(This is a post that I started more than two years ago.)
Thanks, Dave Awl @ Ocelopotamus:
After more than two decades of dormancy, lawmakers are launching a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. My fervent wish is for Phyllis Schafly to see this amendment pass before she dies. It would mean so much to her.
This is what I find interesting: Dave and I were in Illinois during the last big push for the ERA, when Illinois said no. I remember the fight for rights that seemed so obvious that one had to wonder why there was a question.
I fought for the right to be a person, if you will. To stop being exploited, to make my own choices, to be safe as an individual.
Have you looked at women, lately? Forget MTV, have you looked on the street? Of course you have–how can you not see? Apparently, I fought for the right for women to choose to exploit themselves.
I don’t know what fashon is like in the US right now – - I’ve not been there for several years – - although I know that a few years ago, the international fashion boards (whoever they are) named that year’s style as “slut wear”. Mm-hm. Then we got butts.
The subject of Israeli women, et. al., is a longer discussion, as, like all Israelis, they are very bold but they suffer from a national split-personality that is excascerbated by, well, being women. The infiltration of Western culture and “style” has influenced the secular women here to take a fashion direction that I can only describe as “come and get me.” “Cheap”. The word I am looking for is “cheap”. However, I know it’s a self-esteem issue, and for that reason, I am not so much angry as just sad.
I did not fight for the right to choose to put myself on the marketing block, and then influence the rest of the world to do the same.
I had my share of experiences (ask everyone) – - some of which were only realistic in the pre-AIDS era in which I was in high school and college, and only possible because of my state of mind. (Dave, did you know that I waitressed at Big Al’s [strip bar] for a year and a half?! I met the late, great Sam Kinison there.)
Self-worth is yet another discussion, as is the topic of tzniut (tznee-oot), a word roughly translated as “modesty” but better understood as an entire concept of seeing one’s entire self. The shortcut is that it is possible to look attractive, stylish, fetching, etc., while being almost completely covered, and without fashions that look as though they were spraypainted onto the body. I, like all religious women here, do not wear pants, skirts above the knee, or sleeveless or open or short shirts, and yet, I must look good because I am still hit on, all the time
. (The men here are much bolder, too, but again, another time.) In fact, you should see my gentleman friend, Moshe, whom I believe could choose anyone, and he has chosen me (think very good thoughts, please G/d).
My point is that I fought for the already-inherent right for respect as a person, and, well, Phyllis, I don’t think either of us has won. Yet.
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Iran denies greeting Israel at tourism fair – Israel News, Ynetnews.
Does this seem like grown-up behavior? I had the same reaction after hearing a similar story about a soccer official resigning his position as punishment for a season’s greeting to an Israeli counterpart.
This might be read as a companion piece to How I became an Israeli citizen.
It has been so long since the United States had a war on her own land, that it is hard to imagine living in the middle of one. But for those raised in West Virginia, for instance, well, think about the reality. The town names, the street names, the landmarks, the cultural attitudes, the kinds of churches–everywhere one turns, there is evidence of historical hardship and bloodshed. How did people reconcile living in England in the ’40s? Those old war movies–they’re about wars and the people in them. All those people in Arab countries–that’s real. Is it different that I have chosen to live in Israel, that I am not born into a conflict raging in my backyard? I could’ve been snug in Charleston (not that I was born there, either, but you get my point), where some maniac with a rifle was shooting at random pick-up trucks at GoMart service stations. I could have been living, like so many of my friends, in New York City on September 11, 2001. But I was in Israel. I don’t say this snidely. Always in America, I was the minority, and so a target, in addition to the reality of the threat of random violence. Here, I am still targeted for having been born a Jew, and now, for being an Israeli, but here are my real roots, my home, and history and family and majority and purpose–better to die for these things, G/d forbid. In the face of all that . . . thanks to G/d that I am in Jerusalem. For me, there is no struggle of faith versus fear to reconcile.
But yes, my friends, I wish it was safer, too.
Thanks to J.I.K. for giving me the impetus to write this piece.
I grew up incredibly Reform, and despite Sunday religious school, after-school Hebrew class, a Bat Mitzvah, youth group, college organizations, and a variety of experience with anti-Semitism, I was never given the impetus to go to Israel. I wanted to, it’s just that no one ever told me how to go about it, I never heard anyone talk about going . . . and yet, it is the only country I had ever wanted to visit.
