...but it aint about nostalgia

I started this blog in response to an '06 divorce from a violent (court certified) 2nd husband, a strong desire to reconnect w chassidic life and community and get some clarity about what I glimpse in the spoken world of Jew versus text.

As muslims continue to increase their progeny and spread themselves all over in communities in the US and abroad, some claiming asylum, some getting in via work/student visas and never leaving or marrying foreigners to obtain residency for anywhere but the dictatorships they dwell in. I sat in Egypt,listening to conversations between young men in their late 20s, who had never stepped outside Egypt, some had no language skills or education other than grammar school and planned how to find a woman online to court/marry and get pulled out, no matter the country...Sweden was at the top of the list (leggy blondes seen as a big plus) as was the US. There was never discussion about work, "I'll do anything" because the system was already known, the spouse=sponsor was financially responsible for the immigrant and after that the State may grant social welfare benefits.

I read today that the small singular Jewish community in Sweden has been repeatedly threatened by muslims they're making aliyah en masse to Israel. In Brooklyn, NY the week before xMas, 200 Jewish tombstones were overturned in a Boro Park Jewish cemetary. The police were debating whether it was a bias crime. Kissinger allegedly said "It's not our business if the Russians sent their Jews to the concentration camps."

A 46 yr old American woman who married a young jihadist is busily, and not very quietly, doing PR for the online jihad crowd sending announcements out to English speaking converts that its time for war. It's too bad she doesnt understand Arabic to know what her husband and his cohorts say about her as an old piece of ass he has to screw to get what he needs for the sake of Ala so he can blow up something and feel like a mentsch.

So I turn to my own Jewish leaders for some perspective on current events...apparently MIA in the US except for Chabad or kabbalah teachers. It's hard to take Reform/Conservative Judaism seriously, especially when the 'head' of the Reform movement announces 'Israel is becoming racist.' Practice something 3x it becomes part of your routine...a dictum taught to young Jewish students. It seems some in the quasi Jewish world have picked up the goyische dictum, if you repeat lies 3x, they become Truth.

Not only the Arab world (Arab describing muslim populations, at some point pond scum is hard to differentiate from sheiss wasser) but now Jews themselves appear to be of two minds-we have been tormenting, oppressing and cheating the poor Palestinians from the lives they deserve, by building Jewish settlements, holding Golan and keeping Jerusalem intact and available for everyone to use safely, or we should be focused on spreading the light of Moshiach by thinking, acting and speaking good words, studying Torah every spare minute, and in some circles teaching kabbalah to goyim. The Chabad cult of Moshiach sometimes pales in the light of the cult of Manis, but I'll leave that for another post.

My oldest daughter said, make aliyah...this is the place for Jews. I agree, but I'm hold back due to health. My oldest son says many of the Jews where he lives (outside NYS) carry guns because of the simmering antisemiticism. My other children think much as Rodney did, after the LA cops beat the crap out of him "Can't we all just get along?"

Getting along was my modus operandi after leaving Crown Heights...surely educated people all get along, we have Aristotle's Ethics and Proust's a la recherche du temps perdu in common. And if Ethics or recalling the scent of your mother's corsage doesnt keep you in line and friends with someone who wants you dead, learning Kabbalah surely will. Like ships navigating between glaciers without a compass in the dark of night, Jews hope safe harbor is out there, somewhere.

Some days I wonder if anyone outside of his immediate family thinks about Sholom Rubashkin, how many people he fed who would not otherwise have had food.
I wonder about Youseff Khtab nee Cohen (?)from Queens who converted out, lived in Gaza with his converted wife and kids he was raising everyone to be ardent muslims, Khtab suddenly reappears in Queens in 2010, insisting he isnt for killing innocent civilians...just in case anyone thinks he might be back in the US working both sides of the fence.

I don't understand how NYS has soup kitchens, food pantrys, Food Stamps, meals in school for kids, restaurants donated unused cooked food for God's Love We Deliver and other food delivery services..and yet we are shown pics of kids holding signs they ate their dinner from a gas station and we're asked to donate food for hungry New Yorkers.

We dont have enough affordable housing for middle-low income people in NYS-this has been an issue for decades. But Bloomberg found time to install bistro tables and chairs at Union Square and decimate the public school system so that kids are even further behind in math, science and literacy...unless you're Chinese and go to after hours school when public school is over and attend private Chinese school on Saturday to prep for statewide tests.

Leonard Lopate on WNYC was interviewing an author who wrote a book about Boomer parents pushing their 20+ yr olds out of the nest too early, causing them to fail at work and socially. Lopate noted, its different now...years ago we could find an apartment for $200 and with 4 roommates start to make a life...no more. Its all gone. And here I thought all problems evolved from parents divorcing...hmmm.

Yesterday I was perusing thousands of online photos posted on a chabad website. I was mainlining...I couldn't pull myself away looking at the big teased hair, shoulder pads, big eyeglass frames. Pictures of anash who were not identified from the '70s and '80s. Pictures of community members, guests, kids receiving Rebbe dollars. My ex is there with his second wife and my five children are there receiving dollars. I stood on the line many times and received them as well and nary a pic of me. I'll continue to search...A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

along the horizon
where blue sky
meets the sea
I hear approaching
the grinding of ice
..

