Amazing family We are

I got an email from WebRing and dont recall contacting them, but am listed on JewishBloggers. Went to their site and found hundreds of jewish blogs. Some ranting, raving, deferential, saddened, angry and always passionate. Too many of the good ones stopped posting. I added TheShaigetz and Being a BT to my bloglist although they dont have recent posts, some of the writing is wonderful.

GhettoBasher@blogspot.com last post was July 2005. If someone reads his blog or knows him, tell him he's in my prayers.

Our stories and journeys unite us, even in their disparities, it is almost always a profound love and respect for yiddishkeit that drives us to search, move forward toward finding answers and peace.

I hope that those no longer posting found the answers they were seeking and didn't give up.

On strike

I'm not sure if this is permanent or a temporary brain fart due to mental fatigue. I stopped coloring my hair, letting the grey come in at the temple, stopped wearing any and all makeup, stopped wearing jewelry except for a mogen david and wear nothing but simple slacks and shirt.
Coat collar pulled up, bag tightly held, eyes down, find a seat, pull out book, avoid all humans.
I'll never make it as a certified yid, I dont like people enough and that's the truth. I like people at a distance, on paper, in theory, as specimens, house plants or pets. You can't expect much more than an occasional lick or new leaf, more than that breeds disappointment.

I've been sick so that's one valid excuse for going on strike. The other excuse is I did all these things before and during marriage and I could've danced naked on Broadway, he would have strayed because he said it was his right to do as he liked. Paint yourself like a tart and bake and cook yourself into exhaustion. He didnt like cotton underwear and would buy these tarty outfits for me to slip into after a 12 hour day. Its not his fault, I married him hoping that endless love and cooking would be his rehab into democratic civilization, what a hoot. My father o"s used to say, can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear...


If Andrea Dworkin were alive I would have written her a love letter. She saved my life last year.I wasnt thinking of thanking her for keeping me alive, but for her insight and strength. I spent the last 6 months I was trapped living with him, reading "Heartbreak" over and over. Read it like medicine to keep on track, to move forward, keep going and focused. Then a colleague at work was in a funk and I gave it to her for strength.
I think it was too raw for her...she never said a word about reading it. I rarely part with books unless it seems like a fit, I hope the book found a reader and a home.

I'm so tired...

Shabbos, work

I can count on 3 fingers how many events the college has scheduled on Friday nights in the last 15 years. I have one tomorrow night and one next Friday.

Alumni have asked for years that we NOT schedule reunions on the weekend so those who are shomer shabbos can attend. We wouldnt think of planning something on a sunday.

If I had any balls I would take my portable licht and bentsch tomorrow night in the ballroom and freak out the reform pseudo 'jews' and the goyim who have something to say about any religion. But I am a coward, I'm sure that's clear by now. The same people who turned their faces from me for wearing a scarf when I married, will be just as nasty to see me trying to observe judaism. Did anyone ever ask questions, speak to me...side way glares, smirks, gossip traveled back thru the grapevine.

The truly religious people will be in their own homes, not swilling liquor and watching awards presented for stuff no one cares about. We can't even get news covereage this crap is so meaningless. I wont eat there with my health the way it is now and I dont drink. I'm not fun. This is why men find me a pain in the ass. Women are supposed to be flitty bits of T&A with occasional brain when men need some info, otherwise shut up and put out. One of my VPs is a woman. I dont fall in love with people, I think I have a mother complex regarding this woman. She's like this brilliant, beautiful 57 year old...we can finish each other's sentences. I've been in meetings around a table and no one catches things she says except me and we laugh. If I found a man like that I dont know...I never have, maybe they dont exist. Even her, she has a male boss and defers to him, jumps when he calls, he makes her cry she told me once, but he's the Boss. She has a cell phone and is on 24/7 call for him. How do people live like that? Is that professionalism or something bizarre. She was an English teacher and then began writing speeches and copy for him in a corporate setting and moved up with him. She's like a buffer and previewer of people and facts so he doesnt have to think or speak to anyone not worth his time, she vetts everything. She makes over $100k to do that and has an expense account. He makes over $300K and has one. They quibbled over a $5k raise to put my salary on par where it should have been but wasn't and then gave me $3k while dumping a mess into my job description.


I keep having this fantasy about working in a flower shop. To go from the fake world of creating copy about people who mean nothing except to their self inflated sense of themselves, to simple daily making of small bits of honest beauty making a single person happy for a few days.


My second daughter is making aliyah in 2 months. I'm happy for the state of Israel...but I have 2 daughters now who've left the family and I dont know if its for the right reasons. The boys sure aren't interested in pitching in and going over. If M decides to go too, it will be as if I never had children. Life in CH will have been for nothing, my life will amount to nothing. I sent M a check this morning with a letter, telling her we have to move forward with either school or making some decisions about her future and I would like to help her in any way I can. I dont want to drop money down a deep hole for nothing, they all received a hefty inheritance and everyone is tightlipped about where their money is or went. I just dont want to see her married for lack of other options. If I wait for their father to wake up, it'll be another 20 years wasted if I live that long.

I should have titled my blog 'Going Home' because that's what I want to do...this life is enough already.

