Angela Himsel2013-05-24T13:56:39-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=angela-himselCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Angela HimselGood old fashioned elbow grease.Pitching Baby Jesus to the Paploids: If OK! Was Around in the First Centurytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23319542012-12-19T14:56:11-05:002013-02-18T05:12:01-05:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/If OK! Was Around in the First Century.
The baby twins on the cover of Shalom! -- the top selling papyrus celebrity mag in all of Israel - drew Miriam in. Having just given birth herself, she couldn't help but compare every precious bundle to her own. But when she unrolled the scroll, she saw King Herod's decree: "All baby boys in and around Bethlehem under the age of two shall be killed."
Oh, my God! Yeshua was only three months old. If only she had 20 pieces of silver, she could afford to travel to Egypt. But aside from prostituting her body, what did she have of any value that anyone would give her even five shekels for? Gazing again at the twins on the cover, inspiration struck.
Israel was overrun with lowly scribes who hawked sketches of every baby Barabbas and Lazarus in town to scrolls like Shalom, Drek and The Star and the Sun. Miriam pulled out her parchment paper, dipped her quill into ink and made her pitch.
Dear Editor,
My baby, Yeshua, is the most amazing baby you've ever seen. His drool, his burps, his farts - they're otherworldly. I am prepared to negotiate rights for images of him. I believe that 50 shekels is the going rate, and even though Yeshua is worth far more than this, I will sell them for a mere 30 shekels.
Shalom, and peace be on you and your home,
Miriam
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Whoa Miriam, I think you got the wrong publication!
Some papyr-loids are gonna pay big money to celebs like Caiaphas for sketches of their babies, but not me. We pay papyrazzi who hang around near the temple and grab sneak peeks without the parents' consent. Much cheaper. And if you get some Samaritan kid having a meltdown over puppies, it's HUGE!
But this baby craze - the baby bump watch, then the blinged-out baby thing - is so Bronze Age, unless you're an unwed teen mom and your boyfriend made a sketch of you in a manger without your tunic. The happening thing now is breastfeeding. Send me something of you nursing the kid. If the mom has big bazungas, and the kid sits astride a donkey but is still sucking tit, we could pay a few shekels for that. A little more if you have a wardrobe malfunction.
I am an unmarried teenage mom, but I'm a virgin, for heaven's sake, and if you knew who the baby daddy was, you would just plotz!
I am nursing, but I come from an extremely modest, Jewish family and absolutely will not expose my breasts to all of Israel for profit. My Kabbalah teacher Esther Madge says that women are more than a sum of our body parts. We are spiritual beings and that includes my nipples.
I'm sending along a sweet drawing of me cradling Yeshua and gazing lovingly into his angelic face. I hope you can use it.
Blessings,
Miriam
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Miri,
Lemme give it to you straight: Our readers aren't interested in looking at a circumcised Jewish baby with black hair. I'm not saying he isn't cute, but I'm talking about Romans and Egyptians here. They go gaga for dark Nubians or a pale Roman perhaps.
I don't know from the Kabbalah, but Miss Madge has sure used her body for profit. This is a tough world, and a girl's gotta use her God-given gifts to succeed. It's the Madonna or whore. Too bad you can't give us both.
Sources tell me that some new age guys saw a sign in the sky and all that cockamamie stuff, that some baby was being reincarnated. So they followed the star to Bethlehem near you and brought gifts and worshipped him. By any chance, you know who that baby was? I'm not big into worshipping babies, but if we recreated the scene, it could sell - the star in the sky, some cute, blonde baby and those crazy Persians and all their mumbo-jumbo.
Sending you Godspeed,
Handl
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Handl,
Yes, I met those men - they'd been travelling a long while and they brought frankincense. Thank God, because did they ever reek! They should only take their eyes off Orion and the Big Dipper and bathe once.
Here's another drawing of me with Yeshua but without the burp cloth so you can see my collarbones.
We leave tomorrow for Egypt. Herod is out for the blood of innocents. Not to a dog, it should happen.
With honor,
Miriam
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Miri,
I feel bad for you - you gotta get your tuches moving. Look, I'll have my guy Michael work with your drawing, and if he lightens your hair, gets rid of your baby weight, exposes part of your breast, and reverses Yeshua's' circumcision, people might dig it.
But Miriam and Yeshua are too ethnic. How do Mary and Jesus sound? If we surround the drawing in some golden halo that would totally nail it. Who knows, this baby thing might be BIG.
I'm enclosing 30 shekels, which isn't bubkes and it should get you to Egypt. Be well, and God bless.
Handl
Originally published online at DAMEMAGAZINE.com]]>Prepared for Passover -- Not!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8502712011-04-18T14:34:47-04:002011-06-18T05:12:02-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/Israelites were running from the Pharaoh back in Egypt, they were running! Unprepared, no time to carefully choose what to put in their carry-on bag, they grabbed their bread before it had risen, and off they dashed. Three thousand years later, it's perplexingly counterintuitive to me that, in the weeks leading up to the holiday that commemorates the exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land, we Jews enslave ourselves by intensively, seriously, and doggedly preparing for Passover! We take everything out of our cabinets, jettisoning cereal and corn chips; we attack the stove with a vengeance, the fridge with slightly less passion, spending long moments contemplating whether we can keep the strawberry jam or not, and some of us will even purge winter coat pockets of errant crumbs lodged in their folds. Our house in order, out come our old Passover recipes, we make the food shopping list, load up on matzah meal, cursing the Jews who have bought out the entire supply of cake meal, and start peeling onions.
This year, however, in keeping with the original intent of Passover, I am completely unprepared. I didn't plan to be unprepared, if there is such a thing. It just happened. My daughter Anna broke her leg skiing, and so for the three weeks pre-Passover, instead of hunting down my Seder plate and my stash of plastic plagues that amuse children and adults alike, I was icing Anna's leg, taking her to physical therapy, keeping her leg elevated, feeding her Percocet, rubbing Traumeel on her bruises and making her homemade French toast and pancakes (yes, homemade). I did not give Passover much thought, and now that it's upon me, my carry-on bag isn't close to being filled.
Thus, for the first time, I have a limited idea of what the Israelites might have psychologically experienced way down in Egypt, for when a crisis is upon you, everything is reduced to what is absolutely essential. No time for coats or for fancy dishes. No time to shave my legs. No time for anything except what I really, honestly, truly need. People. Gotta invite my peeps for the Passover Seder, because the Israelites would never have escaped individually, they had to go as a group. I dash off e-mails and make phone calls, and once my twenty-eight guests are confirmed, I mentally ponder the food situation. On Thursday, four days before Passover, I schlep Anna back to her classes, lugging the big-ass wheelchair in and out of the trunks of taxis, and resolve to start cooking or cleaning or -- something. But when I get home, there are ice packs, and my younger son seems to think he's entitled to eat dinner, and then Anna says we really have to wash her hair. She has long, thick, curly hair and washing, conditioning, detangling and braiding it is almost as time consuming as passing a UN resolution. The grocery shopping falls to the bottom of the to-do list.
Then it's the Friday before Passover, and we're leaving Egypt on Monday. We gotta get ready! I rummage through my recipes, which breeds a grocery list, which prompts a look-see in the cabinet, which results in tossing Rosh Hashanah honey that has crystallized, and then it's onto the fridge. Oy. Mayonnaise -- technically, this jar is not kosher for Passover. However... I need it for my cauliflower frittata. Nobody will know. I'm keeping it.
Fine, I have about three days to put this Passover Seder together, which is a heck of a lot more time than the Israelites had, but we've come to expect more than just a piece of matzah for dinner. I decide to ask for help from my band of Upper West Side Hebrews. Gena volunteers a flourless chocolate cake. David and Carol are all over the charoset, the sweet, paste-like substance that's supposed to represent the mortar of the bricks that the Israelites were slaving over in Egypt. Barak is bringing a fresh horseradish root, and a proper Passover meal starts to shape itself. However, the extra touches -- placecards, flowers, sliced lemons for water -- will have to fall by the wayside.
