For those enjoying the season of Pesach, maybe you shouldn't read this.
As a child with a jewish father and italian mother who cooked jewish food with her nose in the air, my father did the Pesach cooking. We made Pesach via food.
He ordered 10 lbs of ground whitefish and pike with ground onions included from Harold's Fish store.
Then a grocery list for me...Streits matzah, not the egg kind, eggs noodles, matzah meal, chrain, eggs, chicken for soup. Macaroons until you never wanted to look at a cocaonut again.
No one knew from gebroks.
My father taught me a trick I never heard anywhere in making gefilte fish, so he must have learned it at home. His family was from Radomsk.
He ordered his fish ground with the onions already added and stuck the huge plastic bag in the freezer just until the fish become the texture of crushed ice; frozen but still pliable, more than slushy but not frozen completely. Then in went 5-6 eggs, salt and alot of pepper. In the pot went onions, onions skins, carrots, sugar and salt, brought to a boil. NO matzah meal EVER went into his fish, no meal, no crumbs, no seltzer-fish, onions and eggs. And each year he solemnly reminded me carp is the garbage fish.
The water had to be sweet and peppery. The first balls were wrapped in the remaining fish skin and lowered into the pot. When the skins were finished he quickly made handfuls of gefilte fish balls and placed those on top.
By that time the stove top had splashed fish water all around, onion juice and skins were here and there. 2 huge pots that cooked for about 3 hours and then sat to cool at room temperature to be stored in the fridge.
Chicken soup was an uninspired simmer of carrots and onions with a stick of celery. But it provided a base for matzah balls and that's all that mattered for him. What he did, to produce baseball size feathery floaters, I dont know but selzter was rarely in our house. My mother tried once and we chewed on them, but it was an intersting change...
I learned to love boiled chicken from him. Any excuse to cook it, is good enough. My Polish mother in law couldnt conceive of chicken soup without dill and got me hooked. In CH during the summer the summer camp hired a young man as the cook. Husband was 'handy man' who fixed whatever needed fixing and this young guy started soup for about 200 Thursday in restaurant cauldrons with the usual but added whole cloves of garlic and small quartered tomatoes. The first time he served soup to the adminstrators table, no one realized there was a half inch of shmaltz floating on the top. After people took a spoonful into their mouths they were scorched by blazing hot shmaltz so thick the soup couldnt even cool off. A soup fit for royalty.
I cant find a chicken with this kind of body fat anymore, so in more melancholy moments of trying to recreate the right soup I throw in a package of wings.
By the time Ida and Max showed up with a fruit salad and Manchewitz, Passover was almost ready...he had to be sure the eggs had been boiled. I swear I dont know who taught my father anything about yiddishkeit, I think he just remembered some small things from his childhood and tried passing them on. Like on shabbos he put kippahs on me and sister and we had to make the blessing on the wine and then he uncovered the presliced challah and passed us a slice. All done with my mother huffing and puffing just annoyingly enough to make us wonder what strange sorcery my father was incanting in broken hebrew over the bread and wine.
First came a fish ball covered with skin, horseradish, matzah.
Then he stuffed a piece of matzah somewhere.
He ate a small bowl of soup with a whole egg that he chopped up in the broth himself.
Then a bowl with knaidlach.
Then a piece of chicken.
Then coffee
No Haggadah ever appeared. I did not know you needed a Haggadah until I got to CH and found out Pesach was a cleansing and departure to enter a new place and space, spiritual and physical...bye to Mitzraim.
In CH balsetschvahs gathered annually for a couple of kashering classes offered by one of our rabbonim who I will not mention because he's the sweetest neshoma and I dont know if he's still alive.
He patiently listened as we asked if the floors had to scrubbed with a toothbrush and if we can use the same toothbrush to wash the walls? If the porcelain sinks were scalded did they still have to becovered with alumninum foil? Did we need to buy new carpets? new wigs? new makeup? Can we wear makeup if we eat our lipstick? and on and on as he tried to explain the difference between minhag and required pesach kashrus.
None of us did gebroks because most considered themselves ashkenaz.
HUsband brought the food inside that Shabbos V TomTov delivered since it was more than wife could drag into the kitchen. He splurged on buying oranges to make fresh squeezed juice, allowed potato starch and sugar, but nothing else in cans, bottles or prepared.
I learned how to make egg noodles from potato starch rolled and cut into slivers, charoses he made, juice he squeezed for hours into bottles and crain got grated.
Every year when people were at the bakery either watching or making their own matzahs, somehow he never made it, we got round shmurer, I think they were Bobover because they were thinner and some years lubavitch because they were cheaper but usually leaden.
We would sit down with the kids and occasionally a bochur or two, but it was usually just us. I had this strange concept in my wifely brain that since a husband sat at the head of the table he might lead me and the kids thru the haggadah...kinda help out. But husband said that each person was responsbile for getting thru the entire seder himself, drinking 4 cups himself and get to it and good luck because it had to all happen before 12 when Elijah came knockin.
The kids had no idea what to do and the wife was in not much better shape phonetically trying to say the the words the right way so crippled angels werent created and get stuck in Mitzraim. By the time I finished drinking the second cup of wine, he was opening the door for Elijah, the kids were tired and cranky in tight yontif clothes and had been told not to eat before the seder so were under the table from hunger.
Laugh you may, cry I did in total frustration...it was like being abandoned at the gates of heaven, it was every man for himself.
I have never in my life been to a seder where I knew and understood everything, completed every step and felt a sense of accomplishment in reading the entire haggadah before food was being demanded and could hope that, next year in Yerushalim.
But this year I had an early pesach in leaving my personal mitzraim...so I can still hope next week im'ertzHaShem that Yerushalim remains undivided for yidden and one day I can return.
Chassidisha maydel leaves klal,does tschuvah returns after quarter century in goyische velt. Ous yid ken men vern-ous khusid ken men nisht vern
Monday, March 26, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Suggesting Blog for all
I cannot convey urgently enough the level of antisemitism that's rising and our denial of it.
Those of us needing a quick concise 'education' on what's going on please visit the blog "Yid With Lid"
You can subscribe by emailing yidwithlid@aol.com
This blogger takes time daily to post real time information and articles that urgently effect jews. I do not know him personally but he is doing a yoeman's job of keeping people informed, educated and thinking. And by doing this, hopefully to effect some real changes in the community as well as saving misguided souls.
Those of us needing a quick concise 'education' on what's going on please visit the blog "Yid With Lid"
You can subscribe by emailing yidwithlid@aol.com
This blogger takes time daily to post real time information and articles that urgently effect jews. I do not know him personally but he is doing a yoeman's job of keeping people informed, educated and thinking. And by doing this, hopefully to effect some real changes in the community as well as saving misguided souls.
Racism or Reality?
It used to irk my liberal sensibilities to be labelled the 'chosen' people and find in chassidus that other life forms, human, plant and mineral, had less 'refined' neshomas.
While on the one hand those 'chosen' then have a moral, ethical as well as religious responsibility to 'bestow' care and compassion on those less capable, what was never clear to me is the context or parameters, if any that exist.
And I mean this individually as well as for the klal. For example on a personal level, does one only extend largesse to jews less fortunate and in need, or is humanity at large our responsibility? This may seem obvious, but it is not. If it was obvious the klal, would be sincerely addressing, on a daily basis the needs of our own people whether here or in Israel as a primary issue. These issues include a re-examination of 'mi-yehudi?' and how conversions are done, how heterim are given and to whom, who is being hired to teach and administrate in yeshivahs, the ongoing crises of yidden committed to living in Israel and perhaps foremost, a serious examination of goyishe influences on frum life including technology that both enhances and eases our lives, while simultaneously opening the door to public and secret perversions and expectations due to the blatant sexuality and lack of shame in Western culture.
The last and most important issue, the impact of technology on human life and relationships, is one of the most profound reasons our culture is both revered and reviled by other cultures and religions.
The ability to immerse in self gratification online in what would traditionally be considered unacceptable behaviour, chatting and flirting just for self pleasure, sexual stimulation or gratification outside a sanctioned relationship, shameless exhibitionism in posting one's image for anyone and everyone, clothed or unclothed for the sheerness of being seen, borders on idolatry.
While women moan and gripe about men being less than responsible in supporting a traditional lifestyle, we purchase the magazines, makeup, clothes and behaviour of the goyishe world which increasingly can only be defined as similar to Sidom before it was burned and destroyed. Televisions, elevators, lights, air conditioning et al can be turned on and off by a shabbos clock as desired. Restrictions, put into place to define a jew, are now refined by technology to make the 'restrictive' life a jew should be living, less so, and therefore easier to bear in a goyishe world. Less restrictive means fitting in, more comfortable, less stress and anxiety in being different...less 'chosen' and more like the Other.
Because ultimately, we're all human and part of one big family, the family of Mankind...right?
Because we're all human, we all bleed the same color blood, dont we?
Because we're human we all know what it means to love and to need love, doesnt it?
Any mother knows what it means to lose a child in her lifetime, either by abortion, murder or war, correct?
Every man needs to feel like the care giver and supporter of his kingdom, so we learn...
The exploitation of technology to benefit yiddishe 'causes' is only turning something for good use, hence its okay for dancing and jolly lubavitcher rabonnim to have televised beggathons asking for money to support chabad houses while at the same time our kids and some heedless adults are interviewed by The New York Times in articles like City of Refuge describing spiritual desertion and despair.
Every flame (human heart) flickers upward toward its source (Hashem).
If we set aside the presumption that with age one grows more conservative and I am doing that, I would say both our lives and thinking as a community has been deeply effected by goyishe Western liberal philosphical thinking, that is not only taught in universities and public education, but has trickled down and seeped into our lives like poison. We have absorbed it, wether we like it or not, from the media, computers, television, movies and accepted it into our lives. I do not know if this is the case in more restrictive chassidic communities, but it is the case with lubavitch and in non chassidic judaism. A broad statement, broad condemnation, I stand by it.
This kind of thinking comes to yidden under the guise of 'political correctness' and accepting social behaviour including intermarriage, forms of sexuality once considered forbidden including homosexuality, polygamy (a frum marriage with long term shiksa girlfriends IS polygamy, a frum marriage and a jewish girl friend is adultery), incest, sexual abuse in yeshivahs, online chatting and webcams, pervasiveness of pornography in television, music, advertising and men's (mainly) expectation of women playing the role of private whore under the sanctity of marriage, while publically appearing virtuous, has clearly brought a schism into the yiddishe velt, confusion in shidduch expectations and marital roles on men and women.
I am guilty of some of these behaviours, specifically intermarriage, because of my own parents intermarriage, my own educational background and intellectual confusion. much of which developed from public education including university study.
While we cannot blame parents once we are adults for the choices we make, we are also defined and shaped by the parents we are born to, lived with and the receipt of their care or the lack of it.
Instead of stepping back and refusing to participate, we (self included), try to survive in the world, by participating in unacceptable (Torah standard) behaviour- we condone unacceptable social issues and behaviour we KNOW is wrong, support it, excuse it, explain it and allow it.
And we do this because we want to consider ourselves enlightened humans, and as part of humanity in the global village we now all live in, we all 'have to get along.'
Don't we?
Does 'getting along' mean getting along with other yidden or being accepted by the velt?
We're clearly fractured with levels of yiddishkeit defining how frum one may be...this reminds me of M. Friedman explaining the life of being a chassidic jew to new baletschuvahs in our Minnesota cleansing session before moving into CH. He told us that "being religious is like being pregnant, you either are or you're not, there's no middle ground."
What stuck with me from that statement, is not that Lubavitcher chassidus is the only road to living life as a jew, which is what he meant us to understand, but that a jew must define him and herself according to Torah and less social commentary and interpretation that increasingly draws us away from the core of being a jew.
Perhaps it means not defining ourselves by standards imposed by living in Western culture, not following the standards imposed by the liberal education received in a university to obtain a degree to work with goyim or people who think like goyim.
If being jewish means being racist by today's standards and in the court of public opinion we perhaps need to take some time alone and ask ourselves in the privacy of 'yechidus' with the Abishter what our priorities as yidden are. Is it to become closer to Him in the way He wants us, as yidden, to be?
Or have we become so blinded by wanting to fit in and get along, we have slowly set aside the most fundamental issues of being Jewish including being 'chosen' and separate, to be inclusive and confused?
