falling in love, housing, and learning
First off, I would like to say something about two comments left by drew (since he is the only one who leaves comments)
A) yes i think guys can get away with more than girls, the girls seem to not be able to outlive a reputation of a slut as much as a guy can change.
B) why would i use slut here?
Now on housing:
housing still has yet to give back to me on a single, I have spent the seven best nights of sleep since I have gotten here in a friends dormroom, but tonight I am sleeping in my own. I really despise my dorm and I need to get out of it. It is the party dorm in what is basically an academic campus, and it freaks me out culturally. esepcially becuase my roommate and and at least one of my two suitemates are hypersocial in this situation. I've been woken up on rosh hashanna night by someone male at 4 am. People are just veyr likely to get drunk.
I want some more maturity in my dorm, and I can't figure out either how to be agressive about that, espcially becuase I have one very pushy party person in my suite. The entire thing gave me nightmares (literally), so hence I decided to move out by putting myself on the general waitlist. The waitlsit says it has no singles, but they will get back to me soon. However I know there are a few singles at my top choice, so i don't know why they won't put me there. Meanwhile the not having a real home on campus is just screwing me over.
I really don't know what to do anymoe, ebcuase i need my space and I need a home badly.
In other news:
There is almost no jewish learning on this campus. A) How do i get people interested (i was thinking wierd topics like music in the trop, different cultures differnt sounds, the humor of the holocaust, or chagall: jewish figures in art....to is femenism supported by the talmud) b) how do i get it launched off the ground
C) any other topics
Advise really needed.
also in the catagory of advice:
I am paranoidly afraid of either admiting that I have fallen in love or that I am falling hard.
as a result of that fact, plus the fact that I have slept either next door to him (in a mutal friends room) or at hillel, the relationship is very very intense.
Scarily so.
How do i control the intesity and just learn to enjoy his company on some basic level without worry when I am worried about him breaking my heart (i don't know how to get consistent behavior from myself or him yet), especially considering my problems in housing which is causing a rediculous amount of no personal space from him.
his fact is cuasing a stress to our relationship and is screwing around with our schoolwork, so it feels imperative that I move on from the fear of getting hurt.
I want this relationship to grow, not wither becuase of my own fear of lack of intmacy or of intmacy (depending on the manifestation of the day), and i can't figure out how without communicating back to him that I am still scared. Somehow I see this in the long run as a hinderance not a helpful thing.
Seriously how do i learn to let go of my suspiciousness and fear in order to just grow.
I can't deal with the stress of knowing this is the right person, despite his and my age, now what and how do i make sure it stays this way, when in reality i should probably just enjoy my time with him since I am far too young to get married still.
In other words, how will i make sure that fact will happen?
I just cna't stop being scared that underneath he is using me, and that he doesn't care.
And it is driving bonkers, with pain.
Annoyed at the world(plus good news)
Well, I guess I should start in the beginning.
From Simchat torah, well it was the first time I held a torah scroll, an amzing feeling. Mostly it reminded me why I am jewish and what (when I choose to learn) learn for, becuase you can feel it when you first touch a torah scroll...makes me awfully jealous of men sometiems...
Secondly, bashert has asked me out, so now it is official.
Thirdly,
well i filled out the forms for moving into a different dormitory, but in the past week (since I filed the forms), I have managed to sleep in my dorm
twice. So I come back to my dorm this saturday night, and my stuff is in garbage bags becuase it is too messy. i have a feeling I know which person helped start the perpitration....Moslty becuase she wants the room to be social, which is essentially kicking me out of the room since I feel uncomfortable with the lack of privacy. hence messy to keep people more out.
Anyways becuase of this I got the bashert to call one of the people involved with hosuing. Now she is angry at him since it isn't an emergency.
meanwhile I am still stuck with the concept of just not being involved with my dorm life, and feel like I am being kicked out of my party dorm becuase I am not a party person.
Worse, I am considered low priority becuase I am a freshman....
And I don't know what to do.
meanwhile the situation makes me pissed. Plus I am with bashert, who is on the more pissed side because of tyhe phonecall with the housing director person. And I accidnetally made him more pissed becuase we had to go to the drugstore tonight in order to try filling (pharmacy section of CVS had closed) a perscrition and letting out that we were going to a drugstore to someone in the dorm.
