Happiness

is going to see Pretty in Pink at the Jerusalem Cinemetheque (where I now have an unlimited movie student pass, whoot). This film is, for reasons I myself don’t quite understand, one of the few things on this earth (besides, um, the Torah) that I can see over and over again and continue to thrill at anew. Annie Potts and the Psych Furs! I mean, Duckie Dale alone, really. It was great fun to watch it with Hebrew subtitles, to watch as they squished mid-80’s teen slang into Hebrew’s somewhat more limited vocabulary. (How many different words wound up getting translated as “tov”? A lot, that’s how many.) A giggle all around.

(Blaine, hu ha shem shelo? Zeh lo shem! Zeh mootzar!)

I walked home in the warm Jerusalem night, under the big bright full moon, with New Order in my discman, full of joy and only the tiniest bit nostalgic for times that were, though almost this bad (I mean, the Reagan years), but with better music and much, much better dressed.

Access denied

Succot, which starts Wednesday night, is the holiday in which Jews are literally commanded to be happy, to rejoice. I have, unfortunately, not gotten off to such an auspicious start.

The two major mitzvot of Succot are to build a succah, a little makeshift outdoor hut in which one eats one’s meals, and lulav. A lulav is made of palm, myrtle and willow leaves bound together, and you hold it together with an etrog, which is called a “citron” in English–it looks a bit like a lemon.

(Ripe ones are more yellow and less green).

Together the lulav parts and the etrog are called the “four species.” You take the two things together and shake them in 6 directions (front/back/side/side/up/down) during certain parts of the prayer service. It’s wonderful and delightfully pagan, on my very short list of favorite holiday activities. Both mitzvot–succah and lulav–are extremely intricate and gear-intensive, so in a number of places around Jerusalem there are these little Succot markets that spring up to sell the four species.

They also sell parts for making a succah, adorable harvesty things with which to decorate the succah (like fake grapes and pomegranates) “succah lights” that look suspiciously like strings of lights that decorate something else on somebody else’s holiday, and posters for the inside of the succah that run the full gamut of classy to superkitsch, (as does everything around here.)

This evening I was out walking around with a friend, and I saw a guy carrying a newly-purchased lulav, so I asked him where he got it–I’d been meaning to get my lulav and etrog, and if there was someplace to do so nearby, I figured that would be nice. He said that the big four species market was up on Strauss. I thought, ooh, cool. I could go someplace in my neighborhood, but all the better to go to the big one, since this is my first Succot in Jerusalem. You know, check out the serious action.

So I started walking up Strauss, realizing somewhere along the way that the neighborhood was getting frummer and frummer (more and more religious). Good thing I happened to be dressed like a nice Jewish girl today–seriously, denim skirt, yoga pants underneath, t-shirt, bandanna on head. At some point I stop and don my sweatshirt so that my elbows are covered, too.

I keep walking up, and eventually see the beginning of the succah mart, which stretches on the length of about a block, and has a sort of makeshift cover over the top of it and on the sides. From the front, I could see that mart itself was crammed with people and lulav parts, crates of etrogim. A lot of people looking very carefully at branches and fruit skin to determine their level of kosher-ness and quality (there are all sorts of rules and requirements for having kosher lulavim and etrogim, and if something’s fuzzy or bent or whatever, it can’t be used.) I’m thrilled; this looks like a great party for a Torah geek such as myself.

I get in line and offer my bag to the security guys at the gate to inspect (par for the course in these parts). The guy says something to me, I don’t quite catch his drift. His Hebrew’s fast, I’m a bit spacey.
“You don’t want to see my bag?” I ask.
“No, no. You can’t come in. Women cannot enter.”
“I can’t come in?” (I’m a quick one, you see.)
“No. Women can go over there,” he points to what appears to be the other side of the gate.

Oh! There’s a mechitza entrance sort of thing. Weird, but OK.

It’s not a mechitza. The entrance leads nowhere–it’s just an alleyway on the outside of the succah mart. I peek inside: yep, in fact, it’s just men in there.

This might be a salient time to address the fact that, traditionally, only men are obligated to the mitzvah of lulav. That women are not obligated, however, does not mean that they are forbidden to also perform it–in fact, many important poskim (legal interpreters) and codes of Jewish law have affirmed that women may, in fact, perform the mitzvah without problem. Of course, in this part of town, women would not do such a thing. Here, lulav is a mitzvah for men, period.