Some answers can be found in the rate of intermarriage, divorce, domestic violence, tolerance of emotional and physical abuse be it spousal or to children. The strength of judaism has always been the family, a women's virtuousity and intelligence and the respect of and by men for both, as well as defining our daily life by our laws and tradition, not goyishe laws and traditions.
The filmmaker Woody Allen once was quoted as saying something to the effect that 'the heart knows no boundaries,' in defense of his sleeping with his adopted daughter whom he married.
The human heart indeed has no boundaries if one chooses to disregard the inheritance of being Jewish. The human heart has no boundaries and no boundaries means we can love anyone and everyone. But a jewish heart is defined and guided by Torah laws. I had to convert to be al pi halacha jewish. While the goyishe velt never once regarded me as anything as a Jew, I tried other coats on during 20 years of living in secular society.
Begin sneered at by educated Jews, told to 'take the shmattah off if you want to work for me' forced me to take the shmattah off, to get an education and earn a living. And living in other societies, amidst people of other religions, I remained a spectacle of 'the Jew' among them no matter how I twisted myself to become the Other.
Someone once told me a jew always remains a jew, no matter how you try to change it...I found his summary offensive. Surely we can all change, we can be whatever we want in this big world of individuality and growth potential. We can dye our hair pink, tatoo anything, anywhere, pierce every body part or wear a kapotah or kefiyeh and assume another identity...for awhile.
It seems that not only a chassid cannot turn from judaism, but a yid in the eyes of the world is condemned always to being a Yid and until we accept who we are and how we will fit in our own skins as such, we will continue to implode both here and in Israel.
While on the one hand those 'chosen' then have a moral, ethical as well as religious responsibility to 'bestow' care and compassion on those less capable, what was never clear to me is the context or parameters, if any that exist.
And I mean this individually as well as for the klal. For example on a personal level, does one only extend largesse to jews less fortunate and in need, or is humanity at large our responsibility? This may seem obvious, but it is not. If it was obvious the klal, would be sincerely addressing, on a daily basis the needs of our own people whether here or in Israel as a primary issue. These issues include a re-examination of 'mi-yehudi?' and how conversions are done, how heterim are given and to whom, who is being hired to teach and administrate in yeshivahs, the ongoing crises of yidden committed to living in Israel and perhaps foremost, a serious examination of goyishe influences on frum life including technology that both enhances and eases our lives, while simultaneously opening the door to public and secret perversions and expectations due to the blatant sexuality and lack of shame in Western culture.
The last and most important issue, the impact of technology on human life and relationships, is one of the most profound reasons our culture is both revered and reviled by other cultures and religions.
The ability to immerse in self gratification online in what would traditionally be considered unacceptable behaviour, chatting and flirting just for self pleasure, sexual stimulation or gratification outside a sanctioned relationship, shameless exhibitionism in posting one's image for anyone and everyone, clothed or unclothed for the sheerness of being seen, borders on idolatry.
While women moan and gripe about men being less than responsible in supporting a traditional lifestyle, we purchase the magazines, makeup, clothes and behaviour of the goyishe world which increasingly can only be defined as similar to Sidom before it was burned and destroyed. Televisions, elevators, lights, air conditioning et al can be turned on and off by a shabbos clock as desired. Restrictions, put into place to define a jew, are now refined by technology to make the 'restrictive' life a jew should be living, less so, and therefore easier to bear in a goyishe world. Less restrictive means fitting in, more comfortable, less stress and anxiety in being different...less 'chosen' and more like the Other.
Because ultimately, we're all human and part of one big family, the family of Mankind...right?
Because we're all human, we all bleed the same color blood, dont we?
Because we're human we all know what it means to love and to need love, doesnt it?
Any mother knows what it means to lose a child in her lifetime, either by abortion, murder or war, correct?
Every man needs to feel like the care giver and supporter of his kingdom, so we learn...
The exploitation of technology to benefit yiddishe 'causes' is only turning something for good use, hence its okay for dancing and jolly lubavitcher rabonnim to have televised beggathons asking for money to support chabad houses while at the same time our kids and some heedless adults are interviewed by The New York Times in articles like City of Refuge describing spiritual desertion and despair.
Every flame (human heart) flickers upward toward its source (Hashem).
If we set aside the presumption that with age one grows more conservative and I am doing that, I would say both our lives and thinking as a community has been deeply effected by goyishe Western liberal philosphical thinking, that is not only taught in universities and public education, but has trickled down and seeped into our lives like poison. We have absorbed it, wether we like it or not, from the media, computers, television, movies and accepted it into our lives. I do not know if this is the case in more restrictive chassidic communities, but it is the case with lubavitch and in non chassidic judaism. A broad statement, broad condemnation, I stand by it.
This kind of thinking comes to yidden under the guise of 'political correctness' and accepting social behaviour including intermarriage, forms of sexuality once considered forbidden including homosexuality, polygamy (a frum marriage with long term shiksa girlfriends IS polygamy, a frum marriage and a jewish girl friend is adultery), incest, sexual abuse in yeshivahs, online chatting and webcams, pervasiveness of pornography in television, music, advertising and men's (mainly) expectation of women playing the role of private whore under the sanctity of marriage, while publically appearing virtuous, has clearly brought a schism into the yiddishe velt, confusion in shidduch expectations and marital roles on men and women.
I am guilty of some of these behaviours, specifically intermarriage, because of my own parents intermarriage, my own educational background and intellectual confusion. much of which developed from public education including university study.
While we cannot blame parents once we are adults for the choices we make, we are also defined and shaped by the parents we are born to, lived with and the receipt of their care or the lack of it.
Instead of stepping back and refusing to participate, we (self included), try to survive in the world, by participating in unacceptable (Torah standard) behaviour- we condone unacceptable social issues and behaviour we KNOW is wrong, support it, excuse it, explain it and allow it.
And we do this because we want to consider ourselves enlightened humans, and as part of humanity in the global village we now all live in, we all 'have to get along.'
Don't we?
Does 'getting along' mean getting along with other yidden or being accepted by the velt?
We're clearly fractured with levels of yiddishkeit defining how frum one may be...this reminds me of M. Friedman explaining the life of being a chassidic jew to new baletschuvahs in our Minnesota cleansing session before moving into CH. He told us that "being religious is like being pregnant, you either are or you're not, there's no middle ground."
What stuck with me from that statement, is not that Lubavitcher chassidus is the only road to living life as a jew, which is what he meant us to understand, but that a jew must define him and herself according to Torah and less social commentary and interpretation that increasingly draws us away from the core of being a jew.
Perhaps it means not defining ourselves by standards imposed by living in Western culture, not following the standards imposed by the liberal education received in a university to obtain a degree to work with goyim or people who think like goyim.
If being jewish means being racist by today's standards and in the court of public opinion we perhaps need to take some time alone and ask ourselves in the privacy of 'yechidus' with the Abishter what our priorities as yidden are. Is it to become closer to Him in the way He wants us, as yidden, to be?
Or have we become so blinded by wanting to fit in and get along, we have slowly set aside the most fundamental issues of being Jewish including being 'chosen' and separate, to be inclusive and confused?
Some answers can be found in the rate of intermarriage, divorce, domestic violence, tolerance of emotional and physical abuse be it spousal or to children. The strength of judaism has always been the family, a women's virtuousity and intelligence and the respect of and by men for both, as well as defining our daily life by our laws and tradition, not goyishe laws and traditions.
The filmmaker Woody Allen once was quoted as saying something to the effect that 'the heart knows no boundaries,' in defense of his sleeping with his adopted daughter whom he married.
The human heart indeed has no boundaries if one chooses to disregard the inheritance of being Jewish. The human heart has no boundaries and no boundaries means we can love anyone and everyone. But a jewish heart is defined and guided by Torah laws. I had to convert to be al pi halacha jewish. While the goyishe velt never once regarded me as anything as a Jew, I tried other coats on during 20 years of living in secular society.
Begin sneered at by educated Jews, told to 'take the shmattah off if you want to work for me' forced me to take the shmattah off, to get an education and earn a living. And living in other societies, amidst people of other religions, I remained a spectacle of 'the Jew' among them no matter how I twisted myself to become the Other.
Someone once told me a jew always remains a jew, no matter how you try to change it...I found his summary offensive. Surely we can all change, we can be whatever we want in this big world of individuality and growth potential. We can dye our hair pink, tatoo anything, anywhere, pierce every body part or wear a kapotah or kefiyeh and assume another identity...for awhile.
It seems that not only a chassid cannot turn from judaism, but a yid in the eyes of the world is condemned always to being a Yid and until we accept who we are and how we will fit in our own skins as such, we will continue to implode both here and in Israel.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Quoted
After responding to a 3.22 NY Times article about Edwards running despite his wife's return of incurable cancer I was interviewed for 45 minutes, which is condensed to a few lines, sounding like a feminist diatribe.
A writer's skill I have yet to learn:-)
A writer's skill I have yet to learn:-)
Jewish dePressed
Haven't read the Jewish dePressed for about 5 years.
So I bought a copy this week 3.23.07
So many trees recycled and printed to sell overpriced Pesach food, kitchen items.
Articles written about how to get in the shidduch groove (network alot), how to find a spouse for your daughter (network), a "Bubbe" writing about the misery of her marriage, but she stuck with it and learned with 'humor' how to tolerate an abusive husband, married off her daughters who all but one who also found her husband abusive, did well. The poor girl has Bubbe to give her comfort and counsel as time goes on...and a final finger wagging to parents to look well and closely at matches before your daughters commit fully to marriage.
A complaint about the brazen rudeness now in the frum world during shidduch dating; blunt "you're not attractive enough" rather than "we're not well suited, or think differently on matters of importance..."
Lots of sheitl ads for young girls who want European' style wigs so they dont look like frummies, G-d forbid. Its the shabbos clock mentality-I look frum but I think goy-
A first person article written by a "yeshivah bocher" (read like an editorial assignment) who asked the klal to consider when the call comes maybe the bocher has no where else to eat and that food alone is not a chesed, kindness with the chulent, is.
Dire forecasts for Israel, corupt governments, giving back of jewish lands and cheap flights to take a vacation there.
I bought the dePressed on 'the yellow brick road to tschuvah' hoping to find some comfort, warmth, a sense of coming home...2 inches of chaotic, frenzied writing about Torah and yontif and inbetween little peaks of reality, marital misery, misplaced goishe values about young people looking hot looks and money in a shidduch and their enabling parents.
I married in '77. Not only has nothing changed, its become obscene.
I thought when my chassishe husband brought porn tapes into our home in CH that the heavens and hell would open and burn us alive. Then the Tv came in and my toddlers who once played games with one another, sat like golem on the bed, speechless, except to push one another to say "move, I can't see."
In the 80s, TVs and the rebels who dared own them, hid them in the closet. If women needed to 'relax' they might see an approved (by husband) movie with a couple of girl friends and return home before 12...or attend a shiur. Newspapers, most music, verboten.
When husband brought the TV in, I had not seen these images for almost 10 years. I cannot imagine the shock for my kids; I experienced physical shock at the speed and visual impact flying at me--if you were born after 70, this is hard to understand I think, or maybe for people used to computers at a very early age, this is normal. Even now too many hours in front of a screen is exhausting, I still prefer print for my information and to relax.
There's great sadness for me, to look at this scene from the outside, wanting to be inside again and realizing its all sped up and moved far away, in a world I dont really want to be a part of. A world I cannot be a part of...if I didnt fit before, I surely dont fit now. If beauty and youth is the defining features, I lack both. I remain plain in speech and appearance, prefer my religion and men the same, plain, honest and truthful.
The chassidus I wanted and needed and still need, is a world that either doesnt exist anymore or a world that never had a place for me. The reason yidden dont magire, I was told by lubavitchers I came to know, is because of 2 things; if you're not 'born' a yid, its beshert. And those who do convert, often can't stand the rigor of being truly religious, they either convert to marry, which means nothing, or convert and frey out sooner or later. Baletschuvahs are tolerated, but remain a caste to avoid unless one has a family reason to accept such a marriage.
