Deityblog

כמעמד מיוחד של אין ההופך לשעה להיות יש

2008-01-21T00:49:00.000-08:00

I read that line this morning on the bus and immediately two things happened: "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" came on the radio, and I remembered the dream I had last night that was connected to Dead Kennedys' "Pull My Strings."
And this morning, BaMatMaBat is in Jpost. It's a good day.

Gamble Everything: Chapter 1

2007-12-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

One Day Earlier

"What would you say you would want to change about your life, if anything was possible?" He asks me, his gaze level behind thick rimless glasses.
Instantly, I answer, "I would want to have my shit together."
"Interesting." He shifts in his chair, perhaps uncomfortable with my profanity. "Meaning?"
"To be able to have all the little balls in the air nailed down, and not be so overwhelmed by every little thing I have to do. It's keeping me from tackling the big things I want to do in my life." Are there really people out there who don't ever feel this way, who go through life completely unencumbered by crippling anxiety? Who are these people, and what kind of meds are they on?
"Have you tried making lists, Miranda?"
"Yes, but then when I don't get it all done I feel even worse about myself."
"Ah, perhaps you're making your lists too aspirational."
I blink. "Meaning?"
"Try having lower expectations of yourself."
The alarm buzzes.
"Aaaand our time is up, Miranda. Why don't you work on that and we'll see you next week?"

Gamble Everything: Prologue

2007-12-24T02:18:00.001-08:00

Pieces of a novel/short story/something or other I'm working on.

There is this girl. Looks very young, with huge slightly-slanted cat eyes. Small hands with thin white fingers clutching a portable music player, the headphones lodged in her ears. She wears a loose white tunic over a light white skirt, ethereal and inappropriate for a cold December morning. A small brown hat covers short dirty-blonde hair which peeks out in angry unwashed spurts.

Coming onto the bus, she moves erratically, lumbering with the gait of a small animal. She sits down in front of me, and I see her tunic has the words "Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital" on it, along with a mysterious brown stain. She rocks back and forth in her seat, to the music or to some inner rhythm. Her eyes dart from one window to the other. She exudes self-satisfaction and excitement, showing flashes of a smile as if in appreciation of some hilarious private joke. Yet watching her, I am struck by a feeling of deep, unyielding despair, a dark, uncaring past full of loneliness and harsh words. I don't know why.

At the stop right before mine, she suddenly stands up and bounds off the bus to the nearest intersection. A second later, I realize she has left behind a small, black backpack, which now likes half-open on the floor at my feet. I grab the bag and look up, we're still at a red light. I call to the driver to open the door and I'm on the street.

"Hey!" I shout, running toward the intersection, "You forgot something!" I wave the bag in the air. "Hey!" She doesn't hear me. I draw closer, "You left this on the bus!" I'm 20 feet away when she abruptly turns around and stares at me. Then she steps right into oncoming traffic.

Poem by Marge Piercy

2007-12-24T02:14:00.000-08:00

Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favorably reviewed.
Beforehand what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done after the play is produced and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to get out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you had after the third volume of remarkable poems.
Earlier they accuse you of withdrawing, ask why you don't have a baby, call you a bum.

The reason people want MFAs, take workshops with fancy names when all you can really learn is a few techniques, typing instructions and someone else's mannerisms

Is that every artist lacks a license to hang on the wall like your optician, your vet
Proving you may be a clumsy sadist whose fillings fall into the stew, but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Maria Bamford

2007-12-24T02:12:00.001-08:00

Maria Bamford is pure awesomeness. I was home sick yesterday and watched all of her web videos (link on site), where she plays all of the characters in her family, her therapist, agent, childhood enemy, etc. etc. She is insanely talented and hilarious funny in the way she deals with serious issues including depression, anxiety, wanting to make a difference in the world but not knowing how, not having one's shit together, just a few things I might relate to a little bit. Check her out.

Make Your Life Extraordinary

2007-06-03T04:01:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's an ego thing, or a result of being a child of the 80's, but I've always believed that I was meant to do something big with my life. Have a major impact, do something truly great. Found an organization, fight for human rights and social justice, change the world. I think a lot of people believe this and lose it somewhere down the line in the face of practicality, complacency, and for some, fear. That's what I'm experiencing, anyway.

I have a great life. Love my job; it's interesting work for great causes with some very fun people. Love my home, my friends, my hobbies, my husband. But somehow, with the exception of the husband and friends, who are all wonderful, it's not enough. I don't feel like I'm contributing to the world at the level I want to be, or learning from the world in fundamental, essential ways. I don't want to lead a life of quiet desperation. I've had spiritual "awakenings" and deep epiphanies in my life that would suggest something greater.

And to clarify, I don't believe that I'm somehow superior to anyone else or that I alone can change the world. What I believe is that every single person can and should live their dreams, that the phrase "only human" is a grave distortion of our staggeringly great potential as human beings to channel God into this world and be the change we want to see in it.

I have yet to find, or it has yet to be revealed to me, my personal tafkid in this world, this life. As Yishai says, not using one's talents is like spitting in God's face. I have some thoughts, but a combination of the aforementioned hang-ups have kept me from pursuing these ideas thus far. For now, I'm plugging away at work, supporting Yaakov in rabbinical school so that he can fulfill his dream of being a master Jewish educator. I'm very inspired by his dedication and by the fact that he knows what he wants to do and is damn good at it. In about two years from now, he'll have smicha and it will be time, if I so desire, for him to work while supporting me in my next step. Obviously I don't have to make this decision right now, but it's been coursing through my head constantly and I'm torn between two options that may or may not define the rest of my life.

Basically, it comes down to the following, with pros and cons that are pretty much based on preconceptions that are probably far from reality, but oh well:

~ Human rights law. Ever since I took a class in International Human Rights Law in college, I've wanted to be a human rights lawyer.

PROS: I could be damn good at this, I have the passion, energy and with years of training will have the skills and knowledge to be of assistance to victims of serious human rights violations, in the context of an international body such as the ICC or a human rights organization.

CONS/ FEARS: I could bury myself in three years of law school and come out totally burned out and no longer have the energy to do human rights law, and instead work at a desk for some firm to pay off years of debt. I could also do very well and get a job in international law that will basically mean I'm absent from the lives of my husband and (future) children.

WHAT IT WOULD ENTAIL: Depends on whether I decide to go in Israel or the US. I honestly don't know if I have the strength to go to law school in Israel; it's hard enough without the language gaps, even if I bone up hardcore on my Hebrew in the coming years. So then first, this would entail returning to the States for 3 years (But that's okay, Yaakov and I have discussed the possibility of going to the US for awhile so that our (future) children will have a few years to develop relationships with their grandparents). Oh right, and taking the LSAT. If there's math on the LSAT, I'm screwed and this discussion is already over.

~ Theater. Since I was 7 I've been doing theater in a variety of companies. I've acted, directed, ran a teen theater company and co-founded another company in Baltimore.

PROS: Living out my dream; I love acting and just about everything involved with theater (exceptions: musical theater that takes itself too seriously, David fucking Mamet, Cats, and those ridiculous shows they're making now based on rock stars' greatest hits. Kill me.). I would be committed to doing theater that would impact peoples' lives fundamentally; pieces that challenge, provoke, inspire. I would do theater for social change, I would act and eventually found a company, perhaps in Israel, devoted to theater for social change. Hmm, that's actually a really good idea I just had -- a Living Stage-esque English-speaking theater company in Israel. To the best of my knowledge nothing like this exists here.

CONS: Would have no idea where to start. Would need serious training -- could I get that in Israel? I mean, I don't even really know if I'm any good, I just know it's what I love to do and that I find serious meaning in it, even spirituality, in bringing human stories to life.
Other major con -- would I be able to be financially stable in this field? That's a big, serious practical worry that it's easy to dismiss in the name of carpe diem, but hits you in the ass when the rent bill comes along.

WHAT IT WOULD ENTAIL: Finding a teacher, finding a partner or two, finding a space. Hell, I'd start right now, as a night-job, if I could. Why can't I? Try it out with a few people, at night, for the next couple of years, and see where it goes.

I need to go write to some people.

Thanks for listening!

Shabbat with the Shamberginis

2007-05-20T05:27:00.000-07:00

I'm just coming down off a glorious high from spending Shabbat with some of the greatest people I know. Yesterday was Dovie Shamberg's bar mitzvah at the kotel, so the whole family came in and lots of amazing chevre were there. After he did an incredible job with kriat haTorah at the kotel (in the blazing hot sun, which my now blazing red chest and face can attest to), we headed back up to the Tzemach Tzedek shul in the Old City for a lovely celebration and very good macrobiotic food. Got to chill with Eliyahu, Yosef, Shaul, Gershon and of course Shlayma and Miriam. Aron and Shoshana were so happy, they were floating on air. Dovie was a total pro, and thanked each one of his siblings for what they've taught him. He told Shlayma, "Thanks for letting me know what's right and wrong." Haha, so true. Avraham and Esther Sutton were there as well, and he gave a beautiful dvar Torah in his usual meditative, stream-of-consciousness style. I really miss learning from Avraham, and I told him so. Who knows, maybe we'll head out there for Shabbat sometime soon.

That night at the subsequent melava malka, Tova had me repeatedly hold her baby, feed him, and burp him. Apparently she has an agenda in getting me to be comfortable with babies. Sorry hon, not for awhile. Lots of other things to do before having kids, including Yaakov getting out of the army and traveling and in general being able to get a least a bit of my own shit together before not only giving birth to but being responsible for the life of another human being. At this point I can barely handle having cats.

Anyway, being around so many incredible people that I know well and feel comfortable with always spurs me to be my best self; I suppose that's often the way it is. So what to do with these feelings of inspiration?

~ CALL IBRAHIM
~ set up chavruta for real
~ have a Shavuot that puts the "holy" in "holiest motherfucking Shavuot ever"

Fun plans for tonight -- dropping off headshots at the home of a director to possibly be cast in a commercial (!), editing footage of "Some Girl(s)" with Michael, finishing cleaning the crap out of the old apartment with Yaakov and getting the new one ready for the arrival of Yish-to-the-I.

hello hello hello

2007-05-17T02:12:00.000-07:00

Dammit, no matter what I do I can't seem to get back into the blogging groove. Here are some updates:

The Orthodox Anarchist Has Left the Building
Went to Dan's Descent into Exile party the other night. Israel will definitely be a less fun and radical place without him, but I fully support his decision to leave and seek his fortune elsewhere. Dovide and Amy were there, and we made plans to learn together, which I'm very excited about, and which fulfills my stretch from last week -- to make a set time for learning each week. So yay!

Journaling vs. Blogging
Amy and I got into a discussion about journaling vs. blogging: which is more authentic and spiritually satisfying. I feel that I journal and blog for very different reasons. I journal to process, I blog to give people updates about my life, for the most part. Most of what I write in my journal is extremely personal, not stuff I would put up online. I write in there for release, and it's a very freeing and gratifying process. Blogging is also great, but why I'm less drawn to it is because a. I started this blog to keep in touch with friends all over the world, but b. I don't feel that many people are reading, so c. it's hard to focus on it, therefore d. I don't write and e. nobody reads and f. self-fulfilling prophecy self-fulfilled! But I do see the value in it and therefore am trying to break this cycle.

Pop Culture Crap
I'm just gonna say it, I know I should be too cool to give a crap, but I'm pissed that Melinda was kicked off American Idol. She was hands-down the best, she reminded me of a cross between Aretha and Tina Turner, and she got kicked off because she's not as cute or trendy as the other two, who are so saccharine and boring. Whatever, stupid show yields stupid results.

We've Moved...
...so don't go looking for us at our old place. We won't be there. Our new place is on 15 Eilat, and it's very purty, or at least will be when we put all the crap away and our new aron comes. I'll post chanukat habayit details soon.

3 Spiritually Constructive Things for Today:
~ Be productive at work. I know, it doesn't sound so "spiritual," but wasting time is not good for my soul.
~ Daven mincha.
~ Call Amy about chavruta with Dovide.

We shall see....

Dream

2007-04-25T02:48:00.000-07:00

Had a really nice, chill Yom Haatzmaut, and a very meaningful Yom Hazikaron (my first in Israel). But meanwhile, crazy dreams these past few nights. Here's one I remember:

Walking through Nachlaot at night with Y., on some sort of mission to do something. Don't know why Yaakov and L. aren't with us. We get to this area that's a ruin or a museum, a building that had something to do with World War II and Nazis, don't know what. It's pretty scary, in that way that old buildings are sometimes scary at night, especially if they have weird connotations. A female police officer with short hair yells at us that we can't be there, so we leave. On our way out, there's a couple behind us, a father and daughter. But once we're out, they're not behind us anymore, they somehow disappeared, and I say to Y. that I think they were ghosts. Then he leaves, and I'm in Nachlaot at night, but the scary deserted part, and all of a sudden there's a huge crocodile there, covered in the blood of something it just ate, and it's in between me and my way home, so I'm freaked out, and I start banging on doors yelling in Hebrew that there's a crocodile outside and please let me in! and nobody does, all I get is silence and locked doors and I'm desperate and scared. End.

WTF? Anybody want to interpret?

what have you done today to make you feel proud?

2007-03-22T00:48:00.000-07:00

It's playing in the background, courtesy of Ben, my bleached-blonde fun-loving work little brother.

So yesterday I didn't daven mincha because of an afternoon meeting I had forgotten about. I did, however, learn with Yaakov, and I did spent a significant amount of time with Letters, which I found to be both intuitive and synchronous, so that was great. I was reading some back entries in my journal, old weird dreams, morning pages, and came across an entry that was virtually identical to yesterday's post. And it was March 21, 2006. Things spiral, right? I took it positively, that I'm waking up again, this time at a much better place than I was last year.

So three things for today:

1) daven and learn (should be regulars)

2) more Letters

3) clean for Pesach--always a cathartic experience

Also, while we're on the subject of lists, need to:

1) call my grandmother

2) call Roger about the seder

3) sort out my failure to appear for jury duty in Baltimore--I didn't even get the summons until a week after the date I needed to appear. I hope they don't arrest me at the airport or something. I immediately thought of this cartoon by the genius Emily Flake.

