Rss Feed http://jew-ish.com/ en emily@jew-ish.com Copyright 2012 2012-02-23T00:17:+00:00 Breaking up: It’s not for chickens One way or another, we’ve all probably broken up with something. Some breakups we choose, and some are thrust upon us. Maybe it was a romantic partner or friend, maybe a job or hobby, or maybe even a food. 

So it went with my life-long relationship with chicken. Everything had been going smoothly for say, 20-plus years, until a series of unexpected events threw us off course. It all began when I was hosting a dinner and thought that is was clearly necessary to prepare two large chickens to feed seven people. 

Left with what was essentially an entire chicken, I froze most of the remainder. It was delicious chicken when I first cooked it, and to someone else I’m sure it would have still tasted delicious, but with every package I reheated from the freezer, my enjoyment of the chicken grew less and less. To spice things up in our lukewarm relationship, I attempted to use the remaining meat in a stir-fry with an Asian flair. While that worked well for one meal, afterward I was still left with the same chicken and the same struggles, so I found myself sending the remaining chicken the way of my classmates, because God forbid the chicken should end up in the trash.

After this whole fiasco, I found myself wary of future chicken encounters. My relationship with chicken wasn’t over, but I was keeping my distance. 

Having had some space, I decided that the time had come for me to renew my forays with chicken. To set myself up for success, I planned to make one of my all-time favorites, Mommy McNuggets, my mother’s recipe for chicken fingers. I readied my ingredients on the counter and prepared to start cleaning the chicken.

To my surprise, what I had on hand were not chicken breasts, but chicken thighs! Surely, the chicken thighs were not what I had intended to buy, but with everything ready to go and such grandiose dreams of chicken pleasure, I went ahead with it anyway. I cleaned the chicken, cut it into small pieces, breaded it, and baked it, all in all, quite a bit of work, but worth it for a tasty chicken dinner and a renewed chicken relationship.

But as you can guess, my night of chicken ecstasy did not go as planned. Chicken thighs might be good for some recipes, but not for Mommy McNuggets. What would normally be a succulent and tender bite of chicken was chewy and tough. I ate enough to fill me up for dinner, but couldn’t bring myself to eat the leftovers, and the whole experience was so disturbing that I wouldn’t even think of serving them to anyone else, not matter how undiscriminating their palate might be. And so there it was, despite my best intentions, the seeming nail in the coffin of my relationship with chicken.

A lot of time has passed since that encounter, and since then I’ve tried to keep my experiences with chicken to a minimum. It wasn’t until recently, when I was dealing with a an actual break up that was not involving a food, that I turned back to the chicken, the Mommy McNuggets in particular, and they didn’t let me down.

So rather than “breakups,” I’d like to think of them as “revisions of expectations.” I thought you were the love/food of my life, but then I found you unpalatable, unappetizing, and disappointing. Sometimes they represent the harsh reality of underlying truths, but sometimes they give way to new developments – times and tastes change – they have before, and they will in the future. So for now, I’m going to take it slow, keep my expectations low, and see how my new relationship with chicken will develop. Will it be a series of one-night stands? Will I ask for more than it can give me and then be disappointed? Or will it blossom into a gastronomic love fest? Only time will tell.

Mommy McNuggets
My Mother’s Recipe

Ingredients:

Canola oil
Boneless skinless chicken breast
Panko
Bread crumbs
Italian seasoning
Paprika

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 425. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat with canola oil. Place baking sheet in oven. Rinse chicken and remove any excess tissue. Cut chicken into 3-inch long by 1-inch wide pieces about ½-inch thick.  In a bag, combine panko, bread crumbs and seasonings. One by one, place chicken pieces in bag and shake to coat.

Place breaded chicken pieces on oiled baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 12 minutes, flipping after 7 minutes.

]]> 2012-02-23T00:17+00:00 Around the Sephardic world in 10 days The Seattle area is unique in that such a large Sephardic population settled here more than a century ago. While many of the families whose ancestors grew their families and fortunes here do their best to keep their culture and traditions alive, sometimes it’s best to let others do the heavy lifting.
“People are visual,” says Barri Rind, this year’s committee chair of the AJC Seattle Jewish Film Festival. “It’s very heartwarming for me to see that cinema celebrates these cultures and traditions that may disappear.”
Rind knows firsthand. As the Israeli-born daughter of Iranian Jewish immigrants, “we couldn’t always be openly Jewish,” she says. “When Israel was established, a lot of Jews had to leave Arab lands.”
Defining Sephardic Jewry isn’t simple. The term translates as being of Spanish origin, with most of this area’s Jews coming from Turkey or the Greek island of Rhodes, where they migrated after the expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. Many more, who are also called Mizrachi Jews hail from North Africa and Arab or Middle Eastern countries.
“To me, it doesn’t make any difference. Iranian, Iraqi, Moroccan,” Rind says. “We’re all connected in so many different ways.”
By focusing on Sephardic films in this year’s festival — a third of the screeningshave Sephardic themes — Rind and festival director Pamela Lavitt both hope these artistic efforts not only give that population a taste of the old countries, so to speak, but also teach people whose only connection to the Jewish community might be through this festival.
“We can go deeper into our own roots and our own history, yet it has a broader appeal rather than a smaller appeal,” Lavitt says.
Though the majority of the Sephardic films — and the festival’s films in general this year — are features rather than documentaries, Iraq ’n’ Roll and My Sweet Canary: The Story of Roza Eskenazi, The Queen of Rebetiko explore the musical history of Iraq and Israel’s Sephardic communities. A char lashon, an informal koffee klatch with Congregation Ezra Bessaroth hazzan emeritus Isaac Azose and Prof. Devin Naar, the Marsha and Jay Glazer Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, will follow My Sweet Canary.
For Rind, however, it’s the opening night film that stole her heart, not to mention those of the members of the festival’s film-selection committee. Mabul is the story of a teenage boy with autism who ends up back with his family after the institution in which he’s been living closes down from lack of funding.
“The family suddenly is faced with, how do we deal with this kid that needs 24 hour care?” said Rind, whose own 19-year-old son has a severe form of autism.
“It really hit home,” she says. “The way the movie is depicting how autism affects the family, the marriage, the siblings, [and] the community is very realistic and very authentic.”
In one scene, where after an especially difficult episode the boy’s mother sits down and cries, “I was that woman,” Rind says. “You don’t cry for yourself, you cry for ‘Where’s the solution? Who’s going to fight?’”
Rind has long been the one at the forefront of that fight. Mabul, she says, is powerful enough that she wants state legislators to attend to get a much greater understanding of her efforts over the past 15 years.
“It’s a great opportunity to teach the community what autism is all about,” she says.
Other films include this year’s entry in the AJC Bridge series, which highlights the diplomatic mission of the American Jewish Committee. My So-Called Enemy premiered at last year’s Seattle International Film Festival and followed a group of Israelis and Palestinians who came together at a camp in the U.S. and tracked how their lives were affected over seven years.
The Judge is a documentary of the former chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court, and will be followed by what Lavitt calls a pecha kucha, a presentation developed in Japan that features several short presentations on a subject — in this case, three minutes on how court systems operate — followed by discussion. But these are the tip of the iceberg.
To close the festival, the committee decided to show something much closer to home. The Boys of Terezìn is a documentary from Seattle-based Music of Remembrance, an organization that unearths and commissions music related to the Holocaust. With former TV news reporter John Sharify as director and the Northwest Boychoir performing the music, the film documents the lives of 100 teenage boys in the Terezin concentration camp who secretly created a magazine of their stories, drawings and poetry, and the reunion of four of the survivors 65 years later.
“It really is a gift to the festival to close on that note. We wanted to send it off with a true testament to life,” Lavitt says. “The fact that this film is premiering all over the country — it’s a little bit of Seattle exported, so we’re very proud.”

]]> 2012-02-17T14:15+00:00 What we talk about when we talk about Nathan Englander On the page, Nathan Englander is clear and concise, like each word has been polished and placed it alongside the others on a trophy shelf. But he speaks in sentence fragments.

Englander spoke to me between a Washington, D.C. hotel room and a cab ride to a reading on his book tour, taking two short breaks in our casual conversation to change into a suit and brush his teeth, then to take the elevator without aggravating fellow riders.