As my then-present situation could attest. Standing outside the little tent, I was feeling pretty cranky. I mean, I was just wanting to go in to buy a thing so that I could serve God, after all. It’s not like I had any intent to engage in mixed dancing over the myrtle table, or to use the willows to make an indecent proposal. It still shocks me that I wasn’t even permitted into the space where they sold the stuff. Basic commercial transactions, you know?

I trudge up the street to see if there are any clever posters I might want to get–I don’t have space in my building to build a succah this year, but I will next year, and it would be wonderful to have the one that illustrates all the weird (kosher and not) succot described in the Mishnah–Succah on the deck of a ship! Succah on top of a camel’s back!

(See, I don’t just make this stuff up.)

I don’t see any fabulous posters, but it turns out there are other guys selling four species, so I go up to one of them and start inspecting myrtle branches.

“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I need to buy a lulav.”
“For yourself?”

Oh, man. I knew this was coming. I’d prepared myself for these sorts of questions, and it was still horrible to have to face it in real life. I know that if I say “yes,” I will have to face one or more of several possible outcomes. a) I will inevitably find myself arguing halakha with this guy and a lot of the guys around him–and though I know the halakha both regarding women and lulav and the general halakha of women in the category of Positive Time-Bound Mitzvot, into which lulav falls, I can’t quote lulav halakha chapter and verse, which means I won’t be able to hold my own against the professional yeshivaniks, and b) I’m not quite sure what would happen if they were faced with a 5′3″ female who asserted that she was intending to do what they considered to be “desecrating the holiness of their tradition” or some variant therein–even if the answer is “probably nothing,” it seems clear that this is not the time for bravado, this is the time for passing. And c) I’m pretty sure nobody would be willing to sell them to me if they thought I’d actually use them.

“No, not for me,” I say. He looks at me. He does not buy it. Oy. I really am gonna have to elaborate.
“For my husband,” I say. I use the traditional word for husband–baal. Master.

At this moment, I really feel terrible. Both because I feel like I’ve had to fudge my integrity and also because I am hating the amount of tsuris I have to go through to fulfill a mitzvah. I play dumb a little, let him explain stuff to me, finally pay him some money and walk away with a lulav set and etrog that’ll keep me going through the holiday.

Of course, lulavim–particularly when encased in the handy-dandy carrying case I bought with it–are pretty large, unweildy and conspicuous. So now I’ve gone from being a chick attempting to buy a lulav to one who’s clearly already bought one. Not a short-term improvement. Assuming that my popularity in this neighborhood is about to expire, I skedaddle–but this requires walking past the men’s only water fountain succah mart. As I do so, I see a guy in full Hasidic garb walking in, smoking a cigarette. The irony! This guy, the guy who finances tobacco corporations, gives himself cancer and poisons the rest of us in the process gets access to the holy leaves and I don’t? Ha-rumph.

Eventually I make it home and stick my fruit and leaves safely in the fridge, where they’ll live until called upon Thursday morning. And then, hopefully, I can engage in unadulterated practice of a Positive Time-Bound Mitzvah in a community of really, truly, like-minded Jews. That is to say: the ones who don’t smoke.

pop music

Hadag Nachash (”Snakefish”) is this hugely popular Israeli band, and I finally heard them a few days ago–they’re pretty good. A fusion of hip-hop and jazz with some ska and traditional Middle Eastern riffs. And their rhymes aren’t cheap, the way a lot of Israeli pop is.

Anyway, it seems that starting Oct 15, they’ll be touring the States. Here’s a link to info in the Bay Area, Oct. 20-23. Don’t know anything about the site and don’t endorse it in any way, but they have the info up and play one of the band’s songs–”Shirat HaSticker”, about bumper stickers–so you can hear it for free.