Rage turned inward

Something clicked tonight.
I lived with a man, married and took care of a man, broughtr him to this country, paid for everything, sponsored him, paid exorbitant medical bills for illnesses no one knew he had, paid his credit card and cell phone that he used ran up and over to call other women. Sat home as he took 'vacations' to see women in other states within the first 2 years of our marriage, was humiliated as women sent him gifts of pajamas, cameras, pics and love notes. Women who called him while he was out with me, at home with me, me cooking in the kitchen for him to eat,while I was out working to support us, while I tried to sleep in a room with the TV on silent and flickering all nnight, with the computer keyboard tapping away all night, while he sat with only his bikini pants on, his bare chest pointed at his webcam so she could see him all night or the women in the rooms who posed naked and did whatever people asked them to do, I lived with this man. When I asked this man to stop having a relationship with other women, he said no one tells him what to do, not even his father. When she kept calling even though she knew what she was doing to me, he told her not to worry I was a good girl...he would take care of everything. I refused to speak to him. I called her his whore and he smashed me across the face. In the kitchen as I was cooking our dinner, first one side that landed on my ear and again.
That was the second time he hit me. But when it happened I understood I meant nothing, I was nothing, this invisble woman had taken over my husband's brain, life. The third and last time was when I hit came months later after I had already been going thru a silent and deadly withdrawal, making decisions and silently preparing to break. I removed everything, slowly, day by day in garbage bags, one drawer at a time. I found my letters in his suitcase, stuffed, letters from my children and old college friends, as if he wa collecting some kind of evidence only he could understand...letters from kids and family about thier father, the divorce, things he knew nothing about. It was in this time he was taking calls all hours of the day and night, never letting the cell out of his sight or hand. Going into the bathroom to speak as if he had to shit all the time. Always mumbling and turning up the Tv when I was cooking, like I couldnt tell why the volume suddenly went up. I went into the bedroom and told him he didnt have to turn up the volume to speak to his whore, I knew who he was talking to, just talk it doesnt mean anyting anymmore. Right in his face, up front, direct, just the way he couldnt do it. He punched me so hard I lost my hearing for almost 2 days and smashed my glasses. I lunged at him screaming if he ever hit me again I would kill him, I told him to never touch me ever again. EVer.
I called domestic violence services and some crappy counseling came out of that, no emergency housing, its basically a program for poor minorities with kids. White working women stupid enough to get hit, seem to deserve it. There was no where to go. The judge who first heard my request for an order of protection was black from the islands, she gave me the order and said he could stay in the apartment. For 2 weeks he was on the phone telling anyone who would listen how I was messing up his life with an OP.
I spoke to J at work. J made an offer to get rid of him. J said in this situation a broken leg would only be problematic long term. This was a situation that needed to be cleaned up in one go and dumped. Told me to think about it and to understand it was not something that would be easy, but it would get rid of the problem, permanently. I rememebered when in CH a similar offer was made because husband wasn't working was doing nothing and R said a work over by the community guys with a message to get his ass out and take care of his family, nmight straighten him out. I was appalled then, thinking how do frum even think like this. 20 years later, someone cared enough to put his life on the line for me to get rid of someone who kit and abused me and the trust I had in him. And again I refused it.
I got the impotent OP a second time and he had to leave. Outside the courtroom my lawyer shook his hand, patted him on the back telling him to be a nice guy and stay out of trouble, it would be the best thing for his future.
I went home to an empty apartment that was already packedmostly and threw everything away that had accumulated, things he brought in from someone else discards, curb trash of chairs, tables...anything rather than work and buy something for our life together. I got garbage.
I spent months clutching the pepper spray J gave me for protection. I keep seeing his black volkswagon even when its a subarau, i hear a whistle and hav to hold myself from looking around to see if its him calling me. I look for him still, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of disbelief we are apart. But I realized tonight that I had an opportunity to exact justice, revenge for a second time for being abused and refused that protection. My verbal excuse for refusing was that in front of G-d, it was a hilul hashem. But there's a part of my inside aware that I refused because I felt unworthy that anyone should go do something so clear, so loving, solely to protect me, that I refused to have it done.
He is not far from where I live. His mail came once in a bill he left for me to pay. I looked at the label and he's walking distance. No matter where I go in a place where I know people for 20 years, he can be lurking anywhere, I could be followed anytime and if anything happened I dont have his address. He kept his cell number, he just doesnt answer when i ring to see if he still has it.
What I realized is that instead of killing him literally, I tried killing myself--i stopped eating and lost 40 lbs in 3 months. THat's when the gastritis started, from starving and my insides eating themselves up listening to him talk to some bitch because my hair fell into a dish of food, or I hadn't fixed plates of fried fish, develilled eggs or mombari *stuffed sheeps intestines) for him to gorge on while talking to his schiav online while I worked or when he got hungry at 2am. I am sick now because I didnt have him killed. All the impotence, the rage at being punched around, the insult of listening to a man you call your husband take calls from bitches as if its his right to do so in his home, that his wife has to pay for becuase she his sponsor...thats how he counted it. I put up with it and then when the chnace came to fix it, I didnt fix it, I left it to the impotent court system to leave him go on with his life....and I will look over my shoudler as long as I stay in this apt or at my job. This is why I'm sick physically sickm filkled wikth fear paranoia and rage. This is why I stopped talking to anyone and stay mostly silent, Its not simply a lack of things to say the gavonnes around here, I'm always on hyper alert now, jumping at any noise, feeling other worldly and outside myself, detached, sometimes numb and other times like i ahve no skin on my bones I feel so nakedly raw with emotion. I stopped talking but its clear there nothing left to say on any subject. The only subject I seem to be involved with internally is hearing the next cue, the next stop sign of where to go when to do it.
I never thought of myself so devout that after being beaten for calling a woman breaking my marriage a whore that I would feel ashamed to accept another man would stand up for me and break my husband's head open. I'm repeatin myself but I need to write this clearly. I wanted him to die to feel how he made me sufer. I was given that chance without questions, with a pricetag, free of charge. And that the court refused to acknowledge the adultry, was not allowed to see the pictures of him with her, the cards addressed to beloved husband, the cell bills and jewejlkry reeipts, I was fucked not only by him, I fucked myself and the court fucked me good too by telling him only' bye, have a nice life.'
Do you understand what I'm writing...there is no responsbility, there is no retribution, there is no revenge, there is a woman like many who got played and I was suposed to understand my job wajust hims do at home, while he played because he wanted a wife he could rely on to carry his home an take care of his son, while he played. I hope the irony of it makes you as I cry.
I am sick, physcally imploding with grief at finding myself alone again, separated from a spouse I trusted my life and thoughts with only to find them sharedwith internet whores for discussions I was never a par of, it was
sharing and opening up his marraige to another 'wife' that I was supposed to gradually understand was his righ to take because I couldnt have more children.
His son was diagnosed with gran mal epilepsy in 2005. I can just imagine what idiot made the finding and what kind of garbage pills he getting from the mosque instead of the pharmacy. He blamed his god for giving him a son with epilesy and a wife 'no one wants' A man who never prayed was crying in a prayer to god why he was being punished with marriage to me and crippled son. I had more clearly when the offer came to finish him, it would have served the future of this child well. He would remain in his country with family and either sell fruit or junk on the street, find a young wife and live his simple life in peace. I did all of us a big disservice by not accepting, because I turned all this rage,impotence and injustice in on myself and this is whats eating my insides out.
What is wrong with women...or our we so civilized now that these things are done to us but we return this filthy abuse and behaivour with a gentle pat on the head?This is why men walk awayto he next whore waiting for them...there's aline out there for every cock on parade.
I tell you it be in the next life before I ever have one in m y life or bed.

Big 40

been down and out with illness...mostly stress related
tests show me depleted in critical vitamins which explained some problems
1 doctor prescribed therapuetic vitamins which i took for 4 days then went to work with all other 7 million dwarfs on the subway today, got to office with rumblings starting and by 10am had full blown gastritis, once again. waves of pain, nausea, pain by 2pm had me doubled over my desk, i packed it in and had to go home. we have a major event on friday and i was writing material for it. i dont know that i can make it in wednesday to finish.
Gastro surgeon called and said take your meds and take the vitamins and if things dont slow dosn we'll do a CAt.
This is what comes from leaving the coccoon of CH to live alone in the secular world, putting yourself thru school, working non stop to stay alive and keep a roof.
I called my youngest daughter M3), the one who would only leave for day care if she could wear her shabbos shoes. Now 24, she still has a shoe fetish only its more sophisticated. I called because I was thinking again. Thinking how the playing field is level down for me and J, their father. No other spouses, no child support payments, no grandfather with an inheritance to play games or threaten with, and n...o one is in the middle of CH under a microscope. There's just 2 parents with 5 children, physically grown and emotionally stuck in a time warp. SO I came to the conclusion if maybe the parents can grow up and put the past behind them, that we can try to salvage the kids before they end up as screwed up as we are.
None of them have married, a couple have made some poor choices in relationships which they finally got rid of and the youngest broher and sister it appears will be moving in together and share an apartment. I called M3 to ask her thoughts about me calling her father in an attempt to move forward as a unit and start parenting in a serious way. She was speechless and excited. We talked...she adrift even after we spoke 3 years ago about school. She paralyzed in being able to make a decision about getting ino debt for college with no job guarantee...doesnt want to be a wage slave. We talked, but she had to leave for work. She didnt feel it was something the kids had to comment on but a decision for me and J to decide to communicate.

By 9:30 I had gathered the cohones, hot tea and cigarettes to dial his number. We talked for an hour, if I had called earlier we might have gone more but he needed to sleep for work. Being J he just had to ask how much money I was making. BEing me I felt a need to excuse any money I had that he didnt have...as if child support might suddenly pop up next week.

You know on another day or time I would have found it really intrusive, but thats him, thats his bottom line. And I dont make much but I can live and pay my bills. I asked him if he felt we could move forward and put the divorce and rancor behind us for those 5 kids who need some direction and us...frankly they need their parents. Oldest daughter made aliyah and my middle daughter is supposed to be going within 2 months. I honestly dont know if the either have gone to Israel as their new home and life by choice or becuase they dont feel roots here. That leaves M3 here with 2 brothers and both parents in separate states, other than hers. She is thinking how to go to school to excape the work that doesnt satisfy her...as well as having to work at night.
J gave me a limip speech that he's happy and proud of the kids and told me what each one is doing. It was clear listening to him talk about L in Israel that she bought he version of what she does. But talking to her siblings, she's not dealing with relaity and is being used by the IDF or local police and not being paid. I dont know who to believe, L couldnt wait to go back and be there, its her home now. I am only filled with happiness, shep nachas even, that she feels so strongly. THe problems of the children were glosssed over with paltitudes and I told him this is a major reason we divorced, generalities that never addressed issues that needed serious attention. It was a first call and I didnt call to hammer him about the marriage, I want to work with him if he's willing to help our kids.

After his second divorce the wife scandalized him via loshon hora when he went out on shidduchim. He didnt know where the poison was coming from and was about to propose but the girl pulled out. The rabbi that introduced them asked him who or why and he gave the rabbi the phone of his ex! He called and spoke to her and called J back. She's the one causing you problems he told J. Imagine almost 10 years after divorce and she didtn even have kids with him and wasn't very nice to my kids, so what's her beef?I guess its the woman scorned syndrome... He asked if I was all finished with my marraige etc...'because I'm still single' I cant believe he would entertain marrying me again, I can't think about marrying anyone. The idea of having sex, being that close and trusting someone is unimaginable again. I'm exhausted...anyway I hope at least we can meet either in NY or his town to sit down and jsut talk before seeing the kids.


long day, alot accomplished but only first steps, imerz Hashem it will become what it should be for the children.

deep inside

There's a place inside me that's already shut down. I dont know if this is from depression or from having to deal with too much alone, for too long.
Who's to say its too much? The Abishter only gives us what we can handle...?
If a person become so ill, mentally and physically, 'too much' seems to be a quantifying measure.

This year has capped many years of endings and losses. We say every ending is a new beginning, I'm still looking for the door out of a long difficult chapter.

I'm writing this because I know someone will read it and recognize what I'm saying. I feel like I've already died. The kindness of a doctor I saw erev shabbos made me realize afterwards that what I've wanted and been waiting to hear in the last few months, is for a doctor to confirm what I already feel. I've been waiting for a terminal diagnosis of anything, so the pain will have a deadline, an end.

