PARTY PARTY

Normally, I try to vote non-partisan. I tend to vote for more Democrats than anything but in the 2008 major election I voted for candidates from Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, and even a lowly member of the noble Green Party. I read up on the candidates and their views and what they were running for as best as I could and that is what I came up with.

However, the thought that a Republican candidate could win The White House's highest office chills my very soul.

WHY?

The answer is simple: GEORGE W. BUSH. “Junior”. I was helpless in 2000 and again in 2004 as I was 17 years old. I-possibly more informed than the high school Government teacher (sorry –M.C.)-could not have a say in the man that would dictate my country as I set out into adulthood. I watched him his throw my country into one possibly justifiable war (Afghanistan) and let that fall to a hidden whisper for a War of Lies based on big money, oil and occupation. While I have mixed feelings on marriage as a government institution instead of a private and/or religious commitment, giving it to one group of CITIZENS and not to another is unconstitutional post 3/5 and female-suffrage related laws and it is inherently UNAMERICAN. And while the Great Recession fell upon us during the Obama Administration, it's foundation was set--despite the beautiful economy that Clinton left him--as we trudged through, trapped in eight years of Baby Bush playing out his daddy issues on a national and global stage.

AM I WRONG?

Have the Bush years bushwhacked my sense of substance vs. partisanship? With the GOP dreams of McCain and Vice President Dumb Rhetoric behind us what does that Grand Old Party and it's Republican, hipster offshoot the Tea Party offer the American constituent?

Romney, Paul, Gingrich and Cain.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/romney-two-way-race-is-now-four-way-republican-dead-heat-in-iowa-caucuses.html

I'm-a vote Obama. And pray that people join me.

Impotence

I have an exercise I’d like us to try. Take a journey with me:

In the bible, G-d gets pissed at humans and decides to kill everyone but Noach and the animals. How all of the plants survive is a moot point but Noach and the animals get a heads up and build a boat…well, Noach builds a boat. Hopefully, his kids helped.

G-d floods the world. The waters recede and here’s where it gets interesting. The line in the Torah goes something like this:

"When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between G-d and all living creatures and flesh that is on earth (Gen: 9.16)."

Let’s play with some synonyms, shall we?

Switch “bow/rainbow” for “post-it note” and you get:

When the post-it note is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between G-d and all living creatures and flesh that is on earth.

Let’s also switch out “Covenant” with “promise not to KILL YOU ALL AGAIN (9.15)”

When the post-it note is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting promise not to KILL YOU ALL AGAIN ….

I’ve highlighted “reminder” because G-d needs a frickin’ reminder? G-d is worried that G-d will just FORGET to not destroy us? I find this entire exchange VERY disquieting. I’d also like to take a line to note that the previous verse clarifies that we’re just talking about not killing humans…by flood.

“I will remember my covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (9.15)”

So, G-d’s up front about this covenant euphemism…and it’s only by flood. See Sodom and Gemorrah if you question my notation of this nuance.

If I may quote an 18^th century preacher:

"The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the fire, abhors you. (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards)”

Now, I’ve excepted an angry G-d as my gift for being Jewish. But this garners to my mind the confusion that anyone, EVER, thought G-d was either omnipotent or omniscient. G-d loses Adam, Abraham, Moses, just off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and NEEDS A POST-IT TO NOT KILL US.

G-d might be a chump. That is all.

The Holy Goat

I've actually been writing a lot lately but just not posting it. This may look like it's from Yom Kippur but it's not quite that old. It was inspired by one of the postings I read online but like four weeks later. So about half way between YK and now?

I think I had an undiagnosed inner ear problem as a child. Once, I witnessed the Beard (my father) chastising my brother for saying “Jesus”. This was penalized under taking the lord’s name in vain. However, I had heard my brother say something like “cheese”. I proceeded to never refer to cheese for several years.

In Catholicism, at least, the concept of G-d is represented by the “Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” For anyone who doesn’t know, liturgical legend says that Jesus was born in a manger. Mangers are in barns and barns in the Holy Land have goats. The problem my family had with always being late to church—if we ever went—was that we had to sit in the back. As a child I prayed “the Father, the Son and the Holy Goat.” It made perfect sense at the time.

The ancient Israelites had a different concept of the Holy Goat. For starters, it actually was a goat. On Yom Kippur, the Priest would give one goat to G-d (he’d kill it) and one goat would receive the sins of Israel and be sent out into the wilderness.

Now the practice in many places, Jerusalem and beyond, became to ensure the demise of goat #2, usually via chasing the thing off of a cliff. The idea was that the sins couldn’t return.

I can’t uphold this viewpoint and not just because it’s contra-biblical and needlessly kills a goat (I think the first goat was needlessly killed as well but that’s a different matter). It’s the idea that we can just drop our sins off of a cliff and they won’t come back. That’s not how teshuvah works. It’s not how sin works; nor is it how tikkun works and—in my eyes at least—teshuvah is part of tikkun.

As an archery term as well as for our sin, chet is a missing of the mark and teshuvah is returning to it. Maybe for those sins and misses that are just one-time issues, like maybe someone’s sin-goat bumped you as you were about to shoot, it’s logical to go directly from messing up to a bull’s-eye. However, most things aren’t that easy, especially not the type of personal teshuvah that really matters.

And maybe that’s why the second goat was sent into the wilderness—the ambiguity of Schrödinger’s cat: both alive and dead. We have to be prepared that the goat MIGHT come back. We need to look out for that goat, for those misses and sins that slip back into our lives and our behaviors. If G-d had wanted us to kill that scape-goat, the Torah would tell us how the Priest slaughtered two goat-offerings. Instead the Torah releases it, sets it free with the option of returning. The same way that we let go of our sins, be they one time oopsies or lasting habits; we need to let them go, aware that they may return so that that we may return to better hit the mark.

Intermarriage Essay

Here's a slightly more legitimate essay about my feelings on intermarriage. I would also like to add that in reference to a certain Rabbincal/Cantoral College's policies: if you want to have good examples and you represent a welcoming and confirming community, you should want good examples of the types of families that build up your congregations.