Yom Kippur statistic

Heard in shul today: Evidently 20% of the people who rent movies from Blockbuster in Israel on Yom Kippur are fasting.

a bissel more Torah

My teacher and friend Rabbi Dan Shevitz emailed me with a drash on my drash and I liked it so much that it seemed worth sharing, especially as we’re now only hours away from Yom K. So in the name of the RaDiSH I offer you this:

“The YK ritual involves two kinds of purgation: catharsis (the God goat/Isaac) and separation (the Azazel goat/Ishmael). These come from two basic human reactions to dirt: clean it, and throw it out.  The Akeidah teaches us, among many other things,  reversal: the value of surprise in serving God.  We thought that purification required death: now we are taught that it requires life. The exile of Ishmael and the goat for Azazel teach us that this path ultimately doesn’t work.  Ishmael always comes back.  There is no such place as “out”� and what was once “wilderness”� soon will be your back yard.  All you’ve got in an angry goat.”

And there you have it, people. G’mar tov.
 

IMPORTANT: succah buying from the wrong people

According to an email from GetORA.com, the owner of Succah.com is a recalcitrant husband. Although his wife has asked him, he will not grant her a get and therefore she cannot remarry. The Baltimore Beit Din has issued a seruv against him. Please keep this in mind when making your sukkot purchases this year.

According to Jewish law, a husband has to grant a wife a get, or divorce, to terminate a marriage. When a husband refuses to do so, the wife may become an agunah, a chained wife, who is stuck in the relationship and unable to remarry. Considerable pressure sometimes needs to be exerted by the community to get the husband to give a get.

GetORA is an organization working for the rights of agunot.

Date: Mon, September 20, 2004 11:33 pm

Sam Rosenbloom has a seruv issued against him by the Baltimore Beis din. A copy of the seruv can be viewed by going to www.getora.com/seiruvim.htm

Mr. Rosenbloom owns and operates an on-line succah business www.succah.com

We would like everyone to be informed of this information and request that one should consult their local orthodox rabbi before purchasing anything from www.succah.com

Thank you.

www.getora.com

fasting math

Israel changes the clocks for Daylight Savings right before Yom Kippur (so we switched ‘em Tuez night) so that the fast can end earlier (6-something instead of 7-something). Except… this means that it also gets dark earlier the day before. So instead of starting Yom K. at 6:15, it starts at 5:15. Which means, (factoring in time to walk to shul, etc.) that you’re eating your last. meal. of. the. day at 3:30pm. Is that really better than holding out ’till 7?

quote

I’m in the middle of re-reading Carol Lee Flinders’ excellent Enduring Grace, seven chapter-length biographies of Christian women (mostly) medieval mystics. Today I found this quote by Julian of Norwich, in which she tried to make sense of a vision she had as a young woman.

It seemed appropriate to share both in light of all the suffering over here and the fact that we Jews are about to enter into the calendar’s Holy of Holies, a time of highly intense connection with the One who is ultimate connection. As we beat our breasts, beg for forgiveness, fall to our knees and fervently try to get our prayers into the Gates of Heaven before they close, may we remember Julian’s words:

And from the time that it was revealed, I desired many times to know in what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after and more… it was said, What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was His meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did He reveal to you? Love. Why does He reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end.

I’m OK

Sorry it took me a day to post after the bombing yesterday–I’m in Ein Gedi right now and didn’t hear about it last night, but there wasn’t any internet available where I was then.

I’m OK, I’m here, I wasn’t there. But this one, I have to say, is really, really scary. Not only because people were hurt and lives were lost. That should be enough, and it is. And/but also because it wasn’t far from the Hebrew U campus, and if I hadn’t skipped out on ulpan this week (the last week; I decided to have some downtime a few days before it ended) I would have been around. (Tho she was probably actually targeting a bus stop, from what I’ve heard. I’ve gotten a lot of secondhand information, haven’t yet had time to read the paper.) It’s feeling more… personal… than ever.

And then, of course, there hadn’t been any bombs in Israel for months before the Beer Sheva bombing, and this is the first one in Jerusalem since I got there. And the reality of how this…mess, this terrible, horrible, painful mess–will be hanging over me this year is also kicking in a little. I know they’ve apprehended a number of bombers before anything happened in Jerusalem–I forget the number I heard, but a bunch since just Rosh Hashonah alone. But potential plans and actual execution–well, it’s harder to feel secure when you know they don’t catch everybody before it’s too late.

I have no great insights right now. This sucks and is hard. I am scared for myself and for this country and for all the people in this region and the whole world. This is no way for any of us to have to live. Any of us.

