HalfSours

A commenter wrote on Kvetcher.net that;

If the Hareidim would sink into the earth and vanish from human sight, and if the Christian fundies would get raptured already and float off to meet Jesus in the sky, and if the Islamic fundies would go to Paradise to be with their I forget how many virgins, the rest of us might be able to get on with the business of creating a civilization that was actually tolerable to live in.

Yes! It’s my dream as well that the earth should be purged of all who think differently than me. You might call it a personal crusade of mine. Or jihad. That works too.

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.

“Glum” is the perfect descriptive for when one, perhaps an addled woman in her early 20s, has depressive yearnings to watch Marilyn Manson perform a routine on “Dancing with the Stars”. Fareed Zakaria thinks so. Fareed Zakaria got his Ph.D. from Harvard. Fareed Zakaria is quite the subcontinental sexpot. Fareed Zakaria would look great in a blue spandex jumspsuit. Stop lackadaisically swishing the contents of that cocktail shaker, dear reader. I call your attention to this: The Rise of the Rest

The women of my extended Persian family, even the ones well into their sixties, could double for the Kardashians should some righteous members of their crew stage a violent coup, and de-throne TV’s Armenian royalty. They are almost uniformly tanned, expertly groomed, and by all tastes, gorgeous. Yet nearing Passover they become so unrecognizably domestic looking that I would, were I so bold, warn them against spending time in the parking lot of Home Depot, lest La Migra think that they are illegal hired help. This is in small part due to their complexions, but also due to the fact that bebe hasn’t yet come out with a line of aprons (I don’t think).

I have heard it said in Israel, where knowledge of the Ashkenazi/Mizrachi rift is bounds ahead of us in The States, that Sephardi/Mizrachi women are fanatic about Pesach cleaning. I have heard it also said that Hashem judges a woman’s righteousness by the fervor with which she cleans for Pesach. If the Israeli school of thought on this matter is correct, then ipso facto, Hashem loves Mizrachi/Sephardi women more than Ashkenziot.

There is no empirical evidence to prove this. I have mere anecdotes that I hope my readers, of which I believe there to be a good 6, will come through with in kind. I anticipate a good turnout in the comments page; there is always interest in discussing who Hashem loves more, albeit usually between Jewish denomination rather than ethnicity.

In my mother’s hay-day as a balabusta, she used to shriek at us kids like Judge Judy on the rag if we were caught outside the kitchen with chametz. Dad did not have immunity. This wouldn’t start the week before. Oh no, this would begin and only intensify starting from three months before Pesach. I have a faint memory of such a happening on New Year’s day once, though I don’t remember of which year.

Every year she would use rolls of aluminum foil to quarantine off chametz sections of the kitchen. Were it World War II my mother could have halted the entire war effort with the amount of tin foil she used. There were usually just dishes in those sections in any case; no actual chametz ever survived the great purge. Her rationale for this was that she did not want us to confuse chametz dishes with Pesach dishes. The Pesach dishes, of which there are three sets (dairy, meat, and fancy meat), are more impressive than the dishes we use the whole rest of the year.

Most families have the minhag of hiding a bit of chametz the day before Pesach, and ritually hunting and burning it. My mother could not risk contamination for this tomfoolery, even through the protective sheath of a ziplock bag.

The other women on her side are similarly fervent.

When I moved to Israel, and spent my first Pesach without my family, I was adopted by a couple in their early thirties. He was Persian, and she, I’ll call her Nancy, half Ashkenazi, half Moroccan. Nancy, like me, is technically Ashkenazi from her paternal line. She considers marriage to a Persian, which makes her now Sephardi by minhag, a fine fit. These factors, I think, make her an anthropological wonder. She was my on-call person for Halakhic advice throughout the cleaning season. I was invited to her home for the Shabbat of Pesach chol, when she, a charedi woman, outright refused to allow her husband to learn from his sfarim; she was as frightened as a sheep on shear day that there might be crumbs stuck between the pages. And you know what? That actually made great sense to me.

