And with this fluffernutter...

Today we chose a ring. But first, I managed to get the fella worked up by affectionately addressing him as 'my fluffernutter'. I like sweet nicknames. Even more than sweet nicknames I like the expression on the fella's face when I use them.

Apparently, before today the fella had never heard of a fluffernutter. So I filled him in--a fluffernutter, for those of you who similarly have not heard of such, is a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. The fella was curious. I ended up having to buy a jar of marshmallow fluff in order to demonstrate properly. Yes, there is kosher marshmallow fluff. God help us all.

Then we went to a jewelry store in Berkeley, and chose a simple, very lovely, ring. But you have to imagine it: we walk in together. I say we are looking for wedding rings, well, a ring, since it will be a single ring ceremony. "All right," the sweet proprietor says, "you'll need a kosher ring in that case, I guess."

"Oh, not necessarily," say I, whereupon she looks baffled.

Later, adding to the thickened plot, it occurs to me that the fella had his hat on the whole time we were in the store...as he customarily does in public...anyway, we found a ring, which is the important part...

It's gorgeous.

Going Bridal, Going Educational

Four weeks to go from tomorrow. Ghaagh.

I just finished matching the veil swatches to the dress--I would have said the dress was cream, but apparently the swatch it best matches is 'champagne'. B'seder.

Also sent off a whole lot of personal info to the ketubah lady. Some of it, given my own personal family, was slightly funny. Father's Hebrew Name? (Give Mr. Bluejean's English name) Cohain or Levi? Well, given that the paternal line is English, I suppose he COULD be, just possibly...as the Balabusta begins to make up a suitably romantic tale, she comes back to herself: No.

The machatenim, apparently frustrated at their son's total inability to describe what is happening at his wedding, sent me a very detailed e-mail demanding details. I sent details. They appear much relieved. Apparently, they wanted to know things like "do you have musicians", to which Groomra responded "I don't know." They were getting worried.

We had a small earthquake yesterday morning, very very early. Just a four-point-something. This building is weird with earthquakes. It doesn't sway, it jolts, like someone backed a car into the side of the house. Woke us up, though.

I am fairly sure that I will be offered a job next week, since the place I've interviewed at twice called back and asked for references to call. I also have a possibility of being offered a position at a charter school in Oakland. Did a good interview, I think.

Now, of course, being the Balabusta, I am losing my ever-loving marbles over all this. The job that I am most likely going to accept if it's offered--elaborate anti-evil-eye gestures here--isn't a classroom job. It's perfect in a lot of other ways. If I take it, I will be able to finish my MA thesis, start my next degree, see if I can find a part-time religious-school-teaching gig, learn to drive finally, and do some preparatory work to make sure that if I do go back to teaching it's in a gig that works well for me. Because I will have TIME.

But there's a slight ego trip going on here--why couldn't I do all those things and also teach full-time, like the ur-Balabusta I keep trying to be? WHY?

No answer, except possibly that there really are only 24 hours in the day, no matter what I do.

I've been teaching for three years now, and it has been a long, hard haul. I've ended up at two schools with two totally different sets of extreme problems, and it's been rough, and ego-trashing, and very very difficult. I've learned a lot. I've also sacrificed a lot, and I don't know as it was totally worth it.

I like education. If I stay, I want my next teaching job to be something really good, not just something I grabbed because I needed a gig.

And I really want to enjoy this next year, try new things, enjoy being a newlywed...

"God has created us all, in God's own image, and we, too, are good"

Simple. Beautiful. Robbie says everything that needs to be said about Jerusalem Pride.

The Dozen of the Day

1. We've finally settled on a caterer for the wedding. Don't ask. Just don't ask. There will be food. That's all we know, and all we need to know.

2. The job hunt progresses. I have two things I've interviewed for that should be getting back to me. One place turned me down. (Jewish community job of the kind that ALWAYS turns me down...grrrrrrrr.) I really want a job. I really, really, want a job.

