The In-Flight Commentary

I wrote this in two spurts while in-flight on my way from JFK in New York City to Ben Gurion in Israel. Enjoy!

As I walked down the ramp after reluctantly giving up my carry on, I said to no one in particular, with a huge grin,

"It's happening."

Dinner was outstandingly delicious. Consider ordering gluten free the next time you fly El Al. Fish with steamed zucchini and snow peas, hummus with rice cakes (a substitution I never considered), a salad with Italian dressing, and a delicious chocolate mousse. I was pleasantly surprised. Or maybe it was that I hadn't eaten all day ... Again.

It's just after 7 a.m. in Israel, which means the trip is more than half over. In 4.5 hours we land. That's like a trip to LA from NY. Someone on the plane is sick enough to necessitate the "Is there a doctor on board" call. Of course, there were several.

I'm currently watching some ooey gooey Discovery Channel-style thing. It made for brain-stimulating background noise as I completed a crossword puzzle. I spent a good ten minutes puzzled (bada ching!) on the last clue: feature for a garage door. S_ _s_r. Duh Chaviva!

I've watched two movies so far: Rock of Ages and some movie with a star-studded cast that took place in Rome. Rock of Ages was good, and not annoying at all. I was bummed by Alec Baldwin's role, however. And Tom Cruise just ... He just. The other movie had Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Allen, the girl from Juno, Alec Baldwin (seriously El Al, what's up with that?), Roberto Benini, and Penelope Cruz. It was quality, but it left me sort of wondering ... And? [Note: The movie is To Rome With Love.]

The flight has been going smoothly for me. More smoothly than usual. That is, aside from the kicking child behind me and the petite mother in front of me who has her seat all the way back and keeps pushing on it like there isn't anyone behind her. Sometimes I wonder why people pose all respect for human beings the moment they enter a plane (or any mode of transit, that is).

There are only 67 olim on this flight, which bums me out, but it's no charter flight. Now? I'll watch an episode of Alcatraz I've already seen. It's good Hebrew practice.

Just remembered to write about the international crisis averted when the security guy at baggage drop pulled Bananagrams from my suitcase.

"What is this?" he asked.

"A game," I said. 

"Did anyone give it to you?" he asked. 

"No ... It's mine," I said. 

The girl whose luggage was in after me? She also had Bananagrams and nothing happened. What's up with that?

It's now 9:23 in Israel. We're two hours out. What? Is this happening?!

I haven't gotten up nice to move around. I think my legs are not gong to be able to carry me when the time comes. That's the downfall of the window seat, of course. [Note: I did get up to move around about an hour before landing. It felt so good!]

And ... breakfast.

Spoiler Alert: Harry Potter, a Modern Holocaust Narrative?

Tell me this doesn't look like partisans running for dear life circa World War II ... 

So, there I was, sitting in the movie theater, at the 8:10 showing of Harry Pottery and the Deathly Hallows, minding my own business, and there's this woman, sitting a few rows up and over, telling some extravagant story, with her hands motioning wildly in the air. People are shushing here, telling her to be quiet, and there she goes, hands a'go in the air. So, being the mature adult that I am, I threw some ice at her. This stopped her talking, of course, and the rest of my time in the theater was excellent. I'd intended on writing a blog post on the premise that I like my movie theaters like I like my synagogues (quiet, quiet, quiet), but as the movie progressed, I realized there was something more interesting and pressing to write about.

The Holocaust.

I wrote in the title that this is a spoiler alert. I'm only saying that because I'm going to offer some details of the movie that might give things away. But I can't not write this blog post. It will eat away at me until you all go see the movie (or not), and maybe this will prompt some of you to head to your nearest theater. So let's begin.