Over the years, we've developed certain Passover Seder traditions. For example, we go around the table and play the "I'm leaving Egypt and I'm taking with me..." game in which each person chooses an item to take with him or her, while at the same time recalling and repeating what the others before have said they would take with them. Or, in conjunction with the slavery theme, we ask, "What are you a slave to in today's world?" Answers have included, "My children," "My job," "My blackberry," and "Sex." In the past few weeks, the theme of freedom, not slavery, has preoccupied me. Watching Anna not free to walk, not free of pain, I've become hyper aware of how I take for granted my freedom of movement. So this year, I'm going to ask: Which freedom are you most grateful for? Because when you reduce it to the essentials, to what is absolutely necessary, it wasn't just unleavened bread that the unprepared Israelites took with them when they left Egypt. They took their freedom.
Cauliflower Frittata
2 10-ounce boxes frozen cauliflower
3 eggs
½ envelope onion soup mix
12 cup mayonnaise
Defrost cauliflower. Drain, mash and mix well beaten eggs, onion soup mix and mayonnaise. Grease 9x13 inch pan and line with matzo meal. Pour in cauliflower mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Serves 8-10.
]]>Ghost Stories: Israel's Past Comes to Lifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7942392010-12-09T16:43:50-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
Motti's current , favored ghost is Theodore Herzl who is considered the founder of modern Zionism and thus, of Israel. "He is so relevant to our lives," Motti says. "Herzl changed the course of history, and once in a while, it's worth it to consult with him. Human nature doesn't change, anti-Semitism hasn't changed. It's the same script, the same theater, so why not consult with the director? He's there." In 1895 Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat, ("The Jewish State") a book that asserted Jews were never really safe from anti-Semitism wherever they lived and the only solution was for them to remove themselves from the Diaspora and establish their own state. He died nine years later, in 1904, having visited Palestine only once. "He worked himself to death," Motti says. "He was a dreamer, but first and foremost, it was his honesty and integrity that was an atomic force that demolished all obstacles. Herzl made us think about ourselves as a nation, not as a community."
There's no better place to indulge ghostly love affairs than Israel: it offers a wide array of ghosts to choose from; you don't have to limit yourself to just one; and it's perfectly fine if others are having an affair with that same ghost. In fact, even better - then you can compare notes, which is what we're doing the following day at an event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the death of my husband's great-grandfather, the former chief rabbi of Jerusalem. On a hilltop overlooking Jerusalem, my oldest son, David, and I join a horde of the rabbi's descendants, many of whom are clad in the long-black coats, pants and black hats that indicate their status as ultra-Orthodox Jews. The men gather around the grave, swaying and bowing as they say Psalms in Hebrew. Afterward, we sit in a synagogue in the Old City where various people who knew their grandfather or great-grandfather offer words and memories in honor of him. For a few moments, the ghost comes to life as a man of Torah and of principle who also sought, religiously, to keep the Jewish people united.
Personally, one of my favorite ghosts is one I was introduced to as a child, learning Bible stories at home and in church: King David. Over the years, I've come to understand him as more than simply a "man of God," and as a far more complicated man with big dreams: to unite the individual tribes under one rule and create the first Jewish monarchy in Israel. According to II Samuel, David conquered Zion and created "the city of David," which is where I'm walking this unseasonably warm, winter day, the day before Hanukkah. Archaeologists have been excavating parts of the City of David for the past century and most recently, archaeologist Eilat Mazar claims to have uncovered what she believes to be King David's palace, described also in the book of II Samuel.
The massive boulders below me, which Mazar terms the "Large Stone Structure" and which date to the 12th or 11th centuries BCE, around the time of King David's rule, don't appear to be anything but more stone walls in a city of ancient stone walls. However, whether Mazar's assertion that these are the remains of King David's palace proves to be true or not, it's magical to walk in these dusty pathways just below Mount Moriah and imagine a kingdom being shaped and formed thousands of years ago, right here.
Large Stone Structure of City of David (photo by Arthur Chrysler)
Up north in the Golan Heights, I'm not expecting to encounter ghosts, but in the car with our cousin Dov at the wheel, he points up to a hill where some small stones houses are perched and he says, "In 1967, I was in the paratroopers, and two other guys and I were in one of those houses. We were watching the Syrians with our telescope, and they were watching us with theirs."
Dov goes on to recall the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and how, by chance, he happened not to be in the country when the war broke out. His troop was in the Suez Canal at the time and instead of lying on the beach and getting a suntan, which they had joked they'd be doing, many, including a very close friend, were killed.
For a small country, a lot of ghosts, ancient and not so ancient, are packed within its borders, and the living and those who are gone at times seem equally at hand. Like the stones that have been used and re-used, from the Canaanite times to Herodian times, through the Ottomans and the British, the past and the present co-mingle.
On one of my last days in Israel, when I enter Jerusalem, I note the big encampment outside of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home. Inside are Noam and Avivah Shalit, parents of Gilad Shalit, a soldier who was captured 4 ½ years ago in Gaza by Hamas. They've been sitting in the two tents, accepting visitors, as a sit-in protest of the government for not doing enough to get their son back. A huge sign with a picture of Gilad Shalit and the Hebrew words addressed to Netanyahu and his wife, "Sarah and Bibi, I've been alone for almost 1,609 days. And where are you?!" is prominently placed in full view of all who drive past. An unoccupied chair, "Reserved for Gilad Shalit" sits in the tent.
After ten days of ghost stories - of old, wise rabbis; of dead and captured soldiers; of legendary leaders, modern and ancient - I board the El Al plane to return to America. In the entrance is an electric menorah on which five candles are lit up for the fifth day of Hanukkah. Throughout the week, I've lit the Hanukkah candles and made the blessings with various cousins and eaten potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts, in recognition of the "miracle" that happened in the 3rd century BCE, when a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, overpowered the mighty Greek force that was ruling the country, and relit the eternal flame in the Temple, re-establishing Jewish rule for the second time.
The airplane lifts off, leaving behind Israel, which came to life first under King David, then under the Maccabees, and most recently, after almost 2,000 years as an empty chair that was waiting to be filled, spurred by the dreams of Herzl.
Originally published at Zeek.net]]>Food, Glorious Food: Fried Squirrel Meets Kosher Chickentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7830412010-11-15T17:22:55-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
Following successful surgery, my mother is now in rehab in Indiana and, for the first time in God knows when, she won't be cooking three meals a day any time soon. My mother, as the eldest of seven, and then the mother of eleven, has long had to creatively whip something up out of nothing for others to eat. My childhood was filled with "casseroles" which, though you'd never know to look at them, were tasty. Beef, corn, macaroni, stewed tomatoes and peas were regularly tossed together, baked and served for supper.
Unlike my mother, I'm not one to take care of others by feeding them, though I do make a mean cup of tea. If only my children were interested in spiritual nourishment and talking to me about this week's Torah portion and the significance of stones in the story of Jacob's dream about angels cavorting on the ladder to heaven, I would be considered an excellent mother! Instead, they want to be fed. My daughter, Anna, regularly rummages through the refrigerator searching for a container of yogurt that hasn't exceeded its expiration date, while at the same time purging the refrigerator of questionable items. This is one of Anna's favorite recreational activities, and I've told her that I purposely don't throw out moldy cheese because I hate to deprive her of the pleasure. She doesn't believe me.
The week after my mother fell, my siblings and I all check in with each other, even more often than usual. It's random stuff, but much of it is linked to food. It's as if I'm getting a message from heaven. My sister Wanda texts me, "Just brought daddy some moonshine jelly." I text her back, "Where did u get moonshine jelly? What does it taste like? I want some badly!" and she replies, "Darn, should have told me. I don't like it as much as the peach pecan amaretto. That is yummy."
Mary calls to say that she's planning a chili cook-off for the family, when will I be home? I love chili, but it's not something I make often in my Jewish, New York City world. I tell Mary I once had peanut butter and chocolate chili. It was awful.
Then, my sister Liz calls to taunt me, "I'm eating the heart of the cabbage," and I laugh, "Next thing, you'll be gloating over chicken gizzards!"
"The heart of the cabbage" is a reference to the inner section of the cabbage that is left over when you grate cabbage for cole slaw. Liz and I fought over that sweet heart when we were kids. We also fought over gizzards.