In the short run, I have a few more hours until my ride back to Jerusalem. I will have tomorrow to get ready for Yom Kippur, and I will go beat my breast and cry for all the things that are still out of whack between human beings and God.

And then, as they say around here, it’s business as usual, life goes on. I hope.

to all the coffee shops I’ve loved before….

When I was a young, combat-booted, black hair-dyed little pup, there was Cafe Express on Dempster. Actually, there were a lot of places–Scenes, Heartland, Steep-n-Brew, No Exit, that-new-place-Kafein (which has now been around for about 13 years, but it’ll always be that-new-place-Kafein to me). When we weren’t at school, punk shows or maybe sneaking around Northwestern campus trying to get drunk, we were at coffee shops. For hours. We’d sit. We’d gossip. We’d have inane conversations about the meaning of life. People would wander in and out. Refills became increasingly laced with cinnamon and cocoa powder as our stomachs churned more and more uncomfortably from the sheer volume of diesel intake. Dinner was, on far more than one occasion, zucchini bread.

I’d go alone with my journal and soak up the solitude and the Sinead O’Connor. More often, I’d go with friends and run into more friends. We didn’t need an activity, we. just. hung. out.

Warm summer nights outside Cafe Express. Nothing like it. Crucial information was shared, flirtations were started, ended and processed there, important plans were hatched–like deciding to spend spring break road-tripping to the Spam Museum, or starting a goth-ska band that only sang about hemophiliac clowns.

Sometimes it was too much bother to actually go in and order stuff (or we’d be there past closing time and get kicked out), so we’d hang out accross the street, just sittin’ on the curb, watching Butch and Dylan and ADP (Aaron Da Punk, natch) go clack-clack-clack with their skateboards. Nicole would come by after she got off work at Blind Faith; sometimes we’d make a run to the 31 Flavors to see if George was working. Not that we ever got free ice cream out of it, but it was always worth the effort.

In college, there was Ocean, the Coffee Exchange, a few other places. Good for studying or a mellow night out. And there are some grand places in San Francisco–Dolores Park Cafe, Cafe Bazaar–but they were, there, even less at the core of my life. And in LA? Forget it. What I had within walking distance was a Starbuck’s, and we all know that that certainly doesn’t count. And even at The Novel or Anastasia’s Asylum, it just didn’t feel the same.

Which is why I’m thrilled to be in Jerusalem now. I have a feeeling that my butt will be in cafe chairs almost as much as it did in my days as a wayward youth. I mean, there are fewer boys with skateboards in my life now, but a mere block away from me there’s Zygmund’s (I have no idea if that’s the correct English spelling), which is right on the corner and, save the little overhang, totally outside. It’s just a small little kitchen behind a bar and a couple of tables.

They have crepes, couscous, lemonade, beer, coffee, etc. all for pretty cheap. It’s the kind of place a cafe is supposed to be. Old, unpretentious, cozy in its quirky little way. I’ve already been there like 3 nights in a row at one stretch, and I am not ashamed.

It was created for warm summer nights, I think. Less for dates, more just for sitting with a book or a couple of people over beer, tea, conversation. I’ve been told that there are only a couple of months in Jerusalem where the weather prohibits going.

There are some other places in my neighborhood, too. Moment is hip and shiny and kinda fun, very chill during the day. I was there today for 3 1/2 hours (with the laptop) and after one of the waitery guys and I chatted for a bit about how writing is both fun and also really hard, he came back with some chocolate for me, for inspiration. Awwwww. (And no, it was not a come-on.)

Atara’s is more of an upscale cafe, tends to attract a lot of married religious women for lunch, and they always (oddly) have gefilte fish on the board as a special.

But my laptop seems to really like spending time there, too. I think I’m turning it into a coffee shop, at least for myself. The waitresses certainly seem more amused by me than anything.

There are plenty of other good places around town. The ones down on Emek Refaim are where I’m most apt to run into people (though I don’t think I’ve yet been to Zygmund’s without the same happening; usually there, though, they’re just walking by). There’s of course Timol Shilshom, which is more towards the city center but as much of an old-skool coffeehouse as you’ll find anywhere. Oh, coffee shops! There are so many! I love you all!

Basically, I’m just a very happy camper about this particular aspect of my life here. Coffee shop culture done well. I think even ADP could appreciate that about Jerusalem.