In wrapping up, I am compelled to quote one of my favorite bloggers, and writers in general, Michael, of KosherEucharist.com:

The Cleaning: There are two major schools of thought when it comes to Passover cleaning: there’s the school that gives the floors a good sweep, locks up the plates, pots and pans, buys some paper plates and plastic forks, and goes and does something meaningful with its life; then there’s the school that throws out any food item or utensil ever suspected of having come into contact with leaven or legume, including ovens, sinks and children, and attacks with Lysol and Q-tips the devious chametz hiding, ready for unwitting consumption, in the cracks between the ceilings and floors. As with most things, I belong to a third school: the school that motivates itself to perform a thorough house cleaning through the use of amphetamines. By the end of thirty-some straight hours of awake, jittery and obsessively thorough housecleaning, your fingertips bleeding from the combined action of the rough side of the sponge and the bleach, you will rest content in the knowledge that you have performed a mitzvah - because you have actually heard the voice of God in your head commending you for it. Obviously, this school is not for everyone; I recommend that the faint-hearted among you use a sponge without a rough side.

So where do I live in this mad territory? I’m an interesting case study too. As I’ve hinted at, I take after my mother. When it came time to clean my own apartment for Passover I more closely resembled a dumpster woman than a Long Island Jewess. My four roommates had all scattered on home and left me with an entire apartment to clean. I called Michael, and may or may not have hinted that if he came over I would help him find Adderoll for his snorting pleasure. Michael, by bus or foot, was over within half an hour, and at my service.

Nancy had told me that an alternative to boiling water to purify kitchen surfaces was using bleach. We went through two bottles, and I insisted on going to the neighbor’s to borrow some more. Michael was inspired to write the above piece, thanks in no small part I’m sure, to that unending night he had in my apartment. By five A.M. the place looked like a space station, and the bleach had permanently scrambled our fingerprints. It was, in all earnestness, great seasonal fun.

I was in Penn Station two days ago on, as far as I’m concerned, the worst day of the year to be in Manhattan. I shan’t mention the name of the culpable Catholic holiday on this page, as that would preclude my blog from being introduced into the canon in years to come. The city, especially the train station, was teeming with pasty New Jerseyans with cheap green plastic beads hanging down their chests. The streets of Midtown later, like I’ve trudged over in Dublin, were an expansive swamp of vomit.

As I see it the Irish paid their dues to the city when they built all those bridges and whatnot. Where I’m concerned, they can have their one day to run amuck of the city. Heck, when I was a senior in high school and working as an intern in the publishing racket I got to watch the parade in person. My office was right off of Fifth Avenue, and every third Irish boy had cut school that day to run around, red heads blazing, asking girls to kiss them in the merit of them being born of the clan. Fortunately, my usual penchant for red heads was curbed by the smell of the fresh morning puke.

This year I experienced a different unpleasantry: rollicking anti-Semitism. An older frum man with full beard and fur hat (not a striemel, but a fitted, Russian style hat) was walking on his way somewhere. A group of about 10 of the aforementioned pasty New Jerseyans passed him in the terminal. The tallest of the group, flanked by women, pointed his long arms out at the frummy and said; “Yeah, there’s my man right there.” The frum man then said; “what is wrong with you?”, and continued walking in the opposing direction. Another guy at the front of the group then said loudly; “this is America, ya know?” Not one member of their group chided either of them. Some laughed along with them, some paid no mind.

I was a bit taken aback by this. The Irish and the Jews by all accounts should have a strong kinship forged by a similar history of subjugation. Ireland’s history is one of the least tarnished by violent anti-Semitic crimes. There was one incident known as the Limerick Pogrom which, as pogroms go, was actually pretty pathetic; thank G-d no one was actually even killed. The rest of their record is relatively clean.