I came from a father whose family sat shiva when he married my mother. I grew up in violence, without family on either side, both citing religion laws to exclude us. The only thing that mattered after my father died was to become in the fullest sense of living, a jew and live between jews. It was this fantasy thinking that led me to CH and to bear five children to create my own family, children who now are as confused and heartbroken as their mother. Every step I thought I was doing what was best for them, trying to balance my own heartbreak at the callousness of rabbonim and the needs of my family.
No one can know the weight on me to have failed in all this.
So I bought a copy this week 3.23.07
So many trees recycled and printed to sell overpriced Pesach food, kitchen items.
Articles written about how to get in the shidduch groove (network alot), how to find a spouse for your daughter (network), a "Bubbe" writing about the misery of her marriage, but she stuck with it and learned with 'humor' how to tolerate an abusive husband, married off her daughters who all but one who also found her husband abusive, did well. The poor girl has Bubbe to give her comfort and counsel as time goes on...and a final finger wagging to parents to look well and closely at matches before your daughters commit fully to marriage.
A complaint about the brazen rudeness now in the frum world during shidduch dating; blunt "you're not attractive enough" rather than "we're not well suited, or think differently on matters of importance..."
Lots of sheitl ads for young girls who want European' style wigs so they dont look like frummies, G-d forbid. Its the shabbos clock mentality-I look frum but I think goy-
A first person article written by a "yeshivah bocher" (read like an editorial assignment) who asked the klal to consider when the call comes maybe the bocher has no where else to eat and that food alone is not a chesed, kindness with the chulent, is.
Dire forecasts for Israel, corupt governments, giving back of jewish lands and cheap flights to take a vacation there.
I bought the dePressed on 'the yellow brick road to tschuvah' hoping to find some comfort, warmth, a sense of coming home...2 inches of chaotic, frenzied writing about Torah and yontif and inbetween little peaks of reality, marital misery, misplaced goishe values about young people looking hot looks and money in a shidduch and their enabling parents.
I married in '77. Not only has nothing changed, its become obscene.
I thought when my chassishe husband brought porn tapes into our home in CH that the heavens and hell would open and burn us alive. Then the Tv came in and my toddlers who once played games with one another, sat like golem on the bed, speechless, except to push one another to say "move, I can't see."
In the 80s, TVs and the rebels who dared own them, hid them in the closet. If women needed to 'relax' they might see an approved (by husband) movie with a couple of girl friends and return home before 12...or attend a shiur. Newspapers, most music, verboten.
When husband brought the TV in, I had not seen these images for almost 10 years. I cannot imagine the shock for my kids; I experienced physical shock at the speed and visual impact flying at me--if you were born after 70, this is hard to understand I think, or maybe for people used to computers at a very early age, this is normal. Even now too many hours in front of a screen is exhausting, I still prefer print for my information and to relax.
There's great sadness for me, to look at this scene from the outside, wanting to be inside again and realizing its all sped up and moved far away, in a world I dont really want to be a part of. A world I cannot be a part of...if I didnt fit before, I surely dont fit now. If beauty and youth is the defining features, I lack both. I remain plain in speech and appearance, prefer my religion and men the same, plain, honest and truthful.
The chassidus I wanted and needed and still need, is a world that either doesnt exist anymore or a world that never had a place for me. The reason yidden dont magire, I was told by lubavitchers I came to know, is because of 2 things; if you're not 'born' a yid, its beshert. And those who do convert, often can't stand the rigor of being truly religious, they either convert to marry, which means nothing, or convert and frey out sooner or later. Baletschuvahs are tolerated, but remain a caste to avoid unless one has a family reason to accept such a marriage.
I came from a father whose family sat shiva when he married my mother. I grew up in violence, without family on either side, both citing religion laws to exclude us. The only thing that mattered after my father died was to become in the fullest sense of living, a jew and live between jews. It was this fantasy thinking that led me to CH and to bear five children to create my own family, children who now are as confused and heartbroken as their mother. Every step I thought I was doing what was best for them, trying to balance my own heartbreak at the callousness of rabbonim and the needs of my family.
No one can know the weight on me to have failed in all this.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
1 Year ago
3.22.07 is the first year anniversary of my mother's death. She passed away at Calvary, a hospice in Brooklyn, 10 minutes from my apartment. She refused to live with me and husband.
She refused to accept first husband, her five grandchildren "I dont feel like a Grandmother" and refused to accept my second marriage. She refused to accept that after my father died she might have to work and support herself and her daughters and keep us together. She told me and my sister she as she packed up to move to her mother's home in Jersey, come there or do as you like. I was almost 18 and my sister was 15. My sister stayed with friends in NYC, I went to Israel. After a year on kibbutz right after the Yom Kippur war I returned to work as a short order cook and then left for Crown Heights. I was escorted back to Jersey to collect my belongings, clothes and some books and left everything else for my mother. She said I had been brainwashed, running away to be religious. After three years I was matched by a shaddchun with my first husband, a Polish immigrant and called her excited that I was engaged. She wasn't interested and said she didnt know if she would be able to attend the wedding, she didnt have a dress. I offered to buy her a dress and bring her. When it was clear she wanted no part in my marriage, the wedding was moved to my husband's family in Missouri.
We brought our first son to see his grandmother before his upsherenish. She never came to our home in Brooklyn. The next time she saw her grandchildren was when she had come to live with me and my daughters came to visit. Her grandmotherness was too difficult and depressing for her. When I thought only great joy to see what beautiful grandaughters she had, would thrill her, it simply depressed her and distanced us more, if that was possible.
I separated from my husband in '86. I did not want to be in relationships outside of marriage and was terribly lonely. Working at a university I was completing my Masters, friendly with both teachers and students. But it was confined to classrooms because outside of class it seemed all roads led to sex, either discussions or doing it. I was totally isolated and didnt fit in. I was in my early 30s, older than alot of students, a mother, divorced and just beginning my life again.
I felt religious but was no longer part of a jewish community. Anything outsdie of chassidus seemed like a shadow of the judaism I lived and frankly wanted. My mother would call me daily, 2-3x to talk. She wanted to know if she should marry this person, live with that man. Her brother pulled some strings and got her a garden apt for seniors while still in her late 50s and she settled into a life of being the youngest lady in a house filled with seniors, mostly women.
I graduated from college with my bachelors and she never asked what I studied or what I was interested in, what I was doing. I was the first one in the family to obtain a college degree. Then by 91' I had a Masters...both done fulltime while working all day to support myself. I had left high school at 16 in NYC to work at Woolworths as a cook to help my father. My father was 32 years older than my mother. He was 65 when I was born, was very wealthy in the garment industry and gambled it all away at Acqueduct. I know because most Saturdays he took me with him to sit at his table with a crowd of his gambling buddies. On Sundays we went to Murrays Smoked Fish Store on Broadway. Murray would bring me up into his office and ask for a kiss on his cheek. He always smelled like a smoked whitefish. Murray had the saddest blue eyes, as if nothing he ever saw truly made him happy, his sadness was so profound and dark. But making people happy with fish, bagels, made his dark eyes twinkle. A kiss brought 2 huge bags filled with bagels, sturgeon, huge whitefish, sliced novi, lox bellies, jams, biscuits. Then we went to see Pussy down on Riverside Drive.
Pussy was my father's bookie. Pussy was about 5'2, bald and never wore anything but a dark blue silk bathrobe with white polka dots. As my father held the bags, we waited for 6-7 minutes for Pussy to unlock the 10 Segal locks on his front door...one by one.
Pussy's wife Margie had cancer and never left her pink bedroom. I saw her once...a quiet lady with dark bouffant hair in a sea of pink ruffles all around her bed. She kept telling my father how beautiful I was and to bring me everytime to visit her.
Not long after my father lost his money at the track and in business...most of the people he knew disappeared. So did our chaffeur and housemaid. One old business connection gave him a job. I heard him on the phone with Jack. Jack owned the largest trucking fleet on the East Coast for clothing manufacturers and show rooms. My father was begging him for any kind of work to take care of us and was already in his late 70s. Jack let him sit early morning as the trucks came in and just check the names off a list. The younger men did all the grunt work. I dont think my mother ever met Jack, ever thanked Jack. One morning a rack of dresses rolled off a truck and hit my father, knocking him down and rolled over his then frail ankles. His ankle, badly bruised and his heart was humiliated had to be carried home in the arms of a tall strapping back man, not much younger than my father. Jack paid him for about another year as he remained home, then tried coming in by taxi to 'earn' his living until Jack said, enough, go home and rest now.
He spent his last years between the living room and the bedroom in almost total silence. He had stopped drinking the fifth of scotch he drank that terrified us with subseqeunt rages and destruction. I never knew what I would find in the morning after finally falling asleep as they screamed and threatened each other, him always disclosing he knew what she was doing, he had her followed. One morning her beautiful face and neck was sliced up from a bottle he smashed and attacked her with, one day the beautiful cream colored sofa was splashed by pots of boiled coffee he made to destroy her home she wanted and decorated. He ate little and spent hours writting a book about his life. He had only finished 3rd grade but wanted the world to know he 'coulda been a contender' and in fact had been. With no education and mostly moxie and G-ds help, he made an lost two huge fortunes. He was friends with made men of the profaci family and much of the antiques, oil paintings, jewelry were gifts received from underlings and given to my mother. He sent me on errands to get him2-3 composition books from the corner candystore as he wrote, crossed out, revised. He named his book "She Couldnt Shoot Straight" in honor (!) of my mother. And then at age 82 tried finding a publisher. A man came to the house and offered to publish the book for $5,000 in 1972, without even reading it.
Having stopped drinking 10 years earlier my father discovered pills would hold back the stabbing pains in his stomach and the two nice jewish doctors on each side of our lobby gladly wrote duplicate scripts every time my mother paid each of them a visit. Then filling both at separated pharmacies. Demerol, Tuinol. One of each and he'd get morose and call me in to have a serious discussion about 'the future' and what me and sister going to do "after I go?"
My mother would stop her nail filing to tell him he wasn't going, so to change the subject. My sister was never home, so the existential issues were left for me to deal with.
He was sorry he hadn't been able to set aside money for us, had gambled it all, lost it in some bad business decisions and was grieving for the mess he was leaving the only family he had. Of all the hurt and destructiveness, there was never a moment as a child and young woman that I doubted my father adored me. I was not tiny beautifull and frail like my sister, he saw his own Russian sisters in me, brawn and brains. No one ever saw the fraility in me, that came from taking care of all of them.
He died in '71. The rent was $225, the apartment was filled with expensive antiques, I was at Hunter College completing my first year open admissions after obtaining my GED and working as a cook. My mother called my gay cousin and they both were like giggling kids going thru his things. His pearl handle gun, cuff links, ties, fedoras, custom shoes, camel coats...and then a nice estate lady visited and bought our stuff for $5,000. This within a week of his death and cremation. A cremation I tried to stop and was overruled by rabonnim.
I was at a friends house when my mother called to say my father had passed away. I walked outside and the sun was bright, like on 9/11. But there was a sharp stillness and I couldnt hear anything as everything around me moved. I called a taxi and told the driver my father had just died, could he please take me home. And he did and asked me if I needed anything.
My mother wound up in Calvary because she asked a neighbor to take her to the nearby hosptial emercency room. It didnt matter that my husband had his visa and we were living around the corner from her, visiting every week for 3 years. It didnt matter we bought her television, food, visited. She didtn want us at the hospital. I didnt fully understand why until I got there. She had been forgetting things, sometimes my name, which was always happening calling me by sister's was a lifelong joke between us...sometimes she threw in a cousin or two before getting to my name. But husband said, she doing it on purpose, like a fox, to play games with us. I bought her a new summer wardrobe in her only favorite colors, black and white so she could look elegant in her small walks around the neighborhood. Sometimes jewelry because her black jet beads were getting shabby when the diamonds used to sit 30 years earlier. In the emergency room, she wasnt sure who I was. I asked for a pysch evaluation. The young doctor spoke with her privately as we waited. He came to tell me she had severe dementia and should not live alone, but was too sick to go anywhere. How had I missed dementia? I saw her 2x a week and thought the forgetfullness was just a part of being 84. She wasn't enjoying the news, it was depressing, as were the daily papers. She only ate vitamins, yogurt, grapes trying to fend off the inevitable end. She wanted to see a doctor and then each time an appointment was mad she refused to go, refused to be carried down the stairs and put into a car. REfused everything and anything. She had refused all chemo for the cancer at 79 saying jesus loved her and would protect her. Then her brother, the brother that was more of a husband because she loved him with a passion one would love only a husband, died of hodgkins. he called while she was still living with me, his son was at his side in the hospital bed holding the phone for him to say goodbye to his sister. She refused to take the phone. She refused to say goodbye. When her nephew called to say her brother died, I thanked him and agve her the news. She curled up and moaned for days under her covers. In a fetal position staring at the wall, she refused to eat. I called in senior grief counselors the city offers as a mobile service. They prescribed Paxil and tried setting her up with a nearby senior center. She was enraged I called psychs in to help her with the grief. She said, "you will never love anyone the way N. loved me and I loved him, that why you can't understand what I lost."