On how he views his success, or shortcomings, as a writer, “That’s the best part,” he said. “There’s only your work. Nothing ever really feels like anything. You know what I’m saying?”

And postmodernism claims another victim.

Englander’s collection of eight short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, hit the shelves to critical accolades, riding on the popularity of the title story that appeared in The New Yorker in December. His book tour brought him to Seattle February 16.

Englander, 42, has one novel and two short story collections in print, all of which draw upon themes from the Jewish religious and cultural context he is steeped in. Having grown up in a religious community on Long Island, it was only in Israel as a young adult that he disavowed Orthodoxy. After one week in Jerusalem, where he encountered secular Israelis, Englander turned toward a non-religious life. “I often feel a connection to peoples’ stories about coming out of the closet,” he said.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank traverses the landscape of Jewish identity. The pages interact with defectors from the faith, Israeli pride and zealotry, bullies and their scrawny yeshivish victims, even Englander’s own family. And let’s not forget the Holocaust and anti-Semitism (or the perception thereof), their dull drumbeats never lingering too far off. 

In the title story, we meet two couples, secular and baal teshuvah, bonding over pot, munchies and confessions until the ultimate, ugliest, most honest confession comes to bear. “Sister Hills” captures the birth and development of a West Bank settlement, and a twist on a Faustian bargain that, perhaps, determines its fate; in related form “Fruit for Young Widows” deals with Israel’s wars and the dynamic relationship between two soldiers over time. “Camp Sundown,” in which elderly campers take revenge on a man whom they think they recognize as a Nazi, stands apart in originality and darkness.

Despite the loaded themes, the stories step back at moments of judgment, leaving in their wake a cloud of moral dust. The characters are often left looking at one another, unsure what to make of themselves.

In this light, Englander’s vague, postmodern responses make more sense.

His story ideas don’t come from one place or with any agenda, and he describes his inspiration base as a “word cloud.” When he began writing “Sister Hills,” which he named his most challenging story, “When I had a few pages down I didn’t even know if the words made sense,” he said. “It was just so all consuming.” And regarding “Camp Sundown,” “I can’t even tell you,” he said. “I remember seeing turtles in a lake.” Somehow, he said, this got him to John Demjanjuk and Nazis. And summer camp, and the elderly.

“My obligation is to the story. I really feel connected to them all in different ways,” he said. “You get these lessons you didn’t expect…to me its become this nice thing. That’s what a living thing should be.”

Like other Jewish American writers, Englander spurns the “Jewish American writer” description. “That’s the point. You’re describing my work,” he said. “Stories are universal. I’m an American writer. My whole family is from America. I refuse to see my fiction as other.

“It must be somebody else’s choosing. It’s a category that comes from the outside.
Is it about circumcision or craft or what?”

Nonetheless, Englander, who has been compared to Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer, seems to fall into a class of contemporary “Jewish American writers,” and his prose shares qualities, at times, with Jonathan Safran Foer, Etgar Keret and Shalom Auslander. (He has a Haggadah coming out with Safran Foer, and he co-translated Keret’s latest story collection from the Hebrew.) He’s flattered to be considered part of this line of Jewish literary giants, but again, avoids putting himself there.

“I’m sure I play that game all the time,” he said. “Dylan’s better than the Stones. But the Stones might think differently. And don’t even mess with the Beatles fanatics…As the person who was dreaming of being a writer, this is the life I dreamed of. It’s not for me to absorb it. You have to believe in the work.”

]]> 2012-02-14T23:50+00:00 Young Love It’s that time of year when love is in the air. And while there are countless stories I could tell, good and bad, about my dating experiences, I think it’s most fitting to go back to the start: my first date.

I was five years old. My very complicated life consisted of kindergarten at the public school in the morning, after-care a few blocks away in the afternoon, and then back home in the evenings when my parents were done with work. It was at after-care that I met my first love: Joshua. 

Now, since these memories are twenty years old, I’m going to take some liberties here and tell things the way I remember them, or at least, as I’d like to remember them, as it should be with any love story.

Joshua was very cute. He had blue eyes and dark hair, and he went to the local Catholic school. Since he was also in AM kindergarten, I would see him in the afternoons at after-care. After observing him for some time, I decided that I liked him. And being the go-getter that I am, I did the natural thing that anyone does when they want to express their affection for someone else: I chased him around the playground trying to kiss him. I believe that I was given a timeout for this, but I was not deterred. After my first timeout, my caregivers let me at it, clearly not wanting to stand in the way of young love. 

Our mothers exchanged phone numbers, and all my hard work paid off when not long after that, Joshua’s mother called my mother, and Joshua and I got on the phone, and he asked me out for our first date. When the evening arrived, excited as I was, I got dressed in my party dress and tights and my dress shoes, and my mother did my hair. With that, accompanied by my parents, I made my way to our destination: The mall. There, with his mother, he was, as dressed to the nines as any five-year-old boy could be.

We walked around the mall with our parents. We held hands the whole time. We got balloons. We rode on some rides. And to cap it all off we made our way to the food court to Hillary’s Ice Cream, where I’m sure I got my favorite, strawberry, in a cup. All in all, a pretty magical evening. I only regret that my parents didn’t capture the action on their camcorder.

Afterwards, nothing was complicated and there were no expectations. He came to my birthday party, at McDonald’s, of course. But soon enough, the school year came to an end, kindergarten was over, and Joshua would no longer be coming to after-care. I remember being a little bit sad. But there was a whole new world of first grade ahead of me, so there was no looking back. 

I never saw Joshua again, and even if I were to one day, it likely wouldn’t mean anything to me. But I’ll never forget my first love and my first date, and I’m grateful that I can remember it being so lovely. So on that note, I think I’ll go eat some strawberry ice cream and fantasize about finding someone I’m crazy enough about that I’d want to chase around a playground.

]]> 2012-02-14T00:39+00:00 Help for Women, From the Bar to Birth The search for love and happiness often takes strategy and planning for many women at different stages of their lives, and often runs the gamut, typically from bars to boyfriends to betrothal to babies.
And on that road to bliss and fulfillment, a girl needs to employ every advantage available to her to maximize her success.
Well, Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University are on our side at every phase, whether it’s upping our chances of conceiving, encouraging older moms to conceive, or protecting us from unscrupulous predators that may have less-than-honorable intentions.
Two promising studies, one on fertility in older women, and one on low-fertility women, should cheer up all women who want to conceive.
Professor Yariv Yogev of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and a gynecologist/obstetrician at the Rabin Medical Center Hospital for Women found that women over 45 who want a child have a lot to be hopeful about.
In 2010, Yogev’s team gathered data from over 200 births in their clinic — 177 women were over the age of 45 and 20 were over 50. He documented their adverse health effects and those of their babies.
“I’d been an attending physician in a delivery ward to a woman over 60 who had twins,” Yogev said. “I wanted to know if it’s ethical to treat older women like this — I wanted to know if it’s safe for both mother and child.”
Pregnant women over 40 have a 300 percent greater chance of developing gestational diabetes and high blood pressure, Yogev explained. They also have higher rates of preterm births and are prone to developing placenta previa, a condition where the placenta blocks the birth canal opening.
Older mothers are 6 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure, generally carry the fetus for 37 weeks rather than the average of 40, and experience severe bleeding post-birth more often, said Yogev.
But he also found that the newborns overcame health risks such as metabolic problems. His findings were published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“The babies themselves overcame the risks in the short term,” Yogev said.
More good news about fertility came out of another smaller but promising 2010 study by Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine professor Adrian Shulman. He is a gynecologist, and the director of the IVF unit in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba.
Over a 40-day period before starting fertility treatment, Shulman gave half of the 20 fertility-challenged women in his study a daily 75-milligram dose of the over-the-counter dietary supplement DHEA, typically used as an anti-aging supplement.
He found that the supplemented women were three times more likely to conceive, in comparison to the infertile women who didn’t take it. He also found they had healthier pregnancies and deliveries.
The study was published in the journal of the Israeli Fertility Association, AYALA.
“In the DHEA group, there was a 23 percent live birth rate as opposed to a 4 percent rate in the control group,” reported Shulman. “Of the pregnancies in the DHEA group, all but one ended in healthy deliveries.”
Shulman hopes that further studies will shed light on how DHEA works, suspecting that it might improve the quality of a woman’s eggs or follicles.