Reminiscing over the phone on our simple childhood food pleasures, Liz says she still likes gizzards, "But I can't have tongue!" referring to beef tongue that my mother would cook and put into hash - a soup made of diced potatoes, onions and diced tongue, and which my father refused to eat. (We know for a fact that our mother slipped tongue into other dishes just to annoy him, which amused us greatly back then, and still does today.)
"I can happily have tongue," I say, "any way I can get it," and Liz, God bless her, still laughs at my juvenile, dirty joke.
"Why can you eat the hiney butt of a chicken, but not a cow's tongue?" I ask Liz. "Where do you draw the line?"
Having converted to Judaism long ago, I've learned that keeping kosher is all about drawing that line - you can eat this, but not that. I send kosher, prepared food to my older son, David, in college in Minnesota because he doesn't have access to kosher meat. Even though I don't actually roll up my sleeves and slave at the hot stove, simply choosing the food from the kosher butcher is a bit of an ordeal for me. Luckily, the last time I shipped David food, our cousin, Beverly, accompanied me and she steered me through the correct amounts to order, based on how many meals I wanted him to have for the next two weeks. Beverly also asked the butcher to divide it into single portions so it could be defrosted individually and wouldn't all go to waste. For four years I've been sending David food, and this solution never occurred to me.
My sister-in-law, Debbie, calls not long after Liz and I have finished our tongue-talk, and she is all frazzled. She'd just gotten back from Glicks, the kosher supermarket in Florida that she frequents and which practically requires steel-tipped, combat boots to maneuver through the single-minded manic Jews pushing grocery carts who are on a chopped liver mission. Debbie had taken a deli number and then left the deli area for a few minutes to finish up her shopping. When she returned to the counter and her number was called, Debbie was unfairly accused of picking up a number from the floor in order to get ahead in the line! Waiting for her order to be packaged up, Debbie listened and watched as another woman pointed to the rotisserie chickens laid out on the tray, and one by one refused them, Goldilocks style - too big, too, little, too well done... Finally, in frustration, the deli man said, "Lady, just tell me which chickens you DON'T want!" I pray that Glicks is not in my near future because while I will spend an inordinate amount of time poring over the stone motif in the Jacob narratives, I simply can't take underdone chickens too seriously!
Debbie asks me when I'm going home to see my mother and I say, "I'd like to wait until she gets out of rehab so I can help her at home, cooking and stuff."
Debbie says, "That'll be great!" and I know I'm paranoid, but her voice seems a little too hearty to me, as if the last thing she can imagine is me cooking for my mother. (My conversion to Judaism, Debbie has often remarked, was completely successful in every respect except the food aspect.) However, I realize that I do want to attempt to mother my mother in the way in which mothers, Jewish and non-Jewish, typically do - by providing them with food. I won't do it nearly as well as she has mothered us, and there's no way I'll fry up a squirrel for anybody, but she'll like my chili. I make it just the way she does.]]>Blessed Are Those Who Enter: Sukkot, Hospitality and Hometag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7469232010-10-01T12:14:09-04:002011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/Odyssey when we hear a little squeak. It is, undoubtedly, a mouse. Or mice. For they have returned. A few years ago, there was a rat infestation on our block, and at night when I walked the dogs, I would have long, grim conversations with my neighbors about rat poison and exterminators. Our block hit back at the critters, and ultimately drove them into a more lax, fat-cat neighborhood, probably the Upper East Side. But lately, I've heard unmistakable sounds that they are back. Since I have eight houseguests coming in for my mother-in-law's big birthday party, I can only hope that the mice are polite enough to remain secluded when company is around.
In anticipation of the arrival of our cousins, nieces, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, I spend a few days racing around the house tidying up. I toss out a bunch of really tired, raggedy towels, move a box of papers and magazines dating from 2007, some small sculptures, and a container of Daniel's schoolwork from middle school into a closet, place an unsqueezed tube of toothpaste in a basket in the bathroom, make space in the closets for everyone to hang their clothes, stock the fridge with milk and juice and yoghurt while purging it of questionable-smelling humus and herring salad left over from our Yom Kippur break fast, pull more pillows out of the closets, place tissue boxes next to the beds, and send up a prayer that the mice will have the decency to keep quiet.
Family descends, and it is a busy, riotous weekend, with suitcases opened on the kitchen floor, an ever-changing selection of bagels and cookies and grapes and macaroni and cheese appearing and disappearing on the kitchen table, keys to the house lost and found, late night retellings around a cluttered kitchen table about family members caught in compromising positions, and an ambitious, last-minute craft project for Grandma entailing glue sticks, old photographs and heavy stock paper.
I try, and basically manage, to make certain that everyone has what he or she needs over the weekend: pajamas and a phone recharger for my niece, Jacqui, who forgot hers; an ice pack for Bob's twisted ankle, and a battery recharger for his camera. I am entranced by my four year old great-niece, Sophia, who insists on walking ahead of me wherever we go, "Because I'm the leader, Aunt Ang." Sophia spends a lot of time standing in front of the pantry and with a hopeful voice, asks me, "Aunt Ang, can I have a snack?" to which I reply, "Yes, of course, what would you like?" And then, again, my leader says, "It's your house, Aunt Ang, I don't know what you have," reminding me that she's the guest, I am the host.
Then it's the birthday party, which is held on Sunday afternoon in the sukkah at our synagogue. The sukkah is dressed to the nines. Blue and white banners, strings of mixed, fake fruit, and various shiny garlands in the shape of stars and bells, iridescent gold and purple, hang from the bamboo poles that serve as the sukkah's "ceiling. Posters - of the seven species of the land of Israel, of Sabbath candles, of the words, "Barooch HaBaim" - "Blessed are those who enter" - are tacked to the walls. I take a tiny bit of credit for how beautiful the sukkah looks, for I, as part of the synagogue's Sisterhood, spent a Sunday with other members and a bunch of children helping to put the decorations up. One wants, after all, one's house to look nice for one's guests.
It occurs to me, as I meet and greet the friends and family who are our guests and have come to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday, that Sukkot is the holiday that most centers around guests and emphasizes hospitality. This is ironic since a sukkah is a temporary dwelling, not one's home at all, and it's difficult to be a good host without a bathroom, fresh towels, heat, boxes of tissues...
During the 40 years in which the Israelites wandered in the Sinai Desert, they lived in temporary huts as the guests of God, who provided them with food and water. Today, we continue this tradition of hospitality by inviting friends and strangers to eat with us in our sukkahs. Religiously observant Jews invite other guests into their sukkah, as well - the ushpizin, ("visitors") the seven heavenly guests: Adam, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. All of God's guests - the transient and the enduring - meet under the sky that peeks through the sukkah's bamboo poles.
This mingling of the past and the present reminds me of one of the examples of hospitality that Daniel cited in the Odyssey, when Menelaos gave his guest, Telemakhos, a gift that had been given to him. "That's re-gifting," I argued to Daniel, but he insisted that back then, it was an honor, as not only did it acknowledge the hospitality of someone who came before but it also linked Menelaos' reputation to this other person who was famous for his generosity. When I look around the sukkah at my mother-in-law (whose age I won't mention, but it is not 89), and at her 17 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and another one on the way, it's lovely to see the manifestation of past and present co-existing, and lovely to be linked to someone like her, famous for her warmth and generosity to others.
My house feels empty when my guests leave, though I find physical traces of family in the blow dryer forgotten in the bathroom, the two telephone rechargers inadvertently abandoned in the bedroom, and Sophia's book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on the kitchen cabinet.
The laws of hospitality are slightly different today than before, but only slightly. I'm not planning any time soon to gift my guests with a "mixing bowl, wrought of silver but rimmed with hammered gold." But the effort we make for our guests, whether in a nearly empty hut or in our cluttered, mice infested homes, blesses not only the guests but also the host.]]>Excuse Me, Are You...?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7204232010-09-17T13:12:42-04:002011-05-25T17:40:20-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
I walk past this Hassidic man only to encounter another one who catches my glance. He says to me, "Excuse me, are you Jewish?"
I'm practically ready to make a shehechyanu, the prayer you recite for first-time events! "Yes, I am!" I smile happily.
"Oh, you are?" Does he seem slightly surprised? "Well, shana tovah."
"Thank you. Shana tovah to you, too." I wish him a happy new year in return.