Apparently (a new concept for me) couples in college go to the drugstore for condoms. I would have to ask why i would know this in a real world way, considering i come from a jewish community where it generally doesn;t happen, so it is all academic, that a couple would go together to buy protection, for me.
Even though I tolerate him very well when pissed, we still have two pissed people together who could possibly end up sleep in a room together with one person on the floors.
I wished I could stop the pissed feeling....It isn't helpful.
Fear
I have this huge fear of what I want.
Apparently meeting the bashert is making the past all the more omplciated rather than brush-off-able. apparently as an emotive person,m I feel even more like glass.
In part he is suddnely more flirtacious more out there, more happy than ever. and this frightens me. Like hell. I don't want to walk into any gehennim again. What most people don't know is that a part of me enjoys the pain that comes from there. which is why I am so scared of it, and so scared that in his happiness and want to make me smile, he might accidentally bring me to my knees and keep me underneath him in more painful ways. I'm afraid of losing my humanity to him in the process. It works only when people share thier humanity, not when one person evelopes and then looks away from the others. Trust me, I know. Being underneath someone...but only whne you share humanity is wonderful, when you lose it it hurts and it brings so much fear, becuase you can no longer comfirm that they care. I'm afriad that it will happen all over again, since from day one of the first time it teetered back and forth from a sesne of sharing to a sense of self posseiveness, of whivch i lost out on since i want to give. it wasn't like he didn't care, he just couln't figure it out? And as a result I got burned, and I saw it in his eyes that i could never give enough of myself to make up for what he was taking and I ws beibg burned alive instead. So now I am frightened to death that falling in love will do that again. Becuase I feel in love with the preson who burned me, so why not with the bashert? and now i just feel charred, and still care about the other person on some level too. And i know he does about me, or I keep being told...and I just walk around really confused.
I'm so frightened, and I don't know what to do. This is about all the details I can say here.
I just want the nightmare of fear to stop so I can just fall in love.
The (non) Tephillin Date
Last night, I essentially just had a non-tephillin date. Why a non-tephillin date?
a) as a young ba'al teshuva, oddly exactly my age, he does not own tephillin. This is really worrying. At first I though when I found out, "gee I am making some money, how expensive are tephillin" Turns out extravigantly expensive. There goes that idea.
ANywyas, those little deatils tend to bother me, that I cannnot help him more grow. Call it the jewish mom gene, but ti is soemthing he wants, and on some level It is something I want but I don't know where I should go because I feel I don't know whow, or that If i do it it is somehow wrong in some way ffb-bt(frum from birth ba'al teshuva, from those not in the know is usually implys someone who has flipped out, in this case take in very literally) and all.
In part my greatest wish as he is someone so intensely, openly curious is to push him to be more so on some level, becuase even though I love this stuff, I am afraid that the community might shut me down if I find soemthing they don't like, whereas with him they will give him leeway a) becuase he is male and B) becuase is a ba'al teshuva.
So in some way I want to live through him. Also, it is apprently more culturally parriate for me to raise a torah scholar than to be one myself. Think rabbi akiva and whatnot...they've ebeen telling me that since, I dunno elemantry school? Girls support their husbands learning, not do it themselves.
No one will ever see me as such, and hence I am expected to follow norms that may or maynot actually be halachic.
At the same time, if starts up and I do it with him, I can find space to do the exact same thing, and hence it will suddenly be aok for me to do it as well. That is culturally apporiate for someone of my learning level (or where I want to stirve for, or whatever) Only the illiuot get to really learn on thier own, which probably explains why i want to take aramaic in college. To break form that norm in a healthy sense right now, becuase if I do so, no one will care becuase I did it in the proper form.
So I want him to grow fast and strong, becuase if he doens't, then how will I? Of course hw would yell at me if I said any of this to his face, mostly becuase he thinks this is shtuyot. Which it is. But it is communally enforced shutyot.
B)It was not a tephillin date in actuallity becuase this a dorming situation. And he has a dorm with all singles. I slept in his room in his bed. He slept in the lounge. I counsider this among the nice things anyone has done for me on a jewish basis. Plus it was the first time I got to wake someone up for minyan, which makes me feel ultra special. (ok don't laugh......) Hence we avoided yichud!! I even got his keys for the night to enforce the rules of yichud and lock him out!!! Plus his shirt from inter-dorm council!! To quote our very coseraform (and his next door neighbor) friend "You can't be a whore for doing this, you're shomer!" I wish it were that simple. As far as where I am from, no one cares if you are really shomer, it is all about appearances, so I could have the most anti-yichud, pro-halacha night in general night with a guy who doesn't wear a kippa, but all the people I know ill care quite a lot about how he doesn't wear a kippa. Idiots.
