Category Archives: Jewish

Anything goes in an epic day where nothing happens

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After meeting my sister at the gym (see prior entry), I raced home and showered and changed in time to go with my family to my sister’s house where some out of town, and newly-minted New Yorker, cousins were coming for brunch.  Before meeting me at the gym, my sister had schlepped on her bad foot to Zabars to purchase a Jewish soul food brunch extravaganza.  (We both got the food purchasing gene from Mom; too much is still never enough.) Where is my brother-in-law, you ask?  He was working on a painting assignment in his studio, but I cross-examined him and I was satisfied that he was hard at work and stressed about the painting and, more importantly, he felt guilty and undeserving of my sister’s love.  So, he was excused for the day of family activities.

Whenever our family gets together, gastro-intestinal fortitude makes its way into the conversation.  This time, a fourth generation cousin (third generation born in this country) talked about her IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).  I thought, wow, I thought irritable bowel was just a family personality trait (think about that for a second).  I had no idea that it was a medical condition.  She is a runner and cannot complete a run without — er, um — finding a bathroom (or remote area of the woods if she runs in the countryside).  We discuss Metamusil, Immodium and other products while stuffing smoked fish down our throats.  We discussed the relative cleanliness standards of most major chain stores in NYC and the value of her strengthened thigh muscles in being able not to sit down.  Still we are eating.  In fact, we have to talk with our mouths full just to get in a word amidst the chatter.

My son was very engaging until he stopped abruptly, got a bird encyclopedia (my brother-in-law is a bird nerd) and sat down to read.  My father wanted to continue talking to my son, but my son would have none of it.  He said, “Puh-leeze, Grandpa, I need some alone time to recharge my batteries.” Kids hear everything you say and some time, some place, it comes out — ZING!!!

My cousin brought homemade zucchini bread with zucchini from her garden.  I thought that I could re-gift it for our barbeque in Scarsdale later in the day, but no one would believe that I made anything like that.  Besides, it would be too much like life imitating art — or Seinfeld, whichever.  Of course, after someone tried it and thought it was delicious, I mentioned that I had really wanted to re-gift it and was disappointed that any of it was eaten and my family (jokingly, I promise you) tried to make it look whole again so I could take it.  I didn’t even watch Seinfeld (but I did hear the retelling of the episodes) and even this was too much.  But reality is crazier than any fiction. 

We had to leave this gathering to go to Scarsdale for a barbeque but by this time the migraine had overpowered the pills and I was achy and in need of a dark, quiet room.  That is not possible in my house because when my son gets into playing with his toys, it is loud like an arena.  And, he was so unhappy not to go to our friends in Scarsdale.  So were we.  I just couldn’t make it. 

I slept for awhile and then we did some errands with the car I rented so we could go to Scarsdale.  These are the kinds of errands that need a car — dropping off heavy stuff at donation places, etc.   After a few of these type of errands, my partner gave my son a choice of whether or not to go to Fairway food store (the one that is like a warehouse) to shop.  He opted not to, of course.  My partner tried to change his mind but if you give a child a choice you have to live with the answer or start negotiating.  So, I started negotiating.  He got french fries and an ice pop at dinner if he and I stayed in the car while my partner went shopping for exactly 20 minutes.  Then she remembered she had her iPod with the bird sounds game.  But no one would let me renegotiate, so I was left in the car listening to high pitched bird calls.  My migraine started to spread beyond the borders of my brain and threatened to create an epidemic of brain pain throughout upper Manhattan.

So as not to let the rental go to waste, we are going to the cemetery to visit my mom’s grave tomorrow.  My sister will bring the left-overs from brunch so we can have a tailgate.  Our family can eat anywhere.

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Elul — A Deep Moment on Blogcation Day 3

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When I was in Hebrew School, we were taught a song that starts, in new age, non-gender-specific translation, “Oh G-d, my G-d, I pray that these things never end: the sand and the sea, the rush of the water, the crash of the heavens and the prayers of all.”

The song is, in essence, a prayer for humanity to pray, a prayer for the basic elements, a prayer for the majesty and healing of the world.

It is the beginning of  the month of Elul, which culminates in the Jewish Days of Awe, during which Jews repent and atone for sins.  This leads to introspection (one hopes) about the gulf between who we are and who we want to be.  That introspection is supposed to help one re-set one’s internal compass, toward righteousness and good.  The annual gut-check, and if you are really not so righteous, a sucker punch to the gut (or groin).

I am not religious.  Really.  But tradition is important because it ties me to those generations who came here and struggled so I could have advantages, opportunities and the life I lead.  I stand on their shoulders and my generation’s prosperity fueled their dreams and they stood tall with pride.  Tradition also ties me to the generations that will follow mine. From generation to generation.

My grandfather renounced religion (it was the original Kumbaya Age:  the Age of Socialism and communal living) and preached free love (he was ahead of his time  — free love idled until the 1960s) but got married and never missed religious ritual built around the family.  So Passover, Bar or Bat Mitzvahs were important, but non-family self-inflicted synagogue time?   Hmmmm.  Not so much. 