HERE GO:

I will not say that I am a proponent of intermarriage. The ideal is still that a family would share religious and cultural values in addition to love. However, I am a proponent of love and also of communication and compromise and I have firm conviction that Judaism and its people share these ideals. I believe it is easily possible and can be biblically alluded to that a partially Jewish family could-- and many families do-- maintain a Jewish household. We are commanded to let the stranger among us observe rest on Shabbat and to make sacrifice at Pesach and many of our forefathers and foremothers were non-Jews or married to non-Jews.

Our history seldom denies intermarriage (it would be detrimental to our survival), it instead protests the worshipping of false gods and idols that sometimes accompanied, usually lust and military strategy and once or twice legitimate marriage. THAT is what we need to be combating. Not intermarriage (marriage [theoretically]=love and we should not be fighting love), not even assimilation really, but a wholesale fleeing, running-away from Judaism.

There is also no reason for the alienation of someone who loves, which I regard to be-at least in part-causal of interfaith assimilation. If the response to someone’s love, love strong enough to motivate a life long commitment, is rejectionalism, OF COURSE they will turn away from that which rejected them and their love. That will never be a difficult decision.

We certainly do not get to chose whom we love. We do not get to choose their gender, their looks (however, we have mild to impressive influence on their mode of dress), their age, their music selection or their nascent religion. Our only hope is that if the other person reciprocates real love and connection, they will cultivate our faith with us.

Our goal should not be fighting intermarriage. It is merely the symptom of a much greater, festering, destroying disease. Every time we create the dichotomy between love and an angry, biased Judaism, the choice will always err toward love rather than fighting and Judaism will lose. The goal becomes instead, to instill such a sense of Judaism that the person of intruding religion or irreligious disposition, will be delighted to cultivate and express and live the frumkeit of the Jewish partner regardless of halikic status.

The candle is burning at both ends right now. The Jew emerges from a lukewarm pool of Judaism. Half-hearted religious school memories, ambivalent home practice and a lack of personal Jewish identity and meets their wonderful, funny, shiksa or shaygetz. Then the parents and/or the religious figures (rabbi, old teacher, whoever) puts an electric smack-down on their partner and them and their relationship. In actions, more than words, this is what is happening. Then the couple, rejected from a Judaism which offered them nothing either goes with the competing faith, finds a new one or gives up on theology and faith in general. And it is our fault as a misguided Jewish community.

Here is a better mini-narrative: A Jew of marriageable age emerges from a lifetime of being a baby Jew and playing at shul, of maybe only part-time but fulfilling adolescent study and practice. They wear their magen david which was a present from Bubbe for being bar/bat mitzvoth, every day. They participated in a couple of Hillel/Chabad/Jewish Union events in college-or at least scammed a few nice dinners while they were on hard times. They went on a birthright or to camp and just remember other Jewish kids, more and less observant and having a great time. Then they meet the non-Jew of question and interest. The Jewish partner calls up Abba, or Ima and says, “I met someone….” Maybe they had Shabbos dinner seven times as a family from kindergarten through earning their Bachelor’s degree but Mom or Dad says, “bring them over for Challah and candles and wine.” If after a solid, family Shabbat the shiksa/shaygetz and partner are not completely won over, maybe they’ll only split the faith 50/50. That’s still 50% more frumkeit than the preceding scenario and instead of anger and rejection it’s vibrant and compassionate Judaism thriving not only within the interfaith couple but as viewed by the opposing tradition and all other third parties.

In this, we might discover the saving grace of our plateaued Jewish status in a pluralistic, globally interdependent world. Hopefully soon it will be a world where we have spent more time and effort ensuring a stable and vibrant Judaism which embraces love. This might mean bacon in our households, but in our households with mezuzot and children bringing home colored pictures of Moses and Joseph and Rebbe Nachman to their maybe, lapsed-Catholic fathers donning kippot and pulling fresh challah out of the oven on a Friday evening. Let the other faiths and traditions worry about intermarriage if they want to; I promise that if we pour this energy into education and outreach and retention and tikkun olam, we won’t have to.

Tisha B'Av

Today is Tisha B'Av: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B'Av
It's also known as the black fast. It's a sad Jewish holiday [we died and we don't eat and then we eat]. It's possibly the sadest of the Jewish holidays and that's saying something.
Two temples down, kicked out of Spain, and a few other pretty nasty things befell us on this day in varying years. I hope that I have made it clear through tangents and b-log posts and my general nature that I don't care that we don't have a Temple. I like not killing animals and I like being dispersed in the Diaspora. I think it's GOOD for Judaism.

That being said, I've read a lot of things about how we can't overlook this day: if it weren't for this day, Judaism would not be the Judaism that I love. The events that have fallen on this day are not minor assaults, they're rocketing tragedies.

Today is supposed to be a fast day but I have a life in the summer, like most folk and as a Reform-Jew, can't really FEEL this holiday. There's no holy transformation like on Yom Kippur, there's just kind of a lame, half-lingered sadness.

So I ate food. But my food is bad and in a direct G-d smite, I don't feel really good. FINE. BLACK FAST.
Then I read The Book of Lamentations. I like cycle reading. I like linking up our stories with our year. They become the seasons as much as a falling leaf, or a morning frost.

It's such a linguistically pretty book. However, it's a horrific soul-crush. As I like to express my life through crayons, I colored this.

I'm not quite done yet but I feel I've grasped the severity of the holiday.

That being said, why don't I care more? Last year I commented on a discussion about how a lot of people don't like Tisha B Av because we spend too much time rolling around in our tragedy. When you have a national memory, that's just life I suppose. But my point is the reason this holiday doesn't stick to a lot of us is because much like Judaism, or Spain, or people, we move on. There's no choice but to move on. And look at Israel now: NO there is no Third Temple, but there's hummos and shwarma and a notable decrease in suicide bombings. The Old City Gates flood with people again.

So I'm waiting 'til sunset to let my stomach settle, but not to move on:

COMMEMORATING DESTRUCTION
Hark!
Reborn sits
What once was ravaged
In the dust of our mourning
The ashes fertilize
The regrowth
Of all that burned
Even in our failing
The sun rises behind
Plumes of fallen Temples
Of expelled exiles
Of crematoriums
We rise like a flower
To feel the sun
Once more warm our faces
And dancing rays dry
The tears that streak
Through layers of dirt
Caked on skin
Fresh springs bathe away
The miasmas of the past
And wounds heal to scars
Because skin cannot forget
Maidens and youths
Dance in fields where
Cities once stood
And G-d's wrath
Fades to love

Also, I totally added a picture today. I'm like a blog-master.