When he asks me where I'm from and I say Manhattan, he says, "Well, you probably know Chabad there, then," and I agree, yes, I do, and there's another round of shana tovahs, and then I climb the stairs and exit the subway station, tickled pink about my encounter.
I walk a few blocks to the restaurant where there will be a surprise 40th birthday party for my friend, David, a fellow writer. Over the course of the evening, I meet his best friend, Laura, who knew him in college back when David was an aspiring actor. I meet people he works with in the corporate world that he is in today who remark about how conscientious and trustworthy David is. "If you give it to him, he gets it done." David introduces me to another writer, a guy who, years ago, was in a group with David that told "Queer Stories." He recalls the first story that David shared - something about a broken window and a church. David doesn't remember it at all. At one table are, I think, two other gay couples, one of whom hasn't seen David in four years but is happy to have a reason to reconnect. Seated across from me at dinner are a couple who live in his apartment building in Brooklyn. When I say I know David through writing, they are surprised. They hadn't realized that David is a writer, has a blog, and is working on a memoir. Like most of us, David has a number of separate worlds which tend not to collide except when there's a big event like tonight, when the inhabitants of his separate orbits are brought together and we see him in a larger context.
Before the birthday cake is brought out, I feel compelled to offer a birthday toast, something simple, like, "Thanks, Mark, for putting together this birthday party. David, we love you and happy birthday." However, maybe because my encounter in the subway station with the Hassid has sparked some deeper reflection about how one appears to others, or how one thinks one appears to others, I find myself extemporaneously philosophizing that even though we all know David in various ways, and although many of us are completely unaware of lots of aspects of David's life, we all know the same David.
What I hope is understood by this is that David's qualities - his sense of humor, his decency, his intelligence, his respect for others, his commitment to friends, old and new, his code of ethics, and much more - are consistent, whether he's in a writing group or at work or telling queer stories.
On Yom Kippur, when I stand in synagogue for hours and recite the prayers, striking my fist against my chest to atone for my sins, and as I become more and more tired with the lack of food, water and more importantly, caffeine, it's then that I feel a kind of certainty that God sees and loves each one of us in all of our totality, even the parts that we hide from one another and from ourselves. Wherever we are, whoever we're with, God recognizes us and never needs to ask, on Yom Kippur or any other day, "Excuse me, are you Angela?"]]>Rabbinic Rulings and the Rectal Route: Yom Kippur's Curious Path to Godtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7137042010-09-13T16:11:54-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/Yom Kippur, in preparation for the 25 hour fast, Jews the world over will offer charity, request forgiveness from friends and family whom they may have wronged, and immerse themselves in the mikveh (the ritual bath) to be purified. At some point, perhaps post-mikveh and before donning their white garments for the Kol Nidre service, many of them will stick a little something up their tuches.
I discovered this secret several years ago, here on West 90th Street in the week before Yom Kippur when I was complaining to a neighbor about how not eating or drinking doesn't bother me, but the caffeine withdrawal is brutal. "In Monsey, there's a run on caffeine suppositories the day before Yom Kippur," my in-the-know friend shared with me. I envisioned a hoard of desperate, bearded Jews pounding on a pharmacy door, like heroin addicts begging for a fix.
The purpose of fasting is to enable us to focus on our prayers and thereby to come closer to God, without the distraction of thinking about food. It tends not to work out that way, in my experience. This same friend's wife confided that while she can pray with her whole heart in synagogue on the morning of Yom Kippur, come afternoon she is obsessed with food and so she sits at the kitchen table, reads cookbooks, and fantasizes about crème brulee. Jewish porn.
It's hard to transcend the pounding headache and slip into an altered spiritual state if you're pre-occupied with food or coffee. So if that caffeine suppository offers you a path to God, I say hallelujah. The end justifies the means.
Though my husband grew up in an Orthodox home, he'd never heard about going the rectal route. He jokingly considered asking one of his many rabbi relatives whether this backdoor loophole is recognized in the rabbinical world as being kosher, but his family doesn't like to encourage those kinds of "frivolous" questions. "All I know," my husband said, "is that a lot of matches were made on Yom Kippur afternoon."
This was a revelation to me. "Really? Why?"
He shrugged. "I guess these guys are starving and some girl says she's got a nice brisket at home and a pie and he's in a weakened state..."
This was clearly more about my husband's fantasy of what would entice him in the long, dark, lonely hours of repentance. The fact that this conversation took place over dinner in a restaurant, (no home-cooked meal), was not lost on me.
But it was a curious idea -- that on Yom Kippur, when you have bad breath and are cranky and can't wear lipstick and you smell (no bathing or anointing the body, which means no deodorant or make up -- these laws I have yet to follow) -- you will attract a mate. Yet, a little research corroborated that my yeshiva-educated husband was correct. In the Mishnah, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel wrote that in the times of the Temple: "There were no festivals in Israel like... Yom Kippur, for on them the young women of Israel went out in borrowed white dresses...and danced in the vineyards. And what did they say? `Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself.'"
While the men may have been viewing the women with visions of brisket dancing in their heads, my guess would be the women were looking at the men and seeing spirituality. Whether either of them could in reality offer tender roast beef or whisper sweet-nothings in Aramaic was beside the point. It was Yom Kippur, and if it was possible to start anew with God, you could consider starting anew with another human being. It's that kind of hope that keeps Jewish matchmaking sites like sawyouatsinai in business.
Like everyone else on my block and in the greater, observant Jewish world, I'm not averse to seeking out ways to alleviate the effects of the fast (before the fast begins, have a teaspoon of honey; drink Pedialyte with juice...) However, I've noticed that there's a pointed lack of discussion between people on what is supposed to be at the center of the day - our relationship with God. I truly think my neighbors would flip out if I stopped them to confide that I worry if God heard my prayers, or if I inquired if they'd felt God's presence as much as I had in synagogue. Better, I should speak of suppositories than of my personal soul-searching.
On Yom Kippur, the presumed duality between the body and the soul seems even more pronounced. Our preoccupation with our hunger and our bludgeoning headache only serves to re-enforce how very earth-bound we are, and as a result the two feel to be at odds with one another. Perhaps the idea that the physical and the spiritual are not in conflict but are part of the whole is the lesson that can be learned from the custom of the young women dancing and chasing the men on afternoons many millenniums ago in the old country. On what other day are our physical and spiritual selves so on display and available, and our awareness of our own and others' quite so heightened?
May Yom Kippur be a time of spiritual beginnings, in your partnership with God and with others. I wish you an easy fast, whatever route you take.
"Lift up your eyes, and see what you choose for yourself."
This post originally appeared at zeek.net.]]>Come Hometag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7028412010-09-02T13:49:33-04:002011-05-25T17:30:22-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/ginormous Buddha sitting atop the mountain on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, I turn to my son Daniel and say: "So this elderly woman desperately wanted to see this famous Buddhist monk somewhere in the Himalayas. She was told it would be a long journey and that, once she got there, she could only say six words to him. She wouldn't be dissuaded. So she takes a one-day airplane ride with changes in two cities, then a hot bus ride, followed by hours on a rickety train, and she has to wait in line for days. Finally, as she gets closer to the monk, she's reminded, 'Just six words.' She nods, arrives at his cave and says to the long-bearded monk sitting in the lotus position, 'Sheldon, it's your mothuh. Come home.'"
Daniel laughs at the old JuBu joke, and then we set off to climb the 268 stairs that will take us up to the 34-meters tall, 250-ton Buddha overlooking a vast expanse of green mountains and valleys. It's always been curious to me how many Jews are attracted to Buddhism, and how they manage to synthesize the two practices, becoming "JuBus". The singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, Ram Dass, numerous actors and actresses including Sarah Jessica Parker, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David and Goldie Hawn, and many more -- all are on record as being practicing Buddhists.
I want to tell Daniel that I hope I don't have to hunt him down in a cave in the Himalayas sometime in the future, but I don't. Nonetheless, I worry a little about it because, frankly, the same thing that was missing in mainstream Judaism that these JuBus were seeking is probably still missing. My guess is that they were looking for that oft maligned and easy-to-make-fun-of thing called spirituality, not something one normally associates with Judaism, which emphasizes practicing the laws, no matter how you feel about it. Yet, why should we not expect spirituality, demand it, of our religion? Isn't that what a religion is supposed to provide? Not that spirituality is by definition at odds with rules, but sometimes, the laws might obscure or seem to replace the spirituality underlying them.