I haven't read the Harry Potter books, but I've seen all of the movies. Up until this edition of the series, I hadn't really caught on to the overarching and ever-present looming Holocaust narrative. But this part of the series was ripe with Holocaust imagery, from propaganda to arm tattoos and more. The Deathly Hallows begins with a violent regime change, putting those of pure-blood wizard/witch status in full power. Muggles, that is to say, normal folk without any powers, are viewed as vermin, the lowest level of life form, and propaganda is dispersed about how to spot a muggle and what makes them vile. They must be registered, and ultimately are hunted down like animals. Harry Potter and his two BFFs make their way to the woods, where they hide out for much of the movie, running from Snatchers (people who seek out muggles and half-bloods) and trying to figure out how to save themselves and the world. There is a scene toward the beginning of the film where a woman is on trial, accused of not being a witch, and the woman -- I kid you not -- is styled perfectly with the 1940s, from her house dress to her pin-curl hair. Toward the end of the film, during a particularly heart-wrenching scene, Hermoine -- a half-blood -- is tattooed on her left arm with "Mudblood" by one of the major supporters of the violent regime change.

Wow. I know, right? It goes on and on and on. Here's a list of some things that I spotted that pretty much map out how this fits with the Holocaust narrative.

• Muggles = Jews
• Witches/Wizards = Nazis
• Harry Potter + His Band of Noble Witch Friends = Righteous Gentiles, who fight partisan style from the woods
• Hermoine = a half-Jew who has escaped to fight with the partisans
• Voldimore = Hitler
• And, I'm guessing, Dumbledor will come back Churchill style and save the day. 

I am still marveling at how this turned into a Holocaust narrative. And all of these examples are but mere, well, examples. There was a whole lot more. Harry Potter and Friends disguising themselves to pass as part of the regime, for one. Anyhow, the Holocaust narrative is strong with this flick. The righteous fighting for the safety of those not like themselves, while also trying to save the righteous who are fighting the just cause. And the arm tattoo!? Seriously!? And this was only Part 1 of the two-part final installment of the Harry Potter franchise. Personally, I'm razzle-dazzled to see how it's going to end. 

Did any of you see the movie yet? Did you pick up on this? Did it blow your mind like it did mine? 

Web Site Story!

When I was in High School, I got to play Maria in West Side Story for two of the four performances. I felt *super* important. If this were a real musical, I'd so be Maria ... and I'd meet Tony online on JDate. it'd be AWESOME. Instead of Sharks and Jets, it'd be Orthodox and Modern Orthodox or something silly like that ... (hat tip to Elisha for sending me this!)

The Social Network

I got started in social media through a simple website called LiveJournal.com. From there, I joined a bajillion other websites, made friends, connections, and have networked myself in ways unfathomable to most people I know. I counsel converts-in-process and the curious. I dream of a book deal. And I ask myself, why is Mark Zuckerberg a bajillionaire when he got started the same way as me (and a ton of other people): by journaling on LiveJournal.

A girl can dream, right?

Anyhow, I was curious, after seeing "The Social Network" tonight, to dig up the date that I joined Facebook, a social network that I could let go without any care in the world (while holding firmly on to Blogging and Twitter). After some careful digging around a private forum I've been a member of since who knows when, I discovered the date: December 3, 2004. The moment I joined, of course, I tried to loop all of my newspaper buddies in on the social network. They did, and so did millions of other people. I was part of the trend early on. It's something I wear as a little badge of pride, probably misplaced. Social media, as you know, is the song in my step.

The movie? It was outstanding. I'm convinced that Sean Parker (founder of Napster and un-asked-for mentor to Mark Zuckerberg) is a, pardon me, complete you know what, and Zuckerberg is an awkward genius with a misplaced sense of who he was meant to be. But mad props to him: No matter who you are, you breathe, and Facebook knows it. For better or for worse, it's the here and now. It's no longer the future. Just like Twitter. It's the now and the someday. That is, of course, until the next best thing comes along.

So here's how I heralded the coming of TheFacebook.com, on December 3, 2004:

All right folks. This is a new, obsessive thing. It could be more addictive than friendster AND myspace. It's all for university students -- to register you have to have a unl.edu or unlnotes.unl.edu or bigred or something e-mail address. It's networking, but among university students. You can pretty much see everyone at UNL, create communites, do all sorts of crazy ****.

So if you go to UNL, have an account, create a ******* facebook man. Seriously. John and I are recruiting people for the "daily nebraskan" community.

WE NEED BODIES!

http://www.thefacebook.com

I suppose you could say I had a feeling about where Facebook was going ...