Sandbox

This is going to get REAL-didactic. Sorry.
Also, if I were cooler, I'd give you more history or at least a sampling of those biblical sections that are relevant, but I'm not.

So for years I just could not understand this conflict in the Middle East. It's a big hot sandbox-who the fuck WANTS that? What are these people thinking and why don't they move somewhere colder?

Now, in retrospect, biblically restrospective, I'm pretty sure when this shit first went down, maybe it wasn't a big stupid sandbox. It was probably really hot still but like goats and cows have to eat and we had thousands of them ergo, there was grass.

Not to belittle all the love and millenia of affection but the Jewish relationship with G-d is practical. We do what G-d says, G-d gives us rain for our crops and babies for our wombs.

Why is it a desert?

Now I firmly do not believe, though some do, that praying three times a day—or worse, killing a bunch of goats, ox and pigeons—will end droughts. Contrary to my relationship with G-d, I find this impractical (and kind of creepy). However, the dozens of sections in ye olde testament clearly state a cause-and-effecthood between our actions and the results of those actions.

Why is it a desert?

The bible stories were written literally, when they were written, but a story is seldom about what happened as opposed to why it happened or how, or how it made us feel or changed us. So maybe it sounds hippy and liberal to say the bible means we should take care of the earth. But maybe if we spent more hippy, liberal time taking care of the earth—we wouldn't end up fighting over a sandbox.

Also FUGOOGLE

So, I am on my roommate's computer and just signed in so I could post that mediocre b-log with all the sweet lady business videos and I HAD to use my gmail to sign in. Now I switch to capital letters to express my rage:

FUCK YOU GOOGLE, I DON'T WANT ALL OF MY ACCOUNTS TO BE WITH YOU. THERE's A REASON I HAD SEPARATE ACCOUNTS IN DIFFERENT PLACES. YOU'RE DOUCHY ASS FASCISTS WHO RAPE MY INTERNET FREEDOM AND I JUST WON'T USE YOUTUBE EVER AGAIN UNLESS I CAN BE MY G-DDAMNED YOUTUBE ACCOUNT YOU BITCHES I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU YOU'RE EVIL.

And that's what I think of Google taking over the internet. I think it's bad and I think it's illegal in the USA under monopoly laws and they're dicks. And I know that they can and will read this because Google owns all of the internet and I THINK YOU're BIG SMELLY COCKS.

Socio-class-gender-race-vagina

So, Sometimes I like to tell women, in bed, that they shouldn't try thinking or reading because they are frail and female. I really know better. But I also know that there is no such thing as JUST GENDER, or JUST RACE, OR JUST JEWISH, OR JUST GAY. There's poor and Jewish (it happens a lot-fuck you stereotypes), there's Black and Gay, or Latino and Male but maybe you don't want to be a chauvinistic dickhead.

Anyway these REALLY offensive adds remind me that we can't separate our identities and how they work.

http://www.moxiebird.com/2011/07/summers-eve-shows-us-the-definition-of-the-word-douche.html

And in terms of my mild fetish for sweet commercials they are NOT nor will they ever be as awesome as the Kotex U commercials which I found hilarious and affirming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf35wCmzWw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXz9OcnRBYY

Beating Fireworks into Ploughshares

I happen to be a fan of my country and while I find citizenship more important than patriotism; especially defined by children getting skin cancer and waving tiny american flags that were made in China, I do LOVE the 4th of July. I love barbeques and parades and fireworks.

My firework love was tainted tonight though. And not just because of the resources and the littering but because of irony. Everytime the flash-boom happened, I thought of my friend who has done two tours in Iraq and how much he HATES the Fourth of July. We celebrate our country and it's military/defense heroes by traumatizing their PTSD even further.

While sitting on a lovely lady's lap while she hugged me in the rain, I began to ponder fireworks qua fireworks. And how they are AWESOME. And I was kind of wishing we had some Gandelf, super magical fireworks with like dragons and stuff. I noted we didn't have blue...maybe they can only make certain colors because of the gun powder or something.

It's reminiscent of the Isaiah quote “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares/And their spears into pruning hooks:/Nation shall not take up/Sword against nation;/They shall never again know war.” (2:4)

Moreover I am reminded of the fluffy version from Mishkan T'filah “Don't stop after beating the swords into ploughshares, don't stop! Go on beating and make musical intruments out of them./ Whoever wants to make war again will have to turn them into ploughshares first.”

Weaponry has changed a lot since Isaiah was runnin' around. We can't just beat them into other things anymore. But what if we used all that powder and junk to make pretty displays instead of killing people?

I also pondered whether they shoot these things off in places like Kosovo or Israel that have had shelling in modern times. I won't be manufacturing arms or fireworks or ploughshares or musical instruments...maybe ploughshares....anytime soon, but I enjoy walking home in the chaos, people, cars, bikes, carts, happy-like explosions, like our own celebratory exodus.

Jubilee (Biblical not Marvelical)

So I am like four weeks behind in my e-mail Parashot (Weekly Torah Readings) companions. It's my fault for having so many, never checking my e-mail and being consistently behind in my me-assigned readings.

Currently my computer and I are in B'har (Last o' Leviticus [I'm up-to-date with my actual parasha; we're on Shelak-lecha {Numbas}]). B'har probably talks about stuff but mostly about the Sabbatical YEAR. According to Torah, G-d thinks the fields need a year off every once in a while. And all the Jews are like, “what the shit are we supposed to eat?”

That's a valid question. G-d responds maturely, basically, “Through my blessing, you're going to make so much foodz in the sixth year-3X FOODZ- that you could pro'lly take years eight and nine off too [but don't].

All the Orthodox mailing (I'm well-rounded) think this is a test. Most of the Reform mailings dutifully reinterpret it to fit into leftist, liberal, human-rights junk. My point is THIS IS NOT A TEST. Or at least not for us.

It works this way: Year six: Did G-d grant you great abundance? Tons o' foodz?
Then: take year Seven off.
If Else: Keep working; G-d Fucked up and doesn't want you to starve for it.

Sometimes Judaism doesn't have to be so hard.

