The more I learn, the less I want to eat

I’m a vegetarian. Hilchot kashrut utterly mystifies me. They say that spiciness transfers food-essence (milkiness or meatiness) more than regular cold things–okay, fine, but then they define a beet as a spicy thing. Excuse me? A beet? And sometimes it’s OK to cut off the part of the food that touched treyf and sometimes the whole thing is forbidden, and the bones of a non-kosher animal can sometimes be permitted in the count of kosher food but its marrow is considered treyf, and sometimes steam is considered a contaminating force and sometimes it’s not….

Okay, there’s an inner logic to most of it that I (mostly) get. Even when it mystifies me–some of this halakha is like hanging out with a kid and trying to understand their crazy imaginary world. (”Okay, Billy, so beets are spicy now? And pickling a food is considered just like cooking it?”)

I’m grateful that my study partner eats meat, so he can explain to me exactly what the heck. Even when I get it intellectually, I remain grateful that, at least for the moment, I have a milk-only kitchen. Though probably if I had a real kosher kitchen (that is, meat plates and the like) the whole thing would seem a lot less like sci fi. Or maybe not.

In Halakha haMaaseh class today we also talked about rennet and cheese and gelatin and citric acid, for pete’s sake. And becoming a vegan looks more and more tempting. There’s only so much I want to know about how they get enzymes from a cow’s stomach or–you know, gelatin. Yuck.

This is all either a very strong argument for only eating food which has ingredients with which one is familiar and can pronounce, or fighting the good fight for ignorance, closing one’s eyes and just not reading the dang label at all.

I really really hope I don’t wind up feeling grossed out by even regular kosher (animal rennet) cheese. That would just stink. We’ll see, now, won’t we?

today’s bad news

Just got back online after being away for Shabbat and learned about the bombing in Tel Aviv.

Baruch dayan haemet, and sigh.

more notes on a new semester

All in all, things are looking auspicious. I mean, it’s easy to say that the first week of a semester, when the notebooks are still all pretty and new and the sweet scent of optimism (not to mention SPRING! Hooray for Adar!) is wafting through the Beit Midrash. And yet, I’ve been doing this rab school thing for a while, now, and I reckon my detectors are pretty well honed for this sort of thing.

Professorial lineup seems somewhere between good and fabulous (still haven’t had one class, we’ll see in which direction that teacher nudges things), hevruta (study partner) lineup seems great, material, you know: Torah. (This is a good thing). I mean, granted, I’m going into this semester a little burnt out, which is maybe natural when one is in one’s third year of a five-year program (Sunday, got to school and started wondering aloud whether it was too late to ditch this whole rabbinic lifestyle thing and work as a barrista–my friend Maria, later, informed me over email that since one can’t get a job at a coffee shop without an advanced degree, I may as well stick with this for the moment.) But even so, I think it’s going to be one heck of a crazy spring. Just have to pace myself, as this is a marathon, not a sprint.

By pacing myself, of course, I mean running around and playing this weekend. Adar is good for a girl, especially when there are two Adars. Double your simcha, double your fun and all that.

On that note, what the heck am I gonna be for Purim? I am from San Francisco and take drag and dress-up (you say tomato…) very, very seriously. Plus I consider it my civic duty to outdo myself each year. I just need a concept that I like and then I can easily rachet it up to mach 10, but finding the right concept is the hard part. Last year I was tumah (ritual impurity). The year before that I was the seir l’Azazel (scapegoat). Next year maybe I’ll have the time and resources to do Cohen Gadol (High Priest) the way The (mighty) Sisters do nunnery. But I refuse do to that here, where I have pitiful access to fist-sized rhinestones and other crucial accoutrements d’drag. So I remain adrift, wondering what aspect of the Temple cult I will call down this year. Suggestions welcome. Maybe I need to rent Jesus Christ Superstar for inspiration….

It’s fun to fear and tremble!

Looks like my Mikra (Tanakh, ie Bible) class this semester is going to be on theophany, ie visible manifestations of the Divine in the Bible.

I’m so happy. Theology theology theology! Prof. opened the class talking about Rudolph Otto, who is (eg) one of the thinkers I insisted on having help weigh down my already-too-heavy suitcases to Israel. Nuuuuuminous. I think it’s going to be a great class. Had a great Mincha davvening right after, always a good sign.

Yay for gettin’ my God on.