Anyway, I hope you all had an outstanding chag and are prepared to get back to the grind. I know I'm not. Too much homework and not enough time. There's a lot of Hebrew translation, movie watching, paper writing, and sleeping to be done.

Life As We Know It ...

We here at Just Call Me Chaviva ... er ... that's just me, I mean ... love Oh! Nuts, the awesome purveyors of nuts, sweets, and other goodies that are, happily I add, kosher! There are a variety of stores (the husband and I have frequented the Monsey locale), and their online ordering is super fast. The husband loves the Sweet and Salty Nuts and I'm a huge fan of anything chocolate covered (the lentils? oh yeah), not to mention the dried fruit goodies.

So what's this all about? Oh! Nuts is partnering with Warner Bros. Entertainment to promote the upcoming movie Life As We Know It, and as such, Oh! Nuts is hosting an online sweepstakes for the chance to win a family trip for four to Hollywood, CA! Yes, you want to win (I know I do, who would be my other two?), so head over to the website and enter!

Never heard about the flick? Here's a quick rundown:

In the romantic comedy “Life As We Know It,” Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) is an up-and-coming caterer and Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) is a promising network sports director. After a disastrous first date, the only thing they have in common is their dislike for each other and their love for their goddaughter, Sophie. But when they suddenly become all Sophie has in the world, Holly and Messer are forced to put their differences aside. Juggling career ambitions and competing social calendars, they’ll have to find some common ground while living under one roof.

Dream a Little Dream ...

Tuvia and I just got home from our motzei Shabbos movie date, in which we saw Inception, that movie with confusing commercials and an even more perplexing premise. And? Well, let's just say it's probably the best movie I've seen in a while, and I highly recommend you all go see it. At 2 hours and 28 minutes, I felt as if I'd been sitting in the crowded theater for a mere hour. I suppose that's part of the trickery related to the movie's theme.

The concept of the movie is that you can "break into" other people's dreams to extract ideas, with the impossibility (or is it?) of inception -- of placing an idea in the dream that will then consume the dreamer's conscious thoughts. There's someone who creates landscapes in dreams, another who masterminds the syrupy goo that keeps you asleep and able to accomplish your dream feat for extended period of time, and so on. It's a dreamscape of pretty much illegal proportions.

So why am I even blogging about this? Well, dreams are something near and dear to my heart, because I dream just about every night, vividly, with the ability (most of the time) to recall the depth and details of my dreams. People, faces, colors, scenescapes, the weather, the conversations, everything. I've also -- and this is the most awesome thing -- mastered the ability to throw myself back into a dream after waking up from it. Sounds nuts, right? Sometimes I wake up from an exceedingly vivid dream, and either unhappy with the point at which it ended or frustrated with how it was going or wanting more details, I push myself back into slumber for the express purpose of satisfying what I want out of the dream. Really radical, eh? I mean, I'm the kind of person who can barely fall asleep on any given night, and yet, when it comes to my dreams, I can push myself back into them to try to change outcomes. For what purpose? No clue. My subconscious and I are probably a psychologist's dream.

The best example of this that I can offer is a dream I had a few months ago in which I somehow ended up in an electrical storm outside of a large university building. I can't remember all the details, but it was a dream in which I walked into the building and accidentally caused a powerchord to hit some water and lit the building up. In the first version of the dream I ran throughout the halls, trying to get people out, but dozens died and the building fell before my eyes. (I'm so irritated; I thought I wrote this dream in my dream journal, but it appears that I did not.) I awoke from the dream, frustrated, angry at myself for something that happened in not-real space. I put myself back down and dreary-eyed attempted to fix the dream. The entire thing played out exactly as before, but I got more people out and was able to call for help. I proceeded to play through this dream about four more times, still unable to help everyone out. I changed the way I went through the building, I altered aspects of the floor plan, I did everything in an effort to re-scape the dream in order to be successful. And yet, still, my subconscious was set on defeating me.