So what have Israeli researchers done for the woman who just wants to meet new people in a nightclub, a party, or at a restaurant bar?
Well, Professor Fernando Patolsky and Dr. Michael Ioffe of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences are looking for investors to help them market their newly patented pen-sized, date-rape drug detection device. They are developing a portable version for women everywhere to use.
Designed to detect the two most common date rape drugs, GHB and ketamine, these and other club drugs like Rohypnol are easily slipped into the drinks of unsuspecting women, leaving them barely conscious after a short period of time without any memory of what happened to them under the drug’s influence. These drugs are tasteless and odorless, and are undetectable in the victim shortly after its ingestion, making prosecution for sexual assault — the most common use for the drug by perpetrators — nearly impossible.
In test results, the invention detected these drugs with 100 percent accuracy. Dipped discreetly into a drink, it lasts two or three times, and is re-useable with the insertion of a new cartridge that would cost under a dollar.
The system debuted at the Nano Conference 2011 in Israel.

]]> 2012-02-10T15:00+00:00 Kitzel’s Tickles Mind, Body and Soul On November 14, 2011 I received an unusual email. Titled “Please Help Olympia WA stand up to boycott of Israeli Goods,” it was a plea for contributions to a rather risky venture: A Jewish deli in Olympia in response to the Olympia Food Co-op’s boycott of Israeli products.

“I have had only two callings in my life—” wrote Olympian Hava Aviv “ – to become a mother, and to bring this deli to my town with the intention to heal in the most effective way I know how…through my mother and grandmother and the food they made to nurture my soul, my traditions, my history and my people. I truly believe in the direction that Kitzel’s will take my town, and hope you will join in to support these efforts.”

Aviv’s dream, Kitzel’s Crazy Delicious Delicatessen, opened in December, and as of last week it was thriving.

“We’re profitable already,” Aviv, 32, said over coffee and a bagel last Thursday. “We’re six weeks in and we’re profitable. Which is really unheard of for a restaurant in its first year.”

Short, stout and tattooed, with a head full of curls restrained by a purple bandana, Aviv’s passion for her project is transparent. When we spoke back in November she described how betrayed she felt when the boycott passed in July of 2010. In the wake of negativity, “I have to do something that’s ‘pro,’” she said. “I have to rewire my inner being and stand up for something that is ‘for.’”

She said she had one option: “To take the recipes of women for 4000 years,” and use them to nourish mind, body and soul. “If a matzoh ball doesn’t nourish the body, mind and soul, I don’t know what does.”

The other personality behind Kitzel’s – which means “tickle” in Yiddish – is Irina Gendelman. More demure than Aviv, Gendelman, 42, emigrated from the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Many of the items on the menu are from her family. Others come from Aviv’s Hungarian mother’s side.

Gendelman and Aviv have been pleasantly surprised by the culinary risk-taking. They weren’t sure Gendelman’s mother’s schi (a sauerkraut and corned beef soup) or whole smoked mackerel would appeal to Olympians. That’s why they expand the menu slowly, adding daily specials and matriculating them into the regular menu if they go well.

Also, “this was the easiest way for me to train a half-goyishe crew,” said Aviv. With each dish, she trains her staff and customers about Jewish food customs.

Most dishes are taking root, even the schi. And they learn from their mistakes. “The first round of whitefish we got was entirely too salty for the Olympia palette,” said Aviv. “I’m sure somebody’s grandmother in Florida would have appreciated it.”

Aviv said Kitzel’s tries to use locally sourced and sustainable ingredients, giving the Jewish deli a Pacific Northwest twist. She attributes the early success to the food, the open setting and community seating, and the fact that nothing else like this exists in Olympia.

“Some people are disoriented,” said Gendelman. “It’s supposed to be a new experience. It’s a foreign country almost.”

A community has risen up around Kitzel’s, and as we talked this became obvious. Rabbi Seth Goldstein of Temple Beth Hatfiloh pulled up a chair. Then Jeff Trinin (a plaintiff in the co-op lawsuit) stopped by. And the mayor of Olympia, Stephen Buxbaum, munched on a bagel one table away. Meanwhile, a boisterous late-breakfast crowd seemed to swell.

“It’s just a great place. Hava and Irina did something wonderful for the community,” said Goldstein, who loves the smoked fish plates. “Their intention around it really comes through. I’ve had conversations with people I wouldn’t have had conversations with, because we’re sitting together…It’s very sweet that way.”

“Yes, we’re a sandwich and soup shop, but who else in town has borscht everyday?” said Aviv. “Who else in town has in-house corned beef just on rye with mustard? [Sandwiches are generally] very lettuce-tomato-onion-mayonnaise, lettuce-tomato-onion-mayonnaise.” (No bacon, either, but Kitzel’s is not kosher. However, Aviv said that Chabad rabbi Cheski Edelman has offered to oversee kosher production for one meal a month.)

“We’re introducing this Eastern European Jewish culture to Olympia,” said Gendelman. “They’re going for it.”

]]> 2012-02-09T15:00+00:00 Jconnect to Host Shabbat Around the Sound University of Washington Hillel and Jconnect are preparing to launch another Shabbat Around the Sound here in the Greater Seattle area for local young Jews to celebrate Shabbat in unique and individual ways. On February 17, each dinner will be coordinated by dozens of volunteer hosts in their homes, so regardless of where in Seattle you live, there will be a house to celebrate Shabbat in near you.

“We hope to have SaS quarterly, if not monthly, going forward. It’s a great opportunity for people to meet fellow Jconnectors in an intimate setting,” explains UW Hillel Program Coordinator Lindsey Geller. “Sometime people get overwhelmed at Jconnect events, and SaS provides them the opportunity to make deeper connections with their peers.”

Shabbat Around the Sound also gives Jconnectors the opportunity to take ownership of a Jconnect event. Rather than merely showing up to Hillel and participating in a Shabbat dinner, hosts are able to choose a theme for their very own Shabbat experience. For instance, the event back in April saw some hosts present gluten-free, vegetarian, and potluck dinners. Geller adds, “As we build this event we hope that hosts will get creative with their themes so that Jconnectors have another interest to connect to people on (other than being a young Jew in Seattle).”

Personally, I know if I were to host a dinner for Shabbat Around the Sound, I would certainly make my theme either a beer dinner or possibly Star Trek themed. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that? The goal here is to widen the connections young Jewish adults are making through making Jewish traditions more personal and distinct.

Last year, Jconnect had approximately 45 people participate in Shabbat Around the Sound. They hope to have around the same, if not more people participate on February 17. After the dinners, Jconnect is planning on having all the participants meet up at a bar in an effort to bring the community together post-meal. That way you not only make a connection with the people you had Shabbat with, you’ll have a chance to meet people who participated around the city.

Creativity and fun are paramount, so have fun, meet some new people, and enjoy Shabbat Around the Sound!

]]> 2012-02-08T22:44+00:00 Jewish Family Service Dishes Up Sweet and Savory Sephardic Delights Thursday night saw a lovely turnout of young community members at the first “official” event held at the newly opened Jewish Family Service building here in Seattle. To welcome the community to the new building, JFS, along with devoted volunteer Etan Basseri, hosted “Savor Sephardic,” a tasting of a variety of traditional Sephardic foods. 

Among the most popular choices was the samosa (or sambusak in Israel-speak), a stuffed, deep-fried pastry. A samosa/sambusak, associated with Sephardic Jewish cuisine and considered an Iraqi dish, is usually filled with mashed chickpeas. Sephardic dips and spreads, including hummus and baba ghanouj, along with an array of sweet variations on baklava, were also happily devoured by attendees as they mingled and partook of wine—including some of Etan’s homemade red stuff—and hearty conversation.

After the reception, guests were invited to sit and hear from JFS CEO Ken Weinberg, who gave the visitors a history of the organization and the strides it has made over its 120-year presence in our community. Weinberg emphasized that JFS has gotten to where it is today through the profound support and critical needs it provides for Seattleites of every background and circumstance. Ken turned his focus to one of the most valuable programs making strides in the Seattle Jewish community, Project DVORA (Domestic Violence Outreach, Response and Advocacy), which strives to create the conditions in the Jewish community to support loving, safe and respectful relationships, and to build the capacity within the community to respond to domestic abuse.