Now it’s time to talk about synagogue politics in Israel. Which, for rabbis-to-be, I suppose, inspires a different (and slightly less fun) kind of fear and trembling…..

all in all

it was actually one of the nicest Shabbats I’ve had in a while. Dinner last night with good people, lots of laughter, silliness, crude jokes–plus the hosts had decided it was Pizza and Ice Cream Shabbos (score.) Davvening both last night and this morning also lovely– the weather has been GORGEOUS (a little taste of early spring–but I’ve been assured by locals that it won’t last) and it was great to see my classmate people after a couple of weeks off. Nice people. Plus a long afternoon walk in sunshine does a body good.

They said it’d take a year to get settled here, and then it would be time to go, and that’s exactly what’s happening. I feel even more rooted and more settled and more enjoying my life here now than I have yet, and yet also getting keenly aware that I only have 4 months left. One can do a lot in 4 months, but still.. it’s like the timer is on, now. Wouldn’t be a bad time to reflect on what else I want to have happen in my Year In Israel ™ and get on it re: actually making those things happen.

Mostly, though, I am just enjoying being here, letting my little life unfold as it will.

(Tonight, for example, my big important Israeli Experience is scheduled, to take place in an Irish pub.)

Peace out, y’all. Shavuoh tov all around.

Amsterdangit (or, Trip Files, Part Two of Two)

So where were we? Oh, yeah. From Paris I hopped a train to Amsterdam, which wound up being a slightly longer journey than intended because of my own stupidity. It’s been a while since I’ve done serious travel, and I guess I’m not at the top of my game anymore–spacing out on one important question when buying the ticket (”do I have to change trains when whe stop in Brussels?”) meant that I got 3 extra hours on various trains, turning 4 1/2 hours of travel into 7 1/2. Unnnnnnngh.
But I guess it happens to the best of us sometimes, and since it’s been a while since I did anything that stupid, I guess it was my turn.

By the time I got to Amsterdam, it was late and I was a very cranky girl. I checked into the first hostel in my book, the one closest to the train station. It was listed as being “popular with young backpackers.” Sure ’nuff, the place was crawling with extremely stoned 20 year-olds. There was a “chill out” corner in the lobby of the hotel, a raised dais with grubby pillows to slouch against, Bob Marley and Cypress Hill blaring from the speakers ’till 4am. And then of course there were a few computers with online access, and a stocked bar over to the side. I felt a bit like I had walked into some kid’s fantasy of what the dorms are like at Humboldt State. The hostel was in the middle of the Red Light district, so when I went out to walk around a bit, there were mostly fast food restuaruants, skeezy sex shops and row after row of the famed coffeehouses. Many of them had a cheezy theme, like Jim Morrison or Jamaica, or a cheezy name like “The Greenhouse Effect” or “The 420 Club.” Whatever you do or don’t want to say about the Amsterdam coffehouse scene, subltety and class are not really its forte.

There was one place in particular that really offended my native Chicagoian sensibilities:

Who’s that dancing on top? That’s Jake and Ellwood Blues. And from where are the Blues Brothers? Not New Orleans, I’ll tell you that.

Anyway. The next day I successfully arranged my change of departure date, so I was feeling like I could splurge an extra 8 or 10 Euros on lodging, since I was saving myself 5 nights of hotel expense. So I moved from the Humboldt State hostel to a small, inexpensive but more of a grownup hotel, which was verrry good. Then, finally, I was able to explore the city a bit.

What a beautiful city!

Reminded me of Stockholm, except a little arier, little lighter. little cheerier. Utterly charming. It was the perfect time to see the first delicious crop of tulips at the Bloemenmarkt (flower market)

And they had these staggering bulbs, the size of grapefruit.

I went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was amaaaaazing–a wonderful collection of his work, and though I’ve grown up looking both at reproductions and actual paintings of Van Gogh’s (my mom was an art historian), getting to see so many together, I felt like I was understanding his work for the first time. His compositions, his Japanese and Dutch (and other) references, his use of perspective, his unbelievably skillful use of paint–how he excercised restraint, how he didn’t, how deliberate his texturing was. Really really incredible.
Reproductions do nothing.

I also went to the Rijksmuseum, which was also fantastic.
The Rembrandts! The Rembrandts! Swoooon. Wow. Uhmazing.
To get to spend time with this painting of Jeremiah

or this self-portrait

Agh. There aren’t words, really.