Dreams are ... bizarre. For me, dreams are wicked places that, while supposedly revealing plenty about my innermost thoughts, really just baffles me. Over the past week I had three nights in a row with dreams of being hunted, through city streets, including one city street that featured Kate Gosselin and her sextuplets (she was deeply upset with me for attempting to talk them away from the road while she was busy yelling at someone on the phone). I need to keep a better log of my dreams than I do. I often sit Tuvia down and relate them to him, but he just stares at me blankly like a nutjob. People used to think I was fabricating or elaborating on a kernel of a dream memory. In reality, my dreams are exhausting. I wake up feeling as if I've been running a marathon all night (and in the case of the "being chased" dreams, I really was running -- for my life), and thus I end up feeling as though I haven't slept at all. My mouth guard has become my best friend, with teeth marks poking small holes into its base. Soon enough, I'll chew through the darn thing from dream anxiety.

This stuff is real, folks. And Inception was like this picture of my dreamscape. Weird. Surreal. Creepy. So what I leave you with is a recent dream of mine, from about a week ago, that left Evan staring blankly at me, as usual. Enjoy!

The dream began with Tuvia waking me up for lunch (we're in the Poconos, so the dream took place in our Poconos house, but the house looked a lot nicer and larger than our place actually is). The skies were dark and stormy, and as he was pulling me out of bed this huge torrent of rain came and it started seeping through the ceiling. It was like there was no roof, like the rain was seamlessly slipping through the wooden planks. I started freaking out and told Evan to turn on the lights, and he said, "But it's Shabbat!" and I responded, "I don't care! We need to pack and get the hell out of here!" So he turned on the lights and just then a man came walking up the stairs with an umbrella. "I thought y'all couldn't turn the lights on on Shabbat," he said. We asked him why he was even there and he said he saw our car in the driveway and thought he'd pay a visit. No clue who this guy was, by the way, but I think it might have been the neighbor who I've seen only through his minivan window. We explained the rain, the house falling to pieces, and needing to leave, so he pulled this little ball out of his pocket, pressed a switch, and it lit up. He threw it into the fireplace (which was in a different spot than our actual fireplace) and, with a flash, the rain in the house stopped. He left, and we began to assess the situation. The house suddenly morphed into this big house/community center thing, and all of our friends from West Hartford were there (and some of mine from the shul in Nebraska, too) and the skies were looking seriously doomful. Women and kids started to scream and sirens started going off ... so I ran for the lower level, I crouched in a corner, only to realize that the entire room -- of the basement, which was done up like a kindergarten or preschool classroom -- was full of windows, and this big, looming tornado was coming at us. I got up, squished this little kids hand as I stepped on it (oops), and ran for the only room in the place without any windows, a big cement block of a room. As I got there, an old woman grabbed my hand with a grip I can't describe. I tried to push her off, and I think I broke her arm in the process. I finally got to the corner of the room and then ... POOF. There was a flash and I looked up and I was sitting on a cement floor, the walls mostly decimated, in a field of pumpkins. Alone.

Movies Are Us: "Live and Become"

Monday night, a bunch of second and third year Hebrew students gathered in a dank room of a campus building to watch our scheduled Hebrew-language film, T'chiyeh v't'hiyeh (תחיה ותהיה). My transliteration is probably horrible, but it's the best I can do for now. Here is the film's synopsis, according to Wikipedia:

Live and Become or Va, Vis et Deviens is a 2005 film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguises himself as an Ethiopian Jew in order to escape famine and emigrates to Israel.

The film, which has won a ton of awards, is incredibly emotionally. The young boy in the film is sent off by his Christian mother from a refugee camp with a Jewish woman. The boy gets to Israel and is told what his new name will be and who is parents and grandparents were. He's angry, torn, and inevitably is adopted by a secular Jewish-Israeli family. Throughout his life, he wants/needs to tell others that he isn't truly Jewish, but it never comes up and/or he can't tell anyone. He says, "I'm not Jewish, but I feel Jewish." I won't ruin the movie for you, but there's a wedding, a reunion, and more. The movie is completely emotional with ups and downs, a child torn between his Christian past and mother still in Sudan and his Jewish life with his new Jewish family in Israel.

