What to say?

I didn't write about India on Saturday because I didn't really know what to say and I am no more certain that I know what to say now. I suppose I should confess that I am a little hesistant that in times like this, a convert's ideas or thoughts are easily alienable - maybe some people won't think I have any right to identify with the Jews who died in Mumbai. Sadly, it wouldn't be the first time I'd have been met with this kind of reaction. Secondly, I had personal friends - well, friend - in Mumbai, and didn't really have the ability to distance myself from the situation; my thoughts were pretty much "dontdiedontdiedontdie".

All that aside, the bottom line about India is that anyone has the right to be disgusted with things like this. I think it's important for all of us to donate what we can to the link I had up Friday and maybe most of all, make a real effort to practice a little bit more of the kindness and hospitality Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka extended to all.

A little known fact

You know what? I'm fairly certain that forty days before you're born/conceived/whatever they're arguing about now and the name of your bashert is proudly announced to all the heavens, there's some little, hardly noticible guy sitting the corner whose job requires the possession of excellent hearing and the utmost discretion. See, this poor b*stard has to catch a second name, a name muttered sideways through half-unwilling lips - the name of the person who you'll love more than anything who will inevitably not feel the same way. Invariably, the bearer of this name will reinforce his perfection by offering you meager kernels of friendship that you (just an innocent sac of embryonic cells at this point) will collect in scrapes and pathetic clawing motions, only to realize that the only product of this prolonged partnership is the all-pervasive feeling that you are a massive idiot of unparalled proportions.

Now -- and dont be jealous, girls -- but I have found that guy. And it was everything it sounds like it would be: I was transformed by love, after all. I smiled on the street, I laughed more easily, I sung-thanked the furry woodland creatures who showed up to do my chores for me, as well as the birds who began making my bed every morning. And slowly but surely, we moved into the next, unavoidable phase of our relationship where I am frequently paralyzed by the reminders of my blinding stupidity: my email, sent out of concern for your effing *life* and your maddeningly terse response of "Shavua tov. I'm fine, thanks", or the fact I still dream your actions before you do them (I felt your email as you were writing it, I woke up and checked it the exact moment you sent it). What chokes the self-respect out of me most, though, is the objective part of me sceaming, "Nameless, you huge tool! Grow a pair and get over it!" but I can't because you're that other name - not the right one, just the one that makes me do dumb, dumb sh*t.

So now that I've found the guy who has a heaven-bestowed knack for making me sound/act like an effing moron, where the bleep is other guy? Anyone?

This is important.

Please think about this.

Thats all for today.

Update

Aunt L to Grandmother upon noticing she is dressed to the nines, but: "Mom - why are you wearing a pajama top?"
Grandmother, waving her hand dismissively: "Oh, youh know - when I weh-ah a bra wid it, it's eh deytime top...."

My reasonable attorney of a mother asks from foyer: "Would someone please bring me a broom?"
No one responds because it's too loud.
Mother, louder now: "Could I please have a broom?"
Riot-level noise.
Mother screams at previously-unheard decible: "I need a broom right friggen now!!
Me: "Why? You late to something!?"

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Live blogging Thanksgiving

When I started hanging out with Jewish kids, explaining my family became *a lot* easier. It was like a given that they would understand mine, as they knew firsthand how a family could manage to live in America while really existing in a weird alternate dimension that mixed together G-d, food, guilt, non-English yelling, and incredible racial stereotypes daily. Currently, there are fifteen people in my home - in one hour, we will sit down to eat and there will be forty-seven people here, eating an amount of food that could feed double that. So, in the spirit of the holiday (yeah, ok - everyday) I present to you just a few of the things I've heard today for which I am thankful:

Sister in kitchen: "Ugh, I hate the way this smells...."
Grandmother from next room, screaming: "You doh-n't sey you haite nuh-thin' but dah TURKS!"