Going thru the motions of work and doc appointments, is all done on auto pilot. I am so removed from what's going on in my office and could care less about raising money for people and issues based on nothing but vanity and emptiness. I'm in a state of just waiting life out. I'm not able to 'do the right thing' and volunteer or help with anyone else's misery to make my own seem less. Grief, loss has overwhelmed me with paralysis. Stillness and as little contact with people as possible, avoids further loss, further grief, less chance of losing further control over my life.
And with all of this, I want work that has meaning, to help with something that will change and better other people's lives. To contribute something other than collecting a paycheck for pandering to the selfish egomaniacs I write for. I was given a gift that still hasnt found its voice or use in the right way.

Its an exhaustion from life I find difficult to write or describe. Unless I can change something so fundamental within my self as well as my living situation and the stresses of trying to survive alone--and I dont know that I can--all the meds, vitamins, docs, and religion will not solve the core issues of emotional and financial poverty that's allowed illness to develop.

J...
unlike some blogs perhaps, mine is my life as it is.
went alone to hospital, came home alone on subway after surgery.
made some tea, shaking from exhaustion fell asleep. got up made chicken soup.
returned to hospital next day by subway to see another doctor who's trying to sort out why i'm fading

inbetween the siddurim, tehillim, seforim, emunah, i'm still battling the nagging voice asking what's the point.

birthday 4.19

Mother did not like us to celebrate birthdays...if we received presents from classmates, we had to give had any gifts. ..give back presents. If Champ stopped by house with some oil
paintings, lampsa, trapestries, jewelry, transistor radios off some truck, those were okay to accept.We unwrapped everything and Mother told me to pass presents to all the children to take home.
When we giggled a few days before her birthday and went to Dad for money, he wanted know where we were going to buy her gift. Ardsley Dress Shop, but of coooors. They would sit us 10 and 7 yrs old on the satin armchairs and bring out the dreses and we selected 2 and a robe, everything would be boxed and delivered for her birthday I won't bore you with the results, except to say we knew her taste and the sales ladies knew what the game was, so they showed us what she wanted and we picked from her selections. When the clothes arrive,the pink tweed suit is not really her taste and the deep wine colored house coat is too modest and heavy...but Is loved it because it was like a royal cloak in weight and spread....

In other years she simplly said she wasnt celebrating an y more birthdays...she stayed 36 for more than 5 years.

Husband #1 didnt celebrate much of anything except purim when he put my clothes and makeup on and danced on the table in shul drinking mashka while he yelled when they read Haman's name.
Husband #2 said his family doesnt celebrate birthdays. While I was in Egypt I shopped and baked a large strawberry cream cake. The whole family who didnt celebrate birthdays came to eat it and take pics.

My children...I tried to buy them, even a special nosh or candy and always made a birthday cake, if we didnt have money for toys or clothes.

When husband #2 had his last birthday with me, I went to Men's WEarhouse and we shopped for some sharp clothes for his work. He loved them so much, they looked so good, he kept them in their plastic sleeve and didnt wear them. His lady friend sent him a miniature video camera so he could take pics and put them online for her. While the clothes sat untouched in the closet, he spend time playing with his new camera. This box was the one that contained the cards and pics of "Our dear Stepfather' and "My beloved husband"


My father's favorite birthday cake was strawberry shortcake, we would buy it for him from Cake Masters and sometimes Mother would make him bar b que chicken (special family recipe)

Tomorrow is my first birthday completely alone in many years. No parents, no husband, no kids. I have minor surgery scheduled and they dont want to do it unless someone can pick me up. Which parent should I call? Which husband will come to take me home? Which of the children will stop by to see if I need some tea...a blanket.

If there's no one to hear a celebration, is it a celebration?
fasting for 2 days
very tired

"No one thought...

...it would have come to this"

to have thought it might come to this
even One would have needed to deal with the pain
barely hidden... it was
sharded into poems
the plays, where light was blocked, far
faraway
was a life mapped
yet unseen by any audience
a wound, undressed
...its life agape
then running
out of it, emptying
then reloading images
of a life itself
finally contained
how grief rests
..

in frames frozen
explaining the unutterable
sorrows
no one thought
would come to this


4.18.07

Evil...How we use this word

We mourn collectively but we assign Evil individually.

In the aftermath of the massacres at Virginia Tech, the media again becomes an electronic hearth to gather us all and purge a nation's litany of social issues, examine what happened, assign responsibility and determine if the word "Evil" applies.

Being older now, having lived a bit, traveled alot, known many and set aside much of my liberal education, I still must ask some questions before assigning the word Evil.

Because Evil=Satan and the Satan has a very specific agenda, no remorse, no conscience, doesnt suffer. The Satan doesnt get depressed, isn't preoccupied with rich kids versus poor kids, social injustices or write graphically violent plays. The Satan doesn't take warped segments of a particular religion and use them in twisted sentences to write a manifesto explaining his thoughts before taking other lives.

Human beings do these things. Humans who have suffered in ways beyond their individual capacity to endure further suffering. Humans who cannot bear the deafness that meets the pain devouring their insides and minds. Humans who cannot tolerate the physical and psychic pain of depression that finds no relief.

We do not yet know the medications this boy was taking. Depression medication incorrectly prescribed can take a depressed person, young or old, to the brink of suicide and to a mental precipice so-called 'normal' people cannot ever comprehend. A country that cannot offer sanctuary and treatment for the vast numbers of mentally ill, mild or severe, that still looks at any mental issue as a stigma, a culture indisputably immersed in violence and sexuality, where wealth defines human value and status, such a country might well question where responsibility lies when a member of its society does not, cannot or will not fit in...and then breaks down.

If we continue to think of one person's capacity to destroy lives without apparent reason, as something only The Other could do and all responsibility lies solely on him, not any one of us, we forget many lessons in history...and those who choose not to remember the lessons of history, are doomed to repeat them.

Ethnocentric Education in NY

Seems my childhood experience growing up and receiving an education in the NYC public school system is nothing but a memory now. In the 60s, you went to the elementary and Junior High schools nearest your home. By high school, if you wanted to take a particular foreign language, nursing or other specialty trade, you could apply to a specific school. The system was fairly streamlined, my mother had absolutely no involvement other than 2-3 appearances at PTA meetings during elementary school years.

We had art lessons 3 times a week with a designated art teacher, we had music and orchestra 3 times a week and students had the option of coming earlier for extra music practice. We had dedicated and involved teachers, for the most part, there were plenty of weirdos...Mr. A who came to class with a bag of transistor radios, toys to give away just to get kids to sit still and listen to his grammar lessons. Or Mr. L. our frum science teacher who took some of the 14 year old girls aside (self included) for 'trips' in his car, making suggestive remarks. Or Ms. S., a frum young woman who kept ducking out of our room to see her fellow teacher down the hall and at the end of the year anounced they were engaged, waggling her ring for everyone to see. She taught us English or CORE as it was called then, we read and discussed poetry, literature, attempted to learn grammar and were given writing assignments.

Grammar was something never taught well or seriously or it just never penetrated...kinda like algebra. Math was a bytch. We learned to read using the old fashioned phoenics system, that was later tossed out for some new teaching method that has clearly failed because 2006 research shows that 40% of kids who are in NYC high schools are illiterate in math and english.

We were expected to come to school clean, dressed, with supplies and books. We were expected to do the homework we were assigned each day. Twice a week we had 'assembly' and the entire school piled into the auditorium where the flag was saluted and we 'pledged allegiance', we heard the reading of one Psalm (!) and Mrs. A sang a song, something she clearly practiced for church on Sundays. We sat through announcements of events, meetings or things to do with the school, sometimes students were recognized for special achievements. You were expected to sit at your desk, do your work and not open your mouth unless called on. Our teachers were mostly Jewish with a few Italian and Irish. Every teacher, even the ones who probably shouldnt have been around kids for a variety of reasons, worked their butts off, took time to talk, listen and get us to learn. Teachers also had a dress code that was tznius and appropriate for the role modeling and work they were doing.

I'm writing all this down because I'm reading, somewhat tangentially, about the structuring of the public school system. Schools appear to be 'smaller' and more self contained and locally supervised, but art, music and similar courses are now regarded as luxuries. Schools raise money for essentials like books and teaching supplies. Kids are crowded usually 40 in a class, in buildings that are not only dirty and in disrepair but in some cases falling apart.

Setting all this aside, how did we come to the point of having ethnocentric schools, in a public school system? Years ago bi-lingual teaching was the big thing because you couldnt burden or expect a child to 'give up' his language (Spanish was the only language that appeared to be an issue) and learn English if his parents only spoke their native language at home. And such kids were failing tests, so teach them in their native language and all would be well.