Mother in Disguise

I caught the middle of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on TCM last night and that morphed into my deceased mother showing up in my dream. I was looking down at a lunch counter (at 17 I worked as a 'grillman' for lunch counter at Woolworth's) and there in all her former glory was my mother, sunglasses and all. Oddly, she resembled Liz reprising her role, blousy, hair w blond highlights and as I noticed her, she stood up and climbed up to where I was watching her. It turned out we were both on a bed, in the air or a loft, but she lay down in a fetal position and said she wanted to just stay there, with me.

This is only her 2nd appearance since her death in '06. As the dreamer best knows her own dreams I would say its a role reversal of wishful thinking, as I'm under alot of stress lately. As a woman incapable of showing emotion to her children in life, its strange to sense longing in her in death.

As I attempt to move closer, physically and emotionally to my children, my daughters in particular, the voice of my mother often seems louder than my own. And that truly scares me because I am not her in any remote sense, physically or spiritually.

Growing up in an emotional vacuum left me craving and distrustful of being close to anyone, even my children. And this 'disease' has been passed down...in different forms to each child. I see them struggle with me and other relationships, to one another, while redefining me as someone in their lives, late and in some ways too late, not wanting mothering and me trying to mother...and it so often feels impossible to explain in words to them that what I needed from my mother is what I'm trying to give them. It took me years in and out of therapy, reading, studying to learn what was, what is what might have been...what can be fixed or not, healed or left as a hole in the heart.

Line from Virginia Woolf movie last night..."Mourning is just an extension of self pity" ...after a point, it is.

Dreams of gathering...things

Why dream of mustard seed flour? Does such a flour even exist? I was searching for it and found sacks, the size of small Hecker's bags that had to be lifted and taken. But then a 4 footed long haired pussycat came caterwauling because it was 4:40am and he felt it was time to eat his breakfast.

Very strange how I've baked all my life and lately anything I bake is leaden, as to be inedible, tasteless. As the adage goes the quality of the cholent reflects the guests who will eat it, must be for baked goods as well. Or maybe this is why menstruating women are forbidden to bake challah or make their husbands beds or hand their husbands anything, hand to hand...and I'm sure a host of other dainties I've missed. I remember going to a kallah class in Crown Heights with a bevy of brides-to-be gathered at the feet of this particular rebbitzen (self annointed) and said rebbetizin was whispering so low that anyone not sitting 6" from her slippers couldnt hear a word. So it could be why I'm not fully versed on Niddah laws and their effects on baked goods.

I followed Ina Garten's recipe for Irish Soda Bread and it could be used as a door stop. Thinking that baking soda may not have been fresh enough since that's the only leavening used for 4 cups of flour. And then the best Gingersnaps in the world, a recipe from Paula Deen, came out way too overdone when they should have been chewy. I sent MD brownies for his birthday and even he asked, WTF Ma? or maybe it was something more polite but I asked myself that very question.

Could be the jinn IBSinger writes about, those unseen entities that come around to cause problems when you least need them. They come of their own accord and when you need a lesson taught...and then the souffle falls flat or you twist your ankle on a cat toy you looked at 50x on the rug as you walked past it. Or maybe the mezuzah needs a check?

What kind of Judaism is this that is a hodge podge of Beatrix Potter's anthropomorphized animals speaking, jinnies messing the challah dough, bits and tatters of law, minhaggim, rumor and assumptions?

I was married to my children's father who shaved my head every once in a while...seems tznius according to some in Chabad meant 1" of hair for women as well. But then you can purchase a sheitl of human hair that goes down your back and you look as lovely as if you had hair. I knew women, the older rebbetzins who came to Brooklyn from Russia, Hungary and Poland. They had the front row in the women's section in the old 770. They always wore sheitlach but not for beauty, in fact it appeared those were the last of the horse hair models, combed and shaped once and plopped on like a hat, a middle part, no bangs, functionary...serious and the style went well with the no makeup look and a pair of small pearl earrings.

So when the Rebbe speaks of women obligated to wear a sheitl, its unlikely he meant 24" hair pieces taken from the heads of Indian or Chinese idolators. No matter what kind of scarf I wear, Israeli w fringe or silver threads, plain cotton triangles, tied up or down, I look like a wash woman. I recently bought a sheitl in NYC and the woman showed me there is actually a remedy invented for slipping scarves and wigs. Its a small cap, like a stocking that you slip over your head and the sheitl behaves itself for hours. Like you didnt know that....

So its shabbos Shemot...I read w tissues this last weeks about Avraham missing his son...I lost Josef, take Benjamin and you might as well dig my grave. Now everyone gets to leave (hence ComingHome B"H), lock stock and whatever isnt nailed down. Its not Pesach that I look around and ask when golus ends...its reading parsha Shemot.