Now "Galileo" is playing and I'm missing Shana and those nights singing at the Shambergs' so much it hurts. So glad we're going back next week.

talkin' bout a revolution

2007-03-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

Enough. Enough already. Enough spiritual and physical malaise. Enough sickness and infection, literal and figurative. The antibiotics are supposedly working and my body is on its way to healing, now it's time to finally, at long last focus on my soul. It's been in hibernation, maybe even a coma, for who knows how long but definitely during this winter. Yaakov thinks it's since I graduated from college, since I stopped being constantly intellectually/creatively stimulated. But that was two years ago, and it's pretty sad that I wouldn't have found any other stimulation since. I think I've felt lostin the universe, wanting to dare to disturb but not ever sure of my voice, not ever comfortable in my skin. This is why I've started and quit countless endeavors that would be spiritually/physically/creatively productive, because I don't really believe in myself, and of course there's the added lethargy that comes with depression.
But I'm so, so sick of this. So sick of always making excuses, always doing things half-assed, never doing what I want because of some stupid subconscious fear. So if I want to change, and not just wait on the world to change (that song happens to be playing in the background right now), I think what I need to do is open myself up to the universe. Which sounds corny and vague, yes, but I plan to do it in small ways, to do three spiritually constructive things a day, that I will try to record here to keep myself consistent. I've felt so disconnected for so long, walking through a haze and just existing, not really living, not living into an iota of the greatness I feel I was created to create, that we all were created to discover. But I can create my own reality, I've always believed that, and so now is the time, starting small, starting in my own committed way. Now that it's Nisan and things are beginning to bloom all around me, I feel that it's about damn time for a personal wake-up.

Three Things for Wednesday, March 21:

~ daven mincha
~ learn with Yaakov tonight
~ read Letters to a Young Artist

Starting small, but there's no shame in that. Starting with the fundamentals. Wish me luck.

Open Letter to Friends: Where the Hell Are You?

2007-02-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

I sent this to a few friends I've been missing earlier today, then figured it's a pretty universal message, why not post it here? Therefore, behold:

Hey guys, it's been a long time, and in the winter hibernation I feel like we've lost touch with some of you and that makes me cry myself to sleep at night and sing to my cats more than usual. they don't like my james taylor impression, sadly, so the situation is less than ideal for all those concerned, including yaakov, who spends his time staring far into space while nursing a pipe and rambling occasionally about esoteric concepts in chassidut. i've been watching "heroes" which i'm starting to believe is less than ideal as well (what the hell is the blonde mom's power? being a violent schizo?), though i've recently discovered a handy super-power i possess: invisibility at work. It makes them give you much less to do. The trick is to sleep all day for over a week due to a mysterious virus that produces a crushing headache and nausea and NO I AM NOT PREGNANT, thank you very much coworkers, doctors, friends, Romans, countrymen--don't you think I would have considered that prospect myself?

ANYWAY, my evenings are spent screaming obscenities at my hapless co-star playing my schmuck of an ex-boyfriend, rehearsing the upcoming play I'll be in, starting next week. I've attached some of our publicity shots. I'm having a lot of fun with it, both due to the obscenities and because I get to wear a blonde wig, and as we all know, that instantly guarantees more fun for everyone concerned. sometimes i have so much fun as a blonde it makes me want to do ridiculous things in public, wear ill-fitting little dresses, ignore my loved ones, check into rehab, and shave my head. but only sometimes. I need sleep.

Yaakov, by the way, is doing great. He loves yeshiva and has moved up from the 2nd to 5th gemara shiur in just three months, which is like a world record or something, it's supposed to take at least two between each level. A genius, that one. but y'all, he's so scruffy. he won't shave because supposedly he's Chabad (NOT Lubavitch, bitches) and Meni said so but I call bullshit, I think it's because he's just lazy and they're conspiring against me to slowly crush my spirit through raging neckhair. but I will NOT BE DEFEATED. I'm going to go about this Delilah vs. Samson style, knaamean? I mean, it's time to shave when Sammy the Big Giant Fluffy Black Man Cat is starting to say "Damn, you are one hairy motherfucker," attempting to groom him as one of his own. There is a LINE. There is also a PINK BIC RAZOR. I'm just SAYING. He's driving me to it, I swear.

So this just in: as you know, we'll be in Balto for Pesach. We're swapping houses with the Frischlings, which means we get a Big Giant Gorgeous Victorian House + Car and they get a Pretty Lil' Nachlaot Apt the Size of a 1978 Pinto + Two Disgruntled and Increasingly Overweight Cats. So we're thinking, pending their permission if people are interested, of having a Little Get Together on Shabbat Chol Hamoed to see all of you, since we're not going to be coming in this summer due my snagging of the aforementioned REAL JOB. So let us know if you're up for that. Or down with that. What's up with that? Or dow--you know what? that's it. I need to get back to work. there are people depending on me to write them pretty things that will get them money to SAVE THE WORLD. that is my superpower. I write GRANTS using only the powers of my MIND and the computer and a great deal of chocolate. But since I can't send IMs telepathically or fly or regenerate cells, nobody gives a shit. Well one day I will show them, I will show them all....

Loving you and waiting to hear from you,

DeDe

Is Everyone Batshit Crazy?

2007-02-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

Can Muslims ever be "good" Americans post 9/11? Well, could Jews ever be "good" Germans, circa 1938? Kosher Eucharist with a hilarious take on the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of racism against American Muslims.

And I really love the phrase "batshit crazy." Like the word (and act) "defenestration," it's a beautifully succinct yet evocative expression. Coy yet vivacious.

Yay for West Bank Story

2007-02-26T01:26:00.000-08:00

I have yet to see it, but that doesn't mean I'm not a fan. West Bank Story is the 21-minute musical tale of two star-crossed lovers, David the Israeli soldier and Fatima the Palestinian falafel-place clerk. Tensions ensue between rival falafel establishments, Israeli Kosher King and Palestinian Hummus Hut and David and Fatima must use their love and talent for breaking into random musical numbers to unite their warring peoples. I'm intrigued by this because firstly, I'm a huge musical theater geek and love cheesy stuff, and two, because supposedly it's an even-handed, surprisingly sensitive treatment of the conflict that shows up hatred and bigotry while taking significant issues into account. All in 21 minutes.

But the point, Charlie, the point is that it won the Oscar last night for Best Live-Action Short Film. Wahoo!

Be sure to check the Q&A on the movie site, it's fascinating.

missing Enid

2007-02-26T00:38:00.000-08:00

Check out this story about my aunt, the midrashic poet Enid Dame (z"l), written by her late husband Donald Lev, editor of Home Planet News. Cross-posted from Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF ENID DAME

by Donald Lev

I first met Enid (who was my companion, wife, and colleague for 25 years) through some poems she sent to the New York Poets' Cooperative--it could have been as early as 1975, but more likely 1976 (my sense of chronology is as weak as my sense of direction). The Co-op started in ’69 as an organization that promoted readings—at that period you couldn’t get more than five minutes anywhere in NYC to present your work orally unless you kissed ass at one of two holy edifices—St. Marks in the Bouwerie or the Ninetysecond Street Y. I thought, what is this? Who is this? Does she really spell her last name with an m not an n? Does she either not know what she’s doing or does the sober but funny magic of those unusual poems come from a genuine ability and authority. I guessed the latter and voted with the majority (I believe it was unanimous) to welcome her into membership. One of the poems, “Before,” which subsequently appeared in her first Downtown Poets chapbook Between Revolutions began:

The catshit reproaches me in the bathroom.

The icebox has regressed:

incontinent, it leaks and puddles on the floor.

The drain’s in pain again.

It vomits when I do the dishes.

The dishes crack.

We’re all of us

a bit unwell.

I finally got to meet Enid Dame at a meeting of the New York Poets’ Cooperative. And I came to appreciate her cool literary and political intelligence as well as her inner warmth, honesty, and humor. We soon became friends and allies in some of the controversies rife in the organization (of which I recall nothing now—which fact at least reveals how petty they must have been). When,.in 1978, Mike Devlin and I were beginning to produce issues of Poets Monthly out of Mike’s strategic office in Union Square, I suggested to Mike that we needed a good, organized, literary-minded person to center the enterprise. He agreed. So I got Enid, who at that time was looking for an excuse to lay off her doctoral dissertation for a while (she eventually finished it and became a fully exploitable member of Academia) to take on the task with the title of “associate editor.” But before that time Enid and I met in connection with two other interesting New York City literary institutions of the time: The Print Center and the Downtown Poets Cooperative.The Print Center, in Brooklyn, was where all the small press publishers went in the ‘70s and ‘80s to put their chapbooks and other publications together. Any work you could do yourself, say saddle stitching, trimming, or even typesetting on one of their fine IBM Composers, you did yourself, without any cost to you. And anything the Print Center did for you—which was printing for the most part—was done at very reasonable rates—thanks to NYSCA and NEA funding. The operation was run by poets.

When I first dealt with the Print Center—I notice my third book of poems, copyright 1973 was done there—it was located in a little storefront on State Street. The manager was a pleasant chap named George Faust. All the work was done by the long-suffering Larry Zirlin. By 1975 the Print Center was occupying the first of two similar spaces—large commercial lofts in downtown Brooklyn, near the BQE and the waterfront. In these new locations the manager became Robert Hershon (of Hanging Loose fame); and of course the long-suffering Larry Zirlin was on hand to do all the work. At some point the long-suffering Larry Zirlin was replaced by the uncomplaining Frank Murphy, who also printed the New York Poetry Calendar, which I came to distribute for about fifteen years. (Hershon currently runs something called the Print Center out of offices in Manhattan, which is a much different animal from its predecessor). Among the many many small presses (those were the days when we were a truly powerful movement) that enjoyed the benefits of the Print Center was the Downtown Poets’ Coop. headed by David and Phillis Gershator, two excellent writers and poets themselves, who managed on grants, which were much more plentiful those days, to publish several books and chapbooks.

The Downtown authors whose names are most recognizable today were Ivan Arguelles, Irving Stettner, and Enid Dame.

Enid’s two Downtown Poets chapbooks, Between Revolutions (named “one of the half dozen best of the year” 1977 by Bill Katz of the Library Journal) and Interesting Times (1978), both well printed and illustrated with interesting collages and photographs by her husband of the time, Robin Dame (who, changed in name and gender, is still a good friend and important member of the Home Planet News editorial staff), consists of poems reflecting a period of Enid’s life when she was coming off a long hiatus during which poetry had been replaced by politics (she was a member of that section of SDS which did not use drugs or play with bombs, but also did not get to write the histories of the movement). Now, having left the party which denounced her as a “Bourgeoise Individualist” and moved with husband and cats to Brooklyn, she began writing the funny, sad, nostalgic poems that appear in these books—all soaked in a marinade of place, politics, and Jewish ethnicity.

four days a week

I managethe streets,

the terrible subways

the human explosions

skirting disasters

between revolutions

food cats poetry

sex keep me sane

the recent past

almost sustains me:

Browning and Ruskin

Victorian novels

energy hoarded and measured an inch at a time

my friends know the score:

“politicsare meaningless,

the past a bad joke…”

…yet history rumble sunder the surface

the sea caught in a conch shell

(Between Revolutions)

TodayBrooklyn looks like Russia

In the snow.

The subway stop:

snow on its roof

snow down the tracks

like a railroad station

after a revolution.

People stand muffled:

boots woolen mittens furs

and shopping bags.

A womanreads a Yiddish paper.

A man reads The Daily World.…

We huddlelike survivors…

(“Waiting” in Interesting Times)

Enid’s next book, also from Downtown Poets, was a full collection called On the Road to Damascus, Maryland (1980), which included two types of poems not to be found in the chapbooks: family poems (of which the only example in this particular volume is the title poem), and what Enid was later to call “midrashic poetry”—poems concerned with biblical characters and stories with a view to fill in the blank spaces and answer questions raised in the scriptural narratives. This latter category fills most of the second half of the book in a section called “Traveling Companions.” Here is the first appearance in print of Enid Dame’s signature poem, “Lilith”:

Kicked myself out of paradise

left a hole in the morning

no note no goodbye

the man I lived with

was patient and hairy

he cared for the animals

worked late at night

planting vegetables under the moon…

Taking hints from a 1972 article by Lilly Rivlin in Ms and Susan Sherman’s poem “Lilith of the Wildwood, of the Fair Places,” which was first printed in 1971 (both pieces are reprinted in Which Lilith? Feminist Writers Re-Create the World’s First Woman (Jason Aronson. 1998), an anthology edited by Enid Dame, Lilly Rivlin, and Henny Wenkart), Enid converted Lilith from the Judaeo-Christian Demon to a perennial hip Jewish feminist with some sisterly connections to Mae West and Sadie Thompson.

the middle ages were sort of fun

they called me a witch

I kept dropping in and out

of people’s sexual fantasies

One transitional poem did appear in Enid’s chapbook, Interesting Times. This is “Vildeh Chaya” which she pointed out in her article “Art as Midrash” (published posthumously in Home Planet News #53) was “(a) pivotal poem for me…(n)ot exactly a midrash since there is no such character as Vildeh Chaya in Jewish text. I invented her—a wild Jewish woman—because of a misunderstanding on the part of my mother (who) thought this Yiddish expression actually referred to an archetypal shtetl character "wild Chaya.”

Vildeh Chaya

in the woods on the edge

of the shtetl she hides

mud-splattered dress torn

barefoot she won’t

peel potatoes get married

cut her hair off have children

keep the milk dishes

separatefrom the meat dishes

instead, she

climbs trees talks to animals

naked sings half-crazy

songs to the moon. …

(Interesting Times p.26)

Midrashic poetry is featured also in all of Enid Dame’s subsequent books. Her chapbook Lilith & Her Demons (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1986) and her last book, Stone Shekhina (Three Mile Harbor, 2002) were wholly midrashic in content. In Confessions, an earlier chapbook (1982) from Cross-Cultural Communications, she joins the midrashic “Lot’s Daughter” with two other dramatic monologues (almost all of her midrashic poems were dramatic monologues) featuring Martha Scott, a victim of the Salem witch trials, and Adah Isaacs Mencken, a mid-nineteenth-century American (probably Jewish) poet, actress and femme fatale. Her 1992 collection, Anything You Don’t See (West End Press) is the most comprehensive to date (I have been putting together two posthumous collections, one of which should be out soon from Three Mile Harbor) in that it gives the reader a fine sampling of Enid’s entire oevre. including midrashic and family poems, poems of place, and poems of politics; and contains good examples of the sestina and the dramatic monologue, forms of poetry in which she particularly excelled.

