Quiet to Captivating

The things that I don't write about on this blog could fill the largest spaces of the grandest libraries of the world. When I started blogging, eons ago back in the days of LiveJournal, I managed a very public, honest, and forthcoming image for myself. When I started this specific blog in March 2006, I decided that I would continue my public face in order to build a narrative on my journey to and through Judaism.

Did I anticipate it would garner as much readership as it has now? No. Way. Jose. I'm blown away every day by the hits, the emails, the comments: You guys have made it all worthwhile. But the things I really want or even need to write about -- this blog is my therapy, a voice for the voiceless neshama -- I can't. Why? Because I'm a public blogger. Anonymity, in my point of view, is more harmful than helpful and despite not being able to write about some things that would be worked out through the therapy of word-sharing, I still couldn't imagine doing this any differently. (Remember that rant against anonymous bloggers I wrote?)

Okay, back up, is that really true? Back on March 11, 2006, I wrote,

This is top secret. 

And just in case google does take over the world. I want to be prepared for the changeover when all other blog hosts go defunk. I respect you, LiveJournal, and you've had my love for the past 6 or 7 years, but there comes a time, you know. A time when google waves it's hand over the land and everything disappears.

Ridiculous, I know. So I'm only remembering it the way I want to remember. Or am I? On March 26, 2006, I wrote,

OK. So I lied. I'm moving over. I've decided to be more anonymous. More liberal. But more anonymous. LiveJournal, I love you so, but quite frankly, maybe the fact that I've been around there since the late 1990s has made me ... not grow. I want to write more meaningful things. I want to post about Judaism and what I'm learning and my mundane activities should be no part of that. I need to grow and mature in my writing and my faith. 

So I'll start over. I'm tired of trying to find mantras and phrases that should define how we should be and how we aren't. I can't put words to anything but my emotions. You can't put words to the future, only to the past. So there's no point in trying to express what future I could find, when I should just be writing and creating a chronology for the past. 

Well, and that's where we begin.

Oops. Wrong again. I wanted to be anonymous? I don't remember it that way. In fact, I remember feeling like this blog was a new beginning, a liberation, a place where I could really be the big, bad Jewish me that I was -- something that didn't fit in fluidly with my LiveJournal persona of angst and anger and, well, language. Lots of language. I was a sailor once upon a time, evidently.

It's funny to me, going back and reading this. I was inspired to do so because a friend back in Nebraska (Thanks, Sarah!) sent me an article from the July 2010 College English journal, "A Virtual Veibershul: Blogging and the Blurring of Public and Private among Orthodox Jewish Women" by Andrea Lieber. 

The article is based on research from 2006-2008, a time period in which I was still a mere puddle in the Jewish Blogosphere, let alone an Orthodox Jewish Woman blogger. The author suggests that "blogging is better understood as a technology that enables an expansion of the private sphere for the Orthodox Jewish women who write them" (622), which I can partially agree with, but then she says things like "Blogs are usually, but not always, anonymous" (629), which I wholly disagree with. 

The article is interesting because it focuses on several anonymous, frum women bloggers who tell Lieber that their blog is their place "to vent," "to shout out to the entire world," or to utter a "primal scream" (629). One of the women goes so far as to describe herself as completely orthopraxic but living the life because that's just what you do. To be honest, her case studies are, in my opinion, an incredibly poor glimpse at the amazingly broad tapestry of Orthodox Jewish Women bloggers. She cites 50 OJW blogs discovered between November 2006 and March 2007. Really?

My question is: Did those of us out there who are Orthodox Jewish Women bloggers just hit the scene with force in the past three years? Most of the OJW bloggers I know wouldn't describe their blogs as some place for them to scream out in a way that they can't traditionally in the "traditional" community. 

I also don't feel like most of the OJW bloggers I know would agree that their "public writing does subvert certain aspects of traditional Jewish gender roles" (622). The women that Lieber interviewed were quick to point out that their blogging had no feminist ambitions, and I would agree with that point for most of the OJW bloggers I've encountered. Then again, I suppose one can argue what Orthodoxy and Feminism even mean together for the OJW blogger. If anything, I would urge Ms. Lieber to reexamine her data, search out the powerful OJW bloggers out there who serve as a PSA (public service announcement) for Orthodoxy and strong women, and reconsider some of her conclusions.