A few nights later, we're at dinner in Beijing with a Chinese woman who is a business associate of my husband, and her German boyfriend, a former Olympic athlete who currently works as a trainer for the Chinese basketball team. It's a demanding, physical job and I ask him how he manages to keep up. He explains that he meditates every morning for an hour and a half, and then he has all the energy he needs. With more prompting from me, he tells me how it all began. He was traveling in India, didn't have much money and was sleeping at the door of a Buddhist monastery. They invited him in after a few days on their doorstep, and he remained for four months. He cleaned the floors and did whatever needed to be done, and, as he observed the monks meditating, he started doing it, too. All of his learning was basically in silence, since they had no common language. He hadn't been looking for enlightenment, just a place to stay. Since then, this former Olympic wrestler meditates every day and, "I just take it easy. Relax!"
I'm reminded of another conversation about a different kind of accidental conversion that I heard about earlier in the summer over dinner with a couple we'd literally just met while picking Daniel up at camp in Maine. Margaret had been raised Jewish in Scarsdale, had gone to Israel, worked for a Jewish agency, and went on an archaeological dig in Israel. However, in her mid-30s and not married, her father's new, devoutly Christian wife had told her to pray the catechism, and she would meet the man she was to marry. She did so, met her husband, and that incident - the power of faith, of prayer - converted her to Christianity. But now, married to a non-Jewish man and with a daughter, she's recently realized she wants her daughter to have an understanding of her Jewish background, and so she went to a rabbi to say that she wants to re-convert to Judaism. The rabbi told her that it was unnecessary. She never left.
Call yourself what you want, go to the ends of the earth, but if you're a Jew - a non-practicing Jew, an atheist Jew, a JuBu, a Jewish Christian, or any other form of Jew you can think of - you can never leave home.
This post originally appeared at http://zeek.forward.com/articles/116947/.]]>Nosh, Davin, Kvell, or Eat, Pray, Love, the Upper West Side Waytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6667702010-08-13T12:15:35-04:002011-05-25T17:15:21-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/sawyouatsinai.com, frumster.com, and even, heaven forfend, that most secular of Jewish dating sites, jdate.com, in search of her baschert, her soulmate. Jewish legend has it that every Jew in the world actually stood at Mt. Sinai with his or her soulmate when the Ten Commandments were given. Now, the trick was to find the one she "saw at Sinai."
Leeba Rivka hates being a part of the "Jewish singles' crisis," as if, within the scope of modern-day afflictions, she's right up there with North Korea's nuclear program. She wishes she could be more like her friend Shoshana who just left for a six-month stint in a women's seminary in Israel, with the stated purpose to come back engaged or, G_d willing, married. The rabbis there take it upon themselves to fix the young people up, no mitmazel.com necessary. Begrudgingly, Leeba Rivka admires Shosh for treating her single state like an illness that needs to be cured, or like she's unemployed and is seeking full time employment, systematically and thoroughly and unsentimentally.
It's the middle of a hot summer, and the fall high holidays and the frenetic synagogue-hopping and furtive eye-catching that they entail are looming menacingly. Leeba Rivka decides she needs a break from the modern Orthodox, Jewish dating world in New York City, and maybe with some perspective she will eat less noodle kugel and lose five pounds (ten?), reconnect to more meaningful prayer and learn to love and kvell at everything life offers, not just her one-year-old nephew's recent achievement ("Oy, you made in the potty, you cutie!").
The ten day cruise to Greece, Turkey, Israel and Egypt looks great but is outside her budget. She is quite tempted by the kosher, Eastern European trip: the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, Birkenau. A friend of hers had done a similar trip on her honeymoon and loved it, but it's expensive. Finding one's own authentic neshama, soul, requires a lot of money.
There's notyourtypicalweekend.com, which she'd done once, and while the broad palette of diversions, including life coaches, yoga and ropes courses, as well as the ever-present presence of a rabbi who delivered Talmudic talks on the Temple and the meaning of the red heifer, had been a nice change, Leeba Rivka had had more than a few moments when she'd thought: Jews on ropes courses, clutching their yarmulkahs, holding up their skirts, who are they trying to be, goyim?
Club Getaway in the Berkshires looks far more doable -- a kosher weekend under strictest rabbinical supervision (the food, not the activities), a lot of kibbetzing, music on Saturday night at the close of the Sabbath... it's like summer camp for Jewish professionals. But the thought of being charming and entertaining for an entire weekend, of judging and being judged on her level of religious observance (Leeba Rivka wears pants, on occasion, and she eats in non-kosher restaurants, albeit only cold vegetarian items!) seems like more of a tzuris, a headache, than a simcha, a joyous occasion.
She doesn't have enough money for a thorough, neshama-searching journey that will take her through concentration camps or across the Mediterranean, and she has a terrible aversion to an entire weekend eating over-salted beef teriyaki that bears an uncanny resemblance to brisket, and speed dating with nudnick Shloimeys who have jobs doing something in computers and pride themselves on their shuckeling (swaying) during prayer. So, when she hears about the Tu B'Av celebration sponsored by a local Chabad group, she figures why not?
Leeba Rivka is only vaguely familiar with Tu B'Av. It's a minor, post-Biblical holiday that takes place in the summer on the 15th of the Jewish month of Av. Back in the days of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Tu B'Av was the time of the wood offering and was quite the happening festival. Coinciding with the full-moon, it connoted love and romance and fertility, and today is feted as the Jewish Valentine's Day. But who cares about its history? Far more important, there's a Tu B'Av singles party downtown on the roof of a club called Splashtop, and it only costs $15.
Arriving in a white, flowing dress (Everyone is asked to wear all white -- apparently, back in the day, this was so that the rich couldn't be distinguished from the poor, but in today's world, white shows off Leeba Rivka's suntan very nicely), she nibbles on hummus and vegetables and a few other low-caloric offerings. She sings Hebrew prayers and sways with her eyes closed atop a tall building in New York City with a view of the Hudson River, and feels as if she's connecting to God more than she does during her daily prayers. Then, she gazes into the Reflection Pool and sees the face of a handsome, dark-haired, dark-skinned young man clad in white shirt and white jeans. His name is Roni, he just got out of the Israeli army and is doing a round-the-world trip in search of himself. He'd hooked up with Chabad, famous for its outreach and for accepting Jews of all stripes and types. The rabbi is on record as saying that he'll perform the wedding for free for any couple that meets through their events. When their eyes meet in the pool, schmaltzy and sentimental as it sounds, it's Love.
Six years younger than Leeba Rivka, and a secular, Yemenite Jew from a Kibbutz in the Galilee, Roni is not someone Leeba would have chosen or who would have chosen her on any of the dating websites. But when it turns out they've seen the same documentaries -- Was Picasso Jewish? - and read many of the same books - I Grew Up With Mice and Lice: a Memoir of a Hidden Child in Poland in World War II, Leeba recognizes him as the one she saw at Sinai.
The sequel to Nosh, Davin, Kvell is Shtup, Schluff, Kvetch (Sex, Sleep, Complain), a portrayal of Leeba's subsequent marriage to Roni. The early years.
A Tu B'Av celebration
Originally published at http://zeek.forward.com/articles/116908/]]>Of'feh-nsivetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6625612010-07-28T12:35:11-04:002011-05-25T17:10:24-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/The Complete Idiot's Guide to Converting to Judaism.
My book starts with the very first convert, the biblical Ruth who was the ancestor of King David, briefly mentions a few historical periods of philo-Semitism, then moves to other high-profile converts: Rabbi Akivah (his lineage is questionable), Sammy Davis Junior, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. Back then, there weren't so many people clamoring to be Jewish. Today, who knew, it's become almost sexy to be Jewish, or at least to marry a Jew (90% of non-Jews don't have a problem with marrying a Jew or with someone in their family marrying a Jew). But now that non-Jews want in, many Jews don't want to let them in. I'm confused, which is why I've decided to meet with these two well-bearded ultra-Orthodox rabbis.