Great-aunt speaking softly to my twenty-one year old brother: "It's better to marry a whore from your own nation than someone from another tribe."
Brother: [Nods softly, looks at me pleadingly]

keep in mind here I'm translating from an amalgamation of three completely unrelated languages.

Sister to Brother on couch, quietly and with a polite smile: "You know, as I was giving Grandma a shower, she asked me if you were a virgin."

Brother to Grandmother: "Don't worry! I'm just walking by - I'm not looking!"
Grandmother to brother, cackling: "Heh - youh miht haff to look - odahwise youh miht nehvah know what youh goh-nah get!"

Yeah. People are arriving this very minute, so more where that came from. . . .

Buckle up, we are bouncing all over the place today...

I didn’t grow up Jewish, we should all know this by now, and the bottom line is that sometimes I forget certain things are hot-button issues. Women studying Gemara is one of these. In all honesty, I hardly ever think about this because I have enough going on in my life, but today I set aside some time to really think of how to explain how I feel about this. I started to think about everything I had learned while converting, everything I had read, everyone rabbi I had heard argue Golda v. Gemara and soon enough, my sweet little self was infuriated, ready to spit hot fi-yah! And then you know what? I got a little help from a highly unfathomable source, and the answer came to me in a flash – an answer to the oft-posed question “Why don’t girls study Gemara?” and it’s immeasurable cruelty lies in its stinging simplicity:

because someone tells them not to.

That’s it, the grammatically disastrous truth in all its glory…the thing people spend lifetimes and forests haranguing over is then simply the sourcing, the intention, the questioning, the searching, the reasoning – the why. So the new question should then be: "Why do people tell girls not to study Gemara?" You want the answer to this one? It’s another doozie, so get ready.

that answer is totally inconsequential. It does not matter. At all.

Here’s why: every individual is ultimately responsible for his or her Self because each person is subject to the consequences of the actions they’re performed through Hashem’s provision of free will. As a result, the responsibility rests with each individual woman to extend herself beyond the voice of her rabbi, beyond the voice of her community, beyond even the nagging little voice of presumed propriety that lives in her own head, in an effort to identify which side of this why will get her vote. Without these conscious actions, there can be no integrity of character in Jewish wives, mothers, daughters, sisters; they would simply exist as sad Jewbots doing whatever anyone tells them. Now everyone take a deep breath. This does not mean I am advocating the onset of the Great Orthodox Jewish Female Mutiny – if your decision is to accept with just the slightest perfunctory exploration of thought that you’re not to study Gemara or wear pants or insert yourself in your son’s education, then that’s your choice and as such cannot be judged by me or anyone else as correct or incorrect because it is validated by its very existence as someone’s interpretation of “correct”

Since correct is just someone’s determination of a right path - an answer – there will never be a definitive correct. I mean, even Hashem can’t get people to agree on a “correct” – isn’t that what we are talking about here? So, knowing that in matters of free choice (which is every matter), each individual will produce a different answer to the same question and so the real question is "Where does this leave us?" Not in a place humans usually like to be since we have this ravenous internal need to neatly qualify the world around us as a collection of binary systems (girls who study Gemara = bad/wrong, girls who stay away = good/right) but that just isn’t how it is; our evaluation of the choices our community members make is by nature subjective and cannot be confused with one’s estimation of the desirability of the consequences stemming from that choice. And with that understanding we can identify that the fruits of an action (the positive effects or negative consequences) exist as objective standalones and are therefore comparable across people/situation/time. Consideration of these outcomes are perhaps then most valuable factors when women formulate their own responsive actions to this Gemara question and only after this has been completed does the community have any place at all in this discussion: the place to remember to be kind and loving to fellow Jews above any presence of differences.

Unless that’s all a crock they throw at you along with “Shhaaalooom, Dani” and “Aaaaannnni meedaaberet ivvriiiit.” I don't know, maybe I'm just the idealistic idiot convert who can only say she studies Gemara because she didn't know anyone to tell her not to....

Exhibit A

I wanted to call you tonight. Instead, I studied Hebrew.