I may not have started this blog out with some grand plan that has led me to this point, but one thing was always certain, and that was that I wanted to "post about Judaism." I never wanted my posting to be forceful or even educational -- I just wanted to write, to put words down because for me it was therapeutic. Pen to paper, soul to words. That's how I view blogging. I'm not writing a guide to live by, and I'm not telling others how to be or do Judaism. I'm not liberating myself or other Orthodox Jewish Women by blogging. What am I doing?

I'm telling a story -- to what has turned into a beautiful, captivated audience. 

A Yiddishe Kupf -- A Jewish Head

In the eternal struggle, at the age of 27, to know who I am, who I was, how I got here, and -- I hope -- where I'm going, I've been digging through an old LiveJournal, old poems, things that smatter my hard drive from years gone by, things I'd probably attempted to forget for one reason or another.

This is something I wrote on April 25, 2006, as part of a final paper for my Jewish-American Fictions course, which was one of my favorite courses of my undergraduate career. It was, also, the last class I attended as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I wanted to create some poetry for the class, even though the course was on fiction, prose, not poetry. I am also trying to track down a sort of heart-wrenching poem I have about the Shoah and being a convert.

So, until then, here you are: A little piece of me, right around the time of my conversion to Judaism under Reform auspices.

Jewish-American fiction puts pen to paper, making an image of who 

we are and where we've been. It's Tova Mirvis making my heart bleed 

at the makings of a family figuring out when everything started changing 

and Jonathan Safran Foer making "small prayers to G-d" out of 

memory and religiosity. Jewish-American fiction places faces and makes 

a mosaic out of the grab bag of the things that mean "Jewish." Turning 

tradition into struggle, love and survival into the trappings of figuring out 

what modernity means to the tradition of remembering. Jewish-American 

fiction is a window to the outside world, as Jews and nonJews, and characters 

kept inside story forms make it possible to peek outside and see what we do to 

be Orthodox, Reform, lapsed, born again, a believer or dreamer, secular, 

sane, insane, in love and out of love, living, dying and surviving. 


But above all else, when we are bound to a book below lamplight,
 

it’s easiest to say that Jewish-American fiction is the definition of humanity.

I ended the paper with the following, If anything, [Bernard] Malamud is using Jews as the example: Humanity at its core is Jewish. It is survival, perseverance and remembering so as not to repeat. By saying “all men are Jews,” Malamud creates a most-powerful metaphor, and an example, for all religions, races and nations. He simply is saying “here is the beginning, here is who you are, don’t forget it."

In response to my final paper (which is much longer than these two excerpts), my professor gave me one of the greatest compliments I've probably ever received from someone, and this was just as I was converting the first time around! He said, "Jewishness, Jewish culture, is a matter of putting pen to paper – you’ve got that down, too. You have what my mother would have called a Yiddishe kupf – a Jewish head. You see the subtleties, the nuances in things. You see the humor that’s enveloped in tragedy, and the tears hidden inside the laughter." Here's one Jew who knew.

A sampling of some of the amazing things we read that semester, which I definitely need to revisit are:

• "Lady of the Lake" by Bernard Malamud
• Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegelman
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
• The Outside World by Tova Mirvis
• "Electricity" by ... I can't remember. This bums me out greatly.
• "When You're Excused, You're Excused" by Bruce Jay Friedman
• The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman
• The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

And, if you know what's good for you, you'll purchase Bad Jews and Other Stories by Gerald Shapiro. Would I lead you astray? 

A Reader's Haven

I'm in the midst of THREE books right now. Three nonfiction books, that is. I started one, then got my nook and started another and then I got a free review copy of another book, so obligated to get that going, i started that as well. So here's what I'm currently reading and how I'm feeling about each lovely novel.

• "All Other Nights" by Dara Horn -- I started reading this quite some time ago and had to actually re-start it when I began again recently. I'm about 60 pages in, and aside from the confusion in transition between chapters 1 and 2, it's been pretty outstanding. The story is set during Civil War times and has a nice Jewish boy (or maybe not so nice) skipping out on his future nuptials for some war service. He gets an uncomfortable gig doing some uncomfortable (read: anti-semitic) work, but runs with it. That's about as far as I am, and it's a beautifully woven novel that moves incredibly fast. I'm still perplexed as to where the storyline is going, but being an immense fan of Dara Horn's "The World to Come," I'm incredibly hopeful. Here's hoping I'm not disappointed!