3. The fella's temp agency finally came through and got him a nice two-week gig.

4. We are starting to get wedding presents!

5. We are starting to get response cards in the mail!

6. I am thinking about maybe teaching religious school next year, something I haven't done in about ten years.

7. I'm having trouble sleeping. Don't know if it's the heat, or stress, or what.

8. Need to buy a veil. And shoes. And a bra.

9. Bought the first watermelon of the summer. Ahhhhh....

10. Need to do some serious financial planning.

11. I've realized that, at thirty-four, I am now the same age as Marge Simpson.

12. Saw the latest Harry Potter. Not how I would have adapted Order of the Phoenix, but it was nice to go out and see a movie, which I have not done in far too long.

I Still Don't Believe It All Happened

Introduction
I am not sure I can do justice to everything that happened at the funeral. But here is my report, humbly submitted. I have deleted a lot of the emotional content, obviously. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty, although why the guilty deserve my protection under the circumstances isn't so clear.

Read on...

The Funeral Mass

Friday morning, about fifty people, family and friends of my grandmother, were present for a funeral mass celebrated at Bethlehem House, the Catholic assisted living facility at which my grandmother spent the last few weeks of her life. Bethelehem House has a large population of retired priests, and one of them was available to say the mass. Father is 91, God bless him, and he was not too happy about several things we were doing, chief among them being that the family wished for the grandchildren to speak.


Father declared this to be a Protestant custom, and disapproved of it on those grounds. He also announced that in the past he had dealt with grandchildren speaking, and they had shown a tendency to go on for half an hour and more, and 'cry and snot' on the altar. Somehow, however, we managed to convince him that all the grandchildren are at least well into their twenties, and would be able to control themselves, and use Kleenex. Eventually he relented, to the extent that my aunt's son and daughter would be permitted two minutes, and one cousin from the other side of the family would get two more.

Things improved on the day of the funeral, since Father was (as who would not be) charmed by my cousin and her brother's fiancee. The mass proceeded beautifully, except for a few small mishaps with who was doing what reading, the fact that Father nearly fell over an extension cord (Father is 91, God bless him), and the fact that Father got to his feet purposefully, when one of my cousins ran slightly over his allotted two minutes, apparently with every intention of hooking him off the stage with a crozier if he didn't stop.

The chapel is lovely, with beautiful carved knotwork on the altar, and stained glass--very serene and pleasant--and my cousin had made a program for the funeral with an adorable picture of my grandmother as a little girl, taken in 1924. Listening to my cousins speak was wonderful--they told some stories I hadn't heard before, and it was beautiful and heartbreaking.

Interlude, with brownies
Afterward, my immediate family went to change, and my aunt and her family returned home, and discovered that the dog had eaten three pounds of brownies in their absence.

The dog is a Springer Spaniel, sweet, very friendly, very food-oriented, and was deeply attached to my grandmother. He's not used to being left home alone, and had taken the opportunity to console himself by finding a sealed tub of brownies purchased for the wake, unsealing it, and eating them down to the last chocolatey crumb.

Chocolate being toxic to dogs, my aunt's son was obliged to leave our grandmother's wake to drive the dog to the vet. They gave him (the dog, not my cousin) drugs, and he spent the next three hours throwing up. He was very indisposed and miserable when he came home, and my aunt was incredibly stressed.

The Inurnment (here's where it gets weird)
Internment? Interrment? It turns out the word for placing a funerary urn is 'inurnment'. You learn something new every day.

I should explain that we had very explicit instructions from my grandmother about her resting place. She wished to be cremated, and that her ashes should be placed above ground, since she was claustrophobic all her life. (Point out the obvious irrelevancy of this, and I will ignore you with disdain, much as she would have.)

It turns out that not all mausoleum niches are marble- or bronze-fronted, you can get one with a glass front, so one of those was chosen. She left my aunt with directions that she wanted a beautiful urn, so my aunt and cousin had very carefully, I was informed, chosen one they thought was very attractive, and also in colors my grandmother liked. Aunt and cousin have beautiful taste, so I was sure they would have picked out something exactly right.

The plan was that on Saturday morning, those immediate family members who could remain in town would meet at the cemetery, place the urn, pray together, and I would speak for a few minutes in place of a formal eulogy.

That was the plan, anyway.