Coffee 'Drash

Here's a rough draft of my Midrash on G-d making Coffee.

Coffee Drash

Shortly after G-d expells Adam and Eve from the garden He feels the sting of remorse. Was he too harsh on them? While Adam and Eve wander around bewildered the Eternal decided to help. They cannot just be invited back in: they won't learn anything, they'll stop respecting G-d and they'll eat the damn fruit and take over the world-and the world is so new that we just can't let that happen.

Luckily, for Adam, Eve and the rest of us: G-d is pretty smart sometimes. He stops Adam and says “Your limited life of toil will be difficult- more difficult than I had intended so I'm giving you something to ease the burden.”

“You can't just let us back in?”
“No.”

G-d goes back to the garden and removes seeds, one from the Tree of Knowledge and one from the Tree of Life. Splitting them and combining them.

“Plant this in the warm places and harvest it's beans. Grind them and mix them with hot water and it will be as if I have breathed life in you anew.”

A Linguistic Gender Reflection

Despite being and celebrating being a Reform Jew, I still have some very Orthodox sensibilities. Jews that eat pork freak me out a little. Granted, I work on most Shabbatot, but I dream of being shomer. I'm not only more comfortable around a male rabbi—I'm probably judging him if he doesn't have a beard. Which is why I've decided to ponder and attempt maybe being a rabbi. Statistically 2/3 rabbis are women or are going to be women....in the Reform movement. I'd hazard a guess that the Conservadores are close to us and am disrespectfully indifferent to the demographics of the atheists (Reconstructionists) although I'm pretty sure that I'd be one if I didn't believe in G-d.

The point I might make eventually is that I'm contributing to what I might consider to be a problem. I'm hoping that this influx of chicks in the rabbinate is just a because we of the X2 chromosomes couldn't for a long time. Sweet Moishe, please let us someday have maybe a 50/50 ratio. Anyway, I can't grow a beard. More importantly, I think I can reconcile in a very jewy way, my hang-up.

HEBREW is the glue that holds the Jewish People together, not mitzvot....unless you count the mitzvot (which may or may not exist) to learn Hebrew and use Hebrew. This resurrected language is SUPER gendered. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, almost everything is going to reflect either a boy or a girl. We're not going to dink around the differences between natural and grammatical gender; suffice it to say there's a gendered dichotomy and we're going to engage it.

If I were a conservadox type o' Jew, I might say that men and women are both, very cool but just different. They both do their own, essential and important things. And indeed, their verb endings are different. Women in the kitchen, rearing children and men learning torah. Eh....ah....no. Separate is not equal (it's like a stepping stone to segregated busses; ¿for realz ultra orthodox?). Different is good but not separate. And that's reflected in the language.

Verbs are verbs. Hu medaber and hi medaberet the m-d-b words both translate as “speaks.” They are doing the SAME THING just doing it differently. So the glue that holds Am Yisrael together is going to be comprised of men and women and JEWS in leadership roles and family roles and single roles and social roles and dinner rolls and all the rolls available to us with which we may contribute to and enrich our socio-cultural-religio-thing.

The Year Without A Holiday

This is probably a good preview of the Jewish year as well as a comment about how leaving college is disorienting.

To clarify, I mean Jewish Year. The High Holy Days, albeit tempered with the fear and chaos of leaving, were where and how they should be. I went to my favorite shul with two of my bestest Jewish buds who had come back to visit. We played such '70's-licious games as “Aliyah” and “Going Up.” And by played outdated board games, I'm sure I meant studied and reflected on our sins [no].

Downstate I was much too frazzled for Sukkot. I spent the whole week in-of-doors crying and hardly eating. The particular shame of this was that my home-town Jews had built their first sukkah out on their property. All of this is but a pale and sad comparison to the Cardboard-city (homelessness fundraiser) Sukkah I shared with Hillel in 2009/5770.

Halloween of 2010 was the first time I did not go trick-or-treating. I should probably grow out of that habit in my 20's anyway but not for starvation and sleep deprivation. Instead I wandered the mountains for miles on about 500 calories, avoided the saintly landlady in my shame of non-payment, checked my Spanish bank account approximately four increasingly disappointing times and tried (successfully) to not end myself.

In a weird turnabout, I spent T-day sharing a pleasant meal with my family. This is abnormal. I haven't partaken of Thanksgiving Dinner with my biological family since I was a Freshmen in High School. To me, Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday of neglect and exploration. It's a minor holiday, with practically no important significance. I can make it magical by spending it with my friends either emulating the traditional or by completely disregarding it.

Chanukah may or may not be a joke. I watched my favorite PBS tape but didn't light candles. I went to the synagogue's party but at this point, I was still a little shell-shocked by being back, explaining but never conveying what my exile had been like, and growing increasingly uncomfortable and uneasy by being unemployed.

Despite having converted to Judaism officially, two years prior, this is the first year I was away from home for December 25th. I really wanted to avoid it the year before—what with the fighting and the getting sick. I'm sure it was hard on my family to lack me. At this point in my yearly re-cap, I wish to make clear that these holidays (with the notable exception of Halloween in which I possibly came close to celebrating the festival in a dread-and-ironic manner) were not necessarily BAD days. It just seems that this is the year where nothing was as it had been.

By now I am employed and unfortunately, being the noob and the probie, means I work on the weekends. I work on Shabbat. One of the many blessings of Israel's covenental relationship with G-d is that our most important holiday comes once a week (Yom Kippur is called the “Sabbath of Sabbaths” and is therefore still delegated to the category of my Saturday lack-of-business). In Spain, this meant overwhelming loneliness only partially consoled by reading my entire prayer book and as much Tanakh as I could focus on. The distractions of my state-side life sometimes enrich and often distract from Shabbos. Also, now that I am no longer a student, I must meet the challenge of finding other ways to set this day aside. It had been my custom to do no homework. Now I have no homework all week; I don't begrudge this fact as it is wonderful but my week cannot be Shabbat, my week should be six days of not Shabbat and then one day of Shabbat. This one is still in progress but I'm on weekdays now, so hopefully it will progress...