• On my nook, I'm currently reading an amazing book called "The Invisible Bridge" by Julie Orringer. The problem is, I have a hard time putting it down, so it's on my bedside table, and I read it before going to bed each night, which actually has done wonders for helping to put me to sleep (can't say much for the staying asleep bit). It's a very fluid novel, save some of the parts that go into architectural mumbo jumbo that I just sort of breeze by. The focus of the novel is a Jewish gent from Budapest who heads to Paris for architectural school in pre-war times. He rallies around a group of Jewish fellows, falls for a mysterious woman with a scarred past, and eventually ends up back in Budapest (which is where I am now, and I still have a ton left to read, so I have no idea what's going to happen, so no worries about spoilers). The narrative and dialogue are brilliantly written, very period appropriate, and my only beef with the novel, as I said, is the random tangents on architectural stuff (also, sometimes the Jewishly peppered stuff seems forced). So, I know he's in architectural school and that the goings on at the Ecole d'Especial is very important, but the detail is a little obnoxious at times. I'm sort of mesmerized, however, with Orringer's attention to detail, and I'm really mystified as to where this novel is going, what with the war having started and me still having half the book left to read. The characters are so vivid, I feel like I'm walking the streets of Paris with them, eating at the same bars as them, and smelling the fresh bread they're purchasing. Pick this up, stat. 

• The final book I'm reading is a review copy I got from the nice folks at Other Press LLC called "The Debba," which is the first novel of Avner Mandelman. Now, I picked this up after my nap on Shabbos and got about 22 pages in (we had guests, so my reading was slow and sporadic). At first glance, I was sort of horrified as to where this book was going (the word goy appears a bajillion times on the first page), not to mention that it's about an ex-IDF soldier who gave up his Israeli citizenship ... but, well, so far I'm impressed. The writing is far beyond my expectations, and the emotion floating behind each of the characters is palpable. I'm hopeful, but skeptical. I'm just hoping this doesn't turn into the all-too-often Jew being critical of Israel mumbo jumbo. I am, however, excited that it's a murder-mystery, which is a genre of which I've never been a fan.

Gluckel of Hameln: The Original Blogging Jewess

Gluckel of Hameln, a late-17th century and early-18th century businesswoman and diarist in Germany, wrote her life's story down in a memoir, providing for historians and Jews the world over a glimpse at the everyday life and dealings of a simple woman going about her business. I read this book during my undergraduate career (circa April 2004; wow I'm old) and wrote a short paper on it, highlighting how focused this woman was on proper etiquette in business dealings, privacy in internal family affairs, living justly and rightly in order to obtain a place in the world to come, and other lessons on life. She wrote her memoires largely for her descendants, but what it provides us with today is an intimate look into what I'd like to call the Original Blogging Jewess.

Of course, she wasn't blogging, but reading what she has written is amusing from the perspective of a modern-day woman blogger. Here's this woman, with a bounty of children that she's worried about marrying off, talking about the people who run the synagogue, her business dealings, rabbis and how excellent they are, the internal strife of her family that must be kept private, and more. Obviously when Gluckel was writing her memoires, she never envisioned them being publicized to an audience as widely as they are today. You can hop over to Amazon and buy a copy and read the laundry list of names she provides her reader with. However, much like me, she only includes names when the topics to which they are connected are positive and praiseworthy.


It's extremely fascinating for me, especially being in an environment as a frum Orthodox woman blogger that has certain expectations and understandings of modesty and privacy, to watch Gluckel say something like the following, in regards to those battling over the spot of what essentially was synagogue president.

The community prospered during the presidency of my father ... I do recall, however, while I was yet a child, certain scoundrels rose against my father and his fellow officials, and sought to insure the community. ... Now that they are dead and stand in judgment before the Most High, I will not name them, but everyone in our community well knows who they were.

Now, if someone was blogging this today, they might suspect that no one in their community even reads their blog. The point, then, is without problem. But for those who do read the blog, they would know who she's talking about and might find it offensive or, on the other hand, amusing. Those reading the blog with no connection to the community would be completely uninformed and she's saved face by not naming them! I recall writing something like this on many occasions, such as when I wrote about a synagogue in Chicago (of the Reform slant) that was X, Y, Z. People in Chicago who had been to the shul were well aware of what shul it was. But was I crass enough to talk about the shul by name? No. I mean, come on. Privacy and respect folks!

I really think that if Gluckel were alive today, she'd be rocking a blog like myself and @hsabomilner. Talking about the tough issues of being a frum woman, talking about all the ridiculous situations we get ourselves into, raising kids and husbands (har har). She was a woman outside her age, I think.