The school system has taken bi-lingual education another major step forward now and are offering ethnic immersion programs where students can select to attend a school that is 'chinese' or 'gay' in its orientation and perspectives. Being proposed and it to be looks like a shoe-in, is a middle school to teach the arab perspective. The Director of this proposed school, who claims she's of yemeni extraction, says its not a school for Islam, but the school WILL teach colonialism and the historical issues pertinent to arabs and will teach in arabic. There are schools already that exist to teach arabs, Al-Nour is a respected school in Brooklyn has been written about in the media. Arabs do not have to be religious to attend, arabic is taught, as are secular subjects. Al-Nour would probably love to expand and become a model of what arabic parents, teachers and students could accomplish.

Years ago, parents wanting targeted education accentuating one's family history as christians, jews etc. could opt to send their kids to either a Time Out program once a week, while remaining in public school, where kids could learn both religious and historical aspects of their religion or just send them to parochial schools. One usually learned about one's ethnic history from living and celebrating holidays with family. It was never the job of the public education system to teach a child how to be 'chinese' or 'arab' or 'gay' which is what the schools have set themselves up to do now.

One never hears the term 'melting pot' anymore, because it's probably considered politically incorrect, like corporal punishment, mentioning G-d in school in any manner, dress codes, or expecting teachers to actually role model and not act and dress like 'buddies.'

While we're distracted with the butchery in Darfur (where was everyone during the butchery in Rwanda?) and other non-jewish issues, in our own backyards, kids are attending schools we pay taxes for to immerse in cultures and perspectives of countries that have some of the worst human rights violations in religious, economic and gender abuses on record. The gay high school that opened 4 years ago in Manhattan on 8th and Broadway to great hoopla, was closed in '06 to due poor academic performance.

Islam does not differentiate between political and religious ambitions. Tell me how a child in NY, living in a muslim home or Copt home, will be taught the history of arab butchery, invasions and forced conversions and return home to families where fathers quite often have taken more than one wife, using the mosque network to marry polygamously 'off the books' while having the main wife on civil record to collect benefits--tell me how these configurations will be put into historical context for kids raised in a country where women are theoretically (!) not subjected to this kind of manipulation and abuse?

Will kids be taught one thing in school and laugh it all off when they get home and discuss it, if at all with their parents? Or have our schools been so corrupted by individuals and their political interests that what is taught, doesnt follow a curriculum that addresses children's long term needs, but rather, fosters the ignorance, economic issues and abuses their parents disdained in their own countries to run here, and now they've arrived, want to retain a schizophrenic lifestyle and demand the educational system help them do that?

The same ways in which middle east Arabs are learning that behind the cowboy swaggering is porous borders and liberal policies wanting to appease them and show them how wonderful democracy is, too many immigrants coming to America are learning how to spend their energies focusing on manipulating democratic loopholes and benefits solely to further their own self serving agendas.

What's to be seen, is whether such ethnocentric 'intellectual' indulgences will eventually harvest a generation of havoc (substitute terror if you like), so entrenched in our own society, that issues in the middle east will look, in hindsight, like child's play.

Jen

Your note brought tears.
Your response is why I write what I do.
You are in my prayers.
Thank you for such kindness.
R

Yom HaShoah for the Slightly Disconnected among Us

Yom Hashoah...A day to Remember, or 'Never Forget' as Meir Kahanae o's used to warn us.
Remembering something can be hard when you feel disconnected from the klal. It becomes an intellectual exercise rather than something in the blood, something instinctive and protective. If you're far from family and other yidden, it can be general, instead of personal. Yom HaShoah has to be personal if it will continue to mean anything and have power to motivate yidden to be strong, separate and united.
It has to be personal because the destruction of jews is a mission that continues and is growing. Every yid, cursed, spat on, despised who has suffered antisemitism, lost their lives simply because they are yidden, been murdered only for being yidden, had their beards cut off, been humiliated, isolated, pushed into camps, ghettos, ovens, had their lives, belongings, children and futures stolen from them in ways and with methods unknown to civilized societies prior to the Nazis y"s are now historical models for the arab world to emulate as they continue to call for the obliteration of world jewry.
Nothing, but nothing has changed.
The hate is subdued, dressed up in intellectual propaganda, but barely. It is contained but not for long...its a dam weakening and the right hands of tzadikkim that once walked among us, are no longer physically with us to help hold back the hate, rally us in prayer and guide us. Yom HaShoah has become a personal requirement for all living jews.
To remember those who have been killed, means not only honoring them, but holding a place, a future for those to come. Its not a matter of sitting and saying tehillim, it has to be more. It has to be a commitment to chinuch and to people around us. It has to include a seachange in values that is less defined by what one has accumulated materially to what one has done to build spiritually on a personal level and for one's community. Starting with one's self and building outwards. It is NOT about how much tzaddekah is given to build something with your name on it, its about quietly looking right outside your dalad amis to see who is hungry, who is lonely, who is a jew and doesnt know, what being a jew is. It is about reaching out to those closest, nearest and spiritully furthest from the center of the klal and frumkeit. It's about understanding and acceptance. YomHaShoah means nothing if its displaced with discussions about 'other genocides' and 'other injustices.'
There was and remains no greater injustice than was perpetrated on the Jewish people, there is no Holocaust to compare to the one our families went through. The world is tired of our righteous claim to this distinction? This is not our problem, it is the world's problem. To equate Judaism and Zionism now with Nazism y"s is another bit of political skulldugery and a mere rehash of ongoing antisemitism. Every discussion, every move, every dollar, every bit of energy spent on other wars, peoples and fights that are NOT ours, is a battle diverted and a distraction of what we need to attend to in our own backyard.
Arabs and muslims (not always the same thing!) will continue to butcher and slaughter mindlessly because its inherent in both the culture, the politics and dare I say it about the 'religion of peace'-- and in Islam.
I lived with it and among it for 15 years. Its a blind faceless enemy innocculated early with hate by parents and in school. It may not be evident right away. It does not always comes direct and immediate. But when the choice has to be made, blood is first and antisemitism is second.
"The enemy of my enemy, is my brother" an arab expression that we see coming to fruition today as the discombobulated arab world tries to set aside its pathetic machismo indian chief mentality and unite against Israel and the Jewish world in general. Their own barbarism, their own theft and destruction of their peoples, their internal religious messes and abuses against women in particular, now has a structured agenda: get rid of the Jews and all the problems are solved.
We mock the anxiousness of Abe Foxman and other people like him, warning us its happening again. We prefer to think as many did previously, it can't happen here, it can't happen again. We look to political incompetents in the White House and beyond, constantly analyzing who is a 'friend' to Israel and Jews, who will protect us.
We still haven't learned completely the lessons of remembering if we look to goyim, strangers to do the work we must do for and among ourselves. I feel badly for the people of Darfur. I feel worse for the settlers displaced by the government of Israel who sold them out and have ruptured lives in ways we only thought strangers could do to us. I feel badly for Ethopians, but I feel worse for our own jewish youth who have become strangers among us, estranged from religion, family, meeting in places to talk about their disconnection and apathy, their sense of betrayal and loss and loneliness.
We have so much work to do, 'remembering' is only the beginning.

Big world, small life

Was in Supreme Court Thursday. Table in lobby had copies of "Hamodia." First time I've seen it, took a copy as they were free and read it Friday evening after davening.

It puts alot of issues I'm dealing with into a different perspective. I became frum and was magired by Lubavitch. I lived the only manner of frumkeit I knew, as a lubavitcher. My education in CH was slim to nothing, but I blame myself mostly. I thought all of learning was going to be with the same passion and brilliance as M. Friedman taught us in MN and clearly that wasn't the case. I loved the Rebbe z'tl. He was the father I lost early, and I felt small and somehow unclean standing in front of him, he always took time for anything I needed, sometimes even before I asked. I dont know how many 'life' lubavitchers can say the same. But having said that and having read Hamodia, I see that the jewish world is huge, brilliant, compassionate for the most part, thriving and alive.
Its not the world of whiney adolescent writing depicted in the Jewish Press. The frum world of Lakewood, Boropark, Williamsburg is a world I never knew and a place I could never be a part of...because its a world of yechus and family, pedigree and accumulated respect, learning, parents, simchas, mitzvahs...its a life inside and I remain on a periphery looking in.


This was the world I thought I was coming into when I tried to become frum in '73. The jewish community written about in Hamodia appears functional, not dysfunctional. There wasn't any obsessive writings about messiahs or groupiness or cultiness. There is profound respect for rabbis, but also clear acknowledgement of personal responsibilty, duties to one's relationship to Hashem and other yidden. It may be a community joke about alot of gemachs, but you dont know what it is to see from the outside, what kind of love, whether its yerushamyim or some other purpose, people are busy taking care of 'family.'

