Conservadox & Single

In Honor of Hanukkah . . .

2011-12-22T11:53:00.004-05:00

. . . Katrina has decided to take a break from the exhausting task of not-blogging and embark in at least one post of actual blogging. Without further adieu . . .

Hanukkah is a holiday that I both love and hate.

I love it because:

1) It brings back fond memories of my childhood, including making latkes with my mom, singing old Israeli Hanukkah songs with my parents and brother, and yes, getting cool presents. I think the roller-blades were the highlight.

2) Now that I am observant, I appreciate a holiday that is fun, requires little preparation, and does not have restrictions on working, using electricity, cooking, etc. I am doing practically nothing this Hanukkah other than lighting the candles with DH, and I love it.

I hate it because Jews, especially American Jews, have neutered the holiday, and then they complain that it is boring. "How can it compete with Christmas?" everyone from Jon Stewart to SIL says. Well, it can't, if you are talking about the crass commercialism, materialism, and domination of every aspect of American society for a month that Christmas promotes. Christmas also has a nice little man in a red suit that brings presents, and enough light to put your Hanukkiah to shame. AND it has inspired the best Christian music throughout history. NEWSFLASH: "I Have a Little Dreidel" was not written to rival Handel's Messiah. The traditional Jewish music on the High Holidays represents the apex of Jewish musical skill. Most of it is way older than Handel.

This comparison of Hanukkah and Christmas, clearly a doomed proposition from the Jewish side, is of course partially the fault of American Jews, who wanted a holiday with lots of presents to compete with Christmas. That went well.

So what is Hanukkah actually about? What do I mean when we say we have neutered the holiday?

I have been thinking about posting about this for a few days, and then I ran into this article (link here) on Slate. It talks about the fact that Hanukkah was not originally about lights and divine miracles, not that there is anything wrong with either. But the story of the light that was supposed to last for one day and instead lasted for eight was added by the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Originally, Hanukkah was, as Ponet says, a "Jewish civil war," between Jews assimilated into the Hellenistic way of life and the Maccabees, religious zealots who would tolerate no deviation from the way they thought Jewish life had always been. The latter revolted against the former, won, and then "established a Hasmonean state that never ceased fighting Jews who disagreed with its rule."

IRONY ALERT: We American Jews are the Hellenists. The Maccabees would have totally speared us. Just saying.

So Hanukkah is about lights, and divine miracles, and the problems of retaining ones Jewish identity in an appealing majority culture, and the role of zealotry in preserving a particular vision of the Jewish way of life, and the appeal and danger in Jewish military might (hence, as Ponet says, the popularity of the holiday in Israel). These are all issues that could (I am tempted to say "should") resonate with us today.

So you might want to think about them as you are lighting your Hanukkiah and munching on those latkes and sufganiyot.

Happy Hanukkah!

Yes, What This Guy Says

2011-08-04T15:20:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I even take a break from criticizing everyone to agree with someone:

What do you guys think of his argument that Jewish particularism advances, rather than impedes, universalist empathy?

Getting Ritual Wrong

2011-07-29T08:00:00.003-04:00

I guess that when I start blogging again, I really start blogging again.

Today's edition is entitled: "When media outlets publish unbelievably stupid articles about Jewish rituals." I have read two already this morning that made my blood boil:

1. This gem in the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), linked to via Jewish Ideas Daily, saying that non-Orthodox Jews are doing too much tikkun olam (repairing the world, i.e., social justice) and not enough mitzvot.

This is an old charge, but it never ceases to piss me off, because it presents false choices: mitzvot OR social action. Newsflash: They are not mutually exclusive. All Jews should strive to do more of both. I was raised Reform with a day-school education AND a fair amount of ritual in the home and am now a member of a modern Orthodox shul, although I would not describe myself as modern Orthodox. I have written in the past about how shocked I am by the attitudes toward social action of some of my otherwise wonderful shul friends. I think that the ritual aspects of an Orthodox Jewish life (including among the Modern Orthodox) can become overwhelming, and that it is therefore important for rabbis and, heck, anyone who cares, to remind Orthodox Jews about the importance of social action, not only within the shul, but outside it as well.

But far, far, worse than this false dichotomy is the author's explanation of why Orthodox Jews (don't even get me started on the term "Orthodox movement") engage in "serious Jewish education and Jewish practice":

"We can’t have it both ways. We might insist that tikkun olam and social justice are central to our Jewish way of life, but they are increasingly taking the place of serious Jewish education and Jewish practice. Those are the water pumps and sandbags employed by the Orthodox movement against the rising tides of assimilation."

Silly me. I thought I observed Shabbat because it is an eternal covenant between God and the Jews that evokes the miracles of Creation and the Exodus from Egypt and links me to Jews throughout the centuries. NOW I realize that I am doing it to keep any future children from inter-marrying. That makes it so much more meaningful. Thanks, buddy.

2. The New York Times's religion reporting is a joke. This is another thing that is not new and, yet, continues, in its most egregious instances, to make me want to bang my head against the wall.

So, guess what's (not) new in the Jewish world today? This piece (it may be online only) divulges the great secret that some Jews, especially in San Francisco, are not having their sons circumcised. Wow! If this hadn't been going on even in New York for the last 15 years at least (I am too young to remember any further back, although info is welcome), I might be surprised. I think it is especially ridiculous that the piece makes no connection whatsoever between the recent San Francisco circumcision controversy and the attitudes of "Jewish 'intactivists'" living in the Bay Area who prefer brit shalom to brit milah. Who do you think started and leads the campaign to have circumcision banned in San Fran?

Hey, New York TImes, just in case you forgot about that whole controversy, you might want to check your OWN NEWSPAPER from TWO DAYS AGO, when you ran an article entitled "Judge May Strike Circumcision Ban."

BOTTOM LINE: This whole media narrative about the inexorable decline of Jewish ritual (or mitzvot, if you prefer) in the non-Orthodox world and the related superiority of the Orthodox in all things Jewish is getting really tiresome.

I often wonder whether these writers have ever belonged to an Orthodox community. If they didn't, it would explain why they see Orthodox Jews as so special and transcendent. As a member of a warm and caring modern Orthodox community, I see every Shabbat that its members, who, yes, engage in "serious Jewish education and Jewish practice," also have weaknesses and struggles for holiness, just as other Jews do.

But no one ever writes about that.

Career Advice

2011-07-27T13:51:00.002-04:00

Wow. I realize I haven't blogged for a while, and I realize I haven't blogged about academia much at all, but I saw something today on Slate that really struck me. At the end of an article otherwise pedestrian article on reforming Ph.D. programs in the humanities, the author, William Pannapacker, said something unexpected. Really unexpected.

A bit of background for those of you who are lucky enough not to have, or be studying for, Ph.D.'s in the humanities: Most graduate students are exploited terribly as cheap labor for undergraduate teaching so that tenured professors rarely have to leave the library. Those same professors often encourage their most engaged students to pursue Ph.D.'s, both so that the professors can reproduce themselves academically (have disciples, in other words) and because those professors have little experience outside of academia and think their students' only other choice is working for an evil corporation. Many, many, Ph.D.'s in the humanities do not get tenure-track jobs once they graduate (this has gotten MUCH worse in many fields since the Great Recession). Many of them become severely underpaid adjunct professors who earn something like $5,000 per course (if they're lucky) with no benefits and no job security. If you want to hear from some of these people, check out the blog College Misery.

I didn't know any of this before I entered graduate school, because: a) things weren't as bad then, and b) those undergrad professors tend to reassure their students that MANY people may not get jobs, but, you, of course, are not "many people." You are special and chosen, and you're going to a top-3 grad school in your field, where you will be fully funded. (Did you know, dear readers, that some students take out as much as $100K in loans to get Ph.D.'s? Even as an undergrad, I would have recognized that as crazy).

So, for the last ten years or so, various people have been writing articles in various publications that only academics read suggesting many of the solutions that Pannapacker puts forth, including: providing non-academic career advice to Ph.D.'s; publishing the rates of job placement in any Ph.D. program; and encouraging grad students to organize. Because most of these articles are written by academics (and Pannapacker is one), most of them do not include his final suggestion, which he calls "the nuclear option."

Pannapacker says:

"6. Just walk away. Do not let your irrational love for the humanities make you vulnerable to ongoing exploitation. Do not remain a captive to dubious promises about future rewards. Cut your losses, now. Accumulate work experiences and contacts that will enable you to support yourself, have health coverage, and something like a normal life. Even the more privileged students I mentioned earlier—and the ones who are not seeking traditional employment—could do a lot of good by refusing to support the current academic labor system. It exists because so many of us who care about the humanities and higher education in a sincere, idealistic way have been passively complicit with the destruction of both. You don't have to return to school this fall, but the academic labor system depends on it.
In order to reform higher education, many of us will have to leave it, perhaps temporarily, but with the conviction that the fields of human activity and values we care about—history, literature, philosophy, languages, religion, and the arts—will be more likely to flourish outside of academe than in it. As more and more people are learning, universities do not have a monopoly on the 'life of the mind.'"

There were five jobs nationwide in my field last year. FIVE. In. The. Whole. Country. (And Canadian universities must, by law, give preference to Canadians). Non-academics rarely believe these statistics, but they are real. It is refreshing to hear an academic admit that this may not work, even for the Ivy-League, fully-funded, Ph.D. who has not yet had to resort to adjuncting. I have never heard a tenured professor say anything close to: "It [the current academic labor system] exists because so many of us who care about the humanities and higher education in a sincere, idealistic way have been passively complicit with the destruction of both." It's as refreshing to me as it is shocking.

I'm going back on the job market this year. I very well may find another postdoc. Will it be exploitative? If I don't find one, will I adjunct, or will I do a #6?

Any thoughts?

Score One for Progressive Judaism

2011-03-14T09:17:00.004-04:00

As I have mentioned on this blog, I was raised Reform (in a kosher home) and am now Shomeret Shabbat and belong to a Modern Orthodox shul, although I would have no problem belonging to a traditional egalitarian Conservative shul. I am not a strictly halakhic Jew, in other words, but my practice may be described as Orthodox-style, and I believe in a personal God Who gave us commandments and in Divine Providence. My instincts for social justice, however, are sometimes shocked by my experiences in a Modern Orthodox community, and this morning was no exception.

On account of said practice, I needed to find out the sof z'man kriyat Sh'ma this morning (the last time to say the Sh'ma prayer; yes, there is a time limit). I wasn't sure if Daylight Savings Time affected this. So, I went on to the Orthodox Union website (www.ou.org, natch). Right before I had gone on the website, my browser flashed the cover of the New York Times website, with its latest horrible news on the massive casualties and nuclear disaster of the Japan tsunami.

I am feeling some despair about what has been going on in the world in 2011. I'm not sure what I want (or can) do about it other than pray and give charity, but that's for another post. When I went to the OU website, I saw the following headline: "OU responds to Terrorist tragedy in Israel." Over Shabbat, a Palestinian breached the security of the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed five people, including a BABY. I find this sick and disgusting, of course, and I find it even more sick and disgusting that the coverage of this tragedy has been less than, um, ideal, as the victims have often been described as nameless "settlers" and their story buried on page 15 or something. If an Israeli civilian had gone into an Arab village in the West Bank and killed five people, that would have been on page 1 for at least a week. And I am no fan of settlers or settlements.

That being the case, we are talking about five people here. And how, exactly, can the OU respond to that? What about Japan? People there need food, clothing, radiation detectors, etc. I am sure there are more than five expatriate American Jews who might need something. I know that every life is important, and I believe that, but this struck me as particularism and refusal to engage with the rest of the world run amok.

So I went to the website of the Union for Reform Judaism and saw this headline: "Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan
In response to the tragic devastation of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the URJ has partnered with a number of North American Jewish organizations to form the Jewish Coalition for Japan Relief."

This struck me in my kishkes, as they say, as the far more appropriate headline, although I would have been pleased as punch to see both websites having both headlines. I guess you can take the girl out of Reform Judaism . . .

Shut up, Shylock

2011-03-08T00:18:00.002-05:00

Anti-semitism was a joke in my house when I growing up--literally. My parents firmly believed that anti-Semitism in the US had ceased to be a major problem and were irked that many Jews seemed to base so much of their Jewish identity on fighting it, or just being offended by it. So, if we suffered some kind of minor mishap (the mail was late, my brother couldn't find his left shoe, etc.), and complained, the answer to our childish "Why?" was a smirky "anti-Semitism." I still tell this joke to TH and close friends today.

I think that anti-Semitism was, and still is, both over- and underestimated. On over-estimating, see everything related to the ADL. I am not saying that anti-Semitism is gone, but its prevalence and power depend a lot on context, which is a pretty post-1950 phenomenon. If that American coke fiend Charlie Sheen wants to make anti-Semitic comments about his boss's name change (never mind that Sheen was born with the last name "Estevez"), who cares? He said he was a warlock, so obviously he is not exactly in his right mind. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is a much bigger problem because he has all those weapons and not a lot to lose right now. But both of them were using anti-Semitic speech to attempt to distract others from their actual problems, as is often the case with anti-Semitic speech, and the Jews are the least of those problems. If Gaddafi is going to use those weapons on anyone, it's not going to be the Jews, at least not initially. The anti-Semitism of Hamas and Hezbollah and the publication of works in the Arab world that perpetuate the blood libel are almost unspeakably bad.

The distinction between these different kinds of anti-Semitism may be the hardest to draw in the US precisely BECAUSE this is such a safe country for Jews. What pisses me off about this, though, is that all of the political correctness and anti-Semitic-speech-watching pervading American media today (if I have to hear one more word about that freak British designer and HIS rant, I may scream), is that people can no longer tell the difference between real anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic speech by cokehead lunatics. I'm not saying that the latter can never be a problem, but it's obviously not as big a problem as serious anti-Semitism, or even the casual purveying of old anti-Semitic stereotypes that still have real salience for some people, especially outside the US, and especially in the Arab world.

This brings me to The Merchant of Venice. As you know, faithful readers, unless you have been living under a rock, the play was revived this summer to rave reviews, first as part of NYC's free Shakespeare in the park, and then on Broadway. Al Pacino played Shlock. A mere week or two after the Pacino Merchant closed, a new one opened off-Broadway, starring F. Murray Abraham. TH asked if I wanted to go to the off-Broadway version, since we were willing neither to sleep overnight in Central Park nor to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the Broadway version.

I said no. Why?

Well, The Merchant of Venice is one of the most anti-Semitic plays ever written. It is, by a factor of a lot, the most anti-Semitic work of literature that is still read and interpreted seriously in the Western world. AND NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW IT. One need look no further for evidence of this ignorance than the New York Times's review of the off-Broadway/F. Murray Abraham Merchant of Venice. Under a picture of FMA in an expensive suit, holding a dagger over a captive blond personifying WASP-hood (how many of those do you think there were in Renaissance Venice, btw?), Charles Isherwood chatters on blithely about how the play captures the conflicting forces of good and evil that vie for dominance in every human heart. Never mind that earlier in the article, Isherwood said that the play's "modern dress" is "evoking the bottom-line-obsessed world of today's Wall Street."

So, let me get this straight, Mr. Isherwood. A play by William Shakespeare, who did not exactly live in the heyday of the tolerance of Jews, in which the main character is an evil Jewish moneylender, is being revived on the New York stage with a Jewish actor dressed like a Wall Street trader demanding a pound of flesh from a non-Jew, and I am supposed to focus on its universal themes? We are not very far away from the economic crisis and the calls on Main Street, U.S.A., for the heads of the bankers, especially from Goldman Sachs. (I don't care what you think; I still maintain that Matt Taibi's widely-read Rolling Stone article, then book, on the subject was anti-Semitic). Where are we in the Jewish community when we can scream our heads off about Charlie Sheen and then skip off to our Jew-sploitation theater performance when we're done? I, personally, am comforted to know that there are no mosques within ten blocks of the theater. Because that could be problematic.

A Classic

2011-03-02T22:22:00.001-05:00

Today is my grandmother's yahrzeit (Hebrew-calendar anniversary of her death). May her memory be a blessing.

This Weekend SUCKS!

2011-01-09T15:47:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't already figured it out, Internet, this weekend SUCKS. big. time. Let's review:

--Apparently, it is open season in Arizona on Jewish Democratic Congresspeople. Oh, and federal judges are fair game also. And nine-year-old girls who were FREAKING BORN ON 9/11. Guess what, Republican nimrods looking for that perfect sound bite that will be crazier-than-thou? Violent speech leads to violence.
NOTE: I am not saying that people do not have the right, within already existing case law, to say whatever they want in this country. But I'm saying that some of the so-called leaders of the people in this country might want to exercise some judgement and, um, leadership, rather than snickering in the corner when their supporters are bringing guns to everything. And to Sarah Palin and her PAC, I can only say, "Fuck you." Maybe this incident will help show some of the non-wingnuts in this country who kind of like you how crazy you really are.

--Debbie Friedman died. She provided the soundtrack for my Jewish childhood. And my Jewish young adulthood. And even a not-insignificant part of my Jewish adulthood. And those of my friends and relatives and their friends and relatives, etc. Here is the Reform Movement's tribute. I know it's corny to say that she will live on through her music, but it's true. My three-year-old niece, who has probably never heard the name "Debbie Friedman," was singing the aleph-bet song the last time I saw her.

--I have to stop comparing my professional accomplishments to other peoples'. I actually like what I'm doing as a postdoc and don't know what I would do with a super-high-stress job of the sort some of my friends from grad school have. But it's not like anyone is offering any of those jobs to me, so who cares? And this week I have to go to an event that will include some former grad-school classmates who are super-hot tenure-track assistant professors at elite colleges. This will make me feel like shit. It just will. Even if I know I should chill.

So, internet, are you going to cheer me up? Please?

MO Jews and Food

2010-12-25T23:52:00.003-05:00

I know this isn't exactly a revelation, but the way Orthodox Jews eat, especially on Shabbat, is GROSS!

The shul TH and I joined a year ago has "hot kiddush" on Shabbat, meaning that kiddush includes Cholent (a kind of beef stew made in a crockpot so as not to violate the laws against cooking on the Sabbath). Everyone always runs at the food, and I can't say I haven't been guilty of this, too. I guess one difference is that TH and I consider a kiddush with cholent lunch, but many of the people at shul don't. They go to another meal afterwards! That is grooooooossssssssssssssss. I realize that some people don't eat that much at kiddush, and that those who do may not eat that much at lunch--either or both can be attending primarily for the socializing, especially by women--but isn't there something wrong with sending a message that the holy Sabbath is primarily about stuffing your face?

I grew up in a Reform home in which politeness and decorum, in shul or elsewhere, was prized. I realize that the Orthodox world, and even the Modern Orthodox world, does not necessarily put a very high premium on either quality, and I have gotten pretty used to davening while kids are running up and down the aisles. As long as they are not screaming, I'm okay. And I realize that this rushing at the food is about a lack of decorum almost as much as it is about a generalized lack of mindfulness regarding the advisability of face-stuffing. (Wasn't that last sentence beautiful? I have a doctorate, you know).

A possible source of my frustration may be what I learned as a kid about keeping kosher. We kept kosher at home (kosher meat, two sets of dishes, etc., except that we did not insist on kosher supervision for canned vegetables and other processed vegetarian food). This came largely from my mom, who grew up Conservative. Kashrut is very fraught in the Reform Movement, and people would ask my parents why we bothered. For those who wouldn't back away after the "Katrina's mom's parents have to be able to eat here" explanation, my dad, who had not grown up in a kosher home, would launch into a speech about kashrut and holiness. This is something most of you have probably heard, but the general point was that kashrut is about kedushah, or holiness. Even though human beings have animalistic appetites, we do not have to give into them all of the time. We can choose which foods to eat and which foods not to eat, and we can say a blessing before and after eating, and this all reminds us that we are not animals but special creations of God, that food comes from God, and that we should be mindful of, and thankful for, that.

Because I went to a Jewish school that was kosher, many of my friends kept kosher, and I never felt entirely comfortable in the homes of Jewish friends who did not keep kosher. It was a cultural divide, really, and sort of a surprise, which I assume is what people who don't keep kosher feel in a kosher home. But I guess I always assumed that people who did keep kosher did so at least partially for the reasons that my dad outlined, which had something to do with holiness and mindfulness. So belonging to a Modern Orthodox (MO) shul has been kind of a shock. My family and many of my Jewish friends in college and many in the Jewish community in GradSchoolTown thought a lot about why they performed various ritual mitzvot. Part of joining an MO shul, which really has smart, friendly rabbis and a nice community, has been seeing, in person and in a very concrete way, that so many of our fellow congregants are going through the motions of doing the mitzvot. I always assumed that being Orthodox was hard, and so those who do it must be on a higher spiritual level (or something) than I, but it has pointed out to me that in NYC, being Orthodox isn't that hard. There are kosher restaurants and employers who may have a vague idea what Sukkot is and your pick of Orthodox day schools and synagogues, etc. So if Orthodoxy is all that you have ever known, the theory goes, and you like the community aspect, then you do the mitzvot because you have always done them, and you don't think about why. It's not my job to decide how other people do mitzvot; this whole thing has been a culture shock, though. Plus, it means that "why do we do this mitzvah?" discussions at Shabbat meals tend to fall very, very flat.

And since Orthodoxy tends to look at kashrut as more of a mechanical issue than an ethical/moral/mindfulness one, I suppose that, for many, even among the modern Orthodox, there is no inherent contradiction between keeping kosher and stuffing your face with sugar and fat for three hours at a time, at least twice, on Shabbat. But that doesn't mean I can't think about my own behavior and, God willing, in the future (but not in nine months), my kids'.

It Shouldn't Be a Secret

2010-11-16T09:14:00.002-05:00

The "it" to which I am referring is chesed (kindness) and/or tzedakah (charity).

When TH and I decided to join a Modern Orthodox (MO) shul (synagogue) here in NYC, I thought a number of things would bother me, chief among them the mechitzah (divider between the men's and women's sections) and associated non-participation of women in the service. What I was not expecting, though, was to be so disturbed by the shul's approach to chesed and tzedakah (I am using these terms more or less interchangeably).

I admit there is a certain amount of understandable culture clash on this subject between Orthodox and non-Orthodox shuls. I grew up Reform, and the Reform Movement very heavily emphasizes social justice. At the shul where I grew up, there was always one, and most often more than one, tzedakah project going on at any given time. The youth group volunteered at a food pantry, many of the holidays were accompanied by food and/or money drives of some sort, the shul had a partnership with a school in a disadvantaged neighborhood, etc. The Solomon Schechter school I went to also had frequent tzedakah projects, although I have to admit that without one particular, somewhat strange, rabbi, who started a social action committee and spoke in his classes and at davening (prayers) with great passion about the importance of helping the poor, I'm not so sure we would have gone beyond the occasional food drive.

At our MO shul, however, there is . . . nothing. Well, not quite nothing, because there are announcements every week urging us to engage in bikkur cholim (visiting the sick). The sick in question, though, are members of our own shul. The "nothing" refers to what we do for those sick and/or poor people, Jewish or not, who are not members of the community.

I have a few caveats here: First, it is a small shul, both in terms of its space and in terms of its population. It has no religious school, although there are Shabbat morning services for kids. One of the rabbis works for very little money and has a fairly demanding day job. It is not very organized. Second, I realize that many of the "tzedakah hours" my Reform Temple performed were on Shabbat. As a youth-group member, I was driven, along with the other members, to the food pantry on Saturday morning, while the adults were still in services. All of the rituals, including daily minyan (services), that people in the shul have to do of course takes time away from potential tzedakah projects.

