The Covering Crisis of 2011

Not that I needed a reminder, but thanks to Facebook, I was reminded that

On This Day In 2010

Chaviva Elianah Galatzis now a member of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sheitel ;)

Ahh, memories! It seems like just yesterday that I went with my bestie Ally to a sheitel sale where I picked up my first hair piece -- a hat fall. I blogged about it (Taking the Hair Plunge), with pictures and everything, and to this day it is my most-read blog post. In that post, a year ago, I wrote,

I like to joke that I was born with bangs. I've had these bangs since forever, and when I started covering, I vowed to keep them there, and I have. Everything else covered up, I've discovered that I love covering with scarves (okay, I knew I would), with one small caveat: I miss the volume. I miss the shape of my hair. I miss the way my face and my head look with the hair all up and out like it used to be. I miss having a "look," that made random strangers in random stores ask me if I'm a hair stylist. 

Do I miss it enough to give up hair covering? Of course not. I miss my hair's shape and body like I miss putting 70 buttons on my purse and wearing tons of colorful bracelets on my wrists. It's nostalgia. It's a "moving on" kind of nostalgia. A choice that I'm 110 percent okay with.

Followed by,

In the end, I'm still a tichel kinda girl. But a sheitel gives me something that a tichel doesn't right now, and that's body, a 'do, something to work with. I look forward to wearing it on Shabbat, with cute winter hats, and for specialsimchas and events in cities and locations that, well, are perhaps a little more sheitel appropriate. It gives me something to play with, to do like I didn't do once upon a time when I had long, irritating, thick hair. And, as myreal hair begins to grow long, I look forward to taking it to a special place: growing it, cutting it, donating it. Repeating. That, it appears, is what the awesome gals in my complex do, and I admire them for doing that. (Of course, first I wondered why people don't get their hair cut and turned into a sheitel, but then I realized how silly that was. *wink!*)

Oh how the tides have turned, and oh have my opinions, needs, and feelings changed. To all of those people who said that it would get hard, you now can say "I told you so!"

The headband fall that I just can't love.

A year and a half after getting married and taking on the mitzvah of hair covering, I'm standing in front of a mirror hacking away at my own hair, wondering why I don't feel beautiful anymore. Twice in the past few weeks I have chopped off lengths of hair. Too long, then too awkward, and now? Well, I don't know why I look the way I do. And those bangs that I've had since birth that I've always loved? Also struggling with liking them these days (sorry to those of you who covet my bangs).

Have I worn my fall every day over the past year? No, but I've worn it plenty, and I've complained about it plenty, too. Falls are hard when you have bangs and have to figure out what to comb that fall into, which has left my head often aching. Likewise, the long-hair look just isn't me. It's never been me, and although I enjoyed having some length in the beginning, I ended up throwing it into a ponytail about seven months ago. And still? It hurts, it's too long, it isn't me.

I spend most days taking hats, tichels, and scarves on and off, trying to figure out what looks right. Over the past few months? Nothing looks right. Nothing feels right. But I still cover, it's a mitzvah that I can't give up because the act, itself, is part of who I am, and I believe firmly in everything it stands for. But how I want to do it has changed.

So a month ago I went online and bought a very, very inexpensive "fake" wig off a Chinese website geared toward "cosplay" (that is, people who are into Japanese manga and want to dress up, I guess). I bought a cute bob, short in the back, longer in the front, with side-swept bangs. I wasn't expecting to like it, let alone love it. I figured, for $25, I can't go wrong. If it's a bust, it's a bust. If I love it, maybe I can take it to a sheitel macher and say "this is what I want" and get it done, without winging it with a sheitel stylist.

The fake. Yes, it looks a lot better in this photo
than it does in person. Believe me. 

The "fake" wig arrived, and I was in love. The color wasn't really right, and it was incredibly shiny, but I loved it. I loved how my face shown through the frame of the shape. I didn't wear it for a few weeks, scared that someone might really spot it for the fake it was, but then, on a whim, I wore it out to dinner with some of my convert buddies, and they all loved it as much as I did. Filled with confidence, I wore it to shul a few weeks ago, but it was spotted -- it looked fake. It was too shiny, and no matter how much baby powder I've thrown on it to tame the gleam, it just hasn't worked. The netting is done poorly, there are no combs in it, and the hair already is falling out.

My response? Get a real sheitel in the style that I love, that frames my face, that makes me feel glamorous -- a feeling that I haven't had since getting married. But that, friends, is $500+, money that it's hard to convince your spouse is worth spending, especially when your spouse -- G-d love him -- doesn't dig the sheitel look, period.