Savor Sephardic was one of many upcoming events for the community to come together and get a better understanding for the projects and services the Seattle JFS is providing the community. So, stay tuned for what’s on the horizon for the new building, and stop by to see the beautiful new space!

]]> 2012-02-07T18:55+00:00 Road Tripping Back in the days when I was gainfully employed, before I went back to graduate school, my coworker told me that while a lot of it would not be fun, I would one day look back on my days of working with nostalgia. At the time, I was unconvinced. 

But as it were, my first year of grad school was all that I’d been warned about and more. Yet I experienced a level of camaraderie with my classmates that I had never before – we all got lower grades on exams than we ever had in our academic careers, we spent countless hours together in the basement “grad lounge” of our Soviet-style concrete building working on problem sets that made us (or at least me, anyway) want to cry, and we spent weekends in the computer lab trying to run code of numerous varieties. My initial skepticism about whether I would ever come to be friends with any of my classmates was overcome by our collective frustration, exhaustion, and search for answers to questions on our problem sets. And in that way, I made very close friends.

And so it was at the end of our first year that my closest friend in my program and I made a plan that the day after our we took our last final, we would drive down in “Big Sal,” her very large and very retro gender-neutral van, to San Luis Obispo, where her family lived. It was a massive undertaking – over 1,000 miles and 18-ish hours of driving in a day and a half, but after the year we’d just been through together, we certainly weren’t fazed by a little driving.

The plan was that we would take our last exam, go back to my place and change into our “going out” clothes (because we had not gotten dressed up for any occasion since the start of our program) meet up with our classmates, head downtown, drink it up, leave no later than 11 p.m., and head back to my place, where my classmate would sleep on the couch. She would be driving the whole way since I was too intimidated to try to drive Big Sal, and she had made me a comfy nest to burrow in on the first row of seats, so of course I thought it was my duty to bake something to provide us sustenance for our trip. And for whatever reason, banana bread and road trip seemed synonymous in my mind – a little bit healthy, but not too healthy, of course.

Everything went according to plan, except of course, we didn’t leave at 11. Once we had made it home at 2 a.m., my classmate conked out on the couch, and I, determined in my baking mission, put on my apron and set to work making the banana bread. By 4, the banana bread was out of the oven and the dishes were done, and by 4:30, I might have even been packed. I caught a few hours of shuteye before our 6:30 self-imposed departure time and on the road we went, banana bread in hand.

The road trip was long: I slept in the nest my classmate had made for me, we ate the banana bread, listened to books on tape, all the key elements no road trip should be without. And after spending the night in San Francisco, we made it to San Luis Obispo safe and sound.

There can be a beauty in driving: From the outside, you do your best to steer your car where you need to go safely, but from the inside, you find yourself in a bounded space, with only everything you’ve chosen to bring into it – your traveling companions, your sustenance, your entertainment. And there is a sort of charm in going it together. I wish you all safe travels and fun road trips, and if you let someone else drive, I hope you bring the banana bread.

]]> 2012-02-06T19:36+00:00 The Real Thing “Why do we have relationships?” Aliza Bulow asked as she began her talk on “Love: Cultivating the Real Thing” last Tuesday night at the Stroum Jewish Community Center to a packed room. The crowd spanned a range of ages and included singles and couples. The talk was not specifically focused on romance, but rather about how to strengthen relationships of many varieties. Bulow, who converted to Judaism at the age of 16 and now provides mentoring and consulting for Jewish outreach professionals and organizations across the country and lectures worldwide, came in from Denver for the talk. She is an animated and entertaining speaker.

The talk was hosted by the Seattle Kollel and organized by Giti Fredman as part of their monthly Rosh Chodesh speaker series. While these talks are usually exclusively for women, given the nature of the talk and the notoriety of the speaker, the event was open to both men and women. This was a particularly fitting time for the event as we usher in the new month of Shevat, celebrating the beginning of the planting season. Bulow explained that this is the time of year we would need to start cultivating etrogim for Sukkot; likewise, it is now that we should focus on cultivating our relationships if we want them to grow.

Bulow made the distinction between top-down relationships, such as those between a parent and child, and peer relationships, like marriage and friendships, and focused on the latter for the evening, although some insights were applicable to both. She then explained several lessons from the Torah on relationships from Adam and Eve to Noah and Joseph. Bulow mainly emphasized that the purpose of relationships is to become more God-like and to improve ourselves. She gave examples of specific strategies for emphasizing the good in others and being deliberate about relationships, like actively trying to not get angry in the face of adverse events, but rather, acknowledging the situation, dealing with it, and moving on without berating ourselves or taking our feelings out on others. Bulow emphasized being giving, knowing where we come from and where we want to be, being other-focused, and aspiring to a goal that transcends the relationship. Bulow also stressed that relationships, and marriage in particular, are not a one-size fits all.

After the talk, Bulow took questions from the audience. People asked about how to foster better relationships with their children, how to know when a relationship is beyond repair, and how to handle being hurt in a relationship.  One such question was asked about the issue of divorce, and Bulow responded that divorce would be appropriate when a relationship becomes like a person with a gangrenous limb that must be cut off, but she hesitated to be more specific.

As for me, I’m no expert in relationships. I found the talk to be engaging and enjoyable, and I think Bulow’s insights and tips were helpful. I gathered that the audience had varied reactions: some individuals seemed to thoroughly appreciate the content, while others seemed to feel that Bulow painted a too-rosy picture of relationships, suggesting giving others the benefit of the doubt and controlling emotions rather than really confronting problems head-on and working through them. While I don’t know that this advice applies to every relationship, I think it is worthwhile – because in so many of our relationships, romantic or otherwise, we forget to think about actively trying to build and nurture that relationship. As Bulow emphasized, “The strength of the relationship is based on the strength of the people who choose to be in it.” 

]]> 2012-02-02T17:00+00:00 Jews and Politics Former Jewish Funds for Justice President and CEO Simon Greer looked comfortable before the 100 or so people attending his talk on January 24. At 44, Greer is tall, with thinning blonde hair, a square jaw and distinguished jowls. Reclining in the cushy chair supplied by the University of Washington’s Stroum Jewish Studies Department as part of its living-room style social justice series, Greer, in a suit that set him apart as a New Yorker in the South Lake Union setting, spoke to the evening’s theme of “How Can America Move Toward a ‘Just’ Domestic Agenda?” with the energy, cadence and humor reserved for leaders priming themselves for a political bid.

This second of four conversations sponsored by the Jewish Studies Department’s “If I am not for Myself, What Am I?: Judaism Confronts Human Injustice” series brought Greer, who is now the president and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, together with popular UW communications professor and department chair David Domke.

Domke, who is Christian, posed poignant questions to Greer about the Jewish community’s role in the political sphere.

Greer’s parents fled their British Orthodox Jewish upbringing for New York in the 1960s, adopting instead a progressive, secular ideology.

“I went to Jewish Communist summer camp,” explained Greer. “In the camp Olympics, you—know how they have blue versus gray? We did nations in the anti-colonial struggle. I was on Ivory Coast one year, I was on Vietnam one year…Those are the politics I grew up on.”

After graduating from Vassar College, Greer went into community organizing, first in Poland, then in South Carolina, before deciding to grapple more deeply with the connections between social justice and Jewish values. In 2005 he took the helm at Jewish Funds for Justice, and has been at the forefront of progressive domestic American politics since.

Greer’s public conversation with Domke did not hit any Middle East foreign policy hot buttons. But, he said, part of his goal is to change the tide of American Jewish politics from Israel-focused to America-focused. The Jewish community has become a one-trick pony, he said.

“If you last name happens to be Goldstein,” said Greer, “and you get a piece of mail from someone running for office, it probably says ‘Israel’ in really big letters. The dominant strategy is pander to the Jews on Israel.”

Whatever you think of J Street, the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group, Greer said, they conducted a poll that revealed some telling results: Eighty-three percent of Jews don’t vote based on Israel alone. Like other Americans, they vote with the economy, education, the environment, and so on, in mind.

But aside from the statistics, Domke asked, “Is there a distinct Jewish identity in the political sphere?” Is there a litmus test to determine who is “in the club as a Jewish publicly engaged person in the U.S.?”

Greer explained two recognizable dimensions: There are Jews who are raised more parochially, he said, who veer toward Israel. Then there are those who moved away from the religious Jewish identity and turned toward progressive politics.