Sad to say it, but my Dutch museum experiences pretty solidly kicked the butt of my French ones.
It was a lovely 3 1/2 days, really. Lots of walking around the pretty town, from canal to canal, wandering into amazing little galleries here or there, drinking Belgian white beer that was so good it was pretty much worth the price of the plane ticket itself–like drinking sunshine, or liquid light. Sweetness all around.

By the end of the third day I had definitely had enough, was ready to come home and sit dormant for a bit (and I’ve been doing an excellent job of that since then, I might add.) My only regret, if you could call it that, was that I didn’t more seriously consider buying these:

Yes, yes they are. Fuzzy slippers shaped like wooden shoes. Could there be anything better than that? Really.

Book Review: I Want My FrumTV

If Francesca Lia Block wrote a book about a shomer negiah punk rock girl from New York who goes to L.A. to star in a sitcom (co-starring mostly goyim) about an Orthodox Jewish family,
Never Mind the Goldbergs would be that book.

She didn’t write it, but my boi Matthue Roth did, and it’s sharp and smart and suspenseful and it’s got heart and it’s devour-in-one-Shabbos (if not one sitting) good. The protagonist is Hava, a 17 year-old smartass who divides her time between kosher pizza joints and the gutterpunk stoops of St. Mark’s before she’s “discovered” and ships off to the American Bavel to navigate sleaze, office politics, her alcohol intake, her davenning schedule, and the Hollywoodization of frumkeit. This is the kinda book you’re gonna make all your friends read after you do, it’s like that.

Also check out Matthue’s spoken-word piece, “Orthodox Girls”, which opens with the line, “Orthodox girls’ names turn me on…”

(Crossposted to JewSchool)

Francy-Pants

Hello everybody! I am back from the land of Away, which makes me happy. Away was great, but I realized when I was there that I sorely needed a few days of sitting on my couch before the next crazy semester kicked off–so I changed my ticket, came home a coupla days early. (My father is the kind of guy who knows more obscure airline ticket rules and loopholes than a travel agent, so I was raised to believe that changing my travel dates to suit my moods and whims was my God-given right, and I know just enough to be able to usually pull it off.)

So now, of course, it’s time for the Trip Report.

The choice to go to Paree was in part determined by Lisa. She’s been doing the healthy thang the last few months–no sugar, no white flour, eating mostly vegan, etc. Basically the kind of lifestyle to which I vaguely aspire but will probably never pull off with any extended success. Or at least not this week. She was VERY hot on the idea of being able to go on a proper bender of good baguettes and raw milk cheese, and I was more than happy to assist her in this endeavor.

The food was uhhh-mazing. I’m pretty certain that we each ate our weight in cheese, and the bread, the pastries, the everything was, really, in my opinion, worth blowing six months of whole foods. (I’m sorry I didn’t take more pictures, because there were some pretty hardcore foodie moments there.) But then again, my nutritional intake has gotten worse, not better, in the last six months (leaving California does that sometimes), so it’s not like I’d really know much lately about breaking a whole foods diet. The great tragedy was that L. was sniffley and sick most of the trip, so she wasn’t able even to taste everything to its maximal amazingness. I mean, there’s so much amazing that some of it did get through, of course. But still.

Of course, there were some things available to eat in Paris that were just wrong, wrong, wrong.

The language factor for me was a shande. I took French all through high school and even a semester in college, and once upon a time it wasn’t bad. When I was in Morocco 5 years ago I spoke it for just about all of the month I was there. But now, it is gone, gone, gone. The space in my brain where French once was has been overwritten, to the point where I’d try to say something REALLY basic and frickin’ Hebrew would still insist on coming out instead.

Me to Lisa: “It’s just so frustrating to know that I used to really know something, and now I don’t know it anymore.”
Lisa, to me: “Yeah, well. Welcome to 30.”

There were lots of little moments where it was clear just how thoroughly Judaism has broken me. For example, I had more than one occasion of kvetching to myself that only in Europe would a restaurant advertise as vegetarian but then put chicken on the menu before Lisa pointed out to me that in France, “oeuf” is an egg. Ah. Riiiiight. (עוף in Hebrew, pronounced pretty much the exact same way, is chicken.) Or, like, it turned out our hotel was in both the Jewish and the queer part of town (Double score! Kosher eats and good nightlife!) and I swear, when I first saw “ADONIS CAFE” I thought–despite the rainbow flags and the faux-marble Greek sculptures in the window–they meant HaShem. Ow ow ow. I really did used to be able to live in the normal world, I did! (Also, NB, they spell שבת “Chabbat” and שיר “Chir”, which while I understand is consistent with the rest of the language–chanson, chateau, etc–is still weeeird.)