And this is where I stumble back into that mirror and try to figure out who I am and why I can't feel beautiful as is. It's silly, and I never thought I'd be that person who couldn't pull that inside beauty out and just suck it up under a tichel and deal. But this is the narrative of many women who take on hair covering, who buy a sheitel or fall and months later need something new. First one's never the charm, that's for sure, and most women will tell you that. I was even warned that the fall would be short-lived, and although I scoffed at it, well, those who told me that were right.

So where do I go from here? How do I figure out how to either deal with the hand given me or to magically find $500 and convince my husband that it's worth it -- to me? Is it an investment worth feeling good about oneself?

From Sisterhood of the Travelling Sheitel to the Covering Crisis of 2011. If this is what happens after a year, where will I be in 10?

Update: The Katz Family Torah!

I wrote -- not that long ago -- about a a sefer Torah that my dear husband found while organizing a family member's house. The sefer needed some work, and we were overwhelmed by the cost, so I put out a call to my readers and friends to help us fund the repair work that will run us anywhere between $2,100 to $3,400.

I was amazed at the instant reaction. We had five donors give $263, and, to our utter happiness, a family member has agreed to foot the rest of the bill. We're fixing up the sefer, replacing the etz chayim, and getting a new mantel for it, too. We're trying to find a way to store it in the new house, because we haven't had luck finding a local shul to take it on. Again, if anyone in the NY-NJ-CT-PA area needs one for their shul, still, let us know!

And THANK YOU so much to those who donated to this amazing mitzvah.

Saving a Sefer Torah

Many, many months ago, my dear husband was tasked with organizing the home of a relative, and in the process he has found some true treasures. I've blogged some of the photos before, but I can't help but post them again because I, myself, am shocked that we have this.

The only surviving family photo of the Berkowitz family.
The three oldest (on the far left, middle, and far right)  were the only to survive.
Two of the sisters married two of the Katz brothers, pictured below.

That being said, we were told by this relative whose house Tuvia is organizing that there was a Sefer Torah somewhere in the house. Now, Tuvia had no prior knowledge of such an item in the family and neither did anyone else. Tuvia made sure to look for the Sefer Torah, and even checked with the local synagogues to see if it had been donated back in the 1960s as we'd been told it might have been. Eventually, Tuvia gave up and assumed the Sefer was gone, never to be seen again -- after all, it hadn't been seen in probably 30 or 40 years. And then? He found it! Out of the blue, there it was, rolled up safely in a carpet.

Okay, hold on, you're probably asking yourself: Why on earth does Tuvia's family have a Sefer Torah hanging out somewhere in their house?

Where's the etz chayim!?

Well, legend has it (seriously) that when the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, community's four synagogues combined forces as the community shrank, the Sifrei Torah were dished out to members of the community who had donated money toward the original writing/purchase of the scrolls. The person in charge of the disbursement was my husband's grandfather's step-father, so -- knowing that the family had given toward the scroll -- handed the Sefer Torah over to the family.

Thus, there's a family Sefer Torah, and this is where you come in. We took the sefer to a sofer (scribe) to give it a once over and let us know what kind of shape it was in and what it would take to fix it. Yes, we noticed right away that one of the etz chayims was missing (that's the wooden thing that the parchment is rolled on), but the parchment looked like it was in pretty good condition. But these things aren't cheap, folks.

The sofer aged the Sefer Torah to at least 70-80 years, and he said that it's in pretty good condition for being so old. (Of course, my first thought was: I wonder if this came from Europe pre-Shoah?) The klaf (parchment) has some fraying and small tears, but nothing too severe. It is written in Ksav Bait Yosef, which is the Ashkenazi form of lettering. Oddly enough, one section of the sefer -- from Parshat Ekev through Ki Setzei -- was written by a different sofer, meaning that perhaps the section was damaged and needed to be written.

The Sefer Torah goes for a ride ... to the sofer!

Despite it being in good shape, there's been a lot of fading in Sefer Bamidbar and Devarim, and that with a complete refurbishing, we'll be good to go with a beautiful Sefer Torah! There also is a lot of wonky things going on with many of the letters like the yod (י), hey (ה), chet (ח), and tet (ט), which means that the refurbishing will cost anywhere between $1,500 to $3,400 (depending on if we go machmir and get the letters fixed). Yikes.