Poems in Anything You Don’t See catalogue Enid’s family history from her birth in Beaver Falls, a small mill town in western Pennsylvania

The walls shook, and I broke into the world,

skidded into a bedrail and found my voice

in the summer hospital room, in the quiet milltown.

Mother shuddered, “I think it’s already happened.”

“Impossible!” Father insisted.

“It’s still too early.”

The doctor, meanwhile, was out fishing. …

(“Birthday”)

to politically progressive parents who met at a labor rally in Washington, D.C. when they were young government workers during the New Deal ‘thirties who suddenly removed to Pennsylvania where her father (originally from The Bronx) became a furniture salesman (introduced into that calling by his father-in-law); to the city of Pittsburgh, where Enid spent her early teens, and her Indiana-born mother—who suffered from depression, and, later, from multiple sclerosis painted.

In Mother’s city, there are no doorknobs.

Someone has pulled up the trees.

In this Pittsburgh,

the sky is yellow,

oilspilled, streaky. The color of despair.

Telephone poles throw up hands,

gawky crosses, then fall over backward.

No wires. No birds. Here,everything is inside.

(”Mother’s City”)

In Pittsburgh Enid started high school which had a writer’s club. Then the family (which by now also included her younger brother Phil Jacobs currently editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times) moved to Baltimore where there was no writer’s club. So Enid joined the gun club. Thence to Towson State Teacher’s College (now University) where she published poems in the Talisman (Towson’s literary magazine), got involved with the science fiction “fanzine” movement, where she met her first husband, married, got involved with the Baltimore peace movement, graduated, taught high school; then dumped it all, “caught the red-eye to New York/ reading “America” in the City Lights Edition,/ ecstatic on no sleep and bursts of fantasy…” (“The Seders”, published in the Woodstock Journal).The city Enid loved so passionately is celebrated even more strongly than in the previous volumes in Anything You Don’t See. Consider such classics as “Brighton Beach” (“…a place of immigrants, radicals, exiles,/ serious eaters and various gifts…”) and “Riding the D-Train”:

Notice the rooftops,

the wormeaten Brooklyn buildings.

Houses crawl by,

each with its private legend.

In one, a mother

is punishing her child

slowly, with great enjoyment.

In one, a daughteris writing a novel

she can’t show to anyone.

…In this volume also, her powerful sestinas begin to appear: “My Father and the Brooklyn Bridge,” “Sestina for Michael,” and “Ethel Rosenberg: A Sestina”:

I picture you in your three-room apartment, a woman

singing snatches of arias to yourself as you set the table,

loving and hating the house. I know the type.

Scraping and rearranging, refusing to take things easy,

Foreboding washes over you, an extra sense.

Dramatic monologues are here in abundance. Besides the midrashic Lot and Eve, we are addressed in the voices of Cinderella, Persephone, and citizens of Brighton Beach like the persona of “Closing Down: Old Woman on Boardwalk”:

Still holding on in this body,

an old house;

One by one they’re sealing its rooms off.

Heat’s disappearing

like ghosts through the cracks.

In the last section of the book, Enid celebrates her parents’ lives and deaths in several haunting poems.

Now hold your motherlingeringly on your tongue.

Her fruit is still alive.

It tastes as it always did:

heavy resonant edgy.

It makes you think of old coats

fur collared camphor-scented

worn in another country.

(“Fruit Cellar”)

Inside my father’s blood

a battle is raging,

directed by doctors and chemical companies.

He’s been invaded twice.

Like any other war,

this one is heavy with talk

of blasting, destruction, intrigues,

and, naturally, false reports.

(“What We’re Here For”)

In the elegant “God’s Lioness,” also in Anything You Don’t See, Enid Dame addresses one of her great models, Sylvia Plath:

Art can do just so much

it can’t save you.

These lines move me to reflect on Enid Dame’s late poems, haunted by cancer, 9/11, and impending war. This from an unpublished poem, “Bulbs”:

You gave me six daffodil bulbs

to plant in my upstate front yard,

letting each one stand for an unrescued name

entombed in the Tower wreckage.

I carried the box to my mountain,

set to work with a shovel.

It proved slow going,

that ungiving October day.

One of the bulbs had split:

two bodies joined at the stem.

I thought of those mythic co-workers

who held hands before they jumped.…

I thought:

I’m burying six people

I probably never knew,

their bodies unfound their names amputated..

All we’ll have is six flowers

if they actually bloom next spring,

if we’re here to see, to remember.

Those daffodils have been blooming ever since, more profusely each spring. The theme of remembering became important in these last (perhaps Anthroposophy-influenced) poems. In “Catskill Mountain Book Fair: May 2003” (published in Heliotrope) she begins:

Remember it all.

It won’t be here next year.

Woman poet in red velvet blouse on stage.

Grand piano (covered like a toaster) behind her.

Pieces of quilt on the walls.

Publishers listening at their booths.

Backdrop:

a road climbing a mountain,

trees slowly finding their green,

an apple tree in frail flower.

One poem lays cold fingers

on your shoulders.

You shudder in ecstasy.

The next poet reads too much.

Everyone here is good-humored.

Remember them all.

You reach for a hand.

It is here this year.

It feels warm and comfortable.

You handle it

while the poems’ rhythms gently rock the room.

This is a pleasure. You will need

to remember it later.

…In emulation of another great role model, especially during the last year of her life, the Mexican painter and political activist Frieda Kahlo, Enid participated in peace demonstrations and recorded what it felt like to be in those moments in poems like her villanelle, “The War Moves Closer,” printed posthumously in both Home Planet News and the “Beat Bush” issue of Long Shot:

The war moves closer and we can’t stop it.

Four million marched in Rome and London.

We read our poems on a Woodstock stage.

Winter goes on forever.

Four million marched in Rome and London.

A few lay down in the snow in Antarctica.

Winter goes on forever.

…and the monumental “This One,” also published posthumously, in Tikkun:

The first one wasn’t real.

But I opposed it.

I opposed it in a workshirt.

I opposed it in a mini-skirt.

I opposed it on my way to buy birth-control pills.

I oppposed it ecstatically.

I opposed it in my kitchen bathtub

on the Lower East Side.

I opposed it on the streets with my friends

who were scruffy and raucous and funny,

who opposed it with their youth and great bodies.…

This one is different.

We’ve lost so much already:

a city

a democracy

a way to be together

a fantasy of hope

(which glimmered like a silver-misted island

at the edge of possibility).

Now it’s hard to see that island

through the thickening smoke.…

An awful force is gathering.

It’s real. It’s getting stronger.

It doesn’t mean us well.

But I’ll oppose it

With my smoke-clogged brain.

I’ll oppose it with a stone in my breast…

On December 3, 2003, during a bitter, unseasonable, cold spell, Enid flew out to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to read at a fundraiser for the Jewish feminist journal Bridges, of which she had been a poetry editor. She died of pneumonia and complications from breast cancer three weeks later, on Christmas day.

I’m going to conclude here. Not that there isn’t more to say. This has been little more than a brisk survey covering the small part of Enid Dame’s work included in the seven books and chapbooks published during her lifetime. I have said nothing of her fiction, which included one completed unpublished novel, and many short stories, including parts of the novel, which appeared in small press periodicals and anthologies over many years. I have said little of her editorial work on three periodicals and an important anthology; the readings column, for instance, which she developed in Poets and Home Planet News; nor have I spoken much of her scholarship, which included writings on Victorian literature, Jewish-American fiction, and of course midrashic poetry and Jewish feminism. Besides her work on Which Lilith? noted above, she wrote papers, gave lectures and presentations of her own and other women’s work, and at the time of her death was working on a second anthology, this one of writings on the Prophetess Miriam. This project will reach some fruition in a forthcoming issue of Bridges.Hundreds of notebooks attest to Enid’s serious life-long reflections on, and struggles with, poetry, teaching (which she took very seriously), politics, history, Jewish-American literature and religion, and, finally, cancer, and the meaning of life. This little essay is meant to break some ice over deep, deep water.

guilty pleasures I have known

2007-02-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

If you're going to read me, you have to know how ridiculous and irreverent I really am. Hence, the following, inspired by Kosher Eucharist's category "Things We Have Eaten":

Go Fug Yourself
the Fug Girls dissect the often-atrocious dressing habits of celebrities. written too well to be entirely vapid.

Pajiba!
best movie review site ever. includes fun features in Pajiba's Guide to What's Good for You

Vegging out to episodes of The Office, Weeds, Freaks and Geeks and occasionally Heroes.

Singing "Little Boxes" from Weeds on my way to work in all kinds of funny voices.

Watching our cats kick the crap out of each other.

obsession with Project Runway that is only rivalled by an obsession with Project RunGay

I am OWNING my vapidity, so I don't want to hear it. Fuck the naysayers, know what I'm saying?

Damn, "Little Boxes" is in my head again....

this is life

2007-02-25T03:05:00.000-08:00

just got back into the mood to blog, since, like July or something. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. But hey, if people read (and comment), this will greatly motivate me to keep writing. so think about that. the main reason i stopped blogging is because I get bored going into great detail about things in my life. It's my knee-jerk reaction to the old question from my mom "How was your day?" I guess I haven't progressed past the "grunt" stage.
By way of quick update: we're in Israel, I'm working as a grantwriter, Yaakov's in yeshiva. we're loving life from the vantage point of our teeny Nachlaot apartment. I'm currently in two plays. One premieres next Tuesday night, it's called Some Girl(s). It's about a guy who's about to get married, looking up his ex-girlfriends. My character is Bobbi, and this is probably the most fun I've had doing a show. See pics. Blue background is the one they used, black background is my favorite. Yes, thanks to Lolly, I'm having more fun as a blonde.

In other news, Shabbat was nice. I played the Rebbetzin to Yaakov's yeshiva guy friends. Yes, this is contributing to the mounting identity crisis...

I'm in a play!

2006-07-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is the main reason I haven't posted in awhile, I've been crazy busy working on this. I play the hippie wife, I know what a stretch...

If you happen to be in the Baltimore/DC area this coming week, check this out:

From the people who brought you Theater Bris: 10 Plays in 90
Minutes comes "Barefoot in the Park," a hilarious look at dating
and marriage in the Jewish world.

What happens when a straight-laced YU law student marries a hippie
acupuncturist straight off the Moshav and settles down in a
fifth-story apartment with no elevator, no heat, a hole in the
skylight, a shopaholic mother-in-law, and an upstairs neighbor
nicknamed "The Casanova of 48th Street"? Find out in this classic Neil
Simon comedy, newly adapted with a Jewish twist.

Starring Itta Chana Englander, Yitzy Childress, Yoni Birnbaum, DeDe
Jacobs Komisar and Maddy List.

When: Sunday, July 9 @ 2 pm, Monday July 10 @ 8 pm.

Where: Morstein Performa, Owings Mills Jewish Community Center
3506 Gwynnbrook Avenue
Owings Mills, MD 21117

Cost: $8/ticket

For more info contact iengland@hotmail.com or djkomisar@gmail.com.

Forward to everyone you know!! Hope to see you all there!!

daily amusement

2006-05-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, I might make the daily amusement a regular feature, being that I'm so easily amused. This was the BlogAd on my last post:

Meet Palestinian Singles
Find your Arab soul mate today!
Search photos, chat and more.

If anybody's looking for their Palestinian soul mate (and really, is there any other kind?), I can totally hook you up. One more proof that blogs are an excellent peace-building tool.

a monster in our time

2006-05-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

By now I'm sure most of you have heard about Mordechai Gafni
and the latest scandals that have come out, this time from Bayit Chadash.
It's all very horrifying, especially given the extent to which many of our
most progressive teachers protected him for so many years. Because of a
connection, I knew all along to stay away from him. Yaakov and I have
had discussions with many friends on the matter, regarding whether
to learn from Gafni at the latest Elat Chayyim event, etc. At this point,
we don't feel vindicated, but saddened in the worst possible way that this
was allowed to continue to the point where over a dozen women have come
forward to say they've been affected, including one charge of rape. Add to this the fact that for years he was Gafni has been protected by many leaders in the Jewish Renewal movement, including Arthur Waskow, Avraham Leader, Jacob Ner-David, and even R'Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

While it's quite disturbing and will mean serious consequences for the Renewal movement and for the Jewish community at large, it's definitely something that we should be aware of, as many of us have had contact with Gafni, or with those within the movement who chose to protect him.

For up-to-date details, including letters from Gafni, Arthur Waskow, Avraham
Leader and Jacob Ner-David, go to Jewschool , start from "Gafni
Strikes Again" and read up. You might want to do it on an empty stomach.

Love to you all despite trying times.

remember the time I compared my soul to a thunderstorm?

2006-05-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

We would like to apologize for the achingly earnest, overly self-absorbed poetic sweet nothings which comprised a few of the last few entries. While they may have seemed necessary at the serotonin-depleted time, it has now become abundantly obvious that we needed to simply get over ourselves.

So...not to say this lofty goal has been accomplished, but the knomes are robustly chipping away and so meanwhile, let's discuss what's living for:

~ I got an internship with the Israeli Task Force on Human Trafficking. I'm just a little bit blown away by this development (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Anyone who does not know what this is or why they exist, take a deep breath and click on the link. And after the despair, be prepared to be filled with a sense of existential purpose.

~ There is a very good chance I'll be working as assistant, once again, to a certain professional Rodef Shalom. But this is all very unofficial, so hush.

~ The Palestinian Princess rocks my world. I don't care if you don't think she's perfect. Neither are you.

~ It's suunnny and warm out.

~ We got approved for our aliyah flight--September 5th, baby!

~ Sunday is Mother's Day and I love my Mom. She's the most wonderful and giving person I know, especially with all the crap she's had to put up with. Hug your moms, everybody.

"Oh where oh where are the Palestinian moderates?!"

2006-05-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

It's not that hard to find those oh-so elusive, mythical beings once you look around a little. Case in point: Lucy Widaad, also known as Palestinian Princess. In her latest post, she writes:

The economy of Palestine is thriving under Hamas rule... NOT!

I wonder what the hell is going to happen here. People are not being paid their salaries (gov't workers), merchants are not seeing cash flow and renters are not paying the rent in our building claiming that they don't have the money. Ouch, that hurts my pocket! Us Palestinians have got to get cracking or we will see a insurgance of violence soon. Lack of money will drive some people to work as hired guns for the Islamic Jihad and related groups leading to violence and more hatered towards Israel, this will effect the peace loving among us as we will also feel the Israeli backlash of making our lives EVEN MORE difficult.