At any rate, if you have a free moment, it's a really quick read and it will blow your mind how modern some of the situations are. There's even an incident in which the author's son, Joseph, sends his mother a letter requesting money (despite having been told by the rosh yeshiva that no money was required). At first read, it reminds me of those sneaky phishing schemes that started on phone and have advanced to emails (even Joseph Telushkin's account got hacked, and an email was sent out to the masses of his mailbox saying "help! I'm stuck in London without funds!").

Peace and good books!

"People of the Book"

I just finished (last night since I couldn't fall asleep) reading "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks, and I have to say it's a pretty outstanding work of historical fiction.

The first half of the book is truly captivating, and I found it hard to put down while I was reading it. The second half of the book seemed a little contrived at points, especially toward the very end when it turned into a cheesy "who dun it" kind of storyline. I am guessing that Brooks probably had a lot of really lengthy, detailed chapters to begin with and was forced to edit them down -- that is the only explanation for how quickly the end of the book moved and how short and brief the final narratives were.

I do have to say, however, that of all the historical fiction I've read since Anita Diamant's brilliant and one-of-a-kind book "The Red Tent," Brooks' "People of the Book" is the best. It far surpasses the Rashi's Daughters books which were, to be completely honest, disappointing, and many other books of a similar flare.

I highly recommend the book, which takes a embellished look at the Sarajevo Haggadah -- how it was created, where, by whom, how it traveled from point A to B to C, how it survived many horrible historic events, and perhaps most interestingly, it details the secret lives of historic, important books. The imagined lives of the characters in Brooks' book are so life-like, so real, and I found myself automatically felt compassion and a connection to these historic Christian, Muslim, and Jewish figures.

So go get the book if you haven't. If you have read it? Let me know what you think. Right now on my docket I have "The Book of Names," a mystery novel I believe; John Updike's newest "My Father's Tears and Other Stories;" as well as "The Bible Code" by Michael Drosnin. Not sure which I'll start on first ... but amen for finally having a public library card!

A Little Ditty.

I went to the library yesterday to get a bit of studying done and what did I end up doing? Checking out FOUR books. Only one of which was relevant to anything I am academically working on at the moment -- The Song of Songs by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, which is an interesting presentation of commentary on the text as well as other notes and interesting tidbits about the poem. The other three? Martin Buber's "Way of Man," Jordan Jay Hillman's "The Torah and Its G-d," and "The limits of Orthodox Theology" by Marc Shapiro. The latter is a reappraisal of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles, and it looked like an intriguing read. The Buber book is incredibly short and features the teachings of Hasidism, while the Hillman book appears to be a humanist inquiry into the five books of Moses. If anyone has read any of these and has some words/musings, please comment!

Will I read them all? Who knows. I'm still trying to wrestle through Sarna's "Exodus," while needing to develope a working bibliography for two different papers of which I have yet to pick topics (name changing -- Sarah/Abraham/Jacob; maybe the idea of repentance in scripture; maybe the idea of whether Rachel was stealing the idols to worship them? who knows). Stay tuned, of course. Oh man, I still haven't blogged about "The Search Committee" and it's a week later. Where did the week go?!

At any rate, until I come up with a clear plan of attack for my many books and develop a vlog about what to do when you're a million miles away from a rabbi or perhaps only have a rabbi in a movement with which you don't necessarily want to be affiliated ... be sure to check out this week's Haveil Havalim over on Shiloh Musings.

Books, books galore!

The little brother and I went to Myopic Books yesterday, as I attempted to show him one of the more "well known" neighborhoods in Chicago -- Wicker Park. He tracked down a copy of "Wicked," the story that's now the play, which he saw when he was in Chicago last May. I, on the other hand, hit the Judaica section (this is the place where I tried to sell some of my Judaica and they said "Sorry, they're just not selling well").

I left with a copy of Maimonides' "Mishneh Torah," the abridged edition, annotated with an introduction by Philip Birnbaum, published 1974 (from what I can tell). The true selling point (other than its usefulness) was a tidbit in the introduction that read,

"Anyone reading this book carefully will greatly help reduce our generation's painful ignorance of the contents of Judaism's traditional literature."

That, folks, is plenty a reason to pick up this book.

I also picked up a copy of "Living Judaism" by Rabbi Wayne Dosick, which means I can pull it off my Amazon Wish List. I kept seeing this book everywhere I went, but I couldn't bring myself to pick it up fresh. So here was a used copy, in perfect condition for $6.50. Hot dog! What a steal.

