Monthly Archives: February 2011

Sunday School

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My son has a Hebrew tutor on Sunday mornings.  He goes to our synagogue’s bi-monthly Saturday program, but that is more about culture and being part of an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community.  (Please don’t ask me to explain bi-sexuality or queer-identification.  Those concepts arose after I settled down and became middle-aged.)

He has 4.5 years until his Bar Mitzvah and he needs to be able to read Hebrew.  I would also like him to understand modern Hebrew, as well, which is about as different from biblical Hebrew as English is from Russian.  And I think it would be more fun and interesting for him.  And that means he would squirm less in class and learn more.  You get the picture and, of course, as with many of my blog entries, it all must end in Kumbaya (this time sung in Hebrew).

Today, POB (partner of blogger) and I took turns going to the gym while our son had Hebrew class.  Since my gym is close to West Side Judaica, I took the opportunity to go in and see about kids’ books that have been translated into Hebrew (POB’s great idea for transitioning into modern-day Hebrew).  I was looking for books like Goodnight Moon or the Giving Tree that our son read when he was young.  He would know the story and be able to connect Hebrew words with its English counterpart and . . .  you get the idea.

I walk into West Side Judaica looking, as one might expect, as if I had just come from the gym, complete with ear buds attached to my iPod.   All Hassidic men in this store.  Can you say culture clash?

So, I ask Shloymi (that is really his name) if he had children’s books.

“Do I have children’s books?  Of course!! I have a beautiful section full of beautiful books!! For every child, I have a book.”

The melodic Yiddisha English is comforting to me because it reminds me of my grandparents.  I decided that his last comment wasn’t a dig at the sad nature of my child’s life since he was not being raised in an orthodox home.  I also decided that I would not be passive-aggressive and mention that we were two lesbians raising a Jewish boy.  I think that admirable restraint deserves an honorable mention and, voilá, here it is.

There were indeed many books.  All in English and all about G-d and wonderful Torah stories that will keep children trembling before G-d.  Greeaaaat.

I ask a younger man, Chaim, whether there were English books translated into Hebrew.

“Ach,” he said, “we have Curious George [really, is that what we export?], we have . . . .”

He pointed me in another direction. I found shelves of books.  The problem is that I don’t speak or read modern Hebrew.  So, how do I know what I am buying?  I look at the pictures.  Like any other illiterate.

Then I saw it!!  The distinct pea green color of the “Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein.  And there is the tree on the cover (the back cover because Hebrew is read left to right).  And then, I read, in the only thing that is English transliterated with Hebrew letters:

של סילברסטיין

(SHEL SILVERSTEIN!!)

Hooray!! Reform Judaism’s redemption in front of Chaim and Shloymi.

My son was not as excited as I about the book.  So I have begun reading it, in Hebrew. Why is this book so important to me?

I bought the book years ago, when our nanny, Leta Murray, died (may her memory be for a blessing).  She was my siblings’ and my nanny for 18 years (make no comment).  I read it and cried, because she was the tree and I was the taking child.  I know she knows that I loved her and still do.  So, I will teach my child, in Hebrew and in English, the importance of being the giving tree and not the taking child.  At least, not always.

מדור לדור

(from generation to generation)

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lucky

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I hopped a cab tonight because I really, really, couldn’t deal with the humanity that crowds the subway.  Well, actually, it was late enough that the trains wouldn’t be crowded, but still.  There was a chill in the air (frigid, perhaps) and I needed to get home.  A long-ish day.  Not like the “old days” but then again I am not in my 20s or 30s any more (barely still in my 40s).

The cab driver was talking on the phone.  His driving skills were basic:  if your foot is not on the gas (accelerating in a way that gave a born-and-bred Manhattanite motion sickness), then your foot must be on the brake.

Ok, so I needed him off the phone and off the gas pedal.  Hmmm.  I struck up a conversation.

“Where are you from?”

“Sudan.”

“What do you think of the elections?”

“I don’t think it will change much.  There will be fighting.”

“Are you from the north or the South?”

“North.  Independence won’t change anything.  People will fight each other now in the South.  Many different peoples.”

“Same problem in the North?”

“Government there is strong.  So, no fighting in north.”

I offered “brutal” as a more apt description.

He said, “way of life there, not here.”