Within a few months I met my second husband. I was introduced to him as someone who might be interested in translating some of my poetry into arabic. He was, but someone else did the work, he stayed to talk...and talk. And then ask for marraige. I said no, you're too young. He pulled every cliche out of the book and I cut the conversation with I cannot have any more children and you're young enough to have a family. At which point he told me had in fact had a 5 year son, we woulde raise him as as family together.
When you tell a women who lost her father who loved her, a woman who gave up her own five children to live with a REAL big jewish fam ily with cousins and aunts and insuring their grandfathers inheritance, when you tell that woman that she have a family again, that maybe this is like a gift from Hashem, that she is needed by this man and his son, it was in my mind we would make a courageous and strong unit together. I had no one else. As soon as my mother heard I was engaged, she packed her 3 suitcases. I left for Egypt, got stuck as the Iraq war started and stayed for 3 months. When I returned as a married woman with a scarf on my head, it wouldnt ahve mattered if it was a shmmatah as she called it or a hijab. My attention was back to work and the arrival of my husband and all the issues I knew he was need help with when he got here. I cooked at night and we ate together , she watched tv and I went online to talk to him. Any I love you to him was met with grunts, hisses and obscenities from her while Alex trebek was cheering contestants. I told her in May he was expected by the end of June, his visa had been approved. 2 weeks later I came home and found her and her things, gone. Where does a 77 year old woman on social security go? She went to the neighbor bodega and the lady who she shared coffee with every morning said she had an extra room. She parted with 3/4 of her SS check plus food.
so whenI heard dementia, my second reaction was what a damn relief, now I can take care of her instead of hearing 'no one tells me what to do,' The doctors basically allowed me to make all further decisions. There was an opening in Calvery10 days later and her cancer was so advanced she was accepted and taken to the other side of the hosptial. It was a gift from Hashem, a gift I could never have afforded to offer her, to spend peaceful days near a courtyard garden, with nice people, a social worker to speak with, spiritual counseling. ALl day at work and direct to her room for 3 months. She couldnt eat and her mental state growing worse daily. The chaplain gave me and my sister pamphlets of tehillim.
I started saying tehillim. my mother refused to speak about god except to say days before she died she was an atheist. Sunday afternoon when I went to bring her the soup she had requested after not eating anything, I found her slumped down alone and dead. But it must have been so recent, her body was still warm when I picked her up to shift her in the bed. They didnt want me fussing and to say bye and leave. How do you say bye and leave? How do you leave a body, alone? I asked for some time and washed her all over since I couldnt perform chesed shel emet there and dressed her in the gown she loved. I put the picture of the brother her heart broke over losing and some lipstick on. I brushed her hair and pinned it. I said goodbye and a year later I read something or see something and still think I have to see her later and tell her, how she'd laugh...
4 weeks after I sent her ashes to my sister, to 'make peace' I was cleaning the apt and putting the mess of papers in files. I found greetings cards I knew were nt from me and opened them. There was my husband, posing with a very large blond woman and her two sons, in one of the Sears 'family' portraits. 4 differeent poses and one pose of her smiling needly eyed at the camera holding her arm with her hand, something glinting on her finger. The jewelry receipt with the pics showed a diamond ring. The cards were written out to my Darling Husband and Dear Stepdad. I dont know if they married while he was married to me, muslim men do whatever they want with women that became clear.
But what I did...is another post. This was about my mother, who toiveled to marry my father, who orthodox rabbi had her toivel in the atlantic ocean, not a mikveh and wtihout witnesses or brachas, so when I went to chasidus and shared this bit of news, I was informed I was not a jew and must toivel to bring the neshomah hovering about me, into the keli. And so, it was done after getting permission from the Rebbe and asking for a name change (not granted).
What I didnt write is what I learned in this year.
She refused to accept first husband, her five grandchildren "I dont feel like a Grandmother" and refused to accept my second marriage. She refused to accept that after my father died she might have to work and support herself and her daughters and keep us together. She told me and my sister she as she packed up to move to her mother's home in Jersey, come there or do as you like. I was almost 18 and my sister was 15. My sister stayed with friends in NYC, I went to Israel. After a year on kibbutz right after the Yom Kippur war I returned to work as a short order cook and then left for Crown Heights. I was escorted back to Jersey to collect my belongings, clothes and some books and left everything else for my mother. She said I had been brainwashed, running away to be religious. After three years I was matched by a shaddchun with my first husband, a Polish immigrant and called her excited that I was engaged. She wasn't interested and said she didnt know if she would be able to attend the wedding, she didnt have a dress. I offered to buy her a dress and bring her. When it was clear she wanted no part in my marriage, the wedding was moved to my husband's family in Missouri.
We brought our first son to see his grandmother before his upsherenish. She never came to our home in Brooklyn. The next time she saw her grandchildren was when she had come to live with me and my daughters came to visit. Her grandmotherness was too difficult and depressing for her. When I thought only great joy to see what beautiful grandaughters she had, would thrill her, it simply depressed her and distanced us more, if that was possible.
I separated from my husband in '86. I did not want to be in relationships outside of marriage and was terribly lonely. Working at a university I was completing my Masters, friendly with both teachers and students. But it was confined to classrooms because outside of class it seemed all roads led to sex, either discussions or doing it. I was totally isolated and didnt fit in. I was in my early 30s, older than alot of students, a mother, divorced and just beginning my life again.
I felt religious but was no longer part of a jewish community. Anything outsdie of chassidus seemed like a shadow of the judaism I lived and frankly wanted. My mother would call me daily, 2-3x to talk. She wanted to know if she should marry this person, live with that man. Her brother pulled some strings and got her a garden apt for seniors while still in her late 50s and she settled into a life of being the youngest lady in a house filled with seniors, mostly women.
I graduated from college with my bachelors and she never asked what I studied or what I was interested in, what I was doing. I was the first one in the family to obtain a college degree. Then by 91' I had a Masters...both done fulltime while working all day to support myself. I had left high school at 16 in NYC to work at Woolworths as a cook to help my father. My father was 32 years older than my mother. He was 65 when I was born, was very wealthy in the garment industry and gambled it all away at Acqueduct. I know because most Saturdays he took me with him to sit at his table with a crowd of his gambling buddies. On Sundays we went to Murrays Smoked Fish Store on Broadway. Murray would bring me up into his office and ask for a kiss on his cheek. He always smelled like a smoked whitefish. Murray had the saddest blue eyes, as if nothing he ever saw truly made him happy, his sadness was so profound and dark. But making people happy with fish, bagels, made his dark eyes twinkle. A kiss brought 2 huge bags filled with bagels, sturgeon, huge whitefish, sliced novi, lox bellies, jams, biscuits. Then we went to see Pussy down on Riverside Drive.
Pussy was my father's bookie. Pussy was about 5'2, bald and never wore anything but a dark blue silk bathrobe with white polka dots. As my father held the bags, we waited for 6-7 minutes for Pussy to unlock the 10 Segal locks on his front door...one by one.
Pussy's wife Margie had cancer and never left her pink bedroom. I saw her once...a quiet lady with dark bouffant hair in a sea of pink ruffles all around her bed. She kept telling my father how beautiful I was and to bring me everytime to visit her.
Not long after my father lost his money at the track and in business...most of the people he knew disappeared. So did our chaffeur and housemaid. One old business connection gave him a job. I heard him on the phone with Jack. Jack owned the largest trucking fleet on the East Coast for clothing manufacturers and show rooms. My father was begging him for any kind of work to take care of us and was already in his late 70s. Jack let him sit early morning as the trucks came in and just check the names off a list. The younger men did all the grunt work. I dont think my mother ever met Jack, ever thanked Jack. One morning a rack of dresses rolled off a truck and hit my father, knocking him down and rolled over his then frail ankles. His ankle, badly bruised and his heart was humiliated had to be carried home in the arms of a tall strapping back man, not much younger than my father. Jack paid him for about another year as he remained home, then tried coming in by taxi to 'earn' his living until Jack said, enough, go home and rest now.
He spent his last years between the living room and the bedroom in almost total silence. He had stopped drinking the fifth of scotch he drank that terrified us with subseqeunt rages and destruction. I never knew what I would find in the morning after finally falling asleep as they screamed and threatened each other, him always disclosing he knew what she was doing, he had her followed. One morning her beautiful face and neck was sliced up from a bottle he smashed and attacked her with, one day the beautiful cream colored sofa was splashed by pots of boiled coffee he made to destroy her home she wanted and decorated. He ate little and spent hours writting a book about his life. He had only finished 3rd grade but wanted the world to know he 'coulda been a contender' and in fact had been. With no education and mostly moxie and G-ds help, he made an lost two huge fortunes. He was friends with made men of the profaci family and much of the antiques, oil paintings, jewelry were gifts received from underlings and given to my mother. He sent me on errands to get him2-3 composition books from the corner candystore as he wrote, crossed out, revised. He named his book "She Couldnt Shoot Straight" in honor (!) of my mother. And then at age 82 tried finding a publisher. A man came to the house and offered to publish the book for $5,000 in 1972, without even reading it.
Having stopped drinking 10 years earlier my father discovered pills would hold back the stabbing pains in his stomach and the two nice jewish doctors on each side of our lobby gladly wrote duplicate scripts every time my mother paid each of them a visit. Then filling both at separated pharmacies. Demerol, Tuinol. One of each and he'd get morose and call me in to have a serious discussion about 'the future' and what me and sister going to do "after I go?"
My mother would stop her nail filing to tell him he wasn't going, so to change the subject. My sister was never home, so the existential issues were left for me to deal with.
He was sorry he hadn't been able to set aside money for us, had gambled it all, lost it in some bad business decisions and was grieving for the mess he was leaving the only family he had. Of all the hurt and destructiveness, there was never a moment as a child and young woman that I doubted my father adored me. I was not tiny beautifull and frail like my sister, he saw his own Russian sisters in me, brawn and brains. No one ever saw the fraility in me, that came from taking care of all of them.
He died in '71. The rent was $225, the apartment was filled with expensive antiques, I was at Hunter College completing my first year open admissions after obtaining my GED and working as a cook. My mother called my gay cousin and they both were like giggling kids going thru his things. His pearl handle gun, cuff links, ties, fedoras, custom shoes, camel coats...and then a nice estate lady visited and bought our stuff for $5,000. This within a week of his death and cremation. A cremation I tried to stop and was overruled by rabonnim.
I was at a friends house when my mother called to say my father had passed away. I walked outside and the sun was bright, like on 9/11. But there was a sharp stillness and I couldnt hear anything as everything around me moved. I called a taxi and told the driver my father had just died, could he please take me home. And he did and asked me if I needed anything.