The movie is fashioned around the struggle of the Ethiopian immigrant to Israel and the struggle of being an oleh from a completely different world with a completely different way of life. The story is compounded by the fact that the child isn't Jewish by birth and only he knows this truth. He becomes good friends with a rabbi that also emigrated from Ethiopia, and this rabbi tries to guide the child on the right path. His family life is tenuous, as his family is French-Israeli and his father has a specific outlook on life. But his grandfather and his mother always are there to lend an ear and provide a positive impression on things to come.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the movie -- especially coming from a convert like myself -- is that the boy, despite "feeling Jewish," never goes through the process of a brit milah, even knowing of his future simchas and knowing that he is living a fully Jewish/Israeli life. It raises a lot of really important questions as a Jew or as a potential convert to Judaism.

Is it enough to simply feel Jewish?

This goes into a much greater debate that I don't necessarily want to have here: What should conversion to Judaism comprise? Should it be enough to feel Jewish and state your dedication to Judaism? Some religions require very little, such as a simple statement about the Gd and major prophet of that religion. No learning before the fact, nothing beyond a declaration. Words, after all, are powerful. Was it enough for the boy in the movie to FEEL Jewish? Or did he really need to commit to the brit milah ceremony?

That also makes me wonder whether the movie's point was that it is enough to feel Jewish. I can't decide. Has anyone else seen this movie? What was your perception? Was the boy wrong to go through life not committing to the covenant through the means of the community standard?

Anyway, what an interesting movie. What a thought-provoking movie, at that. I highly recommend it, and I would love to hear what you all think about it, too. As well as the questions posed here.

Tickling Leo!

I wrote a while back about a new movie coming out -- Tickling Leo. The film won the 2009 Jury Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Stony Brook Film Festival!From the makers of the film:

Set around the days of Yom Kippur, Tickling Leo is a contemporary drama that follows three generations of one Jewish family whose secrets threaten to wipe away its future.  When he loses touch with his estranged father, Zak Pikler (Daniel Sauli) and his pregnant girlfriend Delphina (Annie Parisse) travel to an abandoned Catskills lake where the eccentric poet Warren Yitzchak Pikler (Lawrence Pressman) is living in solitude and declining health. As Zak copes with his father's dementia, Delphina inadvertently uncovers a secret the Piklers have been hiding since World War II: an impossible sacrifice they made in order to join Rudolph Kasztner’s controversial train out of Hungary.

I'm happy to announce that the film will be opening in New York on September 4, 2009, and locations can be found on their website. So if you're in the area, you should most definitely make plans to be THERE (after Shabbat, of course). If you can't make it out, the DVD will also be going on sale around the same time with plenty of extra and fascinating features, so head to Amazon.com. Did I mention Mary Stuart Masterson (of "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Benny and Joon") is one of the producers? Expect quality folks! Once again, the trailer:

An Entertainment Interlude!

I've spent the past few weeks burning and burning Hebrew and Judaica music borrowed from some incredibly awesome friends. I got a few more CDs last night from our host family, including a couple that are child-oriented but useful none-the-less. We use lots of these types of CDs and videos in my Hebrew class during the year -- sometimes "Geshem, Geshm MiShamayim" is where one should start to really grasp the beauty and ease of Hebrew. I've got Ugandan Hebrew music, Idan Raichel, The Chevra, Erez Lev Ari, you name it, I've got it.

What's it for? For Middlebury, of course! If I'm going to be speaking, writing, and living Hebrew, I need to be listening to it, as well. Did I mention that our only TV access is Israeli television? Score!

So before I leave for Middlebury, I wanted to share a couple of things that came through my email of the entertainment variety since I'm scooting off and want a spic-and-span clean email box.

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I was contacted about a Jewish film called "Tickling Leo" that will be (hopefully) opening on the East Coast in August/September and G-d willing, subsequently spreading above and beyond with success. A ditty on the film:

A family drama set in the Catskills on Yom Kippur, the story explores how a family is affected by the choice one man made to survive the Holocaust in Hungary. It stars the wonderful Eli Wallach, Lawrence Pressman, Annie Parisse, Ronald Guttman, Daniel Sauli and Tony Award Winner Victoria Clark. It was produced by Mary Stuart Masterson and Barn Door Pictures.

and some more details ...