I called the woman I met on Thursday, coming out of court and as I went into the subway. I called to wish her only a gut shabbos. I didnt want anything, only to connect in a way to thank her for speaking with me. I didnt want a meal or to bother her. Her husband answered and I asked him just to tell I called to say good shabbos. I dont know that he did, she didnt call and its motzeh shabbos and nothing. So its okay...I guess I would have been surprise if she had.

I was careful to bentsch on time, daven and cooked before shabbos. I bought a book by Rabbi Hayim H. Donin called To Pray as a Jew because although I can still read in hebrew and yiddish I never learned really how to daven correctly. I know some of it, but if I had known what I'm reading now...in davening, history maybe if my chinuch had been solid, choices that I made would have been very different.
Chinuch seems more critical than ever, and will remain a survival factor for coming generations. Its not just an issue of remembering the Holocaust, we have to somehow imbue faith and make faith a central part of jewish life in every aspect. Its not about turning people on and then forgetting the small details of everyday life that makes being jewish, Jewish. So many people in my time who became frum lacked family, a core issue in judaism. Having a mashpiah is not the same thing. While passion in spirituality drew me to chassidus...my nature needed a misnagid education and discipline.
Children raised by jewish parents who are thoroughly educated in spirit and intellect about judaism cannot possibly succumb to the insanity taught in universities and the possibility of intermarriage. I am convinced from my experience, if jewish youth strays from the religion and gift of being born a jew, its out of ignorance, its because something was not taught right or at all and likely not at home.

So I am trying to teach myself now, b'ezrat hashem, to be a jew. It doesnt matter now that I am older or too old. I am relearning how to daven, reading parshah, small things. I need a nusach ari siddur like we used to have. the small fat ones with everything, tehillim, rashi....maybe in BoroPark.

I would normally look at an enormous task as this seems at a late age and after wandering about in the world, but its actually a relief. I questioned myself about this very closely, bizaare as that may sound, because I need to be sure its not a rebound reaction to other personal issues I'm cleaning up. I want frumkeit to come from the right source inside me because I do not ever again want to be in a state of denial with myself, with others or in front of G-d about who I am and what I believe.

New Day or End of Days?

I went to court this morning to pick up my divorce decree that had been signed and filed last fall.
I asked in the county clerk's office if it normally took almost 5 months to notify a petitioner that their divorce had been signed. It had been signed and filed only 4 days after. I was told, "your lawyer dropped the ball."
I had been in court with a lawyer (mine had assigned someone to cover for her, she was out of the country) on the 2nd order of protection, had stood in front of a judge for the 3rd time asking for him to be removed and had not known that my divorce decree had already been signed and completed.
I would assume that had the judge known I was no longer married and living with my abuser who the court acknowledged as such by giving me 2 OPs and ordering him to get out, that asking for removal would not have been an ordeal, but would have meant a phone call to 911.
My legal fees had been paid up. My paperwork had been in order with plenty of evidence of his shenanigans and my lawyer was a female.
I will say no more on this subject because there is nothing left to say about the legal system or lawyers. The gentleman kind enough to speak with me for a few minutes said, "We hate lawyers here and don't forget, judges are also lawyers, its a big club." Verbatim.

I left the county clerk's office and the building and stood in the pouring rain, not ready to get to the office. I finally went into the subway and as I was about to go thru the turnstile a woman stops me and says...What's your name? Did you ever live in Crown Heights?
I didnt recognize her and feeling sieged by the questions asked "Who are you?"
20 years after leaving CH, moments after receiving my divorce from a goy, I meet a woman who had been a neighbor. She (said) she couldnt believe she was seeing me, she had only been talking about me days earlier because every pesach I made her pesadike chocolate cakes and we exchanged baked goods. She remembered my name. I knew her name but not her face
...only I wanted to keep her there, to hold onto her, keep her talking as if maybe I could make the past 20 years disappear, fold time into a tiny ball and blow it away like the collapsed useless thing that its become.
I wanted to talk to her and explain what had happened...myabe if I epxlained it finally if someone heard what life had been inside that President St apt, that I could go back and fix it, have my children safe and with me, be their mother again. She said so many people had wondered what had happened to me.
How can you explain why a wife and mother would intentionally rupture her life, her frumkeit and the lives of her children unless there was a valid reason?
She said its over 30 years she and her husband are there...the kids have grown, the daughter wears pants, the son is in CA...another is married and she works in the courts.

It was all I thought about all day...is it a sign to forget the past or a door to return to a sane(r) life. Being frum in a vaccum never worked for me. Even the long lost tribes of african/chinese jews had communities, generations, families, a legacy of some kind to pass on, talk about, live with. I live like a ghost, born to ghosts who were cut off from their own families and forced into isolation.

It seemed in listening to her, that having a frum husband, a frum husband who worked to build his family and 'home' and protected his family (taught and cared about his family) had made the difference...we became frum almost at the same time, had kids at the same time and davened at the same shul.

She gave me her phone number and took my business card...I will be shocked if she calls. And I cannot call because I do not think I am welcome in CH. If the Rebbe z'tl secretary's wife, our neighbors, could look down her nose and be as cold and nasty as she was, even when I bourght her in to see M's strap marks from J's belt and she would do nothing to help, what kind of welcome is there for me now? if neighbors I breached privacy to ask for help to speak to him and the only suggestion they offered was to put my children in Ohel and sort things out, how do I look at such chazerim now? I was not the problem, I didnt hit, scream, stay in bed and not work, bring filth and obscenities into the home. I was ready to take 5 kids and live in a basement, find work to keep things together. Rabbonim, neighbors...it took him marrying a big mouth who broadcasted and continues to tell anyone she can what a 'monster' he was to live with. But it felt right to them, to believe the beard, kapota and haimische yiddish than a geress who became a jew by choice and long before she married.

In the court lobby was a table and on the table was a newspaper, Hamodia. Free copies of a jewish paper, I took a copy. Inside is a magazine and it has an article about keeping silent in the face of suffering. Its a sin to complain and question what befalls you unless the question is asked to correct your own actions. What befalls you is all correction from Hashem. This is what Rav Laitman says kabbalah teaches also. Until you can accept the correction and correct what is making you "suffer" than you will continue to live as if you are suffering. Is it simply perspective? Is it first living as a torah jew and then from that perspective, accepting whatever happens as beshert?
I dont know...I dont know where being passive and accepting begins and being courageous and alone in trying to survive begins. I know that I have tried, but clearly to me anyway the choices I made to become frum, life in CH, make a family were not correct unless living with a man as J was, was all I was meant for. That thought alone is enough to drive me to suicide, that the Abishter saw me as worth so little to place me with such a man. Is that ego? Is asking for kindness to oneself and ones children, misplaced ego? Is the expectation that a husband and father would get up each day to do any kind of work, anything-other than look around for tzedakah, too much? Should children be raised as beggars in a community where shidduchim will be based on such matters? Where futures are defined by what the parents do?
I thought, if I go away it will be better for them, surely the pain I feel is mine alone, they're too young to understand what their father is doing and his family wants him to move to them, if I go everything will be intact, without me.
Does anyone understand what is means to cut your heart out and live with it., missing, like a hole you carved in your own chest? Like cutting your own limb to save your children but not sure if it was going to help or kill them. No one alive knows. YOu kill yourself inside to do this and live. I dont know how women give up children by choice, I could not 'place' mine anywhere. It was better even to let them stay with a father as he was, then put them with strangers or separate them.

When Mendi was 5 yrs old, a year before our divorce, he spent a year in public school because Rabbi T. refused to allow him to continue at Ocean Parkway. He flourished in that year, his grades changed, his face changed and his spirit changed. He wrote and drew, learned how to interact and hold himself responsibily. Only 5 years old and already broken by the yeshivah system. He wrote something that will always stay with me.
His teacher asked the kids if they were the strongest person in the world, what would they do?

He answered if he were that strong he would "hold the hands of time and stop it from moving."

oxygen

I just made a brief detour to Yid W/Lid
Ah, the testosterone delight of male thoughts...the hint of oxygenated airwaves wafting over the monitor.
I finally realize what I've been missing for so many years, men who can think and write.
I've been working so long in 'academia' with gays and women with severe hormone deficiencies that I forgot what it is to be overwhelmed in the safety net of superior (for the most part) testosterone laden ideas.
Need to stay 'home' in my own blog and behave myself. Keep my incorrect PC thoughts to myself in my own space. Make a kugel or something to keep busy.
A woman's place is in her own blog.

Holy Cheez Whiz

I gotta clean up my act for the big time. I've been granted a place among real humans.
Posted a tart bit of commentary on my sanity sanctuary otherwise known as YID WITH LID (see list of Go To Blogs) and found my blog listed.