My mother wound up in Calvary because she asked a neighbor to take her to the nearby hosptial emercency room. It didnt matter that my husband had his visa and we were living around the corner from her, visiting every week for 3 years. It didnt matter we bought her television, food, visited. She didtn want us at the hospital. I didnt fully understand why until I got there. She had been forgetting things, sometimes my name, which was always happening calling me by sister's was a lifelong joke between us...sometimes she threw in a cousin or two before getting to my name. But husband said, she doing it on purpose, like a fox, to play games with us. I bought her a new summer wardrobe in her only favorite colors, black and white so she could look elegant in her small walks around the neighborhood. Sometimes jewelry because her black jet beads were getting shabby when the diamonds used to sit 30 years earlier. In the emergency room, she wasnt sure who I was. I asked for a pysch evaluation. The young doctor spoke with her privately as we waited. He came to tell me she had severe dementia and should not live alone, but was too sick to go anywhere. How had I missed dementia? I saw her 2x a week and thought the forgetfullness was just a part of being 84. She wasn't enjoying the news, it was depressing, as were the daily papers. She only ate vitamins, yogurt, grapes trying to fend off the inevitable end. She wanted to see a doctor and then each time an appointment was mad she refused to go, refused to be carried down the stairs and put into a car. REfused everything and anything. She had refused all chemo for the cancer at 79 saying jesus loved her and would protect her. Then her brother, the brother that was more of a husband because she loved him with a passion one would love only a husband, died of hodgkins. he called while she was still living with me, his son was at his side in the hospital bed holding the phone for him to say goodbye to his sister. She refused to take the phone. She refused to say goodbye. When her nephew called to say her brother died, I thanked him and agve her the news. She curled up and moaned for days under her covers. In a fetal position staring at the wall, she refused to eat. I called in senior grief counselors the city offers as a mobile service. They prescribed Paxil and tried setting her up with a nearby senior center. She was enraged I called psychs in to help her with the grief. She said, "you will never love anyone the way N. loved me and I loved him, that why you can't understand what I lost."
Within a few months I met my second husband. I was introduced to him as someone who might be interested in translating some of my poetry into arabic. He was, but someone else did the work, he stayed to talk...and talk. And then ask for marraige. I said no, you're too young. He pulled every cliche out of the book and I cut the conversation with I cannot have any more children and you're young enough to have a family. At which point he told me had in fact had a 5 year son, we woulde raise him as as family together.
When you tell a women who lost her father who loved her, a woman who gave up her own five children to live with a REAL big jewish fam ily with cousins and aunts and insuring their grandfathers inheritance, when you tell that woman that she have a family again, that maybe this is like a gift from Hashem, that she is needed by this man and his son, it was in my mind we would make a courageous and strong unit together. I had no one else. As soon as my mother heard I was engaged, she packed her 3 suitcases. I left for Egypt, got stuck as the Iraq war started and stayed for 3 months. When I returned as a married woman with a scarf on my head, it wouldnt ahve mattered if it was a shmmatah as she called it or a hijab. My attention was back to work and the arrival of my husband and all the issues I knew he was need help with when he got here. I cooked at night and we ate together , she watched tv and I went online to talk to him. Any I love you to him was met with grunts, hisses and obscenities from her while Alex trebek was cheering contestants. I told her in May he was expected by the end of June, his visa had been approved. 2 weeks later I came home and found her and her things, gone. Where does a 77 year old woman on social security go? She went to the neighbor bodega and the lady who she shared coffee with every morning said she had an extra room. She parted with 3/4 of her SS check plus food.
so whenI heard dementia, my second reaction was what a damn relief, now I can take care of her instead of hearing 'no one tells me what to do,' The doctors basically allowed me to make all further decisions. There was an opening in Calvery10 days later and her cancer was so advanced she was accepted and taken to the other side of the hosptial. It was a gift from Hashem, a gift I could never have afforded to offer her, to spend peaceful days near a courtyard garden, with nice people, a social worker to speak with, spiritual counseling. ALl day at work and direct to her room for 3 months. She couldnt eat and her mental state growing worse daily. The chaplain gave me and my sister pamphlets of tehillim.
I started saying tehillim. my mother refused to speak about god except to say days before she died she was an atheist. Sunday afternoon when I went to bring her the soup she had requested after not eating anything, I found her slumped down alone and dead. But it must have been so recent, her body was still warm when I picked her up to shift her in the bed. They didnt want me fussing and to say bye and leave. How do you say bye and leave? How do you leave a body, alone? I asked for some time and washed her all over since I couldnt perform chesed shel emet there and dressed her in the gown she loved. I put the picture of the brother her heart broke over losing and some lipstick on. I brushed her hair and pinned it. I said goodbye and a year later I read something or see something and still think I have to see her later and tell her, how she'd laugh...
4 weeks after I sent her ashes to my sister, to 'make peace' I was cleaning the apt and putting the mess of papers in files. I found greetings cards I knew were nt from me and opened them. There was my husband, posing with a very large blond woman and her two sons, in one of the Sears 'family' portraits. 4 differeent poses and one pose of her smiling needly eyed at the camera holding her arm with her hand, something glinting on her finger. The jewelry receipt with the pics showed a diamond ring. The cards were written out to my Darling Husband and Dear Stepdad. I dont know if they married while he was married to me, muslim men do whatever they want with women that became clear.
But what I did...is another post. This was about my mother, who toiveled to marry my father, who orthodox rabbi had her toivel in the atlantic ocean, not a mikveh and wtihout witnesses or brachas, so when I went to chasidus and shared this bit of news, I was informed I was not a jew and must toivel to bring the neshomah hovering about me, into the keli. And so, it was done after getting permission from the Rebbe and asking for a name change (not granted).
What I didnt write is what I learned in this year.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Not well
chest pains, like lightening started left deep under breast like an electric shock then stopped, nausea,pain between shoulders, cant stop crying. its nothing specific anymore, anything sets it off
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Time Does Not Fly
I'm convinced 'time' is an illusion, Bergson was right.
No time, no reality. Only appearances, like dress up or pretend.
So tell me why other people seem to know how to play pretend so well, even down to the small talk
and I still haven't learned how to read the players, rules or how to get in the game?
I have PTSD, diagnosed by 2 docs. I feel shell shocked.
I feel like there's so little time left, so little room to make mistakes, that any decisions made now, have to be the right ones because I'm not physically or spiritually strong enough to correct any more errors of judgement. Hence, the Wall.
Less movement means less potential for error. I need furniture and spend hours mentally arranging what I dont have but want to buy, but dont buy because I am alone and it seems a waste now. I have to paint before doing anything because it doesnt make sense to paint after loading a tiny space thats already got boxes in the middle of the room.
Can't paint when the windows need to closed because of the cold. The cat sniffles because she's always cold. I bought a chair that had to be assembled. I assembled it for 2 hours, then had to disassemble and reassemble because I put it together backwards. It took half a day. It's a chair for bad backs. Can someone tell me why furniture costs a fortune, to buy, to ship and then you have to put it together yourself?
As soon as I put it in the bedroom to finally have a place to sit and read, the cat sat in it and now sleeps with one eye open, peering at me. Its clear she thinks the chair was delivered for her. She in fact, has her own chair and its covered with soft fluffy towels. There is no reason for Cat to sit in the new chair other than its the chair I bought to sit in. And cat knows this, which is why she won't move. This is how cats think. I understand...so its okay, I sit here and type away like an ass and she watches and occasionally starts snoring, like anyone would reading this. Why cats are so easily understood and tolerable and humans, not...another puzzle.
When Cat is occasionally griped by the urge to move, its to take a brief walk into the bathroom whereupon the mew meow rwowing begins. She can be found on the edge of the tub or hidden behind the curtain looking up for water. If you ask her, and I have repeatedly, what she wants, she stares back, without blinking because she knows that I know, what she wants. She wants the shower turned on.
Cat has 2 bowls of water, strategically placed (due to age) so she can easily drink. I dont know what goes on while I'm out 12 hours a day, the water level does recede in the bowls, but when I am home, its shower or else...I may lay down briefly to rest from pain, and then for sure a shower must be had. Bedtime comes, lights are turned off and then many showers are needed. In fact the best time to howl for water is around 2am. If there was a way to teach her how to run her own bath, I'd show her. Any kitchen activity means she'll go sit on the bathtub ledge and simply wait because soooner or later the tall dum dum will pass by the bathroom and look in. And sure enough there's fluffy on the tub waiting to play around and get her fluffy toes wet again. Dire warnings about turning into a fish, growing webbed feet, getting sucked down the drain, fall on deaf ears, just run the water and shut up... and for gawd's sake dont pick me up or cuddle me, yeeesh.
No time, no reality. Only appearances, like dress up or pretend.
So tell me why other people seem to know how to play pretend so well, even down to the small talk
and I still haven't learned how to read the players, rules or how to get in the game?
I have PTSD, diagnosed by 2 docs. I feel shell shocked.
I feel like there's so little time left, so little room to make mistakes, that any decisions made now, have to be the right ones because I'm not physically or spiritually strong enough to correct any more errors of judgement. Hence, the Wall.
Less movement means less potential for error. I need furniture and spend hours mentally arranging what I dont have but want to buy, but dont buy because I am alone and it seems a waste now. I have to paint before doing anything because it doesnt make sense to paint after loading a tiny space thats already got boxes in the middle of the room.
Can't paint when the windows need to closed because of the cold. The cat sniffles because she's always cold. I bought a chair that had to be assembled. I assembled it for 2 hours, then had to disassemble and reassemble because I put it together backwards. It took half a day. It's a chair for bad backs. Can someone tell me why furniture costs a fortune, to buy, to ship and then you have to put it together yourself?
As soon as I put it in the bedroom to finally have a place to sit and read, the cat sat in it and now sleeps with one eye open, peering at me. Its clear she thinks the chair was delivered for her. She in fact, has her own chair and its covered with soft fluffy towels. There is no reason for Cat to sit in the new chair other than its the chair I bought to sit in. And cat knows this, which is why she won't move. This is how cats think. I understand...so its okay, I sit here and type away like an ass and she watches and occasionally starts snoring, like anyone would reading this. Why cats are so easily understood and tolerable and humans, not...another puzzle.
When Cat is occasionally griped by the urge to move, its to take a brief walk into the bathroom whereupon the mew meow rwowing begins. She can be found on the edge of the tub or hidden behind the curtain looking up for water. If you ask her, and I have repeatedly, what she wants, she stares back, without blinking because she knows that I know, what she wants. She wants the shower turned on.
Cat has 2 bowls of water, strategically placed (due to age) so she can easily drink. I dont know what goes on while I'm out 12 hours a day, the water level does recede in the bowls, but when I am home, its shower or else...I may lay down briefly to rest from pain, and then for sure a shower must be had. Bedtime comes, lights are turned off and then many showers are needed. In fact the best time to howl for water is around 2am. If there was a way to teach her how to run her own bath, I'd show her. Any kitchen activity means she'll go sit on the bathtub ledge and simply wait because soooner or later the tall dum dum will pass by the bathroom and look in. And sure enough there's fluffy on the tub waiting to play around and get her fluffy toes wet again. Dire warnings about turning into a fish, growing webbed feet, getting sucked down the drain, fall on deaf ears, just run the water and shut up... and for gawd's sake dont pick me up or cuddle me, yeeesh.
Not going well
Kabbalah
We are built to receive pleasure for the least amount of work to obtain it.
We exist on an operating system, like a computer uses Windows and Nature uses Apple.
If we change our 'operating system' from receiving to bestowing we remove ourselves from the egocentric selfishness of "I" and unite with the universal "Creator" who gives without stint and out of love.
Okay...
here's the idiot's question
So you come from an abusive dysfunctional family, like the majority of western culture and you didnt ride your bike down a lane to a picket enclosed house to eat mom's homemade cookies. You didnt have a childhood filled with the 'toys' you now continue to look for as an 'adult'. In fact, what you may try to do is raise yourself, as you weren't raised by your own parents they were so busy with their own codependent misery. You get yourself thru college, get married, become religious, take care of your husband, home, kids, find your husband wont work...is that expectation of him working because one is wanting to "receive"?
Does one continue endlessly in an abusive situation, continuing to "bestow" the gifts of compassion, cleaning, cooking, love and care while being ignored, hit or verbally abused?
Let's look at work. All employers, mine at least, have the expectation that employees exist to bestow their existence for the good of making a profit for the company, hence the pockets/prestige of the boss. Does an employee who is underpaid (according to comparable positions in other companies as well as government statistics) remain silent and thankful the boss receives her bestowed labor year in and out despite illness and personal problems without ever asking if anything might be needed, not to mention a living wage?
So my first very irritated conclusions are:
How do we change the operating system within, when the outside continues to be corrupt and abusive?
For every action, there is a reaction.
If that is correct, then I live in a parallel universe where something is out of sync.
This material was written (this is my understanding of what he wrote, not verbatim) by someone named Michael Kellog on the Kabballah.org site. It's writing for someone completely frey or a detached way of thinking of I & Creator.