“There is a progressive Jewish politics on the domestic front,” Greer said. But there’s also a gap between Jewish establishments and individuals. The establishments tend to focus on Israel-related issues, while a broad swath of the Jewish population identifies with American issues. It’s a gap he tries to exploit.

Greer said that last July he helped bring 170 Jewish leaders to the White House for a debriefing on domestic matters. “It sent shock waves to the organized Jewish community. A bunch of upstart groups could take 170 people to the white house, and the organized Jewish community didn’t know about it? Wasn’t asked to make it happen or not make it happen? And they didn’t talk about Israel?”

Greer, who helped fell Glenn Beck from Fox News (and whom Beck singled out with one of his notorious Holocaust references), has worked closely with President Obama and does not censor his admiration for him.

“A previous president would have only spoken about Israel,” he said. “This president is trying to connect to us on the domestic issues. And actually, when I saw him at the Hanukkah party, I said to him, ‘at the end of the day, the Jews finally care about what’s happening in this country.’ And he said, ‘I know that.’ And I said, ‘you know we’ll be there for you.’ And he said, ‘I’m counting on it!’”

Domke rounded out the evening by attempting to get at the root issue. “What are you driving for?” he asked. “So you got Beck off the air. You took these people to the White House. What’s the goal of all your work?”

Greer took a long, dramatic pause. Drawing, again, from his upbringing, he cited the immigrant story and the American dream. “We have a choice about which America we will be,” he said.

Jews “helped build a more inclusive America. That’s a promise of America. It’s also a promise of Judaism,” he said. “Will our community sort of duck and cover? Or will we say, ‘we have a position, a belief system, long before America was debating these issues.’

“I feel like every single person here could decide in their own life in some way to bring that Jewish value set back into the public square, he continued. “I think Judaism teaches us again and again to come together for the public solution, not retreat to the private solution. We need more people committed every day to changing the world.”

]]> 2012-02-02T00:06+00:00 Cake Walk For my last column, as someone who overthinks everything, I struggled to fathom what I could possibly write about unconsciousness. The only thing that could come to mind was my out-of-the-ordinary experience of being unable to think about what food to prepare. But in the midst of that craziness, I also had a very conscious, or at least deliberate, kitchen experience.

It just so happened that in the middle of my culinary apathy, a good friend of mine was getting married, and I was on deck for assisting in the preparation of the bachelorette party. Most of the details were pretty low-key: we’d all be getting henna done at the bride-to-be’s place and we’d nosh on some finger foods and sip some wine. But I of course would not be satisfied with myself unless there was some monumental hunk of baking goodness marking the event, especially because the bride-to-be and I are baking partners in crime. And because if you don’t have a three-layer cake on such an occasion, when do you? 

So with that in mind, I set out on a search for the right cake. Nothing too sweet or likely to be disaster prone, nothing I’ve made before, and something with a little bit of a wow factor. And so it was in this way that I came across the illustrious pistachio petit-four cake. It looked adorable, it sounded tasty, and it all seemed fairly manageable. I then proceeded to read over the recipe several times identify all the ingredients and steps, consider any new techniques, and psych myself up for my impending baking undertaking.

And so the adventure began a few days before as I prepared the batter for the three layers of cake. Making the requisite pistachio sugar in the food processor perfumed my house with its fragrance, and got me even more excited as my masterpiece slowly took shape. Once the cakes were out of the oven, I sent them right into the freezer. All of this went easily enough with no surprises.

On the day of the party, I made my way over early, with my three frozen cakes, and all the components for the assembly: apricot jam, marzipan, and the ingredients for chocolate ganache. So far, so good. I shaved the cakes down to be even, I rolled out the marzipan, and I readied the jam. The last step was just to prepare the ganache and then layer it all together.

Now I imagine you can anticipate where this is going to go. I combined the ingredients for the ganache as the recipe indicated. Everything was looking OK. I spread the ganache between the cake layers and assembled the cake. But by the time I was ready to pour the ganache over the entire cake, it was looking a little too chunky for my taste, so I thought I would give it a little heat. And that was when disaster struck. Soon enough, I had a separated ganache, which did not look very enticing at all. I searched on the internet for remedies and made a call to a friend who was a pastry chef in a former life, but all to no avail: I just decided I would have to do a take two. 

Fortunately, my second attempt went better. I covered the cake in the ganache and decorated it with my first attempt at a marzipan rose and some toasted pistachios. And while it wasn’t perfect, or at least, not as perfect as I would have hoped, it was certainly a solid, sophisticated cake.

There was a lot to learn from this experience – about cake layering technique, making ganache, and working with marzipan. But I also learned that sometimes no matter how much you think you’ve thought everything through, you can’t anticipate everything. And it makes me realize that even while I might think that most of the time I’m living in a very conscious way, for better or worse, I’m usually functioning at the scrambled-egg consciousness level rather than the pistachio petit-four cake consciousness level. It could be for the better – because you can make yourself crazy that way, but it could also be for the worse, because you might miss out on being deliberate and seeing things through to their full potential. 

So I guess the conclusion is that the key is to find balance. And the challenge is learning how to get there.

]]> 2012-01-31T22:14+00:00 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close It’s rare that I find myself sitting in the movie theater in complete silence as the film comes to an end and credits fill the screen. But it seemed to be the case that the film rendition of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close left me and my fellow moviegoers speechless.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tells the story of Oskar Schell, a nine-year old boy living in New York City who lost his father during the World Trade Center attacks. Oskar finds a key in his father’s belongings and sets out on a search through the five boroughs to find the matching lock. The novel, written by Jonathan Safran Foer in 2005, is one of my favorite novels of all time. It tells a story of tragedy, loss, moving on, and finding meaning in life through characters that I could relate to, despite their differences from me. Once I had heard that a big screen interpretation had been made, I was giddy with excitement to get to check it out. 

In the film we see Oskar, bright beyond his years but also painfully awkward, attempt to come to terms with the loss of his father. We learn that Oskar’s father used to devise reconnaissance missions (scavenger hunts) for him as a way to get him to get out of his comfort zone – to ask questions, search for answers, and meet people. When after his father’s death Oskar finds a key in a vase in his father’s closet, he believes that this is his last chance to be close to his father, as if the key represented one last reconnaissance mission his father had left for him. Oskar devises an elaborate plan to solve the mystery of the key, all kept secret from his mother. In the course of his search, he travels all over New York City and hears the stories of people from all walks of life, most of whom are deeply touched by Oskar’s story more than he knows. The story is a heart wrenching one, and I welled up with tears no fewer than six times upon seeing Oskar connect with others who are learning how to move on from their own loss and grief.

Thomas Horn plays Oskar, a challenging role, very well. Apparently, this was Horn’s first foray into acting, after having won Kids’ Jeopardy, and it seems appropriate that only a very bright young actor could fill the role of a brilliant and grieving child. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, Oskar’s parents, and Max von Sydow, his grandfather, also play convincing roles. John Goodman makes a charming appearance as the doorman of Oskar’s apartment building.

However regarding the adaptation to screen, a lot of the scenes I really enjoyed in the book that rounded out the characters were not incorporated into the movie, and some elements from the text were portrayed, but not given any explanation. In the novel, when describing Oskar’s expeditions in search of the lock to his key, Foer writes, “I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.” In the film, we see Oskar traveling through New York City carrying around a tambourine, but we aren’t given any context for why, except that it might be a cute and quirky touch. We also don’t see Oskar’s visit to his therapist, or how he writes to his idol, Steven Hawking, which all illuminate how Oskar is trying to make sense of what happened to his father and find a meaning for living, which is really the reason he embarks on his search with his key.

In this way, while the book relies on its narrative to give depth to its characters and emotionally involve the reader, the movie relies on less subtle plot themes to tug at the audience’s heart strings, like overly emotional interludes between the characters and visuals of the towers collapsing and snippets of a man falling from the buildings. In this way, while the narrative in the text feels appropriate, some of the scenes in the film seem somewhat forced. It makes the focus of the film about the people Oskar meets and about September 11 in particular, while not effectively portraying what is driving Oskar on his search. 

The movie is worth seeing - but I still recommend the book.

]]> 2012-01-24T15:00+00:00 A Familiar Story My husband popped the question Saturday night. “Want to go to a movie?” I’d been waiting years to hear those words. We have not been to a movie in literally 2 years, mostly due to lack of interest in what’s playing, and inconvenient show times for the better-sounding indie films.