Do I get some kind of grown-up reward or something?

Jew Envy?

Telling your friends and family you're converting is kind of like coming out of the closet - it's nervewracking for both the individual and the family in that the bomb you're about to drop is a very tangible rejection of your previously assumed trappings of birth. It takes anyone time to adjust to the fact that your new surgically-reconstructed penis or faith in The Buddah does not signify a new contempt for the unchanged way they live their lives, but is rather just what goes along with your more fitting moniker of "man" or "fat little bald Asian" ('woh-ei-nee' to my Taiwanese undergrad roommate who might read this one day, by the way).

My family has always been good about "turning Jewish" as my younger brother calls it - as it stands, their particular brand of Christianity looks a lot more like Orthodox Judaism than the Anglo variety, so it wasn't much of a jump. However, I might mention here that I got my BA from a highly Christian, yet very academically well-known American university and telling my college friends was therefore a little different. I mean, this is the girl who dove into the New Testament in Greek with you, the girl who sat up and explained Redemptive Covenant Theology with you, the girl who took you to task on Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons - the entire way they knew me was inextricably tied up in this context of spirituality.

And so I did what every self-respecting person would do in a time of similar crises of identity: I completely ignored it until totally impossible. And you know what I got? Overwhelming responses of what I can only call "Jew Envy" - my friends literally saying how much cooler (COOLER!) it was to be religiously Jewish, inviting themselves on my Israel trips, visiting my Ulpan with me, meeting every week to discuss the parsha and daf yomi, etc. And not even to build up an arsenal of information, either, but to continue informing their knowledge of their faith.

Shocked, I was shocked. Now I know some people don't like hearing this, might have an issue with it, whatever. For me, it remains one if the most affirming examples of humanity...and ah, not to mention the only time I've heard Jews called "cool" not in silkscreen format.

Don't worry, I don't think it's contagious

Maybe it's because I was a working professional for a few years before starting law school, maybe it's because I grew up in Europe, maybe it's because I like beautiful clothes or not making people guess if I'm headed to class or the homeless shelter, but for whatever reason, I typically am habiller-ed slightly better than my classmates. Pearls, tailored shirts, lots of cable knit, lined slacks, denim in trouser form only, and most specifically - killer shoes. This is not because I am frou-frou/uppity/swimming in money/ostentatious/materialistic - in fact, it's so the opposite: this is the wardrobe I owned before taking on $3945304985023498304958.92 in student loans, and so this is what I'm wearing.

Until today, I really had no idea that anyone noticed my clothes as anything other than "Oh, thats nice, her nipples aren't showing and she is fulfilling Mazlow's hierarcy", but evidentally I was wrong. This afternoon, a boy in my ConLaw class leaned over before the prof got there and politely inquired as to my health. As in, "Nameless, I've got some Zycam in my bag if you need some." The wonderous healing properties of zinc aside (seriously, if you've never looked into it, you really should - it basically works by altering the electrical charge of your nasal capilleries, and it's just phenomenal to consider how HaShem creates us), I am not sick. And so the question is begged "WTF are you talking about?"

Answer: I am wearing a fleece, yoga pants, and track shoes.

I kindly explained to this person that no, I am currently the picture of health but the genes that now live in my ass made it to me only after an extended genocide that included death marches in the desert and now must be encouraged not to hold onto every morsel of food I permit to slide down my gullet.

In other words, "Oh, hahahahaha - no! I just came from the gym!" Man alive, you think someone training to be a lawyer would know how to phrase a question less leadingly, right?

Latest email received from the one affectionately known as The One:

"I don't see how the relationship has changed other than I am a lot more busy. I care for you as much as I ever have.... With stability in my family, I'm back to being able to live my real life again and that's why I have a lot less time. You should, too."

Not that you'll ever find this blog, but just for your edification may I present to you "Clues The Relationship Has Changed":

1. You no longer live your life in hopes of waking up next to me in the morning. I no longer entertain thoughts of being the mother of your children.