My extra-academic existence puts me in a weird limbo trapped without a Hillel but not quite willing to commit to adulthood. Without my Hillel, at least this year, nothing could have made Tu B'shevat tolerable. It was a holiday that we developed together and I wasn't ready to do that seder without them. I have been unaware how much of my soul and celebration has been defined by my friends from Hillel and our blundering through Judaism.

Finally cognizant of this fact, I am trying to meet it head on. Purim is the first holiday I felt in control of celebrating this year. I used the dictates of sending festive gifts, by sending things to some of my like-aged and -minded friends who have spread around the country. Distance is no excuse for not sharing a holiday. Then in my affronting lack of Jewry between the ages of legal drinking and responsible drinking (which refers to getting trashed and being a buffoon; NO ONE SHOULD DRINK AND DRIVE EVER), I did the next best thing and substituted a bunch of gentile thespians. Who better to celebrate the drunkest night of Judaism with than the folks who sing me Fiddler on shabbos and are responsible for 96% of every drunken mistake and victory of my life? It was a win—kind of like stopping an evil vizier from genociding all of your people.

With two-thirds of the year behind me now, including an extra Adar, I'm beginning to grasp and revive my sense of holiday. I feel almost prepared to prepare for Passover. In the past, I hated Passover. I still have a theological qualm with any holiday that denies Jews bagels. Eventually, I realized the holiday is not about what we don't have but about having enough. Dayeinu. We thank G-d for constantly providing us with what we need. That's been the theme of my return. “At least I'm not in Spain.” I've been pretty ridiculously happy since my return. G-d could have delivered us from slavery...and left us in the desert alone. Instead, G-d gave us food and water and freedom.

G-d could have left me in Spain. Instead he gave me a landlady who fed and housed me. G-d made a bus attendant notice that I seemed out of place and directed me to my bus—just before it left without me. G-d inspired a gentile to run around and find me a safe place to sleep. G-d got me to ask just one more time about where the airport was so I wouldn't metro to the wrong stop and miss my flight. I have been delivered from slavery in exile through miracles.

All holidays are based on miracles. The High Holy days celebrate the miracle that we can always better ourselves. Thanksgiving is the miracle of holidays and how they can celebrate, and ignore, and change...just like people. Regardless of Jesus' status as messiah or god or zombie, Christmas is many miracles. Contextually it's the miracle of how high a family can rise from it's lowest lows (pregnant and homeless—a low my family has experienced). Chanukah is the constant miracle of how there are way fewer Chanukah-related fires than is probable...oh yeah and something about the Temple's re-dedication and some Maccabees. Tu B'shevat reflects the simple and pure miracle of nature and life. Trees are fuckin' awesome. Purim's miracle is joy and Shabbat's is rest. Passover has so many miracles to choose from but the most obvious are the passing over of the first born and our deliverance from slavery...and carbs.

Still to go? Shavuot. When G-d gave us Torah and we slept through it....we suck. The real miracle is that I can catch up on my lapsed Tanakh reading in a single night and still have time for cheesecake. The minor miracle is the uniting of scripture and people and logic.

There are other holidays and birthdays and weddings all with their own inherent miracles and nuances. This has been for me both the year of the blundering holiday blundering, but also the year where I think I learned the most about what or why holidays we have these days. They highlight their own miracles so that maybe we can be reminded of the miracles that happen everyday.

Fighting For Poverty

I am an illegal and sometimes I condone making false vows. I've lived in approximately eight apartments but have only signed two leases. My friends and/or I have signed leases with the full knowledge that we will not be true to our end—housing and cramming and feeding: more people inhabiting a space than signatures bleed on paper.

Uncle Sam makes it hard for me to be poor. When I think of the really impoverished, I picture families and groups crammed into rooms. In the midst of this most recent economic downturn, many of the “middle class” have realized and discovered and idealized aspects of poverty. In retrospect I can find in my personal history where the recession (whatever that means) happened. It involved me living in a sketchy, cold, unsafe and illegal house and not having enough money for food. I had one job at six hours a week and despite applying to EVERY where in town, no second job. This was the first time I didn't have enough food to eat. It would (and possibly will) happen to me again. I find that making WAY less than 5,000 a year allows me to live-what I consider- substantially well. A bunch of stupid looking buildings, representing over-paid, mostly white men, tell me I am impoverished; they want me to want what they have.

A typical stereotype about modern Americans is that we over-reach our bounds to consume and don't give jack thought to what going without is like. On my part—it's not for lack of trying. The Man keeps me down by trying to force me up.

I do not NEED to sleep in-of-doors; if I do NEED to sleep in-of-doors, I do not NEED a room, or a mattress or a couch. I certainly don't deny these things to others but after giving them up I do not seek to reclaim them. The government tells me I DO NEED. Surely, having a 7-member family share 1.2 rooms is a threat to sanitation and sanity but why do I have to have an address? Why do I have to live in one spot, defined by my habitation? If I am clean, healthy, maybe even happy, and I pay what taxes I can—how then, WHY then must the “land of the free” rape my freedom?

I find that being forced to live above my means an equal (and perhaps causal) denegration to being forced to live below them.

Green Children and their Van-uncle

My weird theatre friend-spouses are not enough family for me:

For the first time in about two years I am developing a possibly, inappropriately strong relationship with a plant. My neurotic amblings make me feel a hefty burden when I think of how I contracted my self to care for the life of this creature. I name it; I pet it; I sing to it and tell it thinkgs about the world it cannon seek itself nor hear from the tall and wide spread trees who slowly spread their newses along the wind. Fizzles McFinklestein is the first plant-child I have committed myself to followed by a yet-unnamed Snakeplant. Fizzles is tall, strong, healthy, straight-standing and true. He is also the first of his kind that will reciprocate to me via consumption.
Cuban oragano, he's not an herb but his leaves are good for munching. I feel like a cannibal. Defensively, I only sampled the few fallen bits that were the victims of cat-attack...
The snakeplant reciprocates, but in a plantier, more-passive way by cleaning our air. He also needs less from me. I suppose I just found myself lonelier with Nam Shak downstate. I reminisce about living with Moshe ( a jade plant and my longest chlorophyllic cohabitation) in my van and the potential of me and my newest off-shoots to sleep there again someday.

Le Poke

The Poke

Most commonly, well now most commonly available on the social networking site, Facebook, the Poke is a way to give affection, get attention, make innuendo or in other popular poking situations: it is the act of sex. The problem with the Facebook “poke” is that it is a word implying a concept once known as an action. At Ye Olde Porne Shoppe where I work, we're all about action.

