This Year

You know what I want to do this year? I want to build a sukkah.

I have never done this, exactly. When I was a kid, we lived in an apartment building where there was a communal sukkah in the courtyard, and my family had dinner and then slept out in it at least one night. We moved from there when I started high school, and we never had a family sukkah. I've helped with a lot of shul sukkot, and the like, but I've never had one of my own.

This year, I have a big cement deck, which will hold a very small sukkah, and I am going to try to go for it, heeding the words of this gifted rhymester:

"The Laws of the Sukkah according to Dr. Seuss"

You can build it very small
You can build it very tall
You can build it very large
You can build it on a barge

You can build it on a ship
Or on a roof but please don't slip
You can build it in an alley
You shouldn't build it in a valley

You can build it on a wagon
You can build it on a dragon
You can make the skakh of wood
Would you, could you, yes you should

Make the Sukkah from leaves of tree
You shouldn't bend it at the knee
Build your Sukkah tall or short
No Sukkah is built in the Temple Court

You can build it somewhat soon
You cannot build it in the month of June
If your Sukkah is well made
You'll have the right amount of shade

You can build it very wide
You can not build it on its side
Build if your name is Jim
Or Bob or Sam or even Tim

Build it if your name is Sue
Do you build it, yes you do!
From the Sukkah you can roam
But you should treat it as your home

You can invite some special guests
Don't stay in it if there are pests
You can sleep upon some rugs
Don't you build it where there's bugs

In the Sukkah you should sit
And eat and drink but never ...
If in the Sukkah it should rain
To stay there would be such a pain

And if it should be very cold
Stay there only if you're bold
So build a Sukkah one and all
Make it large or make it small

Sukkah rules are short and snappy
Enjoy Sukkot, rejoice be happy.

I want foil apples and grapes. I want Sukkot schlock. Check back for more details.

The New Job

My new job is as the humanities teacher at a very small, new, Bay Area charter high school. We just finished the first week--and I have yet to teach a class in my content area. Monday.

We spent the week doing orientation--long, slow, orientation. We did a get-to-know-you anti-bullying all-day program to kick off on Tuesday, which was pretty good, but about which I have mixed feelings. (OK, here's a thing I disliked--the part where people were asked to pair up, lock arms back to back and then do the 'booty dance'. Have you ever been back-to-back with a teenage boy, young enough to be your son, and asked to 'shake your booty'? People get ARRESTED for things like this. My God. We also did the exercise where you cross the line if you're of a particular ethnicity, or have had a particular experience...for some reason, this always feels slightly canned to me, and I don't know quite why...I went up as a 'Middle Easterner', although what she meant was 'Muslim'--there's no other reason to include Pakistanis in a description of 'Middle Eastern'--then went up again as a Jew--then thought that for many Muslims and Jews, the extensive intergender touching demanded by the program would be totally impossible, and thought about cultural assumptions made by people who think they're educating others out of their cultural assumptions...)

The kids liked it well enough, although they had some issues too, mainly that I think many of them were unconvinced that this one emotion-filled day was enough to totally change the way teenagers act toward one another. Ah well, I suppose it's a good Elul activity.

The rest of the week, pretty good. The kids seem like very nice young people. They hang out together very happily, and we've had almost no real problems, and they are generally so far polite and willing to roll with the weirdness of our start-up days. They look like the neighborhood--African-American and Latino, a scattering of white kids. A lot of them have apparently struggled academically elsewhere, or been 'bad kids' at other schools, and I assume they haven't left all their problems behind, but they are mostly here because they have very supportive families, and I think that will help. They're incredibly interesting. I have one boy who raises reptiles, another who's into archery. Lots of them go to the same churches, and have relatives in common--this is something I noted at St. Colmcille, too.