Some people have asked "lee of the wind extactly why are shomer negiah, espically now when you weren't shomer negiah before?"
First off I am in the party dorm on campus, tommorrow I am requesting to move to a single, but right now I am in a suite. Lets just say it is giving me the mental heebee jeebees. Shomer negiah calms it down somewhat by giving me some sence of limits. I think in a secular colege enviroment, espcially one liek thids one, where I know all the shomerei mitzvot Undergrads in the first month, and a good chunk of the grad students, their wives/husbands (if they are married), those who are converting, well then it isn't a large campus when it come to the active jewish population. So it makes it easier to interact with the population at large with less heebeegeebebes.
The there is of course when I was younger I was burned big time, Hence I want second chances. And I get it (sort of) So of course why would I mess it up with non shomerness?
The problem with this is A) it makes him far too happy, considering I am holding out on dating until I tell him some very complicated details of my past.
How complicated? Well, painfully complicated, both on a physical and emotional level. and it involed someone our age (relative).
Also a bit worrying...Hmm right nwo we are perfect angels...and I want to keep it that way...this smacks of something that could eventually turn into bad behviaor.
Being college, how do you limit or it.
Oddly though, there might be spaces in his dorm..so that might limit the whole I sleep in his dorm overnight to I actually do sleep in his dorm overnight becuase I am supposed to...though this creates dormcest.
the oddest dormcest the dorm has seen bwahaha!!!
BTW this is what I mean when saying I don't want to be socialized into being perfect.
To quote bits and piences conversation about this kind of thing:
Some guys I know get very proud of themsleves when they put on thier shoes the halachic matter (and the rest of thier clothing), espeically after their year in Israel. They talk about it, and how they do it the right way versus the wrong way.
a) why talk about it as if it is something to tlak about, you take on the mitzvah or you don't. And you take on mitzvahs when you are ready to take them on. NU?
B) somehting to be proud of is being able to play a conceto by haydn, which no one i know from home can do. and if they could, they would think it is no big deal That takes practice and talent.
See what i mean by screwed up?
Those theing are the things you should appreicate, becuase they take time to do and practivce (not that halchca doesn't) But they affect your life in the sense that expand your personal taletns, not the commnual pool. They also don't tend to expand your spirtual being. Spiritual being is a whole relm of personal that doens't belong as a form of one upmanship that another person can't live up to, and will feel bad if they can't be in front of god the right way...
But halcha is justr a way of life, music is an artform something you do to extend your being. It shows how you're humanity is just growing and shaping (not your soul silly) the public human elemtns.
Those are the kinds of thigns you can share.
So why does no one where I come from do that, but instead share exactly how high they think they have found God? When god just is inside then, and outsode and everywhere (gee I sound like lubavich...)
So why does no get proud of music?
Midterms
I'm studying for midterms right now.
i would like to say something right here and now:
a)That midterms during holiday scheduling suck when your entire first few weeks for classhave been smack in the middle of holidays.
B)Apparently the alck of sleep is reactivating some of the more, umm intese, feelings of bipolar disorder type 2. It gives interesting flashes of the guy. and me...
Not what you call the most condusive thing to shomer negiah.
also I still echo's of complicated. as in poem guy in those flashes I'm working on the assumption that it is becuase that I want to lose myself in what i am craving, of which he definetaly knew how to get out me.
Right now I just feel hungry for intense touch and tired. I don't think the combonation is good at all. and i wish I knew how to better proect myself from the pair. I'm afaird of losing myself to them one day if it gets too bad....which would enveutally mean hurting others.
:(
Another thing
It is actually really hard being shomer neigah
Becuase you can feel attraction still. And smell what you want almost to the point of tasting it.
I describe the sex drive as hunger, someone else I know describes it as thirst. Now reader: think denying that?
For hlacha?
In order to evnetually get better food and wine?
It's a matter of when
But still
You can hear smeel and taste it throb in you.....adn that is what makes young people not shomer. aThe dirty little secret of the Orthodox cxommunity, that we can feel too.....