2. You don't call me in the middle of the night to tell me you were dreaming about me in a wedding dress.

3. You don't subconsciously reassert my diminished capacity in your new future by distinguising between your "real life" and whatever life of yours includes me...I don't know, maybe you call it Fake Life No. 1, or something.

4. You don't expect me to return phone calls or emails or texts with the same alarming speed as I did when we were each other's bashert.

5. (And this is important) You do not give me advice or speak to me authoritatively or presume to know a thimble-effing-full about my current life, thoughts, emotions. And I stay unpresumptuously neutral about your life, as well. That's just respectful - you don't occupy that place for me anymore, nor I for you. Let's get out of each other's way so the next person can come in.

Look, I always thought a guy would give his eye teeth for a girl who doesn't play games, who is honest and forthcoming while being kind and considerate and mindful of her boy's feelings. The breakup (or petering-out or the cessation of the romantic phase or whatever we are going to call it) of our relationship is over - it was the most intensely difficult thing I've ever had to deal with and it is only due to the extremely disturbing ease with which I emotionally detach that I am able to think about it with any kind of objective clarity. But I'm doing it! I'm the girl, the half typically cast as maudlin and clingy, and yet here I am not emailing you, not deluding myself, not inviting you to remember how much I loved you or you loved me.

Please let me go. I'll miss you and it will devastate me, but this tenuous torture is the ultimate despair.

Sidenote: I'm totally going to re-run the blog through that gender algorithm again - this should vag me up at least a few points, don't you think?

Suspicions confirmed!

I think this may be why girls don't really understand me. . . .

Thanks to adderabbi for the site's link.

The most fantastically ridiculous thing said to me today.

I personally love the way the single girls and boys “mingle” after shul. Of course, by mingle, I really mean: crash together like a south Pacific tsunami onto the unsuspecting shores of Borneo, in a way that is both murderously violent yet G-d affirmingly organic. I’m not old, I’m not heavy, I’m not an unfortunate dresser, I get plenty of looks across the aisle – and before I knew they would be translated only slightly less meaningfully than a marriage proposal, I used to cast my fair share of those looks, too. Let it be known, though, that I would rather floss my teeth with the fresh sinews of bubonic plague-carrying rat than allow myself to be caught in the clusterf*ck that is the back-of-the-room-elaborate-siddur-replacement-shuffle-to-the-door scrum.

Today, (why oh why oh why) avoidance was impossible. I was in a rush getting to shul and was distracted – I’m addicted to my iPhone, okay? I can’t turn it off or put it away and my family situation demands that I have it on me at all times and I got a series of disturbing texts right before leaving the house – which lead to 1) choosing the hillel and not my regular shul, and 2) me forgetting my siddur and chumash. Meaning I had to borrow them. Meaning I had to return them. Meaning I was lucky enough to meet (read: be accosted by) a lovely young Jewish gentleman who after stepping directly and abruptly into my path (what if I’m a slow-reflexed shomer negiah, buddy?) began our conversation with, “I’m sorry, I have to ask – is that your real hair? Wow, I only hope that my future wife finds a sheitel that gorgeous.”

What I wanted to do: Stand there slack-jawed until the light in his eyes dimmed a bit, finally completely crushing his spirit by the ejaculation of a deep, utterly pervasive belly laugh.

What I actually did: Chortled charmingly while thanking him warmly and then intentionaccidentally
bumping into another girl, allowing me to turn away and apologize to her effusively, effectively canceling out any conversation time owed to creepy fake hair kallah-seeker.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure this is really my life now.

Over the river and through the woods

Every Friday, I spend time with my mother's mother. Essentially, she is Marie from Everybody Loves Raymond (which may explain my intense aversion to that programme, the channel airing it, any tv carrying that channel, and household in possession of such a device, etc.). I have been here for about 29 minutes; the following is a partial list of what's happened during that time.