But, fundamentally, neither of these are acceptable excuses. If a MO Jew can look at a Reform Jew and say, "You are mechalel Shabbos (desecrating the Sabbath) when you drive to do acts of chesed on Shabbat morning," that same MO Jew should consider whether he or she really thinks that Orthodoxy has a monopoly on Torah. The Torah "speaks" in pretty absolute terms about the need to pursue justice (Deuteronomy 16:20) and to help the widow, the orphan (or fatherless), and the proselyte (Deuteronomy 10:18, e.g.). If MOs want to claim a monopoly on Torah, I think they have the responsibility to follow all of it (with the exception of the laws only applying to Beit Hamikdash, of course), not only the strict ritual parts. If they are willing to admit that other Jews may pursue Torah in their own way, they might want to see what they can learn from those other Jews.

Don't get me wrong here. I am Shomeret Shabbat and (mostly) kashrut, and I wish that many more Jews were as well. I just think it shouldn't have to be an either/or in either direction.

You might ask, "Katrina, what is all this about the post title and secrecy?" The answer is that, a few Shabbatot ago, I asked a few friends of mine and TH's, also pretty recently married and without kids, whether they agreed with me that the shul should be doing more tzedakah. One answer I got shocked me: "I'm sure that many people in the shul perform acts of chesed regularly; you just don't know about it." On the one hand, I believe she is correct. But the premise is crazytown. Tzedakah should be a secret? The shul (and especially the rabbis) have no duty to (at the minimum) urge us to do tzedakah and (even better) organize, or urge others to organize, tzedakah projects in which everyone is urged to participate? The rabbis give hardly any mussar (moral instruction) from the bimah (pulpit), but maybe in this case, for the sake of Torah, they can make an exception.

Is Halloween Okay?

2010-10-29T00:01:00.002-04:00

I went trick-or-treating as a kid. I really enjoyed it, especially before I was ten or so. Sometimes when I think about having kids (God willing, but not within the next nine months, if you catch my drift), I think about taking them trick-or-treating, and so does TH.

But I really think it might be seriously assur (prohibited) to do so. I mean, first of all, this is a holiday that began as a Christian holiday (eve of All Saints' Day, November 1) and is now seriously observed by some as a pagan holiday, although obviously most people don't celebrate it in any kind of religious way. If there were no pagans anymore, that would be a different issue, but there are people who claim that they worship the devil or the sun or what have you. How is dressing up on Halloween different from observing XMas or Easter in some way? I am not including going to church in that, because going to church is so obviously not okay that it is not analogous.

Last year, I read what R. Student had to say on Hirhurim about just passing out candy to non-Jews. I realize that R. Student tends to be way to the right of me hashkafically, plus I live in an apartment in NYC and don't have to deal with it. I also don't get the point of adults dressing up for Halloween (I try to get into it on Purim, but it's hard), so I'm not worried right now. But I am curious.

So what do you guys think, beloved readers? How comfortable are you with Halloween? What does halakhah as you understand it have to say about it?

Polishing the Silver

2010-09-07T09:45:00.003-04:00

Every Erev Yom Tov (day before a major holiday), I polish the silver items in the apartment that are looking tarnished. Lest I sound like Lady Di (l'havdil) or something, I would like to clarify that I am talking about three items: a kiddush cup, candlesticks, and a candy dish. A dear friend gave TH and me the kiddish cup for our wedding, and it has our Hebrew names engraved on it. The other two were my grandmother's.

The holidays, and especially the High Holidays and Pesach, remind me of my grandparents. Both sets of grandparents lived in the same state, about an hour apart, so we spent one day of Yom Tov with my mom's parents and one day with my dad's parents. (Yes, I used to ride on Yom Tov). Aunts, uncles, and cousins lived nearby, so holidays were filled to bursting with family. These celebrations go on today, but without my grandparents, z"l (may their memories be a blessing).

I loved all of my grandparents, but I was especially close with my grandmother, my father's mother. One of the reasons for this is that she lived the longest, until I was 27. This gave me the opportunity to have a relationship with her as an adult. When I was in grad school and she had to spend a lot of time in the house because of her health, we used to talk on the phone three times a week. In the process of this relationship, I figured out the other reason: We had a lot in common. We both loved foreign languages and reading fiction, old friends and long conversations, and we both had old-fashioned taste. We were also both deeply committed to Judaism. None of that captures the fact that she got me. She got me. It is very rare for people to get me, but she did. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, Internet, but when I look at my father's maternal side of the family (my grandmother and my great uncle and his children and grandchildren), I think, "So THAT'S how I got this way." Everyone's family is pretty crazy, and so is mine. My extended family is made up of people who are crazy in different ways, but my grandmother's family is crazy sort of like I am.

My grandmother did many things for me. Right near the top of that list is the fact that she accepted my becoming more observant. She grew up nominally Orthodox, with a traditional father and an adamantly American mother, for whom I am named. She went to a type of American cheder, and I once found her first Hebrew primer, or maybe it was her prayer book. She never lost her ability to read the prayers or her deep commitment to Judaism, but Orthodoxy did not make a lot of sense to her. It meant no role at all for women, something that her own mother could not abide, either. So she and my grandfather, who had little Jewish upbringing, joined a Reform congregation after they got married. She was active in the Reform movement for the rest of her life, giving it both her time and her money, and she eventually became the grand old lady of her Temple, the one rabbinical candidates had to impress if they hoped to have a shot at getting hired.

My increased observance was incredibly puzzling to her. There had always been an observance gap between her and my grandfather on the one hand and my nuclear family on the other, because we kept kosher (as did my mother's parents), and they didn't. By "kept kosher," I mean that we were kosher at home but ate out vegetarian in restaurants, and when my brother and I were younger, we were allowed to eat meat out as long as it was not mixed with dairy (I stopped doing this around the time of my Bat Mitzvah). But there was still a big cultural difference there, and seeing my grandparents eat shellfish was pretty weird. My parents sent my brother and me to a Conservative Day School, and so we had a fair amount of Jewish knowledge that my dad's parents didn't have (but my mom's side of the family did), which was also a bit strange. When I stopped eating meat out, I just ate something vegetarian at my dad's parents', but observing Shabbat was in an entirely different league. Unlike keeping kosher, observing Shabbat is, in my opinion, a marker of Orthodoxy in American Judaism. My grandmother didn't get that.

But she adapted, and she did so after the age of 75, which I think is remarkable. Starting after I graduated from college, I used to stay with her for the weekend every once and a while. Friday afternoons involved a trip to the bagel store to get bagels and lox and one to the supermarket to get kosher cold cuts and any other food I needed for Shabbat. We made sure to cook everything before sundown (toward the end of her life she had someone to help around the house), and we lit candles and had Shabbat dinner together. Saturdays we slept in, I davened (prayed), and then we took it easy, resting, talking, and reading. Her apartment had a terrace, and we used to sit on it, while I would ask her questions about her childhood and young adulthood. She was reluctant to answer many of them, as was and still is common among many people of her generation ("That's all in the past now. Why worry about it?" is something you may have heard, Internet, from your own parents and grandparents), but she did answer some. Then, after Havdalah, we would watch TV. Sunday we would go to a bookstore, of course, and then I would head to the bus station. She would sometimes make a crack or two, but they went very smoothly. I did not realize how special that smoothness was until my father pointed it out to me when I was frustrated with TH's family's resistance to my observance.

I loved those weekends, and I miss them. Shortly before she died, my grandmother gave me the candlesticks that I light every Erev Shabbat and Yom Tov. They were not the ones that she lit every week, but, rather, a spare set, which she had been given by her father around the time of her Bat Mitzvah. (I got the candy dish after she died). I think of her when I light them, and when I polish them.

Note to Ovadia Yosef

2010-08-29T20:55:00.002-04:00

You're not helping!

(with apologies to Jon Stuart)

I Need to Get a Life

2010-08-11T23:30:00.002-04:00

Duh. A friend asked me to help her with a piece she is writing on independent minyanim. I started referring her to various blogs in the Jewish Blogosphere and their recent posts on the subject. Then I asked, "Do you read blogs in the J-Blogosphere?" She responded, "Now I do. It's my job." And I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to get paid for all of this expertise, instead of having acquired it because I don't have a life?"

NOTE: This post is a joke. It is NOT an extension of my previous post about being lonely.

Poll: New Template

2010-08-05T07:08:00.002-04:00

So what do you guys think of my new template?

I really wanted something new, something academic, and not one of the more popular templates, because I like to be a little different.

I'm not thrilled with the colors of the post dates, titles, and links, but there weren't a lot of choices.

Thoughts?

Asking for Help

2010-08-02T10:04:00.003-04:00

I am a very private person.

I have always been this way, I think because my nuclear family is private as well. From a young age, it was made clear to me that it was inappropriate to talk smack about the immediate family to most people. It is obviously the case that if my brother and I had been abused or something of the sort, that would have been inappropriate in the extreme, but we weren't. Our home was a loving and supportive one. My parents just weren't the kind of parents who tell perfect strangers in the supermarket (or even friends) about all their kids' problems and inadequacies. So my brother and I followed that model.

When I was first dating TH, I realized, with the help of a friend, that I was not letting him into my inner life. I got a lot better at doing that, but it is still a struggle, even as our one-year anniversary approaches. I am used to talking to my parents or BFF (pretty much the only person outside the family I feel comfortable letting in) about problems, and once I have done that, it seems almost beside the point to tell TH. This is not particularly healthy, I know, and I am working on it, but it is not easy.

This summer has been a tough one for me. I am about to start a postdoc that will have me teaching my own lecture courses at the college level, and it is pretty terrifying. What is more terrifying is the state of the job market in academia. Last year, there were six jobs in my field in the entire country, and two of them were in rural Ohio. In theory, an academic is supposed to be willing to go to rural Ohio, and her husband is supposed to follow dutifully behind, eager to open a new branch of his money-printing business. Real life, however, is different. ( I don't blame TH for this. He has the kind of job that you can't do in rural Ohio. He doesn't have to do it in NYC; any city would do). I predict that this year there will be fewer. Each job that opens up gets 300 applications, at least. Meanwhile, in theory, I am supposed to be writing articles to publish and thinking about how to turn my dissertation into a book, because otherwise how can I compete in this practically non-existent job market? But my stubborn penchant for realism (bad for academia, I know) is slowing me down. It keeps whispering in my ear, "What is the point of writing that article, Katrina? The odds are incredibly high that you won't make it in academia. The article may be good and get accepted, but what's one more article on your CV if your competition for this year's five jobs has a book coming out next year?"

This post is not really about the completely destroyed market in humanities academia. (If you want to read more about that, I refer you to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Reader, beware, though: If there was a Pulitzer Prize in desperate academic columns, these guys would win hands down).

This post is about the fact that I am going through a difficult time now. My job prospects stink (this post-doc is for two years, though). Also, I am incredibly lonely in NYC, because while I have made some friends, it's not the same as GradSchoolTown, where I lived for six years and got to know lots of people. I talk to BFF on the phone almost every day, but it is not the same as living two blocks away and going over to her house just to sit together and work, keeping each other company without saying a word. TH works all day. I'm glad of that, because he makes money, but when he comes home he is zonked, and it is not easy for me to open my mouth and tell him what I am telling you, Internet. I have told him, but I can hardly tell him every night. In an additional hilarious piece of irony, my not asking for help means that other friends call ME and ask for help! It's not their faults, because how do they know how I am feeling, but I am getting to the point where I am not eager to answer the phone.

Do you have any supportive words for me, Internet? You can say whatever you want, but I have to admit that I am less interested in being reassured that I will find a job in academia, since probability tends to be against it. But other supportive words would be good. For me, this level of asking for help is a sort of breakthrough. Really. So, please . . .

Off Our Rockers

2010-07-18T22:32:00.003-04:00

It's the 8th of Av. That means the Jewish people only have 24 hours to finish going completely off our rockers.

Is it just me, or does it seem to you guys as well that Tisha B'Av brings out the serious crazy in Am Yisrael?

All this discussion about Jewish sovereignty and Jerusalem brings out the pro-Israeli-settler nutbars. The highlight for me came two Shabbatot ago, when my shul's young associate rabbi gave a drash (homiletic speech) on the chapter on Zachariah about Jewish fasts. Zachariah, the rabbis of the Talmud, and the major medieval commentaries, discuss the circumstances under which fasting on Tisha B'Av would be nullified. The sources are not exactly clear, but our living in a time of "peace" is a precondition, though not the only one, and not everyone agrees on what "peace" means. He innocently asked the congregation whether Jews currently live in a time of persecution, a time of peace, or a neutral time. Imagine in his surprise when a few people independently piped up that we currently live in a time of persecution. The rabbi pointed out that even the Rishonim (medieval commentators such as Rashi and Maimonides), who lived at a time when they were officially second-class citizens, when Jews were physically attacked by Christians with impunity, when Jews were forced to listen to sermons in their shuls by Christians who wanted to convert them, thought that they lived in a neutral time. The rabbi realized his mistake when someone said, "But if I can't build a house wherever I want in Yerushalayim, how can you say that's not persecution?" The rabbi quickly said, "No politics," and continued to something else. Our rabbis do not talk about politics from the bima (pulpit), since a modern Orthodox shul in Manhattan will have a range of political opinions, and what is the point of stirring the pot? We'd all kill each other. So, since the rabbi can't answer, allow me to:

Persecution is when non-Jews try to kill you, convert you, tell you what clothes you can wear and by what religious laws you have to live. Not being able to build a house anywhere you want in Jerusalem in 2010 is the democratically-elected government of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel denying you a building permit. SEE HOW THEY'RE DIFFERENT?

Another difference is the one between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do. Your better-raised 9-year-olds know this. Do you think maybe they can tell the settlers? (I am not saying that Jerusalem is a settlement. The Jerusalem stuff is merely a symptom of the larger alternate universe in which the settlers are living. You know, the "What do you mean there's a demographic problem?" universe. I'm saying that throwing Palestinians out of their homes in full few of the international media is a stupid idea, and, of course, and immoral one, though if the "immoral" doesn't convince you, just try to focus on the "stupid").

Also, talking about the Messiah ("Moshiach") makes people crazy, too. How could it not? We have no idea what will happen, there are many conflicting sources, almost all of them written during a time in which monarchy was considered the best form of government, bar none, and women were, shall we say, not yet liberated. DovBear has done a better job than I, of course, in talking about some of the problems that come with traditional Jewish ideas about the Messiah, so I will direct you to his post.

It's not always easy for the modern Jew to relate to Tisha B'Av, as the Orthoprax rabbi points out. For me, the exile of the Shekhinah (the Presence of God) from Jerusalem and, therefore, from the midst of the Jewish people, at the destruction of the First Temple, is plenty to mourn. I will leave building permits and the question of what denomination of Judaism the Messiah will represent for another day.

Stop Locking!

2010-07-07T09:12:00.002-04:00

Another blog that I read a lot, which shall remain nameless, has been locked. It is now "open to invited readers only." Why do people do this? More specifically, why do they do it without warning their readers? If you're going to lock your blog, is it really too much to ask to throw up a post a few days before you plan on locking it, asking your interested readers to contact you if they want to continue to read your blog? You might get a few hostile e-mails from your usual online enemies, but it will be over in two days.

I also think, now that I am on the subject, that bloggers need to get over themselves. I realize that getting over oneself is pretty much the opposite impulse from the one that leads to blogging. But how important do you think your little blog is? Also, if your blog is controversial, how do you not expect to get negative comments? Nobody reads my blog, and I never say much that is controversial, and I'm fine with both. But if you can't take the heat . . .

I realize that sometimes hate blogging can cross the line into harassment, and I am in no way condoning that. But anything short of that . . . deal with it.

Material Maidel, Where Art Thou?

2010-06-07T22:30:00.003-04:00

Does anyone know what happened to Material Maidel? She and I don't have much to be in common on the surface, as she is a modern-Chassidic, music- and shopping-loving woman, and I am none of those things except a woman, but I like reading her blog. She has funny/snarky takes on shidduchim and Jewish womanhood in general, and she links to a lot of the blogs I read. But for the past five days or so, clicking on her URL has resulted in an error message from Blogger ("Blog not found").

Where is she?

Material Maidel, do you copy?

Does Ruth Do It for You?

2010-05-21T14:15:00.004-04:00

I am not a big fan of Shavuot. I am a huge fan of Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah), but I think that Shavuot as we celebrate it is kind of lame. And by "lame," I mean that it does not have enough rituals to cover even one day, let alone two, and it really should, because it commemorates the most important event in Jewish history. (You could argue that the Exodus from Egypt was the most important event in Jewish history, because Israel could not have received the Torah without leaving Egypt, but the general point is the same).

I like the custom of Tikkun Leil Shavuot (staying up all night to study Torah), even if individual tikkunim can suffer from poor preparation in the part of the teachers. I heard one excellent and two pretty good shiurim this year, which is a good number. A funny thing I noticed is that since, in NYC, unlike in GradSchoolTown, people have jobs and are kind of accustomed to going to bed at a reasonable hour, talks after 1:00 a.m. or so are poorly attended. That is fair enough, and, in fact, I think that there should be organized Torah learning during the first and/or second day as well, since Torah study is always better when the person studying is conscious.

But then, after the first night, what are we supposed to do? Pray and eat. That's it. And read the Book of Ruth in synagogue. But what is with the Book of Ruth, anyway? I love the Book of Esther--it is a fantastically well-written, bawdy satire of Jewish life in Persia in particular and the Jews' relationship with God in general. Lamentations is an incredibly moving tale of woe and desperation after the destruction of the first Temple, and Ecclesiastes, though way too long, can be read (according to Yeshayahu Leibowitz) as a meditation on the few material rewards enjoyed by the dedicated follower of God and halakhah. I'm not going to touch Shir HaShirim with a ten-foot pole because I have never studied it and do not really understand it. (BFF is welcome to chime on this front if she wants).

So I am not a Megillah-hater or anything. But what is with Ruth, anyway? From a literary perspective, it is not very well-written. It is too short to get to know the characters. Ruth makes the most important decision of her life, and the book, about 12 verses in, and we have no idea why she does it. Whoever wrote it was either ignorant of the laws of Levirate marriage or was living in a time when the Jews observed that law completely differently than either the Torah or the Talmud requires. If I were a cynic (ha!), I might think that the main purpose of the book was to declare Davidic lineage to be dubious.

Help me out, readers! What does Ruth mean to you?

Making Me Look Bad

2010-04-22T16:30:00.002-04:00

As your standard Type-A, overachieving, perfectionist freak, Katrina does not like meeting people who are apparently perfect. (She also doesn't like meeting people who talk about themselves in the third person all the time, so she's switching to the first person now).

I realize that most people are not as perfect as they seem, since some people insist on thinking that MY life must be perfect, which is funny. But, it turns out that after getting married, graduating with a Ph.D.in the humanities from an Ivy League university, and getting first a research job and then an honest-to-goodness postdoc, I still sometimes feel bad about myself. Some of that is textbook overachiever low self-esteem, resulting from insufficient experience with failure early enough in life to adapt to it. Some of it is that fact that I have a back problem that is preventing me from exercising vigorously, and so I feel like a blob. The third reason is that I keep meeting [drum roll] . . . The People Who Were Put on the Planet to Make Me Look Bad. Here are some examples:

--marathon- and half-marathon runners and triathletes: Why are so many of my Facebook friends taking up these kinds of physical challenges? Why are all of the graduates from my undergrad university, who then insist on sending in pictures of the finish line to the alumni magazine?

--people from my year in grad school who got assistant professorships right away: Ok, some are crazy smart, but others are indistinguishable from me except luckier, I guess. But nothing succeeds like success in academia, and so as I write this they are advancing by another increment in their careers.

--people from my year in grad school who have deals with publishers already: The next person who asks me about my book manuscript is getting a patsch.

--people (okay, women) who work as much as I do and STILL make a huge Shabbat dinner and/or lunch every week, especially if they also have 1 or more kids pulling at their skirts as they do it: I am a perfectly adequate but slow cook and need to put at least some of my life on hold in order to make a meal.

And, finally:

My sister-in-law (TH's brother's wife): I like SIL personally, I really do. She is not very demonstrative, but I think that she likes me as well. Here is what SIL does:
--works full-time+ for a major corporation (you have definitely heard of it)
--has two kids, 3 and 5
--kids are in daycare, but SIL has no other help (housekeeping, etc.) other than a cleaning lady every other week, and BIL works all the time, so she does almost everything for the kids and the house
--plays the piano very well
--makes a tasty cake from scratch for her family members, including MIL and FIL, on their birthdays, to the birthday boy/girl's specifications
--goes running regularly
--gardens

This is why it doesn't pay to be a Type-A, overachieving, perfectionist freak. Someone you know will always be better at it than you will, and instead of accepting that and moving on, you feel bad. So I urge Type-B-ness on my readers.

But while we're on the subject, readers, who makes YOU look bad?

Purim Lessons Learned

2010-03-04T10:59:00.002-05:00

So, I'm a little late. Shoot me. Actually, please don't shoot me. I just wanted to share with you guys a few things I learned on Purim. I have even summarized each lesson at the bottom of its paragraph for those who may not have time to savor my scintillating prose.

--In the "duh, how did I miss this?" category, there is a fair amount of intertext between Megillat Esther and the Haftorah we read the Shabbat before Purim (1 Samuel 15), about when Saul is supposed to kill Agag, King of Amalek, but doesn't and is punished with losing his throne. When Samuel, relating a prophecy from God, tells him he will lose his throne, Samuel says that God will give it "to your fellow, who is greater than you," לרעך הטוב ממך. When I heard this in shul on Saturday, I thought, "Wow, that sounds like a familiar turn of phrase." Then, at Megillah reading Motzei Shabbat, I heard that Achashverosh's advisors suggested that he dethrone Vashti for disobedience, "and the king shall give her throne to her fellow woman [yes, an oxymoron, I know, but I couldn't think of another way to translate it], who is better than she," מַלְכוּתָהּ יִתֵּן הַמֶּלֶךְ, לִרְעוּתָהּ הַטּוֹבָה מִמֶּנָּה. So THAT's where I heard it? Also, the Megillah is careful to say, more than once, in chapter 9, that the Jews did not touch the spoils when they killed their enemies. This seems a clear reference to 1 Samuel 15, when Saul is told that he and his troops must kill everyone in Amalek and not take any spoils. But the people, presumably with good intentions, take the best spoils and sacrifice them to God. This is another reason Saul was punished.
Lesson: Pay attention to the Haftorah! It's not just for bathroom breaks.

--I really need to stop drinking on Purim. I virtually never drink, and on Purim I don't drink very much, but I cannot hold my liquor at all. And drinking depresses me. I really need to keep that in mind for next year. I say this every year, but this year I mean it.
Lesson: Alcohol depresses me, but potato chips make me happy. The choice is obvious.

--TH's favorite minyan is even snottier than I thought. This was only TH's second full Megillah reading ever, and did the minyan take 5 minutes to write a handout with the verses that the congregation says before the reader, or with the words to Shoshanat Ya'akov? Did they make any announcements about either? Noooo.
Lesson: Snotty=bad.

--Now that I am not living in GradSchoolTown anymore, my pithy costumes are less appreciated. This year, I revived a favorite costume of mine, Plato's Philosopher King, which consists of me wearing all black, with a crown on my head. Get it? Get it? While this costume was a hit in GradSchoolTown, it kind of bombed in NYC. Most people I was celebrating with this year wore wigs or funny hats.
Lesson: Become less dorky (ha!).

--TH and I are making friends! Yes, finally, some good news as opposed to non-stop complaining. We were invited to a Purim seudah (feast) by a couple we have become friendly with at shul (the Orthodox shul I like in our neighborhood), and we sat with another couple we vaguely knew from shul and had a good conversation. I really miss the community in GradSchoolTown but feel much better about living in NYC now.
Lesson: Look at the good things in life.

But then what kind of blogger would I be?

Am I Still Conservadox?

2010-01-29T08:45:00.002-05:00

New York City is weird. Yes, I realize this is not the most stunning revelation in the world. The Naked Cowboy is a local treasure here, for Pete's sake.