There is no detachment; there is only interference and the interference is not always the "I" it is in surviving THEM and what THEY present as obstacles in DAILY LIFE in a society. I dont mean drugs, promsicuity or that stuff, I mean what I wrote above.
If you spend all your energy to just stay alive, bestowing on others to fend off abuse, there comes a point when one begins to question many things...
What irritates me about what I read is I smell a cookie cutter THEORY, not a working plan.
So clearly I'm not getting it.
We are built to receive pleasure for the least amount of work to obtain it.
We exist on an operating system, like a computer uses Windows and Nature uses Apple.
If we change our 'operating system' from receiving to bestowing we remove ourselves from the egocentric selfishness of "I" and unite with the universal "Creator" who gives without stint and out of love.
Okay...
here's the idiot's question
So you come from an abusive dysfunctional family, like the majority of western culture and you didnt ride your bike down a lane to a picket enclosed house to eat mom's homemade cookies. You didnt have a childhood filled with the 'toys' you now continue to look for as an 'adult'. In fact, what you may try to do is raise yourself, as you weren't raised by your own parents they were so busy with their own codependent misery. You get yourself thru college, get married, become religious, take care of your husband, home, kids, find your husband wont work...is that expectation of him working because one is wanting to "receive"?
Does one continue endlessly in an abusive situation, continuing to "bestow" the gifts of compassion, cleaning, cooking, love and care while being ignored, hit or verbally abused?
Let's look at work. All employers, mine at least, have the expectation that employees exist to bestow their existence for the good of making a profit for the company, hence the pockets/prestige of the boss. Does an employee who is underpaid (according to comparable positions in other companies as well as government statistics) remain silent and thankful the boss receives her bestowed labor year in and out despite illness and personal problems without ever asking if anything might be needed, not to mention a living wage?
So my first very irritated conclusions are:
How do we change the operating system within, when the outside continues to be corrupt and abusive?
For every action, there is a reaction.
If that is correct, then I live in a parallel universe where something is out of sync.
This material was written (this is my understanding of what he wrote, not verbatim) by someone named Michael Kellog on the Kabballah.org site. It's writing for someone completely frey or a detached way of thinking of I & Creator.
There is no detachment; there is only interference and the interference is not always the "I" it is in surviving THEM and what THEY present as obstacles in DAILY LIFE in a society. I dont mean drugs, promsicuity or that stuff, I mean what I wrote above.
If you spend all your energy to just stay alive, bestowing on others to fend off abuse, there comes a point when one begins to question many things...
What irritates me about what I read is I smell a cookie cutter THEORY, not a working plan.
So clearly I'm not getting it.
“Ous yid ken men vern; ous khusid ken men nisht vern
A yid can turn from yiddishkeit, but a chassid can't...
Sunday New York Times 3.18.07 published a story about the disenfranchised and disillusioned among us meeting motzeh shabbos at the millinery synagogue in the city. i found names of young men whose parents who had been neighbors, neighbors who considred themselves "Untouchable" from such scandals only baletschuvahs or gerim would have in their lives.
You know when something's finally hit mainstream media, its old news already, the Net choking with threads, blogs and sites of people demanding for themselves a religion and life that is based on truth, not an interpretation or cult version.
I came into Crown Heights at the peak and then slow fade of the Rebbe...when yechiddus was stopped, when tzetlach were restricted, dollars weren't given out and the chance for a look or word was ended, when fabrengens meant singing to an empty chair and sichos were only something to read from a book rather than witnessing the words coming down and given over....it was over. Maybe Rebbe didnt appoint anyone to take over because no one was qualified to step in. Maybe its close to the end, it doesnt matter now.
An acqaintance named Miriam had yechiddus (late 80's) and immediately came to R.'s house to tell her some parts but claimed she had been sworn by the Rebbe not to reveal other parts. Since Groner was either always a witness behind you near the door or ready to do a download as you as you stepped out, keeping a secret of what was said in yecchidus never seemed possible.
Miriam was having disturbing dreams and asked for yecchidus so the Rebbe might explain them. While she didnt share the dream with us, she shared the Rebbe told her "...if people only knew how close the end is, they would spend this time only to make themselves ready" She claims he gave her a date but she couldnt tell anyone.
In my last tzetle I did something you weren't ever supposed to do, which was burden the Rebbe with long letters. Not only were you not supposed to write more than 1 page in the designated format (!) but you always gave the letter to Klein or Groner hoping to receive an answer. It was 8 years into my marraige, 5 children in less than 7 years, living on tzedakah. I went passed the clustered bocherim, to his office door and slipped it under the heavy oak. I asked for permission to find work or study to eventually find work. I said it was long enough that we lived on the charity of the community, what kind of future would that be for my children?
Groner called me to say how dare I cause the Rebbe to bend down to pick up my letter and:
You do not have permission to go to college
Be b'simcha
A fire comes before great wealth
(I already mentioned the Rav said no birth control)
Husband knew I was on phone with Rebbe's office and wanted to hear everything for himself so Groner repeated it all.
Husband pulled out a book of matches and lit one.
Smirking, he looked at me and asked, "...where's the money?"
When I study Rav Laitman's writings on kabbalah and the Rashab, its experiences like the above that have me wondering if I am just desiring to 'go home again' because the secular world is so profoundly sick?
Was I such a lacking believer and follower of the Rebbe, that when he said, no college, be happy and fire before great wealth (Groner claimed he didnt know what it meant) that all I felt was a final abandonment?
This is what free will is, making a critical choice we perceive is best or does being a chassid and following a kabbalist negate the aspect of individual choice e.g. free will from the personal (ego) perspective and that one lives only by directives handed down from teachers, Rebbes, etc? Does questioning this make someone a non believer or bad chossid?
If one is meant to live only by the directives of another, with the same flesh and human vulnerabilities, and that person dies and his community is thrown into chaos to the point of followers physciall and spiritually leaving, turning against neighbors on critical chassidic issues (moshiach now or later?), children frying out, was abandonement of one's will to such an extent the right thing to do? The aftereffects of the Void left with the passing of Rebbe has been written about and with better insight I'm sure.
Does a woman with a spiritually educated husband have to consider these kinds of issues for herself or her children?
I had a fifth child, a son whose birth almost ended in both our deaths. The midwife sent a substitute who kept leaving on a cigarette break and after arriving almost fully dilated, everything stopped...for hours. When the midwife called in the evening to see what was going on and heard I hadnt had the baby, she rushed to the hosptial. Her sub was still AWOL. The monitor in the room wasnt working either. The cord was around his neck and choking him. He was so broad across his shoulders and caught on the cord, he couldnt move and had swallowed the muconium. After an excruciating birth focused on saving his life, he was rushed to the PICU and remained there 3 days. In this birth, to bring another child to live in such poverty, depression with no light in front of us, a father refusing to take care of us except nagging his own father to send money, whose own father told me to get a job and stop having kids, after the Rav told me dont stop having kids and Rebbe says stay home and be happy...in this last birth I only said to Hashem, this is my last child and I am responsible for the decision, me alone.
Since birth control was verboten, I refused to have intercourse to avoid having husband involved with the 'sin' of birth control. I stayed up after putting the children to bed and began writing again, after more than a decade of silence.
I read the article in the Times and with the only emotion that still seems to be working, I cried. I cried and cry as I write this because my own children cannot make head or tails of chassidus, lubavitch as a way of life and are completely bitter about yiddishkeit...bitter their mother left to get an education to support them, seeing their father parade in his kapota while spending shabbos in his basement watching porn.
I cry because my children never experienced the beauty of what chassidus was before chaos took over. Would a life lived in and on tzedakah have preserved that illusion for them? for me? for anyone?
The Times article is titled City of Refuge. If I remember, a city of refuge was a designated place for those yidden whose crimes were so heinous they were no longer permitted to live within the community, they were exiled to a city of refuge to live out their days. Once exiled, you can never leave, you are considered DEAD by those outside the city. You cannot participate in anything as a jew, basically you dont exist, you are a different life form.
I want to know how those of us who love as deeply as I do and surely I am not alone, in love of Hashem, the klal and the future of our children, what are our 'crimes' that we are 'lost' and struggling now with yiddishkeit and finding our way 'home again' to Hashem and each other...
If I could collect us all and find us a place to heal...
Sunday New York Times 3.18.07 published a story about the disenfranchised and disillusioned among us meeting motzeh shabbos at the millinery synagogue in the city. i found names of young men whose parents who had been neighbors, neighbors who considred themselves "Untouchable" from such scandals only baletschuvahs or gerim would have in their lives.
You know when something's finally hit mainstream media, its old news already, the Net choking with threads, blogs and sites of people demanding for themselves a religion and life that is based on truth, not an interpretation or cult version.
I came into Crown Heights at the peak and then slow fade of the Rebbe...when yechiddus was stopped, when tzetlach were restricted, dollars weren't given out and the chance for a look or word was ended, when fabrengens meant singing to an empty chair and sichos were only something to read from a book rather than witnessing the words coming down and given over....it was over. Maybe Rebbe didnt appoint anyone to take over because no one was qualified to step in. Maybe its close to the end, it doesnt matter now.
An acqaintance named Miriam had yechiddus (late 80's) and immediately came to R.'s house to tell her some parts but claimed she had been sworn by the Rebbe not to reveal other parts. Since Groner was either always a witness behind you near the door or ready to do a download as you as you stepped out, keeping a secret of what was said in yecchidus never seemed possible.
Miriam was having disturbing dreams and asked for yecchidus so the Rebbe might explain them. While she didnt share the dream with us, she shared the Rebbe told her "...if people only knew how close the end is, they would spend this time only to make themselves ready" She claims he gave her a date but she couldnt tell anyone.
In my last tzetle I did something you weren't ever supposed to do, which was burden the Rebbe with long letters. Not only were you not supposed to write more than 1 page in the designated format (!) but you always gave the letter to Klein or Groner hoping to receive an answer. It was 8 years into my marraige, 5 children in less than 7 years, living on tzedakah. I went passed the clustered bocherim, to his office door and slipped it under the heavy oak. I asked for permission to find work or study to eventually find work. I said it was long enough that we lived on the charity of the community, what kind of future would that be for my children?
Groner called me to say how dare I cause the Rebbe to bend down to pick up my letter and:
You do not have permission to go to college
Be b'simcha
A fire comes before great wealth
(I already mentioned the Rav said no birth control)
Husband knew I was on phone with Rebbe's office and wanted to hear everything for himself so Groner repeated it all.
Husband pulled out a book of matches and lit one.
Smirking, he looked at me and asked, "...where's the money?"
When I study Rav Laitman's writings on kabbalah and the Rashab, its experiences like the above that have me wondering if I am just desiring to 'go home again' because the secular world is so profoundly sick?
Was I such a lacking believer and follower of the Rebbe, that when he said, no college, be happy and fire before great wealth (Groner claimed he didnt know what it meant) that all I felt was a final abandonment?
This is what free will is, making a critical choice we perceive is best or does being a chassid and following a kabbalist negate the aspect of individual choice e.g. free will from the personal (ego) perspective and that one lives only by directives handed down from teachers, Rebbes, etc? Does questioning this make someone a non believer or bad chossid?
If one is meant to live only by the directives of another, with the same flesh and human vulnerabilities, and that person dies and his community is thrown into chaos to the point of followers physciall and spiritually leaving, turning against neighbors on critical chassidic issues (moshiach now or later?), children frying out, was abandonement of one's will to such an extent the right thing to do? The aftereffects of the Void left with the passing of Rebbe has been written about and with better insight I'm sure.
Does a woman with a spiritually educated husband have to consider these kinds of issues for herself or her children?
I had a fifth child, a son whose birth almost ended in both our deaths. The midwife sent a substitute who kept leaving on a cigarette break and after arriving almost fully dilated, everything stopped...for hours. When the midwife called in the evening to see what was going on and heard I hadnt had the baby, she rushed to the hosptial. Her sub was still AWOL. The monitor in the room wasnt working either. The cord was around his neck and choking him. He was so broad across his shoulders and caught on the cord, he couldnt move and had swallowed the muconium. After an excruciating birth focused on saving his life, he was rushed to the PICU and remained there 3 days. In this birth, to bring another child to live in such poverty, depression with no light in front of us, a father refusing to take care of us except nagging his own father to send money, whose own father told me to get a job and stop having kids, after the Rav told me dont stop having kids and Rebbe says stay home and be happy...in this last birth I only said to Hashem, this is my last child and I am responsible for the decision, me alone.