Saturday morning, six immediate family members arrive at the Catholic cemetery in San Diego, and are met at the mausoleum by a man in what seems to be a janitor's uniform. We are ushered in, and shown that they have set up chairs in front of the niche my grandmother purchased, and there is a small table set up for the urn to rest on until we are ready to have it placed. Would we like the remains now? asks the mausoleum employee. Yes, we would. Should he bring them out? My aunt asks her brother, my father, to do so.

So my father goes off, and he comes out of their office, carefully carrying something small. Not an urn. It's a plastic box, dark brown, with a stick-on label stuck on it.

My aunt takes one look. "It's not her," she says. Calmly. Flatly.

We all freeze, and wonder what this means--has my aunt's grief reached a breaking point? Does she have second sight, and is able to determine psychically that these are someone else's remains? What is going on here? I am baffled because I have been repeatedly told we ordered a beautiful urn. My father, it turns out, had similar concerns, but thought that possibly the plastic container went into the urn. We examine the stick-on label. "It has her name," my father points out. We stare at one another blankly.

After some babble back and forth between all of us, my aunt explains that they requested that the mortuary place the remains in the urn they selected. This is not the urn they selected, obviously. This is not a container suitable for placement. What is going on? At our suggestion, the mausoleum man eventually goes into the office and calls the mortuary.


The group of us sit in our folding chairs in the aisle of the mausoleum and wonder what happens next. My aunt has begun to weep. My father is reassuring her that we will get this sorted out, and place the urn tomorrow, or Monday, if need be. All of us are uncomfortable, to say the least. My mother passes out kleenex.

Mausoleum man comes back and tells us that the mortuary got the urn delivered after they delivered the ashes to the mausoleum, but someone has gotten in their car with it, and is coming over. If we can wait twenty minutes, half an hour, they'll be right here, and transfer the remains to the urn, and we'll be good to go. Can we wait?

Well, we're not going anywhere. We spend twenty-five minutes on a self-guided tour of the mausoleum.

The mausoleum is actually very pretty, as mausoleums go. There is a lot of religious art, clearly donated by families over the years, and reflecting the ethnic diversity of the local Catholic community. There are inscriptions in English, Spanish, Italian, Irish and German, and statues and paintings in all kinds of styles.

The urn, when it finally did arrive, was indeed very beautiful. And, thank God, the man from the funeral home who brought it did seem to understand that they had messed up, and was apologetic and warm and hugged and shook hands all around.

Mausoleum man made sure we were back at our niche, and settled us down. He also wanted to assure himself that my aunt had a check for him, which she explained she did. At the time, it struck me as tacky, but we were just so darn relieved...

We had, after all this, a beautiful small family service. My father gave a drash about saints, and we prayed together, and I spoke for a few minutes about my grandmother's courage. We said goodbye.

We spent a very long time working on placing the name-plate exactly perfectly on the urn, and then my father placed it with mausoleum man's help. Turned out mausoleum man needs a witness to the inurnment (not sure what we are), so he goes off and finds another man, also in janitor costume, who stands by silently. He asks twice more about the check, finally insisting on being handed it before finishing attaching the ornamental screws that hold the glass in place.

I must say, that as stressed as we were, my grandmother would have loved the whole thing, and is doubtless retelling the story now, perhaps to Francis of Assisi, patron of the animals she loved so much.

And after...
I'm sad, but ritual makes it easier. I cried the night of the funeral, finally properly cried. I suppose I will be crying again, and again (I am now), but it will get easier. I'll stand for Kaddish, and it will get easier. I'll go the mass being said this Sunday at my father's parish church, and it will get easier.

The grandmother who taught me to take pride in my Irish heritage, and to protect animals, to travel wherever you want to go and to ignore the cost when you're doing the right thing is gone. My children will only know their great-grandmother through stories. I learned more of those stories recently.

I miss her. I know I'll be telling all her stories all my life.

Lioness Freed!

Not to praise Hamas for any reason, but this cheered me up. Sabrina the lion is home.

As you may recall, I posted some time back about this story, and I'm relieved to see that someone responsible has this animal back and is taking care of her.

Tracking Abdullah

OK, now I need some help here. Does anyone out there read Arabic?

See, the Abir thing got to me. I am now deeply curious about Lazer Brody's picture of the Aluf Abir's uncles, the fine young Yemeni men guarding Abdullah ibn Hussein in this photo.