Irish-Americans have a more extensive history of anti-Semitism, which culminated in 1902 during the funeral of Rabbi Jacob Joseph; Irish workers from the R. Hoe company attacked mourners, throwing iron and other projectiles at them. The police called to the scene, mostly Irish, then came and indiscriminately clubbed the Jews in the crowd. Prior to and after that incident it was not uncommon for Jewish peddlers in New York to have their beards pulled by dock workers.

The jerks in the train station were not pulling on the frummy’s beard, but in my mind there was still an injustice done; the guy was just walking through the hall, looking a bit different and minding his business.

I wish I had the wherewithal to say something to them. I was in the midst of a long trip back home from Vermont, was balancing several irregularly shaped objects in my arms, and looked too disheveled to want to draw attention to myself. My usual biting tongue did not feel that it have the go-ahead to lash out at that moment. Quite honestly I’m not sure that protesting that kind of behavior really helps in any case. Ethnic tension is as old as ethnicity. We’re all guilty of ethnic bias; until Messianic days it is here to stay. I like the approach of Eileen Scully, an Irish-American history professor, who once taught me that you can’t use logic or persuasive argument to sway people out of their set opinions. Your actions and behavior are your best modus operandi to sway minds.

So Harvard chose to allot separate time for women to work out at one of their gyms. Then all the little co-eds with no other cares in the world started going ape-shit. It turns out that the Ivy-class is only tolerant of the religious and cultural sensibilities of others when they aren’t inconveniencing them. So one of the campus gyms is closing its doors to men, and allowing modest (mostly Muslim) women to work out sans their presence. People are trying to make this out to be another Plessy vs. Ferguson. Big woop. I have faith that the spry Harvard Renaissance man can hoof it to another campus gym during the six hours per week that particular one is closed to them. And don’t ever let me hear a peep out of Harvard when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. Those people can’t even share a gym facility with Muslims. We share a country.

Read this if you can stand to:
“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521876″>thttp://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521876

I have no opinions to opine on future prevention or retribution. I just thought that it should be acknowledged that at least eight people were senselessly murdered today at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav today in Jerusalem.

‘Terrorist fired 500-600 bullets before he was killed’

I virulently disapprove of the eroticizing of butt-cleavage. It is, aside from the wrathful jellyfish, the least appealing part of any Tel Aviv beach. Every time I see a sexy lady drawing attention to herself in that way I wonder if she also thinks toilet plungers make cute accessories.

As an expert aesthetician (10 college credits in photography), I can certify that a person’s body, in the public realm, is most alluring when it is left mostly unrevealed.

Too much exposure to a good thing can lead to its ultimate under-appreciation (think Seinfeld in syndication). I find that this is a general truism for nearly every good thing in life. In fact, at the moment I’m typing this I can’t think of a single exception.

Women in the Western world have dressed progressively more revealingly since the middle of the last century. The fashion industry, not to be degraded to anything less than a community of true artists, has always sought to push the envelope. Artists, I find, have this drive to be so in your face, that you’re often left in need of a handkerchief to remove the smear marks left behind.

If we are constantly stimulated by revealing, sexy persons around us, do our senses not become frayed and numbed? If, what is meant to be erotic is so ubiquitous that has becomes commonplace, how can it possibly hold the same power?

Time was that a woman dressed just so could stop traffic. Today, undaunted by that diminished possibility, we have billboards with nearly naked women on practically every major roadway.

And so sexuality has become less sexual.

Do we really want to live in a world where nothing, not even the G-d given blessing of sexuality, is sacred?

Even for some of the biggest packers and pushers of sexuality, like Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Jester Turney, the over-exposure has become ad nauseam.

Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy

I have a fierce hatred for American watering holes on account of my own Noam Chomsky strength self-hatred. Naturally, as is the trend amongst many others like me in Israel, I like to avoid them at almost all costs. On Friday I needed to complete some work via email for my employers in Vermont. I needed really fast internet connection, so I took my laptop for a walk. I know of this one cafe that only Americans ever set foot in because of the outrageous prices. But I really needed that fast internet.