But it is Jewishly weird as well. One of the weirdnesses is that the frummy-ness of the frummies (Orthodox Jews) tends to move some Conservative Jews further to the right, since the default level of Jewy-ness (I have a Ph.D.!) is higher, but, in reaction to that, it also moves some Conservative Jews to the left, in protest.

So where do I fit in?

I am the sort of person who tends to move right. Meanwhile, TH and I have been going to a few shuls (synagogues), but most often to Ramath Orah (RO). A fellow congregant described it as the most-left-wing actually Orthodox Orthodox shul on the Upper West Side. What he means is that there are a number of minyanim (prayer communities) that are arguably halakhic but not actually Orthodox, in that they don't affiliate, and they follow some version of the Shapiro teshuvah. So, women lead Kabbalat Shabbat and other non-halakhic parts of the service, some read Torah, but there is still separate seating and a mechitzah (partition) between the men's and women's sections. But RO isn't like that. It affiliates Orthodox, its rabbis went to YU as opposed to Chovevei Torah, women don't lead anything, etc. The other shul that we go to is traditional Conservative egalitarian. We hear divrei Torah there, of course, and I have also had the opportunity to talk to at least one Conservative rabbinical student, which I realize is not exactly a wide sample size, but she reported what sounded to me like a deep dissatisfaction with halakhah among rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). It seems to boil down to the fact that none of the rabbinical students want to be told what to do, halakhically, and the JTS leadership largely capitulates to that, aside from a few hard-and-fast rules.

I am not trying to paint the Conservative movement, or even JTS, with any kind of disapproving brush because of one conversation, even though that conversation echoes one I had with a high-school classmate and then-JTS-student about five years ago. I am really only attempting to describe my own experiences. And they boil down to: I think I feel more comfortable in an Orthodox setting than in an Conservative one.

Why?

One of the earliest posts on this blog, and still one of my most-read, was called "Conservadoxy and its Discontents". It was about what Conservadoxy meant to me. Virtually all of the beliefs and practices I mentioned in that post still hold true for me. I am still Shomeret Shabbat and kashrut (in my home, for kashrut, but I eat fewer and fewer things out, but I still eat out--BAD Katrina--but modern Katrina--I struggle with this a lot), I still wear pants, I still daven once daily and more than that on Shabbat, etc.

Now that I am married, a brief update: I cover my hair in shul only (WARNING! WARNING! As ever, do NOT take halakhic advice from Katrina--she is just being descriptive) and observe Taharat HaMishpachah in a way that is none of your business. How many Conservative people can say they do both of those things, even on the Upper West Side of NYC? Or maybe especially on the Upper West Side of NYC? Is that my fault, or Conservative Judaism's? Well, it's both, of course. Taharat HaMishpachah and hair-covering, even in shul, are, IMHO, largely Orthodox practices that some Conservadox/Conservative people have adopted. But if regular Conservative people get the heebie-jeebies at the idea, I don't really blame them. Shabbat and kashrut are different. The Conservative movement is supposed to stand for both but often, it seems to me, doesn't necessarily any more. So to some extent I moved right, but to another Conservative Judaism moved out under me, took a left turn, and hasn't really looked back. There are lots of things I don't like about Orthodox Judaism:
--mechitzah and all women-are-separate stuff
--insane pro-settlement positions on Israel
--stupid The-Midrash-Says/how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am divrei Torah
--creeping Republicanism, partly as a result of the insane pro-settlement-position above
--IN GENERAL, lack of commitment to social action as compared to the liberal movement (I know, I know, there are a few hundred young Left-Wing MO people in NYC who are in Uri L'Tzedek. It's a positive development, but it's where the liberal Jewish world was on this issue in about 1900. At RO, there is a Bikkur Cholim Lunch 'n Learn group. TH and I went recently. We have to eat lunch, sing Shabbat songs, and study Torah BEFORE we visit the sick, because otherwise we would be Reform or something).
And yet . . . and yet . . .

I find that Orthodox communities on the UWS are often more friendly and less clique-ish than Conservative (including traditional Conservative) ones. And if I want to talk about Jewish texts, or halakhah, outside the loving bosom of Hadar, which has the insane clique-ish problem just alluded to, it's far easier to do it in an Orthodox setting, even as I am gritting my teeth over the mechitzah and wishing TH was sitting next to me.

So, Internet, am I still Conservadox?

Now Even More "Goyish"!

2009-12-29T12:42:00.003-05:00

As a follow-up to my last post, in which I talked about what was considered "goyish" in my house growing up, I want to ask my readers:

What did YOUR family consider goyish?

I am especially interested in what may be outside the normal stereotypes (those stereotypes would include playing football and eating bologna on white bread with mayonnaise).

So, is there anything weird in your "goyish" past?

Goyish

2009-12-23T19:13:00.004-05:00

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time. Now that we are approaching Dec. 25 I actually have some time, plus what better time for it than the week of Christmas?

When I was growing up, my mom had very specific views of what was "goyish." This term is a little hard to translate, but I'm going to go with "culturally non-Jewish," or "of, or relating to, modern American Protestant culture," which I realize is inadequate. It was only upon making friends with whom I was comfortable talking about this that I realized that not everyone's Jewish mother had these ideas. Here are some things that were considered "goyish" in my house when I was a kid:

--creamed spinach (or creamed anything; we ate fleishiks [chicken, turkey, or beef] most nights, so all of our sides had to be pareve [neither meat nor dairy]).
--butter (see above--it later turned out that both my dad and I are lactose intolerant, so we obviously weren't clamoring for the stuff anyway)
--Hanukkah cards (an imitation of Christmas cards)
--Rosh HaShanah cards (same)
--going to friends' Christmas parties (duh), although there was an exception for a Catholic friend of my mom's who had a cookie bake-off every year towards the middle of December. We decorated cookies.
--saying "Happy holidays" in December. I am really surprised to see that TH does this. I didn't know it bothered me until now.
--football and hockey
--keeping furry domesticated animals, especially dogs (my mom got many of these ideas from her father, whose parents were not long off the boat when they had him; I once asked my dad why Grandpa hated dogs so much. He said, "In Europe, Jews didn't have dogs; goyim had dogs, which they turned on the Jews." My dad almost never says "goyim").
--not knowing how to dress--I was very amused when I made a Chareidi friend who basically thought the same thing. My mom thought that the reason Talbots existed was to provide solid-colored separates for hapless WASP women who otherwise could not match fabrics. Having lived in a WASPy area for more than a few years, I don't really disagree.

I'm not writing this post to make fun of my mom. Well, I'm making fun of my mom a little, but more than that I am reflecting on how a set of beliefs I believed to be totally normative in childhood and early adulthood turned out to be extremely relative, pun only sort of intended.

My brother has also pointed out that it was easy for our immediate family to think everything was "goyish" because we had very few non-Jewish friends, or even non-Jewish colleagues. My father is a Reform rabbi, and many of my parents' friends are friends of theirs from when when my dad was in rabinnical school. My brother and I went to (Conservative) day school, so our school friends and their parents were all Jewish. Other than my mom's office parties, there were no Christmas parties for us to be invited to anyway.

All this meant that--and I know this is really unusual for a Reform home in the suburbs--we didn't have to grapple so much with the meaning of living in a mixed society in which Jews are, of course, a minority. (I did feel quite left out, and then resentful, of all the Christmas lights and Santas when I was a kid, but I got over it). Being married to TH, I will have to grapple with real life much more. HIs parents and SIL love Christmas stuff, and his parents consider their participation in same to be an emblem of how wonderfully liberal and tolerant their neighborhood is. I think that Jews with kids should remain separate, not in the creamed spinach or hockey areas, but in matters Christmas, to the extent possible, to avoid confusing the kids. MIL was SO unhappy when I mentioned this, so it has been dropped, but, God-willing, we will have kids sooner rather than later (but not within the next nine months or anything), and then I guess it will be an issue. Oh, well. It's part of growing up, I suppose.

Thanks, guys

2009-12-22T11:00:00.004-05:00

To My Readers:

Thank you so much for your supportive comments on my Hanukkah sucked post. They really did help me feel better. As I was telling a friend, I think that I got all wrapped up in this being TH and my first Hanukkah together and how it had to be perfect. When real life (surprise!) intruded, I got all upset, and then I got cranky about a lot of other stuff I couldn't control. Now that Hanukkah is over, I am feeling less stressed, and the lesson for next year is to CHILL OUT and enjoy the good stuff.

Plus, the sex-scandal article didn't get to the Times (yet)--just the Post, and who reads that? Ok, everyone, but they have three sex scandals a day, so it can't be that salient to readers. And they found the sign. And the little girl in Boro Park is doing better, as you can see from the second link in my response to Off the Derech. I can't believe Off the Derech reads my blog. Cool.

Why My Hanukkah Kind of Sucked

2009-12-18T12:35:00.003-05:00

I know that married life, even in a new city, is supposed to be unremittingly perfect, as is Hanukkah, but I feel that Hanukkah kind of sucked this year, and not only for me. Here are a few gems:

--TH had to work late (didn't get home until 9:00 or 10:00) almost every night this week. On our first Hanukkah as a married couple, we lit candles together only three times. We will not light candles together tonight, either.
--I was allergic to my Hanukkah present from my parents, because it contained wool (but I was fortunate in that the store took it back, and I ordered something else, and my folks were very nice about it).
--My husband's aunt, who is very nice but not Jewish, and who threw a lovely Hanukkah party for the family this year, hung Buddhist good luck charms from her Hanukkiah and told us about it. I thought I might be halakhically required to leave the room, but since she doesn't actually believe in Buddha, I think it was fine from that perspective. But, seriously?
--On a related note, DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND that Hanukkah is (or at least was, historically) about anti-assimilationism? Does anyone else think it ironic that this is the holiday so many Jews are so keen to turn into a goyish extravaganza?
-- More than a couple of Jews I know either told me directly or posted on Facebook that they were not lighting candles this year because: 1) they are two busy; and/or 2) they forgot to buy candles. Really, Jews? Hanukkah is pretty much the least demanding holiday on the Jewish calendar, and you can't even do that?
--A Hanukkiah (8 branches, plus shamash) is NOT the same thing as a menorah (6 branches, plus shamash). Learn it!
--Some super-frum idiots in Flatbush left their Hanukkiah burning in a house without smoke detectors, and now their little girl is severely burned and fighting for her life. This is not the only story of Hanukkiah-caused fires in New York's ultra-Orthodox community this year. So some genius rabbeim had the great idea to issue a p'sak that you CAN extinguish your Hanukkiah when you leave your house, as long as the candles have burned for 30 minutes. If you're so infallible, rabbis, why didn't you issue this p'sak BEFORE all these accidents happened?
--A major Jewish sex scandal is about to break in The New York Times tomorrow. How awesome for the Jews.
--Someone stole the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from Auschwitz this morning. To paraphrase something my father said in 1972 about the terror at the Munich Olympics, We remember at time when there was pretty good security at that camp.

(Not?) Eating Animals

2009-12-11T05:35:00.002-05:00

Does anyone else out there feel guilty about eating kosher meat?

I do.

It's not kosher meat per se that is a problem. It is factory-farmed chicken and beef in general, which you know if you have read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, Jonathan Safran Foer's more-recent Eating Animals, or any of the 72,000 book reviews and imitations of same. The conditions in which most large-scale-farmed chickens and both meat and dairy cows (that sounds funny) are kept are truly appalling. If I did not keep kosher, I think I would buy free-range chicken, like Michael Pollan does. But as far as I know, you can't really get humanely-treated kosher meat, unless you live on a farm and schecht (kosher slaughter) it yourself, or live near people who do and are willing to sell you some.

Now, I'm not one of these Communist, vegetarian, Animal Liberation reading, hemp-wearing weirdos. I believe that human beings have rights that animals don't. We're at the top of the food chain, after all, and if the situation were reversed, the cows would eat us without a second thought. From a Jewish perspective, it is hard, if not impossible, to argue that killing animals is completely bad. About a third of the Torah discusses animal sacrifice. In fact, I think that kashrut originally was much kinder to animals than non-kosher slaughter. (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). The rabbis considered causing pain to animals (tza'ar ba'alei hayyim), for example by ripping the limb off a live one, to be so terrible that the seven Noahide laws prohibit it.

But the reality today is different. We live in a country in which most animals that we eat are treated horribly in order to make it possible for us to have cheap meat (yes, kosher meat could cost more, much more) and for meat companies to make huge profits. As we know from the Rubashkin's scandal, kosher factory farming is not really any different, and sometimes may even be worse, than regular factory farming.

But I can't give up meat.

That is not to say that I eat a lot of meat. I eat meat, at most, three times a week--at Shabbat dinner, Shabbat lunch, and once during the rest of the week (usually Shabbat leftovers). In a typical week, it is closer to twice. Meat (I include beef and chicken) is also a very effective protein-delivery system that happens to taste great. There are so many things one cannot eat as a person who keeps kosher that it is just really hard of me to deprive myself of a major food group with significant dietary benefits. I DO refuse to eat veal, and if there were kosher fois gras, which I'm not sure there is, I wouldn't eat that either. But it is beyond depressing to me (because so ironic) that keeping kosher may mean that I am responsible for animals being treated much more inhumanely than I would be if I could buy free-range at a NYC specialty market.

I also want to note that not a single major halakhic authority that I know of has come out in favor of vegetarianism/against eating meat because to do so is to transgress the law against tza'ar ba'alei hayyim. Part of trying to live a halakhic life of some sort--and as a Conservadox person with a Reform upbringing, I do not follow halakhot that I don't think make any sense and are not meaningful to me--is looking to rabbis for guidance. Am I really responsible for going so above and beyond what the major halakhic consensus about eating meat is?

So, loyal readers, what is a kosher gal like me to do?

Treife with a "t"

2009-11-18T16:05:00.003-05:00

This is going to sound stupid.

Katrina, your friendly neighborhood (Upper West Side of New York, natch) kashrut monster, has discovered the latest, greatest danger to people who keep "hekhsher" kosher. Keeping "heksher" kosher is insisting that the food you buy actually has a reliable (not touching with ten-foot pole right now) symbol of kosher certification (i.e. a heksher) as opposed to, e.g. reading the label and being satisfied if none of the ingredients are obviously unkosher.

That danger is . . .

(Wait for it)

DAIRY TEA.

Yes! Dairy tea? Did you know that there is such a thing? If you look at your boxes of tea, you might find that some of them are labelled kosher dairy. How can tea be dairy? I frankly have no idea, and perhaps what is labelled dairy is only considered so because of some insane chumrah (strict legal interpretation), but since I don't have time to research it, I'll have to take the kashrut agency's word for it.

So why is it such a problem?

Because one doesn't expect tea to be dairy, of course.

This problem was first brought to my attention by BFF, who once noticed that the tea she bought was dairy. She figured, " I will just only drink it after dairy meals." Then, when she was bringing out all of the teas after a meat meal, she forgot, drank the tea in a china cup from her wedding, and ended up having to put that cup away for a year before using it again.

Since my wedding and the china cups it brought into my life, I have been really nervous about making the same mistake. Part of the reason is that I am anal and crazy about stuff like this. But I think that it can be a problem. Here is a case in point:

Recently, I was at an academic conference that served kosher food to everyone for lunch. The administrative assistant in charge of the conference is not a kashrut expert, but it's not rocket science: the kosher deli brings in its platters of meat wrapped in about 10 layers of plastic, the assistant puts the platters out and unseals/uncovers them with the help of the jaws of life, and then the conference participants eat the food. Bottles of soda, urns of coffee and hot water, and a box of tea were put out, too. With my new obsession with dairy tea, I looked at all the tea bags to see if any of the tea was dairy. And it was! There were four bags of Celestial Seasonings cinnamon (or apple cinnamon, I don't remember) tea that were marked dairy! People could have drunk the tea by accident. Since many of the participants were Israeli da'ti'im (literally, religious people, but closest to American modern Orthodox), I doubt it would even occur to them to look to see if the tea was dairy.

So I hid the four bags of tea in my briefcase. I had one of teabags with breakfast at the conference the next morning, and I still have the rest.

Yes, it sounds really stupid, and I'm not proud of it, but I couldn't think of another option. I didn't want to leave them there, and if I had made an announcement, the secular Israelis and non-observant American Jews would have thought that I was insane. When I ordered a kosher meal at dinner one night after the conference, I had to listen to a rant from one of the secular Israelis on the evils of the Israelis Charedi kashrut establishment, as though I am somehow implicated in their shenanigans. (For the record, I support religion-state separation in Israel; if Israelis want kosher food, they can pay extra for it, just like we in the good old US of A do).

So, if you keep kosher, please make sure your tea is pareve (neither meat nor dairy). If it has a kosher symbol and is NOT marked dairy, it's pareve. I find myself actually siding with the Star-K, one of the more, shall we say, strict (insane) kashering agencies, because they no longer certify dairy tea as kosher, based on the principle, "You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind" (Leviticus 19:14). In this case, I think they are on target, although I'm still not checking my lettuce with a fluorescent light box.

The Denominational Smackdown Continues

2009-10-21T23:50:00.004-04:00

I'm pretty pissed off. I just saw this article in the Forward online. The article is short, so of course you can just read it, but please allow me to give a summary of what I think it is saying:

"Liberal" Jews, defined as Reform or Conservative Jews, or, more specifically, their leaders, need to "frame" the way that they talk about religious observance. Ben Dreyfus, the author, compares religious to political framing. Just as Republicans have managed to "frame" much of the domestic debate in the US over the past 12 years, so that even Democrats who win often have to use Republican-coined terms, such as "tax relief," he argues, liberal Jews have gotten into the habit of using words such as "religious" or "observant" to describe their members' beliefs or practices. This is especially the case when their members are observing more halakhot (Jewish ritual laws) than is the norm in that movement. The result is a "scale from zero to Orthodox" that lets people outside each movement define the movement's terms. The leaders, both lay and professional, of Reform and Conservative Judaism, should try to find different ways to frame discussions of their members' religious lives.

I sympathize with Dreyfus, aka BZ, aka the writer of the blog Mah Rabu. I have a really hard time categorizing my observance, and it's frustrating. I use the word Conservadox b/c it's the best word I have, not because I particularly like it. But is is darn helpful, because Jews who ask me about it generally know what I mean by "Conservadox." And if not, they generally have ideas about what "Conservative" and Orthodox" mean that help them to see what I mean.

And that's one of my problems with Dreyfus's article. One could be quite impressed with the way that he sets out the problem. Here is an effective paragraph: "Consider this phrase: 'I’m not shomer Shabbat: Every week I light candles after sundown and then drive to synagogue.' The speaker obviously observes Shabbat but is allowing someone else to define what Shabbat observance means." But he doesn't offer any solutions, aside from the vague imperative that the movements reframe. What would that look like? I notice that he didn't actually suggest a way to reword the sentence about Shabbat observance without using the word "observe," which he uses at the end of the sentence! Words are HELPFUL because they aid people who share a common language in understanding each other.

Here are some other concerns I have:

--the article's point of departure is the argument of "cognitive linguist George Lakoff" about framing. Lakoff's book Don't Think of An Elephant was a big best-seller among Democratic leaders after Kerry's 2004 defeat. But not long afterwards, certain people in the party suggested that maybe the Democrats should get some new ideas, rather than thinking about how to reframe bad ones. I am not comparing either liberal Jewish movement to the Democratic party. I'm just saying that the framing thing may not hold much water.

--What about history? The idea of what Shabbat observance is has been influenced, to a large degree, by what it meant in the past. Of course, you may say, but Katrina, what about all of these crazy Orthodox people who pile chumrah upon chumrah in their Shabbat observance? They
don't care about history either. But that's precisely what offends Shomer Shabbos people such as I and half the J-Blogosphere about the crazy Orthos. The Jewish people do have a sense of what "Sabbath observance" means. If the liberal movements want to change the way that they talk about Shabbat, they will likely have more, rather than less, success, if they don't trample on concepts that people understand and may even be attached to.

--That leads me to my next point, that there is a difference between being a very smart person with a lot of think-outside-the-box ideas and between being a religious leader with a job and, more importantly, a constituency. Regular people who come to synagogue don't want to talk about how they frame their Judaism. They want to talk about how to live it.

-- I have sat in Reform synagogues on the High Holidays and heard rabbis talk about their approaches to Shabbat in a way clearly intended for a Reform audience. One female rabbi talked about how her family makes Shabbat special, or something of the sort, by turning off electronic appliances and abstaining from shopping. The word "observance" didn't even come up. This is just anecdotal, but because the Reform movement in particular does not have to strangle itself on the premise that it follows halakhah, many of its leaders have talked about age-old mitzvot in new ways.

--This article reminded me of the independent minyan movement, which drives me up a tree. I think that it was laudable for the founders of the movement to try to create great environments for meaningfuldavening (praying) when they couldn't find it elsewhere. Then their heads got a little big when various philanthropists and journalists (including in the Forward) said they were the living end. But the bottom line is, AN INDEPENDENT MINYAN IS A SHUL. Hadar just opened its own yeshivah, for pete's sake. Its founders are having kids, and those kids will need Hebrew schools and bnei mitzvah and the like. Then they will buy buildings, or at least more permanent spaces, and basically provide all of the same services as shuls, possibly without rabbis, but Hadar has had rabbinic figures as well. And some small shuls in the Midwest and so forth don't have rabbis. So what is a shul, really?

I rarely write such a long post and then throw it up without at least some editing. But I am tired, and I wanted to get this out. I have work tomorrow. Please pillory or ignore me as you usually do. Toodles.

Lessons from 2 Months of Marriage

2009-10-09T08:36:00.004-04:00

I have been married to TH for 2 months now, so of course I am now a crystal-clear front of wisdom on any number of things. I have decided to share them with you, since I am such a nice person. These things are mostly about me, but when you get married, you could have similar revelations:

-- I did not become a domestic goddess simply because I now have a buttload of expensive pots, but I do get dinner on the table most of the time
--No kitchen in New York City is big enough to hold three sets of dishes, expensive pots, silverware, Cuisinarts, etc.
--I didn't really need 2 Cuisinarts, not because I have relaxed about kashrut, but because of the aforementioned lack of domestic goddness-ness (I haven't used either one yet)
--It's hard to believe that I will ever relax about kashrut
--Groceries in Manhattan are SO EXPENSIVE
--BFF still knows me better than TH, which will change over time
--I can't believe I didn't anticipate the above; the realization slammed into me like a brick on Monday
--Even though I'm married, I still really enjoy Bad for Shidduchim, although my current favorite blog is Mommy Wants Vodka
--TiVo really is as awesome as they say, especially when a TV-watching-fanatic (me) marries someone practically indifferent to TV (TH), and we would rather hang out and talk at night than watch TV anyway
--I don't care that much about the wedding album anymore
--I may have gone into the wrong academic field
--Being employed is so much better than not being employed

Shanah Tovah!

2009-09-18T07:10:00.002-04:00

To my readers:

Shanah Tovah tikatevu v'teichateimu (may you be written and inscribed for a good year). Chag sameach (a happy holiday) to all!

Love,
Katrina

Katrina Gets Married, Moves to NYC, Has Hilarious Kashrut Experiences

2009-09-04T11:52:00.004-04:00

***DISCLAIMER***--This post is meant as SATIRE. It is NOT meant to state or imply that any of the bagels at H&H are not kosher. As far as I know, EVERY BAGEL AT H&H IS CERTIFIED KOSHER BY THE STAR-K. Please DO NOT start internet rumors to the contrary. Thank you.

As one or two people who actually know me have pointed out, I need a new blog name. I am now Conservadox (or whatever) and married. TH (The Husband) works in New York, and I moved in with him after the wedding.

I will probably blog more in the future about married life, and I will almost definitely blog more about New York and what a shock it is (even though I am from the nearby 'burbs) after the comparatively civilized place where I used to live. But I'm kind of busy.

Something happened to me today, nevertheless, that was so hilarious that I felt I had to share it with y'all.

