Don't Gel Too Soon

Sarah Palin, The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Tea Party

 

This is a sincere and committed couple. I am not mocking them. It does demonstrate the depth of anger in our country in a dramatic way though. What do you think?

(Thanks to @Lizardoid who retweeted this from a tweet by @JamesUrbaniak and @boloboffin)

Peacemakers Where There Is NO Peace

There's a lot of pain in Israel and a lot of rage, but NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof found something else. 

Unplugged for Shabbat: Something the "Cool" People Want Too. Wow.

Are you unplugged?  It's Friday morning and soon Shabbat will be here.  I'll light the candles and we'll go to friends for dinner and tomorrow to services and to lunch (I'm bringing part of it).  Later we're going to another home to be part of what they call a "shabbat hangout" where the kids all play and the parents (and their older friends, like us) talk, and study and enjoy the peace of 24 hours of an unplugged, non-electric, non-driving, non-cooking,  non-working life.* 

We started living this way five years ago, as I've often documented here (I dare you to read this one about observant Judaism and Patti Smith), and now it seems that others -- many of them cool hipster digital types, -- are looking to do the same.  Take a look.

Over these years I've struggled with keeping kosher, with the role of women, and with much else.  But there are moments of such beauty and meaning that I find myself spinning - knowing why I'm here and wondering at the same time.

I've always been Progressive; worked in the anti-war movement and the McCarthy campaign - and was in Chicago at the 1968 convention, and when I first found observant Judaism and Shabbat, it felt counterintuitive.  Too many rules.  Sometimes it still does.

But the reason why Unplugged is so great is that when you start, you think Shabbat will be what you hate.  No more errands or Saturday manicures or movies.  No phone calls or emails or web wandering. 

And then you unplug.  And even if - as I suspect will be true for many -  you don't go the way we went and adopt (almost) the entire package, you find the peace of what Josh Foer, in the video, calls this "ancient" idea, and are grateful for it.  And for the people around you -- IRL -- close, and easy and at peace.

*OK I admit it.  I'm really glad the health care vote is on Sunday; if it had been on Saturday it would have been a real pain.

Jewish Women, Feminists, and Esther -- Across the Centuries

How can there be a women's story that women are not allowed to tell?  Today is Purim - the celebration of the rescue of the Jews from the Persian King Asueras' evil adviser Haman.  In a classic (and highly fortunate) intermarriage, she became the favorite wife of the powerful king.  Unaware that she's Jewish, he's chosen her from all the maidens of Shushan and fallen for her - hard.  The story is intricate but it ends with a bad guy trying to get the King to kill all the Jews (sound familiar?) and the Jewish Queen Esther convincing the King that the bad guy is indeed bad, and thus saving the day.

It's an old story with both sexist and feminist implications but today it emerged with a new life - at least for me.  Here's why: it's required that Jews hear the story of Esther, the Megiila Esther, read twice during the holiday.  It's read with a melody - a "trope" that's quite lovely.  Usually, in observant Judaism, men preside.  Prayers and readings are the domain of the male voice.  But women are "permitted" to read the Megilla for a gathering of women.  It's a act of Jewish feminism.  And that's what happened this morning.

I wish I could describe the emotion that arises as one hears the women's voices together, and the single voices, one by one, reading out the story.  It's an act of faith, an act of love, really, but it's also an act of community - the community of women coming together to share the story of a feisty queen who overcame fear to save her people.  

Of course you would be correct to suggest that the simplest solution would be to choose a branch of Judaism that has made its way past such rules and you'd be correct.  But we've chosen, despite the difficulties, to live this life, partly because of the very community that produced this day.   And it comes, as a friend reminded me last night, as a package.  So there will be moments - many of them - of frustration and anger.  Of a sense of deprivation and loss.  And the, just when it seems terrible -- something lovely happens.  Something like today.

New Years and Long Marriages: How Have We Done It?

It's very hard to be married.  This is no headline.  But the Sunday New York Times on December 13th carried a piece by David Sarasohn; a meditation on marriage, moving from the first lines:  "I have been married forever.  Well, not since the Big Bang but since the Nixon administration — 35 years — a stretch long enough to startle new acquaintances or make talk-show audiences applaud" to the last.

As you may deduce from the hair, we too married during the Nixon years, and we too are still together. We were married on September 12, 1971 and have survived more than 38 years of complicated marriage about which I've written before.  So why now?

Well, first of all because my husband asked me to write it.   Just to see what came out, I think.  How did we do it?  How are we still doing it?  Oh - and why have we bothered?  We've seen friends split over much less than what we've faced, so what was different?