Hamas is entering a long dark tunnel with no way out. With the political party Fatah virtually torn and dying, it is time for us Palestinians to think about building a new national movement.

We must save ourselves, but we cannot do it alone either. It is the time to create a political and social entity that is capable of supporting the government of a state, the Palestinian State. Fatah could not do it because they were obviously corrupt. Hamas does not want to do it, because they do not want to give up their sole role as a "resistance" organization. Therefore a new political and social force must be created. And we must do it now!

Now is the time for us Palestinians to create a responsible, honest, moderate, secular movement. It doesn't have to have a particular political focus but it needs to serve as an organization for supporting life in the Palestinian territories and an instrument for distribution of funds from international donors. This entity will be built using a network of existing NGOs as a nucleus, a support system and guidance. Order and hope need to be restored. and this is the main objective initially. Because we will have funding, and Hamas will not, we will eventually make the Hamas government irrelevant, whether or not the Hamas stay in power.

We will obviously need help to do this and money is not enough. We will need the international community to support us and Arab governments will have to play a big role as moderators and enforcers. The Israeli government has a part to play too. Israel will have to unfreeze the funds it owes the Palestinians to help support our new entity. The ports and border crossings of the Palestinian authorities must be opened to free transport of goods. We have to nip this in the bud NOW, poverty breeds radicalism, and radicalism can be exported. And that means a threat for everyone in the world.

Now the question is, uhhh, how do I get started. Suggestions please. I am so willing to do this, as you all now I am unemployed and I don't think I want to be a gunwoman, I am a PEACE LOVER. So help me.

So, nu? Not that we're anything remotely close to being experts on the topic or necessarily being able to relate to her situation, but that's never stopped us before. She's asking for any and all suggestions. What do we think? More importantly, what can we do?

Cross-posted from Palestinian Princess (in part), Jewschool.

Things I Find So Amusing....

2006-05-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

..that I find myself stifling raucous laughter and discreetly wiping away tears while at work:

~ Someone found my blog by googling "Michlala." When you read the post he/she came to, you'll realize why I find this so hilarious.

~ Snakes on a Plane. Or, more accurately, motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane. How the hell did I miss this?

~ The fact that according to this site I look like Shania Twain and Yaakov is a dead-ringer for John Travolta. Check this out, you'll be glad you did.

~ Fuckin' waminals, man.

Havivah Ner-David got Smicha!!

2006-05-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Read story here.

Since my Aunt Enid (z"l) gave me her book Life on the Fringes on the eve of my bat mitzvah, I've been a devoted follower of her spiritual journey and struggles (and just not b/c my name is Chavivah too).

Beyond the Veil: Realities in Iran

2006-05-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've added a few more links to the sidebar--including Radical Torah, On the Face, In the Land of Sad Oranges, and Editor: Myself.

While all of these are excellent and required reading, the last one, a blog by Iranian journalist Hossein Derakshan, is particularly outstanding. Derakshan, or "hoder" left Iran for Canada awhile ago during a regime crackdown on what's left of the free press. I found his blog through On the Face, which linked to an account of Derakshan's recent visit to Israel (do a search for "israel" on his site and read accounts of the whole trip--it's fascinating). He went because, growing up under the repressive regime in Iran, he was raised with the impression that Israel is pure evil. Knowing there had to be more to the story, Derakshan went to Israel (even though by doing so he knew he could never return to Iran under its current rulership), and discovered incredible similarities between the Jewish State and his home country.

For example, did you know that both President Moshe Katsav and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz are Iranian? Did you know that Israel contains the largest Iranian community outside of Iran itself? Pretty amazing.

I've been interested in Iranian youth culture since I picked up Azadeh Moaveni's excellent Lipstick Jihad. Moaveni, daughter of Iranians who had fled the Revolution, grew up in California and returned to Iran as a journalist in 1999. The book describes the culture shock of the Iran of her childhood dreams and the actual reality of what she experienced.

Through Moaveni's book, I learned that our notions of a purely anti-Semitic, anti-American, war-mongering, fundamentalist Iran are fundamentally incorrect. As I learned from both Derakshan and Moaveni, there is an essential disconnect in thought, beliefs, and primary values between the government and the people. The Islamist reactionary government imposes compulsory practice on the nation, who for the most part despise the dress code, the degraded status of women (worth half as much as men, don't have legal rights to custody of their children, can be stoned for adultery, etc. etc.), the government's obsession with blocking out all glimpses of "Western culture", the harsh secret police, the nuclear program, and the virulent anti-Israelism.

In short, the actual citizenry of Iran has diametrically opposed values to the regime. Everything we associate with Iran, from the imprisonment of 12 Iranian Jews several years ago to President Almadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map"--is only reflective of a government ruled by dictatorial clerics, not the people themselves who have virtually no say. From reading books and blogs from people of all ages dealing with living in Iran, they seem very similar to anyone else--they want freedom from their oppressive government, they love the poetry of Rumi and Hafez (a love I share), they are devoted to what Iranian has stood for in the past (the founding of the first feminist groups back in the early 1900s, the democratic legendary leader Mossadegh, who was deposed by a US-backed coup in the fifties, a tragedy Iranians are still bitter about, their Persian ancient culture, etc.). And they're pissed, and are writing about it in the only free press still available to them--the Internet. Farsi is the fourth largest language of currently active blogs--an amazing statistic. Hoder has an enormous selection of Iranian blogs, which you need to weed through since most are in Persian.

A book that serves as a translated guide to the inside world of Iranians is Nasrin Alavi's We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs, in which the author, an Iranian now living in the UK, translates excerpts of blogs detailing the daily lives, struggles, hopes and dreams of Iranians living under the regime. The excerpts are grouped into historical categories that put them into context, giving the reader an illuminating picture of the facts on the ground.

Please check these out--you won't regret it.

Text-Based Activism

2006-05-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Check these out, from radicaltorah.org:

L'Azazel, the Scapegoat, Revisited
(written by a certain significant other of mine)

Encountering Spiritual Attitudes Towards Sex Trafficking

Both are brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Yom Haatzmaut vs. Atzmaut Amitit

2006-05-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

To Israel, with utmost love and devotion--

Today I got all dressed up in blue and white, said full hallel with a bracha, and ate a cupcake with an Israeli flag in it. I'd been looking forward to this day for a long time, as I'll officially be Israeli in about four months (!). But something doesn't feel quite right.

Who really has independence in Israel?

~ The citizenry, a quarter of whom live below the poverty line?

~ The military--100% conscripted, some of whom sent to do unimaginable tasks? The conscientious objectors who are arrested and imprisoned?

~ The original chalutzim, the majority of whom are Holocaust survivors, now a poverty-stricken elderly community that has to do battle for survival, this time with the government they help found?

~ The Arab-Israeli community? What kind of a headtrip is it to get a day off work and go to a friend's barbecue while your cousins are stuck in Gaza under lock and key, mourning Al-Naqba?

~ The "liberated" disengagees of Gush Katif, the vast majority of whom have yet to be re-settled and receive what they were promised?

~ The Bedouins, who, despite paying taxes and serving in the army, receives virtually no rights and has never received compensation for losing their Negev homes time and time again?

~ The government and the upper-classes, caught in this system of corruption and factionalism that denies the principles the State was founded on?

~ The "working women", 3,000 of whom a year are trafficked through Israel and live as sex slaves?

~ The charedi community, inextricably dependent on the very State they decry the independence of?

~ The Ethiopian olim, stuck below the color line in the land of their dreams?

~ The anglo olim, watching as the country of their dreams, whatever these dreams are, changes from day to day and makes these dreams so difficult?

Who is independent?

Answer: all of us are

Despite the weaknesses of the government of Israel, weaknesses that have led to the breakdown of normal freedoms for virtually all of its citizens--I believe that there is still abundant hope, in the independent actions of grassroots efforts.

We're connected to Israel, despite its many flaws, because of the picture in our minds, in our souls, of what the land and its people mean to us. It's an unexplainable feeling of belonging, of spiritual resonance, walking down the cobbled streets with arms outstretched to the blue, blue dream of sky. And it's very hard to bridge this feeling to the facts on the ground as they exist for many of Israel's citizens.

Please don't misunderstand this post as simply griping stating that there is nothing worthwhile about living in Israel. For a great many people, it is a wonderful place to live. The disconnect occurs in connecting the vision of Yom Haatzmaut to the lack of socioeconomic and political security so many people live with in Israel.

On this Yom Haatzmaut, it is our duty not to simply go to barbecues, eat falafel, go through the self-congratulatory motions.....but to internalize the value of atzmaut, independence, and vow to work towards making Israel a land of real, vital independence for all of its citizens.

Yom Haatzmaut, viewed this way, is a yearly check-in on where we stand, and what our responsibilities are to do more for the sake of the kind of independence that matters--where it transforms peoples' day-to-day lives for the better, gradually shaping the harsh realities of the land to reflect the picture of our minds that led us to celebrate this day in the first place.

It's when we own our fundamentally independent status as ethical individuals, despite our status within the State, towards helping one another.

So this Yom Haatzmaut and until next year's, let's pledge to do something to get involved in atzmaut. Check out the links below for some ideas, please post more in Comments:

Israeli Task Force on Human Trafficking

Bustan: Sustainable Community Action for Land and People

Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews

Table to Table: Rescuing Food for Israel's Hungry

Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel

beautiful, beautiful pesach

2006-04-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago this time I was bitching, cursing, and generally being miserable. I had to pretty much make Pesach by myself. My husband's grandfather died suddenly, and he went off to Cleveland to be with his family. So I was left alone to clean, cook, and deal with oodles of family drama. Thank God, things turned out all right, and Yaakov ended up doing a lot more than I would have in his position. But still, things were pretty harrowing.

The problem is, my grandmother freaks me out. She's our family matriarch, for all the best and worst that that implies. She's sweet, sharp, and funny, but also hypercritical, vindictive, and manipulative. I love her, but I can't stand to see her hurt my mom, who is the most wonderful woman in the world. The drama of my grandmother and aunt and uncle coming in for the second seder and following shabbat was absolutely ludicrous, and not worth getting into. It's over.

And the second days more than made up for it. We went out to Casey's parents' gorgeous house in Owings Mills. Holy holy chevra, just good feeling and good times. I lained for the 3rd time ever. Second night, we made a campfire and a select few of us stayed up all night singing niggunim and showtunes and playing freeze. It was an atmosphere of no-holds-barred joy and total friendship. Most of us hadn't even met before, but there was nobody putting up a front of being "too cool," we all got into the corny, blessed moment and belted out Les Miz and many others at the top of our lungs. No egos whatsoever, just joy. I haven't had that much fun in a long, long time.

And it didn't end there, we had one more gorgeous day of yom tov, then I got to stay up all night with holy brothers Baruch and Jose showing one another fun stuff on the internet, which apparently now counts as a hobby. Jose showed us RetroJunk, and about eight hours later we finally went to bed, our heads filled with You Can't Do That on Television, Punky Brewster, Roundhouse, and many many more. If you have a day in your life you just want to devote to mindless fun and have people to bond with doing it, check out this site.

The best thing is, we get to do it all over again this Shabbat, with Jews in the Woods. I can't wait.

Enough complaining and angst and all that crap. Life is fun and good and get over yourself and stop being afraid. If "fear" is fuck everything and run, then let me resolve to fuck running, embrace everything. Please God.

no original thoughts today

2006-03-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

just an excerpt from a poem that matches my mood:

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

disputation

2006-03-22T07:20:00.000-08:00

the computer screen is blinding me
soul-sucking, depleting energy, what is me
what is this spinning wheels dance of futility
groping towards infinity
mean-spirited roadhouses goading endlessly
inertia

curled up in a ball of fuck everything and run
done but half-baked in mediocrity
rhyming uselessly, whining profusely
enough

i am the musicmaker, the dreamer of dreams
now sent reeling into a grueling sleep of my own creation,
avoiding co-creation for creeping death
being eaten by a giant lizard

jerusalem, jerusalem, the answer to all my problems
except the problem, which is me, which can't be solved geographically
which must be worked out
or forgotten about as I realize how ridiculous self-observation masturbation can be
the opposite of fear is free
fuck running, embrace everything

so much I knew, it's been five years already
and now I see myself in other kids around me
stunted in growth, suck somewhere back that February
model un and fights with rabbis
thinking I was going crazy
crazy crazy craziness the chaos never felt so alive as then
struggling since to find a when, how why and where
do i dare disturb the universe, fuck it the universe is me and i'll disturb at will

I have these visions of creation as a microcosm is the macrocosm game of hopscotch
skipping all over the planet with ceaseless energy and spirit
all the time in the world to let them hear it
and hear it from them
internalize the messages I've left to float on the surface
let myself be penetrated so I can penetrate
channel Godliness and be able to create
stop complaining with fear about how much the world sucks
when I know that I can change but choose to watch reality tv
living vicariously through other peoples' dreams and self-possessed "integrity"

but this is not a lamentation, this is a disputation between who I am and who I've let myself be, and though it's all one I've forgotten what's at the core, that I could ask for more, that more actually exists, that God is real and not words on a page mumbled in daily motions I go through
"All my being shall cry out, God, who is like You?"
and in you, me, reaching You with this primal scream
the first of many, the first in too damn long
just remember to stay with it, this is no dream
and there are no rules, so
explode

the weasels, the weasels

2006-02-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

"Every now and then when life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. To relax as it were, in the womb of the desert sun."

Thank you, Hunter S. Thompson (z"l).

I feel the weasels closing in these days. Things just keep getting crazier and crazier in the world, nothing seems to make sense anymore, with increasing strength and ludicrousness (if that's a word). I feel like I'm reading "The Onion"...the "Daily Show" is quickly meeting its match as things become far too absurd to even joke about. Let's look at these last two weeks:

~ Bush, our "Tough-On-Terror-Friend-of-Israel" scum of the earth of a human being, let alone a president, has sold the management of US ports in NYC, Baltimore, Miami, and others to the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. This should speak for itself. Has everyone gone f#$king crazy??!!
Right-wing whacko friends of mine, explain this one to me.

