Decades ago, we would have never thought that there would have been an African American president.  Now, there’s an African American female Rabbi who has just been ordained! 

Alysa Stanton, America's First African American Female Rabbi

Read the article below:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1903245,00.html

The number 18 is meaningful to me.  Not only because its numerical value in Hebrew is life (the Hebrew letter chet=8 and yud=10) but also because ever since my father passed away, I have witnessed denominations of 18 when I pay for meals, gas, clothing and get assigned a seat on an airplane. My father had the Jewish inclination to donate in multiples of 18 and had an affinity for the number.  When suggesting that this was “a sign”, a cynical friend of mine suggested that most consumable goods end in the $.99 suffix and that I shouldn’t get too moved. For whatever reason, it helps me cope and my mother and I continue to make eyes at each other any time our receipt reads $___.54 or $___.72.
I’m a frequent flyer and a fan of the web check in. I want to mentally prepare myself for where my seat is located and what the occupancy of the flight is like.  Today, I was assigned seat 2A. Even though that meant I would disembark the plane earlier than the masses, I decided to change my seat to 18F.  It’s now part of my shtick.  As I made my way onto the plane just after last call, I wondered who I would sit next to.  Typically, I fall asleep or become entirely anti-social for the duration of the flight. Today though, I noticed a young man in the aisle seat of my row and as I put my bag under the vacant middle seat in our row, I struck up a conversation. The beverages at the airport lounge seemed to help in this department.   Turns out, the kid (!) is from my hometown and we have loads of mutual friends. At one point in our banter he turned to me and said, “A Jew always recognizes a Jew.”  We seem to have serious jewdar, almost like a sixth sense!
Again, thanks for the number 18! If anything, it provided me with some solid entertainment for the flight.

Last Shabbat I went to a family simcha – a brother and sister celebrating their Bar and Bat Mitzvah together – a Bnei Mitzvah.  It was arranged so that the sister read the Dvar Torah (interpretation on Torah) and then her brother had an aliyah and read the Torah portion.  After this, the sister was to chant the Haftorah and her brother was to chant the same Haftorah after her.

All went smoothly until it was time for the sister to stand on the Bimah and read the Haftorah.  She began well enough and then suddenly – she stopped.  No one in the synagogue was sure what had just happened but she then tried to continue and we heard her voice crack with tears and shake.  She stopped again.  Tense silent moments followed and she tried again only this time she was openly crying and her voice was not able to complete even a single word of the text.

Her father was standing beside her and the Rabbi motioned to her mother to come to the bimah and stand beside her as well.  With a parent on either side of her, the young woman tried again to read her Haftorah portion but couldn’t.  Everyone sitting in the sanctuary could hear her crying.

Her brother got up and stood opposite her and suddenly we heard him very quietly chanting each word and she followed him by chanting after him.  In this way he lead her through the first verses and supported her when she faltered for the rest of the reading.  It was such a show of bonding and support we were all left speechless.

What we had witnessed was a young woman overwhelmed by her Bat Mitzvah moment because she truly understood what it meant.  This was not a morning of parties and food and showmanship – this was transformation from girl to woman and she crossed that threshold with all the emotions of a woman and the full understanding that goes along with it.

I feel privileged to have witnessed that moment.

Yesterday, I connected to a website my daughter had told me about and there indeed was one of my daughters connecting with me from abroad.  We ‘chit chatted’ online for a while and it was wonderful to have those moments together on the computer.  When I calculated the time difference for where she was, I realized it was 2:00 am, but I restrained myself from having that ‘mother moment’ and asking her why she was awake so late.  I enjoyed the casual conversation we were having (but had to ask her if she was feeling alright or maybe having trouble sleeping…).  She answered with ‘lol’ which I learned a while ago means ‘laughing out loud’. 

I loved the conversation, I loved the surprise of an unscheduled connection.  Just this past Friday she texted me ‘Shabbat shalom’, and I looked at my phone, read her message and finally put a finger on what was bothering me.  The messages are great, I love them, I wouldn’t give them up for anything but there’s nothing there I can really touch.  In the past, before technology became so available for us, we actually had to write letters to each other.  Many of those letters were written during class time and hand delivered at home later.  I loved those notes, memos, scribbles, not just because of what they said but because I was holding the paper they had been holding.  I could see the crumpled parts they tried to smooth out with their hands. My eye could trace the jagged tear of the paper and I connected with how quickly they ripped the piece out of a notebook.  It wasn’t just the message, it was the whole connection – I touched what they held.  If I told them this made a difference, I’m not sure they’d get it – I think it’s a mother thing. 

I have a list of ‘Shabbat shalom’ text messages on my phone – they’re real as long as they’re on my phone.  I can’t put them in a box with the kids’ letters and notes.  I keep them on my phone knowing soon my phone will send me a message telling me my SIM card is full.  When that happens, I may be asking you how you bring yourself to press ‘Delete’.

I just watched a PBS interview with Abigail Progrebin (yes, daughter of Letty Cottin) talking about her book Stars of David: Prominant Jews Talk About Being Jewish.  I got sucked in right away because the topic of the book is something that has long fascinated me – the construction, experience, and expression of Jewish identity in North America. I should state at the outset that I have not read the book, so this in NO way pretends to be a book review, but rather my reaction to Progrebin’s discussion of the themes that she explores in the book and the kinds of conclusions she draws within it.

She explains that of the many people she interviewed, ranging from entertainers like Dustin Hoffman, Joan Rivers, Steven Speilberg, and Larry King, to US Supreme Court Judge Ruth Badder Ginsberg and feminist Gloria Steinam, the vast majority did not describe themselves as ‘religious’ or ‘observant’. Rather, one of the common themes expressed by the group is the strong ‘feeling’ of being Jewish, in a way that is detached from ritual or observance.