I offer humble apologies for anyone visting here and possibly insulted by my talking to myself out loud. I'm too cheap, arrogant and intelligent to pay a shrink to listen to years of abuse, so I'm working things out. If you can't take the belching or mess, go eat somewhere else.

Actually what you'll find here is the piddling and diddling of a woman who chose to take her father's religion in a mixed marriage but because judaism considers the mother's line, had to convert. And dont like doing things half way, went thru chassidus to be kosher:-) But its all here if you have nothing better to do with an evening and I hope you do because alot of this is pretty depressing to read (and write). I made tshuvah and am in the process of publically cleaning the toilet I made of my life. Consider each post a theraputic flush. Or one may cite this blog, as some seem to consider it on more truly kosher sites as, AN EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO SCREW UP YOUR LIFE AS A JEW.

Segue....The best thing in the middle east are the bidets in the bathrooms instead of paper. I came back after 6 months and five years later follow same procedure and dont know how people here can stand themselves without washing. And brochas? And davening? yeech. This country continues to mask its stinky self and mentality with air fresheners, aluminum harmful deodorants and toilet paper instead of good ol H2O, soap and doing the right thing.

Gotta run, Tony Soprano is mine for 2 hours.

Must be summer, 'fruit flies' abound

It's still chilly in the 30's in NYC. The unusually cool weather hasn't cooled off the manipulative mentally handicapped racist hypocrites who continue to intimidate the general public, deciding who can run for office, what is PC and can be said publically, who can be on the airwaves and how the government has to kowtow to their every infantile whim and sense of victimization.
Anyone reading who reads Yid with Lid knows what I'm writing about, no further details necessary.

I'm getting comments on my posts here from people who either have an itch they can't scratch or just need to annoy anyone they can find. Why write to me of all people? My pic isnt posted, I'm not advertising any services, I've been living in hell and trying to climb back out.

Writing to rabbis with questions gets no response. Its the same scene 30 years after I tried entering the community I wanted to be a part of. I thought, well now I'm older, not a single looking to hook up, just a human wanting to be among frum people should be a relatively easier accomodation now. I guess I should try B'nai Jeshrun and join the crowd singing kumbayah on shabbos...

I accept full blame. I earn just enough for my bills and basic essentials and live month to month. The thousands needed to pick up and MOVE just hasn't been possible unless I stop paying electric and rent. I've never scammed on my bills, rent, taxes, played it straight. That may be the right road for earning points with the Abishter but in this country it doesnt pay, you end up out of money and out of luck.

Minor surgery next week, meeting with docs the following week to discuss some issues regarding accomodations at work...yes, it's that serious. I'm fried physically. Met with one VP and asked for accomodations citing medical diagnosis and provided doctors letter of suggestions.
VP asked for a 'treatment plan.' I'm seeing a whole new set of docs now in NYC because the religious 'gentleman' I was married to didnt want to see the docs I was seeing. He had to see new docs, so for four years I basically was running him around seeing imported idiots who told him what he needed to hear for his own health, neglecting my own. If this isn't settled by May I will call the EEOC with everything or go out on STD. I 'danced' for the people I've worked for, for 15 years thru thick and thin, with bosses and no bosses, staff quitting and screwing them left and right and am good and sick from it all. Now they're making themselves stupid?

I personally am too old to care that the old work ethic doesnt exist anymore. I will get a refrigerator box and prepare myself to be homeless if I dont receive an adjustment at work or am fired for asking for one. When we unionized in '06 the union reps and lawyers were so disgusted at my salary level with an MA and years worked, they personally handled my case (and 2 others) to have our salaries adjusted for the years of being 'skipped over' by arbitrary adminstrative decisions. I can label them arbitrary but frankly a middle aged woman working for snot assed gay bosses who hired their buddies who couldnt do the work (& weren't interested in doing work) and consistently got raises for doing nothing, was the problem. 7 years of this while I was asked to hang in, keep the department together, people follow your lead...blah blah blah...load of manipulative management crapola.

Why bitch and not just move somewhere else? Child support payments, bills, a sick mother and dare I say I wanted to get married and not be alone. Too many excuses? I sent out resumes, was ready for interviews with a portfolio of writing samples. Now I'm diagnosed with something and exhausted from the struggle of trying to keep my head above water and doing it alone, in this city. I dont expect anyone to hire me now and if that sounds defeated, I am. Rat race doesnt begin to describe life here.


bitch and moan...well, there's plenty of 'fun' blogs, go find one.

Black Bird...

singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly
all your life
you were only waiting
for this moment to arrive
black bird....fly
into the light
of the dark black
night

Divorced

Emailed lawyer at least 3x since we submitted revised documents Nov. 2006, as per the court, asking why my final decree hasn't yet been granted. She said to my face in her office, when she receives notification she'll send me a copy. She thought the court may decide to date the initial filing from when the revised documents were sent in, which would have meant no decree until Nov. 2007.

Its now April 2007 and I am in limbo (what else is new)with legal documents that need to be changed e.g. pension cannot be revised ERISA unless divorce can be proven. Bank accounts can't be closed or changed, medical insurance is still covering him and he using it.

I emailed lawyer again yesterday asking if indeed I should just 'understand' the decree will not be granted until fall 2007 at the earliest???

She emailed back this morning, "apparently the divorce was granted in November and available at the clerk's office."

Bli neder I will never, ever marry again, ever.
Never say never?
Never. bli ein hora.

If I remember too much

Its early morning erev shabbos
Lately a train whistle blows not far from here, its a sad recall
of inexplicable things, people gone forever
...leaving Dad alone Saturday mornings for those summer trips with Ma to Jersey, smelling sun on my arms, eating under the grape arbor, aunties bickering while stirring tomato sauce, stomach tightening on the trip home thinking, how much has he had to drink and what will we hear...how long will it take me to get him into bed
...the smells in 770, always seemed to be the scent of challah, almost a vanilla mixed with siddurim and clean clothes, maybe that's what hope is or faith..that clean scent of pure anticipation of speaking to Hashem, the always ending and beginning
defining my life by the week beginning wednesdays preparing for shabbos, washing cleaning shopping, waiting for dough to rise, cakes to cool, making shabbos tea parties for the kids shalashudes, the sudden abruptness of havdalah, the clean up of the peacefulness to endure another week of...waiting for things to get better
The loneliness always a lonely
solitary flicker, like a moth in my throat,
fluttering as if caught helpless against a vast screen and that train whistle blows
and blows a heedless recounting of all that's been lost,
tearing the wings off words with tears

inch by inch...

I didnt want to sully the few notes I'm making here by putting them in the previous post.
So at the moment the rehab (!) includes
Davening (short version...dont ask how short please, I'm get thru Shachris far as full Shma every morning, tehillim on the train)
bentch shabbos licht
tzadekah but its usually to our students who need things
no actual treyf, but kitchen isnt kashered
(rarely eat out unless under duress for work, it pains me to piss money when i can cook.
Read Rav Laitman
There's too many 'buts' in the above list

Bought a children's book on brachas for food and bentching (go ahead laugh) to relearn the right brachas

Have to get serious on separating milchig and fleishig....its the Italian half that's the yetza hora on this issue.

Would like to begin mincha. Nothing's stopping me obviously I just dont want to start anything I wont be consistent with...means davening at work unless I wait until coming home which is already maariv.

Want to stop wearing slacks and return to skirts. There is one reason ONLY I haven't done this. I am still too traumatized from ex stealing my wallet & papers so I carry everything important on me, wallet, cash etc. If my bag is taken, I still have my stuff. If I get physically attacked I wont need my stuff anyway...

Want to stop thinking so much and start doing more:-) but if kavenah counts...maybe there's hope.

Ganza velt is meshugah

It's my fault, totally.

The goya I met on the train a few days ago calls me this morning. On the train, she wanted to discuss judaism, had attended "one or two" kabbalah classes, I felt sorry for her, she was very emotional, asked about end of life absolution and so many other questions. She asked for my phone number and gave me her card.

I'm home working because in too much pain to commute and the phone rings. It's her and I'm kinda surprised..."It's your friend, from the train..."
Okay, not sure what to say except Hi, how are you...

She asks what kind of work I do.
"I'm a writer," then wait to hear the followup about what have I written etc etc
"I'm in AWE!! That's like being an actress and I'm in AWE of them too, I could never get up on a stage in front of people like that..."

Please make you're sitting down and have lit a cigarette or had a stiff drink before reading the following:

She's a psychotherapist (which doesnt require a license to practice in NY) a "massage-auric healer" AND a kabbalah healer.

A kabbalah healer?
A goy who knows nothing about judaism and isn't interested in converting, is going around claiming to 'heal' with kabbalah? She didnt even know what a keli or sefirot was, doesn't daven, cant read Hebrew...the world is truly mad.

