Happy Holidays

To my Jewish guests: Happy Chanukah!

To my Christian guests: Merry Christmas!

To one and all: Remember to add some ground cloves and cinammon to your hot chocolate this season. It is oh-so-wintery-good! Best enjoyed under warm blankets with a good book!

[The travel plans to America for my grandmother's funeral continue apace. It is not always so simple, this international travel.]

A Door Closed Today

On my childhood

On an entire generation in my family tree

On Polish Jewry

On a sweet, strong woman.

Rest in peace, Omi. I know your mother and father must be so glad to have you back.

Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet.

Blowing Kisses

According to her doctors, my beloved Omi, who is 88 and has always been the strongest person I knew, has up to a week to remain with us. Please pray for her: Rachel bat Gittl.

So much to do, if I want to go to America next week. Decision, decisions. Which day to go? How much work to do before I leave, and what to postpone until I come back? Who will guard my apartment for me? Who will take in my mail? Who can cover stories that I will miss, and which ones can I do from the States? Which editors can I reach today? Which travel agents can I reach today? Should I go to California as long as I'm there? How much money can I spend on this? Where is my winter coat? Who will take down my suitcases from my high-up storage places?

Thank God I am not hosting Shabbat meals this week and do not have to cook.

Last night I cried my eyes out until about 2 am. I am very close with my grandmother. While I was growing up, she lived about a seven minute drive away, and we visited each other often. After college, when I was living in Boston for a few years, I had dinner with her once a week. And now that I've made aliyah, I still call her about once a week or so. Ever since I was a little girl, I thought of my Omi as being old, and was always afraid she would die before I'd see her again. I have always been careful to tell her I love her every time I see her or talk to her, so I'd never regret a missed opportunity to tell her. And always, in her thick, thick Polish accent, she'd say "And I love you too. Kisses."

When my Omi's time comes to leave us, she'll be joining her mother, who died when my grandmother was 2 1/2, and her father and brothers and sisters, who were killed in the Holocaust. Omi always said that she thinks her mother has been her guardian angel, and that it's because her mother was looking out for her that she survived all the hardships she suffered in her little village in Poland, and the Holocaust, and living in post-WWII Vienna, and being widowed about 35 years ago. It's comforting to know that she'll be reunited with her mother after 85 years, and with her father, but also frightening for me. Do we really know what happens after we die? Can I really count on ever seeing Omi again, when my own time comes?

Whatever strength I have, I inherited from Omi. She went through so much, and never let the turkeys get her down. She was always ready for new adventures, never doubted her ability to make it to the next day, and always had a sweet, simple faith in God. Instead of saying "Why did God take away my family?" she always said "I am so lucky. God is so good to me. He helped me live."

About ten years ago, when she was spending her days in her little apartment watching soap operas and taking slow, daily walks to the grocery store or the butcher, she told me that this was the best time in her life. "Now, finally, when I am old, I am having a good life," she told me. "I have no responsibilities. I can take it easy. I can take a walk when I want to and rest when I want to. This is the best time in my life. I am very lucky."

My mother tells me that Omi is not in any pain, that she is peaceful and, though too weak to talk, is able to understand when people talk to her. Yesterday my mother put the phone to Omi's ear, and I told her that I love and miss her, and that I know she loves me too, even though she can't tell me so right now, because she always told me before. I said I'm sending her kisses.

After, my mother said that my Omi was smiling and blowing kisses to me.

My heart is breaking.

As if we didn't know . . .



This was fun. Indicative of . . . I don't know what . . . but fun!

What's interesting is this note I got after my results:

Right Wing Modern Orthodox: 70%
Left Wing Modern Orthodox: 55%
Left Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 44%
Right Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 10%

Notice that I mostly fit "Right Wing Modern Orthodox," but also got just about half the possible answers for both "Left Wing Modern Orthodox" on one hand and "Left Wing Yeshivish/Charedi" on the other.

Just goes to show how you never know about people. Or labels. Or these quizzes.

Then there was this, which I assume was written tongue-in-cheek:

Congratulations. You're Modern Orthodox all right, but wait! Just when you were ready to live an idyllic happily-labeled life they announce Left Wing and Right Wing Modern Orthodoxy. What the heck is up with that? Maybe you need to rethink and refine some of your positions, and then take the test again so I can put you in a little box.

No, thanks, NerdTest maker person, I'd rather not be put into an even smaller box. The dating pool is too small where I am, as it is.


Hat tip: Orthomom

Appreciation Wednesday: Carrying the Load so we can Carry the Loads

This week, I'm expressing my appreciation for those in Orthodox Jewish communities everywhere who spend their precious time every week checking their local eruvs.