I didn’t know anything about In the Land of Blood and Honey going into the Varsity Theatre. A man with an unidentifiable accent purchased a ticket for the show before me. I heard it was depressing. And it was written and directed by Angelina Jolie, world-class actress and savior of children, but let’s not forget this is the same chic who once wore a vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck.

Blood and Honey is not about Jews, but it’s so Jew-ish I feel compelled to write about it. We took our seats, popcorn and smuggled candy in hand, to find ourselves in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. I was 12 when this war started, the result of the Yugoslavian breakup, and I vaguely remember newspaper pictures of Slobodan Milosevic, but he blends together with Gorbechov and his funny birthmark in my memory. When I traveled around Serbia briefly a few years ago, there were still buildings in Belgrade with their guts spilled, leftover from UN bombing raids. But really, I know nothing about this conflict. It’s a confession of sorts.

The film covers one of the war’s major battles, the Siege of Sarajevo. Like most wars, somehow no one seemed to see it coming. We meet Ajla (pronounced Isla) and her sister Lejla (Leila), and Lejla’s adorable baby boy. Ajla gets dressed in a classy blue number, jokes with her sister about the date she’s about to go on, and heads off to the nightclub where she encounters Danijel (Daniel). The romantic tension is palpable as they get closer on the dance floor. He whispers to her. She laughs wildly. They embrace as the music slows and singles leave the dance floor.

Then the room explodes.

But Danijel and Ajla survive. Next thing we know, Ajla and Lejla are being evicted, with the rest of their apartment, with nothing but the clothes on their backs in the dead of Balkan winter. The men disappear, and their existence is presumably terminated by the machine gun fire we hear from around the corner. The women are separated, and Ajla winds up at a military barracks with tens of other women who clean, cook and are repeatedly and systematically raped by the soldiers.

I found I was mechanistically stuffing popcorn in my mouth to self-soothe. Then I realized this was really inappropriate. The theater was silent; occasionally the couple behind me whispered in a language that sounded Eastern European. Later, my husband pointed out that we may have been the only native-born Americans there. This story, perhaps, was real to the people sitting in my midst.

In the Land of Blood and Honey is a Holocaust film. Holocaust in the sense of politically motivated genocide, deportation, torture, rape, indiscriminate killing, and submission to the regime for fear of something uglier than the ugliness the victims were already witnessing. When the women arrive at the barracks and a soldier rapes one of them – her hands gripping the snow-covered metal table, the soldier looking the bewildered deportees in the eye as he thrusts – you want them to kill him. To pull him off her and gouge his eyes out. Why don’t they? It’s a common rape narrative: Why didn’t you run away? And it’s the burning question of the Holocaust: There were two soldiers, one execution, and 1,000 prisoners standing idly by. Why didn’t they stop them? Because, as we find out when we did a little deeper into history and psychology, there is nowhere to go. And if we try to stop them, it may get uglier than even this. That is just too scary to cope with.

My husband asked if I wanted any of the peanut butter cups or the Coke. No, I shook my head. How could I ever enjoy peanut butter cups again?

The Bosnian War, although primarily about land and territory, saw the genocide of the Bosniak population, that is, the Bosnian Muslims. Ajla and her family are secular Muslims who have assimilated into the Yugoslav identity, and they are completely caught off guard, it would seem, when the government comes for them. Camps are set up. Men are shot into ditches and buried. Women are raped and abused. Children are killed. The only thing that stays in tact as Sarajevo turns to rubble are the churches.

It’s a familiar story.

Years go by and Ajla survives, protected as a sort of concubine to Serbian (Christian) Danijel, whose father is one of the military commanders. Danijel follows orders, but he fights with his conscience, making him the most ambiguous and complex character. Is he in love with Ajla, the state-mandated Muslim enemy, or just enslaved to her sexual availability? To what extent must he remain complicit, and to what degree can he exercise his moral faculty? Watching him work through this is a welcome break from the cold-blooded enemies of Hollywood, and from the order-following rapists who are his comrades.

But then there’s Ajla, almost equally as complex and harder to read. In a situation of war, survival is the only word. When she says she’ll never betray Danijel, could she really mean it? When your Muslim-Yugoslav (or Jewish-German, for instance) identity, formerly welded together is split, to which side do you go? What will she do, I wondered, when the war ends? Could these two lovers-turned-pawns of war live happily ever after?

The title, In the Land of Blood and Honey, rang in my ears. I didn’t make the connection right away to my “own” land, the land of milk and honey. Both lands ooze with sweet idealism, and both have been torn apart. I worried a bit toward the end that Angelina would make some sort of comparison to the fallacious claim of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, that somehow these conflicts would become conflated. And I recalled an email one of my hosts sent me from Serbia after my visit. Casually, she noted that she and other Serbs relate to Israelis. Their image was stained by the wars with the Bosnians, Croatians and with Kosovo. They felt wrongly portrayed as barbaric war criminals.

I checked out IMDB for some reviews and I was shocked to see a low rating of 3.3. The movie is phenomenal (despite a less-than-positive critical reception, which I think is due to our general desire to see Angelina fail). A slew of one-star reviews give away the reason. This is just one that captures the sentiment:

Good day, let me introduce myself. I am Serb from Belgrade. I have not participated in the wars, I have not brought up to be nationalist and not hate other people no matter who they are but I was brought up to love on the first place my own country but also to respect others. This movie is made like many others with zero respect for my country and as usual manipulated with American policy against Serbia. Enough is enough!
...
Do you really think that for the war is only one side needed to be blamed, even for argument you need two people because man can not argue with himself! Both sides were attacked from each other. Muslims were killing us, we were killing them. Serbians had a wish to keep together all country because we were thinking that we were all same people. We invest in that Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, we helped them to grow up, helping for every disaster they had, every month my parents were giving 4% of their salary for development of Kosovo and Montenegro because they were not developed countries and that was happening for many, years… we married each others and we never took attention who was Muslim or Croat or Serb… For me and for all normal people it was not necessary to know, people are people from blood, flash and soul made no matter who they are, we all feel same fears, pains and joy.
Yugoslavia was one of most democratic countries you can imagine and then propaganda of western countries started to work on our destinies and our liberty for destroying one of the nicest creation planet Earth had.


It’s a familiar story.

The reality of the war, whatever my limited understanding can gather, is that it remains enshrouded in ambiguity and contested up until today. But that’s not completely overlooked by Angelina. She shows us one story, one version of a complex situation, and that version alone is Jew-ish in so many complex ways.

 

]]> 2012-01-23T21:08+00:00 One egg, two egg, bad egg, good egg For better or worse, there has not been a lot of action in my kitchen recently, and I mean for weeks and weeks. This time, it wasn’t because of some culmination of kitchen disasters or even a finger-immersion blender encounter. It was just that every time I would think about eating, I would get nauseous, and I guess there was a part of me that didn’t want to go to all the trouble of preparing a meal for myself if half of it was just going to end up in the trash. It got to the point that it wasn’t even a choice, it was unconscious – there was no way I could motivate myself, no incentive I could devise, because the ability to even plan out something I would want to eat and to go to the store to get the necessary components was beyond my comprehension.

Unfortunately for me, there really isn’t any way around eating, at least not in the long term, and so I was left with my other alternatives. The Whole Foods prepared foods section became my daily destination in addition to my handful of options on the Ave in the U-District. Some of it hit the spot, but most of it was just out of necessity. 

Who knows how long this would have gone on for had it not been for some bad eggs. On one of my many meals out, I ordered an omelet, and while I usually don’t go for eggs at restaurants, because they’ll never make them as good as I can, in eating apathy I decided to give them a shot. As can be expected, I was disappointed, but more than that, I was fired up. 

That night I decided to reenter the kitchen – egg vindication would be mine. And so I made my scrambled eggs (and I do make a mean scrambled eggs) with cheese and tomato, and my cooking fuel was fired again. And the next day I got made it to the farmer’s market and got enticed by some vegetables, and slowly but surely, I’m coming back to my usual self.

And so the result of all my inability to choose was that I did choose – something that I really didn’t want. Was it that I was afraid? Or overwhelmed? Or did I just not care? Had one too many servings of leftovers made it too difficult to face my own cooking? It’s too hard to say. It’s not even clear that it made my life any easier – it didn’t necessarily save me time, and certainly not money. And it wasn’t until it became blatantly clear to me about how much I was missing out on that could get myself back on the right path.

