blaugra

Hanukkah Princess strikes again: 8 gifts, please!

Hanukkah starts Sunday night and I'm almost ready with Salty D.'s eight gifts (our tradition is we exchange gifts every night). I bought most of them local, but a couple of them haven't arrived yet -- as we all say "Hanukkah is so early this year!" We go from mashed potatoes and gravy right into potato latkes and applesauce. Hopefully the gifts for him arrive early next week so I won't have to give him any IOUs. 

Once again, D. asked me what I would like for Hanukkah. Seems like just yesterday I wrote this list of ideas for him to choose from.

So this year, I gave him this list:

• Pomegranate arils (what the fuck is an aril, he asked)
• Wine
• L'Occitane cherry blossom stuff like what Kristin got me a while back and I need replenishment
• Overland slippers to replace the ones I'm wearing now that have a giant hole in the right side of the right foot. Sad because I bought them on sale at the Overland store on the plaza in Santa Fe.
• Soap
• A facial at my fave massage place because I don't get them often
• A bouquet of flowers (because you don't bring me flowers anymore)
• Dinner out at a Thai or Middle Eastern place (this means dining with me, not a gift card so that I go with a friend! Since he doesn't really care for Thai or Middle Eastern food, his company would be the biggest gift.)

See, I'm not hard to buy for. Am I? Or am I a Princess? 

I have the box of potato pancake mix ready to go (the traditional way to latke in my family.) Happy happy Hanukkah!

p.s. to self: don't forget Giving Tuesday! The food banks need you!

Dear God

I was raised not on religion but on Judy Blume books. "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" had a huge impact on the way I spoke to a singular deity.

And then I went to church. I became a testifying, devout born-again Christian. For about two years. Go ahead and laugh, that's what people normally do with born-again Christians, who are seen as having their head in the sands of conservatism, believing that ancient fictional stories are true history and law. I've been there.

The truth is, being a little Christian gave me a framework to survive the harrowing high school years. Without that framework, I would've been gobbled up. I was mentally very vulnerable. I have no regrets because it was my decision.

Now I am surrounded by fallen Catholics, cultural Jews and unimpressed Protestants, and committed atheists.

I myself am no longer impressed with the church or with the stories of Jesus. When I was an ardent Christ follower, I was told (and it was a bible verse apparently) that once you have committed to Jesus, you are saved and you are forever saved. No matter what. I find that hard to believe now. With everything I've done and thought, that the son of God will still take me to heaven? I find everything hard to believe now, including the reason that I'd even want to be saved.

What I've liked about acting Jewish is that there's a direct line to God. You don't have to go through any saints or holy mothers or the trinity. It's just, "Dear God..."

And so I've had a relationship with God on my own terms.

It's highly recommended by counselors everywhere (do you like how I'm lazily not attributing that to any source?) that a belief in a higher power, that prayer and/or meditation, has the power to help you heal and have a positive outlook. I believe that. So I've chosen to believe and pray.

Prayer used to come easily to me. Usually in short bursts, or maybe a longer meditation of everything I am grateful for.  I always felt peaceful afterwards, so that's reason enough to do it.

Now, I'm bored with prayer. It doesn't come easily. I fall asleep after five words in. Does that incomplete prayer even count?

My parents have been going through a church resurgence in their senior years. They attend each Sunday and they like to call me to tell me what the sermon was about, how it was delivered, and how impressed they were with the minister. It takes every ounce of patience not to say "I DON'T CARE!"

And I try to just express gratitude to God, but increasingly I just want to tell God what to do.  It's like God needs direction these days because our world is so fucked. Actually that may be what uber-conservative Christians think too, that they can just control it all.  Dear God, don't  let me be that kind of thinker.

I don't know how to end this. Amen? Lame.

 

Hanukkah Princess

This shiksa is being treated as a Hanukkah Princess right here right now. 

Despite being together for a hundred years, or perhaps because we've been together for a hundred years, Salty D. always says he doesn't know what to get me for Hanukkah presents. 

Hanukkah is eight crazy nights, which means, for us, eight crazy gift exchanges.  That's a lot of pressure, I guess. 

I don't think I'm hard to buy for. But I gave him the following list anyway.

Blaugra's Hanukkah Wishes

• Pedicure
• Fruit
• Coffee (really good)
• Olive oil
• Flannel PJs
• Go to a movie with me, please
• Delicious chocolate
• Dried mango
• Manchego cheese
• Ahava body lotion
• Sparkling Italian fancy water
• An incredible hamburger
• Kind bars
• Old Navy because I like my clothes made by child laborers in Bangladesh
• Himalayan salt
• Gasolina
• Mike and Ike's
• Salsa
• Pink Champagne, because why not?

This is just part of the list of gift ideas I gave to D.  I mean, I gave him a lot of options. Seriously.

It's the sixth night of Hanukkah now, and while I watch the candles burn, I will reveal that he is following some of my suggestions. I've happily accepted the gift of pink Champagne. I'm not supposed to drink much of anything but I figure if I'm going to tie one on some night, why not a big bottle of pink bubbly? How Princess is that?

Passover almost passes me by...

Oh no! I was very close to forgetting about Passover. I have the matzoh ball mix ready to go, but that's about it. No cleaning chametz, no Kosher Coke, I totally screwed up my standing as a supportive spouse of a Jewish man.

But I haven't been too into acting Jewish lately. Not really sure why I'm falling away from the fold. Wait, do you say something like that about Jews or is that just a Christian thing? I have no idea.

I had a class for my little MBA last night (Catholic school) so I missed first night seder opportunity.  Tonight, we considered going to a restaurant's seder dinner until Salty D. pointed out that there would be lots of children there and they were only going to serve Maneschewitz wine.  Neither of which I mind on the holiday but those things make him cranky. So I've rushed home to assemble a seder plate and drop some balls in soup.