This is what comes from band wagon money makers trying to make a buck on one of the core pillars of our religion--and I'm not referring about goyim now.
I'm referring to those who decided that mass marketing of kabbalah to the masses was an opportunity not to be missed. No names here, I'm sure there are legit teachers out there.

You know what, this bitch scared me...maybe too much scares me actually. But this kind of insanity really scares me.

It shows me everything is up for grabs, nothing's of value or sacred now except what you create in your own tiny daled amis. It tells me that my instinct to build a 'wall' both spiritual and emotional is NOT incorrect, but protective.

She tried inviting herself to my unpainted, boxed up apt!
She doesn't know diddley about me, nor I about her.

I don't think the conversation lasted 3 minutes, my skin was crawling from what I heard.
Am I too sensitive? Shy? Inhibited? Are people really like this? I'm not joking about this.
I read more papers than anyone should have to for work, but I could be missing something, someone fill me in.

Ernest Hemingway used to say that "A writer has to have a built in crap detector"
Maybe mine is in overdrive...

Marrying out

One of the most arrogant things I have done while living in the 'velt' -by which I mean outside the jewish community- is to marry out, in 2001. After my separation in '86 and divorce from J he remarried and his wife (who herself had been married at least 3x) educated him on the rules of divorce and told him to demand child support.
A man who never supported me (his father and the Rebbe's household fund, Simchas Shabbos V'Yontif and R's family supported us ) filed papers for child support. Because he refused to disclose his own income or details, it was initially thrown out of court without prejudice and she insisted he reapply.
He had held up my Get in order to obtain child support; I refused to listen to my lawyer who advised just take your divorce and forget the Get, because for me, I would still be considered married. I was earning less than $400 a month, a salary provided via work study at the college I was both working for and studying for my BA.
I rented a room my sister had abandoned to live in L.A. Each evening the same mouse walked to the middle of the room, sniffing the air, just sitting there. There was no way to cook and the fridge was a mini in an efficiency kitchen in the other room.
Living on $400 a month, attending college full time at night (18 credits) and working all day. Almost 7 years of this and in the middle of it he insists he needs child support. His father had bought him a HOUSE and a CAR and he needed child support.
He had even taken our oldest who was depressed at age 7 from the separation for evaluation and finagled SSI for him. He wasn't using it for counseling for the kids, he used it for bills.

The way I found out was our son "ran away" with one sister and went to stay with a neighbor. Months later the neighbor found out son was supposed to be getting SSI benefits. She went to Social Security to have his benefits forwarded to her address so she could buy him clothes and help pay for food. It raised a red flag and SS asked husband for an accounting of what the benefits had been used for since he was applying for child support.
He submitted (via lawyer's Discovery process of legal documents) checks for all kinds of nonsense to SS-haircuts, birthday cake, pizza dinners, gas, clothes for himself (!). SS would up telling him he had to repay the government almost $6,000. When the family court judge saw the documents, read thru his scribbled filings for support and heard my testimony he awarded him the minimum amount for each child because the law says custodial parents are entitled, now matter the circumstances and noted for the record that he should get a job.

$385 a month is not alot of child support, but when you're taking home $1,200 a month in NYC, its enormous. I was advised, by anyone I dared tell, to stop being stupid and learn how to play the game.
I had one of 2 choices. The first was get myself committed to a psych ward, declared incompetent to work etc. and I would be absolved from paying child support. The second was stop working on the books. This meant dont pay taxes, work for cash and basically hope you never get sick because you wont have medical insurance. This was before deadbeat dads were tracked and rounded up for non payment. This was when 'disappearing' was expected and done.

For me, choosing either of these meant that my decision to divorce and leave CH for an education to become self reliant from tzedakah, was incorrect. Since I believed my decision to BE correct, I had not choice but to pay for my freedom.
And pay I did until 2005, because the case was a tri-state mess with computer backlogs of almost 2 years between 3 states. We married in NYS, he filed in his parents state where he originally went and then moved to a third state when he remarried and would collect child support.
Although my actual payments ended in 2003, by the time the 3 states caught up with each other, they said I had to pay arrears because payments had been instituted 18 months after the court judgement.
Do you know I was so afraid of going to jail for not paying support I had mailed him personal checks during that initial period, because I hadn't heard from any child support agency how to send in payments. When the payment system was finally set up they weren't interested that I had started making payments directly to him, it didnt count because it wasn't recorded anywhere.

Basically the dream of getting an education and standing up, was spent trying to pay child support, support myself (I do not have a fancy lifestyle at all, no credit cards, no car etc) and now paying back college loans. I have nothing to show for the last 20 years except perhaps exactly what I started out to do, get an education and be self reliant. I did and I am. And I am alone.
When men hear 5 kids, they run. They run for many reasons, but mostly becuase any woman who could possibly "abandon" 5 children is not worthy of human companionship only ugly questions or sexual solicitation. They run because a woman in her late 30s who had 5 kids is pretty much used up.
I'm not exactly beautiful, maybe attractive, incapable of small talk and vapid eyelash fluttering men find attractive. I'm not capable of sex on demand, sex with strangers and sex for no reason other than there's nothing else to do. Sex is so powerful for me, so intimate in disclosure of self I have to trust and love someone, I have to be a wife.
That said, at the age I was divorced my social life was limited to school and work.

I was introduced to 2-3 men by 'friends' but it seemed no one in the secular world married unless your resume showed you wealthy, well connected or extraordinarily gorgeous...you could sleep with anyone but marriage? why?
By the time I was in my late 40s I felt time slipping away, if I didnt grab any opportunity to marry it would never happen. My mother suddenly decided to come live with me and parked herself in my 2 rooms. She showed up after shipping 12 boxes of her things without prior warning. UPS just dumped 12 boxes with my landlord one day and a social worker in her apt complex called a week later saying she was depressed and refused to live in her senior apartment anymore.
This, from a woman who couldnt imagine how in the world anyone could live in Brooklyn. I called my sister in L.A., she refused to come in, to talk to mother, to get involved. She said "I can't take her and I dont think you should do it either." Was there a choice?
Imagine being so poor, old, sick (breast cancer) and feeling so desperate to have to go back on your disdain for living in a place like Brooklyn where your daughter 'ran away from life to be religious.' Imagine agreeing to settling into 2 rooms while your daughter pays child support and lives pretty much hand to mouth...yet there was no way to say no.

But I didnt want to die an old lonely woman taking care of a mother who never liked me. When the opportunity presented itself, meeting my 2nd husband, presented only as someone who would translate my word into arabic, he jumped to propose and I refused at first, then accepted. I traveled to Egypt, met his family, he had just lost his own mother to a disease and there were no sisters. The fact that his father had married 7 times should have told me that women were a commodity for trading rather than valued. But no, I saw myself as the woman who would help a family of men who needed a woman among them. The woman who would 'save' just one family from poverty with an opportunity, how arrogant is that? How one can become deaf in times of desperation. I had davened fiercely for a spouse and when one finally appeared, I assumed this was a gift.

No matter he wasn't jewish, I had already been outside the community 15 years, did it really matter to Hashem? My kids were initially happy, they said, that I was going to marry, even to a muslim. My daughters were happy I wasn't going to be alone, they said. Two of my daughters met him. IN Egypt my daughter who had made aliyah, emailed me in dire straits, asking for money. We went to a bank in cairo and wired her funds in Israel, putting all of us in possible jeopardy.

I seemed accepted by people I met in Egypt. I went to the mosque, tried to pray, read the quran and found passages that seemed to address jews specifically. EVeryone was so happy to see husband having a chance to escape from his own poverty and hopelessness, especially me. No matter how hungry or poor I was, nothing compared to the suffering and filth I found there. If nothing else, even if Love was not the primary reason for marrying, it seemed that the marriage would finally give me companionship and give him an opportunity to make a future not only for himself, but for his young son and his brothers who I understood would eventually want to come here also. In short, it was like building a new family again.

But once he got here, things changed almost immediately. I dont know if his plan was to talk one way and act another or he was advised on what to do and how to do it.
But once on U.S. soil, he made it clear that as his sponsor I was expected me to support him for at least the 5 years until citizenship. The statements of "I'll do any kind of work I can find" melted to "I can't do this or that becuase it would shame my family if they ever knew I:
a) drove a cab b) worked any manual work c) worked in a deli d) went to college at my age.
Even Egyptians he spoke with as family friends told him how lucky he was and not to squander the opportunity in his hands, go to school, treasure your wife and good luck.
Then he began insisting he needed to see doctors because his sinuses were always stuffed and he had a chronic cough that no OTC meds stopped. The embassy had passed on his physical so I assumed he was healthy. But it turns out, the embassy didnt even look at anything as long as a valid sponsor filed valid documents, he was free to go. He was sick and needed very expensive treatment. Thank g-d for insurance. However, the 'jewish doctors' I had werent suitable and made him nervous...he had to find an egyptian doctors and did. In the end he had to return to the specialists, all jewish, becuase every arab he saw kept changing his diagnosis and saying he did, then didnt need meds, he was and wasn't sick.