Then of course there was the art. Mmmm arrrt. Managed to score some free tix to the Louvre, ’cause I’m cool like that, so I had some nice time ogling the Cimabues and El Grecos and Davids. It was predictably crowded and touristy, and though I’m pretty good at tuning out the irritations of large numbers of people when I’m at a museum, it does take a little extra effort and energy to do so. On my birthday, there was the Centre Pompidou. Fun fun to ride up the magical escalator outside the building and watch Paris get smaller and smaller, but the actual experience in terms of art was disappointing. The setup inside was okay, but didn’t feel ideal for looking at art in large crowds (which there of course were–too easy to get clogged up the way they have it, not enough flow to the rooms) and the curatorial decisions struck me as being somewhere between ineffectual and totally arbitrary. White room with pictures in it does not a museum make. Pompidou felt like it was more about being Pompidou and less about being strongly conducive to having an intimate and moving experience with a work of art. Pity, that. We also went to the Picasso Museum, which was smallish and beautifully done, excellently and intelligently curated, and a joy. I had wanted to go to the D’Orsay as well, as much to continue working on the question of why I have so much trouble with Monet as anything, but it didn’t happen, there just wasn’t time for everything and I’d rather see less, but see it well.

Of course, there was also lots and lots of walking along the Seine and Notre Dame, ’cause, I mean, duh.

The real highlight, though, was on my birthday.

Paris had a birthday party for me!

Seriously, with some of the things I like best in the world:

Ginormous puppets!

Okay, the ostensible reason for the thing was this whole Mardi Gras business, but it was all too perfect not to be actually meant as my birthday party. Fireworks! A ferris wheel! It really was bombdiggitytastic. Lisa had gone to take a disco nap (being sick and all) and I was gonna go out just to check my email, maybe get a beer or a coffee and write in my journal or something, but then I saw all these people walking in this one direction, so I followed and there was a parade. Which ended in the big square with the ferris wheel, and several hours of amazing music, and fireworks, and games and fun and love and yay. Thanks, Paris, I’m so touched that you remembered and went to all that trouble for me.

(Apologies to all the Christians who read this blog. You know I’m kidding, right?)

After getting drunk on the music and the sparkles and the playtime, I ran back to the hotel, collected Lisa, and we went to a club called Le Queen that played pitch-perfect diva house and rained, yes, more glitter from the ceiling, and we shook our leetle tail feathers until our no-longer-22 tuchuses were tuckered and needed to go back to crash.

All in all, it was a wonderful 5 days, as always a delight to be around Lisa (who was, blessedly, the easiest travel companion on Earth) and to live the good life in Paris.

Sometime in the next few days, amidst catching up on paperwork and trying to take advantage of some pretty pretty almost-but-not-quite-spring days in Jerusalem, I’ll post about the other stop on my journey. Stay tuned, more news at 11.

so far lovely

this birthday, walking around the cobblestoned streets in early morning light, cafe au lait in a slightly dodgy cafe with good wicker chairs, meeting a friend of my travelling partner’s and going to the French shuk (the market–except here you ask the merchant politely for things and you discuss what you might need, instead of piling sacks full of stuff and throwing them at the merchant, who weighs them and demands your money quickly because he has other things to do. Frankly, I think I’m better-suited to the shuk…). Now we are cooking at the local’s house–small potatoes, omlettes with chives and fancy mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, fresh bread, chocolate souffle from the pastry shop. Later we will go to Centre Pompidou. Not sure after that.

Ooop, time to eat.

Out of Office Autoreply

Tomorrow I get on a plane for Paris, where the ever-fabulous Miz Lisa is going to meet me for a number of days or running around, looking at art, eating food with heavy cream in it, and making as much trouble as time, energy and interest allow. Then I send her on her way and will have another week to knock around that part of the world, wherever I decide that should happen.

Somewhere in there, (Sunday, to be exact), I turn 30. Yay for me! I did my twenties really well, and now I’m done with them. If anybody wants a used set of the 20s, let me know. They’re pretty well-worn out, though, I gotta warn ya–it’s probably a better idea to get a set of your own, new. In any case, I’m very excited for this next chapter and eagerly await all of the gifts that the Thirties Fairy may bring. (According to my friends, the Thirties Fairy is a benevolent being with lots of nice stuff to give.)

Will likely be blogging infrequently at best the next couple of weeks, but who knows? Internet cafes make suckers of us all.