Poking is a potentially aggressive act, with the thrusting and the contact. In my private life, which I keep VERY away from my day job, it usually means that I've been unjustly tickled because my friends think it's funny that I scream and giggle like a 6-year-old.

Where investigation means copulation:
We've often poked things we were unsure of: a cloth on the floor; creepy, robotic toys we don't know are still on; that guy passed out in the dorm's tv lounge. I find that when confronted with a wall of dildos and vibrators, many people are unsure. Then they are seduced by the “try me” circle of texture. Sometimes it's just a nub of material, others it is a mini-mouth willing to kiss their curious finger.

I'm sure somewhere, a psychologist, maybe a Freudian has a checklist of sexual encounter stages like the coping with grief list or the Cass sexual identity model. In the wall o' dil that we have there's approach, reconnaissance, reach, and contact.

Bolder folks will march up, unawed and poke—solid and firm pokes—as if it were their right. If it pleases them, they will poke and feel and move on to poke and prod other nubs and lips and circles of amusement. If they're present on business, they'll squish the packaging (Please Don't). These are the sexual people. This is not their sex, merely a hurdle between them and what might be the real thing.

I prefer to watch growth rather than practice. Like wide-eyed deer-babies, they step to the wall. Sometimes they stay a shelf back...usually until they realize that there's penises on everything (nothing's safe). Often, they will side to side and peruse this wonder. Most back off, or search or wait for some note of disapproval or disavowal. Maybe they fear their conservative, oppressive mother is secretly in our employ, waiting. At this point, some have decided it is safe; they poke with the best of them—it's usually not predatory but certainly with an air of confidence. For many, the quick sideways glance was not enough to assure them they were not in violation of some unknown law. They force a shaky arm and very seldom make eye-contact with the goal as if, when 'caught' they could claim ignorance of the action of their limbs.

“I didn't even see it happen.”

Both sides make contact. No one jumps at them, and if they were brave enough to pick some cavernous, cyberskin lips, they seem quite pleased to note they have not become an amputee.
By now they are well assured...proportionally, in the safety of their sexuality and repeat the process with different things. Sexuality has been breached. Will they buy anything that's not incense or a bumpersticker? Hell no. They might not even be able to meet a vibrator in the eye yet, but the gate is up and the race is ready to begin.

This is about as voyeristic as I get; I like that maybe I work at a place where people learn about themselves and their friends. It's like each tester spot is a button that makes noise, like keys on a piano or stops on a clarinet and people with their poking play a symphony throughout the day.

Strange Land

What do reading, television/film and then just plain busses, trains and planes have in common? Unlike most of the pointless and douchey GRE, this answer is easy: traveling and experiencing different places. I, though well-traveled, do not need to do anything more than hang out with my friends to pass into a different world, visually, culturally, gastronomically. This is not a kvetching of minority stati but more an exploration of perspective.


I literally live in a different world. I never realized before because of my different view the world around me is constructed-formed- differently.
When a straight woman says “he's probably gay” it reflects on an unfortunate irony that sometimes occurs. When a gay woman says “she's probably straight.” it is a cold, hard and unavoidable statistic. The idiom goes that “all the good ones are gay,” but if you're a practicing homosexual, literally “almost all of the ANYONES are straight.” Ten percent is a depressing club name, if you ask me. My ears are fine tuned to hear any reference to queer anything and my body will tense up and my neurons fire. When I go out, I consciously avoid, basically, men. Ring-less and female it would be assumed that I am in their market. I also go on an avoidance of women to respect the camouflage I have that they might assume me to be straight. Although, I even managed to have a guy hit on me at a “10%” dance—so it might just be me. But I am an alien walking among you.
And what really inspired this concept relates to my perversion: I'm a lefty. Even in the late eighties, it was a yardstick-beatable offense. Ableism as far aside as I can place it when referring to a physical difference—despite the fact that there's a loose joke about lefthanders looking strange when we write (the ominous lefty hook) the other day I realized that everyone else still looks weird to me when they write. So instead of the occasional novelty when a Right handed person stumbles across one of us, almost everytime I see someone writing the place where my sight meets my brain feels weird.

That was potentially the most interesting of my recent travels. A brief note on Judaism in pleasant exile. I was at the mall...in a different city with a real-er mall, the other day and while my female-er friends were browsing clothing, I was indulging in the petting of clothing and the perusal of material basis via tags.
“oh, it's 40% something, 60% something else” I mutter destitutly, “not kosher.” My friends, who are active residents of pleasant exile, give me that weird fact tilt/tick that signifies some strange thing that looks as if it feels I've seen a Right handed person sign a paper but I believe represents intrigue.
For anyone who doesn't know, the Levitical Holiness Codes clearly state that one should not mix two types of thread in the same garment. While I don't always adhere to this, the few articles of clothing I have purchased in the closest to us years, have been 100% something. Regardless of my observance, I have no choice but to think this when I encounter poly-cotton or parallel blending in fabrics.

Everyone, each person sees the world differently. Probably physically as well as perspectively, but I live in a different world. I share a planet and a country and a state and a city and often a cohabitative space with others, but somewhere between the outer and the inner the plane of existence skews.

Intermarriage Devil

So, I'm pro-Exile and bump elbows with the goyim all the time and love it and think it sustains Judaism externally, but the constant attacks against intermarriage made me question whether Judaism is strong enough internally.

So, the school I may want to attend someday to maybe be a rabbi some hypothetical, later day has this policy. It goes: don't apply if you're married to a gentile. One of the posts I read recently (in like the last month) was this big lash out against intermarriage. In typical poor form, I do not have the article here for you but my point stands. Jews should be able to marry whomever they choose.

Can and has intermarriage been detrimental to Judaism—for sure but attacking it is attacking a symptom not finding a cure. I do not believe the problem is a lack of Jews but a lacking judaism that leads to this assimilated dispersion.

Why can we not, do we not, in our parental relationship with Avinu Malkeinu [our father, our king] and tell him we want to love Judaism AND whomever special we have found in our lives? At the very least, we neet is not my advice to pursue intermarriage, but merely to acknowledge that temptation drawing support away is less our problem than malcontent, boredom and resentment pushing away, even driving out.

