Writer's Block

28 November 2006

Clearly this blog is not meant to be a regularly-updated thing. My apologies to all of you who keep checking it for updates on my life. It's been interesting to see how not having a desk job has stood in the way of my being able to spend lots and lots of time on the computer. In any case, a few musings on November:

One of the most exciting things I've been doing lately is taking this creative writing class at one of the liberal institutions of Jewish learning in this fair city. While I've yet to turn out anything particularly vibrant, I've been reminded how writing is a muscle, one which requires regular exercise to be honed and sharpened. Perhaps the combination of this unused blog and the class will allow me to record some of the things I've been thinking about during my long walks around the city.

Unfortunately, whenever I sit down to write, all I come up with is...other people's poetry. Most of you know that my brain (and the brains of my dear Smel as well) absorb song lyrics and poetry like the veritable Pirke Avot spongy Jew. While this makes me a hit at parties (and my Thanksgiving cohort can attest to that), it does have the drawback of eliminating any possibilities for independent thought when faced with a writer's prompt. Thus, when my teacher told us to write on name changes, in honor of Sarah and Abraham, all I came up with was Phillip Larkin's wonderful "Maiden Name," and this week's parent-child relationships prompt pointed me to the lovely illustrated poem of my childhood, Delmore Schwartz's "I Am Cherry Alive, the Little Girl Sang." And then I have to stop writing and compulsively write down the poem I've remembered, and think about it a lot, and regress a bit to the age I was when I memorized it. Now I don't think the answer to my compulsive memorizing is to stop reading poetry, but it does present a bit of a challenge to my creative side.

And speaking of practice: this week in MADA, we learned to take blood pressure, and last week, we administered IVs on each other! Photos of my GIANT black and blue marks coming soon. At least I'll never have to be anyone's FIRST attempt at an IV again...I hope...

Happy Birthday Everyone

12 November 2006

To the many of you who have recently turned or are about to turn 30, this poem is for you. (If it makes you depressed, I prescribe immediate viewing of the immortal Sex and the City episode "Valley of the Twentysomething Guys" as an antidote.)

Happy Birthday! Enjoy it!

TO MY TWENTIES
by Kenneth Koch

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman--
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another--and water!
I'm still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X---------- N---------, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren't a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

Everyone Loves a Parade?

4 November 2006

A brief hello from this side of Shabbat, where queendeb and I have just spent a lovely Shabbat. Much to write here about our seminar on sexuality and other stuff, but in honor of the upcoming Pride march, I'll leave you with this sticker from the Meretz party. More to come soon.

Out of Sync

24 October 2006

I'm still without computer, although the good word is that it's on its way tomorrow. Whether the data has survived is another question. I somehow think that Israeli computer repair folks are less charitable about preserving data than their American counterparts. I will take a lesson from the venerable Reb Zalman and his parable on the computer crash as Jewish mystical development. Look out for the "Emmes DOS" pun.

In any case, thanks to my fellow fellow GW, I've got a bit of computer access and thus can try and get up to speed, a bit. What's been happening:

- A lovely holiday of Sukkot came my way, along with a visit from the best Mom ever. We navigated much of the length of the country in our rental car, visiting two kibbutzim, four sets of cousins, and learned to take our bathing suits off in the middle of the Mediterranean. Back in J'lem, we co-built a wonderful sukkah, hosted meals and parties, danced with the sefer Torah, prayed for rain, and ate more meat than I'd eaten in weeks. Mom got kudos for being the "coolest mom ever" for accompanying me to parties and classes without ever seeming like an old fogey. (These words of praise could be about you, O Readers--come visit me!)

- Classes have now started in earnest, and I've dived in headfirst to my superTalmud class. Assignments for the next seven classes total about 11 dapim; that's about six sides of a page to learn per week. Even in my high-school-10-hrs-of-Talmud-per-week days, I don't think I made it through that much material, and this is mostly to be prepared on my own. I've taken to sitting in coffee shops with my books spread around me, learning a bissel Gemara while ignoring the stares from the chiloni and dati customers alike.

- I'm also taking a Magen David Adom training class to be an EMT, which I must say is such a struggle for me. On the one hand, it's great to be learning someting that is so outside my comfort zone and area of expertise. On the other hand, I bristle at the possibility that someday I'll be using this knowledge, be it on an ambulance here or in the States, or in some unfortunate accident of daily life. I am fascinated by the world of medicine, but also so, so scared--we shall see what becomes of this in my life. Add to this my general worries about my Hebrew--could I serve on a Hebrew-speaking ambulance?--and the couple of very annoying people in my class, and I'm in for a stressy ride each Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

- On the upside, our fellows' days have been going great, and last week I discovered the mythic Jerusalem Boogie! As Myrrh describes it, "it's two hundred people dancing like they are dancing alone in their living rooms." Thanks to JT for pointing me its way.

...So I guess newsy is easy to write, insightful less so...more to come when I'm wired again (and maybe even some pics). In the meantime, keep praying for rain--we all need it.

ok computer

17 October 2006

Sorry folks for the long radio silence. My beautiful MacBook has experienced some malfunctions and is now living in the Yeda shop (Israeli branch of Apple) in Rosh Ha'ayin. I hope to have it back home in the next week or two. On the upside, I learned how to navigate Israeli industrial parks and learned the Hebrew words for "keyboard" and "crash."