On March 4, 1957, Rudolph Kasztner, former head of the Jewish Rescue Committee in Hungary, was assassinated on the streets of Tel Aviv for the choices he made while negotiating the rescue of 1600 Jews aboard his controversial "Kasztner Train."  Fifty years later in the Catskills, one of the survivors of that train struggles to face his own family's choices in relation to this historical event.

I was intrigued when I was contacted about the film, and I have a lot of reading I've been meaning to do about Rudolph Kasztner and the true incident of his life and death. The trailer will pique your interest, without a doubt, so be sure to give it a look here.

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Since I've been all up and down with the Israeli and Hebrew music as of late, how perfect that I was contacted about an Indie Israeli record label, Oleh! Records. In particular, Onili was mentioned, and although I don't know if her music is right up my alley, it most definitely makes me want to crawl onto a lounge chair by the pool and drink something tropical. It appears she's big in Tel Aviv and has connected with Israel's biggest underground stars, so maybe you've heard of her? If not, give her website a gander.

Truly Unique, Defiance

Last Saturday, after some tenuous debate, Tuvia and I went to see "Defiance ," the much lauded true story staring Daniel Craig, Liev Schrieber and others. For those who don't know, the film is about a group of brothers -- of which I originally thought there were three, but as it turned out there were four -- who build a band of Jewish survivors/partisans in the forests of Eastern Europe (then-Poland, now western Belarus). The brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, Asael, and Aron -- help shelter hundreds in the forests starting in 1941, and at the war's end, there were 1,200 people who had been sheltered in the Naliboki forest.

The movie itself was surprising, compared to many Holocaust period films. I was shocked, and almost dismayed to see some of the violence committed by Jews on non-Jews and Nazis. Now, I want to explain myself so that people don't think I'm being sympathetic toward Nazis. I don't want to give anything away in the film, but there is a lot of vengeance killing, and although we later see that there is reversal where the brothers seek to save Jews, not kill non-Jews, it was incredibly difficult to watch. Many Holocaust movies portray Jews as timid, wanting to fight back but unwilling. This movie is quite the contrary, and this seeming anomaly is portrayed in conversations between Zus and a Russian military officer with whom he comes to work. It was an interesting aspect of the film that made it, well, all the more real.

What's more -- beyond the amazing musical score and cinematics and acting -- the movie became even more real when Tuvia and I learned that he knows members of the Bielski family. In fact, the grandchildren of one of the brothers even went to Tuvia's school! It is truly a small world when it comes to the Jewish community, but the reality of the film was magnified at that point.

This movie is perhaps most unique because we don't see Jews in a ghetto or in a camp -- we see them building homes in the forest, starving in the winter, fighting for their lives, traveling helplessly through bogs and marshes, creating relationships while knowing full well that their former families have died, and more. It's a unique perspective on Jews during the Shoah, and one that I have yet to see portrayed outside of this film.

I applaud the filmmakers, the actors (especially Liev Schrieber, who seems to make his way into every Shoah film on the planet), and those who take the time to view the movie. It's a beautiful story, just beautiful, and inspiring in ways that nothing else can compare.

The Google Bot likes Kvetchingeditor.com.

As much as I really want to write about the Hallmark trainwreck that was "Loving Leah," I can't bring myself to waste the space on it. Lots of other bloggers have written about it, and Twitter was afloat Sunday night with lots of commentary. Let's just say that the message was not that being frum is cool and hip and the way to go, but rather that when your husband dies and by old-school Jewish law you marry his brother, you're best to shed your old ways and go the way of the cool kids.

At any rate, the real reason I'm posting is because I was checking out my Sitemeter.com stats and found this really amusing. I mean, it may not be amusing to Joe Reader, but I've never noticed the Google Bot scoping out my site before. I'm guessing this is for caching purposes or something. If you know what the Google Bot wants with my site, please let me know.

Getting Ready to SHAKE it!

What an interesting weekend I had down in the Poconos with Evan. We saw a bear by the side of the road in the community, not to mention wild turkeys wandering around someone's driveway. We stopped at a most magnificent waterfall (which you see pictured here and which you can see more of over on my Flickr ), and we spent most of one day this weekend at a flea market/craft fair/harvest festival where I procured some delicious jams/spreads from some nice Quaker girls (who had a yummy-looking loaf of challah that I resisted buying).