I'm still struggling to learn names. Some of them look distinct, much younger than the others, or short, or very tall, zaftig or skinny, or with a particularly effusive personality, or in the case of one girl, with bright blue extensions in her braids, or another with blond and violet streaks in her hair, or our only redhead, and they are pretty easy to learn. There are others, though, that I'm going to have to learn quickly, who I've only sorted out into a general physical type--for example, there's a whole group of seven or eight girls who are African-American, about five-seven, slim, wearing jeans and printed tops, with straightened hair or braids worn long, and pretty faces. I need to stop addressing them all as 'honey'and thinking of them as 'kid with long hair' and learn names.

I'm struggling not let old failures and insecurities keep me from doing a good job. Right now, I'm a little freaked out, because there's a woman at our 'parent' school I'm supposed to be getting in touch with, and haven't, and our ed director is getting gently concerned. Will deal with.

I hope this works out. I hope. Oh, wow, how I hope.

Appreciating House

I love House. It's just one of those TV shows that keeps me entertained and happy. But I just realizewd, watching all of Season One, that one of the many things I appreciate about it is that house, to the extent that he has relationships with women at all, has them with women his own age.

Hugh Laurie is in his late forties. If Jerry Bruckheimer was producing this show, his ex-girlfriend would be about twenty-three, but the beautiful and inaccessibly married Stacy is played by stunning Sela Ward, who's fiftyish. His major ongoing flirtation on the show is with Dr. Cuddy, approximately forty. (Best House/Cuddy exchange ever: House: "One small feel for a man, one giant ass for mankind." Cuddy, in bathrobe, moving away from him: "Call the Make-A-Wish Foundation".)

Honestly, it's kind of weird, if you've been watching TV long enough, to see a man who's interested in women of his own generation. And for a mid-thirties Balabusta, it's decidedly nice to see grown-up women looking hot and running hospitals and stuff. You know, TV like real life. Well, real life except for the dramatic medical cases that get solved in an hour, the hilarious one-liners, and the fact that the medical team keeps breaking into people's houses.

NCIS has this too. Another point in its favor.

Ayn Rand annoys me

I'm employed again. Don't think I mentioned that, since it was right before the wedding, and everything was crazy. High school, near the house, start-up.

Anyway, for work I've been reading some novels on themes of rebellion against social strictures and beliefs, and a website led me to Ayn Rand's Anthem.

It's not a bad book, overall, although Orwell did so many of these themes so so much better. Short novel set in a future collective agrarian society set up after the collapse of modern civilization as we know it. The word "I" has been removed from the vocabulary, as have first person nouns--everyone refers to themselves collectively. The hero eventually is cast out from/escapes from this community with his girlfriend (one isn't allowed romantic ties either). They head off and find a house from the before-times.

Here's where I started to get cranky. The last word of the book is EGO. (All caps.) The entire, pounded-home-with-a-hammer message is the importance of the individual and their right to self-determination. Now I don't believe that as strongly as Rand, but I do believe it. But nearly the last thing that happens in the book is that our hero abandons his community name and number and renames himself "Prometheus". (He's been doing some reading.) And he names his girlfriend "Gaea". (She's been spending a lot of time staring into the mirror.)

He. Names. His girlfriend. And she says "That will be my name."

Great. And then he goes off in a happy reverie about how his sons will be free men. His daughters, I guess, will be good mothers and wives.

(Additionally, I nearly choked over the part where he asks her, before they escape, how old she is, and nearly dies of relief when she says 'seventeen', which means she's a virgin, because she hasn't done the 'time of mating' thing yet. He's been twice, of course, and thought it was just awful, but forfend that SHE should have been contaminated. Then they make love in the forest, and despite the fact that neither of them knows a dang thing about romance, and his only exposure to sex was apparently pretty grotesque, it's perfect and dreamy. Groan.)

Sometimes you just want to hit someone with a wiffle bat, even if they are dead.

Bat Mitzvah Celebrations at Rachel's Tomb

Thought that this article was rather interesting.

The Wedding

The Wedding was perfect. It was eclectic, traditional, classic and funky. Much like the Balabusta. I loved it. The only thing that could have possibly made it any better would be if all of my grandparents had lived to attend. It was the best wedding ever. I became a sort of wedding superhero, the Kallah, able to deflect evil with her Bridal Glow (TM). It was awesome.