Some Clarity
Well, I figure right now I should answer some issues raised by the lovely to-be-Rabbi Drew Kaplan (people who accientally stumble across this blog, go to his at http://drewkaplans.blogspot.com/)
In order:
I realize that trying to figure out the difference between frumkeit and religious is not easy at all. Far from it. Actually it drove me away from being orthodox all through middle and high school (hey Olam hablog, I hope you read that don't make kids frum make them religious) I really have a strong dislike for comformity, enough so that I don't see the hevdel bein blue hair and shomer shabbat, kashruth, niddah(or in this case shomer negiah, considering I just started that for various purposes, more later). That's right blue hair. Or kantian critism about how god may or may not exisit and you can't prove it only feel it (sorry Rambam) But this drives the world I grew up in nuts. Very very nuts.
Further, apparently i am very community oriented, even when I am rebeling, I try to lay down myself for others (and this puts me in uncomfortable positions) and also just try to have some modicum of repsect even when people really disagree with me.
As for how my religiousity is slipping, well I used to pray eveyfr morning, and now I don't. I'm too stressed to just get a good feeling from it, and I just have too much work to make the time. and i feel guilty from it. what's wierder is that I did enjoy it.
actually my dorming situation period is not condusive, my room/suite is too social for someone shemirat shabbat.
Also shemriat kashurt is a problem. someone finally sent me (not Drew Kaplan, oddly, though I did find it afterwards on his blog) about kashurth and vegetarianism in University dining. This actually was really important, becuase I was under a lot of home pressure to be machmir and as a result it was giving me nightmares to eat. I also just have a really low tolerance for just deli, which is basically all the dining ahll offers (deli, hotdogs, and occasionally shwarma, but we are still waiting on that) So i had to figure out how to eat. But I got nightmares for it. It just felt like a constant madrega falling and you couldn't stop it.
also i basically stopped learning excepted by olam hablog (which is very depressing) mostly due to time at this university and due to holidays...I have 3 chavrotot plus two out of state ones (yay skype!) lined up though...which I hope to eventually start up.
All these limiting things, especially after just coming from midrasha, just makes you feel less religious. even the fact that I never have time to prerrip toliet paper and that there are no tissues in my room makes me feel less religious, especially despite growing up in a really large Modern Orthodox frum community with Modern Orthodox Parents (the Parents henceforth), I know what bacon tastes like (just don't ask)
And I knew that at yom kippur.
Why does artscroll make me upset.well espeically becuase apparrently people think it makes me happy (NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) it makes me upset for two reasons
A) it is really hard to grow from artscroll.
Somewhere below in this blog, I made the point that learning hebrew is the essence of gaining jewish knowledge. It is nice when I catch a snippet of what I know when I pray, and I want to evnetually translaute a siddur for myself among a bazzillion other things so That I know it and so that I learn hebrew.
B) It is really hard to live up to rabbi artscroll
Frankly I know already that I not perfect. frankly my attitude is, well I will fall, pick myself up, and keep trying. Frankly I know that my hillel is one of the most left wing ones in the country (the mechitza is essentially clear even if there are no spaces bigger that a tefach in the glass becuase of the black lines) But I don't like looking at a machzor and seeing *some people say this* in
bold. I just need to say the minum right now, plus what makes me move and sing praises. I should write my own piyutim. (I am one of those types, depsite the fact that no one withoing orthodox trype affilaition would dare anymore becuase of the fact the reform movement and the conservative movement will alter thier services...it's a legit thing to do, to praise the God how you feel like it...and frankly it is wrong that the establishment says BAD!) But I don't need to see eveyrhitng that eveyrone does and be made to feel that I need to do it to in order to be "good enough".
becuase it is tradionally insertered there, does that mean I also have to do it as well in order to be bringht and perky and (especially) datable/marriagable?
I keep thinking a lot right now if sending kids to yeshiva is the right thing to do...if the socialization is worth it. The knoledge payoff might not be great enough. I keep thinking tutoring might be better, espeically if you live in one of those areas with great public schools.
even homeschooling would be better, I just see the system as so corrupt. A lot of people say, screw shomer neigah (something I did, I can admit to that, I just took tat one during the yemai hanoraim) or screw being perfect I just want to be socialized into it and wear my srugi/skirt.
Frankly I think you dye your hair orange.