He met an egyptian selling on the street. Because the man was egyptian for sure he knew more than his american wife, about anything, but especially about life in the U.S. This man told him because he spoke english so well, to go work as an interpreter. And so he did, without any training, credentials or security checks, an agency in NYC hired him to translate SS, medicaid and ASC cases. When he wasn't out 2-3 a couple hours once or twice each week, he was online in chat rooms or talking to freinds and family in egypt.
I think I mentioned previously my nights were spent trying to sleep listening to the tap tap of the keyboard with the silent TV glare and computer screen on all night until 5am for 3 years. When I woke from hearing strange female sounds during the night, I was told I was dreaming, but it was to see either porn or a woman who turned out to be someone he would visit 2x in New Mexico. A woman with 2 kids with no shame who stayed up showing him herself on a webcam while his wife slept so she could work the next day and support him.

There aren't enough words, time or even energy left in me to understand the amount of lies I was told and believed to have a MAN in my life. During the Lebanon war last summer he finally showed himself for the antisemite he really was. He sat on the bed glued to the TV waiting for Hezbollah to destroy Israel, sure there was a secret plan about to take effect on behalf of the arab world that would finally obliterate israel.
All the problems in the world were due to Israels existence, not only in the middle east you see, but all over the world, zionists controlled everything, even his life in 2 rooms in brooklyn. Everything that happened to everyone that one might label BAD, was due to the existence of jews. Not the original people of the book, sanctioned as "real jews" in the quran, those jews dont exist anymore, the jews of modern times are all fake and the religion changed, the holocaust never happened, maybe some jews were killed but no one can stand them anyway, they bring this kind of hate on themselves...do you know any other group of people hated like jews? of course not, so there must be a reason why the world hates jews...right?
Days into hours of this hate. Then demanding I make a choice, no more fence sitting trying to LOVE everyone, trying to get along with everyone, wanting peace for everyone.

I dont write these words now out of self pity, I dont write because I have nothing else to write about, I'm writing because if only one jewish woman or man reads my words, you must know I lived with and among muslims and arabs. I lived among the double face and forked tongues. I heard repeatedly about the religion of "peace" and how the people of The Book are accepted. The hate and antisemitism was never directed at me personally, it was broad and blind. It was total and unexpected and unrepentent.
It was a lesson I needed and will never ever need again.
Love is not blind and when it is, one should run from it. There is no luxury of romantic love when you are a Jew in which you can afford to squander your life on a goy for a spouse who sooner or later will throw in your face the words "jew" as an epithet. The word is used to define how worthless you are seen.
I was hit by this man, he was removed by the court and 2 O.P. because he refused to divorce and refused to leave. Its great having a stupid wife who works all day while you play:-) But none of the violence compared to the mental abuse and spiritual rape I allowed myself to endure for the sake of being married to drek.

Meir Kahane was murdered, not by a mad man but by a simple muslim, who like all muslims thought he would go to heaven for his jihad to meet his maker and his 72 unblemished brides for all eternity after ridding the world of one more jew. Arabs are learning, at least the more educated ones, that if you talk nice and speak softly to the dumb jews who just want some peace and quiet, that the truth of the hate preached, written and lived by will all be pushed aside. We see how Carter bought it, Pelosi is buying it and countless other blind liberals, like my former self, continue to buy it.

Of all Kahane's admonitions to the klal, the one we must begin to take seriously, if we want to continue to exist, is separation and a complete ban on intermarriage. The bracha we say each morning about tzitzis, is not meant only for physical separation. I dont know how you enforce that especially in a time when jewish leadership is nowhere to be found and something as profound as kabbalah is being shared with goyim!

I saw my own father shut away from his entire family for marrying my mother and instead of heeding this law, thought melding myself into the velt was the solution to feeling like an exile.

A life spent on lessons...I come to read kabbalah bowed and humble, but its a door only to ComingHome, one I am trying to reopen, after becoming perhaps more prepared spiritually from years of trying to survive.

Pesach

Both sedurim spent alone.
Chidlren's uncle called erev pesach, but since he came and sat here for 3 days, saw the help i needed and offered none and then asked for a box of presents to be shipped to him tha i bought and mailed him, whats left to say? I did the job I was execpted to do, played hostess. He came with a bag of joints and even in my tiny apt had to get high at his age (55) Haven't heard from the kids since November when I visited M's first apartment and asked her brother, my oldest son, to stop stomping around his sister's house in army boots like a Stormfielder that the atmosphere from his aggressiveness felt abusive. Oh that went over really well, so I'm not surprised i'm in the dog house.

Last 2 weeks spent trying to work while going thru medical tests.
Exhausted, chronic pain issues. Found something important, BP meds make me sucidal
Consulting doc viewed blood work on hospital network.
Since '86 I am telling docs something is wrong, this pain and fatigue isnt normal.
Wink & nods...hysterical female BS diagnosis. Told too I had too many kids too fast, only cows give birth annually (by a jewish doc). He wanted fun fuin fun....i needed to get well and rest. Marriage is not made for rest, except if you're on the receving end of the other's largesse, place i'v been.

Finally validated by bloodwork...20 years of 'misdiagnoses' running in circles, missed opportunities, miscalculations. AFter 3 years, its no wonder my husband sought out other women rather than watch me disintegrateAs Lorinne would write...a life of leaks...

I was on the subway 4 days ago, reading a text by Rav Laitman. A woman gets on, sits next to me, starts talking, WHILE I'M READING (avoiding human contact, my favorite sport of late.)
She says something about the sound of the voice on the train intercom, I told her being in the subway is like being in the 'twilight zone.' I dont know how that statement brought about her telling me she is studying Kabbalah, but it did. She says she attends classes on the West Side with Rabbi Berger at the Kabbalah Center. Stupid asks, 'are you jewish?' after listening to her for a few minutes and thinking something doesnt sound kosher here.
No, she isnt but she has a friend who is jewish and a buddhist and studying kabbalah and he calls himself a 'Bukah'
While reading Rav Laitman I have to ask with the intricated detailed explanations he provides of light receiving/rejecting/keli breaking/sefirot levels and this is only generalizations- who- among folk who have not studied chassidus for some time, who among non-jews-- can possibly either absorb or understand any of this?

I read Laitman's text and am looking to purchase the bi-lingual edition of Tanya which is coming out. I had studied Tanya briefly with R while in CH. There were times when she would read a passage in hebrew and was unable to find the english word to translate and from nowhere I translate something it out loud for us. I'm not fluent in hebrew and had not previously studied Tanya. But Tanya seemed more comprehensible (& sensible, sorry) in putting kabbalistic concepts into context for the novice. Since Rav Laitman teaches and I suppose write in Hebrew as its the language of kabbalah and holy, it may be the english translation is not capturing something, or could it be dummy here isn't ready to capture something? The screen is blocking light reception!

So wait, this woman on the subway asks me a question that made me immediately undertstnad this was no accidental meeting. Yes, nothing is accidental, but some things are more obvious that others in lesson-hood.
She wants to know if a person can receive enlightenment at the moment death?
I told her all of life is given only so we come to know and become closer to Hashem, its a process, there is no last minute absolution...its alot of work and we all come to this work in different stages of things we need to resolve and complete. You cannot reject Hashem all your life or live in sin all your life and at the moment of death claim faith as some religions sell their believers.
She had tears in her eyes. She told me her sister is jewish but didnt discuss judaism with her.

I tried to give her the Rav's book to read, she refused to take it. It turns out she only went to one kabbalah class, it was a little confusing for her but 'they celebrated the sabbath like a big family' and that was warm and fuzzy.

In another time I would have pressed her to call me and would have obsessed on finding someone to work with her to learn or convert. But I have become cynical and now protective. It's strange but having been outside, having seen and lived among the filth of intellectual transience, it seems to me now like almost a desecration of judaism to see how ideas, religion, the essence of what jewishness is, is be peddled for mass consumption and not necessarily jewish consumption. I read its the right time to open everything to everyone, those ready will receive and understand.

At every turn I read that you can study alone for just so long....sooner or later you gotta-getta-group and a teacher. The power of the minyan is greater than the one. In a group you learn how to butil yourself rather than spending solitary time with the yetza hora whispering while you're reading. I wouldn't last 5 minutes in a group of non jews questions derived from catachism training.


Well if nothing else is positive in this post let me say i've begun bentchin licht again B"H
If anhyone read and is still awake this far down...please mention me in your tehillim, rochel bas sarah emeinu *as per the Luvaitcher rebbe shlita

its now 1am and