My comadres of honor, (Basya and Niamh for the purposes of the blog) got me dressed and did my makeup, and my hair, and pinned the veil in with seven bobby pins. (This, after two days of driving me around, helping me get the groom a suit, soothing my jitters, getting me a bra, taking me to the mikvah, and picking up my wedding cake.) My in-laws brought leis for everyone from Hawaii.The wedding party assembled, went downstairs, read the ketubah and signed it, and then headed off to process into the chapel.

Up to this point, everything had been going eerily smoothly, in part because I had not realized, in my daze, (and veil-induced haze) that my grandmother had not yet arrived. This became clear when my parents threw themselves in front of the assembling processional to demand another five minutes on the chance that she might yet show.

This was, by me, fine, because I was protected from nerves by my Bridal Glow, and I simply pottered around in the hall for the next ten minutes, meeting and greeting small children born to my friends in the time since I saw them last, and being radiant at everyone. The only small fallout from it was that the musicians played 'Erev Shel Shoshanim' for approximately fifteen minutes, got tired of it, and switched to something else by the time I was walking down the aisle. I didn't care. Also, my grandmother arrived during this time.

We had a perfect ceremony. Our friends stood around us, and the flower girl, Raizy, sat on the floor by the chuppah next to her mother and played with her flower petals. (She still had them all, since she had not really wanted to do the scattering thing.) There was one minor hold-up when the door to the chapel next to the bimah on which we were all standing opened, and some guy we haven't been able to identify tried to prop it open with a chair until the groom and the rabbi glared sufficiently to make him go away. "A wedding of surprises," said the rabbi faintly, but I was protected by my Bridal Glow, and felt that if the gentleman wanted to come in, we should welcome him. (I didn't mention this, I just stood there and glowed. I have no idea who this person was.) The groom, although he won't admit it, was glowing a little too, or maybe that was just my Bridal Vision. He looked--perfect.

(UPDATE: We have since discovered, through comparing notes with relatives, that the person who opened the door was my seven-year-old cousin, who was wandering the halls, heard voices, and decided to check it out. Since the groom reports seeing an adult male, I speculate that this was said cousin's father, trying to remove cousin from the scene.)

The reception was also perfect. I mention, as highlights:

The amazing wonderful toasts by my father and the best man.

The tear-inducing beautiful hula danced by my new mother-in-law in honor of the wedding.

The beautiful songs sung by my high school friend/bridesmaid Tehilah, including my high school prom theme...oy, nostalgia!

Taking pictures with my grandmother in the courtyard.

The fact that the groom, disatisfied with the stomping of the glass, (it sort of split down the middle, and part of it shot out of the envelope it was in) returned to the scene to crunch it a couple more time. It's in fragments. The people putting it in the Lucite cube are gonna have their work cut out for them.

Seeing Chava, who was widowed May before last, continuing to blossom and heal and be her wonderful self (and with a possible future husband accompanying her!)

Meeting all the babies my friends have had since I saw them last. (Shalvah has big blue eyes and is absolutely edible. Moshe, brother of Raizy and son of Gilah, nearly two, upon being led to the buffet, threw out his arms and shouted "BACON!". His mother told him that she was pretty sure that whatever there was to eat, it wasn't bacon. I think he was OK with the roast beef sandwiches and grilled veggies.)

Blessing my maids of honor in the courtyard of the synagogue I grew up in.

Hugging my parents before we headed off on a very short honeymoon.

Oh. And the fact that Basya and Niamh not only DELIVERED my clean clothes which had been forgotten to the honeymoon hotel, but then CAME BACK two days later, and collected not only us, but all our wedding presents, and drove us home--gratitude does not begin to describe it.

Am Married

Details to follow.

Anti-Semitic Mural Arts 202

Here we go again.

Back in 1994, San Francisco State unveiled a mural of Malcolm X on campus, which included magen Davids, dollar signs, skulls and bones, and the words "African Blood".