More to come soon...

Ofanei HaKodesh

4 October 2006

A quick hello from this side of the Day of Repentance. I'd begun to post before Yom Kippur started, but as way led on to way, that post got abandoned and here we are, with the gates of teshuva closed once again.

I'd entered YK without much introspection or hope for a spiritual day. Despite all the preparations here--the stores closing at 11 am, white clothing on sale, the barrista wishing you a "gmar chatimah tovah" with the change from your latte--I was not so ready for a day of full spiritual onslaught. In truth, I've been doing so so much introspection since deciding to come to Israel that I'm a bit "emoted out." I planned for myself a day of full attendance at various services, hoping to get some good singing, a bit of the fasting rush, and perhaps a tiny snippet of time with the One Upstairs.

As it turns out, it was a lovely day, about on par with my spiritual expectations but rather transformed with regards to my political feelings about living in a Jewish state. In Jerusalem (and I'm told in most other Jewish Israeli cities), the roads are entirely bereft of cars. None. All the children--secular and religious--come out with their rollerblades and bikes, riding down the major thoroughfares in prime rush hour time. To steal from one of the Hav wordsmiths, I can make a joke about ofanei ha-kodesh, the holy revolving spheres and the modern Hebrew word for bicycle. These children can participate in the religious day of not-riding in cars, but more than that, they can participate in the political day of having streets of our own, where traffic can stop because the Jewish state decides that this is a day of no-cars for everyone. (One might make the point that this is another instance of the uniformity of practice imposed by the Rabbinate, but that's for another post.)

In any case, no good spiritual awakenings, but I did learn a couple terrific tunes and missed my rollerblades a whole lot. If I'd not been groggy w/no food, I'd have cut a figure 8 or two with the hippie kids in the street.

Other snippets of life here:

- Being the only woman in my MDA class wearing pants. I'll write about my nervousness about becoming a medic in a later post, but being that this is a religiously-focused post (in a good time for sinat chinam), I'll just mention that this was the first time I saw everyday folks with orange pro-settler ribbons on the bags.

- Trying to buy a prefab sukkah and lulav in the shuk. Yesterday was an information-gathering day, and today I return with my male kippah-wearing friend and my long sleeves to try again. I think we'll be in luck, but we may have to pay a pretty penny--this'll be my first time indulging in a prefab kit. Wonder whether I can ship it home to the US?

- The weather is changing--almost too cool for sleeveless except in the midday heat. I'm told that the skies open up as soon as Sukkot ends, coinciding perfectly with our prayers for rain.

- My MOM comes tomorrow! Hooray! We are off traveling next week, to Tel Aviv and Haifa and Kibbutz Be'eri and perhaps the Akko theater festival. All the rest of you who are considering coming, prices on tix are falling, falling...

New Year, Old City

25 September 2006

The picture of the day, in honor of Mr. G. and what we're not eating:

I write this from the lunchroom of a certain yeshiva that happens to be located above a Mazda dealership, rather than attending yet another class that I likely won't take. With the coming of this new year, I hope to be freed of my nagging desire to take as many classes as I possibly can--this is not high school, after all. So while I can't relax today with a coffee in some lovely cafe, I'll take my few moments to catch up on this rather-neglected blog.

I find myself settling in rather well to Jerusalem, still beset occasionally by bouts of homesickness, but doing my best to make space for myself in this town of overwhelming history. Rosh Hashanah here was very nice, full of new and old friends and synagogues on every corner. i was a bit surprised at the number of cars that I still heard outside of my window--I'm told Yom Kippur here is really the holiday of the bicycle, though not Rosh Hashanah.

One thing the holiday brought out for me was the (perhaps flawed) notion of authenticity: in telling a friend about my RH services where everyone spoke English, we both tossed around the word "authentic." If I've spent most of my ritual time with native English speakers, am I having a less "authentic" Israeli experience? On the one hand, I am here to learn Hebrew, and I'm somewhat frustrated that I'm not speaking more Hebrew in my daily life. But I also feel that American Jewry has really been innovative with forms of Jewish expression in ways that I don't see in "native" Israeli Judaism, particularly in terms of egalitarianism and women's issues. I do want to speak Hebrew during davenning, but not if that means I've no way to participate in the service.

There is also the paradox that Israel is entirely an immigrant society, a gathering place for Jews (and Muslims, and Christians, and foreign workers, but that is another story). While we may idealize a country of sabras, the culture has actually been created by people from all over the world who gave up their native languages and lands to speak Hebrew and become Israeli, a melting part even rawer than the American one. As easy as it is for me to disparage spending time with Anglos as being "inauthentic," I shouldn't pretend that the other ethnic enclaves are any more authentic than my corner of Emek Refaim. And I do love the morality, spirituality, flexibility of American Judaism, where I don't have to be either dati or chiloni but can be somewhere in between.

That said, it's time to begin speaking Hebrew! So far it's been very easy for me to shop classes at the various liberal yeshivot around town. I'm ready to begin working at a social service organization that can use my energy and my skills--and hopefully my Hebrew as well.

One other piece of excitement, on the ritual frame: I had my first tefillin experience the other day, one ritual I've avoided (while shooting longing glances). This may be something to be actualized this year...we shall see. I'm a bit scared to purchase tefillin here--will they be as kind to a woman as the Brookline folks? (See "egalitarianism" above.) Ah well, we shall see.