But first some background. TH loves bagels. Before I came into the apartment and kashered it, he used to buy his bagels in a supermarket about 20 feet from our apartment. I didn't know too much about kosher bagel places around here, so he has been going without for about 2 weeks. I decided to have rachmanus (mercy) on him today and go to the H&H Bagels that I recently discovered is not too far away.

As those who know me know, I am a kashrut freak. I pack chumras (stringencies) on top of chumras. I'm not proud of this. I blame it on my first roommate after colllege, a lovely young woman from London who was a completely insane kashrut monster. My parents keep kosher, but with a "well, that got treifed up, just wash it and put it back in the drawer" kind of attitude, and I knew I wanted to do more. But I didn't have a great role model, and I haven't been able to shake many of her customs. So, even though I know H&H is kosher, I decided to double-check by looking at the kashrut certificate, aka te'udah.

For those new to this, a te'udah just normally says that the place is kosher and is certified by X Kashering Agency. When I saw a paper on the wall saying "Kosher Certificate" and saw the Star-K emblem (they are out of Baltimore, FYI), I was about to walk away and order my bagels.

Then I saw the subtitles.

Instead of merely saying that H&H is kosher, the Star-K had a list of which items were kosher! And it wasn't a short list. I think it probably encompassed nearly every single bagel in the place (at first glance, I did not see the regular garlic bagels on there, which should not be confused with the garlic bagel twists, which of course are kosher, you numbskull).

Why do that??? Have we gone completely mad??????? (Yes). After comparing the te'udah's list with the flavors TH likes most, I decided to order a half-dozen of one kind of bagel and a half-dozen of another. Then the woman at the counter told me that I got a free bagel. What kind would I like.

Of course, I was completely paralyzed. I wanted to get cinnamon raisin, but was it on the list? The certificate was all the way across the room, and there were people behind me. Finally, I just decided to get another of the bagels I had already decided to buy.

Only in New York.

What Is "Sinat Chinam," Anyway?

2009-07-23T18:52:00.003-04:00

Well, it's the "Nine Days" again, and again I am freaking confused about what I am supposed to be thinking and doing. I know that I am supposed to be feeling bad about the destructions of the First and Second Temples, as well as any number of other tragedies throughout Jewish history dated to 9 Av. Even though I am a total dorkmonger who actually finds some kinot (mournful hymns, recited on Tisha b'Av and other solemn occasions) meaningful, I find this really difficult. I do believe that the destructions of the Temples (the first, because it ended direct Divine revelation; the second, because it ended for good Judaism as it was originally practiced) were the greatest tragedies in Jewish history. But it's hard to hold onto that and make it meaningful in the twenty-first century. Even on Tisha b'Av itself, I have an easier time making myself feel depressed by reading first-person Holocaust accounts.

The community (read: Orthodox community, mainly) approach to the Nine Days is no help, really. It's all about things you are not supposed to do (eat meat, drink wine, bathe [don't worry, lukewarm showers are generally allowed, and I certainly take them], listen to live [some also add recorded] music, go to weddings, etc.). This is based on the principle "Mishenichnas Av, me'ma'atim b'simchah" (When Av begins, we diminish our joy), a deliberate parallel in the Gemara to "When Adar enters, we increase our joy." But, as often happens with me (I am SO Orthoprax, in addition to Conservadox and googleplex), I get caught up in the doing/not doing and the feeling guilty that I am not doing/refraining from doing enough. So I feel like crap a lot, but not for the right reasons.

What really pisses me off, though, is the traditional way of talking about "sinat chinam." According to the Gemara in somewhere, the Temple was destroyed because of "sinat chinam," which is usually translated as "baseless hatred." That we should all refrain from "baseless hatred" so that the third Temple can be rebuilt, or so that we can live in a redeemed world, or whatever, is held out as a goal for the Jewish people. Fights between and within different Jewish denominations are often given as examples of sinat chinam.

But what does that mean, exactly?

Don't the different denominations hate each other pretty much past the point of no return?
As someone who travels across the denominations, I have been surprised at the level of rancor between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox. It comes from both sides. And blogging has introduced me to the Modern Orthodox--Chareidi smackdown (see especially the comment thread). Very admirable, guys.

Is it sinat chinam to hate the rabbis (including at least one rosh yeshivah) who got arrested today for money laundering (and, in one case, selling kidneys)?

Is it sinat chinam to hate the Israeli Chareidim who set their own neighborhoods on fire last week because the police arrested a Chareidi woman for starving her son? And what is the order of remove? Can I hate the bloggers who explain that the Israeli secular police are to blame; the Chareidim only riot because oppressive state policies make them feel "backed into a corner"?

Is it sinat chinam to hate American Jewish "leaders" (Chareidi, most often, but not only them) who are apologists for abusers of children and spouses?

Refraining from sinah (hate) doesn't seem to be an option in our messed-up Jewish world today. There seems to be so much on which to base the hatred.

Baseless hatred is one thing, but what about hatred with a basis? What to do about that during the nine days?

For reactions to the kind of pathetic/criminal/chillul Hashem behavior that our brethren have been engaging in recently, I turn, instead, to a verse in the Torah: Leviticus 19:17. In the King James Version, the first part of the verse says, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart." In interpreting that part, Chazal (our Sages) look to the second half of the verse: "thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. " Chazal say that if one man sees another sinning, it does neither of them any good if the first man keeps silent. Silence leads to the continuation of the sin by the second person, and results in sin for the first one, who did not intervene. Instead, the first man should admonish his neighbor (in private, so as to avoid public embarrassment) and urge him not to continue to sin.

So, my fellow Jews, if we want to make the world a better place, a place worthy of being redeemed, then, during these nine days until Tisha b'Av, I propose that, rather than feel ashamed of our hatred, we should use it constructively. We should make it clear to the Jewish community and to the rest of the world that sinning--not only sins bein Adam la'Makom (between man and God), but also those bein Adam l'chaveiro (between people) is unacceptable. It does not represent the Jewish ideal, no matter what the dress or reputation of the sinner. We should rebuke not out of joy or a feeling of superiority. Our concern should be our survival as a "light unto the nations."

Katrina's Deep Thought of the Week

2009-07-17T10:52:00.005-04:00

A "Bridezilla" is just a woman who repeatedly is told by others what she wants, needs, and desires for her wedding, even though said other people have no idea. Then she loses it.

Marriage is Hard

2009-07-07T11:14:00.003-04:00

This post has been rattling around in my head for a while. I finally decided to write it because I saw SerandEz's post today on the documentary Unattached. It looks like a very depressing, if not necessarily inaccurate, portrait of Orthodox dating on the Upper West Side of New York. I lived on the UWS for a year after college, and it is still kind of traumatizing to think about.

Ironically, I am getting married later this summer and moving back to the UWS, because that is where TF's apartment is. I already strongly suspect that it will be very different from the last time, since I have been there to visit TF a few times since our engagement. I felt much more confidence as part of a couple, and it's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing, but I felt that I was treated differently.

So, the subject is marriage (or, mawwiage, if you prefer). First off, I am REALLY GLAD I am not still single. I feel very blessed.
I do want to say, though, that marriage is not easy. If this seems self-evident to you, you are probably already married, or at least engaged. I say this because I think that many singles have a romantic view of marriage. Even though I hope they all get married soon, I figured it wouldn't hurt to offer a reality check. (By the way, this is NOT about the difficulties and absurdities of wedding-planning. They exist, but who cares? They are over after the wedding).

I am in my late twenties, and TF is in his early thirties. I have been living on my own (i.e., own apartment, no roommates) for four years, and TF has been living on his own for about twice that long. We are both set in our ways and don't particularly like change. We can both be stubborn. We have to turn "his" apartment into "our" apartment. We each have to get rid of, or store, a bunch of stuff. We are still trying to figure out how we will deal with finances, although, after a fight and then a make-up, we have hammered out many of those details. It will be an ongoing process.

I love TF, and I am really looking forward to living with him, being married to him, sleeping next to him, etc. But none of that comes free. That's all I want to say.

All-or-Nothing Judaism

2009-06-02T02:10:00.006-04:00

I know I haven't posted in a while. Things have been crazy here in Katrina-land, what with finishing my dissertation (yes, I am now Dr. Katrina), becoming more involved in wedding planning, and preparing to move to where TF lives.

One thing I have been doing since Pesach is reading a new (for me) category of blogs: OTD blogs. OTD is a TLA (three-letter acronym) for "off the derech (path)," an adjective referring to frum, i.e., Orthodox (and sometimes ultra-Orthodox) Jews who decide they don't want to be Orthodox anymore and actually act on it. Young people, especially those in their early twenties, are most represented on the OTD blogs I have seen. I am not saying that these blogs represent a statistically significant sample of anything, but it makes sense that frum people in their late teens and early twenties would be the most likely to leave the community. By then, some of their peers are already getting married, and once one is married and has children, it is harder to leave.

I have noticed a few traits that seem common among OTD'ers with blogs. These are not meant to be exhaustive, and of course they do not apply to everyone:

-- a feeling, from an early age according to the OTD'er, that something was not right or did not "fit"
-- a skeptical personality (not surprising, I suppose)
-- feelings of isolation, arising from the above two traits, because he or she thinks that he or she is alone in his/her feelings
-- parents who are either Ba'alei Teshuvah (BTs, Jews who became more Orthodox when adults, rather than being raised as such) or who went from Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox/Chareidi
-- difficulty with academics, especially Gemara (this especially applies to guys)

The above four, other than the BT thing, are probably causing you all to say "duh," but it is the fifth that really threw me for a loop:

-- rather than going from being ultra-Orthodox/Charedi to modern Orthodox, or from modern Orthodox to Conservative (the latter being exemplified by Tikkun Olam of Dov Bear fame), many of the OTD'ers totally abandon Judaism as a religion. They stop wearing yarmulkes or skirts, stop keeping kosher, stop praying, stop believing in God, and even marry non-Jews. I know it's strange to put the "even" before the marrying non-Jews and not before the agnosticism/atheism, but the intermarriage thing surprised me the most. (And don't get me started on the ex-Bais-Yaakov-girl from Brooklyn who converted to Catholicism; Catholic women, you see, can be faithful servants of God and still shake hands with men. No such option exists in Judaism, of course).

To be honest, the whole situation makes me very sad.

I think that it makes me sad at least in part because I spend so much time banging my head against the wall (metaphorically) trying to figure out how to reconcile Judaism and modernity. I can't figure out why they don't try. Those who go OTD after being Chareidi sometimes try modern Orthodoxy for a while, but then they quit.

Why?

This is the crux of my post.

Many of the bloggers were raised in a type of Chareidi Judaism that was so narrow, chumra-filled, and distrustful of the outside world that they only see two alternatives: continuing in that lifestyle or eating ham. That is all-or-nothing Judaism folks.

It is so unnecessary. Why are Jewish children being raised to think that eating chalav stam rather than chalav Yisrael (or a mainstream hechsher rather than a Chareidi hechsher)is like eating pork? Why are they being raised to believe that all non-Jews and non-frum Jews are evil? Why are they being taught that believing in evolution is tantamount to atheism? Why are young men told that learning Gemara full-time is the only acceptable way of life?

This is a recipe for disaster. The OTD bloggers write things like, "When I turned on a light on Shabbat and did not get immediately punished by God, I realized this whole Judaism thing was a farce." Or, "Once I started to question biblical chronology (e.g. of a 6,00-year-old world), I just lost my faith." Or, "I couldn't get up the courage to go to college until I left frumkeit altogether."

What a waste. In the community in which I live, there are educated Jews who observe Shabbat, keep kosher, and have advanced secular educations. Yes, many of the women wear pants and don't cover their hair, but that hardly seems like the worst outcome, given the above. We are people who want to observe mitzvot, marry Jews and build Jewish families, and study Torah. It sickens me to think that Chareidi rabbis would rather run the risk of their children eating pork with their non-Jewish spouses than expose them to the type of community where Jewish culture and modernity exist (albeit somewhat uneasily) side-by-side. I know that they do not think of things in those terms, but their actions are leading down this path.

That's all-or-nothing Judaism, folks. To borrow a word from the Chareidim, feh.

Quit Your Whining

2009-04-05T17:19:00.006-04:00

One of my least favorite parts of Pesach* is liberal Jews whining about the parts of the Haggadah that they do not consider politically correct. When I say "liberal Jews," I am not speaking about political preferences, though there is some overlap, but rather about denominations. A liberal Jew, as I am using it, is a non-Orthodox Jew. Not all liberal Jews whine about this sort of thing. I am Conservadox, and I consider myself a liberal Jew, because sometimes I care about modernity more than halakhah (Jewish law), primarily on occasions when I deem a particular piece of halakhah stupid (DO NOT TRY THIS halakhic parsing AT HOME).
But I don't whine about the Haggadah, for a few reasons:

1. I know the context(s) in which it was written, i.e. a little before 1960. A friend who studies this kind of thing tells me that Shfoch Chamatchah (Pour out Your Wrath), one of the favorite targets of the Haggadah whiners, was added to the seder in the Middle Ages. If you were dodging Crusaders and blood libel accusations, how P.C. would you have been? And don't get me started on the Ten Plagues. If you think they weren't fair, don't come to the seder.
2. I'm not naive enough to think that everyone would like Jews if only we would be nice to them. Maybe in the ealry '90's, there was a brief period when I thought that. But I was 12. What was everyone else's excuse?
3. Unlike the people who go to one of the shuls around here, not to mention TF's minyan, I don't sit around all day trying to find the parts of the Torah and liturgy that "embarrass" me.

That may just beg the question of why people bother to get embarrassed at traditional Jewish liturgy, even if they are Conservative and would retch after five minutes of a Reform service, where, for better or worse, people try to deal with liturgical problems by changing the liturgy, not by complaining. I think it's because they don't understand the liturgy. This is understandable, especially in the case of the Hagaddah. We get two nights per year with no rabbi and one of the hardest texts in Judaism? Who thought that up? But if you don't understand, just say "I don't understand" instead of "I'm embarrassed." You're allowed to be human. Even if you have a Ph.D.

*no, it's not the eating matzah, the constipation, the cleaning, OR the three days without a hot shower, but thanks for playing.

Navel-Gazing Crap*

2009-03-18T23:49:00.008-04:00

*how a favorite professor of mine once referred to superfluous personal reflection

What I learned about myself this week (and last week, if you really want to be technical):

--I should NOT drink more than half a beer at a sitting

--My interest in blogging has clearly faded. I even missed my own first blogoversary!

--It is no fun sending the perfect passive-aggressive e-mail to my advisor anymore (too easy and kind of eats away at the soul; how has my advisor been doing it to me for so long?)

--I am really bothered by Washington politicians wearing green ties on St. Patrick's Day unless: 1) they are from New York or Illinois; and/or 2) they are actually Irish. Can't we even get our pandering up to date, people? The Irish don't vote as a block anymore.

--It would be a good idea for me to try to take it a day at a time right now. Thinking two years ahead is helpful for dissertation organizing and writing and less helpful when times are busy,stressful, and uncertain

--Talking to someone about things that are bothering me is helpful, even if it is BFF, and everyone assumes I am telling her everything anyway (I'm not, but every little bit helps)

--Conservative Judaism pisses me off (ok, that's not new, but did you see the Voices of theUnited Synagogue's Pesach issue, which focused primarily on homosexuality and Conservative Judaism? It was wrong on so many levels. If you're gay or pro-Jewish-commitment-ceremony-and/or ordination, you could say, "So now you're just going to pretend that the movement has not spent all but the last year or so officially discriminating against gays?" And if you're anti, you could say, "Why didn't you provide a platform for people who did not agree with the teshuvot [responsa] on homosexuality to share their side of the story?")

--I've still got it in the last-minute-Purim-costume department

Nihilism and Dissertation Writing

2009-02-16T12:29:00.003-05:00

I have eight weeks to finish a draft of my whole dissertation.

For you non-academic types out there, that is the equivalent of having 24 minutes to do your taxes from beginning to end. (Did I mention I am filing for an extension this year?).

It would say that it is overwhelming, but that would be an insult to "overwhelming."

I am faced with an age-old problem that afflicts all dissertation-writers, especially towards the end: To read or to write?

I have written drafts of 4 out of 5 chapters of my dissertation, and I just started drafting the fifth chapter. I also have to write an introduction and conclusion. On the one hand, that is not very much, but on the other, it is massive and life-consuming. I could write the whole thing without reading more than 10 books (reading doesn't really mean reading--it's more like consulting or skimming), and then it would be done, but it would kind of suck. Or I could go to the library and take out the 30 books on the list I spent the morning compiling, consult those, make another list, consult those, and never finish. Obviously, I will do neither. I am leaning towards taking out only the most important books and reading as little as I can until I have a draft of both the fifth chapter and the introduction. Then I will beef up my autobiography.

On another level, though, who cares? I don't know for sure, but it looks increasingly likely that I will not have any kind of academic job next year, unless I can scrounge up some adjuncting. TF and I won't starve (to supplement his income, I can tutor snotty rich kinds in a panoply of snotty subjects), but it's pretty humiliating for me. The job market has crashed, and who knows when it will recover? On one level it's not my fault, but I never hold myself up to those kinds of standards if I can hold myself up to higher ones.

I hear that people who get jobs just finish their dissertations in a rush and worry about them later, since the dissertation is meant to get you a job, not the other way around. But now I see it is really not that different for those who probably won't have jobs. This is especially the case if the job drought has the potential to be long-term. Who will ever read my dissertation if there are no jobs? I may publish some articles, but I won't try to publish a book if I don't make it in academia. So a few people who work on the same abstruse sh*t I do may look at it on an internet dissertation database. I doubt they care whether I have 2 or 4 sources in footnote 17. (Can you tell that I was up for a ritzy postdoc and didn't get it and am now bitter? Then you are very observant).

You also might say, "But, Katrina, this is just a defense mechanism. You are worried about finishing, so you get all nihilistic and convince yourself that how you finish doesn't matter. In doing so, you free yourself from your perfectionism enough to finish, march in the funny hat and robe, get married, move in with TF, make him dinner, have babies, etc." To which I say: "Duh."

But this wasn't what I had imagined for my life.

Score -24,876 for Jewish-Catholic Relations

2009-01-26T19:15:00.002-05:00

I can't say it any better than this guy:

http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/pope-may-be-close-to-reinstati.html

Thoughts

2009-01-13T06:48:00.002-05:00

I have not been blogging too much lately, and neither have many of the bloggers I read. I chalk this up to the overwhelming nature of the Gaza campaign and the difficulty of saying anything cogent about it. Blogging patterns are weird, though, so the drought could just be a fluke. In case anyone is interested in what I think about this and a few other issues, or is just bored by the overall lack of posts and wants a quick read, here are some thoughts:

Operation "Cast Lead": A stupid name, but a justified campaign. Israel can't just be expected to let Hamas fire rockets into its cities. I am worried, though. Even though the Israelis planned this out pretty thoroughly (a lesson learned from the Second Lebanon War), it's not clear what the endgame is. I doubt a satisfactory ceasefire can be reached, since that would require Hamas to abide by it. My guess is that the Israelis will continue until the Obama administration tells them to cut it out. I hope that they can do enough damage in that time seriously to undermine the rocket attacks. Of course, this will be seen as a loss for Israel by the majority of the world. It makes me sick how gleefully The New York Times and others report that, despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas is still managing to get rockets off. Oh, what a knee-slapper! The Israelis are engaged in ground warfare, which is killing civilians, largely because Hamas is using them as human shields, and Hamas is still managing to terrorize northern Israel. That will show Israel . . . what, exactly?

On a related note. . . Israel's decision not to allow most foreign reporters into Gaza: I have mixed feelings. The Times and others keep running whiny stories about how much they want to go into Gaza, but then if someone gets hurt, that of course will be Israel's fault. (Remember that idiot BBC reporter who got kidnapped by Hamas and was still sympathetic to them? I will charitably diagnose him with Stockholm Syndrome). I don't really understand why reporters want to go into those kinds of war zones. These opinions compete with my (and TF's) conviction that reporters should be able to report on the news, even if it's really unpleasant. What do you guys think?

Valkyrie: I can't believe I have to say this, but movie reviews, both from the popular press and from academic sources, seem to necessitate it: 1) This is not just an ordinary suspense movie! It has a strong polemical message, so stop devoting the entire review to Tom Cruise's acting ability and the effectiveness of the climactic scene; 2) Some professor of German literature referred to Claus von Stauffenberg, the guy Cruise plays, as a "German officer." Give me a break. He was a Nazi. In what army was he an "officer?" Oh, right. The Wehrmacht. He and his co-conspirators did not try to kill the yemach shemo because they were humanitarian Jew-lovers. They did it because they thought he was a bad military commander which, fortunately for the non-genocidal-maniac-world, he was. I can't believe how desperate even educated (and over-educated) people are to find a serious German resistance to Nazism. If this is the best you guys can do . . .

Academic conferences: Don't agree to deliver two completely different papers in three weeks. That's just dumb.

Satmar: Blech. Double blech. I just discovered, through Frum Satire's blogroll, a new blog called Hasidic Feminist. It is the story of a woman who grew up Satmar in Williamsburg, educated herself by sneaking off to the public library, got married at 17, and, at some point, took her kids and ran. It is beautifully written, but the subject-matter is kind of horrifying, I have to warn you.

And, on a lighter note, I am reading a great book called The Northern Clemency. Check it out.

Two, Two, Two Memes in One!

2008-12-30T12:56:00.005-05:00

I've been tagged! Yay! This makes me feel like a real part of the J-blogosphere. This may mean that someone occasionally reads my blog.

Anyway, according to Frum Single Female, who tagged me, here is the first meme:

Pick up the nearest book (physically) to you, turn to page 56, and write down the 2nd to 5th sentences.

Lucky for you guys, I am sitting on my bed, so the nearest book is the one I am reading now, David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System. A blurb says this is metafiction (although I think Foster Wallace himself, may he rest in peace, may have hated that term) at its finest:

"Mr. Lunberg: The Great Ohio Desert.
"Governor: The Great Ohio Desert.
"Mr. Lunberg: Yes.
"Governor: Joe, a super name. I take my hat off to you."

Here is the second meme: "next state 7 facts about [yourself] and then tag others and link [to] them . . . and . . . leave a comment on their blog saying they've been tagged."

I read on another blog that some of the seven facts are supposed to be weird facts and/or details of your neuroses (oh, where do I start?), while others are supposed to be not-so-weird (ok, honestly, where do I start?). Here goes:

1. As you can tell from my punctuation and brackets in this post, I am a grammar freak (what David Foster Wallace called a SNOOT). If you think you are a bigger grammar freak than I, you are incorrect.

2. I schedule my life around the TV show House. Unless I have to be somewhere for grad school (ha!), I insist on watching it when it first airs. My parents, BFF, and TF know not to call me, and if they do by accident, or if someone else calls, I do not answer the phone.

3. My favorite sport to watch is American football.

4. I can recite the American presidents in order, and if you give me the number of a president (e.g., 23), I can tell you the president with a less than 5-second delay (e.g., Benjamin Harrison).

5. I don't like shopping for clothes.

6. My favorite food is chili.

7. I am a shameless punster and deliverer of one-liners.

Most of the people I am thinking of tagging have already been tagged. But I will tag: Knitter of Shiny Things, Miryam (Mama o' the Matrices), Apikorsus, Alg, Shira (On the Fringe), Michelle, and Sunkist Miss .

Well, That Sucked

2008-12-20T19:19:00.004-05:00

By "that," I mean my academic job search for 2008-2009. (I can't think of anything nicer to call it than "that." Nor can I figure out why a bunch of hyper-educated graduate students in the humanities refer to anything relating to the job market as "job stuff." Maybe the stress just obliterates any articulateness that we might have had).