Since birth control was verboten, I refused to have intercourse to avoid having husband involved with the 'sin' of birth control. I stayed up after putting the children to bed and began writing again, after more than a decade of silence.
I read the article in the Times and with the only emotion that still seems to be working, I cried. I cried and cry as I write this because my own children cannot make head or tails of chassidus, lubavitch as a way of life and are completely bitter about yiddishkeit...bitter their mother left to get an education to support them, seeing their father parade in his kapota while spending shabbos in his basement watching porn.
I cry because my children never experienced the beauty of what chassidus was before chaos took over. Would a life lived in and on tzedakah have preserved that illusion for them? for me? for anyone?
The Times article is titled City of Refuge. If I remember, a city of refuge was a designated place for those yidden whose crimes were so heinous they were no longer permitted to live within the community, they were exiled to a city of refuge to live out their days. Once exiled, you can never leave, you are considered DEAD by those outside the city. You cannot participate in anything as a jew, basically you dont exist, you are a different life form.
I want to know how those of us who love as deeply as I do and surely I am not alone, in love of Hashem, the klal and the future of our children, what are our 'crimes' that we are 'lost' and struggling now with yiddishkeit and finding our way 'home again' to Hashem and each other...
If I could collect us all and find us a place to heal...
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Thank you...but
Thank you, those who have written emails.
The well is dry... so when I'm not writing or working, I'm usually studying.
Its a safer choice for me, right now.
Please consider visiting Rav Michael Laitman's website/Bnei Baruch listed in my Links/Blogs section.
There's alot of water there...
The well is dry... so when I'm not writing or working, I'm usually studying.
Its a safer choice for me, right now.
Please consider visiting Rav Michael Laitman's website/Bnei Baruch listed in my Links/Blogs section.
There's alot of water there...
Motzeh shabbos or another Sat nite w/meself
Turmoil at work, turmoil within, turmoil in the world. I come home for peace but 'home' is packed in boxes. I can't bring myself to unpack and resign myself to living here ad infinitum. Surrounded by tacos on the right and peking duck on the left. Landlord just rented property next door to a chop shop on a residential block. Sidewalk piled with tires, air pump, tools, cars lined up in differing states of repair. whine whine whine...Boro Park is a bus ride away but rents are too high. I'm too old for a roommate and no quiet, dividing refrigerator shelves, bathroom space...who sleeps with the room with a door and all that adolescent stuff we do in starting our lives. I've spent my life trying to start my life and too often considered ending my life. I started at 5 yr taking care of parents who needed a child to mediate their violent squabbles.
You ask yourself if there is supposed to be lesson for someone born into such circumstances, is the lesson for the child or a residual punishment on the parents...my parents weren't interested in religion at all. Father's family sat shiva when he married mother and we never knew them, they wouldnt speak to us. Mother's family taunted and shunned me and sister as 'jews'. I haven't seen my mother's family for 40 years. My mother refused to attend my Crown Heights wedding, not for religious reasons but because I learned later that I was never expected to marry. I was expected as the eldest to wait to take care of her...old Italian tradition. School friends couldnt come to our home because I never knew how much father had drank or if Mother had anything on under her sheer nightgown or where she had been all day...
That's why I became chassidic...why do something half assed? Commit and go all the way. I had lived thru the torture of 2 religions in one home that neither side was serious about. I wanted to be religious since 3 yrs of age, asked my father to take me to 'temple' and when we got home I went to bed with a fever and my mother screamed for hours and I never got to go again.
When my father died I wanted the rabbi at the conservative shul across the street to intervene with my mother having him cremated. He refused, saying her wishes took precedence halacha. His ashes sat around in my mother's posession for 7 years until I nagged her enough to let me bury him. Lubavitch buried in the special section of a cemetary upstate...I dont even know the name of the cemetary. The family that arranged it wouldnt tell me where it was. But at least he stopped 'visiting' me in dreams. My mother left NYC to live with her mother...my sister and I were told we could do as we liked...14 and 17 with no money, no family in back of us, no education or jobs...good luck.
You understand now why I feel the chaos?
You understand why I became frum in such a confining and structured manner?
And I thought that what I saw, the sea of black, the niggunim, the week defined by shabbos coming and going, meant I found a world of law and order in everything...then after settling into a CH basement, being sent to a shaddchun who matched baletschuvahs by what he felt would be sexual compatability (he told me later) I got put with a Polish immigrant who didnt want me because his parents had already rejected the previous convert because she didnt have 'family.'
After the 3rd child was born, his father came to tell me I should be looking for work to help support my husband (I was already pregnant with the 4th) because his son was unable to find enough work...but he didnt get up until 12pm and couldnt keep any job he was offered. He supported his son, my children until his death last year. He left his entire estate to all five children and nothing to either of his sons. When I asked rabonnim for a heter for birth control, the Rav told me lubavitcher women must continue having babies to bring moshiach. my children's clothes came from Rochel, either hand downs from her family or bought for yontif from a shop where she had an account. One year I went in to the shop to buy each girl a dress and when I picked out the least expensive ones, went to the owner to have it put on R.'s bill. He said he would hold them and I should call R. I did, asking what what wrong...she asked how many more years would I be charging clothes for the kids on her account? When was my husband going to go to work?
Do you know what it feels like to be holding a phone receiver and feel as if your skin all over your body is being burned off with acid from the shame?
I suppose its mostly my fault for wanting to be a 'real' lubavitcher, even if my kids only looked the part with clothes for yontif. I should have bought a machine and learned how to sew between nursings, diaper changes and everything else I was learning on the spot with no mother, sister or family for guidance. This isnt self pity, this is a question and answer for me on responsibility and where it falls. Because until a few months ago I was still looking, at age 53, for love and security.
I'm not looking anymore, its not out there. It may be out there for some, its not my fate. Rather than live shunned or as an accepted 'half breed' I'm at a point now where I choose to remain alone. I can't bear to be physically touched but need to be held. I write because I cannot speak of the pain inside me and if I speak I begin to weep. I don't understand cruelty after you have done what you've been told to do, by parents or anyone. It seems its a long life of contradictions, that I may never anticipate an appropriate response as in good for good. I think I understand the game plan, which rules are being used and the sand shifts, again. Basically there are no rules, its everyone for himself. I dont have the stomach to play this way and so am removing myself from participating.
This kind of thinking goes against what I think I understand of Rav Laitman's writings. All of Torah may be summed up as 'do onto others as you would want done to you.' One might add the warning, do and expect nothing. The altruistic or religious would say but of course because you DO for the love of Hashem, not for personal gain. I am asking those people who say that, is our world divided between those who take and those who give? is there no balance? is the balance those who receive and give tzdakah and those who receive tzadakah? while the partnership may have spiritual benefits here and beyond, the ego suffers painfully being on the receiving end.
Since my divorce in '86 I have worked 2 jobs and paid every bill myself. I have nothing but owe nothing. All I wanted was one partner, not boyfriends or relationships, but a husband to build a life with. I davened, begging for something I clearly had no right to ask for. Because the 2x I married I chose men who said one thing and did the opposite, both hiding behind each of their respective religions to marry and then sit back and do as they liked...which was nothing. Maybe's its life in America...maybe the diet or air...maybe women are just too tolerant. I write here what I never said for 45 years to husbands or parents. I write because it has to go somewhere...in a universe of mathematical balances, there must be a place where pain or grief is heard and responded too, where emptiness is filled. Or maybe not.
When my mother died last March, it was in a hospice. She had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. She had moderate alzheimers. For a woman who had spent her life bargaining her way around with great beauty, it was good at the end she was n't fully aware of what was happening to her. But she seemed acutely convinced she had been abandoned. She had not smoked, didnt drink, had a fridge filled with vitamins and ate little meat.
AFter my father died, men only wanted fun, not marriage. No one wanted to support her, just for the thrill of having her in their home, like my father did. She spent the last 2 months without speaking...I tried speaking to her, I wanted her to talk about things, I wanted to know her, to know what was inside her, wanted her to pray, pray anything but to come to peace with herself. I wanted her once to say she loved me, maybe one word that she knew things had been hard, but she hadnt strong enough to do more or better.
She wasn't eating but one afternoon asked for pasta fagiola, a bean and pasta soup. I went home and made it early Sunday morning to take for her dinner. When I got to the hospital at 1:30 she was already dead. No one was there with her. My sister had already gone back to her home after coming for 2 weeks and asking me how I live in Brooklyn at all...she hadn't seen our mother for 30 years. 30 years 30 years. Some people take their pain far away. I didnt know how to cut myself and abandon her to save myself, I waited for her to abandon me first and so she did.
I know there is G-d since I'm about 3. I don't know how I knew, but I felt it and it's stayed with me all my life, no matter the paths or choices, the decisions were always based on what I perceived as the right path, what I thought He wanted. So its a full circle now of being alone. One may say, you are Not alone, there is G-d. Yes and we are human and need human contact unless we are totally insane which I am not. I am too shattered and tired, that is all.
You ask yourself if there is supposed to be lesson for someone born into such circumstances, is the lesson for the child or a residual punishment on the parents...my parents weren't interested in religion at all. Father's family sat shiva when he married mother and we never knew them, they wouldnt speak to us. Mother's family taunted and shunned me and sister as 'jews'. I haven't seen my mother's family for 40 years. My mother refused to attend my Crown Heights wedding, not for religious reasons but because I learned later that I was never expected to marry. I was expected as the eldest to wait to take care of her...old Italian tradition. School friends couldnt come to our home because I never knew how much father had drank or if Mother had anything on under her sheer nightgown or where she had been all day...
That's why I became chassidic...why do something half assed? Commit and go all the way. I had lived thru the torture of 2 religions in one home that neither side was serious about. I wanted to be religious since 3 yrs of age, asked my father to take me to 'temple' and when we got home I went to bed with a fever and my mother screamed for hours and I never got to go again.
When my father died I wanted the rabbi at the conservative shul across the street to intervene with my mother having him cremated. He refused, saying her wishes took precedence halacha. His ashes sat around in my mother's posession for 7 years until I nagged her enough to let me bury him. Lubavitch buried in the special section of a cemetary upstate...I dont even know the name of the cemetary. The family that arranged it wouldnt tell me where it was. But at least he stopped 'visiting' me in dreams. My mother left NYC to live with her mother...my sister and I were told we could do as we liked...14 and 17 with no money, no family in back of us, no education or jobs...good luck.
You understand now why I feel the chaos?
You understand why I became frum in such a confining and structured manner?
And I thought that what I saw, the sea of black, the niggunim, the week defined by shabbos coming and going, meant I found a world of law and order in everything...then after settling into a CH basement, being sent to a shaddchun who matched baletschuvahs by what he felt would be sexual compatability (he told me later) I got put with a Polish immigrant who didnt want me because his parents had already rejected the previous convert because she didnt have 'family.'
After the 3rd child was born, his father came to tell me I should be looking for work to help support my husband (I was already pregnant with the 4th) because his son was unable to find enough work...but he didnt get up until 12pm and couldnt keep any job he was offered. He supported his son, my children until his death last year. He left his entire estate to all five children and nothing to either of his sons. When I asked rabonnim for a heter for birth control, the Rav told me lubavitcher women must continue having babies to bring moshiach. my children's clothes came from Rochel, either hand downs from her family or bought for yontif from a shop where she had an account. One year I went in to the shop to buy each girl a dress and when I picked out the least expensive ones, went to the owner to have it put on R.'s bill. He said he would hold them and I should call R. I did, asking what what wrong...she asked how many more years would I be charging clothes for the kids on her account? When was my husband going to go to work?
Do you know what it feels like to be holding a phone receiver and feel as if your skin all over your body is being burned off with acid from the shame?
I suppose its mostly my fault for wanting to be a 'real' lubavitcher, even if my kids only looked the part with clothes for yontif. I should have bought a machine and learned how to sew between nursings, diaper changes and everything else I was learning on the spot with no mother, sister or family for guidance. This isnt self pity, this is a question and answer for me on responsibility and where it falls. Because until a few months ago I was still looking, at age 53, for love and security.