Anyways onto more relevant things:
I have become shomer neigah
Various reasons
A) I am/was having a hard time ajusting to my dormitory and its social aspects. It is not what you call Tzniut central, to be in a college where you know all the orhtodox undergrads easily. And then to live in the first year party dorm....I figure it would help me socialize.
I also really wanted to fall in love and I wanted to fall in love for real, so deeply that it would be among my closest friends and my lover, but He had to be my closest friends first.
Fact: Lee of the wind is extremely sense oriented, including touch, including sexual touch...
Speaking of which: Aprently this is happening in front of my eyes. Very bashert very himself ba'al teshuva. Right now we are still friends untril I can gain the matuirty to trust myself and from there to discuss some complicated issues and hence trust him, but yeah, it feels well, I am just worried.
Thing to know about said person:
he can't read hebrew but wants to learn (to which we all say: just take the damn college class!!!)
He doesn't wear a kippah during the week but oddly is more religious than most guys that I grew up with
He grew up in this area conservative and started "flipping out" in high school, but I dount he will flip out to communitee norms, which mysteriously makes me happy, moistly becuase I guess I am need to rebel a little agianst them myself.
he listens, and I listen back.
oddly the only really big contensious issue for the future that I can think of is the other real longing in my heart.
Aliya.
That is complicated, becuase he never has visited Israel where as I feel that that was the first community i intergrated into (though as alwasy not without it's own set of problems)
he sees that both the state and the land is seared into my soul somehow, and that I long for Jerusalem and its Hills, the mayanot andthe trees thaqt surrond it.
He actually has a fear in this odd we are not courting, not dating, just we don't know what we are, thT if i don't surive here, I will run to Hebrew U. Even though I don't like the university system in Israel, he is absolutely right.
I long to tremp again. I long for that ability of acceptance of sort of in beteet status of religioisty ofr some people that alows you to move madrigot slowly (but of course polarizes the dati leumi communitee)
I long for the freedom to be jewish on my own terms again surrounded by learning.
which is ultimateluy much harder to do in the states.
I feel like I am forgetting something, but i really need to read oh say five books of plato and study math and do hebrew............welcome to college!
Meanwhile, if a girl shows up with a class ring sometime soon in a frum neighborhood on a necklace, that's me....
It's really wierd finding your bashert, especially when you first really sat down and talked for real on rosh hashana....don't even start
Honesty as a theme
Honesty.
Definately a theme last week.
I had two of the most honest moments of my life last week.
a) Yome kippur.
Yom kippur this year was essentially the most fustrating day of my life.
My close female friend in hillel is shtark or very religious, right now i would say very religious. But yom kippur just felt overly pious, and she came off shtark instead, which I can't stand. Mostly becuase I need something to rebel against. anyways it was fustrating to have the chazzan go slightly too fast, not really sing and not be freilicht. It just reminded me of home, a little too much. In a sense where it felt like there were charatertypes walking around.
And home is something that I have a love/hate relationship. it is in some way enjoyable to live in a jewish communitee, but not one where it has gotten out of control.
Shacharit and mussaf were a mess. I davened for a total of an hour, due to a combonation of headache and just emotional messiness. one of the proffessors here led it, and he has a stunningvoice. But, (big but), i kept crying. Bawling. I just felt so confused and so much need for forgiveness and God, that it just was so overwhelming.
Here is the thing: although somewhere in my heart I know I am on that path, I feel like I am slipping and sliding up and down out of control due to my lack of understanding between frumness, religiousity, and the difference between the tow.
i've stopped davening due to time and due to the calmness that it gives me sometimes has now morphed into just an overwhelming feeling of both God's lack of and inherent presence, and what I am doing wrong, and how do i make it better. and that is just when I pray by myself.
artscroll glues me in place mostly in fear that I am not good enough.
and I feel distant in some way to the communtiy at large when praying instead of connecting. I'm fearsome of the community, of joining it. what will happen to me? will someone come back at me and destroy me while I am looking for a safe haven to be myself not matter who that person becomes. I can't pray with the community if the community rejects me as a person, or expects me to conform to something I can't be. I'm willing to bend quite a lot, but I don't know how to bend myself, and I keep trying...