I had no response to that simple statement of relief and admiration for this country.  I asked him what he thought about Egypt.

“Now the world knows what has been happening there.”

I was silent.  Maybe I should have known before.  I just didn’t think about it.

He offered up, “no one speaks to police.  too much bribes and danger.  not here, government is less corrupt.”

I had never thought of our government in terms of lesser corruption.  Not the superlatives we were raised to expect of our government.  But he meant it as a true compliment.

My world view, turned on an incline — “less corrupt” as a compliment and an ideal.

Another lesson in life from a stranger.

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Dragon Wimpering in the Year of the Rabbit

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My son keeps trying to teach me how to say Happy New Year in Mandarin, but he is soooooo frustrated with my horrible tones (for those of you who may not know, Chinese languages are tonal).  At the tender again of 8-1/2, he has been taking Chinese for a few years and apparently has really good tones.  But I wouldn’t know since I am obviously tone-illiterate.

As someone totally demoralized by the economic bloodbath of the last few years, I have taken to looking up any horoscope in any culture in a — yes, yes — futile attempt to divine (or control, let’s be honest) the future.

Since it is the Chinese New Year, I looked up Dragon in the Year of the Rabbit.  But that isn’t enough information.  I need to know my elements: am I wood or metal, earth or water or fire?  I always imagined my elements would be like 1920s-30s modern furniture — brushed steel or carved wood structure with fabrics in deep red accents or bright thin stripes.

But, you can’t simply pick what you think works for you.  That is determined at your time of birth.  Not so simple, now that Mom is gone.  But it wouldn’t have been so simple either if she were still alive. Mom gave birth in a classically 1960s way:  she was under anesthesia before the first labor pain and woke up for the hairdresser (surgery can play havoc on one’s slightly poofy, Jackie Kennedy look).

So, even when my mother was alive, she couldn’t say, “I stopped screaming at 3:00pm, so that’s how I know that’s when you were born.”  It would always have been, “Oh, darling, you were born sometime between when I was told to breathe deeply into the gas mask and when the hairdresser woke me for an in-hospital hair emergency procedure.”

So, it isn’t as easy as one might think to get tired, trite and vague prognostications.  I needed information from a third party reliable source.

I got out of bed where I was web-surfing and I started hunting around for my birth certificate.  I found only half of it.  The copy I have was the original copy given to my parents and, well, after 47 years, the part with the relevant information had disintegrated.

POB (partner of blogger) asked if she could help and I told her she would laugh at me if I told her what I was doing.  She didn’t laugh but she did roll her eyes.  The Big Eye Roll. The one that means “I had a crazy day and now you are going off the deep-end trying to find out the time of your birth so you can read some free, on-line horoscope and use that to guide your and — therefore my — life for the next 12 months?”

Ok, she had a point.  I cannot control the future.  I cannot divine whether my loved ones and I will be financially successful, or happy, or healthy or . . . or . . . .  But, crazy is as crazy does, because I keep trying.

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We interrupt your usual programming

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Egypt is still in chaos, Cambodia and Thailand are having border skirmishes, Southern Sudan is preparing for independence, and there are protests in Jordan, Lebanon.  Just to name a few things going on in the world.   Oh, yeah, and some asteroid will blow us up in 25 years.

But, we haven’t been able to talk about these things since Sunday.  Pre-game Superbowl coverage, the GAME and post-game jubilation and lamentation.  We’ll catch up with the world, let’s say, around Saturday, February 12.

So, please, rest of the world, forgive us.  We love you.  Really, we do.  But we love Super Bowl Sunday, chicken wings, salsa & chips, beer and barely-clad cheerleaders way better.

No, it is true that we love you.  We let our news coverage of the crisis in Egypt last one full week.  SEE?  The anchor men and women didn’t go back to being stupid until this morning.  And they say we Americans have attention spans of gnats.

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Protesters in Egypt

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I am following the events in Egypt.  As I understand the situation, there was long simmering unrest about the irreversible decades-long slide into poverty and human indignity.

Then, the harshness of life for one-third of the country crossed a line.  People took to the streets no longer fearful of the repressive regime because there was nothing more to lose.

I hope, naively for sure, that there is an orderly transition to representative government.  But not a government that looks like ours;  the government must be authentic and legitimate within Egyptian history and culture.