The conclusion is that not choosing is a choice. It could mean staying with the status quo, or accepting the easy option, or letting someone else decide. And sometimes that’s necessary or preferred. But in the end, if we don’t choose what’s best for us, we certainly will never get it.

Joelle is currently in the dissertation phase of a PhD in economics at the University of Washington. In her free time, she writes for her blog, the Gastronomist Economist, is a site coordinator for the Jharvest CSA, and also likes to bike, cook, bake, and tango.

]]> 2012-01-20T21:02+00:00 What Jews Get Wrong About Christianity Do Christians really believe that the Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death? Do all Christians believe that Christianity is the one true faith and that the “Old Testament” is an invalid document that no longer applies? Last weekend, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Amy-Jill Levine came to Seattle to speak with audiences about assumptions and misconceptions perceived and repeated about Judaism and Christianity. 

To begin her whirlwind tour, Levine spoke with students and community members at University of Washington Hillel on Jan. 12 on the topic of “What Jews Get Wrong About Christianity.”

A self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” Levine “combines historical-critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating anti-Semitic, sexist, and homophobic theologies,” according to her bio. An Orthodox Jew in Nashville, Tenn., Levine recently co-wrote, with Brandeis’ Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, an edited version of the New Testament writings in the context of the authors and audiences at the time it was written. Although the New Testament is not subscribed to by Jews, Levine says there’s much in the New Testament that corresponds to early Jewish history. If Jews can look objectively at the text of the New Testament and accept (though not necessarily believe) Christianity as a historical development with its basis in Jewish tradition, rather than an attack on Judaism, maybe Jews can hope for the same acceptance and respect from Christianity.

Rather than lecture, Levine opened the floor to the audience’s most common misconceptions, and then listed off her top five.

“When we talk about what Christians believe and what Jews believe, we’re only talking about what some Christians believe and what some Jews believe,” Levine said, making this important distinction for the audience. “Not all Christians believe the same thing, even within particular denominations. When I talk about Jewish mistakes about Christianity or Christian mistakes about Judaism – and there are many – I’m talking about some people make mistakes, but more than one.”

Number one on Levine’s list was also number one for many of the audience members: “Deep down all Christians are anti-Jewish, because Christianity replaces Judaism.” She said that many Jews feel that Christians believe Christianity “got it right,” when Judaism didn’t quite make it. Levine explained that this concept is often called replacement theology or supersessionism and can extend as far as to say that, due to the fulfillment of the prophesies with the coming of Jesus as the messiah, the promise of the land of Israel to the Jews no longer applies and there is no longer a divine connection between Jews and Israel.

“So do some Christians go in that direction? Yes,” said Levine. But “The vast majority do not. And the reason they don’t is because there’s all that other stuff that suggests the covenant with Israel continues, and if you go over to a writing, ‘The Epistle to the Romans’ – which is a big one – Paul says that the gifts given to the Jews are irrevocable. Because if God goes back onto my promises then no one can trust God. So, according to Paul, the Jews are still under covenant with God.”

Also, she said, “pretty much every religion that comes after an earlier religion says, ‘We got it better than you did. We can even see this happening within the Christian tradition.” Levine cited the example of the Protestant Reformation emerging from Roman Catholicism, and then the Anglicans, United Methodists, and the many other Protestant denominations that have sprung up since then.

Levine also spoke extensively about how Christians and Jews can understand their different interpretations of the messiah. They don’t necessarily have to agree. Instead, Jews can look at how Christianity moved forward with its interpretation of Jesus as its proclaimed messiah, and what that meant for all previous Jewish texts and Halachic ritual.

“The vast majority of Christians are interested in getting along with Jews, recognize Jews as under covenant with God, and recognize the validity of their tradition,” she said.

“The major issue here,” Levine pointed out, “is not who’s better and who’s more right, but rather, How do I get along with my neighbor and respect that person regardless of that fact?”

Levine is most concerned with engaging her audiences with the history and the original texts in order to get real answers and to gain deeper understanding, rather than placing blame, jumping to conclusions, and continuing to pass along assumptions. “The important thing is to recognize that all this stuff makes some sense in an early Jewish context. If we look at the fact that there’s mishugas in all religions, there’s a little bit of ‘I can’t possibly believe that!’ All religions have ‘that.’

“The point of interfaith that I like is that it’s not for everyone to agree with each other, hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It’s to be able to understand where others are coming from, see what we hold in common, see where and why we differ.”

]]> 2012-01-19T00:02+00:00 “A small part of me threw up.” I remember my parents’ reactions when I told them I had declared my major. “English and philosophy,” I said, proudly.

Silence.

Unlike Esther Kohler, Leigh Stein’s protagonist in her first novel, The Fallback Plan, I didn’t move home after college, listless and simultaneously disillusioned with my liberal arts education and my parents’ now-strange habitat (“Why did we own so many TVs? I couldn’t understand it.”).  Instead, I went to graduate school for another semi-useless degree in theology, then took my graduation money to travel around Europe to work on organic farms, and then – only then – did I move back in with my parents, at the age of 26.

I like to think I was never as charmingly pathetic as Esther, who crawls into bed in her favorite old t-shirt that is so ugly it is awesome, to reread The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, only to get sidetracked by thoughts of the screenplay she will someday write called The Littlest Panda. (Just because I still sleep in the same t-shirt when I visit my parents – a once-huge nightshirt I decorated in third grade that depicts a cat and a dog racing with thought bubbles over their heads, “will it be a tie?” – and reread my baby book and The Wizard of Oz and fall asleep on the couch to the fantasy about all my unwritten novels and screenplays does not make me anything like Esther! The fact that Esther Kohler sounds a little like Emily Keeler is mere coincidence.)

The reason Esther is such a relatable character is because she’s a reflection of ourselves, Generation Broke and Jobless (Gen BJ; maybe there’s a double entendre here too). And in perfect literary fashion (ah, how I love when art models life) she has to come home to get where she needs to go.

I am not sure how deep Leigh Stein intended to make Esther. Maybe I’m just projecting all over the poor fictional character who never even asked to be written.

“I grew up outside Chicago in the suburbs,” said Stein in a phone interview from an L.A. stop on her book tour. “I always wanted to be an actress and I moved to New York to go to acting school.”

This narrative merges with Esther’s. Esther has come home from Northwestern with an acting degree and unfulfilled dreams of “a small group of brunette women who were all my best friends, and our bearded boyfriends who all hailed from Portland, in a room together drinking red wine and discussing Brecht’s influence on Godard, or the merits of Joyce.” Whether or not such fantasies ever crossed Leigh Stein’s mind as a freshman acting student doesn’t matter. These trite visions of adulthood are symbolic of our generation, secretly shared across our collective unconscious social network.

But Leigh’s own story veers away from Esther’s. Day after day of rehearsing dramatic, emotional love scenes left her exhausted – and writing about them every day. “It dawned on me that a writer was something I could be,” she said.

So she left acting school and moved home. Then something truly crazy happened.

“I was living with my parents when I was 22. I met a guy and we started dating, and he said, ‘We should move somewhere and you can write a book.’ It was the most romantic thing I ever heard.”

Leigh and her boyfriend moved to New Mexico, where she focused solely on writing The Fallback Plan. Without the negative conditioning and self-deprecation known to writers, “I was kind of arrogant,” she said, like, “of course I can do it.”

Alas, the love affair ended and Leigh was back home, living with her parents for the fourth time, moping around and eating cereal (to hazard a guess, I would presume Cinnamon Toast Crunch). At the urging of a friend, Leigh applied to The New Yorker to be the cover art director’s assistant. Getting the job at the prestigious magazine, however, perhaps did less for her career than it did for her personal life. Like Esther, she had to go back to move forward.

“It was a life-changing event that happened in a really strange way,” she said. Now firmly rooted in Brooklyn, her book is out, she’s got another one in the works, and life is looking pretty good.

Leigh describes herself as jew-ish, with an emphasis on the -ish. “I’m interested in Jewish culture. As a child I read tons of Holocaust books,” she said. “But I don’t regularly go to temple. I’m proud to be Jewish. Jew-ish.”

But just how Jew-ish is Esther?