I considered sitting by the curb, thinking that if I stayed on the periphery of the place my immune system might keep its integrity, and I wouldn’t lose my decent “Reish” and hardening sensibilities. Then I was reminded of my part Persian, part Hunk lineage by the guard outside shouting “mah, atah Parsi?” to somebody else doing something cheap outside. Helping myself to their internet would only be an affirmation of my inability to perform outside of my genetic disposition. So, with ducked head and hunched posture, I entered the place.

I was looking for a place to unravel. I scanned the room, but there were no free tables. I thought first of sitting down next to a good looking religious guy, but it was a fleeting instinct. That trick is transparent, and I’ve retired it. I saw a girl about my age. She was a bit round and wearing a jean skirt. This is my mate, I thought to myself. I asked her in leisurely Friday morning Hebrew if I could sit. She rendered a flat “no”.

It was too absurd to even be taken aback. My mind took its precious time to process this response. The worst my wildest imaginings had anticipated was the remote possibility of a frame’s-time of sour face. This, of course, would be followed by a warmed yield. I was not expecting a cold, unexplained, and unapologetic “no”. It was like she was sending me and my small boat back to Cyprus. My expectations were too fundamental to be dashed. I still don’t know from where the cognizance came for me to expel this basic question;
“why?”
She said with an ambiguously Israeli tongue “I’m using the table”, then put her earphones back in and continued listening to whatever me-generation music that nurtures this kind of crap.

Though I’m not sure she heard, I muttered at mid volume; “Shabbat Shalom to you too.”

Well this incident was the maraschino cherry on the liverwurst of my week.

My Father, a brilliant and excellent man, wanted me to appreciate this thing from his experiences in life: “[Daughter], people will never fail to disappoint you.” In my earlier period of infatuation with this country, I thought that it might offer millions of people to the exception.

Lately I have been experiencing more jagged interactions here, and have revisited that theory. On this Friday morning, overwhelmed by this woman’s cold rejection of communal sensibility, I wondered if I initially hypothesized incorrectly. At that point I’m really low. Perhaps the people of this country are special in other ways, but still fit Dad’s model.

This Sunday I woke up, stepped out of my hovel, discovered a short new way to a superior bus route, and caught the bus immediately. Sitting across the aisle from me was the woman I saw in the coffee shop. I say woman, but her roundness, her words, and her earphone dependence don’t follow suit. She was writing in an ulpan book. Eureka! NOT ISRAELI!

Well things started to look sunny again. She was not a home-grown blight on Israeli society, but a foreign element. Perhaps she was still maladjusted to Israeli sensibilities. She did not speak for the whole of the county with her stony “no”.

I could tell this woman off in my mother tongue. Excellent.

I thought to myself: this is an opportunity that could only have been granted by G-d to administer some Seinfeldian justice to this woman. I would fill the hole where my self-respect had been staked.

This must be done with tact, I thought. I could not simply bitch her out drive-by fashion, and leave her spurting red without so much as a napkin. I would do this to be constructive, with the poise of a teacher of etiquette. A gentle reminder of maintaining our manners. All good intentions. Sure. Good old intentions.

“Excuse Me”
(unplugging earphones)
“You were in Cafe [X] this weekend, right?”
(blank stare, slight head shake to the negative)

At this point I’m wondering if it is maybe the wrong girl, but instinct tells me to keep at it.

“Or Cafe [Y]. Yes it was Cafe [Y]. I asked if I could sit down and share a table with you. You flat out said no. I would hope that next time, in this country, in a crowded restaurant, you would be more welcoming.”

I was becoming a bit ruffled. My English was crumbling. I was not being as articulate as I can be (i.e. “welcoming”). She said something to the muffled effect of;
“Why?”

All good intentions then left me. My temper flared, and my words turned into living organisms who spurn a leash.

“Because it’s rude and selfish.”

“I don’t think it’s rude.”