For those not in the know yet, on the Sabbath, Jewish law prohibits carrying things around outside, or from inside to outside or outside to inside. More specifically, it's prohibited on the Sabbath to carry things from a "private domain" (eg, my house) to a "public domain" (eg, the street). I'm simplifying things, but basically it's OK for me to carry, say, my prayer book around within my house or within my synagogue, but not OK to carry it from my house to the synagogue. Therefore, under normal circumstances (that is, without an eruv), if I want my prayer book with me in synagogue to use on the Sabbath, I have to get it there before sundown on Friday. If I want to bring wine to a family who has invited me, I have to bring it before sundown and then come back again later.

In general, this prohibition against carrying stuff is a particular problem for families, since it includes a no-no against pushing strollers or carrying babies. People with little children have to coordinate their synagogue-going activities (often the mother ends up staying home and not praying in a synagogue for years, or else one parent goes to an ultra-early service so the other can go later, tag-team style). And people with little children also cannot usually "eat out" at the home of another family, since they have no way of transporting the babies.

Enter the magical loophole! I'm going to simplify this in a major, major way. If you want more details, there is plenty to be found at Google. Basically, the loophole is to make an entire neighborhood into one great big "private domain."

If I have a continuous fence around my house, then I can still carry things from my house to my yard, because the fence makes the yard part of my "private domain." So, some Orthodox communities have arranged with their local municipalities to create a "fence" around entire neighborhoods. Usually this "fence" consists of walls or natural phenomena that are there anyhow, combined with discreet ropes strung from telephone pole to telephone pole. This system of walls and ropes and other things that make a "fence" is called the "eruv" (ay-roov). And within the eruv, people can carry things and push baby strollers on Shabbat, making life easier for everyone.

The problem comes in when you consider that in order for people to use the eruv, the eruv has to be intact on Shabbat. That is, if any of the ropes have been taken down, or walls opened, or whatever, then it is not a continuous "fence" and that is not OK. American winters, in particular, can wreak havoc on eruvs, what with winds and falling trees, etc.

So, every Thursday and Friday, there are very kind and generous people in Jewish communities around the world, who travel the length and breadth of their local eruv and make sure it is all intact. If it is not intact, they either arrange to fix it quickly, or at least let their co-religionists know that the "eruv is down" and therefore this week they may not carry things around outdoors. Many communities have hotlines, where the eruv-checkers leave messages on Friday morning letting callers know the "status of the eruv." When an eruv is down, it is very disappointing for everyone, but it is so important for people who follow Jewish Law to know that the eruv has been checked and they can carry things without worrying about violating halacha.

So, to any eruv-checkers who are reading this, thank you very much for the time and effort you put in every week to help us observe Shabbat!

Five Simple Pleasures

:: Sigh::

Another meme.

Can't live with 'em, can't ignore them.

In order to humor The Artist Formerly Known as Purple Parrot, whom I had the pleasure of meeting (again) at my Eilat trip, here are five simple pleasures. To be specific, five simple Eilat pleasures:

1. Getting into a hotel bed that is much, much softer than my bed at home, with a good Agatha Christie mystery.

2. Hotel buffet, especially the free hot chocolate!

3. Lying at the beach, doing absolutely nothing, while the sun shines on me.

4. Gorgeous view of four countries at once. Those mountains are incredible!

5. Finding two great pairs of boots, free of sales tax.

Were I not limited to "Eilat pleasures," I would add:

• Finishing a work assignment and handing it in
• The smell of the smoke generated when you put out a havdala candle in the wine
• The smell of freshly dried laundry
• Being told by an Israeli that my Hebrew is very good
• Putting on the perfect shade of lipstick

Appreciation Wednesday

I've been thinking, on and off, about what to write about this week. There are so many things in my life I appreciate: my sister, my parents, my grandmother, my friends, my relatively easy absorption into Israel, my education, having my own apartment, my teachers, my career, my straight white teeth, clean water, and so many organizations and institutions and entities and people who have made my life better over the years. I appreciate that I live in a free country. I appreciate the ocean. I appreciate scientists who research diseases and find new ways to treat them. I appreciate people who volunteer their time and expertise to help the poor and the sick and the uneducated and the downtrodden. And I really appreciate janitors.

But I don't really have time to focus on any one of those things right now. So much going on! So, I invite you to spend a moment, this Wednesday, thinking about the things YOU appreciate. Feel free to list some of them in the comments.

Jewish-Israeli Blog Awards, and Linky Love

It's the 2nd Annual JIB Awards! Nominate your favorite J-blogs here, with thanks to the good folk at Israellycool and the Jerusalem Post! Nominations close on the 18th, so get there in a hurry, and remember who sent you! Chayyei Sarah! Chayyei Sarah!