Anyway, I just heard my last "no, thanks," so it seems that my first season on the job market has ended without my getting even one preliminary interview. To be fair, I did get long-listed (in the final 6) at a school that does not do preliminary interviews, so that is perhaps the equivalent of getting one preliminary interview, but that was it. And I did not get short-listed (in the final 3, who get on-campus interviews) for that job.

Some background on the academic job market in the humanities for the unitiated: The fall before a humanities Ph.D. student will get his or her dissertation, he or she typically goes on the job market. He or she doesn't typically get anything, since schools don't like to hire people without completed dissertations. Instead, he or she generally gets a preliminary interview or two at the annual meeting of his/her discipline's major conference and emerges, dignity more or less intact, with some materials to use next year when no longer A.B.D. (All But Dissertation). Meanwhile, students who have graduated from the same prgram in past years get jobs, thus preserving faith in the overall viability of the job market, while at the same time taking the new job-finders off the list of the colleagues the A.B.D. will have to compete against next year. A.B.D.'s often get postdocs.

That was before the market fell through the floor.

This year, two of the nine jobs I applied to had hiring freezes before they even thought about interviewing anyone. Two were not exactly in my field (I would have had to interview at a different conference altogether) and came under the "cast a wide net" just in case they have no other candidates they want and would hire a Jew to teach a subject that Jews don't normally teach). So, that left five. That's not very many, considering that the top five programs in the country (mine included) will be graduating about 15 Ph.D.'s this year. That does not account for people who went on the market last year and now have postdocs. One long-listed me, and the others . . . nothing. Well, I got a fairly nice rejection e-mail from one. The others didn't get in touch, but I learned from other people that those schools have been in touch with THEM, which is as close as prospective academics get to rejection. That's a post for another day. Many in my field, including some who are a year out, are not even getting preliminary interviews because they are competing against Ph.D.'s who have been on the market for a few years and may even already have book contracts. That increases competition for postdocs and for jobs next year.

You might be thinking, "Katrina, if the market is so bad, and everyone is getting slammed, why are you so upset? Also, didn't you know this might happen when you started grad school?" I have this to say:

1. It's very hard not to take this personally. I had to write letters to schools telling them about my work--often giving samples of my work--and my approach to teaching, and my next project. Note all the "my"s. I have been working on my dissertation for 3.5 years. If no one even wants to talk to me about any of this at a conference they will be attending anyway, it's personal. Of course there are other factors--maybe they want to hire a specialist in a different country than the one I study--but clearly my work has failed to wow.

2. I'm embarrassed. I have a bit of a reputation in my department as a superstar. I'm not 100% sure where this comes from. Part of it is the confidence I exude, because I believe one should exude confidence about one's work, even if one doesn't feel it. And I do think that I am erudite and do fine work.

3. Relates to 2: I don't like to seem vulnerable or uncertain about my work, even to friends in my department. People aren't going to know the extent of my sucking--people only find out if you got an on-campus interview or not. But I will, and now I have to fake it. Also, my advisor knows, and I think this must diminish her view of me, even if she would never admit it.

4. I go to a top-five program in my field. Depending on who you ask, it might be a top-three program. That's supposed to be worth something at job-searching time. It doesn't get you a job in a top-flight program, but, again, it should be good for something, a small, second- or third-tier liberal arts college looking for academic polish. Maybe a preliminary interview there? (To be fair, only one liberal arts college had a job and no hiring freeze, and it wasn't in my subfield, but I applied anyway. So it's not a representative sample). If I seem obsessed, I kind of am, but this is much worse than I expected to do.

All this is made worse by the situation with TF. He is looking for a job, and now it looks that my only postdoc-ing options may be at my current university. That puts a lot of pressure on him to find a job in my city, where he doesn't currently live, in another difficult market (he's not an academic, but all job markets are bad right now). He is looking for a job anyway, but my city isn't a natural choice.

So I am sad and mad and feel bad and don't feel like I can really talk about it, except to my parents and TF and BFF. And you guys, since you don't know me. If you do know me, please don't mention this, since it's pretty painful right now.

Is It Just Me?

2008-12-03T14:38:00.002-05:00

The attacks in Mumbai and the news reports about them, plus the reactions in the blogosphere, have gotten me thinking about a number of issues. Some of these really concern me, and I was wondering if I am the only one. If they concern you, too, please let me know. If you know the answers to Question 1, I would love to hear from you as well.

Questions:

1. Why don't Chabadniks (or some members of Chabad, anyway) get tested for Tay-Sachs? Since they will not do pre-natal testing or get abortions, why not do the testing and tell two carriers they can't get married? My cousin died of Tay-Sachs due to a faulty genetic test, and it really, really sucked.

2. How can I learn mishnah for every dead Jewish person, or even every murdered Jewish person? When a friend died last year, that was one thing, but I just received an e-mail from someone in my community proposing we learn mishnah for Rabbi and Mrs. Holzberg z"l. This is the sort of thing that can easily get out of control, in my opinion.

3. What is with anti-Zionist Jews living in Israel, anyway? Let's not try to claim they don't benefit from the State (who, for example, pays to pick up their garbage? Whose military protects their children?). I hear there are lovely anti-Zionist enclaves in New York, Virginia, London, and Vienna, just to name a few.

I am not trying to besmirch anyone's memory. All who died because they were Jews deserve to be mourned by us, and may their families be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. I just have all these questions . . .

Read Any Good Blogs Lately?

2008-11-19T21:08:00.002-05:00

With all due respect to my blogroll and secret blogroll, I have been bored lately by the blogs I am reading. I think I have just gotten used to them. So I'm looking to add new blogs to my blogroll. Any suggestions? I'm pretty open as long as the blog is clean, not Republican, and not about a particular hobby, such as computing or cooking, since if I don't share the hobby, it's not that interesting to me.

So, read any good blogs lately?

Katrina's Guide to Middle-East Peace

2008-11-09T23:33:00.004-05:00

I know I haven't been around much lately. Most of my concerns, to be honest, are about wedding planning or my dissertation, and no one wants to listen to other folks whine about either of those subjects.

But now that the election is over, I have some thoughts about the new administration and Israel. Since most of my 11 readers are J-bloggers, I thought this would be a suitable post.

To: President-elect Obama
From: Katrina
Re: Israel

Since you are not even in office yet, Mr. President-elect, and since you have neither much foreign policy experience nor the wisdom of Solomon, you are probably confused about how you can improve the situation in Israel. Your predicament may be complicated by the fact that a loud minority of right-wing Jews spent the election season implying or outright saying that you are a friend of terrorists who want to wipe Israel off the map. But take heart! They didn't vote for you. Over 70% of Jews did, so don't be afraid to be the president of the moderate majority of Jews.
You are probably also thinking, Where do I start? Well, that's where Katrina comes in. YOU NEED TO STOP THE QUASI-CIVIL WAR GOING ON BETWEEN SETTLERS AND THE ARMY/GOVERNMENT. Here's why:

--You don't need the US army to do this, which is convenient, since the army is over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how are you going to stop the Iranians anyway, if you don't know where the factories are?
--This quasi-civil war is a HUGE threat to Israel. Israel's survival depends on a two-state solution, and these "hill youth" who are trying to settle the wrong side of the fence are putting that solution in jeopardy. Since they are just kids, however, and neither the government or the so-called leaders of the dati leumi community is doing anything to stop them, I can't blame them too much.
--Not that this should be THE determining factor, but the image of settlers taking on their own army and winning is not exactly a public-relations victory for Israel, or for you, its strongest ally.
AND, THE BEST PART:
--You are best equipped to do this, because you control the money. Let's face it. The Bush years taught us that no matter how big a friend of Israel a president is or thinks he is, he won't have any effect if he just lets the Israelis do whatever they want. The US government gives the Israelis bilions of dollars in loan guarantees. That gives them, as personified by you, the right to go over there, or send Bill Richardson or John Kerry or Bob Gates or whomever, over there to bang some heads together. You could have your diplomats say or imply that at least part of the money depends on the government taking down illegal settlements, with a bonus if the army at least attempts to protect Palestinians when settlers attack them.

So, think about it. It may be a 2,000+-year-old problem, but Israel needs you now. We don't have 20 years to get serious about solutions, given the demographic problem. How's that for a legacy?

Why We're BFFs

2008-11-09T23:28:00.002-05:00

The actual reason why BFF and I are BFFs is that she saves my life several times a week, and she knows this. But here is a less sappy anecdote, which I offer as evidence that we have many of the same quirky interests:

Katrina and BFF are having a conversation about lesbian activism, which is ok, even though they are heterosexual. This reminds Katrina of something--
Katrina: Hey, BFF, I just read a story last night by David Foster Wallace about lesbians and Jeopardy!
BFF: I read that story!
Katrina: Really?
BFF: Yes, in high school, in literary club.
Katrina: What are the odds?

Weird, huh? Thanks for everything, BFF!

TC=TF

2008-10-09T23:16:00.003-04:00

Shavua Tov (and by Shavua [week], I mean the remaining day before Shabbat). I hope that your fasts were meaningful and not too physically taxing, and that you had good davening (praying) experiences.

The big news is that TC and I are engaged. So, his name on this blog will now be TF (The Fiance, of course). I am really excited. I'm also kind of freaked out. With both of us looking for jobs, and my trying to finish my dissertation, there is a lot of uncertainty right now, and I don't deal that well with uncertainty. But I can't complain. I love him. I want us to be together.

I'm not sure what the future of this blog holds. I guess I can change the name, or not. I don't want it to be the kind of blog where I complain about wedding planning, since if any blog had featured such complaints a year ago, I would have been really annoyed by it. I also think I should tell TF about the blog if it continues to be active, but I would have to sanitize it if I did. There's stuff about his mom and our earlier relationship. Also, even if I did sanitize it, I don't know if my usual kvetching about all things Jewish would seem incredibly snarky to him (he is virtually snark-free). I'm not saying I would modify it just on his say-so, but I'm trying to pick my battles, since he has been very accomodating about those aspects of the wedding about which we have already talked.

So I won't make any decisions right now, but that's what's currently going on. Shabbat Shalom!

Shanah Tovah!

2008-09-28T23:47:00.001-04:00

Shanah Tovah tikateivu, everyone. Have a happy, healthy, and sweet new year.

Cowards

2008-09-25T08:40:00.002-04:00

I am sick to my stomach about the cowardly bomb attack this morning on Zeev Sternhell, the Israeli professor and winner of the Israel Prize whose "crime," apparently, was being against West Bank settlements. The Times reports that the police found (Hebrew) fliers in his neighborhood offering $320,000 to anyone who killed a member of Peace Now.

Way to get into the spirit of Elul, you cowards.

To my readers: remember all of those starving children in Israel to whom you're supposed to donate before Rosh HaShanah? I get e-mails about this constantly. Do you have any idea how much food $320,000 can buy?

I hope you will join me in posting your condemnations as well. I'm not naive enough to think this will change anything in real life. But I wouldn't be surprised to see some aspects of the J-Blogosphere talking about how we have to understand what the poor bomber was going through (see, Baruch Goldstein, "heroic martyrdom" of). Those 12 of us who are still moderates (two-state solution, Arabs need to stop terror, Israelis have to stop settling the wrong side of the fence[not that #2 and #3 are comparable, but both stand in the way of any kind of solution in which the demographic problem can be prevented from turning us into South Africa in 20 years]) should make our voices heard, at least in the blogosphere.

Yesterday, some frum bloggers I read, including Dov Bear, whom I greatly respect, expressed admiration for a certain post by West Bank Mama called "A Tale of Two Sons." I was really mad when I read it and didn't want to comment, but I'm ready now. Hey, Westbankmama and other yishuv-niks: Want to know why the Arabs are angry? BECAUSE YOU'RE ON THEIR LAND. Get on the right side of the fence. (P.S., I don't know for sure if West Bank Mama lives on the wrong side of the fence, but I strongly suspect that she does, since she says she lives in Shomron). I realize that large, established settlements such as Maaleh Adumim are going to be part of Israel in any peace solution, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean it's okay constantly to set up a new illegal settlement on the next hill. The Israeli government is partly to blame, too, since they don't throw these law-breakers out immediately. Have you noticed that the settlers don't mind accepting protection from the government's army? It's just the rest of the government and its pesky laws that bothers them.

Another note to the Israeli government: When you catch the bomber, don't let him get married to the president of his fan club and have conjugal visits in prison, like you did with Yigal Amir.

Spammed

2008-09-15T08:35:00.003-04:00

Question for those who know something about computers:

Overnight, I got about seven "comments" on various recent posts on my blogs. They turned out to connect to a "blog" that is really an online gaming site.

Is there any way to prevent this in the future, short of restricting who gets to read my blog?

Thanks.

Politics

2008-08-29T11:33:00.003-04:00

I consider myself to be something of a politics junkie, although I'm not a wonk. I don't usually discuss politics on this blog (with at least one exception). But I have a bunch of thoughts about this week's Democratic National Convention and McCain's VP choice:

--Hillary supporters: Vote for Obama. A lot. This isn't about being right about a sexist society. Of course there is sexism in society. I would like to suggest that it is a mistake to try to prove your feminism by facilitating the election of someone who has promised to appoint ultra-Conservative Supreme Court justices. Did you know that John Roberts thinks that unmarried women shouldn't have access to birth control?

--McCain's VP choice (Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska) reeks of desperation. The night after Obama gives a fantastic speech (policy AND inspiration), the day of McCain 72nd birthday, the only rationale I can think of for picking someone who has no experience at anything and is about as qualified to be president as Martin Sheen is that McCain has decided he can't win without Hillary's supporters.

--Hey, McCain campaign: If you release your rebuttal to Obama's speech BEFORE the speech is actually finished--or the second it's finished; I don't have the exact timeline nailed down--people might get the idea that you didn't actually watch the speech.

--Don't believe the smears! This week, McCain's campaign has been beating the drum of "Obama has all of this lofty rhetoric, but he isn't offering specifics." First of all, in last night's speech, he did. Second, on his website, as a number of people pointed out in this comment stream on DovBear, he spells out his policies in excruciating detail. If you want to hear about his health care plan AND HOW HE WILL PAY FOR IT (oh, how I will miss Bush's unfunded mandates), it's all there.

--John Kerry gave a great speech about McCain not being a maverick anymore. He shares the malady of Al Gore and others, who give their best speeches when their presidential hopes have already been dashed.

--The Clintons did better than I expected in not screwing the convention up completely for Obama, but not as well as they could have. I liked Bill Clinton's speech, and I always enjoy his oratory. I thought that the second half, when he attacked McCain, was excellent; the first half, when he was praising Obama, was less enthusiastic than I would have liked, but not terrible.
--Hillary gave a good speech endorsing Obama, but the next morning she undercut herself by not ordering her supporters to vote for Obama and avoid the preposterous roll call that happened. Don't believe her "I can't tell them what to do" garbage. OF COURSE she can tell them what to do. They're HER delegates. And she didn't even try. She said that she would vote for Obama, but that they could vote for whomever they wanted. Way to be a leader promoting unity!

--Biden gave a great speech. He came across as approachable and one of the guys (which, from what I have heard, he is), and he attack-dogged it to infinity! Democrats should have been more enthusiastic about it. Democrats, be happy already. Our ticket is awesome. Their ticket sucks. Enjoy yourselves for once! This brings us to the "Biden corallary": Obama's speech rocked! It kicked! So if you're a Democratic political writer, don't say, "Well, yes, it was good, but I'm uneasy about . . .", or "The problem was . . .". Try to stay on message for once! The Republicans don't do this, and they have won the last two presidential elections. Coincidence? I think not.

--I was moved almost to tears by Ted Kennedy's speech and his presence at the convention. I admire his service to our country so much. (I also consider it a kind of repentance for his shameful act at Chappaquiddick). I can't imagine the Senate without him.

--Snarkiness is NOT the answer to everything. I usually enjoy reading Wonkette, a political blog that is about 90% snark. Generally, I find their take on the mundane politics of the day pretty funny, but they were very ill-equipped to deal with real news, particularly the inspirational speeches at the convention.

And, finally,

THE MEDIA IS OUT OF CONTROL. They spent so much of their time at the convention finding the ten crazy Hillary supporters who are voting for McCain. Conflict, or the appearance of conflict, makes for a better story than unity. There were real problems with the Clintons (see my comment above), but the amount of time the MSM devoted to it was unreal. I watched CNN the most, so I am madder at them than at others. Their answer to every Democratic speech was to have a Republican operative on to "reply," let said operative prattle on, and not challenge him or her at all. Do you call that journalism??? And where's the critique of McCain? (The New Republic had something on this, says my dad, but I think it's only accessible to subscribers). The critique better come next week, media. I'm putting you on notice, Stephen-Colbert style.

My Most Recent Post

2008-08-25T09:10:00.003-04:00

. . . is actually here. It started as a draft, and I can't figure out how to change the date. It's about novels, which I haven't talked about yet. Can't decide what to read next? Maybe I can help.

Katrina Discovers Her Compassionate Side

2008-08-23T23:15:00.005-04:00

. . . and yes, she has one.

Katrina would like to apologize to anyone whose feelings she might have hurt with her "How Not to be a Jerk 2: Being a Shabbat Guest and Host" (hard to believe, isn't it, that she might have offended anyone?).

It's not that anyone has complained, but this week, for the first time in a long time, Katrina did not have Shabbat dinner plans. It did not feel good. It did not feel good at all, especially since she had such a crappy week. That made her think that she had been too harsh on people who invite themselves over to others' places for dinner.

She stands by most of the content of that post, but she feels the tone was probably uncalled for, and for that she is sorry. She went to Chabad, which is was actually quite pleasant.

Next time . . . Katrina stops talking about herself in the third person.

Oh, Crap

2008-08-22T02:13:00.004-04:00

Things have been going kind of crummily for me this past month. I have to secure some kind of income for myself for next year, which involves convincing people I don't know that I am somehow more worthy than the other 800 applicants. My dissertation-writing group is a waste of time. TC and I have been mutually cranky lately (mostly because he is looking for a job, too).

The problem is that when I am feeling really stressed, I have trouble talking about it. LOTS of trouble. So I withdraw. I tend to stick to my apartment. I work from my apartment, so I'm not totally unproductive here, but still. Not that anyone except BFF (and TC from out of town with his phone calls) is coming by, by the way. But I don't blame them for that. Everyone is busy with their own stuff.

So I'm taking the step of putting this on my blog, even though some people I know read it. Shabbat Shalom.

Post-Tisha-B'Av Musings: Kinot

2008-08-13T05:31:00.003-04:00

Kinot (mournful poems focusing on the destruction of the Holy Temple or other tragedies; they originated ca. in the 6th-8th century, but many more have been composed since then) pose a special problem for Conservative and Conservadox synagogues and minyanim on Tisha B'Av. There is a tradition to say Kinot both at night and in the morning (although more in the morning since most congregations read Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, at night). The problem is that, even for those who have had 13years of Jewish day school, plus some camp or other supplementary education, Kinot are REALLY HARD to understand. They are often written in medieval Hebrew, and the genre encourages allusions to biblical and other texts which many people have not read.

In Orthodox shuls, as I have seen once or twice personally and as I understand from anecdotes, the congregation "reads" the Kinot silently, which means that some people get what they're talking about and most people don't. That doesn't mean that no one cares if people understand; it's just that the middle of Shacharit (morning prayers) isn't considered the best time to explain. Some shuls have shiurim (study sessions, often led by the rabbi or perhaps a well-educated layperson) after services, and the Orthodox Union has a video shiur on its website every year. On Tisha B'Av 5767 (aka last year), I was at my parents' house on Tisha B'Av and didn't have a morning shul option, so I watched OU Executive Director Rabbi Tzvi Hersch Weinreb's Kinot shiur. I was very impressed by its simultaneous sophistication and accessibility.

Conservative and Conservadox shuls or minyanim have more flexibility in terms of integrating Kinot into the service. I go to two different minyanim (don't ask) on Tisha B'Av, and both have the custom of "introducing" Kinot. That means that one person in the minyan, usually someone in a leadership position, gives a summary of the main themes of the Kinah before the congregation reads it, either out loud or silently, in Hebrew or English.

I heard some really well-thought-out introductions this year, but I think that the system needs tweaking. First of all, because people have to volunteer in advance to introduce Kinot, the same few people usually do most of them. I give kudos to those folks. I was asked to introduce a Kinah this year and said "no." But I fear that this phenomemon tends further to integrate those few people and to leave the rest of the congregation outside the circle of knowledge. Second, after the Kinot are introduced, it's time to "read" them. That means in most cases that, led by the writer of the introduction, those who can read the Kinah, either silently or out loud, often in Hebrew and often very quickly. I have had approximatley a bazillion years of Day School education, and I minored in Jewish Studies in college, and I couldn't get more than a sense of the text before we moved on. This is particularly ironic, I think, because, as I have observed it, Shacharit on Tisha B'Av is mostly about killing time. Unlike on Yom Kippur, when there are many, many, many prayers to get through before people need to take a nap, on Tisha B'Av, some congregations have the custom to stay in shul until chatzot (halfway through the daylight hours, this year around 12:45 p.m.), and there just aren't that many obligatory prayers to say. So the Kinot part of the service could (easily, in my opinion, although I realize some people have their favorites) devote much more time to individual Kinot, which just means fewer being read overall. There's plenty of time between Shacharit and Mincha (afternoon prayers) for indivual study by those die-hard Kinot devotees.

So, here are a few humble suggestions for integrating Kinot into Conservative and Conservadox minyanim in as relevant a way as I can think think of (Note: I said minyanim instead of shuls, bcause lay-led minyanim often have more flexibility than shuls led by rabbis. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? That's a topic for another post):

1. (see above) Decrease the number of total Kinot to be covered, thus allowing more time for each individual Kinah.

2. Supplement introductions of Kinot with more inclusive discussions. Divide minyan-goers up into groups, probably with a leader of the introduction-giving type. Give each group a Kinah to study, in Hebrew or English, for about 10 minutes. (Both Conservative and Orthodox Tisha B'Av prayerbooks provide decent introductions and English translations). Encourage each group member to say something about the Kinah text. When discussion time is over, give each group (or the whole congregation together) enough time (could be up to 4-5 minutes) to read the text silently in English or Hebrew. There's no rush, here, people! I tend to think that silent reading is more meaningful than reading aloud, but there's room for disagreement on that.

3. If you're feeling really ambitious, have one person from each group "report back" to the larger minyan on something the group found paticularly interesting about the Kinah.

4. Let's be honest about what most people find relevant: That means more Holocaust Kinot and fewer Crusades Kinot. IMHO, it is not necessary to go in chronological order.

I know that this sounds a little hokey, especially for those of you who know me personally. "Oh, sure," I can hear you saying, "but if I had suggested that, Katrina would have made vomiting noises." Perhaps. But these and similar group efforts are the only ways I can think of to include more than 5-8 people (and the minyan that I went to for Shacharit had at least 30 for Kinot) in the Kinah part of the service. The discussion-group method won't necessarily make less work for the leader types; it might make more, since Kinot have to be selected in advance, people have to be divided into groups and kept moving along, etc. But the result, I think, would be more participation and less boredom or mental opting-out overall.

So, what do you guys think? What other ideas do you have?

How Not to Be a Jerk 2

2008-07-27T23:23:00.006-04:00

. . . or, Katrina's Quik 'n E-Z Guide to Being a Shabbat Guest and Host

The Jewish community in which I live has a big Hakhnasat Orchim (welcoming-of-guests) problem. Maybe I'm noticing it more now because it's the summer, and I have less to do, or perhaps the problem is getting worse, but I feel I have to say (or at least blog) something.

My Shomer Shabbat community has many graduate students. Many of these are single, and also, because they're graduate students, poor and car-less. This makes it harder for them to obtain kosher meat, or at least kosher chicken, and, let's face it, it's a lot more fun to cook when you're cooking with at least one other person. (Because TC has a job, when he visits for a weekend, he doesn't get here until Friday, late-afternoon, so I still have to cook meals alone, and it's lonely). Of course, there is also clique-y-ness, so within each social group, even fewer people cook on a regular basis. Some people, of course, enjoy cooking more than others, and some like to dictate the guest lists at their meals, but, in general, there are not a lot of conditions here that are conducive to these single graduate students cooking.