The artist insisted that it was not meant to offend Jews, but "represent(ed) Malcolm X's anti-Israel sentiments."

Robert Corrigan, SFSU President and tool of the Zionist Conspiracy, announced that it was coming down. All hell broke loose. After weeks of hysterical posturing, including a student table with a banner announcing that they were "Anti-Zionist, not Anti-Semitic", and including photographs of Robert Corrigan wearing a kippa at the Western Wall, compromise was reached, and a modified version of the mural remained up.

I had ample opportunity to check out the student group's literature, because that was the summer I was taking a handful of classes at SFSU to cover my science requirement at Mills. Can't tell you how super I felt to be on campus.

Some years later, in the spring of 2002, I sat around a table with some Jewish activists who, a couple of days before, had attended a pro-Israel, pro-peace rally at SFSU to speak about their experiences as Jews violently expelled from Arab countries. They didn't make much of the fact that the event turned into a near-riot due to "anti-Zionist" protestors yelling things like "Hitler did not finish the job" at Jewish students. They'd seen a lot worse--crowds yelling the same thing, and armed to the teeth. ("Leave me alone, or I'll call the police. What do you mean, you are the police?") I, on the other hand, was a little agitated when I realized how badly things had gone...

Not too long after that, I applied for a job at SF Hillel. During the interview, I commented that the situation must be tense for young Jews on the SFSU campus. This was shrugged off by the then director. It was fine, I was told. The whole thing had been because of a few bad apples who had since graduated. All was well.

Well, heeeeere we go again. The mural above, featuring the late Dr. Edward Said, the al-Aksa mosque, folk dancers, small children reading under an olive tree, and possibly a partridge in same tree, is going up at SFSU. What's not going up, after Robert Corrigan's steadfast refusal, is the bit on the right-hand side showing the cartoon figure Handala holding a key labelled, in Arabic, "The Return".

Honestly, I am just surprised that it took this long, and impressed that Corrigan is still going after all these years. What's deeply angering me, though, is the coverage of this in the j., successor to the Northern California Jewish Bulletin. They write:

More than two years of debate, hand-wringing and intense dissection of what exactly a cartoon character holding a key means has ended.

Robert Corrigan, president of San Francisco State University, approved a mural celebrating the late Palestinian activist professor Edward Said last month after an agreement was made to remove elements that campus Jewish groups claimed were symbols of violence and promoted the destruction of Israel.

“I think this is a victory for moderation. The mural as it stands now is a celebration of Palestinian culture and that’s not something we should be objecting to,” said Alon Shalev, the executive director of San Francisco Hillel.

I beg your pardon, Alon, but why the hell not, given the intensely anti-Semitic history of Palestinian student organizations on campus, and the obvious fact that any attempt to put up a 'celebration of Jewish culture' on these walls would lead to total insanity of an unprecedented nature even on the SFSU campus?

My kneejerk liberal reaction is that of course I can't justify saying that there shouldn't be a mural for Said, just because I wouldn't have voted one in myself, he's just another popular lefty scholar of the moment, and of course, Palestinian culture is very nice and all...but my kneejerk liberal reaction is wrong. This is different from the other murals up at State, even the Malcolm X one.

Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, praised Corrigan for “insisting that blatantly offensive symbols are not included” in the mural.
Representatives of SFSU’s General Union of Palestinian Students did not return calls or emails.

Wonder why.

The key — pun intended — of Jewish concern with the mural was the inclusion of the Palestinian cartoon character Handala. The illustrated child, which some claim is a symbol of violent resistance, was holding a key in his hand. Campus Jewish groups claim this was a veiled reference to Palestinians’ right of return to Israel and the destruction of the Jewish state.

Not all that veiled, given the inscription. BTW, the General Union of Palestinian Students' petition online claims that "the Palestinian key, in conjunction with the word ‘Al-Awda,’ represents how Palestinians have adapted to different cultures without forgetting where they came from. The Palestinian house key is the symbol that represents a collective memory, culture and identity of the Palestinian Diaspora whose families still carry keys to the only homes they knew."