Meantime, enjoy these Passovers over the years:

• On Barbra and improvising coconut macaroons
• A blended Easter/Passover feast, including Grandma's chocolate mousse recipe
• This addition to the Haggadah for when you get to the Dayenu part

This is sufficient.

Is Jewish a race, religion, or culture?

When I was a naive college freshman I said something that offended some of the people in my dorm.

They were Jewish, and I was not. I was, in fact, heavy into a born-again Christian phase.

I don't regret the phase because it was what literally saved me at a very vulnerable time before my freshman year, but, I do regret some of the attitudes I had temporarily adopted.

Anyway, my dorm-mates and I were talking about our cultural or ethnic backgrounds one night and of course mine is suburban euro-mutt so that's so very fascinating, and one of my friends said she was Jewish. And I was like, "No, that's a religion. That's not a culture. Where is your family FROM?" the typical U.S. American conversation. And she argued, "No, I'm Jewish. It's a race." we went back and forth and I got very judgy like I knew it all, at age 18.  It left me confused and with one less friend, and to this day I still talk about the issue with D., who never says "My family is German." He always says he is Jewish. And I never really get it.

This news item I just read piqued my interest:

"Using sophisticated genomic analysis, scientists have probed the ancestry of several Jewish and non-Jewish populations and better defined the relatedness of contemporary Jewish people. The research, published in the June issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, may shed light on the question, first raised more than a century ago, of whether Jews are a race, a religious group or something else."

First, calm yourself, don't be so shocked that I do read Science Daily alongside OK! Magazine and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Based on scientific research and not just belief, I now perceive that the Jews are a race and are bound together by religion and cultural traditions.

I can't compare being Jewish to being Christian, and I've tried to organize that in my head over the past 20 years.

The other reason this study is interesting to me, thinking about current events, is that the other day I got a tweet about a video showing a passionate Palestinian group protesting Israel in the wake of this whole flotilla thing, and against them stood a solitary Israeli student. 

But at the end of the video, the Palestinian demonstrators tell the reporter "There should not be an Israeli state, it does not even exist" Hmm. I think there have been some mighty big advantages of having an Israeli state. "The only reason Israel is doing this is they got kicked out of Germany whatever happened to them." Jeeezus, they sound less informed than I am but even I know that 'whatever happened to them' was called GENOCIDE.

So this linked together in my head. Genetically, scientifically, the Jewish people are from Israel.  Even if you don't care what the Bible or other documents and proclamations say about having a birthright to Israel, does a scientific study bring some logic to it?  Well, I think we're way beyond logic in the conflict.  Why all the fighting?  Why all the misunderstanding? The hate?

The frustrating thing is it's not logical. It's not about land or religion, as some Americans think. I think it's about resentment and hatred of a race.

I'm a pro-Israel shiksa moderate Republican and you can have at me now, dear reader.

 

Passover '09 almost over

Passover's almost over, and the matzoh-glue that has adhered itself to my internal organs can dissipate whenever it would like.  Oy. It IS the bread of affliction, after all.

Getting religion

Some people get so squirrely when you talk about spiritual reawakenings or religious beliefs.  We're afraid that you're going to push your agenda, or tell us we're going to hell in a handbasket. 

Well I have neither agenda nor judgment, I just really believe in the power of some religious ritual and the process of personal prayer. 

As yesterday was Yom Kippur, and I feel cleansed yet bloated from dairy, smoked fish and kugel, I thought I'd share these simple but wise words of the rabbis. 

"God did not put us on earth to be mean."

"May you have an easy fast, but remember that a little affliction is good for you."

"All children need prayers - the child who throws a tantrum in the grocery store, the child who witnesses his parents being tortured.  The child who is a finicky eater and the child who can not find a loaf of bread to steal."

"Life today is very difficult."

"Choose life. L'chaim."

That last one was very 1984 t-shirt slogan, but was the summation of a gentle sermon about life being hard but beautiful, and that is the point of life.  After that one, I vowed to myself that I'll never be suicidal again. 

pesach for my peeps

I'm busy planning Passover menus and preparing for the pascal feasts. To help me along I found this: the 10 plagues of Egypt brilliantly interpreted though Peeps.

The plague of the firstborn.

happy hanukkah!

Mmmmmm....oil.

L'shana tovah

Why I like Jewishness.  It makes sense to me, for the most part - and what doesn't make sense, I either adapt or disregard.  Like, cheeseburgers. What's wrong with them?  Disregard.  Rosh Hashanah, the head of a new year, I accept.  Good concept.   The execution - a little painful, involving extended time with family.  Topped off with a lunch at a Chinese restaurant. 

Anyway, you can make it your own, as Paula Abdul would say.

So we proclaimed this the Year of the Mu Shu.

Meanwhile, I secretly like to read stuff from the Kabbalah Center.  Don't tell my husband.  It's not because of Madonna.  While I don't believe in everything there, much of it makes sense and helps with practical application of Jewish calendar milestones, which are all based on astronomical and natural events so it all kinda makes sense.  Like now, the so-called time of renewal and resolution. 

There's a good common-sense practice proposed this month, how to get what you want. 

Focus on what you want in life, write it down, and then write down the steps it will take to reach your goal.  Wow. Easy, right?  Isn't this the whole basis of The Secret (it's a bestseller so I haven't read it)?   It's not something that everyone thinks about every day, unless you're one of those people addicted to Day Timers.

Anyway, do this before next Saturday because that's the final day of the Days of Awe.  So you have a week.  On next Saturday (sundown on yom kippur) your fate for the coming year is sealed.

Make it your own!  Have fun!