Well, TOO FREAKING BAD.

I say this because most of the cooking, especially for Friday-night dinner, is falling on a disproportionately small number of people (often married couples) in the community. Singles who don't have anywhere to go tend to find out where the dinners are and invite themselves. This is the wrong attitude. It's rude, and it's not mentschlich. Just because a married couple is making dinner every week does not mean that the members of said couple always want to make dinner. Our community is sufficiently young and informal that virtually no one, pre-kids, cooks every week. It just means that they have to eat, and no one else has invited them over. If people invite themselves over, then that means more cooking for said already busy couple (or single, or collection of roommates--I realize there is more than one model here).

Now, I'm not saying that if you are moving, and your dog died, and your oven broke, that you shouldn't call a good friend and ask to be included in a Shabbat meal. I'm saying that: 1) you shouldn't do so consistently without reciprocating; and 2) you shouldn't think that you are the only person who is busy and stressed out; everyone is.

My parents were very strict about manners when I was growing up. When we went to Temple, and they introduced my sibling and me to new people, we had to shake their hands, look them in the eye, smile, and then answer the obvious adult questions (How old are you? What grade are you in now?). Letting the adult know we were grievously annoyed and would rather be home reading The Babysitters' Club was not an option. When we had guests over, we were not allowed to take food until all the guests had been served. AND, when someone invited my parents or the family over for dinner, my parents always invited them back. This had nothing to do with being frum, of course. We were not frum. I first head about Hakhnasat Orchim (or Hochnosos Orchim) on an Uncle Moishe cassette tape in someone else's car. So the fact that many Shomer Shabbat people around here did not grow up that way is not an excuse either. It has to do with being a decent, polite, well-brought-up human being.

In case you have read this far and are still not sure what I'm getting at, or in case you're saying, Well, Katrina, of course I would like to reciprocate as a decent, polite, human being, but I just don't have time, here are my quik 'n e-z tips for being a mentschlich Shabbat guest:

1. Make at least 1 meal for every month (or so) that you are in town and eating at someone else's house for at least one Shabbat meal per week. Try to invite as many of your hosts as possible to your meal. It's very unlikely that they will all be able to make it, and I would suggest inviting a few at a time if you're nervous about numbers. You can always get 'em the following month. Don't worry about not competing with the regular Shabbat dinner makers. It's the thought that counts, and everyone knows there's a learning curve

2. Consider making lunch if dinner overwhelms you; it's summer, and you can get away with a bunch of cold salads.

3. If you honestly feel that you cannot, for whatever reason (and there are a very small number of people out there with good reasons), host a meal and reciprocate, I would suggest one or more of the following:

A. Going to Chabad. That's what they are there for. They don't care if you reciprocate, since they always have a place to eat. They don't care if you don't RSVP, if you're late, if you're early. If you're Jewish, they will take you, and they have already cooked.

B. Going up to the Hospitality Person at your minyan, admitting you don't have meal plans, and letting that person match you with someone offering a meal. Yes, it can be uncomfortable for you, but you're asking for free, no-work-for-you food; uncomfortable is not the end of the world.

C. Organizing a potluck. People who cook a lot (or even a little) will tell you that it is MUCH easier to make only one dish, even if they have to host the potluck, then it is to plan out, buy the ingredients for, and make, an entire meal. The annoying thing is not the cooking, but the organizing. If you can't contribute more than a side dish, donate your time to making the potluck happen. Donating time is how some poor people pay their shul dues, and this, IMHO, is similar. And it's summer! There's an eruv! You don't even need a host; have a picnic in the park instead.

D. Cooking with your friends and/or roommates. This is similar to a potluck, I guess, but maybe all of you have been invited over for Shabbat by the same three couples for the last few months, and neither feels up to reciprocating individually. It's so much friendlier with 2 (or 3, or 4).

Katrina has sometimes been guilty of breaches of etiquette where Shabbat meals are concerned, but she's working on it.

Next time you're thinking of mooching, please consider my advice. Shavua Tov!

Novels! (I knew I'd get to it eventually)

2008-07-24T23:29:00.002-04:00

(Psst . . . There's a list of books at the bottom if you want to skip all the reflective stuff)

My loyal readers (all dozen or so of you) may notice that in the "subtitle" (what's that called, anyway?) of my blog, I say, "Dating (or not even dating), weird approaches to Judaism, academia, and novels." Well, dating and weird approaches to Judaism I talk about a lot. I have occasionally made reference to my dissertation and how stressed it makes me feel, but I decided that posting too much more about academia wouldn't be good, since some of you guys know who I am. Keep it close to the vest, that is how I feel about blogging about one's work. But there is no good reason for me not to talk about novels.

I love novels! I love them. When Shabbat starts, I like to have at least two novels in my apartment, plus a magazine. Ideally, I would have started reading one book, so I know I like it, lest I be rudely surprised. The magazine could be either new or not, as long as there is something left to read in it. But I digress.

Where do all these novels come from, Katrina, you might ask? Well, first of all, I spend a fair amount of my disposable income on them. Since that's not much, I try to cut back on costs by: 1) borrowing books from friends (this rarely works, since I have idiosyncratic tastes); 2) buying remainders at my local book store, which has yielded more good books than I would expect; and 3) charging everything on my Amazon Visa and then spending the reward gift certificates on books. I also got my love of novels from my dad, so, whenever I'm home, he usually buys me a couple.

How do I have time to read all of these novels? Shouldn't I be reading for grad school? Well, Shabbatot in the summer are LONG, so even if I go to shul and then lunch, that leaves 6+ hours of reading. Even if half of that is taken up by napping, that's still a lot of reading time. And I am a fast reader. Also, I spend a fair amount of time with my books and my computer, so when I go out to or host dinner on Friday night and interact with all the people, it's cool, but it makes me kind of hyper. Even if I get home at midnight, I often have trouble calming down, so that's another reading opportunity. Then (gasp!) I read a little during the week.

Of course, the most important question (if you're still reading this after the thrilling previous paragraphs) is, what do I read? I happen to have very specific taste in novels. I used to feel bad about this, but then I figured, hey, it's my escape, so eat it, Dostoyevsky! I like to read books originally written in English because writing style is very important to me. I prefer contemporary fiction (within the last ten years, usually), and most of the books I read are by women*, which I think is a style thing. Not that men can't write in the kind of feminine style I like, but I think there is this pressure to be Hemingway. When I go to a bookstore, I will pick up a book that looks good and read the first few sentences. By that point, I can usually tell if it's a "no." People probably think I'm crazy because I can pick up a book, look at the back or page 1 for a few seconds, then put it down. If it's a "maybe," I move on to other books, repeat, and decide at the end, unless I'm in a rush. When I order online, I usually stick to authors I know, with some attention paid to reviews.

So, here is a partial list of books and/or authors I have really enjoyed these past few years. Maybe you'll decide to read one or more of them and tell me what you think. The authors are in alphabetical order to avoid appearance of favoritism:

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman's Union: No, I am not comparing the two. Kavalier and Clay is a FREAKING MASTERPIECE. I felt blessed to be reading it and hoped it would never end. But YPU was still quite good as a book and, to borrow my father's adjective, "brilliant" as a satire. I know that opinions on the book were mixed. If you want to know what I think it was about, leave me a comment, and I'll tell you.

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss: This is one of the first post-colonial novels I have read that understands the mind-blowing complexity of the post-colonial world.

Junot Diaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Yes, I read it BEFORE it won the Pulitzer, and I couldn't put it down. It's part story of a nerd, part window into Dominican-American culture, part mystery. Afterwards I read Diaz's first book, a collection of stories called Drown. Not as good, but pretty darn good.

Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Like Yiddish Policeman's Union, it's probably only funny if you're really Jewy. The first two stories in particular blew my mind.

Keri Hulme, The Bone People: Really weird in terms of style, plot, and everything else, but worth it. It's about an artist (with almost the same name as the author) who lives in New Zealand and meets a Maori boy and his foster father and befriends them.

Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land: Another hilarious book for Jews to read, I think. It's about a Chinese-American teenager growing up in Scarsdale, her Jewish friend (boyfriend?), and her interactions with the Jewish communnity. It seems the two groups have something in common! Fancy that.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, and Unaccustomed Earth: I can't really decide which is my favorite. They are all different. IofM is a collection of interconnected short stories, set in an apartment building in India, UE is short stories and a novella set in the States, and Namesake is a novel set in the States. The part of Namesake in which the narrator explains why the main character is nicknamed "Gogol" is particularly good.

Andrew Miller, Oxygen: I picked it up for $5 at the bookstore, really enjoyed it, then realized I had read another of his books in a similar fashion.

Denise Mina, Field of Blood: Totally accidental borrowing from BFF, and now I practically keep her in business. Her first book is the real thing, though--it's the thinking woman's mystery. Gory.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried: a semi-autobiographical book of interlinked short stories about the Vietnam war. I thought there was nothing more anyone could do with the subject post-Apocalypse-Now and Born-on-the-Fourth-of-July, but I was WAY wrong.

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto: another beautifully written book. It's hard to explain her way with words if you haven't been there.

Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker: It's the Korean-American immigrant story, beautifully told.

Marilyn Robinson, Housekeeping (warning: this book is for style fiends only; it has a plot, but the cool part is that every single word was chosen with care to be the perfect word for its sentence--wow).

Lionel Shriver (who is actually a woman), The Post-Birthday World: A really creative set-up. A woman has the opportunity to kiss an acquaintance of her husband's. Then the book continues in alternating chapters based on whether she did it or not. Shriver has a very unconventional way of looking at the world, to say the least, as you will find if you read We Need to Talk about Kevin (not just another school shooting book, that's for darn sure) and the satire Game Control.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth: Really unusual and really good, it tells the story of two inter-connected immigrant families in the UK. But I totally can't do it justice by describing plot.

Colm Tóibín, Mothers and Sons and The Heather Blazing: I'm a sucker for Irish fiction. I think as a Jew I identify with all the suffering and yearning for a homeland. Toibin is an artist.

What do you guys like? I'm always looking for recommendations . . .

*Funny story: After I compiled the list, I realize there are an awful lot of men on it. Hmm . . . Have to think about it. Also, the number of books that take place in different countries surprised me.

The J-Blogosphere: Good for the (Frum) Jews?

2008-07-16T17:40:00.005-04:00

Lately it seems as though every New York media outlet I read has something to say about subjects related to shidduchim or other topics of frum interest.

DISCLAIMER: I do not identify as frum; I identify as Conservadox, which is American for confused. Nevertheless, I have frum friends, and I read frum blogs, and I have common sense, so I think that I can sketch this out broadly. Please let me know if anything seems horribly off-key.

First, there was the New York Jewish Week article in which one of my favorite bloggers, Bad4shidduchim, aka Bad4, was profiled. I think that the article failed to capture Bad4's wit but was otherwise pretty positive. Bad4's regular posters, some of whom know her personally, agreed. Then, taking her shidduch article to a paper that some people actually pay for and read, the same journalist who interviewd Bad4 wrote a more general article for The Wall Street Journal called "Single Jewish Female Seeks Stress Relief." That article highlighted some of the less pleasant aspects of the shidduch process (all of which the writer seems to have gotten from reading Bad4's blog, but who in journalism cares about attribution?), including that there are more dating gals than guys, which creates: 1) a series of women who can't marry and are considered old maids at 25; 2) really demanding "learning boys" and their even more demanding mothers, who sometimes insist on interviewing the "girl" before they will let their sons interrupt learning to date her; and 3) male "serial daters" who can and will date women as young as 18 for years because they can, and because they are afraid of making a mistake and ending up divorced. I am skeptical about the last one, since what 18-year-old would date a 30-year-old? As far as I understand it, 18-year-old girls are considered quite marriageable, and 30-year-old "bochurim" are considered, at the very least, weird. Anyway, the seemingly insane degree of background checking and labeling that goes on before the first date is also mentioned.

Charedi/yeshivish bloggers' reactions to The Wall Street Journal article seemed to range from "yeah, that's us," to "yeah, can you believe that's us? G-d help us." MY reaction was, Isn't this bad for the Jews, at least for Jews who participate in the shidduch "System"? And what about the Jews, like me, who are considered "Orthodox" by their non-Jewish friends--and some of the Jewish ones as well--because they are Shomrei Shabbat, and they don't live in New York, and people are ignorant? Now, instead of asking me whether I am going to have a million (read: 3) kids, since I can't use birth control (yes, I have gotten that question), people will ask me whether I put my boyfriend through a CIA background check before our first date. (Oh, yeah, JDate has that extra James Bond application).

Does anyone think that shidduchim would have made it into The Wall Street Journal without the J-Blogosphere? I don't. The J-Blogosphere provides too many research-free opportunities for journalists to get quick articles before their deadlines (on posts from Bad4 overlapping with subjects in the article, see here, here, and here).

I would also like to point out that, where I live, I have a number of out-of-town Modern Orthodox, Conservadox, and Conservative (labels are helpful sometimes) friends who read Charedi/yeshivish blogs and discuss them at Shabbat meals. By "discuss," I mostly mean that they say, "Can you believe these crazies?" Favorite non-shidduch internet proof of craziness usually centers on issues of: kashrut (keeping kosher), tznius (modesty), and chumrahs (customary stringencies that many people, including rabbis, now treat as halakhah, Jewish law) in general. When I say kashrut, I don't mean actually keeping kosher; I mean water-filtering, avoidance of raw fruits and vegetables even without the CDC scare, and Chalav Yisrael. By "tznius," I don't mean wearing long skirts and long sleeves; I mean Israeli "mehadrin" buses, Israeli women in burkas, and total separation of the sexes before marriage. By chumrahs, I mean what FrumSatire calls "the chumrah-of-the-month club." I think that's self-explanatory. I wouldn't know about 90% of these "crazy" things without the J-Blogosphere. I try to avoid these conversations, but they are going on. I predict that this Shabbat, the New York article on the woman who left Kiryas Joel will be the J-Blogosphere-inspired topic of conversation.

I know that Jews have found ways to hate each other for millenia without the help of the Jewish Blogosphere. (And in case anyone wants to accuse non-Orthodox Jews of hating the Orthodox for the fun of it, let me assure you that it's mutual. If I had a dollar for every time I read a hateful comment directed against Conservative and Reform Jews on a blog, I could drop out of grad school and eat bon-bons all day. These discussions also take place at dinner tables and would continue to occur even without the J-Blogosphere).

I also know that the J-Blogosphere provides much-needed outlets for frustrated people to express their frustration and anger, often at their own communities. The Charedi/yeshivish community, of course, is not monolithic: there is a silent majority that wants change, just as there is in every community. And I firmly believe it's their business, at least in the US. The taxpayers don't pay guys to learn full time, and people are free to leave.

But will it really remain their business if they are broadcasting it to the (at least Jewish) world?

This Is Why People Have Blogs

2008-07-14T23:11:00.002-04:00

. . . so that they can rant about things that were bothering them last month (June) and will not be even remotely revelant until next June. So here it is:

If you are even remotely considering advertising a June jazz event with the words "We jazz June," please consider the poem from which it comes, "We Real Cool." The African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) published this poem as part of a collection in 1963:

We Real Cool
THE POOL PLAYERS
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL

We real cool.
We Left school. We

Lurk late.
We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.
____________________________________________________________________

Take-home point: Promoting your family jazz celebration in the park in June with a poem about the urban racialized poor and their imminent demise=bad.

Boyfriends and Blogs

2008-07-07T22:36:00.002-04:00

TC and I have been back together for about two-and-a-half months, and I felt for the first time on Sunday that it is serious now. Please get your minds out of the gutter; this was not because we had sex or anything. I was visiting my parents, who live near TC, for a few weeks, and we were able to see each other more often than about once every two weeks, and things just feel . . . intense, if I had to sum it up in a word. This isn't bad. It's weird, in a good way, not to mention good, in a weird way, and it's kind of overwhelming, but, humble reader, I have an even more important (in cyber-space terms) question for you:

Do I have to tell TC about my blog?

He doesn't know it exists yet, which I tend to think is a good idea, since I have already blogged about: 1) our previous relationship; 2) my conflicted feelings for The Shaigetz, which I realize now didn't amount to anything but a certain type of frustration; and 3) his mother. I don't know if he would care about 1), and I could delete posts pertaining to 2) and 3), but then what's the point of having a blog? If I had a diary, I don't think I would share it with him. If I talk about him to my parents, brother, or BFF, I don't necessarily tell him. I realize there is a difference, though, because others read this blog, and a few even know who I am and therefore who he is, although many don't. I could keep my blog and limit my posts to those relating to Judaism and politics, but I have gotten kind of attached to sharing my not-hugely-interesting dating stories in the blogosphere.

So, I wasn't thinking of telling him right away, but what's the etiquette on this? I am not worried about "getting caught" because he is very NOT computer-savvy and never reads blogs; this is more an issue of mutual respect. How serious does it have to get before it's inappropriate for me NOT to tell him? And then I guess I should sanitize my blog first?

Coupled

2008-06-28T23:44:00.002-04:00

I realize that much of this is not new, but it's pretty new to me. My experience, my blog, you know.

Usually, when I visit TC in New York over Shabbat, we go to his regular minyan for Shacharit. In that minyan, most of the people are old enough to be my (or TC's) parents. I also happen to know a few of these parentally-aged types. They are pleased that TC and I are together, but it's pretty low-key. I enjoy meeting TC's co-minyanites, just as I hope, when he is in town, he likes to make the acquaintance of my friends.

Last Shabbat, though, the regular minyan was having a special service that we (or at least I) didn't want to go to. So we went to Hadar (a post-denominational but essentially Conservative minyan founded by young people who are now in their mid-30's, although there are younger folks there, too). I had gone to Hadar when I lived in NYC right out of college, and I had never found it particularly friendly. I knew a few people from college and around the Upper West Side, but I never felt like I had an "in" there. I ended up going to another minyan (or two) regularly.

This time, when TC and I went to Hadar, the place had a totally feel. I felt like people were finally treating me like a whole person, now that I was part of a couple. I had several long conversations with people (people I already knew, but I still felt like I belonged). I knew more people there than I had before (people from where I live now who had moved to NYC, mostly), and of course I was more confident, with boyfriend in tow. I realize there are a number of variables here. But I still think that people closer to my age treat me differently now that I am "coupled." I told this to one of my Charedi/yeshivish friends, who is also old enough to be my mom. She was surprised, because she thought that since Hadar is all egalitarian and everything, people wouldn't be hung up on that. Ha! We're still Jewish, right? But it does raise of the question: if we're so egalitarian and progressive, why do we think women are missing something if they don't have a man?

Shavuot Musings, or Lack Thereof

2008-06-06T12:57:00.002-04:00

Shavuot is coming up on Sunday night. This is the holiday on which we celebrate the Revelation and giving of the Torah at Sinai (I believe in the Revelation; in terms of exactly what was given, I am not touching that on this blog with a ten-foot pole).

Anyway, I have noticed from reading blogs and seeing people's Facebook status updates--hey, I'm a grad student, so I don't always go outside--that some people are talking about readying themselves for Shavuot, preparing to bring their neshamot (souls) up as high as possible for the time when they will receive the Torah again. Even though I am a (religious) rationalist who would rather think of mitzvot than her neshamah, not that the two are mutually exclusive, I find all this talk of musings and preparations for the holiday quite nice.

I also find that it makes me feel guilty. When I think of Shavuot, I think of: 1. where I will eat meals, and how many dishes I have to prepare beforehand for me and/or potlocks; 2. how disgusting my hair is going to be on the second day; 3. how bored and or/hot (temperature-wise)I will probably be by Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes I also think about and get kind of excited for my community's Tikkun Leil Shavuot (staying up all night to study Torah) and a few of the shiurim (lessons) that I have seen on the tentative schedule, so that's good. But then my mind wanders to logistics: Should I go for mincha (afternoon prayers), or wait to go over until dinner and then stay for some shiurim? How late will I be able to stay up? I should really make a donation to the sponsoring group, etc. Not exactly elevated thinking.

I talked about this with my BFF this morning, and she said that it is only natural to feel this way, since that is how our ancestors thought about the holiday, too. Even though we now have modern technology, money, and butcher shops, only really special, high energy people who are not writing dissertations can do both. That reminded me of a d'var Torah I once heard from a woman who used to be yeshivish and married to a yeshivah bochur (full-time Talmud student) and now is not religious like that anymore. She talked about slaving over holiday meals for her husband and his fellow yeshivah bochurim and then having one of them say at her table, "I really enjoy yontif (holidays) because they're so relaxing." She thought, "Yeah, right, for those who have food served to them."

My mom told me that this was an anti-feminist statement when I said something similar in a slightly different context, but I think that the traditional division of labor is not particularly conducive to women having deep thoughts about yontif in the days before. Now that many men in my community help with food preparation and so forth, one possibility is that both parties feel like they have a little more time to reflect. The other possibility is that, now, everyone's head is full of blintzes and logistics (mmmm . . . logistics), and only those who are teaching at the Tikkun are thinking about texts, and it is largely because they are forced to. (Although I realize that some people volunteer for the Tikkun in order to motivate themselves to study texts and think about the holiday, which I think is very admirable).

So, does anyone else feel this way? What do you do about it? (Please don't tell me that I CAN, in fact, wash my hair on yontif. I'm not doing that right now, and it's not the point, anyway).

Enough already, Hillary!

2008-06-04T07:14:00.003-04:00

I don't usually blog about political issues, because everyone else is doing it, but I am getting to be crazed (I hope not literally) by Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama has won the nomination. He has the requisite number of delegates. What is Hillary doing? She's "considering her options." What options are those? I hope she's busy writing a speech in which she says something like, "I encourage all of my supporters to support Senator Obama in the fall, since we have to take back the White House, AND ANYWAY OUR POLICY POSITIONS ARE NEARLY IDENTICAL!!!!" I just watched the beginning of the Today show, and one of her staffers was on. Matt Lauer showed him the headline from the Washington Post today. It said something like, "Obama Wins Nomination," and asked, "Is this headline accurate or inaccurate?" The staffer couldn't give him a direct answer, even when Matt asked him again.

A few weeks ago in the New Yorker, Hendrik Herzberg wrote that the Clinton campaign had reached an almost mystical phase, in which her decision to drop out no longer had anything to do with the change she had to win. And that was before Obama had actually clinched the nomination! And they still won't concede. Incredible! AND, I think this vice-presidential thing is just a distraction by her people to get more attention.

Hillary Clinton, please concede gracefully and urge your supporters to support Obama before you do even more damage to his campaign. McCain was already starting to recruit your supporters last night!

ON AN UNRELATED NOTE: Since I'm in the realm of politics, I would like to wish Ted Kennedy a refuah shleimah (full recovery). He did something horrible a long time ago, and, it's true, if he were not a Kennedy, he might have gone to jail, although he would not have done that much time. I believe in teshuvah (it's a complicated term, but let's go, in one word, with "repentance"), and I think that his tireless work in the Senate over the past four decades has demonstrated a commitment to be an upright, contributing citizen who advocates on behalf of the poor, disenfranchised, and usually ignored. As I heard on TV, it's hard to imagine the Senate without him.

On his surgery: The cable news networks have been tying themselves into pretzels trying to explain his surgery, and the fact that he was awake. Maybe I remember too much old TV, but it seems simplest to me to compare it to the surgery that Dr. Mark Greene had on the TV show ER 5-7 seasons ago. He, too, had a tumor in Broca's area, which controls speech, and he had experimental surgery in which he was awake the whole time. I think that a good number of TV viewers remember that episode. That would have been my idea for a news segment, anyway.

Misheberach Issue

2008-05-28T19:55:00.002-04:00

In case you are wondering what happened to TC and me at his parents' this weekend, you can see the post here.