This is a sentiment which I myself have heard many times. It begs exploring, and is something to which I have given much thought over the years. It strikes me as amazing that we, as a people, with all of our diversity and wide range of observance, can (for the most part) agree that somewhere in our souls we feel Jewish, feel part of something bigger than ourselves, feel part of our history.  Its a feeling that resists definition. Surely part of what informs this feeling is the historical, political, and sociological fact of persecution and being branded ‘Other’ within outside dominant cultures. I would speculate though that the much larger part that is informing this feeling comes not from the ‘outside’ but from the wondrous wisdom and tradition within Judaism that has accumulated and been passed down for thousands of years.

This sense of feeling Jewish in the way that one operates in the world, in one’s sensibilities, in one’s world view, and in one’s core values, is something that many people feel in their gut, but lacking a foundation in Jewish knowledge, don’t necessarily know where it comes from or what exactly is grounding it.  I think that it so important that we connect our sense of feeling Jewish to an engagement with the tradition within which this feeling is embedded – however that engagement expresses, and it is unique to each person. In the absence of making this connection, what do we pass on to our children?

I just made my son a party for his 7th birthday.  Thanks to an incredible website called echoage.com, the party was environmentally friendly and socially conscious.   Echoage was founded by two Toronto moms who were frustrated by the excess and waste of the typical birthday parties that their children were attending, and the values and messaging that their children were absorbing  in the process. The two moms came up with a wonderful alternate. Here’s how it works. Through the echoage website, you email your invitations to all your guests (its paperless). The guests are then asked not to buy and bring a  wrapped gift to the party, but rather to make a modest contribution online, half of which goes to a charity of the birthday child’s choosing, and the other half goes towards the birthday child so that they can buy one meaningful gift.

After my son’s soccer party, it was so refreshing not to have to load up the car with a heap of gift wrapped presents, and then even more refreshing not to have a heap of barely appreciated gifts (because of the sheer quantity of them) and a ton of wrapping and toy packaging sitting on my living room floor.

What I love even more though are the values that are being  taught by making an echoage party – and they are completely consistent with the Jewish values with which I am trying to infuse in my home. First of all, from a mussar perspective, making an echoage party took my family, and all of the guests we invited to the party, out of automatic. Instead of just feeling uncomfortable with the excess pervasive in the birthday party culture today, we actually did something to call it into question, and generated much thoughtful dialogue amongst the many guests in the process.

One of the prevailing, taken for granted assumptions that was questioned in all of this is the idea that the birthday child is entitled to many gifts. So ingrained is this sense of entitlement owing to the birthday child, that in some rare negative feedback I actually heard one mom say that she would never do an echoage party because she didn’t think that it was ‘fair’ to her child to be ‘deprived’ of presents.  But the concepts of ‘fairness’ and ‘deprivation’ only make sense here if we are working from a very materialistic and egocentric starting point. This is not what our Jewish values teach us. Our Jewish values teach us that we do not exist alone and we do not exist for ourselves. Rather, we live embedded within relationships and community that are defined by responsibility and obligation to one another. Having the birthday child give half of their birthday money to tzedakah (charity) helps to keep the child mindful of this fact. Also, the idea of consuming less and reducing waste further helps to make the child mindful that we are all partners in our obligations to the planet. This too is a Jewish value.

In the end, there were still plenty of gifts from Bubbies and Zaidys, and aunts and uncles. To say that an additional eighteen from class mates would be excessive is an understatement. My son had a wonderful birthday, truly appreciated and enjoyed opening the gifts that he did get, and, in his own small way, helped towards saving the environment and giving money to an excellent cause.

For the past two days I’ve been groggy, exhausted and sore. Every time I swallow, it feels like razor blades are cutting my throat.  My doctor tells me that it’s strep throat.  In between the penicillin doses, I’ve been popping cold and flu medication for fever and congestion, gargling with salt water and sucking on lozenges.  I’ve accumulated some serious Shoppers Optimum points this week! The only relief that I’ve felt has been from eating bowls of my mother’s chicken soup, that I have stock-piled in my freezer.  Maybe it’s the comfort of my mother and the taste of her secret ingredients, but I truly believe that there are some medicinal effects of chicken soup.  I get sick quite infrequently, so I save the soup for emergencies only and I take eating it very seriously. First, it starts with boiled broad egg noodles.  There is pretty much an equal ratio of noodles to soup. Then, to top off the delight,  I generously sprinkle some “crunchies” on top. (You know, those little yellow soup mandel made by OSEM). I especially like it when there is cut up chicken or pipicks in the soup.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with Jewish Penicillin:

The cure

Does anyone know how many weight watchers points those things are? Actually, I’m sure they’re fried, I’d rather not know…

I am sometimes fearful of the types of children, specifically girls, that are being raised in our society. I frequently witness the preoccupation with pop culture, celebrity gossip and fashion among our young women. This past Shabbat, my hope was restored and I felt that everything will be alright. I attended a Bat Mitzvah and the theme was “THINK PINK” – A popular and successful breast cancer awareness campaign.  http://shop.thebreastcancersite.com/store/site.do?siteId=224 The Bat Mitzvah girl had designated a certain percentage of her Bat Mitzvah gifts to this worthy cause. Not only was the tzedakah project a monetary contribution, but a Breast Cancer awareness board to educate the attendees of her simcha, was handmade.

While I understand tzedakah projects are common among our young men and women, this project was creative, thought provoking and inspiring!