Here are some other blogs worth nominating, if they haven't been nominated already. If you don't read them, you should be!

A Whispering Soul (excellent personal blog)
Five Years Later (a mother's reflection on the death of her daughter)
Hirhurim (assumes a fairly high level of Jewish knowledge)
Jewlicious (still Jewlicious, after all these years)
My Urban Kvetch (still Kvetching, after all these years)
Nice Jewish Girl (no longer Shomer Negiah, after all these years)
On the Face (my alter ego; single and secular in Tel Aviv)
Orthomom (proving you can be an Orthodox woman in the Five Towns and still have something sophisticated to say)
Renegade Rebbetzin (title is self-explanatory)
Treppenwitz (opinionated American dad living in Efrat)

And here's a blog I just discovered today, which looks really good.

Happy Reading.

Fear and Annoyance in the City of Gold

OK, so when I said that the next post would be about why Eilat is not a great place to spend Shabbat if you observe Shabbat, I was wrong. First I want to write about the crazy evening I had yesterday.

Last night I went to Yael's place for dinner. On the way home, while I was walking on Bustanai Street at 8:10 pm, I saw a car suddenly stop in front of a house. The driver stepped out of the car, threw something over the car and over the gate of the nearest house, got back into the car, and quickly sped off in reverse up the street.

The package he'd thrown into the garden looked just like a newspaper rolled up in the typical white plastic covering, but who'd be delivering a newspaper at 8:10 in the evening? Maybe it was a bomb? I've always had a feeling that the terrorists might start up with private homes in Jerusalem, rather than sticking to public and crowded places. They want nowhere to be safe, right? So why not target a house on quiet Bustanai Street?

Or maybe it was the mafia? Have I been watching too many movies, or could it really be a bomb?

Either way, I wasn't about to stick around, and I wasn't about to let that house blow up when I could've prevented it. So I walked to the end of the street and called the police from my cell phone. I told them what I saw, explained that it might be nothing but it sure looked strange to me, and tried to describe which house it was. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of street lamps on Bustanai, so I hadn't been able to see the house number.

So then of course I had to wait around for the police to show up. It took a surprisingly long time, about 15 minutes. The house could've blown up several times before they got there. But finally they came, and a police officer walked with me up Bustanai so I could show him what house it was. He shined his flashlight into the garden, where we saw . . .

Two rolled-up newspapers, still in their packages.

"What kind of newspaper comes at 8:10 at night?!?" I asked.

"The Globes," the officer responded.

Turns out everyone in Jerusalem knows about The Globes and how it's delivered at night, but did Chayyei Sarah, the new immigrant know? Of course not.

I apologized to the police officer for wasting their time, but he was really nice about it. He said "We are happy you called. We're glad the public is alert. Don't feel bad. This is our job." etc etc. and I went home.

By the way, if you live in 14 Bustanai Street, you should really bring in your newspapers.

Anyway, I got home and started tooling around on my computer. About half an hour later there was a knock at the door.

Someday I might write another post about the internal conflict I have in Israel about opening my door to strangers. Not everyone here is a good guy, you know. I'm not talking about terrorists. I'm talking about burglars, drug addicts, burglars, burglars, and burglars. Oh, and thieves. Yet, often the person at the door is legitimate, and often due to my lack of Hebrew I can't tell who it is until I open the door. So I'm often in a bind.

Last night I opted to open the door. It was a man in his late forties or so with a big black yarmulka, telling me a sob story about how he lives on my street, his newborn son needs a new liver, and here is the medical paperwork showing that the story is for real, and they have to fly to Boston tonight for emergency surgery (a transplant, maybe), and the Bostoner Rebbe is helping them, but they have to pay for the plane ticket, and he is asking the neighbors to help pay for the plane ticket.

I've met con artists before, and they are often just as convincing as this guy, so I knew not to give him any money unless and until I verify his story. The fact that he'd mentioned the Bostoner Rebbe gave me pause and made me believe that he might be telling the truth. The Bostoner Rebbe founded an incredible organization called Rofeh International, which provides kosher housing and medical referrals for Jews who come to Boston from all over the world for the world-class hospitals there. How do I know? Because I'm from Boston. I'm not just from Boston, I'm the daughter of people who were married by the Bostoner Rebbe. The Bostoner Rebbe kindly wrote me a recommendation for Michlalah when I was 17. But how many Israelis know about Rofeh? Maybe this guy was for real.

And if he was for real, it would be a real shame for me to shut the door in his face.