Now, onto something else I have been thinking about on and off lately:

I try to add the names of people needing misheberachs (prayers for the sick) to my prayers (I pray once a day on weekdays and 2-3 times a day on Shabbat). I sometimes get these names from e-mail lists I am on, Facebook groups, or newspaper articles about Israeli terror victims. The problem is that, since I don't know many of these people or their relatives personally, I don't know when they no longer need the misheberachs, either because they (God forbid) died, or because they are well. (For example, does Nadav Eliahu ben Hadassah, the victim of the Mercaz HaRav yeshivah attack, still need the misheberach that was requested 2-and-a-half months ago?). The truth is, even when the misheberach is for the grandparent of someone with whom I am friendly, I can hardly go up to the person and say, So, is your grandfather still alive? Obviously, I could ask how the relative is doing, but I am afraid of upsetting the person.

Do other people have this problem? And, if so, what do you do about it? Should there be a six-month cut-off point or something? I am of the opinion that even if someone has a chronic illness, I will not say a misheberach for him or her indefinitely--only if he or she is in the hospital or otherwise gets worse. But that is more information than I usually have.

I will open this up to responses and suggestions from the gallery (and please, nothing cheeky about how the majority of people on synagogue misheberach lists are dead--that's not helpful).

The Omer: What is a Conservadox Woman to Do?

2008-05-11T22:12:00.002-04:00

Every year, I struggle with the Omer. The two questions I have are: 1. For How Long? 2. What do I do (other than counting the Omer)?

Question 1 was answered convincingly for me by the husband of a friend a few years ago. He said that it makes no sense to observe the Omer, a mourning or partial mourning period, in Nissan, the month of Passover, traditionally associated with the Redemption. (Observing the Omer on Chol HaMoed Pesach in particular seems dumb to him). If there is no tachanun (a prayer of supplication that is omitted on happy occasions) in Nissan, why should there be Omer observance? Furthermore, there is no tachanun on Rosh Chodesh Iyar, so he starts to observe the Omer on the third of Iyar (the Hebrew month after Nissan). He continues to observe it for about three more weeks, until Lag Ba'Omer (the thirty-fifth day of the Omer), and then he stops. His reasoning is that the official reason for observing a mourning or semi-mourning period during the Omer is that, according to the Gemara, Rabbi Akiva's students started dying during the Omer, and they stopped dying on Lag Ba'Omer. He thinks that the custom arose to observe the Omer as a mourning period from the thirty-sixth day of the Omer until Shavuot only for the maintenance of symmetry between the first and last halves of the Omer. In true Conservadox style, I follow this minhag (custom), since it makes sense to me, although I feel kind of guilty about not observing the Omer (other than counting it) after Lag Ba'Omer, since everyone else is doing it.

The question of how I observe the Omer is a much harder one. My friend's husband is (wait for it) a guy, which means that he can observe the Omer very visibly by not shaving. Since he is hirsute, his observance is quite visible. But what should women do? There is no historical connection between mourning and not shaving legs, and I have to be seen in public, so that's out. In the past, I have not listened to recorded music, but this year is a bit of a challenge, since with the exception of one train ride in the near future, I wouldn't normally listen to music anyway. I'm also not convinced that listening to recorded music during the Omer is not allowed. Listening to LIVE music is not allowed, and going to weddings is not allowed, but I don't do those things at this time of year anyway. That is my question, I suppose: Does it "count" (no pun intended, but it's still funny) if I don't do what is forbidden if I wasn't going to do it anyway? Is the idea only to avoid the forbidden--assuming I even know what that is--or do I also have to make a separation between Omer and not-Omer?

I have considered giving up TV, or some TV, but it's hard to convince myself that that is necessary. Even the reason about Rabbi Akiva's students dying seems insufficient to me as a reason why all Jews shouldn't be allowed to have any fun (a gloss from an old acquaintance) for three or six or seven weeks. Is this a situation where the mourning custom, which had developed but whose origin had been forgotten, had to be explained retroactively by the rabbis?

What do you guys do? I am open to suggestions.

Well, I'm Still Conservadox . . .

2008-05-07T12:46:00.002-04:00

. . . but as for the single thing, not so much. I'm back with the Ex.

Now, before everyone goes crazy, I haven't told you guys that I had been thinking about the Ex and me a lot lately. I decided that the primary obstacle to our relationship previously was the difference in our positions on the religious spectrum, and, after dating some and trying to date some over the last six months, that was not insurmountable, since we are compatible in so many other areas. (There are lots of guys out there with whom I am SO not compatible). We have decided on some minimim religion-in-the-home prerequisites in case the relationship progresses, and I am satisfied with them. I also realized that I was way too hard on him in our past relationship. That was due largely to my inexperience, which led to the belief that if we were right for each other, everything would be perfect from the beginning. Ha! I am trying patience, patience, patience.

He has also changed, in the sense of having matured, knowing what he wants (including me!) and going for it. I have been missing him lately, and he was missing me, too.

We will still have to be long-distance for a while, but in the summer I will have more flexibility in terms of my location.

I am pretty happy. It feels as though very little time has passed. I'm nervous, too, because relationships are hard, but so is everything rewarding.

Feast or Famine

2008-04-23T10:41:00.002-04:00

Another dispatch from the hilariously unpredictable world of dating:

After a March that might charitably be called slow (and, uncharitably, dry as a bone) I am suddenly faced with: 1) two dates this week; and 2) two unsolicited messages of interest from promising-looking JDaters in the metro area where I live. This is not bad news. I realize that things are cyclical. In February, if you remember, I had three first dates--and, sadly, no second dates. When things are bad, I tend to get really really pessimistic and sad, never remembering, of course, that they will probably improve. By "improve," I don't necessarily mean that I will start dating someone seriously--only that I will get a date or some interest from people on JDate or Frumster. I know intellectually that after Pesach, a lot of people join JDate, because who wants to be single at a seder with his or her mom, aunts, and grandma there? My family is actually extremely tactful about this, but I know that is not the norm.

So, Katrina, you might ask, is there a problem here? Thanks for asking. Yes. After over a month of feeling bad about myself (and gaining some weight as a result), I'm not sure how to switch over to confident Katrina, the super dater. I don't know what to wear. I think that maybe I should lose some weight before contacting the JDaters, although I actually know that is ridiculous, since it's Pesach, when coffee cake is considered breakfast. I am really stressed about being judged, appraised, given the once-over, etc., although of course I realize that I will be doing that to the guy as well.

If anyone wants to help me get psyched--I have a date tonight!--please feel free.

Another 5,000 Down

2008-04-10T17:07:00.005-04:00

Or that's how it seems, anyway. In the last two or three weeks, it seems that a lot of friends or acquaintances or random people I read about on blogs have been getting engaged or married. On one level, I am certainly happy for them. Some are older than me (although some are younger--back to that later), and they must be happy and relieved to have found their other halves. On another level, though, I have to admit that I'm bummed out, not for them, of course, but for me.* I have lived in the place where I attend grad school for 4.5 years now, and as I look back at the single people I met when I first got here, a surprising percentage are engaged, married, or in serious relationships. Or maybe it's not surprising. Maybe it's more surprising that I'm not in a relationship, even though I have been (once) in the past. This fuels a common fear that I have about being left behind. As I have talked about in at least one previous post, I have never exactly been at top of my class in terms of social skills and relationships. High school was not good. I had a few close friends in college, but I didn't have a circle of friends until a year or two into grad school, i.e. when I was 25 years old, younger than the age when some people I know are getting engaged and married now. Since then I have felt ready for dating, but things haven't really been going that well for me, and I worry about being the one left standing alone. Sure, there will be a few others, but that doesn't make me feel better, nor should it.

In case you were thinking, "But Katrina, you're only 28; that's not that old," I would like to respond. Objectively, no, that is not that old in this day and age, given my demographic. But, the older I get, I have observed, the more discouraged and semi-closed-down the members of my (already so small) potential dating pool get. As I was discussing with one comically mismatched date in December--since we both realized we were comically mismatched about 10 minutes in, we were free to ruminate on the larger dating situation--it seems that the older people get, the more narrow their criteria get, when in fact those criteria should be getting broader. Call it the "I waited for this?" syndrome. This is only matched, on the guy front, with the "I'm suddenly tired of dating and will marry the next girl/woman I see," which is frustrating for the clearly smarter, funnier, cutier girl/woman whom you wouldn't even think about dating a year before because she wasn't a supermodel.

So, I open this up to the floor. Please don't all tell me it's okay, because I don't feel okay, and teh reality isn't okay, as we could all see from the article Shira linked to last week. The New York Times also has an article today about the reasons behind the man shortage, but I won't link to it here. Single people, do you share any of these feelings? I am trying to date (not too successfully, but I'm trying), so this isn't about my being depressed and hiding in a corner. Guys, is there some kind of faux pas that women commit that turns you off every time? And for pete's sake, people; if someone writes to you on Frumster, write back, even if it is just that form letter. Not knowing is worse.

*And I really don't believe, except in my really down moments, that not being happy for someone guaranties poor results in the dating/marriage department. It's hard to imagine that life is that clear-cut.

The US vs. Europe: A comparison based on experience and, of course, blatant generalizations

2008-04-08T00:48:00.009-04:00

By "the US," I primary mean the Northeastern US, and by "Europe," I primarily mean western, continental Europe:

US: Jews of lots of different types
Europe: unaffiliated Jews, charedim, kiruv-niks, Chabad

US: kosher food
Europe: not so much, although Chabad is happy to feed you

US: eruvs
Europe: yeah, right

US: sense of humor
Europe: varies greatly; Italy=yes, Germany=no

US: awkward Mulim/Christian dynamic caused by Republicans
Europe: VERY awkward Muslim/Christian dynamic caused by everyone

US: factory farming
Europe: grazing sheep, horses, goats, etc. visible from trains

US: Suburban sprawl
Europe: When you leave a city, there are actually green fields and the aforementioned animals

US: some interest in climate change
Europe: small cars--very small cars; very thin aluminum foil; those new futuristic windmills

US: speaky English
Europe: Dave Barry: "your average German speaks better English than your average US Congressperson"; Katrina: this is depressingly true, although it says more about Congress than Germans

US: decent toilet paper
Europe: yeah, right

US: public transportation outside NYC? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Europe: excellent public transportation

US: college professors who almost always know that women can walk through doors and put on their own coats-unassisted
Europe: this knowledge is surprisingly lacking

US: I often sleep
Europe: I am writing a blog post at 7:00 am when I have to be up at 8:30. Bon soir, folks.

Grappling with Purim

2008-03-18T22:48:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, I never liked Purim. It seemed like a bunch of people running around in costume for no obvious reason. Halloween seemed more fun and more likely to result in candy for me, personally. Despite not being frum, my family has some Litvish tendencies, so my parents didn't even like the service at our synagogue.

There were some positive developments along the way, such as my ninth grade class at Schechter, where we studied Megillat Esther as literature. I really enjoyed it and discovered that it much less silly than I had thought. In 11th or 12th grade, I spent Purim with some friends in NCSY (the Orthodox youth group), and with them I heard my first complete Megillah reading and had my first Purim seudah (festive meal).

College was less good, but that was only because I didn't really like my college's Hillel, so my dissatisfaction wasn't limited to Purim. Also there were some girls who liked to dress up in theme costumes, and I was somehow never included. All those girls are married now, and I'm not, but I don't draw any conclusions from that.

But, when I moved to where I currently live, I fell in love with Purim. Lots of dorks in dorky costumes! A choice of Megillah readings, including one where people do voices! Parties with my friends! Candy! (OK, there was always candy, but candy is so much better when you're already having fun).

So, I'm still here where I live, but this coming Purim has raised a lot of issues for me. First, there was the attack on the Mercaz HaRav (Kook) Yeshivah in Jerusalem. It horrified me beyond words. Some insane Arab terrorist killed teenagers in Jerusalem while they were studying Torah. And someone said up a Facebook group in his honor! The reaction, alas, left something to be desired. According to The New York Times, which isn't the best source necessarily, but this doesn't sound so far-fetched, the Israeli government is trying to figure out whether it would be legal to demolish this guy's house, which I'm pretty sure won't help. Then the Rosh Yeshivah of Mercaz HaRav, whom I acknowledge must be suffering terribly, said in his eulogy, "The murderers are the Amalek of our day." Since we just passed Shabbat Zachor, I think we know what that means. I am very worried that right-wing Israeli religious nationalists will kill Israeli Arabs and/or Palestinians this Purim. We're not that many years removed from Baruch Goldstein, who is still treated like a hero in some circles, most visibly in Hevron. Please don't do it, guys. Purim is confusing because Megillat Esther and much of the Jewish tradition clearly glorifies killing our enemies. (Skipping those parts of the Megillah in some non-Orthodox shuls won't make that go away). I think that modern Jews, regardless of whether they are frum or not, can draw distinctions between previous times and now, and can assess what makes long-term geopolitical sense, which is also a part of our long-term survival. Killing Arabs won't help with that. But not all Jews are modern (which is their choice), and not all Jews are sane (and I am not equating non-modernity with insanity--these are two separate categories), as Jewish tradition also attests, so I'm very concerned.

Second, a friend of mine was killed this week. He was just about my age. Many communities are in mourning. He and I often attended the same Purim seudah. My friends and I cannot figure out what to do. Some sort of seudah will take place. HaMotzi (the blessing over the bread, which is necessary in order for a meal to be considered a seudah) will be said, mishloach manot (gift baskets of food) will be exchanged, and probably everyone will cry. Great, right?

So, I'm seriously trying to figure out how to view this Purim as anything other than a disaster. Something I heard a few weeks ago is part of what I'm thinking about. My father has been reading (Former Israeli Chief) Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Lau's guide to Jewish law (a best-seller in Israel in the '70's, still in print). It was designed for the average Israeli and thus is good for American Jews, in English or the language of your preference. My father, an owner of a Jewish calendar if ever there was one, was reading the section on Purim, and he told me that Lau talked about the aspect of the holiday that is "the world turned upside down."

A brief excursus for those of you who aren't grad students, and who don't use the word "excursus" in any context, ever: A number of scholars, most famously Mikhail Bakhtin, author of Rabelais and His World, have discussed the role of Carnival (part of which we now know today in America as Mardi Gras) in Europe before the advent of modernity. Basically, his thesis was that because medieval and early modern society were so unequal and generally depressing, regular people needed an outlet to avoid setting everything on fire. So, for a fixed period of time before Lent, there were rowdy, costumed, alcohol-soaked parades and other celebrations in which people dressed up as or otherwise mocked the king, the local lord, the tax collector, or all three, with no consequences as long as they went home when it was over. Commoners "turned the world upside down" and pretended that they were the rich guys with all of the money and power (and food). It's not a secret that Mardi Gras and Purim occur around the same time (unless there is a lunar leap year and the solar calendar is off), and that certain themes--the costumes, the booze, the not wanting to be able to differentiate between the good guy and the bad guy--are similar. After hearing about Bakhtin in my first year of graduate school, I did what I usually do when I hear these things. I said to myself, "Okay, Katrina, so there is a basic need in society for turning the world upside down, and it probably predates Christianity; we have turned this need into something Jewish, as we do, which is a good thing." And I left it at that.

Lau had quite a different perspective. The turning the world upside town, or turning oneself inside out, gives one the opportunity to truly and openly let oneself experience the pain of the Golah (exile--it used to refer to the loss of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel AND the absence of God's presence from the Holy Temple and the sacrifices; now, although opinions differ, depending on what you think "Jewish sovereignty" means, it refers primarily to the latter) and the suffering of the Jewish people that has resulted. Lau's statement really struck me, not least because it made Purim seem much more Jewish to me than it had since I read about Bakhtin. I heard this before my friend died, but I think that if we look at Purim as also perhaps a time of anguish (that's why lots of people drink, of course)--something the rabbis touched on in reverse when they said that Yom Kippur, Yom ha'Kippurim, is meant to be a Yom ki' Purim (a day like Purim), it can make sense even amidst our suffering. And if you look at the sweep of Jewish history, of course, Purim was often far from happy; Jews "celebrated" it amidst desperate poverty and persecution, and perhaps even while being locked into their ghettos by the government for their own protection during Carnival, which did happen. There is always a thin line between comedy and tragedy; to take a more modern example, just think of how many people are afraid of clowns. So that's the best I can do right now.

Things That Piss Me Off

2008-03-12T09:05:00.005-04:00

I thought I would share. These are in no particular order:

Hillary Clinton and her "kitchen sink" tactics (great if you want to repeat 1972, Hillary!)

That a not-insignificant number of my cousins (first and more distant) are marrying non-Jews

Tall, blond, skinny women (whether or not they are marrying my cousins)

Even the thought of Pesach cleaning

That Provigil, which I don't take, but which has legitimate therapeutic uses for some, is now apparently a performance-enhancing drug (NYT requires registration)

That Saturday Night Live should have any effect on the presidential election whatsoever

That I sometimes can't resist the clarion call of JDate, despite my efforts

The disastrous economic policies (or rather lack thereof) of the Bush administration, and the crushing effects it is having on the country

Insane homicidal Palestinian terrorists and the lefties who love them (Sure, watch Unsettled, but how about some balance, people?)

The Israeli goverment's incredibly ill-advised settlement policy, which is not justified by the insane homicidal Palestianian terrorists

NOTE: It surprises me how much better it makes me feel to get this out. The fact that these things piss me off does not mean that there are other things that don't piss me off. That just isn't what I want to post about today.

Memo to the American Organized Jewish Community

2008-02-28T21:25:00.006-05:00

To: The organized Jewish community

From: Katrina

Re: Bad for the Jews

It has come to my attention that certain Jewish leaders have been making ninnies of themselves and, by extension, all of us. These leaders, who happen to be Republicans (I have no problem disclosing that I am a proud Democrat), have been saying as loudly as possible that Obama is bad for Israel, AND that American Jews agree with them (Many of this was quoted first in the Jerusalem Post, which, to its credit, also has a campaign section about Israel with a variety of views on Obama). Although certain other Jewish leaders, who are Democrats, have spoken out against this, it may be too late, since I saw a news story on CNN's Situation Room this evening about what Israel thinks of the American candidates. The fact that there even was such a story (as though the US should care what Israel, or any other allied country, thinks of their individual candidates, as long as neither one of them is an axe-murderer) indicates that certain people in media also take seriously this idea that "American Jews" are evaluating Obama solely on his position on Israel. Furthermore, the implication is that there is a substantive difference between his views on Israel's and McCain's, of which there is currently no evidence (other than, as CNN reported, that Obama might talk to Ahmadinejad--that's talk to, folks, not sign a mutural non-agression pact with--without preconditions instead of bombing first and asking questions later).

Remember 2004, Organized Jewish Community (OJC)? Republicans said the sky would fall if Kerry was elected, and then Bush proceded to: 1) do nothing for 3 years, and then 2) do something, which many of our friends in New York who had been so vehemently against Kerry nevertheless thought was totally unacceptable because it might result in peace (although no one seriously thought that it would result in peace, but, you know, it's the principle).

So, OJC, these are my requests: 1) Regardless of your party affiliation, stop portraying "American Jews" as a giant monlith whose behavior is identical with yours, or yours and your other New York friends; there are Jews all over the country, and the majority (including some in NY) both support peace in Israel, including with some symbolic concessions on Jeruslaem, and think that a candidate's fitness to be president involves his or her views on domestic and general foreign issues, in addition to his or her views on Israel; 2) Stop making the Jews look bad, traitorous, selfish, etc. This is related to 1), of course, but this Israel-centric behavior RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE TV CAMERAS OR NEWSPAPER REPORTERS just plays into the hands of the The Israel Lobby folks and everyone else who thinks that Jews control the government and/or don't care about anything other than Israel; and 3) Do some research on the remaining candidates from both parties and think about domestic policy for a while. You live here--and here's kind of a mess right now.

A Must-See

2008-02-24T00:30:00.004-05:00

UPDATE: Here's the link!

So I was watching the newly-returned SNL tonight, and Tina Fey was hosting. At the end of Weekend Update, which she used to co-anchor when she was on the show, she did a bit about Hillary Clinton and why people in Texas and Ohio should vote for her. As an Obama supporter who used to support Hillary but doesn't think she's electable, I appreciated it. As an assertive woman who has been called (mostly behind her back) a bitch, I idenified with it. As soon as it's online, I'll link to it.

Taking a Break

2008-02-21T07:25:00.003-05:00

After consultation with a few people, and reassurance from alg (a member of my approximate demographic) that it's not totally nuts, I have decided to take a two-month-to-10-weeks break from dating. I have been so frustrated lately (here is just one example) by my unsuccessful efforts to get from a first date to a second date that I think I am doing no one any good by going on more first dates. I think guys can tell how pissed off/frustrated/nervous I am. The key is that this is not an indefinite break or a sign of giving up--it is a mindful decision to concentrate on other things to the exclusion of dating, online or otherwise, until Pesach or right after Pesach.

Also, I am trying to declutter my life in general, since I am deluged by a number of treatises in a language other than English that I have to read within the next month for dissertation purposes. It's hard for me to admit that I need de-cluttering, since I pride myself on being a very competent multitasker, but when a trusted person who knows me well suggested it yesterday, it made a lot of sense. I felt very relieved, so I'm pretty sure it's the right thing to do. I don't know yet how this will impact blogging. Right now I'm not intending to take a break, but if you don't hear from me for a while, you will know why. Thanks.

I Tried to Date the Law . . .

2008-02-18T19:14:00.003-05:00

. . . and the law won. Or whatever. The analogy doesn't quite work. The lawyer, aka Date #3 from my 3-date bonanza of a few weeks ago, told me tonight that he didn't feel a click after the first date. So he doesn't want to go out again. I told him I was confused because he called after the first date, and normally when guys do that, it means they are open to a second date. He said that he "doesn't like it" when guys don't call, so he called to "feel me out" regarding the situation. What does that mean? Maybe I was too eager on that phone call. There are different freaking rules for every date and every guy, it seems.

So, that means I have officially gone 0-3 on the date front. And there isn't much waiting in the wings. I have a lot of work to do, and I'm really discouraged, so my instinct is to take a break. My parents are constantly telling me that I can't take breaks, but they don't have to deal with the emotional consequences of the aftermath. I would also like to add that I have difficulty taking breaks myself, but the lack of prospects should help. I can go onto J-Date as much as I want, but I think I have run out of people until the next mass-joining. So, if you need me, I'll be working on some sort of arcane treatise and feeling, at best, inadequate.

Blogs and Privacy

2008-02-18T08:15:00.003-05:00

Happy Monday. (I am, of course, kidding; it's raining, and I have just started my taxes).

Anyway, my blog is pretty new, and I have been interested in figuring out how many people are reading it. Naturally, I thought of Site Meter, and, on the advice of the BF's DH, Google Analytics. But I have been troubled by the ethics of tracking people. I worry about the extent that all of these great software tools infringe on privacy. Right now I'm leaning towards not tracking.

Has anyone else worried about this? Any thoughts? As a new blogger I am always looking for advice on these matters. Thanks.

Conservative Judaism??

2008-02-10T18:36:00.001-05:00

I have been thinking a lot about Conservative Judaism lately, and I have been getting quite frustrated.

First, some background: I went to a Solomon Schechter school for an undisclosed amount of time, but let's just say it was a lot of years. I have also audited a bunch of classes at List College at various times and in a whole bunch of different subjects (Talmud, Midrash, Jewish history and philosophy, Hebrew literature, etc.). When I lived on the Upper West Side for a year after college, I occasionally went to Hadar and more often went to an actual Conservative shul that had been partially taken over by young whippersnappers. When I came to grad school, the first minyan that I attended (I now attend more than one) was Conservative in a way pretty similar to Hadar. Despite all of this, I was not brought up in the Conservative movement, so I never identified with the movement or felt it was "mine." When I was in college, the Conservative minyan was lame, so I went to the Orthodox one and found I could tolerate davening with a mechitsah. I tend to "affiliate" as Conservadox because I find it is the label that fits me best and most accurately conveys to others, in one word or less, what my beliefs and practices are.