The contested mural — and Corrigan’s blocking of it or any other mural gracing SFSU’s main quad in 2006 — had long been a sore point within the pro-Palestinian community.

At a vitriolic anti-Israel confab held on the SFSU campus last summer, speaker Eyad Kishawi said Corrigan had rejected the mural because of the influence exerted by “racist, chauvinist people.”

The Palestinian student union hopes to have the mural up on the Cesar Chavez Student Center by Nov. 2. Corrigan will review the artist’s final rendering prior to the mural’s installation.
Shalev hopes this accord is the first step in improved relations between Jewish and Palestinian campus groups.

Mr. Shalev is an optimistic man. Wish I was that optimistic.

“We are cautiously optimistic about that. We feel the moderates within the Palestinian movement are the ones who have won and that’s a good sign for us,” he said.
“The last couple of years, our Israel Coalition has been putting out feelers all the time, inviting them to all the concerts we’ve had on campus. And they’ve been coming, which they hadn’t in the past.”

Ummm...WHAT Palestinian moderates? From everything I've heard so far, Robert Corrigan is the only Palestinian moderate out there. And he's not even Palestinian. Glad they're going to concerts, though. Concerts of what?

Also, this has been going on for two years. I never heard about it before, and I'm fairly plugged in to the Bay Area Jewish Community. Why the hell were we not out there? Why the hell was Hillel not out there? Why are we taking this, again?

Oriental Beef Skillet

In my neverending search for more recipes. (MORE recipes), I have been spending some time with a 1968 Better Homes and Gardens publication entitled "Casserole Cookbook". Some of the things they have are actually pretty good, and will be cooked by me. Some of them...

Well, take the Oriental Beef Skillet mentioned above. If I asked you to guess its ingredients, how long would you have had to guess before you came up with '10-ounce can of cream of mushroom soup'? Yeah, me too.

I have discovered the real reason you can't mix poultry and dairy. It's not to create a further fence around the law. It's to prevent Jews from eating the 'Chicken Pecan Waffles'. Or the 'Black Magic Luncheon'.

And did you know that tamales come from cans? I didn't know this.

Old recipe books are strange, strange things.

Countdown

We're ten days out:

10. Still unemployed. Interviewed yesterday at a nice school which is .59 miles from my home--this would be nice! Have interview Monday at school which I would have to wake up at 5 each weekday morning to get to--less nice. Need to get driving. Turned down interviews at two schools in Antioch.

9. We still need to get the fella clothed for the wedding. He is currently thinking a black sport coat and black slacks. We need to go shopping. Alternatively, I could buy him a bekishe and a shtreimel.

8. I still have not read the last Harry Potter book. I am broke, that's part of it. I am also very tense, and not sure I can do it justice. Avoiding spoilers is getting difficult.

7. New housework tracking system appears useful. (I can detail it further if anyone is interested.)

6. Shout out mazels tovs for me at DovBear!

5. Caterer is nagging me for head count. One family has just RSVPed with eight members coming (no, not relatives of mine, this is Chava and Drora's family. I went to high school with Chava.) We're trying to figure out if baby Shalvah is included in the count.

4. I am making Groomra write the thank-yous for presents coming from relatives of his in Louisiana whom I have never met. This is making him cranky.

3. Just checked the wedding registry, and the best man and his wife got us the cute blueberry shaped casserole, which is, well, awful cute.

2. We finally got a florist on board. We don't need a ton of flowers, partly because my whole family is kind of uninterested in them, and partly because Groomra's moms are bringing leis from Hawaii for everyone. But we needed some arrangements for the table and such. And petals for the flower girl.

1. I'm marrying a man I love like crazy. Basically, that's the point of this whole exercise, right? Mazel tov and deep breaths to me.

Sudanese Refugees Murdered By Egyptian Troops

Oh dear God. As if these people weren't running from enough horror, now this. (Hat tip to Meryl Yourish.)