The Katz Family, probably from the 1930s. The man in the hat, Fred Katz, Tuvia's great grandfather,
we believe, is who gave money toward the purchase or writing of the scroll.

As the sofer said, "The mitzvah of actually writing a Sefer Torah is one that does not come around very often. Consider this a great zechus and a perfect opportunity to fulfill it in a most Mehudar way."

Translated: To take part in fixing up a Sefer Torah is a great virtue and fulfills a mitzvah in a most enhanced way! And this is where you guys come in. The sefer recommends doing the minimum fixing of $1,500 plus fixing the yod ("The letter י is missing the 'kotz' in the majority of instances. According to the vast majority of poskim, this renders the Torah possul, and must be repaired") for $600.

So help us save this Torah. Our plan is to loan the Sefer Torah to an organization or synagogue that needs a Torah use it, but for the Sefer Torah to remain in the family for use at b'nai mitzvah. (If you know of an organization that needs a sefer, please let us know!)

Will you help us in this mitzvah?

To help us in this mitzvah, click on the DONATE button on the top right of my homepage. We are trying to raise at least $2,100 by the High Holidays! I will be compiling a list of those who donate, and we hope to somehow acknowledge the donors upon the completion of the Sefer Torah's renovations by Rosh HaShanah!

It's a Negative Mitzvah to Not What?

There are a lot of really horribly written and poorly edited pieces of Judaica out there. I've kvetched about plenty, including one that was required reading for my conversion that was more confusing than it was worth (don't use your oven on Shabbos! okay, you can use it, but only in this way! did we mention NEVER to use your oven?). But this one, folks, takes the cake for ridiculousness.

The book? The Concise Book of Mitzvoth.

The translation on this is horrible. Horrible to the point of being absolutely blasphemous. The problem? In Hebrew, double-negatives are the norm. For example, to say "No one was there," you would say אף אחד לא היו שם. Translate that into English literally and you end up with "No one wasn't there," which means people were there. Thus, well, just ... look at this.

No! That doesn't give you right to start oppressing me, just because a book compiled by The Chafetz Chayim says so. But reading all of the negative commandments gave me a huge laugh. If a non-Jew picked up this book, they'd probably have some serious material to work with (of course, until they read the Hebrew, which is clear as day). I'll leave you with this one, which is just downright disturbing.

This is when literal translation goes wrong, wrong, SO wrong. Oy.

Do a Mitzvah: Mitzfunder!

The awesome social starter, Leah Jones, sent me an email before Shabbos that I want to share with y'all, because I think it's an amazing project that needs our funding, even in the smallest amount ($10 gets you a button even!). Can you spare $10? This is a great project. Read on!

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I'm working with Aryeh Goldsmith and a few others to create a peer to peer fundraising platform for Jewish projects called Mitzfunder. Too many buzzwords this late in the week? Think Kickstarter, but for Jewish projects.

And the first project on Mitzfunder is Mitzfunder.

We want to build the tool, but won't build it unless there is financial support. The world doesn't need another digital tool without an audience, so we are relying on the Jewish community to vote with dollars to tell us if we should keep building. We're talking to people and racing to try and get 70 percent of our goal pledged in the next 27 days - that's $10,500 of our $15,000 total. I've written a blog post answering as many questions as I could come up with that Aryeh hadn't already answered on the FAQ on the site.

Mitzfunder: Peer to Peer Fundraising and You 

Take a gander at the site for Mitzfunder and the blog post. Send us your ideas and questions. If you are interested, I hope that you'll make a pledge, write a blog post or send a tweet. Aryeh and I are both available to answer questions you may have.

I've got Questions, do you have Answers?

On any given day, I have dozens of questions swimming about my brain. I always forget to look them up or write them down or look for a solution. So, I thought it might be useful to write them down here, see what the public says, and until I have a rav? Rely on the kindness of intelligent folks on the net to provide some answers or insight. Begin!

• Are Sorry and Trivial Pursuit okay to play on Shabbos?
• Can you cut a bag open on Shabbos (like, lettuce let's say)?
• Can you tear an envelope on Shabbos?
• Can you cut or tear anything on Shabbos?
• Can you wash dishes by hand on Shabbos? If you need to clear away dirty dishes post-meal?
• Can you put dishes in a dishwasher on Shabbos ...?
• If I'm reading a book, can I put sticky notes on pages on Shabbos?
• What do people do on Shabbos when they A) aren't eating and B) aren't at shul and C) aren't napping?
• And on and on and on ...