We order pizza and take our slices to a small, round table. Luckily, I have remembered to wear my turquoise Eilat-stone earrings which hide a small microphone, so I am able to record our off-the-record conversation. Glad I did, as it appears that even Benyamin Netanyahu and Elie Wiesel might truly be at risk. Here's the conversion conversation:
Rabbi M: Not so many mushrooms. Usually, they give more mushrooms.
Rabbi S: The conversion bill, you asked about... How can I say? We have these Russians here in Israel, hundreds of thousands of them, nice people, very nice, nothing wrong with them.
Me: But they're not Jewish?
Rabbi S: Not exactly. We can't say. Who can say? We don't know. Probably not.
Rabbi M: No. Definitely not. They are not born of a Jewish mother.
Rabbi S: Well, they serve in the army, they live here...
Rabbi M: The army, feh!
Me: You don't think the army is important?
Rabbi M: Feh!
Rabbi S: And even the ones who say they converted here, what does that mean? You might convert, and then find out that the rabbi who converted you wasn't kosher.
Me: What do you mean, he wasn't kosher? He ate pork?
Rabbi M: (Laughs so hard he almost falls off the chair. Seriously.) No, oy gevalt, pork! No, he was just, let's say, not so stringent. He wasn't so careful about making sure the convert knew what he had to know or did what he had to do.
Me: (confused) The convert didn't know Judaism?
Rabbi M: (impatient) No, no, he knew Judaism, he just wasn't -- you know. So Jewish.
Me: Not so observant?
Rabbi M: Yes, or maybe the rabbi was...
Rabbi S: (sternly) We're not discussing the other rabbis...
Rabbi M: The rabbis, feh!
Me : Since you're ultimately going to let those Russians convert, why not just do one mass conversion? I mean, the Khazars did it. I would bet that when the Khazar rulers and the people of the kingdom decided to convert to Judaism, they didn't each individually have to undergo a conversion process. And at Mount Sinai, when the law was given, it was one mass conversion, right? It's not like when the Muslims and Christians forced entire populations to convert. These Russians want to convert. Can it be that you don't really want these people to become Jewish? Are you opposed to conversion in general?
Rabbi M: (suddenly erupting, as if the pizza has been lit on fire) You know, I see that all of these people want to be Jewish...
Rabbi S: Really? Who?
Me: Lindsay Lohan was wearing the Star of David, probably because of her Jewish girlfriend.
Rabbi M: (Sound of fist klopping against chest) Feh!
Rabbi S: Why you think all of these people want to become Jewish?
Me: Faith, sometimes. Maybe they want to join a club that's exclusive. It's sexy.
Rabbi M: You don't say? Jews are sexy?
Me: Not all Jews, but being Jewish is kinda sexy, yeah.
Rabbi M: I'm getting another slice, what about you?
Me: No, thanks.
Rabbi S: Tell them not to make it so hot this time. I burned the roof of my mouth.
Me (to Rabbi S): If you can say a rabbi was not really a legitimate rabbi and that therefore the conversion is illegitimate -- then who's to stop you from saying that a person who is born Jewish isn't legitimately a Jew?
Rabbi S: (in a whisper) That's the next step. Reb Moshe wants to publicly declare that some Jews who are Jews aren't really Jews, you understand?
Me: (a bit confused) Like whom?
Rabbi S: (seeing Rabbi M. approach and speaking quickly) Rabbi Shmuely Boteach and his kosher sex nonsense. Netanyahu -- he hates him. Elie Wiesel.
Me: (Shocked!) What?? He wants to strip Elie Wiesel of being Jewish?
Rabbi S: (quickly) Yes, it's a plan of his, to determine and define who's a real Jew. First, the converts, then the rest of -- oh, good, that looks delicious.
(Silence as both rabbis snarf up their pizza)
Rabbi M: Not enough mushrooms, feh!
Rabbi S: Oy, stop feh'ing already! He loves to feh. Feh this, feh that.
Rabbi M: Very satisfying, feh'ing.
Me: (barely audible) Anyway, it's easier.
This was originally published at zeek.net]]>Come In, Take Your Shoes Off: A New Look at Tisha B'Avtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6480462010-07-16T11:22:13-04:002011-05-25T17:05:23-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
Let me tell you who I was, or who I believed myself to be, when I came to be built among you. You saw me as a bridge between the earth and heaven, but come closer. Do you see the ten emanations of creation within the outline of my edifice? What about the tree of life? No? Too mystical? Do you see my human form? It's not easily recognizable, but it's there, hidden in plain sight within the stones and the gold and silver and bronze that I'm comprised of. Superimpose a human body atop me, and you'll find a torso in the sanctuary, eyes in the oil that lights the candelabrum to see in the dark, and a nose and mouth in the spices that are burned on the altar. Each gate, each courtyard, each room, each vessel brings you closer and closer to the final room, the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest who, shoes removed, enters on Yom Kippur. Here, the ark of the covenant rests under the outspread wings of two cherubs, and within the ark are the tablets from Mt. Sinai, where you made your eternal covenant. "I will put my teaching into their inmost being, and inscribe it upon their hearts." In the Holy of Holies, you will find the heart.
I was also a physical outline of your soul. And I don't mean that metaphorically, though I know you are more comfortable these days with metaphors than you are with miracles. In my external courtyard was your public self; but when you were inside me, your soul was truly known.
I was more than a building, a temple, or a "place." I was The Place, The Space, HaMakom, just like the Place Jacob recognizes as being filled with God when he wakes up from his dream of the ladder and the stairway to heaven; like the Place where Moses saw the burning bush and took his shoes off for he was on holy ground. In this Place, portable no longer, HaMakom's presence could dwell among you as in Eden.
Then I was destroyed, rebuilt, defiled, and destroyed. Each destruction fell on the same day of the month, the 9th of Av, which you, my kingdom of priests scattered throughout the world, will remember next week by observing a fast on Tisha b'Av. In Jerusalem on Tisha b'Av there have been 100,000 of my people gathered at the Wall, not far from where I once stood, to recite Lamentations, Jeremiah's sad dirge to the captives in Babylon. I've come to share this day with other terrible world events that occurred on the 9th of Av - my people were expelled from England in 1290, from Spain in 1492, and liquidated in the Warsaw Ghetto on the same day that I was destroyed.
Now, these thousands of years later, I can't help but be happy that I still matter, you still recall me and you still mourn, from Brazil to Alaska. I'm gone now, but shards of me are lodged within you (not metaphorically, either, but miraculously). Each of you is a template of the temple, and it's your body, your head and torso, your arms and legs, that can be draped over the floor plan of the temple. When you pray, the sweet smell drifts toward the Place; when you love, you light up everything around you. When you, bare-footed (metaphorically this time) just like the High Priest and Moses, build a space inside your heart - your own Holy of Holies - for HaMakom's presence to dwell, you are giving it wings so that the finite can be infinite. You are bridging the spiritual and the physical and, in my absence, it's your presence that is creating a small miracle on earth. For you still remember the other words, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people."
This was originally published at http://zeek.forward.com/articles/116856/]]>Rachael and Adam's Uber-Rad Weddingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6248022010-06-30T12:48:37-04:002011-05-25T16:55:19-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
Admittedly, there were a few times over the weekend when, in the midst of a thunderstorm that knocked the power out in and around Bloomington, Indiana, it occurred to me that there's something to be said for an indoor wedding with four or five bridesmaids and one band. However, Rachael is allergic to convention, so uber-rad (her word) it was - with a wedding party composed of all five sisters and four brothers, 20-plus nieces and nephews, three great-nieces, and a mixed assortment of childhood, college and recent friends, against a backdrop of hay bales, a huge boar rolling in water, water antelopes, and a spectacular, hot-pink sunset later in the evening.
But putting those external, unorthodox elements aside, it was the ceremony itself that struck me as being most reflective of my completely unique baby sister. She and her soon-to-be husband Adam stood on a raised platform/stage and the officiant, a woman named Faith, presided over the ceremony. Neither Rachael nor Adam is affiliated with a church or a religious faith as such, so instead of readings from the Bible, they chose selections from the Muslim mystic poet, Rumi, and from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea. The wedding party was invited to participate in a unity sand ceremony, in which we poured a small shot glass of colored sand into a large bowl, representative of the community's involvement in the newlyweds' lives together. Rachael's friend, Caren, introduced the final symbolic gesture - the breaking of glasses, a la Jewish weddings. Caren explained that this act, often used to symbolize the destruction of the Jewish Temple, is a reminder that even on a day of great joy we should remember that there is suffering and pain elsewhere. Both Rachael and Adam stomped on a glass wrapped in a napkin, and Faith called out mazal tov!