I went trawling, and found this photo. As you can see, it seems to be the same photo, except that the new site is showing a less cropped version with what are probably the original edges. And as you can see, it gives the name of the Emir in question (without the 'h' at the end, which most people use in English--Lazer doesn't use it either, interestingly), and the year.

But I can't read the website. Someone, tell me what THEY say it is!

Family update

The funeral mass will be this coming Friday. Wake to follow at a relative's home.

So far I am not crying much, or in fact, responding much. I stood for Kaddish at shul this morning and it felt like a physical shock--I got up almost without realizing that was what I was doing.

My father is grieving and tired. Ditto other family members.

Maybe this will be more real when I see the relatives.

This, I guess, is news

Farfour the Mouse is no more. The giant Arabic-speaking black-and-white rodent who was briefly the star of a Hamas-funded children's show, transfixing horrified sane people worldwide, was beaten to death in the final episode of the program. There is something wrong here, when we may never know what happened to Tony Soprano, but we know that Farfour the Mouse was beaten to death by a land-hungry Israeli official.

You want to know what's worse than that? I'll TELL you what's worse than that. I first read the story in the Chronicle, and after reading the first paragraph I thought, I swear to you, that the guy in the mouse suit had actually been beaten to death. By, I assumed, Fatah operatives. Honest to God. I thought, for about five seconds, until I absorbed the next paragraph, that Fatah had sent people to kill Martyr Mouse. I don't know exactly where I got this idea from, except that, well, who else would go to the trouble of killing a giant Hamasnik mouse in front of a studio audience?

I Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Scream

So I'm sitting here feeling disoriented and blue, and reading blogs to take me away from work I'm actually supposed to be doing, when I stumbled on Friar Yid's latest. And discovered this. And this.

A note about the Wiki article for the non-Hebrew-reader. It becomes easier to understand what's going on in the Biblical quotes when you realize that the word they are transliterating as qashath or qoshath, and identifying as an unarmed form of combat is the word for 'bow', as in 'the thing one shoots arrows with'.

This may be the funniest thing I've seen in months. I suppose it could be seen simply as a total rip-off, but there is such a long tradition in Jewish history of people claiming to be from far-off Jewish communities, descended from important people and carrying special ancient secrets, that I see the whole set of his claims as sort of an authentically Jewish scam, even if the origins of the martial art are clearly bogus.

And the outfits are way cool. I would like to point out, though, in the tradition of Jewish feminist midrash, that the claim is made that Abir allowed Jacob's sons to plow through the men of Shechem. You know, if Jacob had trained his daughter in the ancient Native Israelite unarmed art of combat, it's possible that none of this would have happened at all. I'm just saying.

We Got The License

The Balabusta and the fella made their way to the county clerk-recorder's office in Oakland, and got a marriage license.

It started out a little awkwardly, since we got off at 12th and Broadway, had no idea where we were going, and had to walk for a ways, but it wasn't hard to find, and wasn't terribly crowded.

When you present yourself to the man behind the counter and say you want a marriage license, he leads you to a computer terminal in the next room, where you are requested to fill out a worksheet with information about yourself, your parents, and dates and places of everyone's birth. Then you hit 'send', and it gives you a four-digit number to take back to the man behind the the counter.

The man behind the counter then gives you a different number, and you wait for your number to show on the overhead screen and lead you to a window.

While we waited, we admired the very modern artwork on the walls. There was a thing made out of buttons and clock faces that looked vaguely like a man's face. I thought it was Dr. King. The fella thought it was Bruce Willis. Turned out that it was the artist's father. The card next to the art did not mention if he looked like either Martin Luther King Jr. or Bruce Willis.

The lady at window six filled out our paperwork, had us sign, and took our $84. Painless.

We also received a booklet formerly entitled "If There Are Children In Your Future". We read this dramatically aloud to one another on the BART ride back.

A successful trip.

"Hatred of immigrants is sinful"

A good column from Father Andrew Greeley.

Hard news...

It turns out that we lost her Friday night, around the same time I was blogging, I suppose.

With apologies to the blogosphere, I don't want to get too deeply into what I'm feeling and what the family is up to, at least right now. I just wanted you to know. Which may be insane, but I know that this kind of thing matters to me when I read other people's blogs--anyway.