~ Hamas victory. If we give them aid ("we" =US and Israel), then we're acknowledging the legitimacy of a terrorist regime. If we don't, they'll get it from Iran, thus exacerbating their use of terror and making the situation even more beyond the pale. Right-wing whacko friends of mine, I have no answers for this one, only that now it's just become that much more crucial to try to eke out light and maintain stable partnerships with peace-building Palestinians. If you want the phone numbers of at least 12 I know personally, that can be arranged. They exist, whether you wish to believe it or not, and we need to strengthen them and the work they do for peace.

~ Denmark falling over itself to apologize to the Muslim world, while some Muslims go around rioting and killing people and setting fire to everything in site, carrying signs that say "Exterminate those who shame Islam." Excuse me?

I know I'm not saying anything new, but I'm feeling a little shell-shocked right now, and I know it's probably just going to get much, much worse.

On a related note, I'm reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," which has the interesting premise of a right-wing Nazi sympathizer, namely Charles Lindbergh, beating out FDR in the 1940 election on a platform of keeping the US out of war...and then what begins to happen to American Jews once Lindbergh signs a pact with Hitler. I'm not very far into it, and excuse me for disclosing my paranoia...but it's got me thinking.

Every country in history that has at one point offered a safe harbor to Jews has also, at one point, abruptly changed its mind and made things extremely bad for the Jews, with "bad" varying from a pogrom or two to mass expulsion to the Holocaust. You get my drift.

I'm positing that this shift will happen very soon in America--and it will be spearheaded by the Christian Right. They may seem like our friends now, but they're not--they're our most despicable, aggressive, and deceptive of enemies. They desire our spiritual or at least physical death. They support Israel and aliyah to get us there to fulfill their dogma, that it will bring the second coming, at which point we'll have the choice of conversion or death. That the right-wing Jewish community has ignored this and has embraced the Christian Right's support strikes me as selling out of the worst kind, acknowledging the legitimacy of this sinister agenda in exchange for money.

Think I'm crazy? Agree with me? Let me know...

something to do

2006-02-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

Feeling kind of deflated recently. I think I'm being fried by my desk job. The desk part of it, anyway. There's only so much banality a soul can take, I guess. The space between projects is nurturing an unhealthy internet habit that kind of makes me sick. I'll be fine, don't worry. It's just good to write about.
My Artist Date this week was to go up to the library for a little over an hour yesterday and look at art books. Would have been much better if the fluorescent lighting + air conditioner up there didn't always make me so sleepy and apathetic. I paged through a Chagall book, disturbed to read that his Catholic third wife had him buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery. Teddy Kollek even argued against it. The art, of course, was amazing, but not immediately absorbing for me. Too much of the unreal doesn't always pack the right kind of punch. One of my favorite pieces is the stark, brusquely-constructed "No" by Jasper Johns (whom I love in general). It really captures the essence of what "no" is. If you happen to be passing by the National Gallery in DC, check it out.
Then I found a book called "Artists Confronting the Inconceivable." It's an international selection of glasswork artists responding to Kristallnacht, and to the Holocaust in general. Amazing idea, extremely powerful images.
Quiz for whoever reads this--what is your guiltiest pleasure, website-wise? Even if you don't spend that much time online, there's probably one or two sites you go to just for pure, decadent pleasure. I actually have lots of these, sadly, but the best is probably Holy Bibble. Click, and be amazed :-)

First Anniversary

2006-01-25T07:45:00.000-08:00

In honor of our very first wedding anniversary (and by the way neither of us nor any of our friends can believe it's been an entire year already--wow), we took a special trip to visit Yaakov's old haunts in Asheville, NC. 'Twas a truly blessed weekend. Yaakov told me we were staying at the ghetto Days Inn, which I can understand because frankly, we're poor. Then he pulls up to an insanely gorgeous bed-and-breakfast and says "Welcome to the Days Inn." And I'm screaming OMG!!! like a 12 year old girl. It was absolutely beautiful. Double jacuzzi too. Amazing. We could afford it, he explained, because this place (Jewish-owned) does this thing called "Easy Giving Weekends," where the proceeds of your stay go straight to your favorite charity. And we need to give maaser anyway, so this was perfect. We had a great weekend, and the Save Darfur Coalition got a donation. Asheville. What a great little town.

Theater Bris a Success

2006-01-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

While we still don't have a name, our shomer-shabbat theater company kicked some seriously holy ass this weekend with 10 Plays in 90 Minutes: A One-Page Play Festival. If you're in NYC this weekend, check it out at 6 pm at the Chabad Loft, 182 5th Ave (between 2nd & 23rd), 2nd floor. Cost: $5

more info: email allisvain@gmail.com

I (State Your Name) Resolve to:

2006-01-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

not let 2006 go by as quickly as 2005 did. Last January, I didn't even know when it was New Year's, I was too busy getting everything together for the wedding two weeks later.
This January, things are at a calmer pace--for now. I've only thought of one worthwhile resolution to accompany the general one above, and here it is:

To stop whining about the Jewish community's lack of awareness and action, and just to be aware and active myself.

This will be a challenge. But let's make a deal, Universe. I'm putting out the vibes, as Lisa would say, to be involved where I can in things that are real and helpful. Let's work together on this.

Aleha L'Shalom

2005-12-29T12:42:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been over two years already since my aunt,
Enid Dame, feminist midrashic poet and all-around tzadeket,
went on to better worlds. For more.

Breathe in.
The strength to breathe in you.
Your still, small voice containing the intensity of realities as yet unfound.

Beginning at Malchut--consciousness of majesty in you, pride and spirit.
You knew it wasn't going to be easy to the anti-heroine in a world so easy to dismiss.
You fought. And the battles never ended, would never end.

Breathe in. Breathe up and into Yesod--foundation.
Legacy from your parents, from a dynasty that began with Lilith and becomes ever more eternal the more it is felt--Netzach.
And Hod, the splendor that balances where we come from with where we're going.
But we never truly go.

Breathe in Binah--intuition.
The internal energy that moved you, the link between you and me and always.
I wanted to express how much I knew, I wanted to know more.
You sent me books about Jewish women--maybe you thought I was repressed.

You are--inspiration--Chochma, the external intelligence that penetrates, that reverberates, renews.
I am left with your creations, and the Daat--intimacy, that binds me to you forever, to understanding you now as I never did then.

Further, breathing into Chesed--the air flowing through rivers of kindness, of generosity, of giving spirit.
Echoing how much you gave--beyond the limits of Gevurah, brought together in the Tiferet of the integrated you.

Enid Dame. My Aunt Enid.
Poet, dreamer, and madwoman.
Lover of justice, of ideas, of my grandparents, of creation and cats.
Now united with Keter--the crown of holiness that transcends all branches of being.

I breathe you all in, and I am staggered by your fullness.
You are Yetta Sarah bat Tova Shaindel, Aleha L'Shalom.
You are.
At your last breath, the sefirot you embodied were released.
Now it is our lifelong task to reflect them back up to you,
With love.

virtual sanctuary

2005-12-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

Ah.....isn't this much better?

new rule

2005-12-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

if you visit here, you have to leave a comment--come on people--Rosie the Riveter in tefillin? A play? I'm getting better here, and I want some damn feedback from the 5 people who ever read this. I can demand that of you, and I'm doing it. Don't make me tell you again.

I'm waiting.

Theater Bris

2005-12-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

20 Plays in 90 Minutes
Join us for an eclectic, unique one-page play review to name a shomer shabbat theater company.
I'm doing some acting, writing, and directing for this noble effort, co-sponsored by Jewschool and YourSpark.com.
To get an idea, here are some sample titles of pieces included in the review:
A Match Made In...
Sarah Lieberman, Meet Jesus
Strange Worship
Elijah in Central Park
Confession...
and much more.

Baltimore performance: Sunday, January 8. Meyerhoff Arts Center, Goucher College. $5. 3 pm. More info, contact Itta: iengland@hotmail.com

NYC performance: Sunday, January 15. Chabad Loft, 182 5th Ave (btw. 2nd & 23rd), 2nd floor. $5. 6 pm. More info, contact Yishai: allisvain@gmail.com

yes. yes we can.

2005-12-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

c/o Danya + Mobius

i wrote a play

2005-12-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

It's for an upcoming one-page play festival that I'm doing some directing, acting, and apparently writing for.

A Match Made in…..
A girl a guy sit side by side facing the audience. Halfway through, they turn to one another.

GUY: So I’m back in town for a few days, and my mom tells me about this girl she wants me to go out with. Such a Jewish mom, always trying to set me up, but whatever, she means well. So this girl sounds good, she’s about my age—23, which is a little young to start dating seriously, in my opinion, but whatever. My mom says she’s religious. Hey, that’s fine. We can go to shul and light candles on Friday night. It’ll be nice. You can get kosher Taco Bell, right?
GIRL: Everyone seems to think that because I’m 23 and not married, it’s never going to happen. Apparently I’m “damaged goods.” They tell me about this guy who’s a bit modern, but nice and relatives with a good family. Whatever, fine, I said, I’ll go if it’ll make you stop talking about how hopelessly single I am.
GUY: So I call her up, and she sounds nice on the phone. She wants to meet me in the lobby of some hotel. This seems a little forward to me, especially for a religious girl, but hey, I’m going to say no?
GIRL: We meet at the hotel, and he tries to throw me off by offering to shake hands. So he’s got a good sense of humor.
GUY: When she comes in, she totally blows off my handshake, which was weird. But I can tell from the start this girl is pure class. With those pointy shoes and everything. (turns to her) So, what do you do?
GIRL: I’m an occupational therapist. But I’d be willing to stay at home for a few years when the kids are young.
GUY: Okay, whoa, a little too much information there.
GIRL: So, where did you go in Israel?
GUY: Israel? Oh, that was fun. I went a few years ago, did the usual stuff…Masada, the Western Wall, the Dead Sea. Did you go to Israel too?
GIRL: Yeah. Michlala. (to audience) I liked how he kept joking, showing the hypocrisy of the high-powered shidduch system. I hope he didn’t think I was being totally nerdy.
GUY: So, um…
GIRL: I think you should know that I don’t wear denim skirts.
GUY: Excuse me?
GIRL: Yeah. They’re just too modern for me. So tell me--what about movies?
GUY: Personally, I’m a big fan of the Rocky series. But then, there’s also Lord of the Rings. And Spaceballs! Come on, tell me you don’t like Spaceballs.
(awkward pause)
GIRL: Well, I guess that answers my question.
GUY: So….you want to….head upstairs?
GIRL: What’s upstairs?
GUY: You tell me—it was your idea to meet here.
GIRL: What are you saying?
GUY: What? Nothing. I just thought--(gestures upstairs, turns head, we can see he’s not wearing a kipah. GIRL gasps audibly.)
GIRL: You—you’re not—
GUY: What? What did I say?
GIRL: You’re not frum!
GUY: From where?
GIRL (starts to cry): Oh, I just can’t believe this.
GUY: No, don’t cry. I’m really sorry, I just don’t know what I did.
GIRL: It’s nothing personal. I just can’t believe they thought I would want to marry you. I need to leave—now.
GUY: Marry me? Whoa, hold on a minute there. Who said anything about marriage? What the hell is going on? I gotta get out of here. Is this how you religious people do things? Marriage on the first date?
GIRL: Is this how you people do things? “Going upstairs”?? Jerk!
GUY: Psycho!
GIRL: I’m leaving!
GUY: Have a nice life!

(They both turn and stomp toward the exits, then pause and turn.)

GUY: So, I’ll call you?
GIRL: I’d like that.

END.

i've succumbed

2005-12-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

i'm not (yet) addicted, but myspace sure is fun.

Different Tracks

2005-12-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

This kid over here looks like Al Franken.
Only two bathrooms on the whole train, and no cafe service.
Fifteen college freshmen flank me on all sides.
Homeward at the end of Thanksgiving weekend.
Thanks giving way to loathing at the week ahead.
Responsibilities, uncomfortabilities, drudgery of a computer screen and forced smiles.
I work at a non-profit. It puts the non in.
We do theater for social change, like
the change in our teen audience's faces when we change their lives.
Somewhere between boredom and pity.

a kid says "where my ticket?"
Holy crap, where is this kid's ticket?
I look up--what's going on? Did one of these kids just say my name?
I like them, I wish I had had friends like them when I was in college.
They're nerdy and quirky and funny and cool. I can tell.
From across the aisle, I'm an excellent judge of character--
it's when I get to know you that I change my mind.

He found his ticket. God bless him, Little Al Franken.
I wonder where these kids go to school. What they're majoring in,
if they're happy.
If I would've been happy if my dreams of a normal college experience hadn't been abandoned and aborted by logistics and the logic of necessary evils.
My mind wanters on, musing over nonexistent roommates and a dorm life that failed to materialize.

I wonder if these kids like themselves,
and curse myself for being across the aisle from perfect post-adolescence,
careened into adulthood without taking a breath to be more stupid,
teenage, free.

Now I have to care about too many things.
I work in non-profit. I write grants.
I go to meetings.
I'll never own an Ipod Nano.

This knowledge hurts. When did I go from almost being one of these kids to being the weirdo adult writing bad poetry about them from across the aisle?

It's humiliating.
It's demoralizing.
It makes me dread the future.
I feel old and washed up at 22, because I couldn't afford the dorm and commuted to campus, because I fell in love and got married at 21, because I'm obsessed with my cats and cleaning out the goddamn refrigerator.
I'm old! I'm a 22 year old yuppie, I'm a never-was-has-been surrounded by people who take themselves too seriously.

I'm history.

I close my eyes. Open them.
Al Franken is staring at me. We grin at what the skinny kid with the pseudo-cool ripped jeans just said:
"I don't want to worry about social networking when I'm enjoying my football."

Al and I crack up. It's a beautiful moment.
Bottled water gets up my nose.
he puts the earpiece of his Ipod back in,
and I settle into my pseudo-adult sleep,
glad I don't have a paper due, ever.
Glad I can reach across the aisle once in awhile,
and that I have no business calling myself an adult.

talkin' the elul blues

2005-09-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Just read this hilarious piece off of wandering stu
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40520/2

Sorry, I'm an html moron.

The article was funny, but sobering because it's pretty much how I feel this time of year. Dirshu Hashem BiHimatzo--seek out God when God is close. God is always close, but in Elul we're supposed to have more kavanah about it, be a little more carpe diem with the whole be a better person thing. I'm ruminating on this, because every year the contemplation gets put off until Rosh Hashanah itself, and then the actual manifestation leaves much to be desired.