The weekend was all around beautiful and relaxing, and the services at the shul in the community were, well, interesting. I got nothing spiritually from them, but they were amusing in that the chazzan was funny and had some interesting things to say (he even brought up "Mallrats," which no one seemed to know about except the chazzan, Evan and I). But there was probably a 40-50 year age gap between us and the rest of the people there, though there was a mighty showing, it being an older community. They used the old -- we're talking the ORIGINAL -- Reform siddur, which made me want to cry, but the building was beautiful and the company was nice and the chazzan was plenty friendly. We will probably go back, I just have to figure out a way to do my prayers on my own. I think it's time to suck it up and buy myself that transliterated Artscroll so I can daven solo-style.

At any rate, the sukkah is up in the grad courtyard and we did some l'chaims earlier to celebrate it's construction. It's incredibly tall and was purchased from PopUpSukkah.com, but it'll get the job done for what we need. I spent the afternoon mulling about with the Chabad rabbi's youngest boy (age 2-ish) who ... wow ... I want 10 just like him. I can't understand a word he said, but we were looking at water in a drain pipe and watching planes dart across the sky leaving smokey skies behind. I got him to start saying "bye bye! bye bye!" while waving frantically and it was seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen. So tomorrow evening begins Sukkot -- also known as Sukkos or the Feast of Tabernacles/Booths -- and I'll be spending my time probably at the Chabad rabbi's place for dinner and services on Tuesday morning since I'm not sure what Hillel is doing and I can't seem to get enough of the wee one (and the older one calls me Chava and Ahava, which amuses me but I'm down with it cuz he's cool).

So with Sukkot approaching, I implore everyone to quickly get a copy of Ushpizin (one of my most FAVORITE MOVIES) and watch it with joy. It is THE Sukkot movie, and if you haven't seen it, you're really missing out.

This will be my first "observant" Sukkot ... and I'm stoked. I'm ready to get my shake on -- are you? The only thing is, I've never done the shakin' before and I don't know the rules and regulations ... good thing I found this video! (Not!)







Moadim l'simcha!

More Beloved by G-d.

Color me stoked! Thanks to Aliza (of ye olde Jewminicana blog), a new documentary has been brought to my attention, and it's called More Beloved by G-d. You can view the trailer for it by clicking here. (I'd embed, but unfortunately that feature is disabled on YouTube, so click the link!) It's directed by Laura Wiessen, and the little blurb on YouTube says:  

"More Beloved by Gd is a documentary exploration of converts, conversion to Judaism and what the newest Jews bring to the Jewish people. Through this lens, the film will examine the very human need for spirituality." 

Those featured in the trailer are of varied backgrounds -- an Italian Catholic, an Africa-American (Yitz!), a mother of a young child, a woman named Rain, etc. It most definitely looks like a varied group of individuals with a lot to say about their experiences, and I'm pretty excited to see how the film turns out. Though, I can't seem to find anything about WHEN the movie is coming out. I guess I'll just have to wait with breath bated!

The potpourri: Movies, Books, and Electrocuted Family.

So many things to say, so little space to make it all relevant and/or connected to every other thing that needs to be said.
Firstly, the Sex and the City movie. I guess I won't say as much as I was planning to, simply because it just isn't worth the space. But beware, reading this might ruin the movie-going experience. Wait. On second thought, this stream of consciousness has made me think that maybe I should post my thoughts at the end of the blog so if someone wants to read all the other junk, they're not tainted by my spoiler. Moving on ...

Secondly, I got a bunch of documents in the mail today from the St. Louis Dispatch archives. It amazes me that I can get a couple or three or four documents from one location for a whopping $6, whereas getting marriage licenses from various counties in Illinois is going to cost me upwards of $50. How does that happen? Mom has suggested it isn't worth it, but I'd rather collect the docs now and not have some relative trying to track them down in the future. Better to do the leg work and get it done than wait, eh?