While I was growing up, my family and I used to make fun of the Conservative movement. In our defense, my father's job brought him into contact with the Conservative movement and its officials, whom my father experienced as fence-sitting even on very important issues, such as the recognition of non-Orthodox rabbis and synagogues by the Israeli government. Lo those many years ago, in the '80's, there was still a fair amount of what my friend calls, "But if we do that, what will our friends at Yeshiva University think of us?" in the movement. My teachers at school who were modern Orthodox also often made fun of the indecisiveness of the Conservatives. My fellow students who identified strongly as Conservative (often the children of Conservative rabbis) did not make too many of these jokes, and I figured that that made sense, since it was their movement.

That was why I was so surprised when I got to graduate school and the Conservative minyan that I go to, where most of the other attendees could be described as self-loathing Conservative Jews. Many were brought up in the Conservative movement but find it ridiculous, as I learned when we had a Koach (the Conservative movement's college organization) speaker for a Friday night dinner, and we were talking before she got there about whether we should mention our lack of enthusiasm for the movement. Some want to become Conservative rabbis, although usually not pulpit rabbis, but view any time they might have to spend at the Jewish Theological Seminary (to say nothing of an actual, real-life, non-New-York, Conservative shul) as some sort of purgatory. They do tell jokes about the Conservative movement, particularly about the Dorff-Nevins-Reisner homosexuality teshuvah, although they hope the new Chancellor will improve matters. At a recent Shabbat dinner, some of the more involved undergraduates were saying that they will probably not end up in a Conservative shul when they get older, unless it is a minyan like Hadar, because it will not be "frum" enough.

As a non-Conservative Jew looking at this at least partially from the outside, I often think, What is WRONG with these people? I may be yet another unaffiliated wonder, but I know lots of committed Reform Jews, for whom Reform is not a synonym for "nothing," but rather a particular set of beliefs about Judaism, Torah, and mitzvot. Although the key to this is "informed choice," and so it only involves mitzvot on a very uneven basis, these Reform Jews proudly go to Temple, attend movement conventions, send their kids to Reform summer camps and NFTY (the Reform youth group), etc. They are also pretty happy with the national movement, despite all the usual Jewish kvetching. Most of the self-loathing Reform Jews I have come across are the LEAST committed (they say things along the line of, "Well, I'm Reform, I guess, but I don't see why I should do anything, unless you, Rabbi X, can PROVE to me that I have to/that God exists, etc."). Any movement will have trouble attracting/retaining its marginal members. What surprises me about Conservative Judaism is that, from my own experience, it is the MOST committed people who are dragging themselves, kicking and screaming, to identify with the movement, rather than to become un-affiliated, post-denominational, or whatever. I think that is partially because the national movement is so fractured. USY (the Conservative youth group), JTS (the Conservative rabbinical school), and the Solomon Schechter schools teach one thing, but if it doesn't seem replicable, and not too much is being done about that fact, I see how that could be depressing.

I am less qualified to talk about modern Orthodoxy. Of course it is different from Reform and Conservative; it has a weak national movement, but people like that. Its leaders seem to have an incredible hold on some members (in the Northeast and California) and much, much less of a hold on some other members (everywhere else). I don't know if Modern Orthodoxy has much of a future in the New York area, where it's "Centrist or bust!," but in other parts of the country it seems to be doing pretty well. One can hardly underestimate the importance of NCSY (the Orthodox youth group) in attracting new members.

So, what's my point here? I guess it's that I don't know what the future of the Conservative movement is. It seems likely to break in half, with one half at least trying to hold onto halakhah, even at the expense of pretzel-ing sometimes (see, above, Dorff-Nevins-Reisner), and the other half, which has basically admitted that on some key issues it is most concerned with "meta-halakhic" issues, which is, as far as I can tell, a fancy way of saying, "non-halakhic" standpoints. With these messages coming out of New York, how can one expect people at a Conservative or sort-of-Conservative shul to realize/accept that some questions have to be answered with halakhah firmly in mind, even at the risk of hurting someone's feelings? Ideally, the halakhic types would remain at JTS, with a few decamping for Chovevei (a relatively new Orthodox rabbinical school that is to the left of Yeshiva University), which is not abnormal (just as a few students at Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical school, over a given decade will decide they want to study more Talmud and go to JTS), and the "meta-halakhic" types would go to Hebrew College or AJR or somewhere else not-so-denominational. One of the things that metaphorically kills me is that I think that, hashkafah-wise, the "meta-halakhic" rank-and-file, if not the leadership, would be happiest in Reform congregations, where at least they might meet a rabbi who has something in common with them. But then there is the difficult issue of the wide liturgical differences between two movements whose practices are, on the ground, quite similar. Maybe the new Reform siddur will help bridge the gap, or maybe, as often happens, the folks on the ground will do EXACTLY what they have been doing for years, while bloggers like me obsess about this online for the benefit of their 12 readers.

So, what do you guys think? I am especially interested in hearing from people who DID grow up Conservative on what they think the future of their movement is, but, please, everyone, feel free to let loose. One more question: Does this sort of post qualify as Lashon Hara?

Good News, For Now

2008-02-10T18:13:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note that the lawyer, aka date #3, called today. I was really happy. We just chatted about politics and our work, and he said he would talk to me later. It seems he is quite deliberative and moves slowly. I think that he wants to go out again, but it may take him a few phone calls to get there (We didn't set up our first date until our second phone call). Plus, I told him that my mom will be in town this weekend, which is true. So, I am trying to be cautiously optimistic about a second date and not think beyond that. This was a quick infusion of self-esteem at a time when I REALLY needed it.

I figured that since I have been complaining so much about my life, I would tell you all about this. Thanks for "listening."

Also, my blog was featured on Haveil-Havalim today. I'm so excited. I'm hoping to get some more readers who don't know me personally. Thanks a lot to Shira and Jack for recommending this to me.

Two Strikes . . .

2008-02-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

So here's the latest report from dating-land:

I told the Israeli guy that I thought we didn't have too much in common (or much to say to each other). He seemed pretty upset and asked if I was sure I didn't want to go out on one more date. I said yes. I felt bad about this but also found it to be a confirmation of the Murphy's Law of Katrina's dating: Apparently, another thing we didn't have in common was perception of what constitutes an awkward date.

Then, the guy from the second date, the fun one, told me today that he doesn't think we clicked or will click in the future. This one pissed me off. This is an older guy (10-15 years older than I am), and he is pretty average in terms of what people stereotypically usually look for in guys: looks, job, apartment, etc. On the other hand, he is pretty weird in terms of interests, which I will not delineate here for fear of being too specific. He basically had two concerns: we're at different places in life, and we don't have too many overlapping interests. Give me a freaking break. If I were his age, I would be eager to start a relationship, not looking for excuses not to start one. Perhaps I am naive, but it has never been my policy to try to date someone who is exactly like me. If two people spend time together, their interests will ideally get closer together. If you're a squash fanatic, I might start playing squash with you, and at the same time, you might start organizing your week around my favorite television show so that we can watch together. This guy is sufficiently weird that he will never find someone who has all of his interests. If that is his method, he won't ever find anyone.

And maybe that's the point. I spoke to a good friend of mine, a professor in New York, about this guy and the date. She expressed herself more eloquently, but basically she said that from my description (this was before I talked to the guy, based on my report of the date and the fact he hadn't called), this guy sounded like a freak and a loser. If people aren't married by his age, she said, it may be that they cannot give of themselves. (That may why be the very idea of doing something that he hasn't done before, merely because I am interested in it, strikes fear in his heart). She is frum, so some people might say that she has too narrow a view of what relationships should be, but in my opinion, ca. 40 is ca. 40, regardless of whether he watches TV.

From my perspective, another potential problem is that I am far more accomplished than he was at my age. In the frum world, this seems less of a problem than in the regular, Conservative/Conservadox world (Older Guy is an active member of one of the shuls I go to). That has to do with concrete socio-economic factors, and I am not judging either world, but the religious issues that I encounter are just piled on by guys sometimes not being interested in smart, ambitious women. I can't say that this was a factor for Older Guy, merely that it could have been.

The third date was fine, conversational but low-key, but I kind of doubt he will call, since I don't exactly seem to be batting 1000 lately . . .

Overwhelmed

2008-02-02T20:14:00.000-05:00

Katrina is, you guessed it, overwhelmed. I suppose this happens to everyone occasionally, but I feel guilty about being overwhelmed since I basically have no life. Somewhere in my town there is a mother with 4 kids, a full-time job, and a do-nothing husband who demands that she make dinner, who is also feeling overwhelmed, but she is justified. One of the interesting features of modern upper-middle-class single life is that it leaves a fair amount of time for thinking too much, perhaps on a scale unprecedented in history.

So why am I feeling overwhelmed? There are a few factors. First, my dissertation. I am up to my neck in books to read, and I am having trouble organizing my time. I keep thinking that it would be best for me to have large blocks of uninterrupted time to work, but in fact I work better if I know some activity to attend that acts as a deadline before which I have to get someting done. Knowing that I am supposed to be done in three semesters is just starting to hit me. Some of my friends who are a year ahead of me in the program have on-campus job interviews coming up. It turns out that every school, including Do You Want Fries with That U, demands, in addition to the application submitted in the fall, an approximately 30-minute talk, in which one's research has to be made palatable to non-specialists, a lecture to actual undergraduates and/or a discussion of one's teaching philosophy, and an overview of future projects. This semester is supposed to be the most productive one of my life, since starting in the fall I will be the one applying to jobs for the first time and having to sell myself in this time-guzzling manner. Great. No pressure.

Now, my love life. Israeli guy did, indeed, call me on Thursday (oh, disinterested Katrina is so hot!), and he said he would call back, which he hasn't. This is a relief to me because I don't know what to say to him. I had another date on Thursday night, with a different guy, whom I liked, and now I get to wait for him to call or e-mail. This guy I was interested in, so it's touch and go. I REALLY want to wait for him to call and not jump the gun, since I think this is the best way to gauge his interest in me, but I have poor impulse control and have to struggle constantly not to pick up the phone or at least send him some light-hearted e-mail. Does anyone have suggestions about how NOT to call, other than hiding my cell phone?

On Tuesday, I have a third date, with a guy I "met" and e-mailed with on JDate a half-dozen times and talked to on the phone twice. You're probably saying, I can't believe Katrina is complaining. THREE dates in two weeks? Fair enough. I want to emphasize, though, that I had no dates between Chol HaMoed Sukkot and December 23rd, when I had a perfectly nice dinner with a Frumster guy who was so hashkafically to the right of me that I almost burst out laughting over my cucumber martini. These three Jan./Feb. dates were the culmination of a lot of getting myself out there singles-wise in late 2007 and early 2008. I'm not saying that I deserve them, per se, but I went through a lot of humiliation to get them, and if even one resulted in a second date actaully desired by both parties, that would be a lot. I have low expectations going into the JDate date Tuesday because, like many guys on JDate, this guy is smart and cute and is probably not too observant at all despite the "Conservative" label. This is my experience with JDate and Frumster, respectively: JDate guys tend to be way to the left of me, while Frumster guys are way to the right. My parents, and especialy my father, are urging me to date guys more to the left, because the odds of finding an unmarried Conservadox guy with fewer than 3 heads are low. I am beginning to agree, but that's putting the cart before the horse for now.

Then there is the connection between work and love life, with the rest of my social life, such as it is, thrown in there for fun. The problem is that I am exhausted. I am not a high-energy person, and I am shy, although most people don't realize that about me, since I SEEM confident, and the putting myself out there and then actually going on the dates that eventually result is taking a lot out of me. Then I note all the time I haven't worked, and I get freaked out. This doesn't help my work, and it makes me more determined than ever that at least one of these dates HAS to work out, because how else will I explain to my advisor that I haven't produced some written work by X or Y date? Don't worry, I don't actually talk to my advisor about my love life, good or bad. Then I want to do other things, with actual friends who I already know and get along with, and I have no time for that, what with the dates and the working. Hence the overwhelmed-ness. Any ideas on how to get through this, as I imagine some of my readers have had to do at some point or another, would be appreciated. Hint: starting slack-jawed at Law and Order reruns on TNT doesn't work. I have tried.

Shavua Tov everyone.

The Matchmaker

2008-01-29T22:01:00.001-05:00

Tonight, I had my first date since I started the blog. Don't worry; it wasn't with a matchmaker. It was set up by a matchmaker. This is not a matchmaker in the shadchan sense but someone more modern than that. I decided it would be a good alternative to JDate, which is not to say that I haven't had some good luck with JDate (The Ex, for example).

It turns out it wasn't such a good alternative, though, since on JDate I would have had to make an effort to find someone I had less in common with than this guy. He was a perfectly nice guy, but did she pick his name out of a hat? He is Israeli, around my age, lived in Europe for a few years, and is now getting his M.B.A. at one of the foremost schools of hotel management in the U.S. He is one of the only Israelis I have ever met with an accent I have trouble understanding (I think that his time in Europe may have changed his accent). On the phone I can barely understand him, and even sitting across from him in a restaurant I didn't catch everything. But maybe that's okay, because (and this is the key part of why the date didn't work) we had VERY LITTLE to say to each other. We (mostly I) were able to keep the conversation going for two hours because we had never met and could exchange information about our families, jobs, etc., but already towards the end we were running out of things to talk about. Not promising.

OK, perhaps I am being too hard on the matchmaker. This guy and I actually have three things in common: 1) he's somewhat observant; 2) he loves to read; 3) he likes travel to Europe. I think that the matchmaker, whose practice is largely regular American Conservative, thinks that any two people who are more observant than that will have lots in common. Or maybe I'm being too cynical. The point is that there was no click, which was disappointing. I almost never have luck with dating Israelis. I think there's a big cultural difference in many cases.

My parents asked me if I will go out to him again. I told him that whenever I am completely non-interested in a guy, he calls. I guess my dad is right that non-interest is a turn-on. If only I could fake it for guys I DO like.

Conservadoxy and its Discontents

2008-01-24T20:56:00.000-05:00

I know, creative subject line. I have wished since at least when I worked on my high school paper that I could make up short, witty titles for articles and other short prose, but I can't. Oh, well.

So, what does Conservadoxy mean to Katrina, you might ask? If you consider yourself Conservadox, you might have a vague idea, or you might disagree violently with what I am about to say. If you are not Conservadox, you might think Conservadoxy is a bunch of nahrishkeit, but the same can be said for a lot of Jewish labels and the particular teeny tiny hashkafic segments of the Jewish world they represent. Here is my answer, anyway, in list form (it is not only my views but also, I hope, contains enough hedging/grab-bagging to snag others too):

1. Being Shomer (or in my case Shomeret) Shabbat and Yom Tov
2. Keeping hekhsher kosher in the house, assuming you don't live in Arkansas or Europe or some place like that, and perhaps outside, too, or perhaps eating some fish and dairy out and feeling guilty about it
3. Being comfortable with davening in either an Orthodox minyan or a so-called Traditional Egalitarian minyan (essentially same liturgy as Orthodox, full Torah reading, but women lead and read Torah, and women and men sit togther); now I now some will say that you don't have to be comfortable in a mechitsa minyan to be Conservadox, and I don't disagree--I just happen to be.
4. At least entertaining the idea of Taharat Ha'Mishpachah after marriage, plus some (varying based on the person, but probably not skirt-related) definition of tzniut before marriage
5. Wearing pants and not feeling guilty about it, if you're a woman
6. Some kind of davening commitment, whether it be the whole shebang on Shabbat, or Shabbat plus one service per day approximately during the week, or more of course
7. Some kind of regular Torah study commitment
8. Having some halakhic principles

Perhpas the real purpose of this post is to complain about #8. I live in a community in which I increasingly feel that people who look at things halakhically are considered Conservadox or Orthodox, while people who don't are considered tolerant and friendly. I don't want to get into the specifics of halakhic controversies that have ensnared at least one of the shuls where I daven, since I am trying for at least some degree of anonymity here. Also there is the lashon hara thing, which maybe I should have put on my list above. The point is that in a shul in which I sometimes daven, which identifies itself as post-denominational, which I consider to be another name for Conservative (and that at least is their style of davening), there have been two halakhic controversies this academic year. It may not be correct to call them halakhic controversies, though, because in both cases, one side has placed halakhic considerations as the number one determining factor in the final decision, and the other has not. Those of us who have the temerity to suggest that although some situations are unfortunate and hurt people's feelings, they still have to be resolved with halakhah firmly mind, have mostly been dismissed as Orthodox and therefore out of touch with the concerns of the majority of people in the shul, and/or intolerant, and/or unfeeling. This disturbs me greatly. I am not unfeeling. I'm not exactly a fundamentalist, but what Conservadoxy means to me, increasingly, is holding the line against Conservative Judaism and its meta-halakhic standpoint. I think that some of the problem in the case of this shul is the massive under-education of many of its members, which is not their fault. Plus there is shul politics and the bonds of friendship, which admittedly makes things more dificult.

Don't worry. This blog is not going to be me venting about my various shuls. I have just been frustrated about this for a long time and wanted to get it off my chest. End of rant.

Vibes (or, The Shaigetz, Part II)

2008-01-23T23:13:00.000-05:00

So, I was talking with the Shaigetz yesterday. We have been talking about the issue of him semi-consciously sending me weird vibes that distract me. He has apologized and promised to cut it out if at all possible, and I have said that I get he's an affectionate person, and I'm glad our friendship means a lot to him, but, you know, I have to do work every once and a while!

Then we got onto the issue of vibes within the Cambridge Conservative/Conservadox/Modern Orthodox singles community. I told him that one reason why his vibes kind of threw me for a loop was that in the singles community here--which isn't formal like the one on NY's Upper West Side but rather is made up of whoever happens to be single and may be interested in not being single forever--THERE ARE NO VIBES. Everyone is so terrified of accidentally conveying interest, which could be returned, of course, but is more likely to render everything awkward and/or invite crushing rejection before anyone even knows anyone else very well, that it is as though I am in an emotional vacuum every time I try to have a conversation with any single male of the opposite sex in my age bracket. Part of the problem is that the community is so small that no one wants to alienate anyone else. That's fine, but how am I supposed to know if I even want to ask you out/be asked out by you, Mr. Local Single Male of the Opposite Sex in My Age Bracket (Mr. LSMOSMAB, for short), if you won't answer my e-mails or have more than a ten-minute conversation with me? This is not a rhetorical question. Seriously, how?

The Shaigetz

2008-01-15T14:32:00.001-05:00

First of all, I know that this is not a politically correct designation, but it has more of a ring to it than "the non-Jew." It also suggests the intensity of communal disapproval of inter-dating and intermarriage, which I support. The Shaigetz is a colleague who grew up in a very Jewish town and knows more about Judaism than some Jews I know. I realize this makes no halakhic difference.

Okay, enough about terminology. The Shaigetz bought me jewelry on his trip abroad to visit his brother. He gave me the bracelet today. Oh, boy. It's beautiful. I know that I am starved for male attention, and it doesn't help that he is my preferred physical type, single, and a great guy. I am have been seriously considering jumping his bones. I know that is a terrible idea.

Fortunately, I have a fair amount of self-control, and although I do not consider myself a halakhic Jew, I believe that one of the key things that the Torah and halakhah are trying to teach us is that we do not have to give into our desires. This is not about my going all Protestant on your ass. One of the values of kashrut, I think, is to remind us that we are not just animals who eat everything in front of us; we take a moment to wash our hands and say brachot to remind us of the fact that we are supposed to be "k'doshim" (and also that food comes from God). When I was with my Ex, we were not Shomer Nagiah or anything, and sex is not how I roll, but I did think carefully about what we did do. It's part of balancing modern and traditional Jewish values. Oh, boy, being Conservadox is fun. I'm going to throw myself into my work now.

MLK Inanity

2008-01-14T18:41:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a break from my usual (although two posts doesn't exactly make it "usual") ruminations on my love life to comment on a political controversy that is sweeping the 10 people who are still following the Presidential election.

Basically, Hillary Clinton, whom I support, said that President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) deserved either a great deal or most (I'm not sure) of the credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Obama campaign fired back by suggesting that she meant to insult Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the work on the ground that eventually produced the Civils Right Act. Clinton qualified her remarks somewhat, saying that she meant that, regardless of how much great work a given individual such as Dr. King does, one still must work within the political system in order to affect real change (this may provide a parallel, although she did not say so, with the Democratic goal of establishing some sort of national health care system). On the same day, her supporter, the head of BET, made another snide comment about Obama's drug use, which the Clinton campaign had said it would stop doing. Obama said that Clinton was trying to drive him off message, while pundits speculated that it's no coincidence that this is happening in the same week as the South Carolina primary, where about half of Dem voters (or maybe likely voters?) are African-American.

My take on this is that it's inane and distracting. Of course, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both right. In order for major, society-changing legislation to pass, much work must be done at the grass roots--and a charismatic leader certainly doesn't hurt--and then the State and National Legislature and President have to step in (and the Supreme Court has to not torpedo it). Scholars have also argued--no coverage of this in the mainstream media yet--that, had it not been for the assasination of JFK in November, 1963, and the resevoir of good will that it built up for the Democratic Party, LBJ would not have had the political capital to sign the Civil Rights Act. Anyone for an argument over whether Lee Harvey Oswald (or, if you are conspiracy minded, the CIA, Mob, RFK, and/or Castro) did more than MLK to get the Civil Rights Act passed? I'm getting tired of this . . .

Okay, that's off my chest now. In the next post, I plan to discuss: The Shaigetz (of course, there's a Shaigetz. There always is one).

The Ex

2008-01-10T23:32:00.001-05:00

I am thinking about trying to get back together with my Ex. Now, I know this sounds perhaps a little desperate, but consider this: he's smart, good-looking, has a job and a nice apartment (and still single). To a graduate student, this sounds like a good deal. We have gotten back in touch over e-mail lately, and while we have only been shooting the breeze (after I apologized to him and he forgave me for sending him one hostile e-mail soon after we broke up), it might be a foundation for something. Anyway, I'm not planning on doing anything right now, since he doesn't live around here. I will be up his way around Pesach.

Seriously, folks, he was my first serious boyfriend, and while I was concerned that he was commitment-phobic (which he was, of course, since he's a guy), I think now that I was also pretty freaked out about the idea of sharing myself with someone. I don't mean that sexually; that's not how I roll. I mean that I have lived alone for a long time, and I always felt a little cramped when he was around. I think that if I had been more honest with him about that, he would have understood and given me more space. In other words, he pushed me away somewhat, but it was mutual. For now, I'm just e-mailing and taking it slow . . .

Welcome to my blog

2008-01-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

I decided to start this blog pretty much on a whim this Motzei Shabbat, although I've been pondering it for a month or so. Some of my best friends are bloggers, and I have also recently started reading a number of blogs by strangers that I like. The major impetus, really, is that I am still single, and I need to talk about it in some format that includes neither my very worried parents or my patient best friend (who is married), who could probably use a break. I consider myself to be smart and funny and not bad-looking, so I don't really get what has happened. I know it's hard to be Conservadox and a woman because there are approximately 10 Conservadox men who have not now, nor ever have, attended JTS, and they are all married. I'm open, though, to both "Conserv" and "dox" guys, too, which should in theory be less limiting. There are never as many Jewish guys in the Boston area, where I live, as in New York, but I lived in New York once and didn't like it (I would not rule out relocation, though, now that I am older).
Don't worry, though; this blog will not be all kvetching. I have other things in my life as well, such as my dissertation (parents: you're having trouble finding a man because men have trouble with smart women), politics, fiction (which I can read on Shabbat; eat it, non-Shomer-Shabbat grad students!), television, and of course my friends.