TESHUVAH: working on lashon hora, working on being more patient, less lazy and selfish, and more giving in my marriage. learning more, and on a regular basis. Being less self-indulgent, and not watching "Fear Factor" anymore. I mean seriously.
but also--doing more to actively, physically get involved in Katrina relief. Working against genocide in Darfur instead of just getting angry when other Jews aren't (yes, I can spell "projection"). To name a small few.

TEFILAH: Never have I had, at once, so much to praise God for and thank God for, and also so much to pray for. And never has my davening been so shvach (yeshivish for "crappy"). So what's going to change? I think it has to be practical--going to bed earlier, so I can concentrate on tefilah the next morning and have time to get into kavanah beforehand. Maybe it's that simple. I think I also need to find times during the day when I can just talk to God--other than right before sleep when I doze off in the middle. Maybe talking to God will help me hear God more, knocking on the inside and from outside as well.

TZEDAKAH: Katrina, Bustan, Darfur, there's no end to the suffering going on right now. Tzedakah is a challenge, as newlyweds working at Jewish non-profits, so I'm trying, with God's help, to focus on volunteer work. PSA--if anyone wants to come along, I'm helping in the food distribution effort for Katrina survivors at the DC Armory this weekend. Check out more info at DC Central Kitchen (dccentralkitchen.org).

And more. And more. And perhaps maybe then I'll hear the kol demamah dakah.

Love and blessings to all.

something good

2005-09-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

To add a bit of cheer and hope for humanity, here are some photos from this year's Sulha (courtesy of Akiva):

in memory

2005-09-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Erin Felarca, pictured on the left here, died last week in an apparent suicide. She was in a theater class with me, and had a sense of confidence and conviction that was inspiring. She will be missed.

Something good needs to happen very soon.

why i hate blogging

2005-09-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

I've been resisting writing more, because I hate recanting the past, and then, you know, life goes on, God willing, and you find yourself even more removed from the situation than you were before. So, in a nutshell:

1) Sulha rocked, especially the intense sicha in the Beit Tfilah on the last day. Wow. You had to be there. And it was just amazing seeing everyone again, and seeing Laura's film from last year. Check it out: www.roadtosulha.com. Follows the stories of Rana and Nevim, people I met last year, and others, encountering the Sulha. Has its ups and downs, but generally very worthwhile. I caught glimpses of myself, and there were two incredible scenes with Casey and Sarit. Casey was interviewed saying how he'd never met his neighbors in the West Bank, living in Bat Ayin all of these years, and how it was a very meaningful experience for him. Sarit, wow. I can't believe they captured this on camera. There was this beautiful moment where it was after lunch, and were in the chader ochel with about four Palestinian guys, and none of us were talking between the groups. Sarit takes a paper cup, and says, "Humans, play with me." And we all played Keep the Cup in the Air for about half an hour. It was great.

2) Long story short, Yaakov and I are the new co-Directors of Development for Bustan, an environmental peace agency based in Nachlaot, that does work with marginalized communities in Israel (specifically Bedouin at the moment). It's an incredible organization headed by a true tzadeket, the one and only Devorah Brous, and we're spectacularly lucky to have this opportunity. Check it out: www.bustan.org.

3) Katrina. That bitch. Up yours, Katrina. No, but seriously. It's been a tremendously difficult couple of weeks. Confusion, anger, and deep, deep sadness. FEMA, Bush, I don't even have the words. Beyond sickening. I'm getting involved in the volunteer effort by helping survivors being housed temporarily at the DC Armory. I would say more, but I'm of the mind at this point thta I'd rather do than say.

4) Eric Singer's daughter died. Her name was Ariel, she was 18. She was hiking in a cave with some friends in Utah, and they couldn't get out, and all drowned. So, so horrible. He's my favorite professor at Goucher, a brilliant loner with a cynical sense of humor and affection for Communism. This is just awful.

5) Shmittens. Adopted two kittens, Sammy Davis Jr. (he's black and Jewish) and Blackbeard. Yaakov and I are both so in love with them, they're already like our kids--almost :-) We have to constantly vacuum and dust to make sure my allergy-prone family can visit, and we have to hide them from the management. So far, so good. They're wonderful, they're keeping us young.

moving on

2005-08-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

....you may notice what's missing. enough already, time to move on.

Sulha 2005--Part I

2005-08-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

It was incredible to see Eliyahu there, after it had been so long. It made everything instantly right. For more on Eliyahu, scroll down to some of the first few posts, from the Sulha last year. That'll give you an idea of what the Sulha itself actually is.

We joined the silent peace walk coming in to the park, where I reunited, and Yaakov united, with Ihab, Gaby, and Ibrahim. The walk led us through a few covered tents with breathtaking photos on the walls. Turns out it was a photo essay facilitated by none other than the amazing Azriel Cohen (I think I wrote about him last year, too), who gave cameras to one group of Israeli kids in Tel Aviv, a group of Jordanian kids in Amman, and a group of Palestinian kids in Tulkarem, I believe. What was most remarkable about the pictures was the similarity of the teens' experience, as a whole, to that of their counterparts on the "other side."

From the Welcome tent ("wilkomm cen-tare"), we grasped the vastness of the park. This place was seriously huge, a serious departure from last year's intimate, if cramped gathering at Shuni. If it was hard to keep track of things last year, I immediately got a bit worried about this year. But I tried to keep that in the back of my mind,and just focused on Yaakov and how he was taking everything in. He seemed instantly alive, and I realized that for the first time, it's like we're seeing one another in context--where we want to be together, and what we want to be doing. We're seeing the dream that, God willing, is going to come true, very soon.

Anyway, the welcome center opened up on a vast area including Eliyahu's Beit Tfilah (house of prayer), where regular Jewish and Muslim prayers were to be held, as well as communal prayer and workshops on religion and peacebuilding. There was also, of course, the Tent of Sarah and Hagar, where women would come together for intense dialogue circles (that, if last year would prove the trend, would turn into serious bonding and crying circles). There was a cafe in the middle of the Park that turned out Turkish coffee, nana tea, and lafa with labne and zatar. The Bereaved Parents Forum was over to the right, already gathering a crowd together. The Silent Tent was to the left, for meditation. "Eretz HaYeladim," Kid Land, encompassed the entire midsection of the park, and we were already seeing groups of kids of all faiths getting together and kicking the ball around. The stage was down and to the right, and the kitchen and campgrounds were to the left. Okay, we were oriented.
And then, score, we got a tent for the night from Sulha organizer Daniel, an Israeli who liked to go around wearing khafiyehs and jalbiyehs, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

We gathered around the center lawn and, of course, were treated to a beautiful original niggun by Gaby on the guitar. I noticed two things--one, less people were there for the opening ceremonies than last year, and two, there were more religious people of all faiths, which to me was a very good sign. I remember scrambling to get a minyan together last year, and it only happened once.

Gaby and Fara Gaye spoke about the meaning of the Sulha and the power of religion to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Afterwards, we broke up into dialogue circles, but Yaakov and I ran over and accosted Devorah Brous. For those of you who don't know her, you should. Five years ago, Devorah, a beautiful, outspoken, kickass wonderwoman, founded the organization Bustan (garden, literally), Building Using Sustainable Technology and Agriculture in Neighborhoods (I think), www.bustan.org.

Bustan brings Arabs and Jews together to work to make the lives of marginalized communities in Israel more livable, particularly those of the Bedouin.
Devorah gave a workshop that day at the Sulha, in which she had us hold a large elastic circle, which she said represented 2% of the Negev, the desert which makes up the entire Israeli south. In this 2%, called Dimona, Devorah had people go in to represent the two giant nuclear reactors that are there, then the 17 chemical factors, then the huge toxic waste dump, then two sewage rivers, then the electric and water companies. Once pretty much all of us were in the teeny little elastic triangle, Devorah informed us that this is where the the entire Bedouin community of the Negev, 160,000 strong, has been forced to live, under these toxic conditions. MUCH more on this later. So the point was, these Bedouin are Israeli citizens, they serve in the Israeli army, they pay taxes. Yet the Israeli government seems to be just throwing them away and destroying their way of life, creating what some fear will be a Negev intifada of Bedouin seeking to reclaim their rights. Devorah's point was that while everyone is focusing on the Palestinians, there is grave injustice being committed inside Israel itself, also.

At that point, we were greeted by the fabulous Anna, Eli, and Sarah Barefoot, chevra fixtures from the galus side. We davened a mystical mincha-maariv,and at about that point Yaakov and I passed out from jetlag.

the journey begins

2005-08-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, been back from Israel for a little while now, time to finally get my thoughts down about all the cosmic craziness that occurred.

So we get to our United flight at Dulles airport, outside of Maryland. We stand in line for a good long time, after asking where to go. When we get to the counter, they tell us that we've been standing in the wrong line, and we have to go around the corner to these totally unmarked counters in order to check in. WHen we go around the corner, the guy tells us we're too late, and we explain what happened, that we were told by a United employee to stand where we did. This guy proceeds to give us a nasty lecture about reading signs better and not trusting anybody. Sound advice, b/c next thing we new this guy we giving us a security check--when he knew doing so would cause us to miss our flight. And then they wouldn't give us a voucher to get to the front of the security line, and because of their check we had to be padded down and frisked, the whole thing. We were absolutely seething. So we get to the counter, and lo and behold we've missed our flight. They put us on the next flight to Newark, but then we've gotta get from Newark to JFK in order to make it on our El Al flight. The woman at the counter says she'll put a note in our file to give us vouchers for a cab to JFK.

We get to Newark, and guess what, no vouchers. We argue with the women at these counters for a bit, as time rapidly ticks by, and finally get into a cab. Thank God, we made our flight on time. Thank God, we got to Israel--our first time ever there together, for our honeymoon/pilot trip. For the Sulha and for our souls.
Of course, they lost our luggage. But we pretty much expected that at this point. So we gave them our info and trained on over to Petach Tikva, where we suited up in 40 shekel Old Navy knockoff t-shirts that were tacky, but clean.

We made our way over to Park Mekorot HaYarkon, where we immediately ran into Eliyahu--Hallelujah!!

out of hibernation

2005-02-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

Okay. I haven't felt like doing this in a long time, but a lot is currently being reawakened in my life, so why not this? Plus, it's sad to just let things go static, as I'm quite afraid my thoughts are beginning to be. Today I actually caught myself planning the route I was going to take to throw something in the garbage. This is what it's become, everything but survival turned off, to get through the insanely busy days. Wow.
And the thing is, thos eof you who know me, if anyone is reading this, know that things are pretty damn wonderful in my life right now, honestly. Of course a lot is still hard cuz I'm still crazy and have a lot of shit to deal with, but who doesn't?
Marriage. Yaakov. Yaakov Yaakov Yaakov. We are our new occupation. This is such a total roller coaster, learning tons of new things about each other, about the way our minds work, our bodies work, our souls work. It's been intense. Eitan would say I'm saying nothing here, but it's also that we share a little corner of space somewhere in the universe now, and it's hard to bring other people there. Not that I don't want to show it to people, but it's our own language. Anybody else ever just get married and feel this intimacy you cannot begin to express? Before, I could tell you in detail what was going on in our relationship. Now, it's not "our relationship." It's us. Something like that, I don't know.

And I find myself wanting a baby. Really badly. Which I never have before, and know is totally out of the question right now, and actually offends some of my feminist sensibilities. I am not a baby machine, dammit!! I need to finish college and we can't afford it and it's just insane right now. But still.......either that, or a yellow lab puppy :-)

Gotta go, not sure when I'll be back, but this was nice.

if at second you don't succeed, try again the first time

2004-08-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

exactly.
Thank you, Ilana, you're a lifesaver. Ladies and gentlemen, photos can be seen here:

Jerusalem--
http://www.snapfish.com/share/p=813311093982594427/l=32656991/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Sulha--
http://www.snapfish.com/share/p=613311093982339591/l=32656405/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

This better work now. Or maybe not. Maybe these images were just not meant to be viewed on a grand scale--they're too precious. Or something.

Ari--if you're reading this, how do I get a links bar on my blog like the snazzy one you have?

In other news, trying to not try to try to hold onto the effortless. Elul is a stream, please open me up to flowing with it, instead of questioning my every move. While speaking with Ami I realized that a deep-seated sense of guilt is so ingrained in me when it comes to doing tshuva that I'm not sure how to approach tshuva without it. Just another victim of Bais Yaakov, but really that's a copout, because it's up to me to go deeper. With Your help... Here at work, not much going on, just got an illicit hello from a certain wonderboy. Illicit only for another two weeks--and counting. And how.

Trying to book Eliyahu for a bunch of speaking and radio engagements when he comes to Balto, tentatively September 28-29. Trying to get him onto the Marc Steiner Show (local NPR) and to speak at Goucher and my shul, Tiferes Yisroel. Need some more protexia I think, but working on it.

Moving out of my apartment this weekend, back with the parentals. Should work fine, and it'll give me a chance to keep an eye on my kid sister and stop my mom from voting Republican (I'm not even kidding).

the images are really in

2004-08-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, check out photos here:

Sulha:
http://www.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=14401806/PictureID=314385109/t_=13053878

Hangin' round the Holy Land:
http://www.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=14421999/t_=13053878

If you don't have snapfish, just get it and log in, it's worth it!

into the new

2004-08-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

Back in Btown, somehow not jetlagged on this beautiful Friday morning, but not prepared to do much of anything either. Definitely can't even mentally approach the concept of starting work and school next week. On the other hand, seeing the family, chilling to Hadag Nachash with kid sis Emily, and getting amazing vibes from the best boyfriend in the entire universe all helped the situation...
Kind of weird, laying in bed last night looking at the same old ceiling, the whole month almost seemed like a dream, already so far away. I have to work to keep it real, to keep the beauty and consciousness going. I'll speak about it to anyone who will listen, and even those who won't. G-d willing, I've been blown too far open to just close up again. And it'll help to keep in touch with Habiba, Chaim, Ari, Azriel, Mahmoud, Devorah, and of course Eliyahu.
Now it really begins--Sulha was the easy part, it's making it manifest that's going to be the challenge. How to do this?
~throwing myself into www.stopabusingtorah.org --stay tuned for info, this is gonna be huge
~speaking about my experiences
~keeping in touch with the heroes and tzaddikim I had the merit of learning from
~praying, and working on my prayer
~learning more about various social justice and peace efforts in Israel and staying constantly involved
~walking down Park Heights Ave in my Sulha t-shirt
~having Eliyahu come speak in Balto soon--I know you're reading this, man

Any more suggestions?