IDF troops witnessed (and caught on tape), Egyptian soldiers firing on, and beating to death, Sudanese refugees making for the border.

I have a lot of bitter things I want to say about Egypt's military aid, and the criticism Israel has faced about non-homicidal treatment of Sudanese refugees, and the total silence about this that will follow from the American and European 'left'. (They don't deserve the title anymore.) But Meryl's said a lot of it, and...it's all been said a lot of times.

May God be good to those people who died out there--no one else managed to.

Tsnius Tsuris

This was posted over at Jameel's. This was posted in some Jerusalem neighborhood, and as you can see, it's been modified by some sweet neshomeh with a marker, changing the message from "Please Do Not Pass Through Our Neighborhood in Immodest Clothes" to the much more welcoming "Please Do Pass Through Our Neighborhood In Modest Clothes".

Personally, I think this is a great improvement, and very cute. However, I am going to comment briefly on the nature of tsnius tsuris:

When issues of modesty are brought up in the Judeoblogosphere, it is not uncommon for folks to insist that the rising obsession with modesty in the haredi world is not oppressive to women, and is not aimed at women. Religious men, they point out, also wear head-to-toe clothes.

So they do. But the difference is here, where the warning to the immodest is to women and girls only, where modest clothes are defined as women's clothes. Men with tight pants and open collars are apparently being given a pass here. There are a lot of reasons for this--some halachic, some just plain sexist. But targeted at women, most certainly.

Just sayin'.

I Hate Job-Hunting

OK, update on the job I am waiting to hear about: yesterday I called to check in with their process around one--I am not trying to be a nagging Ninotchka here, I just happened to recall from the interview that they wanted people to start TODAY, so it seemed prudent to check to see if I was being hired.

The very pleasant, distracted man who is the principal, told me that he was calling references for a number of candidates and I was one of them. He will call me, perhaps today (yesterday), or tomorrow. (Today).

Oy.

In about fifteen minutes I need to start getting ready for ANOTHER job interview, this one in Berkeley.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I hate job hunting. I hate the weird questions. I hate finding new places while wearing pantyhose. I hate the hope, the calls, the sickening disappointment when you don't get a job that sounded nice.

I also hate financial stress.

And I am finding it very hard to focus on wedding details while also job hunting.

Feh.

In other news, I just got another call from a local Jewish agency, who I called some months ago with a request for help finding a rabbi to officiate at the wedding. They gave me some references, and I went my way. Twice now, they have called back to tell me that they have a NEW message on their machine, from me, giving my number and asking for help finding a rabbi to perform the wedding. I feel vaguely guilty about this, but have no idea what's going on. Is it possible that the original message is somehow resending itself?

Odd.

Taking to the Road

I am starting to think seriously about goals for the new year--yeah, after the wedding, and I get a job and all that other lighthearted stuff that's taking up my time right now. (Three weeks from today! OH GOOD LORD! I get married THREE WEEKS from TODAY!)

I've decided that one of my primary goals--one that should take a fair portion of available time and money, etc, is getting a driver's license and a car. I realize that this has been on my 'to-do' list for over five years now, (and I have gone so far as to take about five lessons), and a lot of my friends and family will be rolling their eyes and saying 'this again' (but to my defense, it has been a pretty busy five years)--but I think push has got to come to shove in the near future. Here are some reasons why:

1. Not having the ability to drive eats my time. Sunday mornings, I could go and do the shopping for the week quickly and efficiently. Instead, I wait for the fella to feel like going out, then I resent it if he wants to stay in the car instead of helping. My work commutes eat hours of each day. I can't take work home as easily (YOU carry twenty-five student notebooks in a Trader Joe's bag!) so I have to go in on the weekends--except it takes longer, without a car. Trips to the bank are hard. Trips to the doctor are hard. Everything just takes longer, and is more difficult.

2. Not being able to drive adversely affects my relationships. I rely on the fella, then resent him for not dropping everything when I need a lift. I don't see friends as often, because getting to their homes and back is hard. I have to take public transit to see my parents, and it can be exhausting.