I Love Lucy Saves The World

I mentioned going to Southern California to see my grandmother a couple of months ago. Since then, she relocated to a Catholic assisted living/nursing facility, where she became the roommate of a hundred-year-old Irish nun who, quite properly, restored the "Mary" to my grandmother's name (she hasn't used the "Mary" regularly since she was at school being taught by Irish nuns herself, seventy years ago and more.)

My grandmother is a tough lady, with a will of steel. Since moving into "Bethlehem House", she has claimed to be a vegetarian (she's not, but they stopped trying to make her eat the chicken broth), tried to bail out of her wheelchair to go exploring...oh, you name it, she's made life a little more interesting for them. Mr. Bluejeans made friends with the nurses in his broken Russian.

He got a call yesterday that she's not doing well, and that he should go down now. So that's where he is. We're now at the point where we're talking openly about funeral plans (we should only be made to look like fools for this), and the sacrament one of my students once called 'annoying of the sick' has been given.

I am sad. I'm worried about my father and his sister. My grandmother is apparently being made as comfortable as she can be, they have someone holding her hand and talking to her. She is being taken care of in this world, and she will be taken care of in the next. The rest of us I don't know about.

And I come home to find my wedding invitations have been delivered.

I wish I could express the full scope and humor and grace of my grandmother on this blog. She should have a movie about her in which Lucille Ball plays a sort of Zorro-esque character who travels the world in a motor home, finding the oppressed and standing up for them. I got lucky in grandmothers. So incredibly lucky.

What is the religious value of 'ick'?

I've been over at Joe Settler's place, makin' a nuisance of myself, and I'm left with some questions from our conversation, namely, what is the religious (or political, for that matter) value of the 'ick' factor?



Apparently the Israeli Tourist Board folks ran some campaign to bring gay travelers to Israel. They included some pictures of gay couples doin' gay couple stuff around Jerusalem. Per Joe, and some other things I've seen on the web, religious MKs and some other people went berserk. These photos seem to include:



This one, featuring two young men in yarmulkes gazing deeply into one another's eyes in a familiar honeymoon-photo location. Joe comments that they 'slapped' yarmulkes on gay models for this, and I have to say, that given the fact the guy with his back to the camera doesn't seem to have bothered to pin his, and may be about to lose it altogether in the passion of the moment, this could be the case. (Also, how does his mother feel about him walking around Jerusalem with a tattoo showing.) (It's also possible that these two models are straight, in which case we have an altogether different kind of deception going on.) Joe tells me that that this photo is the equivalent to a picture of a priest and a nun making out, and asks me to consider how I would feel if I were a devout Christian and saw that.





Unfortunately, I spent a while living in Ireland, a deeply Catholic nation where hiring kissing telegram people dressed as clergy is considered rollicking fun. And equally unfortunately, I think that what Joe is implying is that people like this--boys in kippot who go to Jerusalem for the Jewishness and kiss because they're in love--don't exist--and I know a bunch. Although most of them (I'm thinking of one notable exception, Mrs. Bluejeans knows who he is), they're not that conventionally pretty.

Do I care if the religious MKs were offended? Well, yes, I do. I don't want them to feel bad, but this is the face of Judaism too, and, uh, to modify, they're here, they're gay, they wanna see Eretz Yisrael and they're willing to pay. I'm entirely aware that some people are not comfortable with the existence of religious gay Jews, but they're part of us, (and an incredibly good and strong part too, editorializes the Balabusta). Live, says I, and says the tourist board too.

But apparently some of the lady MKs were not so happy about this picture, which was sent out by the Israeli Consulate in NYC, to interest straight men of a certain age in Israel. The young lady in the photo, as you can see, is stretched out on a wall, in a bikini and high heels, in a bluntly sexual pose. Apparently Dahlia Itzik and Zahava Gal-On were not so amused.



I'm not so amused either. I'm used to this kind of thing, everything is sold with women's mostly naked bodies, but this is, by me, offensive in a way that the other is not. Why? Couple of things. First, the couple in the gay tourism photos are a couple, being sexual together. This woman is being a virtual stripper. Secondly, this apparently is meant to promote a piece Maxim did on 'Women of the IDF'. Please imagine male soldiers being sexualized like this, and then their consulate happily promoting it, and you get the real-world equivalent to this ad.