So I received the obituary of my great-grandma's brother, Edward Weilbacher, who had died of electrocution in 1922. It sort of threw me because here's this 19-year-old kid dying of electricity in the early 20s. I was assuming perhaps it was some sort of fratboy incident gone wrong, but as it turns out, he died after being electrocuted while using an electric floor scrubber. The sort of mysterious part, though, is that supposedly it killed him because of a weak heart. His football couch marveled at such a thought (which is why there was an inquest) -- this was a healthy, athletic kid. How could he have had a weak heart? The story in the Dispatch is pretty long for some kid getting electrocuted, and as it turns out, the reason it was such big doings was because he had been the star quarterback and team captain of his high school football team. He was also in a fraternity, so chances are the listing of "scholar" on his death certificate means he was attending university. Where? The obit doesn't say. The obit does list his brothers and sisters, including one brother I was unaware of who isn't buried at the family plot. The mystery woman buried there could, however, be this other brother's wife I guess. Either way, how nifty that he died in such a tragic way. I mean, it isn't nifty ... but finding out these quirks in the tree is fascinating. The funny thing about it, though, is that after he was juiced, they hosed him down and put him back to work. Had they taken him immediately to the hospital, he probably would have survived.

Thirdly, I finished one book and got about 1/3 of the way through another book during flights and airport time this weekend. I finished reading Marc D. Angel's book on Orthodox conversion and then started reading Chaim Potok's "The Promise." The later is an incredibly quick read, and the former was as well. The thing about the former is that it wasn't what I expected in a conversion book. Most of the books I've read are very much about the ins and outs of the process itself and what people do or do not believe. Rabbi Angel's book detailed the history of conversion, the rabbinical rulings and responsa, historical fluxes in the acceptance and avoidance of converts, etc. He talked about the different types of converts and why they choose the path they do, and he included various essays from converts of varying backgrounds and what led them to the Orthodox route. (In more cases than not, the converts started on the Reform route because it was easy and/or accessible, only to find themselves reconverting later or finding a difficulty associated with their original route that led them to the Orthodox beth din.) I'm sort of zipping through books, which is a good thing, considering I have so very many of them to read, and the moment I get to graduate school, my reading style and habits will change greatly.

Fourthly, we come back to the firstly. The Sex and the City movie. I have to say my company was outstanding, and the way all the women in the audience were dressed gave us endless conversation. The estrogen abounded, and my movie companion was definitely outnumbered. But cripes. I found myself so upset at the end of the flick, in dismay, frustrated. Maybe I'm just worn out with the Happily Ever After movies. The scenario that everyone gets what they want, or rather, what we -- the audience -- want for the fictitious characters. Yes, it's a movie. We go to them to be entertained, to escape the sad and lonely existence of life. To watch characters fall in love and live happily ever after. Or, in the case of SATC, we see characters who don't necessarily fall out of love, but fall back in love with themselves. Not everyone in the movie ends up in love and with a spouse and the kids and the car and the house and the dream. But for Samantha, the dream WAS being alone -- being a sexy vixen who can have sex with anything and everything that moves without consequence. It's essentially who she is. So she, too, lives happily ever after. I guess I yearn for surprise. I yearned for Carrie to not end up with Big. For her to somehow realize that all the tumult, the shit, the mess, the breakups and get-back-togethers over 10 years were a sign that it wasn't all meant to be. Nothing's perfect, but anything that is so broken for so long must be like Humpty Dumpty, right? Maybe I just wanted validation. To know that ending my nearly three year on-again/off-again with the supposed man of my dreams was the right choice. Because for the length of that relationship it had been this Carrie/Big comparison, though I knew that there was no comparison. For starters, I wasn't in my 30s. I wasn't a cosmo-drinking sex column writer. I wasn't Carrie and he most certainly wasn't big. The comparisons continued though, as I dated a Russian and other exotics in between the on-agains. It was ridiculous how my friends and I made the connections. Maybe that's why the movie's end irritated the hell out of me. I wanted them to break as my little fantasy had broken six months ago. But it didn't, and life goes on. We want the happily ever after, because it rekindles that hope that maybe we can have what we want. That we should really fight for it. If it can happen in the movies, then ... right?

A girl can dream, anyway. Maybe I had the Mr. Big character in my life all wrong.