3. I'm planning to reproduce. In the next twenty-four months or so. I cannot parent in my current life without a car. I will need to get the baby to daycare, and home. I will need to take Jezebel to school, dance lessons, the doctor's, her grandparents...and I'd rather not be a new driver and have a new baby simultaneously.

4. Not being able to drive is just dangerous. If the fella were ill late at night, if a friend had an emergency and needed a baby-sitter--endless possibilities here, most of them not good, but bad stuff does happen.

5. Not being able to drive closes off possibilities. My area that I can take jobs in is severely limited--I can't get to places I could easily drive to. Some things I would like to do for pleasure are nearly impossible--go to Ocean Beach on a weekend if I felt like it, drive to Point Reyes by myself and get cheese at Cowgirl Creamery, see Jewish Film Festival movies on the Peninsula, go by bob & bob and buy Chanike candles. Some are hard. Visiting relatives in Southern California, for example. I could have a much fuller life if I drove.

This is not going to be easy. For one thing, lessons and cars cost. For another, I have very little time. For a third, I am phobic as hell about driving. But it's got to happen. I'll keep you all posted.

See you In Damascus

Two things I've seen in the j-b-s got me thinking: this, at An Unsealed Room and this at Baka Diary. Both talk, in different ways, about wanting to be able to travel in the Middle East freely--someday, after peace.

Years ago, one of my college friends, whose grandparents were from Italy, went on a trip to her grandmother's home town. She met the cousins, saw processions for the Virgin, ate, spoke Italian with the family, and got taken to see the local sights. I heard the tales of how cool it was, and something occurred to me that I'd never articulated before--how totally impossible such a trip would be for most Jews. How gone most of 'the old country' is.

Imagine doing the Jewish roots trip just as I did the Irish. Utterly impossible. Imagine a trip to Vilna or Cracow, where instead of 'March of the Living', or a polite tour around what's left, you visited relatives, or stayed with homestay families, went to the same synagogues used for hundreds of years uninterrupted, heard Yiddish in the streets, went to the restaurants...hard to imagine, even without the war, somehow. My great-grandmother once commented that there were some good things in the Old Country, but I believe she was talking about a dessert recipe at the time.

Sure, there are people who visit Europe. There's even Jewish nostalgia tourism developing. But it's basically a trip to the cemetery. The week I once spent in Germany nearly exploded my head. A friend (Iraqi-Jewish) once told me that she bicycled across Europe once, and spit her way across Germany. The scene in the last paragraph just couldn't have happened, could it, even without the Shoah? But it's weirdly inviting, at least to me.

Imagine some of my friends doing the Jewish roots trip. Iraq. Syria. Morocco. Iran. Egypt. Think of the historic Jewish sites out there, the communities that in another world you could visit and see the changing life of.

In some ways, I think we've tried to address this by making Israel our everything. "Drive us out of every other place we've called home? We don't care! We got the original back!" But it's different, more emotionally complicated than that. Sure, we can see where David and Isaiah walked, but the towns our grandparents came from are largely gone, behind borders, burned out, lost. Our most ancient connections, even, go farther than our borders. I've always remembered a Shabbos morning in a Sephardi shul in San Francisco where the rabbi commented "Now, Lavan lived in Syria. Anyone here from Syria?" Hands went up here and there. Imagine being able to do the whole Genesis Roots Tour.

So we wonder. What would it be like to go to Damascus? What would it be like to be Jews in a friendly Middle East? What would it be like? It's tiring, all this war unending, it's exhausting to be the man in the joke whose travel agent can't send him anywhere because of what they did to the Jews. What kind of a world could it be if?

And Now, Something Hilarious

You may have to be a dog person for this one. And not terribly squeamish about the fact that dogs were not originally intended by the good Lord to eat lamb and rice kibble.

Gonna Blow A Fuse

OK. This is rotten.