Joe feels that the reaction is hypocritical--if Dahlia and Zahava weren't willing to support the religious MKs, their outrage now is worthless. I dunno. Where is the outrage of the religious MKs now? Are they OK with this? Is the sexual exploitation of women something they take for granted, or can't be bothered with?

Joe says that the Maxim ad does not bother him, while he is offended as a religious Jew by the gay couple one. He also sees hypocrisy in MKs objecting to one but not the other. I say that the gay couple ad does not bother me, while I am irritated as both a woman and religious Jew by the Maxim one. So, here's my question. Does the 'ick' factor actually have a religious nature to it, or are Joe and I both responding to our socialization and opinions around homosexuality, tznius, and Judaism, and trying to put some spin on it?

The Caterer Says

Well, the caterer says that I should give up on my thoughts of possibly moving the chuppah out into the courtyard of the shul, since she's done six weddings (four Russian, two Anglophone) there, and it's a wind tunnel.

The caterer likes Rabbi Bruriah, and approves of my plans for the alcohol (two cases of two-buck Chuck, champagne for toasts, a bottle of Scotch for the men over fifty).

The caterer says that I should source the cake myself, that we can have a delicious poached salmon and nice roast beef sandwiches, and that the lima bean hummus is to die for.

The caterer also says that I should be prepared to start carrying my cell phone with me at all times as the date of the wedding draws nigh.

I met the caterer for coffee today. (Just in case you couldn't tell.) It went well.

In other news, I am still wedding dress hunting, and job hunting. Have just received my weirdest response to a resume, the principal writing back and asking if I was aware that today's paper shows that the route from my house to his school is the worst commute in the region.

The caterer says I don't need this kind of tsuris.

Noach goes to the County Clerk-Recorder's Office

Sometime this week, the Balabusta and Groomra will be going to get a marriage license.

We have to appear, in person, at the County Clerk-Recorder's office in Oakland, with ID demonstrating that we are over eighteen, and are male and female (1 each, created he them).

Ethically, I have issues with the fact that we still need to be male and female (I mean, WE are, and I'm happy with that, but that everyone needs to be...oy. I mean that it annoys me that the state of California will not issue a marriage license for a same-sex couple,) but at the same time, it makes me smile that we need to show up in a pair like a couple of creatures about to get on the ark.

I explained this to the fella, and then added "And we give them our $84, and they give us a marriage license."

"Oh," said the fella. "I thought you were going to say that we give them $84 and they give us two of every animal."

In an apartment this size, maybe not the best idea.

Registering boredom

OK. I am doing my register and cum folders now.

For those of you not in the know, doing one's register is, possibly, the most boring occupation known to humankind, except, maybe, the graveyard shift at at a Dunkin' Donuts in rural South Dakota. Worse. At Dunkin' Donuts you can fantasize that a rock star will come in.

Basically, I am creating a handwritten document showing the attendence of my homeroom class for the past year, which needs to confirm in each detail all the information found in the attendence file I compiled for the school over the course of the year. In pencil. Then I need to ink it in, in ink.

It's the kind of thing you want not to take seriously, except that it is, in fact, a subpoenable document, and teachers have found their attendence registers playing a key role in, say, murder trials.

Oh, I am bored.

School's Out!

And the teacher is left wondering if she is the fool...

I still have one more week to serve, but the students aren't coming in. It's a time to do paperwork and clean up the room, etc.

The last day was long, but it came to an end, finally, with a cute little prayer service, awards, and we pushed them all out the door. What made it both nice and hard right at the end was that several parents showed up to say nice things to me. In particular, the moms of Noam and Daniel surrounded me and got very upset and emotional that I wouldn't be back next year. Both of them have boys who are sweet, but struggle academically and sometimes get in trouble, and I've done a lot with them this year. The moms hugged me and told me they had been looking forward to having me as Noam and Daniel's homeroom teacher next year--and I really would have loved to have been, not only for the boys' sake, but because it is a very nice class--and demanded to know why I was leaving.

That was difficult, because how do you say "I'm leaving because the new principal thinks I'm pond scum, and the diocese agrees with her."? I muttered something about working on my thesis. "I'll type for you, just stay here!" Noam's mom said.