By the way, the pics will be up by Sunday, so be sure to check in then.

the macrocosm in the microcosm

2004-08-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting here in front of the computer, I have absolutely no idea where to begin. This will probably be an excruciatingly long post, so just bear with me and skim for the juicy parts. Check out http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=sulha&itemNo=467103 for real coverage of the Sulha. Oh, and be sure to keep look out for www.stopabusingtorah.org, a new project of my man Yaakov's which is sure to revolutionize the world as we know it, as usual.

Just diving in:
Thursday night--took the train to Tel Aviv, met Erica and Ariel there, two fellow seekers and temporary Nachlaot dwellers, hopped a quick train to Binyamina which turned out to be a very long train to Nahariya, freaked out for a bit, but eventually worked out a bus to Haifa and a ride with the most beautiful female cab driver I've ever seen to arrive at Park Shuni at around 1 am. First impressions: This is going to be insane, in a good way. Huuuuge site for the peace organizations, with booths all laid out. A winding path from the Welcome Center into the larger lawn, with netting and tents stretched out over the grass to form the Children's Space, the Bereaved Parents tent, the Meeting Tent, and the information center. Stage set up facing the grass, with a big tree to its right, whichwould become a central place for prayer, discussions, and gathering during the days. Said hi to Ihab and Sagi, then kept going up the winding path past many semi-permanent tents curtained by tapestries and carpeted with pillows and mattresses, the largest of which being the Ohel Sarah V'Hagar, the Women's Tent, a space for women to come together in an intimate, y-chromosome-free way and get some connection flowing. Said hey-lo to Eliyahu and pitched our tents in the dark, thinking, "this is real, I'm here.......hey G-d, let's go for a ride."

Friday: Woke up to Gabi on the ram-kol, arousing everyone from their sleep just like in camp, singing songs of peace, love, and get-the-hell-out-of-bed and help us down here, the bus from Ramallah is arriving momentarily. Went down to help Yoav and Eliyahu set up the site for the various peace organizations that would be arriving to have booths and give workshops, just in time to greet Firas in full PLC splendor, and Ibtisam with her usual glow of ultimate awesomeness. Rav Froman and Hadassah arrived soon after the Jordanian contingent, and then I turned around to see holy brother Casey-Baruch of Baltimore fame, tired and generally blissed-out from the Jerusalem bus ride. Casey, you made my Sulha just by being there, man. Also ran into Sareet, holy sister one-hour fresh off the plane from the States, making aliyah. I stopped in at the Bereaved Parents Tent as people were assembling there, and fell in with a loving crowd of young Palestinian guys, instant connection. One new friend with a guitar played a song about my name, Habiba el Habiba, kind of like Chabibi....that was it for me, right there, Sulha just being able to sit around and sing with these guys, at the prime age to be hate-filled suicide bombers, making peace with Israeli Jews, many of whom were current or former soldiers and/or settlement-dwellers. Everyone at the Sulha was making a committed choice--choosing life over death, love over war, and then putting themselves out there to make it a reality.

While the official opening ceremony wouldn't be until later, Gaby gathered everyone around the tree and shared a beautiful niggun that incorporated Ein Keloheinu with a chorus of "Lai lai, Il'Allah...." This was followed by the first listening circles, where everyone broke up into groups to get to know one another for the first time. Among many other holy souls, my group included Rana and Nevim, two women my age from Bethlehem, both fighting the good fight on their end (peacing the good peace?). We all went around introducing ourselves and saying what had brought us to Sulha, answers ranging from plain curiosity to hope, to wanting to be woken up from skepticism. Casey just wanted to meet some of his neighbors out there near Bat Ayin. Rana believed that Jews wanted peace, and wanted to see it for herself.

When the circle disbanded, Mahmoud brought me over to be interviewed on Al-Jazeera. Crazy! I think it went well, the reporter just asked me what the Sulha means to me, and I said that it means creating a consciousness for authentic and lasting peace to grow out of, in so many words. Don't know if the segment was live, don't even know if they used it, but it was definitely a unique experience.

Spent a good portion of the day fenagling stuff with the peace organizations. In the end, not many showed up, for whatever reason. Either they had no people to send during summer vacation,or things got screwed up, or they simply weren't interested in compromising their time and attention to be at the Sulha. Their loss, but it was quality instead of quantity all the way, with Bustan L'Shalom, Pathway Circle, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Theosophical Society all making choice appearances. Check out these orgs, my friends. Their work is bringing us into the new world. Caught an impromtu mincha led by Rav Froman, screaming out to the Creator from the eye of a storm of peace. Let it hail, brother!!!

Made friends with Chaim, a refusenik who'd just been released from being in jail for a month for taking his stand. A really beautiful, sensitive soul, changed the way that I'd thought about people who refuse to serve in the territories for humanitarian reasons. I still have reservations, generally believing that the Israeli army tries very hard to do the right thing and isn't out to get the Arabs, just to protect Israel. In my circles, army service is a duty, even a holy thing, that you do even if you believe in peace, to defend Israel against many ever-present threats. So talking to Chaim was challenging for me. He'd been on the career track in the army, eight years running, when he got completely disillusioned by Operation Defensive Shield, April 2002 when Israel went into Jenin and Ramallah and conducted full-on terrorist raids. Personally, I believe these raids were justified or not after a month where there were terrorist attacks every single day, but Chaim read the reports of the army's actions there and became demoralized, choosing to leave the army and do time rather than continue serving. Heavy stuff, he'd been clearly shaken up by his experiences in prison, where he says he bonded more with the Druze prisoners than the Israelis. He planted an organic garden there, and is now reshaping his life by working with Bustan L'Shalom and doing organic farming. Love, blessings, and strength to you, Chaim.

First night of Sulha, I don't even have the right words to describe it. While a dedicated group of Arabs and Israelis worked nonstop making refreshments in the back corner of the lawn--including one elderly Bedouin woman who never stopped making lafa the entire time--seriously, I never saw her get up--the opening ceremony commenced. Rav Menachem and Hadassah Froman lit the first torch, and the Rav gave a rousing speech in his uniquely plantive, incendiarily loving manner, getting the crowd to scream Allah Hu Akhbar, saying that it means Ahava T'Natzeach--Love willl be Eternal. "Allah Hu Akhbar--Ahava T'Natzeach!!!!" Rav Froman is other-worldly. Other speeches included organizer Elias Jabbour explaining the significance of the Sulha, Zulu chief John Quizulini doing a peace dance in full tribal regalia, Tibetan monk Geshele urging both sides to be free of their attachments and work together, a messenger with an endorsement from Arafat which proved to be a bit of a bring-down (long story behind that), and many more. After the speeches, a concert began which lasted well into the night. First Shoteh HaNevuah (Fools of Prophecy) played, one of their chorus being, in Hebrew, "Nobody's leaving this place, so let's start to love." Sounds better in the original. The music was rocking beyond belief, including the young Arab indie-rock salaam band, the Israeli peacenik garage band, and Gaia, who totally brought down the house on an ecstatic, tribal revelation of Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, dancing and singing together for several moshiach-induced hours. The highest of the high.
Wednesday: Spent a few estrogen-filled hours in the women's tent with Sareet, meeting Israeli and Arab women who'd lost children, and more blessed sisters who just came to talk and build consciousness from the inside out. I remember saying that I felt like our spirituality had been hijacked by masculine forces of hatred and control, and that it's up to us to infuse the soul back into our peoples. My friend Leah spoke about being sick of feeling like it's wrong somehow to greet Arabs on the street, really wanting to break down needless walls. Ibtisam gave a moving testimony of her story. She'd been on an Egged bus and had been terribly humiliated by the driver, who told her to get off, and when she wouldn't, as an Israeli citizen and a human being, he got both the cops and a couple of soldiers to physically extract her, for no reason whatsoever. Bitterness burned in her heart for a long time after taht, especially when Egged did nothing about it. She thought all Jews were terrible human beings. Gradually, though, she began to meet Jewish people, opened up more and began to get seriously involved in peace work. So many skeptics, all it takes is a couple of conversations to know that the "other" is a person, is a friend, and that can be the world. As Rumi put it, "If you have a hundred cynical conceptions of G-d, make them ninety-nine!" All we did in the circle was go around and share our experiences, and by the end everybody was crying.

The Green Sheykh and Habibah came that day, so nice to see them. While the Sheykh sat on a panel of international leaders discussing peace as various energy circles and music went on throughout the lawn, I chilled out with my soul-sister Habibeleh. At least four times that day, we'd introduce ourselves to someone and they'd do a double-take at the fact that we have the same name.

That night was an intensely stirring Rosh Chodesh celebration, led by a group of angelic women, getting the crowd of 4,000 people to chant "Elohim Echad" and "Allah Hu Allah" together, interpersing the phrases, their voices dancing in and out and lacing them together until they were one, going from soft to hardcore on the jembe, rocking out to the Oneness, within and without. We were also greeted, via satellite, by Rav Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, the Patriarch of Jewish Renewal and a palpably righteous presence, who shared words of peace and blessing for the Sulha, for Israel and Palestine. Ari also came that night--yay!! So good to have some Ari energy around. Sitting in a circle with a group that included Sareet, Ari, Casey, Habibah, and new friend Yosef David, I was thinking it does not get any better than this. This is real, and we have to do everything in our power in this world to keep this going. This Sulha is a microcosm of what needs to happen on a grand scale and on every level, a utopia that we've proved can exist, even for a few days. Everything is here.

We said goodbye to our Palestinian and Jordanian friends the next morning, who needed to leave early because of delays they were expecting at the border. Orthodoxanarchist.com has a beautiful narration of the ceremony, where Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian leaders were given branches from an olive tree, resolving to plant them and bring back a piece of them the next year, to show that the symbol of peace is firmly entrenched and growing. All of the Israelis got up and handed t-shirts to our departing friends, sharing hugs and words of blessings. The t-shirt is a blessing itself, a yin-yang with an Israeli and Palestinian flag, showing that we're dancing, struggling, learning from one another, sharing the same space whether we like it or not. I gave a shirt to Rana, she liked the design and we resolved to keep in touch. She said that the Sulha had proven to her that Jews really are interested in peace, and that we all have to forget our inept political leaders (whoever is more of a problem, Sharon or Arafat, is still a divisive issue) and work together as people of this land. All the power to you, Rana.

After chilling with some friends who'd come to experience the end of the Sulha, I made a mad dash back to Jerusalem with Ari to catch Tamar's wedding, which was a microcosm of insane holiness in it of itself. Tamar's the first one from my high school class to bite the dust, marriage-wise, so it was a pretty blessed event. Tamar and Moshe, mazal tov of the highest order on your new life together, and you can't imagine how sorry I am for calling you at 2 in the morning on your wedding night trying to find my cell phone. So it goes....

Might sound like an anti-climatic end to the Sulha for me, but the truth is, it's still going. Last night we had a ridiculously delicious seudah-shlishit-melava-malka at Eliyahu's with all of the Sulha's international guests plus holy Nachlaot chevre. A groovy soul-stirring time had by all. Today I'll be travelling back to Shuni for a processing meeting with Sulha staff, should be interesting. I'll keep you posted, and thanks for reading this far.

....it's all happening....

2004-08-16T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Days of Sulha are quickly approaching. I'm just finishing up here, doing some last-minute follow-up calls and running errands, and then I'll be heading up to the Sulha site tonight. Eliyahu's already there, and of course there's already a major controversy. I discussed before that the park is a memorial to the Etzel Fighters, an illegal extreme militia who defended the Jews in the area before the official establishment of Israel. More info from the Jewish Virtual Library:

Etzel: Armed Jewish underground organization, founded in 1931 by a group of Haganah commanders, who left the Haganah in protest against its defense charter. In April 1937, during the Arab riots, the organization split—about half its members returned to the Haganah. The rest formed a new Irgun Zeva'i Le'umi (abbr. Etzel), which was ideologically linked with the Revisionist Movement and accepted the authority of its leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Etzel rejected the “restraint” policy of the Haganah and carried out armed reprisals against Arabs, which were condemned by the Jewish Agency. Many of its members were arrested by the British authorities; one of them, Shlomo Ben Yosef, was hanged for shooting an Arab bus. After the publication of the White Paper in May 1939, Etzel directed its activities against the British Mandatory autorities.

At the outbreak of World War II, the organization declared a truce, which led to a second split (see Lohamei Herut Yisrael). Etzel members joined the British Army's Palestinian units and later the Jewish Brigade.

From 1943 Etzel was headed by Menachem Begin. In February 1944, Etzel declared war against the British administration. It attacked and blew up government offices, military installations and police stations. The Jewish Agency and the Haganah moved against the Etzel in a campaign nicknamed the Sezon. Etzel joined the Jewish Resistance Movement and after its disintegration in August 1946, Etzel continued attacks on British military and government objectives.

In April 1947, four members of the organization were hanged in Acre prison. In May 1947, Etzel broke into the fortress at Acre and freed 41 prisoners. In July 1947, when 3 other Etzel members were executed, the I.Z.L. hanged two British sergeants.

After the Declaration of Independence, the Etzel high command offered to disband the organization and integrate its members into the army of the new Jewish state. Full integration was achieved in September 1948.

So I guess you can see why some Arabs have serious issues with having the Sulha at their memorial park, which, incidentally, used to be an Arab village. The Arab Sulha organizers were furious at first with the site, but everybody agreed in the end, more or less, that having it there is exactly the point of the Sulha--doing a healing between the two peoples on a disputed territory. Makes sense, beautiful, right?
So just when the Arab organizers calmed down, the Etzel memorial people started throwing a fit at the fact that we're having a peace gathering there. We've had this site for months, but nevermind that, they won't allow Palestinians to be there, they're not having any of it. For a few terrifying moments it looked like the entire Sulha was going to have to be cancelled. But they worked it out, we just can't use a few key facilities of the park, like the office we had set up and the ampitheater for all of the ceremonies.
But.....lo mishaneh. Peace will prevail on Earth, with the help of G-d. We'll defy the odds, with everyone's help. We even invited the Etzel people to join our talking circles and share their stories....should be interesting.
In other news, a humongous mazal tov mazal tov to Tamar Pieczenik and Moshe Gordon, who are getting married on Thursday, to Chana Leah Friedland-Wechsler and Betsalel Esterson, who are getting married tomorrow, to Bracha and Micha Hyman on the birth of Zahava Tsipia Hinda, to Leora Hessing on her recent aliyah to Israel, to Ari Johnson on his official appointment to go to the gold mines of South Africa to do AIDS research, and last but certainly not least, to my parents, the holy beloved Phil and Lisa Jacobs, on their 28th wedding anniversary this Thursday. So many incredibly beautiful milestones and changes, so much love, thanks to you all for allowing me to be part of your worlds.
Don't forget to check out the live webcast of the sulha--www.sulha.com.

