talmud which, with his system of a page a day, would take seven years (2,711 pages)." Description from http://www.dafyomi.co.il/

My assumption is that when daf yomi programs started, you had to get yourself in front of a teacher once a day to do the daily page of Talmud study, and the classes were all men. When audio cassettes became readily available and easy to copy, day yomi became available that way. You could also call in to hear the daily daf over the phone. Now, the daf yomi is as close as a mouse click, and available to anyone who has a computer and the crazy desire for daily Talmud study. Even women.

So I ordered Tractate Megillah (Artscroll edition/translated to English) from Amazon.com and tried to keep up with the daily daf. Oh, the woe of aspirations.

First, I tried reading the assigned Talmud pages on own before the day of the Daf. The Mishnah seemed to make sense. It was very striaghtforward and laid out the rules for when the holiday of Purim can be celebrated. (OK, I had to make a chart, but once I did, I understood what was going on.) The Gemara was fairly inpenetrable. I’m not going to get into content here. If you want to delve into it, there are plenty of resources on the net.

Second, I listened to the daily teaching online with my book in front of me. A few problems arose:

1. The man giving the teacher spoke very fast, had a heavy accent, and slipped in Yiddish and Hebrew without translation.

2. The lectures that were part of the Daf didn’t necessarily answer the questions I had formed while I was reading on my own.

3. I know this is a consequence of form, but the daf rarely covered anything in depth. Content that seemed difficult and containing deep implications was skimmed over or seemingly dismissed. If it didn’t relate to halacha, it seemed, it wasn’t important.

4. The almost complete absence of women. Obviously none of the sages quoted in the Talmud were women, but women’s concerns and stories seemed to be missing as well. Disappointing in a tractate about the Book of Esther.

I’m left wondering if it’s worth my time at all to engage in Talmud study. What can it offer me? How can I access what it can offer?

Can anyone point me to a place online where engaging, effective Talmud study can take place, or is it just not possible? I keep having dreams of Yentl. Hey, what girl wouldn’t want to study with a young Mandy Patinkin?

(No, I didn't complete the tractate. Frustration and the aforementioned spring break got in the way. I'd really love to do at least one entire tractate in my life time--you're all invited to the celebratory festive meal ;) )

Thanks for the laugh, PsychoToddler

2007-03-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

Test answers I wish I would have had the guts to write!

We still have to have the "feminism" talk?

2007-03-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

It was quite the shock to learn, some time in my teens, that I had not even been present at my own naming ceremony when I was born. My father and grandfather went to shul the shabbat following my birth, received an aliyah, said a special prayer and, behold, Chaya was named.

And I wasn’t even there.

This was the late 1960s in the Conservative movement. The "women’s movement" was also in its infancy. It would be 20 years before a Conservative woman rabbi was ordained. Bat mitzvahs were becoming more common, but certainly not the norm yet. The seminal (that SO seems like the wrong word here) document for Conservative feminism would not be presented to the annual assembly meeting until 1972. This "Call for Change" demanded that women:

be accepted as witnesses before Jewish law
be considered as bound to perform all mitzvot
be allowed full participation in religious observances
have equal rights in marriage and be allowed to initiate divorce
be counted in the minyan
and be permitted to assume positions of leadership in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community.

As a woman who grew up with most of these reforms in place it’s humbling to look back and see how hard they were fought for. I cannot imagine NOT being counted in a minyan or having access to religious observances and rituals.

So when I read a comment like this on RenReb, in response to a post about baby naming ceremonies for girls (and Ren Reb wasn’t even advocating such ceremonies), I get more than a bit irritated:

Anyone who hosts a "brita" or "brit bat" is saying that they suffer from feminine insecurity and a need to copy anything that boys have. Why else would parents search so far and wide to make up ceremonies like washing baby girls feet in mikva water or dunking a baby girl in a mikva (yes really), instead of simply celebrating the birth? Why else would it be called a brit bat instead of a simchat bat or mesibat bat or, hey here's a radical idea, a "kiddush."

My sons came into the world with a deficiency that Hashem commanded us to fix, then welcoming them to the covenent. My daughters came into the world already how Hashem wanted them to be, and already in the covenent. Our celebration of all births were not effected by having an extra mitzva to perform for the sons. Claiming that baby girls need an extra ceremony seems to me to be an insult to them and to G-d. Why not just celebrate their birth? I'm posting this anonymously since I know I'll get in trouble for this.

This comment was made anonymously, but I’m making a couple of assumptions here:

1. The commentor is a male.
2. The commentor is some strain of Orthodox.
3. The commentor has very little exposure to or education in true feminism
(meaning feminism unfiltered through Orthodoxy or Limbaugh-like lenses).

It’s an old canard to say that feminists who want girl-centered and girl-honoring rituals are "insecure" and need to "copy anything boys have."