The Top Twelve Reasons I Don't Live In Israel

Apparently Nefesh b'Nefesh is hosting some sort of event where people list great reasons to make aliyah. Jameel even made this neat book cover to go with his list.


Unfortunately, this sort of thing inspires the Balabusta to flip out. I'm not sure why. On the face of it, I don't plan to make aliyah--OK, nu, so I don't plan to make aliyah. People who have done seem awfully happy, and I'm happy for them (the Balabusta is a hard-core theoretical Zionist), and maybe I really should make aliyah--but herewith are some of the major reasons I don't.

1. Throughout the past couple thousand years, the Diaspora has produced vibrant, glorious, kickass Jewish cultures. I am still part of one. I believe that it is important. I belong to an old and constantly evolving Jewish community, one that has demonstrated its ability to thrive without being rooted in the auld sod. Jews are like tumbleweeds. We pull up roots easily, but each plant carries with it the potential to create a whole new world of tumbleweeds. (Also, we push over people's fences, and...OK, I am not going any farther with the tumbleweed analogy.)

2. Also, I don't speak much Hebrew, at least not modern-type Hebrew. Tanach I can manage. I realized the flexibility and the limitations of my Chumash-based vocabulary the day I realized I did not know the Hebrew word for 'car' (although 'tank' I could manage), but when one of my father's oddball Lutheran friends asked how to say 'How many camels to make that little girl my wife?' I could answer with ease.

3. I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m freeeeee,
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up, next to you, and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land, God bless the USA.

This reason loses something on the screen, since you cannot hear the Balabusta's gleeful offkey singing in an assumed Southern accent, and you also lose out on her final yell of "PROUD to be an 'Murkin". It is, nevertheless, true. I am so absolutely gone on this country it boggles the mind.

4. I'm not rich enough to make aliyah. Please note Jameel's little jab about 'leaving wealth and luxury', well, as I already whinged at Jameel's site, I don't have enough wealth and luxury to leave it behind.

As I also whinged at Jameel's site, I think I was scarred for life by a column in the JPost a couple of years ago. It was written as a welcome letter to two typical new American olim, and I kind of freaked out badly about it. It burbled on quite a bit about cleaning ladies and 'good' schools.

5. I am not smart enough for Israeli politics. I cannot deal with all these teeny-tiny political parties, and shifting loyalties, and the way Sharon is a big hero to the settlers one day and a big villain the next, and the weird British-inspired thing where you have elections any time a bunch of people get a bug up their nether bits. It's too confusing. I am proud to be an 'Murkin, where at least I remember the name of the two important parties, and when the next election is.

6. I enjoy the intense frustration on new employer's faces when they realize they can't get out of giving me the High Holidays off. I would miss that, if we ALL had yontiff off, and they didn't even think about it.

7. I have an addictive personality. If I give in to the pressure to go live in Israel where the action is, soon I will get pressured into living in the West Bank. And then I will get pressured into moving into a not-quite-legal settlement. And then a not-quite-legal settlement without running water. And then (and all this could happen in just a couple of weeks) I will be living up a hill smack-dab in the middle of Ramallah, in a shelter made out of a couple of shopping carts. Or sleeping on Jameel's couch.

8. If I were a convert, the Israeli rabbinate wouldn't recognize my conversion, and if I married in Israel they wouldn't recognize my marriage, and frankly, I'm just not in the mood for all of that. And if my Conservative shul is to come under attack, frankly, I'd just a soon that Gentiles be behind it.

9. Do you have any idea how long a flight that is to be back in San Francisco for the chagim? I would be a WRECK.

10. When is the last time two ######## whales unexpectedly took a wrong turn into the Gulf of Aqaba? Thought so. Also, the Jerusalem Pride Parade seems to be having trouble getting off the ground, while in San Francisco we line downtown with rainbow flags for weeks in advance.

11. If I leave now, the terrorists win.

12. I do not believe there is a single Trader Joe's in all of Israel. And if you think I am driving to frickin' Amman for my kosher chicken, my Tuscan Italian salad dressing, my organic tomato sauce or my really cheap palm hearts, you have got another think coming.