But whether or not one is a deist, taking the time to think about life and mistakes, and things to do better, can’t be bad.  The problem I have is that people can off-load responsibility on some sort of fatalistic rationalization based on the existence of G-d.  Judaism doesn’t really afford that off-loading option but lots of Jews don’t seem to acknowledge that.

With all these caveats, there is something mystical about starting the month leading into the Days of Awe enjoying and marveling at the sand and the sea, the rush of the water, and the crash of the heavens (a little too much crashing, if you ask me, but rarely does anyone ask me).  Maybe prayer isn’t so bad, as long as the responsibility to make the prayers come true rests with us singularly and as a human collective.

Maybe I believe in G-d, somehow, some way.  The only compelling argument I heard for the existence of G-d was from an orthodox Jew with a nihilist edge (and not an insignificant case of depression).  He said, “could everything be so screwed up by accident?”  Can’t argue with that.

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The Go-Gos

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“Vacation is all I’ve ever wanted, vacation . . . . ”  We used to sing this Go-Gos song in college.  What did we know about needing a vacation?  We LIVED vacation (especially if you saw my GPA).

Today, at this time, in this place, at this hour, I start my vacation.  You may think that I am mocking President Obama by paraphrasing his words and using them to describe my vacation.  But I am not.  I am giddy with excitement and anticipation, even though I know that, on Monday, I will get calls from the office and have to negotiate a work-out.  Even though I know we are spending a week at the beach, sullied with a hurricane’s detritus.  Even though I know that we are in the mother of all recessions (sorry, Ben Bernanke, but we are only technically on the cusp of possibly exiting the recession) and what am I doing spending money on a beach house?  It is an achievement to make it through the Great Recession (at least so far) and live to enjoy a vacation.  A greedy little pleasure that seems a necessary escape from the world’s currently bleak landscape.

I don’t care if it rains.  I just don’t.  I will be happy to be huddled on the couch with my partner and our son, watching Charlotte’s Web, which we’ve seen innumerable times and I cry every time.  And it’s about a pig.  And I am Jewish. And there is no such thing as a kosher pig.  Let’s let THAT urban legend die.

My sister (who, you might have read, is my hero) and her husband can’t join us for the weekend because she is busy being a superhero to a former colleague in need. I wish my sister and brother-in-law could come because it would make for a wonderful family tableau of our generation, except for the absence of my brother and his family.  I don’t write often about him because we don’t have a day-to-day relationship, but he is a good man. I think we get along now better than before.

When we were kids, he used to tease me that I covered up my homework to keep him from copying (he is three years older).  The truth was that I was scared he would catch a stupid mistake and tease me until I was in tears.  It is interesting how these miscues carry through the years.  I was appalled by something he said, only to realize that I didn’t understand the reference and that I had jumped to a conclusion based on my life experience.  He has a totally different life experience now and an entirely different frame of reference than do I.  As I get older, I want more than ever to bridge that gap.  His kids are wonderful and, well, I wish his wife would like us New York family branch members more.  I wish I knew what makes her uncomfortable.  Well, we ARE loud, opinionated, bossy, sardonic, neurotic, urban dwellers, so I get her point.  But I just wish that we could get past any bad first steps and forge a meaningful bond.

Anyway, vacation and family.  Two fabulous word and fabulous together.  Am I blessed or what?

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My Sister, My Hero, Part II

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For you were strangers in the land of Egypt . . .  Every Passover, Jews are reminded to be kind to the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt and, well, you know what happened and how Charleton Heston had to lead us out with a mighty hand. . .  The quintessential Jewish mother’s Midrash on this principle is “be kind to strangers; just don’t TALK to them”.

My sister is not a religious person.  She is a spiritual person and that is in my view the important quality.  My sister took into her home a very sick former colleague who had no family nearby and is trying to get this person help.  Not because of a religious admonishment or directive but because of a spiritual imperative to lend a hand to those in need.  She is like my mother (of blessed memory) in that way.  She shrugs a silent “whatever” when anyone talks about religion.  She, like my mother, does what others only talk about doing.  And I only know because my sister had to miss a family dinner to help her former colleague.  Otherwise, I might have never known.  Because she does what needs to be done because it should be done and not for bragging rights.

Lest you think she is the Flying Nun or Mother Teresa with the glow of G-d upon her, my sister is definitely a real person with bad hair days (less so now that she colors her gray, oops, that shouldn’t appear in print I guess) and a limited attention span for most people. So, a saint she is not. 

And still, she heals the world by her very presence among us.  My sister, my hero.

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When I get it right . . . .

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40andyounger(for now) thinks I am too political, too depressing, not uplifting, etc.  So do some other people.

I am a neurotic, Jewish, urban professional in her mid-forties.  How am I supposed to see the bright side of life? 

IT IS NOT IN MY DNA.

That is why I have invited some friends to contribute to my blog, as a way of lightening things up.  In the mean time I will struggle, STRUGGLE, to find something that would even make me sing in the rain (ok, a person could catch pneumonia) or walk on air (ok, a person could fall and break her neck).  Ok ok ok ok ok ok.  This is going to be hard.