And the years rolled along. I moved through a few more states (12 in all), got some degrees, got a teaching job, which was wonderful–I love teaching. But, more. Something. Something else. I needed to be learning, again, myself. I thought about the next degree, but there was no program in any field related to me, closer than a four-hour drive. And a relationship with someone more versed in Halacha (Jewish religious law) made me realize that there was immense substance to my religion, that there was more to know than I had ever imagined–I had had no idea how much I didn’t know. I found that I knew enough to talk to Christians, but not enough to talk to other Jews.
I read a little, no plan, no clue, but I wanted to know. This was what I needed to learn, this needed to be my next field, to take all of my Western Humanities education and explore what was happening at the same time within Jewish Humanities–I had always identified with being Jewish, now it was time to get the complete picture of what that meant, to fill in blanks in who I am.
Rabbi and I discussed it, and came to the idea of rabbinical school. I had a horrendous interview with one institution in the winter, and a slightly less horrendous interview with another one in early spring, out of which came the suggestion that I should go to Israel, spend some time, spend some time studying. (They were right, of course; the whys of which became clear to me only after I had spent time in Israel in study, and found there was even more that I didn’t begin to know, yet.)
I had no idea how to find a program, when just weeks later, perhaps April or May, a friend returned from Israel and told me about a program that he had heard about while on a kibbutz: WUJS-Arad (sadly, WUJS* is no longer in Arad, although it does exist now in Tel Aviv). It looked ideal: nine months of Jewish religious, historical, and cultural studies, as well as Hebrew language study, trips around the country, all with room and board, at an incredible price. The bonus for me? It had a companion, graduate-level arts program (Arad Arts Program)–if accepted, I was free to participate in any part of the program but was not required to; I was required only to practice my craft. Both because of my age (37), and that I was a writer, I got my own room (plastic arts got outside studio space, instead). I applied, and by July, received my acceptance letter–I would be leaving in October and staying until June.
(There are other posts extolling my specific experience in WUJS. Let’s move on.)
(Oh. Except to mention the following anecdote. All of my life, I had searching dreams, involving my chasing toward something, through hallways. One of my favorite parts of WUJS was going to the weekly Torah discussion at the WUJS rabbi’s house. Naturally, during Pesach [Passover], we discussed the journey though the desert, and soon after that, I had my first finding dream–I didn’t know where, but in the dream, I arrived at a place.)
WUJS and Israel were such worthwhile experience that near the end of the program, I decided that I wanted to learn more, to stay a little longer, and I enrolled in Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem for the following fall. Having nowhere to go in the months between the programs, I enrolled for another semester at WUJS, where a new group of students had arrived.
One of them was from a small town near where I had gone to high school (outside of Milwaukee); in fact, his best friend’s father had been one of my English teachers. He come to in preparation to making Aliyah (becoming an Israeli citizen), and so was already all for promoting the idea. In a conversation about home, I happened to mention that I didn’t have one, having lived in 12 of those United States, and his response was immediate:
“Of course you do; every Jew has a home. You’re standing in it.”
The next week, I went to the nearest large-enough town–Be’er Sheva–and applied for citizenship. Six weeks later, October 11, 2001, I received my citizen card. And finally, after 12 states and 40 addresses, that was that and I am homehomehome in Jerusalem; it is more than nine years later and I still thank G/d every day just for letting me be here.
I know: such a big-deal build-up and such a short conclusion. Sometimes the pieces in the puzzle of life come together just so. Sometimes.
NOTE: To my great joy, my father made Aliyah in 2006 and lives down the street.
*WUJS: World Union of Jewish Students
As I was buying this book–finally, finally, finally–Max asked me in his silly, dead-pan way, if I was going to love it, and I surprised the heck out of him by exclaiming how much I planned to love it.
I have a copy of the first, and only, edition, put together in 1996, which I bought during my first year in Israel (2000). Since then, I have used it to pieces. Literally. The binding is gone, and I hold the bundle of pages together with a little bungee cord, but I put off buying a new one. ‘Cause I kind of needed to buy food.