The real truth of the matter is that women have been systematically denied access to the power structures of Judaism since its inception. Women did not write the powerful guiding myths of our people. Women were not asked our opinion when entire volumes of Talmud related to things like nidda were redacted. (Can you imagine men accepting entire volumes of Talmud about men’s bodies that were written by women?) Women were not participants in the codification of Jewish law. Women are conspicuously absent in so many arenas of Jewish importance, even today*.

What I really don’t get (at all )if the uproar from men when women want to add celebrations that honor girls, young women, and women. What harm does it do, exactly, for a girl to have a simcha bat, or a public naming ceremony in which she is formally welcomed into the covenant? What do men lose? Is a bris less of a celebration because the boy’s sister gets a simcha bat, too? It seems like a win-win to me.

What’s the downside?

Some links and resources. I really encourage everyone to visit the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) site. These feminists are concerned with feminism and maintaining the boundaries of halacha and tradition. Imagine that.

Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
Wikipedia
The Jewish Women's Archive
Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project
The Velveteen Rabbi

* One report I read recently indicated that of the 40 largest Federations in the United States, only one (one!) has a female CEO. How many of you have women Board presidents? Women principals? Women CEOs, CFOs, or VPs? In many Jewish organizations, even "liberal" ones, women are still relegated to doing much of the work but never rising to the top of the game.

Madonna on Purim

2007-03-05T14:04:00.000-05:00

What, she couldn't go as Esther?

I have no idea if the site linked to above is really Madonna's blog. She probably would have sued someone else claiming to be her, right? So let's say for now that it is Madonna's blog. She posts a picutre of her at the Kaballah Center Purim party and then gives a short (probably plagiarized)version of the Purim story. I can't think of anything wrong with it, except is just feels so damn wrong!

Interesting that she refers to Shushan as Susa, which is technically correct, but I've never heard it from a Jewish source before. Not my Sunday School teachers. Not my rabbi. My calendar says today is Shushan Purim, not Susa Purim! Not like my Jewish education is complete, but still, is it a goyishe giveaway?

Purim Meme -- Things I thought about during the Megillah

2007-03-04T15:02:00.000-05:00

Jumping in on DovBear's meme, which he lifted from RenReb, both of whom I'm great fans of.

I'm sure you're all dying to know...What did Chaya think about during the Megillah reading?

First, a short preface. This was the first actual Megillah reading I can remember attending. With an official kosher scroll and everything. I'm sure I must have been to them as a kid, but I've forgotten. Purim memories are all about costumes and parades. Our synagogue hasn't done the official reading for many years, opting instead for a spiel/play/shortened version of the story. This year, we really did the whole Megillah, and here's what I thought:

1. The rabbi is faking the trope. There's no sense to it. I've got it right in front of me and he's definitely not consistent with the trope signs here. What does he think, that no one in the congregaiton can read along? Oh, wait. There are about 5 of us reading along in the Hebrew and I'm the only one who knows trope. Good thinking, Rabbi. Takes much less practice.

2. The rabbi's Hebrew School training is coming back to haunt him. Tav is now Sav, even though we're all about Sephardic pronounciation around here. Guess he just can't help himself.

3. Boy that scroll looks ling.

4. It was Haman's wife who said "Hang them all?" I must have known this from somewhere in religious school, but I don't remember it. His wife. Huh. Does she get the grogger, too? She does from me.

5. Why can't people keep from giggling about Achashveros raising his golden scepter? So 6th grade.

6. How is showing up in your pajamas a "costume"?

7. Holy smokes! The names of Haman's sons in the actual scroll are HUGE! I had no idea. And you really can see the leters that are written smaller much more clearly than in a printed book of Esther. *

8. Oops. Crowd thought "hema" was "Haman" and grogged it. People must be sipping schnapps already.

I'm so glad we did the "traditional" reading this year instead of a cobbled together spiel or a lame English reading. It didn't take as long as people thought it would, and it managed to be entertaining, too. Not to mmany kids were there, though -- my three were absent as well. I didn't know what to expect, so I picutred the part of the Shabbat service where we read Torah, which is definitely not kid friendly. But people were noisy and everyone seemed to get into shouting over Haman's name and interrupting the rabbi with crude and not-so crude remarks. Ihope it becomes a tradition.

The New Kosher?

2007-02-26T11:54:00.000-05:00

Here's the discussion prompt that appeared at the head of the Union of Reform Judaism's Eilu v'Eilu listserv today:

"The recent debates about the internal ethics of hekshering organizations, animal rights concerns, and the multiplicity of interpretations of the dietary laws have contributed lately to an already significant decline in keeping Kosher in the Jewish community. What relevance does Kashrut have to the world today, and what is the future of Reform Judaism's engagement with Kashrut?"

First, let me state clearly that I do not consider myself a "Reform" Jew, and the synagogue I belong to isn't affiliated with the movement. I do receive the newsletter listed above, just as I receive regular missives from Ohr Chaim and OU. But I am not Orthodox. Definitely not that. I'm highly uncomfortable with labels, so let's just say "liberalish" with "traditionalish" leanings.