I've never been to a non-Jewish wedding in which a glass was stomped on in recognition of others' sufferings. My sister's inclusion of this ritual moved me, and I admit, surprised me. It wouldn't occur to me to co-opt a tradition from a faith not my own in any of my own life-cycle events, not because there's anything wrong with it (on the contrary!) but because it simply wouldn't cross my mind. Yet, when I thought about it, lots of wedding traditions were originally lifted from long-gone cultures and religions, but today are considered integral parts of most western weddings. Bouquets were originally garlands worn in the bride's hair, made of thyme and garlic to frighten off evil spirits. The German Goths needed a best man, because he helped steal the bride from a neighboring tribe. He would then stay at the groom's side to prevent her from being returned. Throwing rice is an old Assyrian, Hebrew and Egyptian custom symbolizing fertility. The white wedding dress dates back to England and Queen Victoria's notions of sexual purity. The wedding cake is a Roman tradition, again symbolizing fertility (Ceres, their fertility goddess, was the goddess of wheat). All of these are components in most of today's wedding ceremonies, but we never think, "Oh, we are one with the Goths and the Romans!"
I actually don't know that Rachael consciously and pre-meditatedly thought to herself, "Hmm, let me be inclusive of other faiths." It's more that that is just who she is. For her, there is room for tradition and originality, for a serious commitment and having fun, and for a Muslim poet and a Jewish symbol to co-exist. Rachael didn't have to make room for any of them. She knew that the room already existed. In Rachael's wedding, there was a sense both of individuality and of community amongst this truly diverse group of people gathered for her wedding. There were devout Catholics and Christians, some Jews, atheists and agnostics; there were homophobic folks mingling with Rachael's gay, lesbian and transgender friends. And we were all gathered together - happily! - to support Rachael and to participate in this ancient rite of passage, a public ceremony in which two people make promises to remain together for the rest of their lives. That, I thought, is one of the most important functions of ceremonies and rituals - to serve as a "container" of sorts, to offer an opportunity for individuals to come together, to leave their alienated worlds for a few moments and enter into the world of one another.
It didn't rain at all during the ceremony. One of Rachael's rain goddess friends was in charge of making sure of that. Quite a few of us were praying, too. There is room for everyone's prayers.
This was originally published at zeek.net]]>Desperately Seeking a Titletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6078252010-06-10T14:11:49-04:002011-05-25T16:45:26-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/
My writer friend, Gabrielle, and I have been going back and forth over titles for books we are both working on. My working title is Frog Legs in Heaven, but she argues that it sounds like a French cook book, not a memoir about growing up in a Christian cult and converting to Judaism. I counter that I'm going with a more subtle, evocative approach. She is not fooled. She knows I just don't have anything better.
Gabrielle's memoir is thus far entitled Rush: the Art of my Life. But she's grappling with whether Rush is concrete enough. Back and forth, over phone calls and e-mails, we've been discussing it.
Gabrielle's e-mail to me:
I've been playing with titles/subtitles. I want something that is concrete and visual. Not abstract. Rush is too abstract and people don't know what it means. Want the title to reflect the central dilemma of the book. i.e. My misadventures in attempting to insert myself, or be included, in my father's picture. That's why I'm rushing. (So I want the title to have me, my father and art in it. And something about chasing that down or putting myself back in the picture.) I'm leaning away from Art Tart or Art Whore for various reasons, one of which is that I write seriously about art for art magazines . . .
She follows this with two pages of potential titles, which include various words like "frame" "boundaries", "part of the picture" and "expressionistic life."
My e-mail to Gabrielle:
I like three of them so far: Unframed, Framing Myself, and Finding my Way Back into the Picture...Unless I come up with something really compelling, I'm gonna keep "Frog Legs in Heaven" as a working title. These are some of the other possibilities:
Mascara Raptured me Away
Goldie Lox Wears Mascara: A Journey from Christian Cult to Rapture in the Jewish World
Mascara, the Mikvah and Me (same subtitle)
In the following days, I mentally run titles through my head. Picking out grapefruit at the fruit stand on Columbus Avenue, I decide I really want something with mascara in the title, since it's my church's fatwa against mascara that pushed me into the open arms of the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath. Waiting in line at the coffee shop, I reconsider Goldie Lox - too cute, right?
Then, at my friend, Amy's, son's bar mitzvah, listening to him chant from Bamidbar, which in English is the book of Numbers, I wonder why I can't title my book like they used to in antiquity: they took a few words from the opening sentence of the book, and made that the title, without thought of marketing or audience or theme or genre. Numbers opens with, "And God said to Moses in the desert." Bamidbar translates from the Hebrew as "in the desert," while the English title, Numbers, which is translated from the Greek, arithmoi, numbers, encompasses the theme of the book, the numbering of the people in the desert.
1. Genesis, (Greek, "birth" or "origin"); Bereshith (בראשית), Hebrew for "In the Beginning"
2. Exodus, (from Greek, "departure"); Shemot (שמות) Hebrew for "Names"
3. Leviticus, (Greek, relating to the Levites); Vayikra (ויקרא) Hebrew for "And He spoke"
4. Numbers, (Greek, arithmoi, refers to numbering the people); Bamidbar (במדבר) Hebrew for "In the Desert"
5. Deuteronomy, (Greek, "second law"); Devarim (דברים), Hebrew for "Words" or "Things"
The opening of my book changes as often as the title, but the first sentence thus far is either "I'm sitting in a coffee shop with my friend, Lili,..." or, conversely, "During your menstrual period...." I don't know that either is particularly compelling as a title. But "In a coffee shop" surely summarizes the themes in my life: sitting, as opposed to running or skiing or exerting myself in any manner that might cause me to work up a sweat and have to shower; drinking coffee, my drug of choice; and with a friend implies social interaction. All three - the sitting, coffee, and friends - are certainly themes in my memoir.
My other potential first line, however, "During your menstrual period..." alludes to Jewish law connected to the mikveh, the ritual bath, and likewise, these somewhat arcane (to many) laws are of interest to me, and they are things I talk about over coffee with friends. But would anyone pick up a book called During Your Menstrual Period?
Gabrielle's memoir begins with, "We have begun our descent..." Were this the Bible, the title might be Our Descent. Her early life does descend in many respects, but then it ascends again, so Our Descent seems not only a little depressing but also, isn't representative of the book as a whole. I suggest she move one of her later sections to the beginning, and start with the line, "White food is good for depression." Now, that's a cool title.
I'm still floundering. My friend Rob suggests Angela's Lashes as a title. "Lashes" might bring to a reader's mind mascara, which is right up there with coffee in my addictions. So, should I return to Mascara, the Mikveh and Me?
Gabrielle e-mails me a website, goodreads.com, which is a list of the 100 best book titles. I peruse it, hoping inspiration will strike: Something Wicked This Way Comes; Women are From Venus, Men are from Hell...; Still Life with a Psychotic Squirrel; The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things; Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell Me It's Raining; The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes.
Oh, my God! My nickname is Tater...
Tater's Got Eyes?
This was originally posted at Zeek.net]]>Faith Floats: Collecting Noah's Arktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5922052010-05-28T17:16:35-04:002011-05-25T16:35:20-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/Noah's Ark in Indiana, and I wasn't even looking for it. It was Bakelite jewelry that my daughter, Anna, and I were perusing in an antique store in Huntingburg, the small town next to my hometown. But lo and behold, I looked up and there, perched atop a cabinet, was a wooden Noah's ark! It was thrilling for a number of reasons, not just because I found it without having to set out on an exhausting expedition up Mt. Ararat. My friend, Liz Neumark, collects Noah's arks and how cool would it be to bring one back to New York City from Indiana?