The other major brakethrough in honesty is the truth that I am picking up tiny pieces of myself from the shatterer that was high school. I had a messier home life, and a messy time with guys as a result. I live in a world where I have to dress like the onlysimchas people (the modern orthdox ones my age, who shop at anthropology , which i admit to sometimes likeing but not when i Look like everyone else) and be more ditzy so as not to hurt some guy's ego (I am a semi failure at this, I have become somewhat a ditz for where I am, but I leak out a knowledge of too many facts and I like them too much to become really stupid). It makes for rocky times with my parents when I know I need to do some same rebelling and there is too much fear of letting me do so becuase what if i hurt myself by letting go of too many community norms.......So then I feel not so loved. Which of course means I go looking for people who will love me.
Which of course knowing me means looking in the oddest of places with the oddest of people.
All this would be fine and well, considering I realize thois, but the whole I need to follow community norms but I don't thing locked inside of me, of rebellion versus no rebellion and what that means means I have very little trust in myself, and I am looking for someone also to validate the fact that I am trustworthy....
Meanwhile, the proof of this is that in my house, no one cracks jokes. As a result my sense of humor is only partially developed, which is sad becuase I like funny things too.
I don't anyone in my hosue sometimes trusts the other person...which is why it is not a safe haven to make funny jokes all the time.
Anyways I told someone part a) when he asked if I trusted him..well the question really should be if i trust me. I don't trust him in a sense. It took me forever after a long proccess of finally becoming close with someone as my friend (hi friend in ny/nj/hieghts with smicha!!!) to tell a lot of truths about myself. Basically a year since I started talking to him, and he had to pry it out of me, as well as deal with the fact that i was falling back into memeory (which sucks). I had to figure that out, and I had to really learn to trust him, and he had clergyman authority wrapped like a cloak around him.
I had to learn to first trust my own instinct that he was ok, then how ok, etc.
meanwhile, most people I know want information out of me becuase behind closed doors there is enough gossip to last a while. a Long long while.
Still, I do want to be honest with myself, and I want an honest recount of certian events in my life. problem is this isn't anomymous enough.
I might set up another lj account and lock it from everyone so I can record it there step by step and put all the nasty thiogns I want to say, but always prclude it by: these people are really nice (which in truth they are, they just messed up and have some streaks in them encouraged byt eh community that shouldn't be encouraged) and this is what happened.
Anyways....I still can't beelvie I told someone that I don't trust myself. That was so ubermature, and I wouldn't have done that a long time ago.
Picking up my dust
Qualifying
Right now I am in the middle of a paper. it is not going well, I have writers block about it's structure.
Anyways I feel like i should qualify some things I have said last post:
It is not the guy in boston. for some reason it sounds like that mostly due to order.
If for some reason he reads this, which is possible, take into account that I might take it down also. I'm all sort of confused feeling. Mostly becuase of a sense of trust. If anythign I prefer freindship over hormones, since I need that more. 110% Maybe that is why I am so scared, becuase on some level there is a huge sense of confort talking that I have never had before. which is nice, and i would rather keep that over an uncomfortable well now what?
Hormones are bad in that sense. Nice but bad becuase they just tell you to blush and act stupid. Rather just be able to appreiucate things for what they are worth without having to add extra meaning sometiems, becuase I don't want to worry about the stress.
The Jews and the News
Right now I am putting off a paper to write this *sigh* but i need to relax becuase I don't do enough of that. I also shpould probably just finish my Intellegent design essay for the school newspaper as well.
Hmm, well what significant things have happened to me?
I have found www.kashrut.org through a friend. I sick all of you upon it.
Why is this important? apparently, when one talks about authenticity issues, one better start talking about knowledge and why one can be ok with what one does. In a world that is highly judgemental and always wants to move to the chumra, you better find someone who is part of the backlash and is willing to speak up about it, becuase to always go to these chumras is defintaely putting a stumblingblock before the blind.
This area is full of ba'al teshuvot, about to converts, etc, and peopel like me, who have some knowledge but aren't clear why the world is so strict and would kill themselves slowly on bad nutrition if they would live by chumrot 24/7. Nu stop it?
You have got to accept that certain things are much more ok than they seem and stop making the "I am so shtark" judgement calls. it is really ok. Life will move on in smaller communities.
Speaking of smaller communties, sometiems I easily get appalled by the little storie I hear, or the ones that I only get brief mentions of (ahem if you are reading this)
I would hedge a guess that one of the reason one of the reasons one of the emembers of hillel doesn't wear a kippa on campus during the week has to do with antisemtism when he was younger, something which I find part appalling and part frightening. Considering he is a local boy, from the local metro area, and I am an out of town NYer, I have to ask, where the hell am I?