My darling chasan had already convinced me that I should stay with the dogs overnight by myself, because he was working, and can't sleep well with the dogs either hogging the bed or whining outside. OK. It's chutzpahdik (he was the one who agreed to take care of the critters). But OK.

So then, he develops some sort of horrible bug last night. And is off work today. But it's probably still just as well, because he apparently sweated and shook all last night, and the dogs would have driven him mad. OK.

Meanwhile, I was peacefully sharing a bed with two whippets, who were doing their level best to take up 95% of said bed. OK. They are warm and friendly, at least, I'm just afraid to shove them out of the way because they're so skinny and fragile-looking. They like to be under the covers, and make skin contact. (No body fat.)

So, this morning I make coffee, find that the additional callback for interview I got yesterday is two hours from my home, call my last outstanding job possibility (who, by the by, wants people to start Wednesday). He tells me to wait until Monday or Tuesday at the latest. We ain't cutting that one fine at all, eh? I can't tell if he's assuming I know I've got the job (and will take it), or iif they're planning to wait to turn me down until they're sure their first choice says yes, or if they're planning to just call people until they find eight of us who haven't found other work or WHAT. OK.

Now, I just have to make my way into San Francisco, by public transit, through an area I do not know, that has lousy bus service, go into the city, order a wedding cake, eat Shabbos dinner, and then coerce the fella into driving me to let the whippets out to pee.

EXPLETIVES DELETED!

On the other hand, the whippets are awfully sweet. This morning I sat up in bed with them, put a hand on each one and wished them 'a broche on their furry little heads'. They are nice little guys. The female is in heat, again, so they're sort of agitated about that. I realize she's not actually PMSing, but I can't help saying things like "Honey, should I get you some ice cream? Hot bath? Heating pad?"

I should let them run around the yard one more time before I lock up and hit the road. This really, really, sucks.

Whippet-Sitting

Tonight, and for the next couple of evenings, I will be in a small city not far from here, sitting the two whippets, two cockatiels and two parakeets belonging to friends of ours.

The whippets are interesting critters. They were bred for speed. Brain power was sacrificed in the process. They are basically little bundles of nerve, muscle and instinct, created solely to run like lightning after anything that runs away from them. They have narrow little aerodynamic heads, and delicate skinny limbs that are actually translucent at points. In their peak physical condition they basically have no body fat at all, and get very cold, very easily. They have sweet personalities, but not very complicated ones. They are rather fun, but if I were getting a dog, I think a black lab, or a German shepherd, or something else slightly less neurotic, and able to play fetch even after the object you throw stops moving.

Blaaaaaaaagh

The job I thought I was going to get? The break? The half an hour from the house? Turned me down.

So much for that.

Now, I get my last paycheck in three and a half weeks, and I'm getting hysterical.

I have one school out there that I interviewed with, and I'm praying. And I don't even like them that much.

This sucks.

Tumbleweeds and temples

On Tisha b'Av I think about tumbleweeds. Cut off from their source of water, tumbleweeds dry, and take to the road, blowing for hundreds of miles across open plain and desert. They carry their seeds with them, an entire genetic blueprint for how to be a tumbleweed. When they come to rest, seeds are germinated in the rains, and a new cycle begins, often several states away from their starting point. The original tumbleweeds traveled to the Americas on the clothing and blankets of immigrants. The ones rolling through the Mojave at this moment are descended from ones that rolled through the Siberian steppes a few hundred years ago. They keep on rolling.

The destruction of the Temple was meant to destroy the Jewish people as a religious entity. It was supposed to yank out our spine, and take away our identity. We still mourn the loss of the Temple, the loss of life, the loss of land, but it's those who hate the Jews who should cry today. The attempt on our life as a people failed, when by any sane calculation it should have succeeded. Rabbinic Judaism did not just rise out of the loss of the Temple, it rocketed. Confident, steeped in tradition, the generations of the Talmud created a blueprint for Judaism for the road ahead.

Today, we remember, and we mourn. But we are able to mourn because we, and our people, are alive, and endlessly moving forward.