So if the genetic pool has its heart on straying, remember that families which flex and compromise, stay together. Judaism is based on supreme love; the Covenant is a marriage between the people Israel and G-d. And if G-d has taught us anything, despite the constant barrage of fatherly threats—straying doesn't separate us, love unites us.

L'eretz M'itrayim

In the light of recent uprising and conflict in Egypt, my father expressed relief that I had already gone and returned from Israel. Right before that conversation I had read this article:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/world/article/unrest_in_egypt_could_lead_to_israels_worst_nightmare_20110201/

By the transitive property of geopolitical politics, Egypt's problem(s) are probably Israel's problem(s)...and Jordan's problems and Syria's problems. If you live in a region, you live in a region. However, Egypt is its own country, with it's own histories and cultures and politics. Give Egypt and it's turmoil some of its own time for its own mystical, historical transition before it's whisked away into the global media-history that we feed on now-a-days.

So as Egypt may or may not transition power, and people rise up and governments crack down all I can pray is that it is resolved efficiently, in the favor of the citizens therein and as peacefully as is prudently possible.

Laundro-zen

I do my laundry approximately once a month. Some of my clothes become questionable in this period but as I own about a singular load's worth of clothing, it will just have to abide. I could bother some of my grown up friends for the untaxing use of their washing opperatti but I love laundromats. I love the sketchy people, I love the advertisements, I love the florescent lighting on the garish, '70's cast-off paint job and peeling wall paper. The public display of humanity really touches me.

Laundering my clothing, like most domestic chores is a zen process of comfort to me. Sir, I do not care if you own this building, which in my most homeless has been my 2am reading and using the bathroom Zion, I will put my laundry soap...or substitute in-- when and where I choose. It's my eight quarters damn it. I have used one of these washers before—in fact I've used this one, number 13, a dozen times. I need, in order for me to complete the process of laundry, to read all seven points of instruction EVERY time. And if I'm questioning your top loader for the soap, I will do so because I'm experimenting with new detergent practices and because it pleases me.

And instead of sitting here, relaxed by the steady drip of ironic lucky thirteen's failed door-lock and reading a Mexican novel, I had to take out my computer to scribe the rape of my laundering process. How dare you intercede! How am I supposed to play dying, Street Fighter pinball if I do not have my zen? Am I supposed to last another month until I can find it again? This was my lap-top free laundromat because I don't have internet here. But I also didn't have any paper and my groove was thrown. I've now wasted my wash cycle.

Due to the ineptitrusion of the proprietor, Ms. Pacman will for another month be Ms. Cat-a-holic-lonely-manless and eaten by ghosts. My second laundromat got me closer to my zen. I dried things (th e driers are newer and cheaper at Laundromat #2) and watched some episodes online and piddled around online. Watching naval crime dramas is not the same if I'm not neglecting German Hausaufgaben, but was comforting nevertheless.

Not until 1:30am while folding my finally dried (cheaper is not free) belongings, does the zen envelope me. Sealed safely into my menstrual soul by the newly darned socks. Mmm domesticity, how you balm a weary soul and your victoriously clean clothings attire a weary body.

I'm Smiling at Sexism Again

I find myself smiling at sexism again...

This is not uncommon. My words happen to be very sexist, often. In the public sphere, for example, I have repeatedly made the claim that women, including myself are illiterate and should not be allowed to entertain the notion of thought as it only leads to trouble. There's a certain, tasty irony that accompanies these and even worse, gender and sexually discriminatory statements as they issue from a queer and feminist educated and practicing individual. However, I maintain the very serious issue that women cannot be exempt from sexism as there is no more true statement as: that no one can hate women more than women.

That being said let's move on to religion. Israel's current manifestation of the problem with I define as letting the ultra-Orthodox nutjobs run a secular country that they neither aid monetarily nor help to defend, is GENDER SEGREGATED BUSSES. The high court is finally smacking down on this coddling of the poor, defenseless Haredi, who want to impose their way of life on EVERY...Jew. I think they should be honored to bump heavily clothed elbows with the men AND WOMEN who work and soldier and basically keep Israel together while they live off of government stipends....paid by the less observant, practically-gentiles.

I might love Israel. There's a woman sitting in prison right now because she prayed at a segregated section of a really old wall and had the audacity to sing her love of adonai. Truly offensive. Frankly, I almost hopped the fence when I was there. And what is this wall of malcontent? Is this the wall of the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies? Is it the wall of the Temple where our people congregated thrice a year in giant picnics of worship? Nope. It's the Western, “wailing” Wall also known as a kind of fence, outter wall of the Temple, albeit the Western is the closest to all the important Arks and junk but I think if you pray at the Southern wall, there's a lot more room and shade (which might only be important to pastier Jews).

And why is the palace of the picnic so important? Did G-d give us Torah there? Did Abraham almost kill his son there? Actually, what a morbid holy site, the muslims can keep that one. Nah, King Dave might have wanted a sweeter digs....no, wait, that's the first tiny temple, which did NOT replace all of the worship sites, just kind of united the country a little, which was nice, but not Torah-biblical. Nope, this is the last of like three, standing, OUTER walls of the GIANT, osentatious palace that HEROD, of the roman-loving, politically savvy and ethically questionable, built because he wanted to look even awesomer.

So, here's why I love Israel and the Jews that cohabitate there: They're praying at a mildly, pointless archeological site where we killed animals instead of prayed anyway. They're doing it in a painfully sexist way, defined by the epic slackers and religiously intolerant who run the country which is defended by the hard-working, pluralistic and religiously indifferent. And the women uprising, only rising up on their designated side of course, can't even bus there in peace.

Oy Veh. Luckily for us, I think after this long, G-d understands that our tradition totally trumps anything He might have to say.

Plausible Accountibility

“Kids These Days”
I could use this cyberly-written space to rally on about technology, lack of respect or discipline currently pervades those coming-of-age right now or about how the modern-day person lacks connection to his fellow; instead I will discuss how we lack connection to our society and through that connection, find ourselves lacking responsibility for it.