I've been following some of the recent debates about sluaghtering practices and heksher concerns. In some ways, these have nothing to do with me. I don't check for heckshers on my meat, and I keep only very limited kashrut. Last night's dinner was a burger from Mc Donald's. WHo knows, maybe it's slaughter was more "humane" than the poor cow would have found at the kosher butcher. But, in the end, dead is dead all the same...

Am I simplifying too much when I say that there may be no "humane" way of slaughtering any animal. I doubt any slaughterhouse in the world is willing to give the animal some nice anesthetic drugs before the slaughtering commences. Just go to sleep little cow. (And we end up with poisonous meat perhaps.) I'm not a troll for PETA, but I think I live like most Americans -- far removed from the processes which occur so that we have nicely plucked, hardly bird-like chickens in our pots and burgers on our buns that are very far removed from the cows they came from.

Many Jews I know are vegetarians, skirting the entire slaughtering issue entirely. That alwyas seems like such an easy path, until I think of all the things I wouldn't be able to eat. And yet, as a partially observant Jew, there is already a list of things I don't eat (pork, shellfish, mammals and dairy mized together). Would it be so difficult to add to that list? Well, yes, and my refusing to eat meat wouldn't have any effect on the poor beasts being slaughtered. What? Chaya's not eating meat any more? That just saved this cow's life.

I do hope that those in charge of turning living, breathing animals with functioning brains into our dinner are mindful when they do their work. Like a lot of my hopes, I'm too skeptical to think it might actually come true.

Mazel Tov Mr. and Mr.!

2007-02-22T17:17:00.000-05:00

Much has been made in the Jblogosphere (OK, on Dovbear, and he didn't make much of it) of the story/photo which appeared in the February 20th edition of the Boston Globe, my hometown paper. Two male Jews (well, one obviously Jewish) celebrating and holding up their certificate of Civil Union, now recognized by the state of New Jersey (and Massachusetts, and perhaps 1 or 2 other states.)

Where do I stand?

First, I have absolutely no objection to homosexuality or to people co-habitating with their partners or "significant others," gay or straight. I've never understood why marriage seems to be the be all end all of relationships. I've known terribly unhappy married couples and wonderfully matched, secure couples (both gay and straight) who never felt the need to get married at all.

Second, I do recognize that no matter what my personal feelings are on the issue, marriage has certain benefits in this country, and as long as the government is in charge of deciding who has access to those rights and privileges and who doesn't, the government should be doing it right. I am reminded of the language the Supreme Court used in deciding one of its landmark cases about marriage, Loving et ux v. Virginia. (Wiki article here)

The short redux: A white man married a black woman in Washington, DC in 1958. Both were residents of Virginia, and when they returned to Virginia, where such marriages were illegal, they were arrested, tried, and convicted of violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages.

The trial judge stated in his opinion that:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix."

(I find this reads especially well in a thick Southern drawl.)

The judge also sentenced them to one year in jail but suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not come back together for 25 years.

The Lovings appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which issued its ruling in 1967. Here's what the high court had to say:

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. "

In 1967, this was pretty earth-shattering news for people like our judge quoted above. Sure, some enlightened folk had accepted miscegenation for a long time, and others quietly looked the other way, but not until the Supreme Court made it so clear did everyone have to sit up and take notice. Sixteen states still had laws against inter-racial marriages on the books when the Loving case was decided.

Let's not be naive. This ruling by the Court probably changed few minds. Those who were against inter-racial marriage before Loving V. Virginia were still against it after; they were just ticked off at those dirty race-mixers and the Supreme Court. But now they could be as angry as they wanted to be, the law offered equal protection. No angry ignorant judge could throw a couple out of his state for inter-marrying, no matter how much he wanted to.

Now try this. Imagine a Supreme Court ruling that said the following:

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very
existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the sexual orientation classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious sexual orientation discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of the same gender resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. "

Makes perfect sense to me, and that's where I stand.

Let all who want to marry come and be married. Let those who object stew in their anger. No harm will come to any heterosexual marriage because of a homosexual one. I daresay that Brittney Spears has done more to offend the sanctity of marriage than either of the two gentleman pictured above.

Mazel Tov Mr. Gross and Mr. Goldstein!

Shalom World

2007-02-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

I can't resist any longer. The pull of the Jblog world is just too strong. I must join the conversation. I must spend hours during my work day checking my hit counter and analyzing the location of commentors' ISPs. I must leave massive amounts of comments on other Jblogs in hopes of getting a few readers to consider my posts. I must throw my sometimes informed/sometimes shot from the hip opinions into the wild "out there" of the Internet and see what sticks.

What you can expect:
Parsha Talk
Ethical Questions in Judaism
Musings on Jewish Life in America
Insights from My Current Booklist and Courses I'm Taking
Grumblings about the Obstacles to Figuring it All Out

Keep me not from blog temptation, eh?

Let's see together how this all works out, and maybe along the way we'll all find out where we stand...