1. Made her a complete breakfast. As she is French, this means two kinds of coffee, seven differently shaped carbs, about a pound of butter, half that of preserves, and double that of cheese.

2. Removed and reset the table as she refused to eat anything until I represented the entire meal with the correct silver, tablecloth, blah blah. If you are thinking "Oh, that's sweet, she wants to make it special during your day together!", let me just stop you right there. I assure you this is not the case.

3. Cleaned the oven.

4. Wiped down the interior of the refrigerator with a bucket of soapy water.

5. Started a load of laundry - her unmentionables, naturally.

Note: I do not mind items 1-5; I am the oldest girl in a large family. Although my family has always been lucky enough to have the means to hire help, it was decided back in the old country that that would not happen and here I am, cleaning toilets with four carats of diamonds in my ears. Here's what I do mind:

6. 29 minutes of The 700 Club.

7. The pamphlet slid to me over that just-placed tablecloth that describes the benefits of female masturbation, accompanied by the confession that her doctor gave her this after her first miscarriage -- in 1955 -- and the detailed description of her adventurous sex life with my grandfather.

8. The direct quote: "Oh, no, tey kent weah a Jesus nicklass en schoul, bat Islam ken use de Quran ass a tex-book." Let's just set aside the fact that she's been in this country for 60 years and still puts a "g" in the world "children". Let's focus instead on the fact that that makes absolutely no sense.

9. The insistence I wear a hat in the house, lest the "cold eh-fect yah bowels, an you get kon-stapated."

Seriously. Every Friday. More where this came from.

This is my later occasion....

No one is perfect, right? As Jews, we (still feels weird saying we - when does that go away?) believe there's an inherent duality within humanity causing the constant struggle to reconcile one's yetzer ra and yetzer tov. (Tell me if I'm wrong, seriously. Tell the beit din, too. ) The ultimate choice in identity determination is then whether you place preeminence on needing to fulfill your desires over desiring to fulfill the needs of others. So, within this contex is it possible that reflecting on your past life be selfish? Is it an evil impulse to remember unsavory things? A case can be made affirming the validity of relection upon the past - I mean, the entire study of history exists because there is an assumption that the past is valuable for the positive impact its study will have on the future. If recognition is born of reflection, and the knowledge contained in that word recognition is the key to any kind of advancement, why should our own pasts rest maligned outside the boundaries of "Value" and "Worth"?



Okay, so maybe thats a little heavy handed, but you get what I'm saying?



Improving oneself, enacting tshuva, is clearly yetzer tov. Tshuva is commonly thought of as a multi-phased action, the first part being acknowledgement of a misdeed or behavior. This part of tshuva - the recognition of past sin leading to the desire of future reorganiztion of past behavior - demands one confront these sins, which clearly calls to attention memories of things that were more than likely very yetzer ra. Therefore, it's fairly obvious there will exist some overlap of one's yetzer ra and yetzer tov during the reconciliation process of a specific situation or struggle, no?


There is a long history of great men and women doing this, expressing their personal doubts/failings through private journals, journals we know about because someone found and read them (most likely in violation of the author's original intentions). If we assume a blog to be a modern modification of those journals or letters (the given being my blog is intended to exist as a collection vessel for my personal thoughts, as a bound journal would), is is my responsibility as an author to uphold the morality of a public community? I realize that a blog makes this private recognition available for public consumption immediately and easily, yet does that mean my own reconcilliation and "rehabillitation" should take a backseat as a result of the insistence that I should censor based on the sensibilities of another mind? Or is the question entirely different: Should one bother to think on paper at all/is thinking on paper less appropriate than plain old thinking? Should the self be subjugated for others?

Mother of crap, lets make it about civil liberties, at least. Maybe then I could get some kind of university credit for it, maybe even a consideration for Law Review. . . .

Who knew?