This particular ark had been constructed in the 1800s and still contained traces of the original red paint. Like most of the arks that were made back then to quietly amuse children on Sundays, the Christian day of rest, it was homemade, but the animals that came with it were not - obviously, the original animals, which would have been carved in wood, had been swept away on the waters of time. When I got home, I delivered the ark to Liz's apartment building in New York City, where she moored it with her pagoda ark (sent to her by a cousin in Hong Kong), and the various other arks she's collected over the past 19 years.
"How did it start?" I asked Liz. She explained that when her daughter, Nell, was born, she was named in synagogue the following Sabbath. On that Sabbath, the Noah story was being read in synagogue. Three months later, Liz was in Texas and saw an ark in a gift shop. Then, a few days later, another ark, and "Okay, ark, Nell, Noah, I get it," Liz said. "And my need to acquire was activated." Suddenly, arks were everywhere she looked, and today she possesses a variety of arks - only three-dimensional ones, no placemats or other ark-themed products - including a farm ark with farm animals, an endangered species ark, and her favorite, from Maine, a glass ark with hand-blown glass pieces. "It gets dusty and I'm very strict about not letting the cleaning lady dust them lest she mix up the animals. That would be very traumatic, to end up on the wrong ark!"
The wrong ark, or the right ark, has been in the news lately, with Noah's Ark Ministries, a group of Chinese Christians claiming to have found Noah's ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. Apparently, there is a wooden object which they say carbon dates to almost 5,000 years atop the mountain. However, there are already many within the scholarly world accusing them of having planted the wood up there and staging a hoax.
The search for Noah's ark, and presumed ark discoveries, are not new. The book of Genesis states that the ark, which was built according to God's specifications to save Noah and his family and animals from the flood, came to rest on Urartu, which is assumed to be today's Mt. Ararat in Turkey. Around the year 425, Philostorgius wrote of Mt. Ararat, "...they say that considerable remnants of its wood and nails are still preserved there." Within this last century, photos have been released of the "Ararat anomaly," an odd, vessel-like formation encased in ice near the summit of Mt. Ararat and which, ark enthusiasts believe, might be the remains of the ark. The anomaly has been captured in film and high-resolution digital images from satellites, but thus far, Turkey's government has not green-lighted the site's exploration, and it's anybody's guess what lies beneath the snow and ice.
For centuries, the Biblical stories were accepted by adherents to the Judeo-Christian traditions as containing literal, historical truths. This assumption began to change in the 17th and 18th centuries, when rationalism and the Enlightenment insisted that intellectual rigor and critical faculty be applied to religion in order to arrive at what was empirically "true" about the Biblical text. Subsequently, scientific scrutiny cast a long shadow of doubt on the Bible's veracity. Today, there are perhaps more doubting Thomases than not. The scholarly world often seems at odds with, and sometimes antagonistic toward, believers, as if the two communities are mutually exclusive, and as if anyone who believes in the possibility of a flood and a God who personally served as the architect and on-site contractor for the ark's construction is unsophisticated and simple, and cannot also recognize science as valid and important.
To be sure, there are many like Noah's Ark Ministries who would believe that archaeology can corroborate events mentioned in the Bible, and they make that agenda perfectly clear. Less clear is the agenda of some in the scholarly world who can be close-minded in a different way, for many are unwilling to entertain the possibility that there are objective, historical truths in the Biblical stories. Those truths have many times been re-enforced by archaeological finds, like the "House of David" inscription dating from 850 BC found in the ancient Israelite city of Dan which provides the first extra-Biblical evidence of a Davidic dynasty and perhaps of David himself.
One wonders what effect the discovery of an ark might have on rationalists who have thrown the Bible out with the floodwater. Would they say, "Okay, ark, no steering mechanism, God as Navigator, I get it."? Would the presence of a tangible ark encourage their buried faith to float to the surface? Personally, for me, faith is not tethered to a distant mountaintop; it is, in fact, moored comfortably with the rational, intellectual world, much as an old, painted ark from Indiana can rest side by side in New York City with a pagoda from Hong Kong.
This post was originally published at Zeek.net
]]>Shavuot: Like Honey and Milk Under Your Tonguetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5758112010-05-14T11:22:07-04:002011-05-25T16:30:24-04:00Angela Himselhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/Shavuot coming up next week, I've been thinking less about the covenant at Mt. Sinai which the holiday commemorates, and more about Leah's blintzes. Every year my friend Eva's 80-something year old mother, Leah Fogelman, provides me with a Tupperware container filled with homemade, delicious cheese, blueberry and strawberry blintzes for the holiday.
A non-Jewish friend of mine who is conversant with most of the Jewish holidays asked me if Shavuot is a "feast or famine" holiday. It's a quiet kind of a holiday, not one of the high-profile holidays like Passover, where everywhere you look, it seems there are boxes of matzoh, and even non-Jews in New York City are talking about going to a Seder. It's not Rosh Hashanah with "Happy new year!" greetings being called out on the streets of New York and displayed in storefront windows. It's not Chanukah, when the world's largest menorah is lit on 59th and Fifth Avenue, nor is it the solemn, breast-beating repentance of Yom Kippur which hangs over the city like bad breath.
Indeed, unlike the other holidays, you wouldn't notice much external, physical evidence of Shavuot's presence in the stores or on the streets of New York City, unless you looked closely. Some Jews will stay up all night studying the Torah or engaging in some kind of learning, then maybe they'll go to synagogue the next day and listen to the book of Ruth being read, and later that afternoon many congregants will bring a picnic of blintzes and cheesecake and non-meat items to a park and, as a community, eat together on the grass.
Shavuot has been a difficult holiday to pin down ever since the destruction of the Second Temple. In Temple times, Shavuot was one of the three big pilgrimage festivals, a harvest festival. The giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and the book of Ruth were tacked on to Shavuot later, perhaps to lend this festival more historical weight. As for the dairy meals, God knows where they came from.
Which brings me back to Leah's blintzes. To non-Jews, as well as many secular Jews, the custom of eating dairy food like blintzes and cheesecake on Shavuot is peculiar. What does dairy have to do with the Ten Commandments? There are a number of explanations, including a mystical one that notes that the numerical value of the Hebrew word, chalav, (milk) is 40, equivalent to the number of days that Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Law. Or, Mt. Sinai is referred to in Psalms 68:16 as Bar Gavnunim in Hebrew, a word that shares the same root as gevinah, cheese.
Shavuot literally means "weeks" in Hebrew, and it falls seven weeks after Passover, in springtime, when lambs and calves were suckling, so perhaps since more dairy was available it became traditional to eat dairy at that time. Or, it might be traced back to the "land flowing with milk and honey," Israel, the land into which they would soon enter. More far-fetched (to me) is the connection with the passage from the Song of Songs, "Like honey and milk lies under your tongue," which some believe is a metaphorical reference to the Torah. I think it's a not-so-veiled allusion to oral sex, nor oral law.
Anyway. I have another theory, one that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. Covenants in the ancient world tended to be brokered with animal sacrifices. In fact, that's the etymology of a popular expression today, "to cut a deal," meaning: If I break this contract, may I be cut up like this animal. The covenant at Mt. Sinai, however, was one of words, not of flesh. Is it not possible that eating dairy was a manifestation of a new kind of covenant, one that was centered around the life-giving sustenance of mother's milk, not the blood of a dead animal? Words, not violence or death, were intended to be the new way in which decisions were to be made and conflicts resolved. Unlike animals, milk can't be divided or cut apart.
Shavuot is a festival of giving, which also reminds me of Ruth. As many reasons are given for this story being read on Shavuot as for the dairy meals. The story takes place during the spring harvest, which coincides with Shavuot. Like the people of Israel, Ruth accepted the Torah individually, just as each person individually, but within part of the group, accepted the Torah at Mt. Sinai with Moses. But again, I have my theory. Ruth was not related, by blood, to the Israelites, but she took on the covenant in the only way she could - with words. Blood and words, receiving and giving.
The most plausible explanation for the dairy tradition on Shavuot is that it wasn't until Moses received the Law that the Israelites knew which animals were allowed for consumption, or how the meat was to be prepared. So, presumably, the Israelites were eating only dairy until Moses descended the mountain. Leah's blintzes date way back, then, some 3,200 years. Though they seem awfully fresh.