This is the point in time that this woman, had she been aware of my inner urgings, would thank G-d all her life for saving her from being shanked in the side. Instead I re-furled myself and said this;

“Then you have no derech eretz.”

At this, stunned and wounded I’m sure, she plugged her ears with the earphones, and rightly ignored me. Now for several minutes I am content as a fed cat. I didn’t even care that she was still sitting within 5 feet of me, and we had 15 minutes left of the bus ride.

We both got off at the University, which I anticipated would happen even before I opened my mouth. We walked within a dozen feet of each other over the Jerusalem stone. This is after all the world capital of self-righteousness. I felt that, if she felt awkward after this confrontation, she could give me a heartfelt kiss on the ass.

Then I start to be ashamed of myself. I embarrassed this woman, in public, on a bus. People, given the opportunity to exercise their English skills, must have understood. I ravaged this person. I am certainly a shit.

The Talmud rationalizes, quite cogently, that to embarrass a fellow person in public is a very hefty sin. Our sages go so far as to compare it to murder. Everybody would be protected from all kinds of painfully memorable encounters if we all strove not to embarrass our fellows.

I saw this girl later in the day on Sunday. I wanted to apologize to redeem myself from the condemning finger of heaven. I was too embarrassed. Isn’t it amazing how we can be so embarrassed to try and make a cruelty up to somebody, but not embarrassed to commit them in first place? Isn’t it more amazing how we can fear the harsh judgment of others more so than G-d?

Doubtless this woman thinks I’m batshit insane. I’m too ashamed to confront her again. I mostly afraid I’ll start a verbal pounce again. Or she’ll cower again by reflex on my approach. I certainly gave her justification for any sort of reaction. So lame and inadequate as it is, I offer this apology:

Girl, whoever you are, I am sorry for browbeating you in public view. It was very wrong. I should not have turned you into the personified symbol of a few weeks of my life gone awry. Please forgive me, and if you let me, I’ll carry your books home from school sometime, and buy you a coffee. You can have your own table if you want it.

Several months ago, around the time of Mahmoud Achmedinejad’s sensational visit, David Kelsey posed a few questions to him on his blog. David might not have taken into account that Prez Achmedinejad is very busy braiding nooses, and coaching Iran’s olympic flogging team. He is far too busy to answer every question posed by every Jew with a blog. Being somewhat versed in Persian life and cultural milieu, I figured that I should do my part to save the president his valueble time. The question that I have chosen to address is this one:

3) I find Persian women very attractive, but have heard they are often hairy. Is this true, or is it a Moroccan slander?

We Persian women are, if I do say so, very beautiful. And, like those domestic felines that carry our national namesake, we are the hairiest little powder-puffs this side of Tehran. Lest David think that I am just a master of pun, he should ask himself; just why do all these reputedly beautiful women hide behind those ensconcing burkas (chador in Farsi)? They cover themselves so the dark men-folk over there don’t get driven mad with wild desire for those hott, shapely bods. And to conceal some wicked Middle Eastern stubble.

That shouldn’t deter Kelsey from dating an American-Persian. Most of us deal with our hair with ingenuity; we outsource.

We, as a community, have had an implemented a practice since the days of Queen Esther. Backed with all the resources of King Achasveroush’s kingdom, emissaries scoured the Korean countryside. His men traversed perilous mountain peak after mountain peak. Their mission, and that of their successors, has been to find the most aggressive Korean woman of that generation. The Midrash excludes this little piece of our history, but indigenous Asian folkloric record supports my recounting.

Generations of such women have been plucked from their villages. They were never permitted to marry. Like nuns they are completely wed to their spiritual calling; purging us Persian JAPS of the unsightly. Their story has never been shared in any means other than whispers East or West of those Asian mountaintops. They are never seen outside of their meager accommodations in the backrooms of waxing salons in Great Neck and LA. Thus, fear not David Kelsey. Thanks to the painstaking efforts of these fierce, Yellow, women the result is a product of woman that is Korean tested, Ashkenazi approved!