I think about these protesters and then I think back to the 2000 election in the US, where the voting irregularities, and finally a Supreme Court decision, effectively awarded the election to George W. Bush even though Al Gore won the popular vote.  Americans didn’t take to the streets.  Why?  Because we were rich, comfortable and had too much to lose by unrest.  Hey, I was angry but I didn’t really do anything but talk.

If we knew then what our nation would look and feel like 8 years later, would we have, should we have, taken to the streets to protest the fraud and the Supreme Court’s ruling?  Still, probably not.

And even thinking we might trivializes the determination and the courage of the protesters who are standing up against poverty, repression and hopelessness.

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The caterpillar who became the butterfly

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A friend told me a story about a caterpillar.

This young caterpillar was the first egg to hatch and ate up her shell faster than anyone else.  She was skating down the path to becoming the beautiful butterfly that was in her.  She did all of the right things.  She ate all of the nutritious stuff available.  Everyone around her said so.  They even told other, younger caterpillars to do just what this caterpillar was doing.  Months later, she started her cocoon, and she spun and spun and it was the best cocoon ever.  It had a separate chamber in case another caterpillar needed shelter from a substandard cocoon.

The caterpillar metamorphosed into a spectacularly beautiful butterfly.   The problem was that the cocoon was so carefully woven that the beautiful butterfly became ensnared in the fibers.  She couldn’t find her way out.  All of sudden she was frightened of what was outside.  Maybe she was meant to stay in the cocoon that was becoming her prison.

Her friends who were caterpillars had since become butterflies.  Some had holes in their wings, some had scars from life and some turned out to have colors as dull as moths.  But all surrounded the cocoon and begged the beautiful butterfly to come out and fly free.  Her friends knew that the world would be even a more wondrous place if she left her cocoon and spread her wings.  She would be so happy soaring!!

But the butterfly knew that her friends had been flying for a while and had laid their eggs and what if she couldn’t fly as high or as well because of all the years in the cocoon?  Nonsense, her friends told her.  “You were born to soar but you have to shed your cocoon.  It is dragging you down.  Flying weightless into the great blue sky and seeing the wonders of the great world is an experience like no other.  And you will appreciate it more because of your time in your cocoon.”

She whispered, “I will try soon but I am afraid right now.”

“We will be here when you first fly,” her friends responded.  “We know you won’t fall, but we will be there to catch you if you forget that you are not a caterpillar anymore.”

I asked my friend, “and, then?”

My friend paused and thought for a minute.  And my friend said, “There is no end.  There are only new beginnings.”

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Winter

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This morning there was a two-inch sheet of ice covering most of Manhattan.  I slip and slide on the un-shoveled sidewalks, comfortable in the knowledge that my father, who is over 90 years-old, is too level-headed to go outside.  He may be crazy when it comes to other things, and a little “vague” when it comes to yet other things, but about these things, he is a solid guy.

On a regular day, he would have gone to his sculpture studio, all the way down in Chinatown.  I call in the afternoon and, as I expected, he was home. 

“I am soooo glad that you didn’t go to the studio, Dad.” 

 “Oh, no, no,” he replied, “not today.” 

I think, see, he is a level-headed guy.  But he continues: 

“I had a check-up at 8:45am near NYU, so I wasn’t planning on going to the studio anyway.” 

My voice raised in alarm:  “Dad, that was when the ice was the worst!!!” 

Dad was reassuring in tone and demeanor, “Sweetheart, the sidewalks were shoveled in front of the doorman buildings.  And I only slid about an inch on one of those thick ice patches at a corner.”

THUD.  My head crashes to my desk.  I lift my head.  THUD.  My head crashes again.  This feels so much better than what I am hearing on the other end of the phone call.

“Do you need me to pick up anything for you for dinner?”

“Oh, no, after I came back from my check-up, I rested, and then I went down to the bagel store and over to the supermarket and bought what I need.”

Ok, my 90+ year-old dad carried groceries over icy streets.  He is fine.

He sounded exhilarated, in fact.  Maybe because he is 90 years-old and can still take care of himself (on a day-to-day basis, at least).

Me?  I have grayer hair.  Maybe I am scared because one day he won’t be able to.

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