In 2001, the United States went to war. The two most major conflicts preceeding the “War[s] on Terror” were WWII and if semantasaurus can be reeled in, Vietnam. The first, we entered late but with gusto. Cans were scrapped, women penciled in their panty-hose and worked in factories while every available soldier went to war, proud to defend all that was right and abolish injustice. We needed no draft and civilians went without to fuel the effort.
The second war I focus on, few really condoned. We were cleaning up France's unjust involvement in a conflict that was not our own, in a place we could not comprehend. Our men, our friends, brothers, lovers and brothers, were being taken and forced to engage in violent, haunting warfare, often against their will. And while monetarily, we did not really go with out, the country and people left over connected and raged and the institutional machine fought as well, a war on US soil. We connected, occasionally through substances, with our world.

The current desert conflicts initiated willfully. We had been attacked and demanded retribution. Corruption and length quickly drained our enthusiasm. And while most of us have been affected directly, we do not aid, nor do we fight, we merely accept this war. Sometimes people die, sometimes we voice our disavowal, but mostly, life proceeds. I cannot explain this apathy, maybe it derives from exaustion, or from the disconnect that technology provides, or even from the transcontinental, transwar connection that it DOES provide. As the sun sets here, we can watch it rise over our loved ones in their bunkers.

In 1929 the Stock Exchange crashed, plummeted...exploded, eroded, completely reversed life in America. The current recession is worse that that financial crisis and while many have struggled to live, most of us continued as if unaffected. Unemployment benefits and social aid—created as the result of the infamous crash—maintained the dull and consuming status quo. And somewhere between war and financial downfall, gas skyrocketed and we still drove.

There has been no whole-sale shanty villages, no counting and hoarding of coffee grounds or sugar or flower. How are we to know that there is crisis if we cannot and do not experience it?


I offer no answers only the dysphoria and surreality that we cannot live if we've no place to live and we cannot claim a place to live if we cannot connect with it's ebbs and flows. We cannot connect with each other if we cannot stand on ground. I do know though, that we will never fix what we cannot be made to feel accountable for or dependent upon.

Academic Theory

Why Going to College Might Be More Important Than What You Study

I think that my largest motivation behind going to university was the safety net factor. It was like moving out into the world on my own, except I was only being a student (which was all I really knew) and there was a giant system designed around housing, feeding and amusing me. This probably is not the best way to train for life because it exists as a completely fabricated reality, parallel to the real world but it was good for me. I got my first job motivated by need. I found myself, in my effort to not take out loans, with $33 to my name and lacking about two critical textbooks. Then I worked as a custodian and found out that I still was not over my fear of household chemical-cleaners. I ended up taking out loans.

Paying back those loans will be a worthwhile challenge because the person that pays them has developed a great deal. Cliché: college is a good place to discover one's self. In contradiction to academic standards, I do not posses any fancy statistics, but I remain confident that a large proportion of graduates, or even non-grads do NOT work in their field of study. Luckily, I planned for this and designed my choice of major around pleasure, skill, utility and future regret. After four years, even if I never translate, interpret, subtitle or live abroad again, I will still speak Spanish and continue to put it on every job application I fill out. In the real world, speaking Spanish will also help me in the service industries, construction and farming, and basically any job I search for in Texas, Florida, New York, California, Arizona or any other major urban area.
Returning from the southern United States to my cliché...Universities are pluralistic breeding centers of any path in life one could desire. If you like a language, you can probably study it or at least find someone that speaks it. If you like science, which kind? You can learn about chemistry, including organic, lab and computational; biology, including zoology, conservation, ecology; engineering and other sciency-flavored subject that my useless humanities degree can not comprehend. There are religious clubs if you want to join a cult or if your spirit pulls in a different direction from your upbringing. It is possible to explore cultures, sexuality, jobs and careers, manias (most universities have psychological services, often free of charge [read: covered in tuition]), transportations and really anything all within the confines of an institution. Many life skills are also explored such as driving, orienteering, laundering and cooking.


Aside from the debt, I can find one major drawback in my theory. Many courses of study, if followed through, are not skills per se. I did not learn to interpret-I learned Spanish. I assume Career Services and it's other collegiate mirrors were supposed to fix this. Regardless, and with the exception of certain programs, supplementary programs and tradeschools, the only thing I really know how to be and do successfully is a studenthood. Maybe the safety net is too safe but I never would have discovered that, nor myself as I know me to be, if I had not jumped.

Feudality

If you have ever daydreamed that maybe you could live a life of ease, you are probably not alone. Sure, rich folks aren't always happier, but you would be different...or at least less worried or less overworked, a little less degraded by not wondering where your next bite of food will hail from. For me this daydream is related to the stupid idealism often applied former time-periods, a practice of which I too, am guilty. I constantly wish I were living in the 1960's. The music was sweet and a huge populous got off with running around in rags and hangin' out all the time. They also had things to believe in. However, in reality, the 60's would have been really lame or really scary. War sucks with a voluntary army and I don't like the racism that still exists. F-the past.
My favorite stupid is the Middle Ages. Wooo! We'd run around, go to market, play with horses, maybe work or live in the castle, smell like shit, walk through shit, be undernourished, and work for a feudal lord. Speaking of feudalism, that would be the real segue into this ramble. I HATE the concept of rent. In the modern bourgeois world, poverty exists wandering the streets and begging for food in the fortunate places where you can do that in public. More pervasive is the poverty that exists as an either/or conundrum. You can afford to pay for a place to sleep, or you can afford to eat. Sure, there are programs for such things but what happened to the dignity of self-sufficiency? And even if we were permitted to wander onto a plot of land and claim, till and live it as our own, we'd probably just fail and starve anyway.
I understand that most of our average, landlords are not evil, feudal scum. They are just people trying to keep a roof over their head and food in their mouth. If someone is far enough up the ladder that they can afford to be a douche, then they're living off of more than just your money. I need close to no money to maintain what I find a comfortable standard of living. I like to have a roof in the winter, I'm also fond of eating, and studying and occasionally renting a movie. I am also fortunate that someday I will find some sort of job and easily fulfill these desires with minimum work within the context of my own society. There are many people who would settle for any of the meager things on my wish list—but who'll never get them.
There are no answers here. I will continue to live juxtaposed between my wealth and my poverty but my leisurely daydreams will be tainted by the knowledge that if I were living the life of luxury and leisure by not working, I'd be living off the work of others.