Here's Mr. Sarasohn's theory:

I am somewhat better with words than my wife is; she is infinitely better with people. In different ways, we translate each other to the rest of the world, and admire each other’s contrasting language skills. Being married to someone you respect for being somehow better than you keeps affection alive. That this impressive person chooses you year after year makes you more pleased with yourself, fueling the kind of mutual self-esteem that can get you through decades.

Not bad.  I know we've been all over the world and I would never have had the nerve with out him; he is the one who was probably an airplane in a previous life.  And that we met an extraordinary number of wonderful people because of the work he chose to do.  And that he pushed me to write my book and never expected me to be anything but a working mom.  And among psychoanalysts in Manhattan in the 70s and 80s that was pretty amazing.  OH and he shoved and pushed and pulled me to spend money on myself once in a while, which was very hard for a girl from a Depression-scarred background.  I know he's got his own list for me as well.

Of course we've faced plenty of though stuff too.  His chronic illness is a rotten burden and one that has colored much of our time together.  And we've had professional and financial crises, and moved from Washington to Palo Alto to New York to another apartment in New York to Los Angeles to another house in Los Angeles to Washington and another house in Washington.  We've had some challenges as parents and as partners, other health issues including open-heart surgery, loss of our parents and very tough moments even now.  But leaving - that was never an option.  We have many young friends who wonder at the fact that we are still together and it's one of the few times I feel a distance from them. I'm so aware that it's something you know more than you say, despite the beauty and wisdom of the Sarasohn piece and despite my efforts here.   

Once my dad told me that he was sure we'd never be divorced; we were both too stubborn.  I guess that's true too, but it takes more than that.  We are never ever bored with each other.  We share basic values that we've been able to pass on to our kids even though we may have differed on the details.  We trust each other.  We have fun - and now, day-by-day, we share a history.

A collected set of joint memories is not a small thing.  I always say it's like quitting smoking - every day you accumulate increases the value of the commitment.  Just this morning, listening to the blizzard weather predictions, I recalled an orange outfit we had bought our toddler in Paris more than thirty years ago.  " Remember the orange snowsuit we bought Josh in au Printemps?" I asked him.  He smiled in fond recollection and said "Yeah, but it was Galeries Lafayette."  There are a lifetime of those moments. 

 That was, by the way, the same trip where Josh stared up at the Winged Victory of Samothrace towering at the top of the main staircase in the Louvre and said "pigeon."   

I'm telling you these small memories for a reason.  The big things are cool too - watching a son get married, fancy parties with high-profile people, trips around the country and around the world.  But within and surrounding the gigantic are those moments that make a marriage, tiny and still; a quiet loving word from a son, or the sharing of a meal he has prepared, the deck of a beach house while the sun goes down, wonder at a great performance or a great meal shared.  For the two of us, 38 years of those trump the aggravation and the stressful moments.

Frighteningly, I'm about to turn the age I always thought a subject for humor - after all, there is even a song. 

When I get older, losing my hair,

Many years from now.

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

 

If I'd been out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I'm sixty-four.

We knew each other when this song was still part of FM rotation – when we counted our ages in fewer than half those years.  Between then and now, more has happened than I can describe – both in the “outside world” and in our home.  And I know the answer to the question.  Yes - from me and from him.  When we're sixty-four and, God willng, long after that.

It's Hard, Ain't It Hard, Ain't It Hard, Ain't It Hard: the No Good, Awful, Terrible, Very Bad Day

Sometimes things are so sad, and so hard, and not your story to tell - and they follow you in and out of rooms and around corners and out into the street and you feel like you're riding on some perverted, malformed roller coaster. There's nothing to do, really, but apologize for the maudlin language, sit back and hang on for dear life. 

Like the Counting Crows song about sitting in the hills in Hollywood hoping "this year will be better than the last." The new year is coming so I suppose that's worth considering. It's hard though.

For those of you who know us, nobody's sick and nobody's dead and we're still married and our family seems fine. This is something else. And it's really, really hard - because it doesn't feel right or fair or even sensible. We've gotten through everything else so I guess we'll get through this too. I wouldn't even bring it up but I own those of you who are still taking the trouble to stop by here an explanation for the silences between posts. Just wish us well, OK?

You Mean There Are Jewish Neighborhoods in PARIS????

