Life Updates

1. Last Friday night, Deborah Feldman, author of Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots, came to speak at our Shabbat service. First of all, just HOW FREAKIN' AWESOME to have a bestselling author come to our humble synagogue and spend time with us. She is a natural storyteller, so her speech was riveting, and then she wrapped it up in a decent amount of time so she could take questions and engage with the congregation's curiosity. She signed books at the oneg (shockingly few of us had actually brought the book to be signed) and we got to have a little chat there too. I told her that coming from the South, Judaism itself had been quite a mystery to me, and even now after my conversion, the ultra-Orthodox world she came from was completely foreign and shocking. (Ultra-Orthodox sects, contrary to what one might assume, did not actually exist until fairly recently...it came about as a response to the Holocaust, for Jews who believed that was a punishment for assimilation and felt they needed to make themselves stand out isolated from the world far more than they were.) Deborah said, "You left the land of barbecue to come here?? Please tell me you can still have pork ribs!"

Rabbi on the left, Deborah Feldman on the right

2. Last Sunday was the New York City Marathon, and my brother-in-law's fiancee ran in it. She was never an athlete and just took up running about two years ago after she got out of law school and before she found a job. Talk about inspiring. Nicole and I grumbled privately to each other for a while about having to go into Manhattan on such a crazy day, but we ended up having a great time. It's such a different feel from, say, a parade. Participants are working so hard and the spectators are there to support and cheer on, not to be entertained. We gathered at two different spots to see her pass by, and then we were meeting up with her friends and family at a bar afterward where my brother-in-law had rented out a little loft area for the group.

Watching the race was unexpectedly emotional for me. Seeing two different blind runners who held a rope circle with another runner to keep in line, people running on blades (the prosthetic limbs designed for athletics), people from all over the globe, a woman bursting into tears of exhaustion as soon as her partner stepped out to hug her at Mile 23 so then he ran alongside her for the last three miles.

Between our second spotting and the time we would all be meeting at the bar, there was over an hour to kill. And as we turned to walk with everyone, we realized we had been standing right in front of the Jewish Museum the whole time. I have been wanting to see the Chagall exhibit that leaves in February and figured, like always, we would never end up making it in to see it. We're both such homebodies and it takes a lot for us to commit to spending a day in the city, and the museum is not in a location convenient at all to Penn Station even, which makes it require extra motivation. So we looked at each other and lit up and both said alternately, "Really? Do you really want to? Can we? Is it okay?" Meanwhile my brother-in-law was encouraging us to go. He was so grateful that we had all come out to support his fiancee and wanted us to get out of the cold and do something we'd enjoy while we were there. We didn't have to be told twice.

The Chagall exhibit was awesome. He was a Soviet artist who moved to France and then to the US right before the war, so he had a lot of guilt and distress around what was happening to his fellow Jews back in Europe during the Shoah. I'm not even close to what one would call "cultured" or "a sophisticate," and I could appreciate the very obvious change in his works from before the war to during the war. They got much darker, lots of black and red and sad images. It was fascinating. Then on top of this, we got to see the rest of the museum where we'd never been. An intimate and quiet spontaneous date in the middle of a packed, crowded, and loud day.

3.  I'm super excited about "Thanksgivukah," the very rare, less-than-once-in-a-lifetime coinciding of Thanksgiving and Chanukah. I've already found a pumpkin latke recipe for the combined Thanksgiving/Chanukah dinner. The Jewish world is lit up with excitement and creative ideas over this holiday combination, and it's such a fun energy. But I have one minor issue - I don't know how to decorate!! It already feels strange sending holiday cards before Thanksgiving, but when to change out the orange and brown leaf-themed kitchen towels for the blue and white Chanukah towels is causing me more than a minimal amount of distress. We have a little box that looks like a miniature crate and says "Apples, 50 cents" on it that we use for our napkins and salt and pepper shakers on the dining room table. It's perfect for fall and Thanksgiving. But then we have a nice blue basket with white snowflakes and silver tinsel that would be perfect for the same purpose for Chanukah. When do I trade them out??

This is the fatal conflict: I hate decorating for one holiday before the preceding one is over, and I love decorating far in advance for each holiday so I have time to enjoy the decor. So what to do you do when they happen at the same time??

Our rabbi offered to come over and help us put up our mezuzahs, BLOWING MY MIND as to the role Jewish clergy can play in your life....this is beyond incredible of her and I'm excited out of my mind. This is next Saturday and because I'm ridiculously psyched for it, and because she won't exactly be a frequent visitor to our home, I want everything to be perfect. We've been toying with a date for a couple of months, and I had been very excited about cutesying my house up with fall decor...til we finally confirmed a date that is only two weeks before Chanukah, and now I want her to see our Chanukah decor! But while Chanukah colors fitting a winter theme is normally perfect, it's definitely not while we're not even at Thanksgiving yet.

Yes, I could put both baskets out, both sets of kitchen towels. But boy do they clash, and it goes against the perfectionist in my brain (who only makes rare appearances but this is most definitely one of them).

Chanukat