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On my mind (with apologies to A.M. Rosenthal)

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No one ever trusted politicians.  Even our Founding Fathers flung the muck around to win an election.  Many of them did not in their personal lives live up to the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutions which they so lovingly drafted.  So, even in hoary (or whore-y) times, you could tell most politicians were lying because their lips were moving.

In the last 30 years (which is roughly equivalent to my adult memory), the clergy have disappointed me mightily in big and small ways.  First, Bernard Bergman and the nursing home scandal.  He dared to wear an outward sign of piety as he sat accused of heinous acts against other human beings.  Then the priests who abused children, making a mockery of the cross that they wore and the robes they donned. Then the Taliban clerics destroying cultures and killing people in the name of their haywire fundamentalism.

Even with all of this, I assume that people start out dealing with each other in good faith and with decency.  (Yes, I am a schmuck.)

So, why am I on a rant? The straw that broke the camel’s back: New Jersey.  This is not some small scandal.  Money laundering, trafficking in human organs, influence peddling and stealing from the  public coffers across many cities and communities.  Not just any time.   IN THESE TIMES WHEN WE NEED OUR POLITICIANS AND CLERGY TO LEAD US OUT OF THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL MELTDOWNS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

I want to yell at each of those arrested in this New Jersey scandal who as politicians or rabbis enjoyed our collective trust and faith: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” (to quote Joseph Welch, a lawyer at Hale & Dorr who represented the Army at the 1950’s McCarthy hearings)

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE!!

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Thought for tomorrow July 24th (because I will be pondering this tomorrow, too)

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There were more than 40 arrests in NJ today on any number of federal crimes. Many of the arrested were orthodox Jews, and RABBIS at that. Here are my two thoughts on this:

Religious people doing criminal things always makes me wonder how they think they’re closer to G-d.

Jews leave the corners of the cemeteries to bury thieves and prostitutes. I bet the cost of those graves in NJ sky-rocketed today.

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Grandma, Mom and me

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So I am not only becoming my mother, I am becoming my grandmother.

You may remember seeing old Jewish ladies like her. They had heavy accents and would offer you a “gless of tea in a kup” (because in the “old country” tea was served in glasses, but “vee know that here, in Amerrrica, dahlink, vee poot tea in a kup”).

They carried heavy shopping bags full of things. In fact, those shopping bags were so ubiquitous that they were called “Jewish luggage”. Which gets me to my point. This morning, I couldn’t seem to find any of my fancy shmancy bags in which to shove some of the daily detritus of my life. I spied a small Dean & Deluca shopping bag (note to self: remind family that this is not a eatery for recessionary times). So in went my blackberries (yes more than one), gym clothes, bills I need to pay, etc. Off I went to my fancy shmancy job at my fancy shmancy office with my shtetl style bag.

Some things must just be in our genes. From generation to generation. . . .

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Losing my mother — 6.5 years later

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Dear Mom:

Tomorrow is your grandson’s 7th birthday.  You died one day shy of his being six months old.  That means today is 6 and 1/2 years since you died.  I can’t believe it. There is no “moving on” after your death; there is only “moving with” your memory and wishing you were here. Next to the computer is a picture of you holding him after his bris and I am sitting with you on your left. The person on your right (unseen in the photo) said something tremendously stupid because I can see it in your eyes. But I know that look — you were measuring your response to an inane statement. In fact, I have that same look on my face in the picture. Genes are amazing things, except you would have responded with something perfectly diplomatic but to the point. I would have responded like Larry King did when he interviewed Jean Harris (who killed the Scarsdale diet doctor), “so, you’re a murderer”.

You live in me and as I age I look more and more like you. This comforts me. But I need for your grandson to know you or know about you, so he can appreciate the remarkable person who was his grandmother.

I tell him about you all the time.  I use those Yiddish phrases that you used with us when you cupped our punims adoringly.  Sometimes, I tell him what Grandma would have said if she were alive because I want him to have a sense of you. So if he does something funny or wonderful or if he needs comforting, I tell him what you would have said to him if you were alive.

A few months ago, we were all in a cab after visiting Dad.  I buckled up and put your grandson on my lap and “strapped him in” with my arms forming the “Grandma grip” (which he knows comes from your legendary strong grip on your children’s arms when crossing streets).  The cab stopped short and everyone else went flying (though, thank G-d, no one was hurt).  Your grandson was safe in the Grandma grip.  That is the image of you I want him to carry with him — the strong, protective love that endures even though you are in Heaven.

I wonder if you would like my blog and would send the link to all of your friends. I wonder if you would comment. You would probably send me direct tweets that said, “be nice” in that slightly chastising way you have. You would worry about Sarah Palin’s daughter being so young to have had a child and tell me to be gentle about that. But, you needn’t worry. I, too, feel that the world is too much upon her. It is her mother who makes me crazy(ier).

Mom, this is not getting easier. And I know you would say to me, “my poor little tsatskele, if I could have this sadness for you, I would.” And that’s the catch: so much more to mourn.

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