It May Seem a Million Miles Away....

2004-08-13T01:54:00.000-07:00

...but it gets a little closer every day. At least this week it's sure feeling that way.
First, for those of you who won't make it to the end

of this epic poem of a post, just know to tune into www.sulha.com next tuesday-thursday for live video feed of the peace event I've been blabbing out--get blown away for yourselves, why take it from me?
This week has been so long, eventful, and busy that it's hard to look back and go through each day separately, but I'll try. Sunday I went with Eliyahu to Shvaram, an Israeli Arab city in the Haifa area, for a meeting with the top Sulha organizers, including Elias Jabbour, head of the International House of Hope, Gaby Meyer, original creator of the Sulha, and many others, including Ihab, an Israeli Arab from Yaffo who, after losing his business in Tel Aviv due to neglect from an anti-Arab Jewish landlord, became a Muslim "chozer b'tshuva" and joined the religious peace movement. Wonderful, remarkable people. We discussed particulars of the Sulha--like, how to accommodate the 200+ Palestinians who are coming in, through Bereaved Parents Forum and other organizations? Almost all overnight guests of the anticipated 3000+ will be staying with families in the area, except for some who choose to camp out at the park, staff included. I got a tent, I'm all set.
Eliyahu and I are the default liaisons to the religious English-speaking communities here, printing English flyers and making endless phone calls to various rabbanim to encourage them to come. it's an interesting phenomenon, actually--rabbis say they're hesitant to come because they don't feel there's reciprocation, but there are about thirty imams and sheykhs attending the sulha so far, and only about 2 prominent Israeli rabbis. So the divide has clearly got to be bridged, over fear and apprehension. I myself have a very good friend that wants to come, but says he can't because he's starting yeshiva. At some point, this has got to become a priority for a good amount of religious Jews, who always seem to be discussing the messianic era, but what about working to bring it? Anyway, I digress.
After the meeting on Sunday, we headed back to Jerusalem and attended a lecture by Yossi Klein HaLevi, the New York-born Israeli author who's book about his spiritual journey, "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, a Jew's Search for G-d with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land," got me into this work in the first place, since Eliyahu was his guide into the Muslim world. The lecture turned out to be a reflection of Yossi's own inner dilemmas--how to continue believing in peace as a viable option after years of terror, after seeing Muslim voices for peace being increasingly marginalized by a torrent of hatred for Israel and the Jewish people? Yossi himself says there must be a two-pronged paradoxical approach--unceasing political and military strength, including the security fence, with the ultimate goal of disengagement. We have to get beyond our myths of what Israel should be, Yossi said, including the Right's myth of controlling all of Israel--a reality which has turned into a demoralizing occupation--and the Left's myth of "Land for Peace" actually working. At the same time, we should be reaching out, wherever we still can, for spiritual/religious-based peace, to create consciousness that will one day transcend the current political mess and marginalize voices of hate. During the question and answer period, I stood up and asked Yossi what he thought of the Sulha Project, shamelessly plugging the event, but I felt it needed to be said, and so did Yossi, he encouraged me to describe it and pass out fliers, all of which were distributed to the many audience members. Woohoo! When I met Yossi, I told him the great effect his book had on me (and on Yaakov), how it created hope for me that there were boundaries that could be transcended and work to be done, that a difference could yet be made. I think he appreciated hearing that, just as I appreciated his book so much.
The next day, a group included me, Eliyahu, and others from the Nachlaot community took the Green Sheykh from London and his daughter to meet Rav Menachem Froman of Tekoa, a self-described "primitive settler" who sees no contradiction in living in the settlements and meeting with Muslim leaders,including Arafat on occasion, to work for peace. Rav Froman is a deep, human, powerful force for change, who goes beyond all social conventions for the sake of making peace. I've never met anyone quite like him. The encounter between Rav Froman and the Green Sheykh was beyond anything I can say, but my friend Shaul Yudelman said it well, so, with apologies to him, I've shamelessly copied his email:
Yesterday I went with my friend Eliyahu and some other friends in a visiting of an unusual cast. We brought a Sufi SHeikh abu Khassam, who lives today in England but was born in the ARab neigborhood that was next to the Wailing Wall. This sheikh group up in the womens sections of the Wailing wall, climbing up the Wall to eat the sweet grasses that grew there, he recounted. His family is a Sufi family that were the guardians of Nebi Musa, the spiritual resting place of Moses' grave and a prayer site for both Jew and Muslims. He is known as the Green Sheikh, for he wears these green fabrics he started wearing after a strong vision he received telling him to stop wearing the jeans and cowboy belt he had started wearing in England. He came to Israel with his daughter, and is touring and visiting, praying and meeting. SO this was a very special meeting that my friend Eliyahu had arranged to visit with Rav Menachem Fromin, a jewish mystic, who lives in a settlement not so far from where I live, a place called Tekoa. We and the sheikh got into our chartered van in the middle jerusalem, and unusual combination of folks walking down the street, veils, peos, hawaiian shirts, and sandals-the commonest denominator. We travelled south from Jerusalem into the Judaean mountains and then headed east watching the land dry as we neared the town of Tekoa, overlooking the harsh Judaean desert and through the haze was resting the Dead Sea and then themountains of Jordan. Near Tekoa is the Herodian, a palace/ fortress built by Herod which holds a view to the east of the Dead sea, and to the west and the Mediterannean.
THe bustling house of Rav Froman recieved us.. THere is something very settling about the family nature of these spiritual leaders, The bustle of the kitchen was in constant accompaniement to the dialogue of spiritual sharing, stories and hopes that transpired. Many wide open smiles and jokes back and forth accentuated a beautiful sharing of visions where the traditional Other is incorporated into a greater vision of the We, and awareness of the ONeness of Hashem/Allah was the guiding principle in boths sense of the way to peace.
Rav Fromin, my friend Eliyahu and a deep part of myself feel that the only way to peace in this land is through the spiritual traditions of both people. The future of this land needs to be based on the faiths that have grown here, and are at the heart of both peoples here. This statement is with a grain of salt, given the large number of secular Israelis,

who strongly disavow the religious content of the state- but as a heard pointed out in a lecture the other night by Yossi Klein ha Levi, a main reason for the utter failure of previous peace agreements (oslo) was the fact that it was made between the secular elites of bothe sides... The heart of this conflict- are the keepers of the tradition on both side, religious settler movement and Islamic imbued violent nationalism.
Rav Fromin asked over and over for the Green Sheikh to take the same beautiful teachings he was sharing with us to the Arab public and the Israeli people. FOr the Israelis to hear a sheikh explain that Allah hu-Akbar doesn't mean death to the jews is already a deep step forward at this point. Rav Fromin suggested they both go, tomorrow to speak to the prime ministers of both peoples, which he has been doing in recent times with rabbis. THe Green SHeikh had no interest in politicians, and it was a agreed instead to set up visits with local SHeikhs and mukhtars and rabbis.

Back to DeDe: In addition to the encounter between the Sheykh and the Rav, I had an encounter of my own with the Sheykh's daughter. She's Habiba, my Hebrew name is Chavivah. We bonded, she's a beautiful person, very devoted to her faith and the beauty she sees so deeply within it. She whipped out a tube of henna dye and expertly painted an intricate design on my hands with it. We talked about Rumi, Rav Kook, Rav Nachman, her dad's work, what its' like to be a relatively normal British teenager growing up in a house with two wives and a father who's a pioneering spiritual leader. She's great, I can't wait to see her again at the Sulha.
After Monday, the days were most composed of making phone calls to peace organizations to finalize the workshop schedule and booths at the Sulha, a process which has been both endlessly interesting and tedious at times. The Big Event is approaching, check out the details at the updated www.sulha.com. It will also be accessible on LIVE FEED all three days, so tune in once in awhile, maybe I'll be waving hi :-)

A Really Nice Restaurant

2004-08-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, no time or money to write much, but I'll include this tidbit copied shamelessly from an email to Yaakov:
This week has been pretty incredible, the most incredible thing being that I've only been here a week. It feels like a lifetime, with my eyes getting opened up wider and wider by the minute. The highlight of this week, I suppose, was going to Ramallah. Yes, that's right. I was at a meeting in East East East Jerusalem with the Palestinian delegation of the Sulha organizers--in the home of this guy on the Palestinian Legislative Council, Farsik, who is beyond us ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, which for me is incredible and awesome and wonderful. He's working on getting at least 100 Palestinians, in addition to tons of Israeli Arabs, to the Sulha. Also at the meeting were Gaby Meyer, the Sulha organizers who's a wonderful guy and a total hoot, this guy Mahmoud who's also on the PLC and is mamash a mensch, Ibtisam, a religious Muslim woman from the Galil who is involved in all kinds of community-building and peacemaking efforts, including this one, one of Eliyahu's best friends, and just more amazingly cool beyond beyond people that I was blown away at the honor to be with. Afterwards, Judius, a Catholic Arab from the Galil, suggested we "go to a falafel place for lunch right across the checkpoint", ok....suddenly we're across the checkpoint and in a taxi right into the heart of Ramallah to go to waht Judius says is "a really nice restaurant." I was a *little bit* freaked out, thinking of the lynchings of Israeli soldiers that happened there and all sorts of other awful things, but I tried to be cool, and it totally helped that I was surrounded by beautiful people putting their lives on the line to make peace. The restaurant was nice, had good salad I guess, but it was also an oasis for peacemakers, it seemed. The maitre'd is part of Chefs for Peace, two guys from the Arab Parliament walked in, the very same two Arafat had screamed at earlier in the week for their peacemaking efforts with Jews. So Ramallah, oddly enough, was a good experience. Draining, but good. And don't tell my mom. Really.

Coming Home

2004-07-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings, all who are reading this, if anyone. I arrived safely in Israel yesterday morning (after seeing a much-recommended movie on the plane--an Israeli film called "Walk on Water"--see it). After unwittingly getting into a *discussion* with a right-wing American Jew on the shuttle to Jerusalem, I arrived in Nachlaot, the beautiful Jerusalem neighborhood where I've spent so many good times--one of the epicenters of Jewish spiritual coolness in Israel. All is breathtaking, I walk down the streets with my arms outstretched, I dance for no reason with my head turned up toward the blue blue sky, and lots more corny things that sometimes end up in bumping into thousand-year-old stone walls. The house I'm staying in is huge and airy, my roommates are cool, all logistics are in order.
Went to a "Boogie" last night--an Israeli hippie dance party--imagine 200 hipped-out Middle-Easterners of all ages dancing to "American Pie" under disco lights--to meet Yoav, another organizer of the Sulha. This guy is so skinny he disappears from the side, and so full of love you never notice it. We talked about what I'll be doing--starting out making phone calls to various organizations about what they want their capacities to be in the Sulha and sending them info, so I'm already all over that.
I met Eliyahu this morning. Wow. If there's a chance for peace, this guy is gonna take us there. Just a great person--fun to hang out with and talk to, well-read, likes the color purple a whole lot (purple door, purple room, purple kipah....), not to mention the incredible work he does so fearlessly, without even thinking. If peace will ever be lasting, it has to start from inside, the consciousness must be built up to see it, to look at one another as godly beings. The Sulha is beyond politics, but bridges to a new reality in which politics is transcended, in which the variables change through connection on a level which is at once totally basic and human yet reaches into our deepest essence. Eliyahu and I had a good talk, and we're going to get cracking on Sunday, when hopefully we'll be having a peace event with the Green Sheikh, an awesome Sufi from London who's here for a wedding. This stuff is real, it's really happening, these people are doing it. I'm blown away on every level.
When people give me funny looks when I tell them what I'm doing here, I just say that if there's a chance to eke out light from so much darkness, I want to be involved in it. I want to work with people who have Moshiach-consciousness and are relating to the world in that way, bringing all of us there, Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, everything.
The very location of the Sulha, as it turns out, is going to be a microcosm of healing. It's Park Shuni, but reallyh park JABOTINSKY-Shuni. Jabotinsky was the Israeli leader responsible for the exile of hundreds of Arabs from their homes in the North in the 48-era. The park itselfwas a base camp for the Etzel--a group of Israeli "freedom fighters" who perpetrated violence against Arabs. So a lot of Arab Sulha organizers were pissed when they were told the location, even tghough it was given to us free and has great facilities and all. the Israelis understood their painand indignation at once, but are emphasizing the fact that this is a phenomenal chance to do tikkun--healing of the highest order, in that very spot.
Shabbat Shalom or good weekend to all, hope to hear from you soon.

The Digits

2004-07-28T04:56:00.000-07:00

Okay FYI--my phone number is 053-277-698. Hope to hear from you soon.
~dd

hello all

2004-07-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, so if you're here it probably means that you're a close, personal friend who got my email and wants to stay in touch while I'm away this month. I'll be interning with the Sulha Peace Project at their annual gathering--check them out at www.metasulha.org.
It's the religious peace movement--Muslims and Jews using both religions as a forum for unity and peace, as opposed to the hatred and violence that has resulted from extremists corrupting both schools of worship from their essence. I'll be helping out with the 3-day gathering in the Galil, coordinating stuff and just generally getting my sheltered-little-girl-from-Baltimore eyes blown wide open. If there's a chance for love, I surrender to it.
In other news, Yaakov just got a job at www.bnaishalomofolney.org as their youth director, so he'll be moving to Baltimore soon, G-d willing. I'm still working hard at www.jewsforjudaism.org and www.sparkpfs.org and going to www.goucher.edu. This link stuff is fun.
I'll post my cell phone number in Israel as soon as I have it. I'll be headin' back to the old neighborhood in Nachlaot, 38 Gilboa, so if you're already there or planning on it, you best be stopping by for tea.
That's all for now, love you all and hope to be hearing from you soon. Have a meaningful fast.