“I think Esther Kohler is me in that sense,” she added. Esther’s parents throw a Hanukkah party at which her parents pass around name tags that say, “I’m Jewish, ask me about Hanukkah,” or, “I’m not Jewish, tell me about Hanukkah.” This is lifted right out of Leigh’s life – a secular, suburban existence that found her, like me, one of a couple of Jews in town responsible for communicating the meaning of Jewish symbols to lots of well-meaning goyishe neighbors and classmates. But again, maybe I’m projecting.

Esther’s voice is authentic, conjured from a place I can only imagine to be somewhere in Leigh’s soul. Her current project is more of a challenge, she says. “I’m toying with ideas of jealousy and success,” Leigh said. “It’s structurally more ambitious” – and difficult to separate from her experience writing from Esther’s relatively immature perspective.

I can only hope that the characters, a successful dating book author and a style magazine staffer who are best friends, are going to tell us some sad-funny truths about what happens after college, after the fake scruffy Portland boyfriends have left and the conversations on Joyce that never happened have grown tedious and the red wine has turned to vinegar. But I’m probably projecting.

]]> 2012-01-16T21:09+00:00 How Not to Give Your Kid OCD Unless you’re the parents of a Kobe Bryant or a Tiger Woods, most moms and dads probably spend most of their time and money helping their children make good grades. But new research from three Israeli doctors shows that awkwardness or disinterest in sports and physical activities can affect a child’s success later in life.
While grades and extra-curricular activities are impressive on paper, researchers say it’s what kids are doing in their daily routines that could yield clues about debilitating behavior problems and may even signal a future Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
It might seem obsessive to analyze your child’s reactions and moods, on the hunt for any odd behavioral quirks, but recognizing these general tendencies may signal a pattern.
The largest of the three studies, which looked at sports and aggression, was conducted at Tel Aviv University’s Bob Shapell School of Social Work and was presented at TAU’s Renata Adler Memorial Research Center for Child Welfare and Protection Conference.
TAU doctoral student Keren Shahar and her team studied 649 children in 25 Israeli schools for 24 weeks. Half of students practiced soccer, basketball, or martial arts five days a week, and the other half had no physical activities.
Shahar found that the activity-based group had less aggressive behavior overall, and displayed more self-control and discipline in their daily tasks.
“The key is to introduce children to something that they love to do and in which they have a compelling interest,” writes Shahar. “Find something that motivates them. A strong connection with any activity gives children a sense of purpose and decreases the likelihood that they will ‘act out.’”
Better than talk therapy for kids who have these kinds of self-control issues, Shahar found that involving children in a sport they love actually resulted in “quelling negative emotions.”
However, Shahar also found that a sports regimen had a more profound effect on boys. She posited that girls are generally less aggressive than boys and less likely to excel in sports.
In more new research published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Prof. Reuven Dar of TAU’s department of psychology found “preliminary support” for “a strong connection” between hypersensitivity and ritualism in children and OCD. Adults with OCD exhibit these two behaviors.
Dar believes that children who are extremely sensitive to touch or smell, or are reactive to irritations like a dental visit or certain fabrics, feel threatened and develop ritualistic behaviors to regain a sense of control. These rituals could be an early warning sign of adult OCD.
“If you see that a child is very rigid with rituals, becoming anxious if unable to engage in this behavior, it is more alarming,” Dar explained. “Also, age is a factor. A habit exhibited by a 5- or 6-year-old is not necessarily a predictor of OCD. If the same behavior continues to the ages of 8 and above, it could be a warning sign, especially if accompanied by anxiety or distress.”
In the first of the two surveys, parents of kindergartners answered three questionnaires about their children, reporting any unusual repetition, anxiety, discomfort with strangers, worry, object ordering, attachment to family members, and reactions to touch, taste, or smell.
In a second online survey, 314 adults answered questions about their child’s anxiety levels and their past and current sensitivity to oral and tactile stimulation.
The results of both studies were so encouraging that Dar hopes to study a large sample of these overly sensitive children all the way through to adulthood.
In a third research project with the smallest sample, Dr. Orit Bart of TAU’s Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions monitored 50 5- to 7-year-olds with Developmental Coordination Disorder and 25 without DCD, using motor skills assessment tests.
According to Bart, an internationally recognized expert in DCD, children with the disorder find sports difficult, can’t organize schoolwork, feel lonely, shun group tasks, are at risk for substance abuse, and can’t master basic tasks like driving. DCD, adds Bart, can greatly impact a child throughout his or her life.
“DCD kids are often described as clumsy,” said Bart. “Because they’re usually of average to above-average intelligence, their disorder is rarely considered grave.”
Her research appeared in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities.
Bart said that when diagnosed, children can learn to participate in groups, a key behavioral indicator of healthy emotional development.
She also developed a new DCD questionnaire, designed to assess 8- to 14-1/2-year-old children with DCD. That may lead to new treatments and interventions.

Longtime JTNews correspondent and freelance journalist Janis Siegel has covered international health research for SELF magazine and campaigns for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

]]> 2012-01-12T15:00+00:00 So You Think You Know Something About Christianity? You might notice a theme this week. Amy-Jill Levine, co-author of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, is in town all weekend to talk about misconceptions Jews and Christians have of one another. Her talk Thursday night at Hillel UW will focus on “What Jews Get Wrong About Christianity.”

She came up with some (tough!) questions. Let’s see how much you know.

Good luck and God bless.

]]> 2012-01-12T01:09+00:00 Cold Turkey It was New Years Day, 2009. I was living in Seattle by then, but I was back in DC to visit friends over the holidays. And so I found myself on a street corner in Dupont Circle dressed to look cute, but not too cute, waiting. I paced back and forth in front of the Starbucks. I sat in the Starbucks.  I took a walk around the block. But 45 minutes and an unanswered call and text later, it was clear: I had, for the first time ever, been stood up. And I wasn’t stood up by just anyone – I was stood up by my ex.

It would have been the first time I’d see him since our breakup, or really, our lack thereof, and I was hoping I’d find some clarity about what exactly – or even vaguely – went down between us. He’d been so loving to me and then all of a sudden he was gone – not returning my calls or my belongings. I couldn’t reconcile these events in my head: How could someone who I thought was such a good person do that to me? And so even though I didn’t talk with him that day, I came away with some resolution, that it was more than time to forget him, that the man I so admired wasn’t admirable at all.

It would be four months later that he would message me that he’d been in a horrible accident the day before we were to meet, that he was in love with me, and that he’d be moving to Washington and wanted to see me. Then he disappeared again. And it would be another eight months later that I got a nice call from his wife, telling me how they’d started dating when he and I had been together and how she’d gotten pregnant and they’d gotten married a few months later, how there was no accident, and so on.

After all the time I’d spent analyzing and re-analyzing what happened between us, somehow, this had never come up on my radar. And so that chapter of my life was closed.

Or so it seemed. My ex’s wrongdoing didn’t relieve me of my own less than stellar behavior. He might have acted badly – very badly – but that didn’t make me a saint. And by an odd turn of events, it would take me until this New Years, three years later, to see that.

What I realized is that I didn’t try to get to know this man at all. Sure, I had cooked him a wonderful dinner on his birthday including a very wonderful and effort-consuming chicken Marbella. And I told him that I loved him, and I meant it as truly as I could then. But really, I knew so little about him, about this man who said he was willing to move to Seattle with me. What were his hopes and dreams? What was he afraid of? Who were his friends? I wouldn’t have been able to tell you then, and really, I can’t tell you that I was really ever interested to find out. And likewise, I don’t know if he could have answered those questions about me, although I think he tried to get to know me more than I ever did him. That didn’t stop me from believing he was the love of my life, from pining away for him for months, this man who I really didn’t know at all.

And it happens all the time: we become so infatuated with people we hardly even know, and sometimes, in our infatuation, we don’t want to see what is really there, good or bad. I wish I could say that I’ve wised up, but I just don’t know. I can only say that with my new knowledge, I can try to do things differently – to change what I value. Because if I don’t change, I will certainly end up where I am heading.

This time of year, we talk about change in a very nonchalant way – we change our diets, our exercise regimes, our flossing habits (OK, maybe that’s just me), but if we don’t change what we value, simply changing our actions won’t work in the long run. So for this year ahead, I hope that we can all value what we truly desire so that we can act on our values and be the best that we can be.

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