I've been to Paris probably close to 15 times in the past 30 years; never has it disappointed me. But until I began living a more Jewishly observant life, I'd missed a huge part of it. Like virtually every other city in Europe, Paris has a "Jewish neighborhood." Like virtually every other city in the world - (if they hadn't been thrown out altogether) the Jews moved out of their old neighborhoods, as they did on the Lower East Side, leaving their stores and delis behind. This neighborhood in Paris, in the Marais, is somewhere in the middle. Plenty of Jews are still there; plenty more have moved on. But the services, and especially the restaurants, groceries and bookstores -- and several synagogues large and small -- they're still there. This is the bookstore where you can buy prayer books and Jewish history and Shoah books as well as candle sticks and other Jewish necessities. It's not far from a primary school whose front entrance includes a tribute to the more than 100 Jewish children seized there during the German occupation of Paris, never to be seen again. Stand outside that door and you can't help but imagine how it must have looked and sounded and felt that day.

 

On a lighter note  though, since we're Jews, there's food. This is one of two competing falafel stands on Rue de Rosiers and the lines were enormous on this hot, sunny Sunday. In addition to residents and Jewish tourists wandering by, whole tour groups arrived to try the native fare. It was quite festive, actually.

Oh, and there's a photo missing here.  I was scared to take it.   We were approaching the former home of Jo Goldenberg, the legendary Jewish restaurant in the neighborhood, internationally known even before it was bombed in the summer of 1982, killing six and injuring several others.  It's gone now, a victim of the times, but as we neared the empty building, police sirens in the ooh-aah sound European sirens make, blasted us, close by.  They screeched to a halt outside and a policeman cautiously approached a bag siting on the stoop outside the former deli.  Clearly frightened, he gingerly picked up the bag to put into the police van and move it from the area, now so full of tourists and shoppers.  Unnerved, my husband and I sped away.  

So you don't get a photo.  But I can tell you that the cop looked very scared.  And just so you don't think this is a lot of melodrama, I was in a synagogue in Vienna EXACTLY one week before it was bombed.  I had my young son in his stroller.  That next week, a mother died throwing herself on top of her child - in his stroller.  So there's more to hanging around a famous Jewish neighborhood that candlesticks and shwarma.

One more thing.  It looks as if, again, like the Lower East Side, gentrification may complete the job that first persecution and then upward mobility began.  Last year, a story appeared in AFP - the French wire service, with the headline: "Paris Jewish quarter fights tourism, commerce in battle for soul."  Fashion retailers and other high-end businesses want to be in what is now the "cool" neighborhood and let some of that cache rub off on them.  The Jews?  Well they're fighting to keep their institutions and to remain a distinct community, but there's no guarantee they'll succeed.  Until then, the Marais, in addition to great coats, shoes, bags and jewelry, remains the "Jewish neighborhood."  So get there while you can.

One of the Many Reasons to Love Christopher Wren: St. Paul's Cathedral

It's late and I'm tired from a probably too-long walk and probably too much work. So I'll leave you with this picture of the wonderful St. Paul's Cathedral, taken from the very center of the Millenium Pedestrian Bridge  that crosses the river from the Tate Modern to this old masterpiece and the bustling legal community close by.

Brick Lane in the Real World - Things Have Changed in London

You can see it there - the street name in English and,  I think, Bengali - the street brought to life in Monica Ali's wonderful book.  Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been.  Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London's East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane.  But the book was published six years ago.   And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.  

Gentrification has arrived - as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint.  As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them.  Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself.  Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that  -- nothing remotely ethnic.  There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus.  And there are liquor stores.

I'm not sure precisely why I'm telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel.  Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago.  This immigrant literature, whether it's Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced.  So it's nothing new; it's just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.

Sons Really Do Get Married, and Their Parents Really Do Love It, (and Nobody Cried)

There we are, our sweet sweet family with it's newly married eldest and his lovely brand-new wife.   It's an out-of-body experience to watch your son get married, and this was a wonderful one.  I'd been very nervous:  would it go well after the two of them had worked so hard on every detail, would they have fun, would we cry, would I look ok (well, after all, those photos last forever.)

It all did go well.  The groom (in the middle) was so joyous and ready, his speech so sure and calm; his wife so lovely and pleased, his brother (on the right)offering the loveliest, funniest, just-rightest toast ever.  There were only 80 of us so over the weekend we became a kind of tribe, tables shifting as people moved around enjoying the event, and one another. 

It was a great joy to me to see how much the boys feel for each other.  I have, today, two of my dearest wishes: that my children be good friends and that each son find a partner who is wonderful, honorable and loving.  So far so good.

I'd been thinking for months about the power of time, of change.  One of my friends commented on my Facebook page that "I remember when Josh was xeroxing his little hands in the office!" I do too.  And I thought I'd be consumed by those kinds of thoughts.  But this just felt right, timely and good for everyone.  No nostalgia, not "where are you going my little one, little one"  "sunrise, sunset" thoughts at all.  Just gratitude at the happiness and love that surrounded the bride, the groom and the rest of us.  May it always be so.