And then, wonder of wonders, etc., I heard there was going to be a new edition! So I waited. And then, after it came out, I waited some more. ‘Cause I kind of needed to buy food. At least for the cats.
Finally, I got a little money, enough to buy myself something, and I chose The Book. I went to the store, and as I was buying this book–finally, finally, finally–but this is where we came in.
What is this book, already?
It is Barron’s 501 Hebrew Verbs. Ah, the joys of a new and long-awaited Hebrew reference book.
This isn’t just any reference book. This is a playground constructed of verb tables.
Hebrew is a (mostly three-letter) root-based language, and employs up to seven “buildings” of each root for inflection, and it is a thing of beauty, this tongue with which H” created the universe.
The book over which I have gone nuts lays out each verb’s tables, and gives the most fun examples:
AHV (kiss) Michael fell in love with Ilana at first sight. Even today, thirty years later, they still love each other. Ilana says that she’s in love with Michael, and that he’s better than a French lover.
But the new edition: the new one has more more more roots (it actually shows 565, now), keeps the tables in a more consistent order, and has a better binding, and–at last–goes from right to left.
This is going to keep me busy for a pretty long time!
07 November 2000
In Arad, there are children and old people and cats cats cats, and all of these beings are all shapes and sizes and colors. They are everywhere, at all times, in the sun and at night, talking, walking/running, playing. There are also redheads of all sorts — real and imagined — on skin of all hues, and tight pants, and pupiks (belly buttons), pierced and un-pierced, on a range of ages. Self-esteem runs rampant.
Everyone has a cell phone. There is very little noise beyond the voices — though walking into the Merkaz changes that level drastically — and so little garbage and graffiti and decay that what is visible, stands out in contrast rather than fading into the background as the norm.
Bright, happy playgrounds are plentiful, also, in the middle of everywhere, and surrounded by benches for parents. The whole town is outlined by gardens of red and deep pink and orange, and by wide, comfortable sidewalks, and by buildings with the colors of sandy, stony pinks and tans more of beaches and shells than of deserts, accented on occasion by sea-teal blue railings, & then more benches & more gardens. There are no jarring colors & almost no neon; even public phones call attention only in a vivid melon.
The town’s interior is shaped unobtrusively by apartment complexes of all sizes, heights, and designs, eclectic but flowing together, carrying simple, varying, intriguing lines, and with skillfully-shaped terraces. Windows often have almost-ornate curved cages that may be for protection but seem more to hold plants. Fences are mostly low and for design and as trellises for more foliage.
The streets themselves are lined on both sides and on the medians by more bushes and trees and flowers; there are no parking meters or high rise lots — spaces are designated by a change in the pattern of the laid brick, like going from room to room in a house.
There is little car traffic, mostly very small cars with fast drivers. There are no stop lights, only trust on the parts of both the drivers and the walkers, who are, after all, in the majority.
We walk often to Mizpe Moav (we just called it The Point), just 30 or so minutes through town until suddenly, we’re on the outskirts, coming out next to the oddly-failed and dilapidated Hotel Masada, and the street lights have ended well behind us. We stand on what from our direction and perspective, is an outcropping of sand, and stare out into the rolling hills of more sand that make up the desert, and I get the same sense of immensity that I felt in California last January as I stood at the base of the mountains. During the day, the Dead Sea is visible from this spot, and at any time, we can taste the salt on our lips as it claims the air. But at night . . .
. . . at night the moon is so bright that it limns our shadows in perfect detail. I stand there, fascinated by this phenomenon, and I get a flash that my image has been etched into the very sand of G/d’s country by the Hand of the Artist Who created the canvas . . .
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Legacy.com is a gateway to memories.
No, seriously. I find it kind of creepy.
the zOhn stOre
Zmanim for Jerusalem- Alot Hashachar (dawn) - 5:19 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Earliest Tallit and Tefillin - 5:44 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Netz Hachamah (sunrise) - 6:34 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Latest Shema - 9:13 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Zman Tefillah - 10:06 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Chatzot (midday) - 11:52 AM -- (1/30/2012)
- Minchah Gedolah (earliest Minchah) - 12:19 PM -- (1/30/2012)
- Minchah Ketanah - 2:58 PM -- (1/30/2012)
- Plag Haminchah - 4:04 PM -- (1/30/2012)