I'm not looking anymore, its not out there. It may be out there for some, its not my fate. Rather than live shunned or as an accepted 'half breed' I'm at a point now where I choose to remain alone. I can't bear to be physically touched but need to be held. I write because I cannot speak of the pain inside me and if I speak I begin to weep. I don't understand cruelty after you have done what you've been told to do, by parents or anyone. It seems its a long life of contradictions, that I may never anticipate an appropriate response as in good for good. I think I understand the game plan, which rules are being used and the sand shifts, again. Basically there are no rules, its everyone for himself. I dont have the stomach to play this way and so am removing myself from participating.
This kind of thinking goes against what I think I understand of Rav Laitman's writings. All of Torah may be summed up as 'do onto others as you would want done to you.' One might add the warning, do and expect nothing. The altruistic or religious would say but of course because you DO for the love of Hashem, not for personal gain. I am asking those people who say that, is our world divided between those who take and those who give? is there no balance? is the balance those who receive and give tzdakah and those who receive tzadakah? while the partnership may have spiritual benefits here and beyond, the ego suffers painfully being on the receiving end.
Since my divorce in '86 I have worked 2 jobs and paid every bill myself. I have nothing but owe nothing. All I wanted was one partner, not boyfriends or relationships, but a husband to build a life with. I davened, begging for something I clearly had no right to ask for. Because the 2x I married I chose men who said one thing and did the opposite, both hiding behind each of their respective religions to marry and then sit back and do as they liked...which was nothing. Maybe's its life in America...maybe the diet or air...maybe women are just too tolerant. I write here what I never said for 45 years to husbands or parents. I write because it has to go somewhere...in a universe of mathematical balances, there must be a place where pain or grief is heard and responded too, where emptiness is filled. Or maybe not.
When my mother died last March, it was in a hospice. She had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. She had moderate alzheimers. For a woman who had spent her life bargaining her way around with great beauty, it was good at the end she was n't fully aware of what was happening to her. But she seemed acutely convinced she had been abandoned. She had not smoked, didnt drink, had a fridge filled with vitamins and ate little meat.
AFter my father died, men only wanted fun, not marriage. No one wanted to support her, just for the thrill of having her in their home, like my father did. She spent the last 2 months without speaking...I tried speaking to her, I wanted her to talk about things, I wanted to know her, to know what was inside her, wanted her to pray, pray anything but to come to peace with herself. I wanted her once to say she loved me, maybe one word that she knew things had been hard, but she hadnt strong enough to do more or better.
She wasn't eating but one afternoon asked for pasta fagiola, a bean and pasta soup. I went home and made it early Sunday morning to take for her dinner. When I got to the hospital at 1:30 she was already dead. No one was there with her. My sister had already gone back to her home after coming for 2 weeks and asking me how I live in Brooklyn at all...she hadn't seen our mother for 30 years. 30 years 30 years. Some people take their pain far away. I didnt know how to cut myself and abandon her to save myself, I waited for her to abandon me first and so she did.
I know there is G-d since I'm about 3. I don't know how I knew, but I felt it and it's stayed with me all my life, no matter the paths or choices, the decisions were always based on what I perceived as the right path, what I thought He wanted. So its a full circle now of being alone. One may say, you are Not alone, there is G-d. Yes and we are human and need human contact unless we are totally insane which I am not. I am too shattered and tired, that is all.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Long month
The aftermath of going thru divorce, the second marriage was with a goy, has been more than traumatic. Going into it, many flowery phrases and promises, tales about what a blessing his religion said to marry with 'people of the book'. Unfortunately being alone, I bought everything that was said, brought him here, supported him for 3.5 years and found him neither interested in work, fidelity, religion of any kind. His interests were accumulating as much money and women as possible, under the guise that since I cannot bear any more children, he had a right to do as he liked. Those readers knowledgable about what I'm speaking about, will understand. When it became clear the marriage was nothing but a sham, as I found ample evidence in letters, pics and receipts, I cut off all support and filed for divorce.
The courts in NYS are not interested in hearing the truth, there's a formula to follow and lawyers follow the formula and parties parrot what lawyers tell them, lawyers shake hands and everyone goes home to pay their legal fees. And 9 months later, I'm waiting for my papers.
When he was removed, as he had to be, violent and unwilling to leave, I threw everything out. I dont know if this is a 'woman' thing or my own quirk. I packed up my things and began looking for a new apt after 13 years living where I do. Rents are unaffordable, 2 months plus fee, moving expenses and for what...to live among different strangers and start all over again. SO I am in 3 rooms if you count the kitchen, living out of boxes, buying as little as possible.
Hiring a painter means finding 800 to paint 3 rooms. So I bought paint and then became too sick to paint. I was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and in pain even childbirth didnt compare. And then a second attack, then a third one. Now I keep medications in the fridge in case it happens and have stomach tests coming in a week.
On the frum front I was channel surfing and stumbled (!) baruch H'shem on a cable program with kabbalist Michael Laitman. I listened and just cried, it was like drinking water after years of thirst. In fact I cannot recall a teacher in CH except maybe Manis Friedman with an ability to give over knowledge on this level. I've been plagued with a mental problem about toiveling myself. Not for relations but having left CH, married a non jew, I wanted to toivel a last time as part of tschuvah. I am not comfortable feeling I made myself unlcean and now am asking the abishter to hear my prayers, even if I'm not asking for something, but thanking or in gratitude, i feel like a kid who came to the table and didnt wash first.
One of my docs has a frum young woman I love so much. I told her I want to toivel, she knew my husband and understood and found a sephardishe mikveh. I called to make an appointment and to say it was my final toivel and I need help with the right brochas. The woman told me it was not right for me to toivel as I am not married (god forbid I tell her who I was married to) and to breach the laws for the sake of my own desire was not a good thing. I said I understood the law that a woman must toivel a final time after menses finished, she said, only if you're married, goodbye.
Any ravs reading? I dont know who to quiz on this.
Anyway I cried a good cry, told the abishter I'm moving forward and if He makes a path and toiveling is necessary, I'll see it and do it.
I bought (Amazon my bookstore!) 5 books by Rav Laitman. My years in CH and followed by fry 20 yrs has left extremely skeptical of anything smelling of 'cult' or my way or the highway kind of thinking. Part of the self protection comes from growing up in an abusive home, choosing abusive husbands (big surprise there). My need for tschuvah is a circle in which I never stepped away from H'shem or faith, its a life long struggle with dealing with humans. I cannot seem to broach the gap between the great compassion and wisdom of text and the callousness often cruelty of people I've grown up with, worked with, lived with.
I can count on one hand, literally the 4 people who with their kindness directed at me, changed my life, helped in in dire circumstances, none of these are my parents or husbands. They were strangers, the Rebbe being one, Rochel and her family in CH and 2 teachers. I suppose that's more than many people can count in their lives. But when you think overall that a woman of 53 is completely alone now without family, parents dead, freinds never acquired for so many reasons, its frighteningly isolated.
I think this is one reason I stayed in academia...school, learning, books has been a lifelong sanctuary for me. If my experience in CH had been different, less pressure to marry, study for women taken truly seriously rather than a brief baletschuvah 'cleansing' from the velt or the tummedikah parents we were born to, than maybe differnt choices would have been made. I know so many families that opened their homes, wallets and hearts, mostly for love of the Rebbe and what he wanted...but sometimes when you give a plate of food to a starving person and you let him feel its the beggar's portion owed to the beggar and a brownie point for the giver, all the taste and benefits of the food, rot in the begggars stomach, heart...it is as if he never ate at all. And in the end, this was my CH experience, I came away empty except for the connection in yechidus and the answers given by Rebbe.
I am reading Rav Laitman's Basic Concepts in Kabbalah as my first book, only because of its size. Already I am concerned and full of questions. But I will end here and begin g-d willing in the following posts to talk about what those are and maybe find some answers.
If you read this and daven, please say tehillim for me as I do for all yidden, especially in these times. I am rochel bas sarah eminu, the Rebbe corrected me finally after asking my name 3x until he had to tell me when I thought he had not heard my words (the audacity of the ignorant!)
3.15.07
The courts in NYS are not interested in hearing the truth, there's a formula to follow and lawyers follow the formula and parties parrot what lawyers tell them, lawyers shake hands and everyone goes home to pay their legal fees. And 9 months later, I'm waiting for my papers.
When he was removed, as he had to be, violent and unwilling to leave, I threw everything out. I dont know if this is a 'woman' thing or my own quirk. I packed up my things and began looking for a new apt after 13 years living where I do. Rents are unaffordable, 2 months plus fee, moving expenses and for what...to live among different strangers and start all over again. SO I am in 3 rooms if you count the kitchen, living out of boxes, buying as little as possible.
Hiring a painter means finding 800 to paint 3 rooms. So I bought paint and then became too sick to paint. I was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and in pain even childbirth didnt compare. And then a second attack, then a third one. Now I keep medications in the fridge in case it happens and have stomach tests coming in a week.
On the frum front I was channel surfing and stumbled (!) baruch H'shem on a cable program with kabbalist Michael Laitman. I listened and just cried, it was like drinking water after years of thirst. In fact I cannot recall a teacher in CH except maybe Manis Friedman with an ability to give over knowledge on this level. I've been plagued with a mental problem about toiveling myself. Not for relations but having left CH, married a non jew, I wanted to toivel a last time as part of tschuvah. I am not comfortable feeling I made myself unlcean and now am asking the abishter to hear my prayers, even if I'm not asking for something, but thanking or in gratitude, i feel like a kid who came to the table and didnt wash first.
One of my docs has a frum young woman I love so much. I told her I want to toivel, she knew my husband and understood and found a sephardishe mikveh. I called to make an appointment and to say it was my final toivel and I need help with the right brochas. The woman told me it was not right for me to toivel as I am not married (god forbid I tell her who I was married to) and to breach the laws for the sake of my own desire was not a good thing. I said I understood the law that a woman must toivel a final time after menses finished, she said, only if you're married, goodbye.
Any ravs reading? I dont know who to quiz on this.
Anyway I cried a good cry, told the abishter I'm moving forward and if He makes a path and toiveling is necessary, I'll see it and do it.
I bought (Amazon my bookstore!) 5 books by Rav Laitman. My years in CH and followed by fry 20 yrs has left extremely skeptical of anything smelling of 'cult' or my way or the highway kind of thinking. Part of the self protection comes from growing up in an abusive home, choosing abusive husbands (big surprise there). My need for tschuvah is a circle in which I never stepped away from H'shem or faith, its a life long struggle with dealing with humans. I cannot seem to broach the gap between the great compassion and wisdom of text and the callousness often cruelty of people I've grown up with, worked with, lived with.
I can count on one hand, literally the 4 people who with their kindness directed at me, changed my life, helped in in dire circumstances, none of these are my parents or husbands. They were strangers, the Rebbe being one, Rochel and her family in CH and 2 teachers. I suppose that's more than many people can count in their lives. But when you think overall that a woman of 53 is completely alone now without family, parents dead, freinds never acquired for so many reasons, its frighteningly isolated.
I think this is one reason I stayed in academia...school, learning, books has been a lifelong sanctuary for me. If my experience in CH had been different, less pressure to marry, study for women taken truly seriously rather than a brief baletschuvah 'cleansing' from the velt or the tummedikah parents we were born to, than maybe differnt choices would have been made. I know so many families that opened their homes, wallets and hearts, mostly for love of the Rebbe and what he wanted...but sometimes when you give a plate of food to a starving person and you let him feel its the beggar's portion owed to the beggar and a brownie point for the giver, all the taste and benefits of the food, rot in the begggars stomach, heart...it is as if he never ate at all. And in the end, this was my CH experience, I came away empty except for the connection in yechidus and the answers given by Rebbe.
I am reading Rav Laitman's Basic Concepts in Kabbalah as my first book, only because of its size. Already I am concerned and full of questions. But I will end here and begin g-d willing in the following posts to talk about what those are and maybe find some answers.
If you read this and daven, please say tehillim for me as I do for all yidden, especially in these times. I am rochel bas sarah eminu, the Rebbe corrected me finally after asking my name 3x until he had to tell me when I thought he had not heard my words (the audacity of the ignorant!)
3.15.07
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