Alright, I have to admit: FrumSatire did a huge number on me with this one

Now, I know frummy boys have this weird thing that all converts are some hybrid of nympho and Dr. Drew, so I hate to disappoint but searching the nyc craigslist personals for "frum" almost killed me. One of my profs recently said of me "One of your greatest strengths is your shock value" - which I disagreed with, but state anyway to let you know that this stuff usually doesn't weird me out. That being said, this is blowing my mind. In fact, my sister was in our apartment for all of three seconds before she came running to see what I was looking at. Why? Because my jaw was on the floor. Somehow, we ended up at this post and are now currently in the middle of using my photo editing expertise to fatten up some pictures of ourselves. In the interest of science, we owe it to the sisterhood to discover this man's miracle methods.

Also, quick question: aren't the odds significant that someone will be able to recognize the creepy jewish married guy who is trying to hook up online? Has this ever happened?

Unbelievable

One of my best friends is a social worker. Needless to say, her stories are fantastic. Until today, the best one involved an axe found underneath the driver's seat in her car. And then came this:

Angelique's mother's boyfriend is getting out of jail the day after Thanksgiving. Her mother admonished her family (including her granddaughter) to not bother her on the 25th because "I'll be getting my shit off on that day all day".
Angelique hates that n***** but extends good wishes to her mom and the convict because "What the hell, he makes her happy. I don't like talkin' trash about my mother, but hell, she met him in Kennedy Plaza when he was out on work release."
I, of course, have to ask, "So, it's okay with your mom that he's in and out of jail?" She replies, "Oh hell, yeah. She gets a break from cookin', cleanin' and bendin' over fah him, you know... and she gets to watch her soap operas." I agree with her, of course I know what it's like living with a man.
Angelique explains that he's just a clepto, "nothin really bad", and hell, that has paid off for her and her family. "Like, when he was in jail one time, he used to hustle out french fries. Damned if we knew how he did it, but there they were...mad bags and bags of frozen french fries. He's good, he even stuffed frozen chicken in his shoes."

Too much. Just waaaay too much to keep to myself.

Things that make you go "hmmm...."

So maybe this shouldn't make me laugh. Shiksha is offensive, and you are smart enough to Google why so I'm not going to explain. However, as someone who was once identifiable as such I will say this: It's funny 'cuz it's truuuuue!

Line from an email from the Necromancer: "You let me try on my old battered personality to see if it fit - I'll always love you for letting me be romantic again."

I'm so glad I could rehabilitate you for the Hebrew community! I'm just grateful that I was a non-Jewish automaton at the time so we didn't have to worry about my feelings. Newsflash, sexually-conflicted Yeshiva boy, shikshas are not some secret subgroup contained under the Three-Fifths Rule. A break-up doesn't hurt less when you don't know when YK is, and although this was a long time ago, it's still infuriating.

"I don't normally pray to you like this, but...if you're up there, help me Superman!"

He emailed today. It's an important occasion and he remembered it. Ours was an unusual breakup: nothing bad ever happened - we were totally compatible - but we just couldn't be together because our life situations required us to be half a world apart for the next few years. On one hand, it was nice to know that I (someone who tells poop jokes and likes frat boy movies) had progressed past the "ride it into the ground" mentality. On the other hand, I also proved that I am indeed a girl because I could not stop crying for weeks: shower = crying, library = crying, walking the dog = crying. So it’s a very big deal. Now what do I do? He emailed me, I replied in a cheery, grateful way – he replied with a friendly, intimate line and now the ball is in my court.

You know what my first reaction is? It's very masculine: I do nothing. He's a boy, so odds are nothing more is being anticipated and so nothing more is required. But something about him infiltrates my normally stoic self and I become the classic girl: If I don’t respond, will he stop emailing? I want to see his name in my inbox again – I have to write something! How do I keep this light? Will I be bothering him if I start another line of questioning? Did he want it to be just this special occasion email and not a sign that we should keep in touch more frequently? I will fall apart if he doesn't respond to this! How do I avoid being the last email in a dangling chain?

ALKJLlkfgsdflkgjLaksjlk ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I mean, I have things to do! How do girls do this?