Of course, neither of these purchases helps with my overflowing book problem. Luckily, I returned many books to the library (mostly those that I'd checked out for reading-up for the class I attended while checking out schools last year). Right now I'm reading "Heat" by Bill Buford -- a non-Judaic book, but an amazing book that I can't seem to put down (it's for a bookclub, actually). I'm still into "Constantine's Sword," but I'm about ready to just give up on that and pick it up in another lifetime when I have the time to sit down with a 700-page giant. There are about five other books that are sort of sitting in the wings that, well, aren't super high on my list of priorities to indulge in. I am, however, going to start putting some books on hold at the library (the pocketbook thanks me), since I finally paid off my $1.50 fine (a late fee for CS, of course). Did I mention that the library is literally around the corner? Yah, I'm just slow.

Here's to books, read, unread, and piling up all over my studio apartment.

Clearing the air.

It was supposed to flurry here today, but it hasn't and it won't. I'm ready for snow, so I'm hoping Mother Nature will take the time to dust off those snow shoes and bring it on. Last night I went by Borders, despite my knowing that I have several books that I have yet to pick up that are gathering dust on my shelves at home, to browse. I was immediately caught by Bernice Eisenstein's "I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors," which happens to not only be a textual work, but also an illustrated work. It isn't quite on par with Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman in the abundance of artistry, but it's appropriate and almost whimsical in its form. So far it is a very quick read, and I'm finding it hard to put down. I also picked up "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages," because there just aren't enough Medieval scholars, by golly. That is, I'm trying to narrow my focus a little. Will that make me more marketable?

On a separate, albeit more pressing, note, I'd like to say a little more about my poorly planned out and perhaps not very eloquently written blurb about Emma Lazarus. I'll note that I have my reasons for doing this, but I thought I'd just go ahead and get out with it here, since this is my outlet for academic and Jewish rantings.

I'd gone off about Esther Schor's new book "Emma Lazarus" and the blurb about it in Reform Judaism's new issue. My reasons for this are that I spent some time studying Lazarus in my undergrad for one of my classes (I forget which), and I'd been mildly appalled at the makings of one of Judaism's great writers of the modern period. I wrote a 10-page paper (ooo, big doins there, folks), pulling from two books: Dan Vogel’s “Emma Lazarus” and Bette Roth Young’s “Emma Lazarus in her world: Life and Letters," as well as historical organization web sites and the like. My ultimate conclusion from my research was that Emma Lazarus identified as a Jew, of course, but only insomuch as that it was a race of people who it was necessary to assimilate to American life, culture and identity. Lazarus had MANY, we're talking many, works with Jewish themes -- no argument there. When her uncle died, she even wrote an elegy that alluded to the call of the Shofar and Rosh HaShanah. But there were peculiarities about her identity. It was as though Judaism was meant for books, not for practice, and most definitely not for the shtetl lifestyle. She sought a return for Jews to Israel, but only for those Jews not living in the U.S. I think that Lazarus was affected more by her class, perhaps, than being an assimilated Jew. She viewed the Jewish immigrants of the Pogroms as ill suited for American life (thus her approval of Zionism for those not in America).

But these are all *my* thoughts. These are my conclusions from the research I did. I'm not saying that Lazarus didn't identify as a Jew, but that her identification was with a nonexistent form of the "Jew." I'm not exactly sure what her idea of a Jew was, to be honest.

If you're interested in reading the 10-page paper, let me know and I'll ship it along to you. I'd post it freely on the web, but I don't want a snot-nosed freshman ripping off my magic :)

Shalom!

Lazarus, the colossus of Jewish identity ignorance

I'm only 13 pages into the new Reform Judaism magazine (picked up at shul tonight), and there's a small write-up on Esther Schor's new book, "Emma Lazarus." The write-up says "Schor's portrait serves to restore the centrality of Jewishness in Emma Lazarus' life and work, showing how she consistently put her literary reputation on the line to defend the Jewish people."

Thing is, when I did research about Lazarus in college, every source I read (and I'll admit that it wasn't more than 5-10) gave me the impression -- quite bluntly -- that Lazarus' Jewish identification was one mostly of convenience and pity, not of personal effort or out of any kind of deep connection to her roots. Her family was entirely assimilated and when she died, her sisters left out nearly all of her Jewish works from the collections of her works, citing it as a "phase" she was going through. Lazarus' first real outreach to the Jewish community came during the pogroms in Russia -- she was from a very affluent family and had the money to donate. But her identification as a Jew -- in my research -- was never even an issue. It was merely a fleeting aspect of her life. It played no more a role in her personal development than did the length of her pinky nail.

Then again, this is a topic that I was considering pursuing in graduate studies ... maybe I should read Schor's book and do some cross-researching :D OHHH the excitement!