So I asked him all sorts of questions about who I could call to verify. He hemmed and hawed, but it was hard for me to tell whether it's because he's a con artist (most likely) or whether he's a stressed-out person speaking in Hebrew, and not terribly bright, either (possible). The paperwork he was holding proved nothing to me because I couldn't understand it. The fact that his National ID Card had the same name as the medical paperwork proved nothing other than that he had some connection to these (possibly phony) documents. He said that his son was no longer at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital because they were leaving for the airport (uh, huh), and the people at the Rebbe's wouldn't know his name, because it was his wife who'd been dealing with them.

Right, whatever. His ID card had the name of his wife, and certainly they'd know the name of the baby, correct? I got his address (which, even now, I think might actually be his real address - he's such an idiot), told him that I'm from Boston, that I'll call the Rebbe's, and that I'm a journalist, and I know how to check things out, and that if he's for real I will come over to his house in 15 minutes and give him a generous donation. He left, looking a little shocked -- maybe because he's stressed out or maybe because he hadn't banked on my being a journalist from Boston-- and I got on the phone.

I called Rofeh. The woman who answered asked how my parents are doing and then put another lady on the phone to help with my question. She also asked how my parents are doing, and is this Sarah or Rivka (my sister), and how is Rivka doing? After all the catching up, I explained the story, and Freydie told me that no, she's not aware of any baby with liver problems, in Boston or scheduled to come to Boston, connected with Rofeh.

Then I called Hadassah Ein Kerem's pediatric unit. They said they'd never heard of the family name in question, though perhaps the baby simply hadn't been in pediatrics, but in another unit. Still, there was only so much work I was willing to do to verify this story after Rofeh had already told me it's a scam as far as they know.

I thought about calling the police to tell them about this con artist trolling my neighborhood.

But if this American woman named Sarah suddenly calls the police twice in one night, the police would probably think I'm a wierdo, don't you think?

We interrupt this blog for the following special announcement:

I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST!

I AM GETTING MY ISRAELI DRIVER'S LICENSE!

IT HAS BEEN WEIGHING ON ME ONLY FOR 2 1/2 YEARS, EVER SINCE MY ALIYAH!

I CAN RENT A CAR WHENEVER I NEED ONE!

YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!

Ok, details: You all may recall that a few months ago I took the test for the first time, and failed. I am a very very experienced driver -- remember, I drove NCSYers around in an RV for 11 days, for heaven's sake -- but I was extremely nervous and made a very stupid error during the test. Darn.

After that, I put off taking more lessons and doing the test again for a while, because I just did not want to deal with it. It was an especially dark raincloud over my head, because if I failed the second time, I'd be ineligible for the "switching from an American to an Israeli license" procedure and would have to go take the theory test and 30 lessons. Failing the test a second time would be a very expensive and time-consuming inconvenience.So I had to pass this time. It was a lot of pressure.

To reduce the pressure, I took five more driving lessons. My teacher kept saying "you're ready. You're fine. Just take the test," but I said "I am not taking the test until I'm perfectly relaxed." During the fifth lesson, I noticed that I was driving with one hand and leaning back in my seat. Good sign. I was also making comments like "I own Talpiot. This is my Talpiot" (Talpiot being the neighborhood in which the tests are conducted, and also the neighborhood with the worst traffic in the city.) So, I was ready, and I took the test yesterday.

During the test, I was so relaxed, it was like I'd taken a drug. Everyone should be that relaxed when they take a driving test! I own Talpiot!

By the way, here's a little interesting trivia about driving tests in Talpiot. As you may know, Talpiot is right next to what used to be the Jordanian border, but is now the "Green Line" between East and West Jerusalem. So, until 1967, there was not much goin' on in Talpiot. It was pretty empty, being that close to the border and all. So the Driving License Authority, or however you'd translate "Misrad HaRishui," put their HQ there so that the student drivers would be out of everyone else's way. People could take lessons and do their tests on relatively empty roads.

But after 1967, the neighborhood got built up. It is now an incredibly busy industrial area with lots of malls, shopping centers, offices, restaurants, etc etc. The traffic is awful. I'd put it in the same category as driving in mid-town Manhattan, no kidding. And God forbid that the Misrad Harishui should move.

So, basically, there's now an "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere" attitude toward getting one's driver's license in Jerusalem. The lessons are nerve-wracking and the test is harder to pass, but having a J-lem license is a badge of driving honor. We are the Golani brigade of drivers. We are the creme de la creme. We own Talpiot and therefore we own Israel. We are the New Yorkers of the Israeli driving scene.

Look out highway 6! Here comes Chayyei Sarah!