Another Shabbat come and gone.

The first time I ever went to shul on Shabbat was a disaster of epic proportions. There is zero exaggeration here. It was an Orthodox situation and I: wore pants, mules, carried a purse, didn't know to take a siddur, talked during davening, didn't know the words to anything, didn't know that there was no speaker, didn't know any of the melodies, didn't know when to turn or bow, didn't know what all the mummering was about or all the swaying and it was painfully, painfully obvious that I was incredibly out of place. The girl who sat next to me came to my rescue - helped me follow along, smiled at me occasionally. Her name, like the names of the first 56 Jewish girls I met, was Rebecca and she confessed the way of the Big-O was a little intimidating for her, too. Other than Rebecca - an an out-of-towner whose only friends were one the other side of the mechitza - no one else so much as looked at me. For six weeks.

I think of this every single Shabbat because I knew that first week that I was where I belonged in life, but at the same time, I felt so othered. There was a very real disconnect between the kindness and hospitality preached verses practiced.

If someone walks into your shul, or synagogue, or temple, or backyard with a true sense of seeking, its your responsibility to treat that person with warmth and hospitality. However, its been my experience that the greatest shows of closed ranks occur within religious communities - why do we do that to people? Why do we try to preserve the groups we know, not letting new people in or releasing those who want to leave? Why is it the groups that talk the loudest about chesed are usually the last to extend it?

Kindness in our words and actions is paramount. You can be clever, teasing, slightly irreverent, questioning, strong, unique, opinionated, but never cruel, dismissive, or insensitive. If you need reasons, here are two: Other people's feelings are worthy of care and concern because their very existence is an immediate manifestation of your own actions as they root in another human. You throw little seeds of bitterness, joy, thankfulness, anger around and they latch onto other people and then begin to grow there, too. Secondly, how you are can never be fully defined: your present self is a bundle of the shadows of your former actions and your future self is nothing but the actions of your current present. One always has the option to become a person characterized by the true presence of lovingkindness.

So what are you waiting for? Go do it right, already.

add it to the list of things outside my current realm of knowledge

This is anonymous, so a little self-aggrandisement is alright. I know a lot about Judaism - I know the history, the figures, the laws, the teachings, the words, blah blah blah but I have a huge blind spot when it comes to things biologically Jewish kids get from birth. This is precisely what prompted me to search for the blogs I read in the first place - where were all the kids with a Jewish worldview on dating, family, working, israel, graduate studies...who could tell me what it sounded like to be Jewish?

Answer: Evidently hanging out in exotic places with magical names like "Monsey" and "BP" and from the looks of it, more ready to judge me than indulge my innocent questions.

So, now its time to play "Explain THAT!" and here's how it works: I posit a question and if you are Jewish in any way, shape, or form and know how to work a fancy computertypingmachine, you tell me what the %&*# is going on. And you don't worry about people seeing you talk to a girl, a girl convert, a girl convert who attends a very non-jewish school, a girl convert who attends a very non-jewish school and is pretty hot, bc its the computer and no one knows who you are! So hook a sister up, won't you?

So calling all cars:

You're in shul, you spy a new girl across the mechitzah. During the 25 steps from where you were to where she is, Mossad agents inform you that she is frum but a giyoret (I'm fairly certain this happens - not the combo, the plainclothes agents). What do you do, boys? And girls, what do you think when you succumb to extreme boredom and onlysimchas it at work or in the library, only to discover that the most eligible boy in your generation has gone and ketubah-ed it with like girl?

And even worse, what do you do when you are that girl? I'll tell you what: you make a blog because no one gets you.

when writing your history...

It's a little strange - I am more nervous about the reactions I'll get regarding my blog content than I typically am with my everyday conversation. Everyday conversation that's attached to my name and my face. Alright, so currently this is attached to my lips and my chin and my neck, which could be argued as representative of my face if one argues the root functions of recognition but lets just beeasy right now because I'm currently still in bed.

I've never kept a diary - I've always been way too impatient to sit down at the end of a day and rethink about everything that's happened to me. I'm lucky if I can get my contacts out before I collapse. Lately, though, I've realized that my life has changed drastically in the last year but the level of odd hilarity remains impressively (and unfortunately?) high. All the creeps and wackos and nutjobs that seemed to come out of the woodwork for me BCE (Before Conversion Era) were still popping up, except now they were saying things like g'mar chatimah tova, Ramban, shidduch, Netilas Yedayim, and shkoyach. Now, my old friends require a ten minute mini-Jewish lesson whenever I tell a freakdate story and my new Jewish friends can't possibly understand why I'm not phased when my dinner date tries to teach me how to count in Hebrew using a set of anal beads.

Oh, yeah. That's an absolutely true story - do you see now why I have to write a blog?

Anyway, I'll try to give you guys heads up on the stories that might be slightly offensive, but I've been seeing that the Jewish Blogosphere is no kid's birthday party, so I think we'll be okay. We can start out with a quickie so you know what we're dealing with here:

The first Jewish boy I dated was so sure I was a biological Jew one of his first conversations with me was his outrage at the bastardization of the glass-breaking at interfaith weddings, Hebrew/Yiddish terminologies flying every which way. When he learned my decidedly un-Jewish name, he was totally thrown and spent the next month loading our conversations with "Seinfeld" quotes and praising my "New York sense of humour" in an effort to Jack Bauer the answer out of me. He finally told me that I "thought, talked, believed" like a Jew, but that didn't matter because my primary language was not that of Jewish culture and so therefore I was "not appropriate" - to which I replied I found it just as inappropriate to be a phD candidate supposedly proud of his culture but forced to used a syndicated subterfuge to wheedle out my religious association instead of having some balls and asking me outright.

Also, his mother didn't know my mother so that's it right there, isn't it?

small update re: brownies

It seems I've lost the battle.

why is this blog different from all other other blogs?

After much careful consideration (conducted entirely between the hours of 3 and 6 in the morning), here are the top ten reasons:

i am a convert to judaism
orthodox judaism
with dati leumi leanings
planning aliyah
despite being raised by orthodox mediterranean non-jewish parents
between two homes on either side of the atlantic
(both with koshered kitchens and metzuzot - again, not jewish)
who is trying to identify a place she might exist in this world
while not sounding like an indulgent douche
or failing law school

shockingly enough, there is no blog for that already. i know, i didnt believe it either.

Here's the thing: I've spent six months reading Bad4Shidduchim, Frum Satire, What War Zone, Jacob da Jew, Leah in Chicago, Frum Meets World, Adderabbi, the list goes on and on. And sure, I've laughed hysterically, congratulated myself on understanding the Hebrew, scoffed in superiority, been painfully humbled, become so disgusted I actually x'ed out all my Firefox tabs, questioned whether I'll ever be good enough for the kind of boy I'm looking for, and learned more about being Jewish (as opposed to being Jewish) than I ever thought possible outside of a kibbutz, but I've never truly thought, "Yes. This is me! This is someone telling me what I don't want to take the time to tell myself!"

So thanks a lot, tortuously paradoxical soul of mine - you've managed to become aggressively introspective while maintaining a significant contempt for any kind of self-searching that results in even the slightest value. naturally, there's a good deal of internal speculation regarding why - at the busiest time of my short life - I have finally decided to let my quasi-serious thoughts feel the warm sun of the blogosphere on their sad little faces. (possible answers: new way to procrastinate, impending doom of a milestone (read:millstone) birthday, the implosion of the best relationship I've ever had, deep-seeded mental issues, trying to avoid the pan of brownies in the kitchen, etc.) ultimately, its all inconclusive. but i guarantee you it will be a fabulous way to waste a few minutes, and really, isn't that why we all have wireless?

Next on nameless, faceless: I've never lived in Flatbush, am I out of the loop?