Though I heard that one of my friends got harrassed when we were visiting boston near Harvard Yard.
So it may be just a NY thing, that no one would dare peep, espeically when the best camera store (b&h) in the city is owned by the chassidim. (if i am not mistaken ger but don't hold me by that)
On the smae guy all I can say is *blush* in a very distracted sort of way.
What a pity I can't find any good quotes about this sort of blushing on bartleby.com. The one quote I found was far too direct which would be bad for a blog.
*redder*
UNfortunately that means circling around something, which of course with two Jews in college, means a very funny dialetical questioning thing about the other person all while the other person is being sweet.
So questions like, "what exactly makes you blush?" and "why do you want to know" are all sort of common, in this sort of sweetly funny way.
In an odd kind of way, despite the fact that this is all making me blush, I wish I could say more directly that I am frightened. Something instinctual says if this is not just fun and games between friends, but rather something more immensely real and trusting than I can possibly owe up to if I want it that way. For me that implies a kind of seriousness that smells uberlong term...and I am not sure if I am ready for that, which is probably why I am not saying anything about what exactly I am blushing about directly to him.
In a sense though I am blushing about nothing. that's also a bit odd.
another item: i still need to stop worrying what people think of me
Apparently this has been discovered by Jews for jesus, becuase they use little chareid boys and a charidie rabbi as there charitures in their flyers. Apparently now I wonder if people see me as authentic. still.
I need to consider myself orthodox I know, but I just feel like with orthodoxy being so communal, how do I end up defining ti for myself without getting hurt?
Yes I know you would all say, enjoy your refuge lee of the wind, people here consider you dati! but still.
even beyond which, if i owe up to community pressure, then I fall into that trap, well they are also falling into that trap themselves, becuase they are allowing that image to be propagated across the us by even letting me think of the question.
Does anyone even care about that, that no one fights the image?
I mean, if I have to question my autheticity agianst standard MO (i guess) then they have to guess an image agianst what the US thinks orhtodoxy is as well which means they are falling into that trap. Maybe that's why there is a rightward pull, becuase they need to define thier autheticity also.
Ok i need to write
Apparently
I got the following quote from Jack Kerouac from a friend Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
Yup I Have become panicstricken.
Hillel life here is so muchof a relief in a way(or at least right now, if you talk to me in six months I probably will complain like every other person in the Hillel) that it actually is making me paniced.
No one is going to judge me, and I can't deal and It is overstimulating me and I am pushing people to try and find out why. I also get mind boggled when commmunity emembers do things that are anti-ny jewish community. I also get mind boggled that I am meeting fairly shtark people who you would take one look at them and say hmmmmmm.......no way. For a place populated by who is about to covnert ba'al teshuvas and people ar just interested in trying to become orthodox on thier own terms, for some reason this actually hurts. I grew up in a community of a comepitition of autheticity and a cpompetition of meoney with a very little actual regard for either the practual nitty gritty of halacha and learning for the sake of learning and as a result no one really cares if you are enjoying your religious experience.
Somehow it really does beocme possible where I am, to be orthodox and not care that texts are just interesting and that halacha is complex and broad and that kula is just as right as chumra. (remember effective balance, my joke about myself is that, if you have ever heard the song flipping out, about how everyone picks up one chumra in insrael, mine was standing up for those who need it more un public transportation...don't ask)
I'm also just shocked out of my mind at the effective amount of prituzt in my dorm and what feels like the sheer lack of privacy. With people always leaving doors essentially unlocked, and eveyrone walking around everywhere, i feel sort of naked in pajamas.
The wierd thing is I have hung around yeshiva guys in my pjs before, it just there was this sort of sense of in the lee of the wind's space and yeshiva guy's space. I may not keep derech chiba, but I know what it's limits are. That's a big difference here. My RA will give me a hug whenever he sees me. The frat guy will ask if i will show up at a frat party, and my suitemate with slight sorority leanings (she is a total sweetheart though) thinks I will tabledance by the end of the year (and if i did it will be an irish jig, the total antithesis of a tabledance)
People seem to always be haning loose, My other suitemate has been sexiled, and since the four of us share a bathroom, had I run into the guy I would have started to freak out.
I might need to move out which is really sad becuase I like who I am with a lot. I like the people here so much, but I have gotten passing commentss already about being Shomer Shabbat and Shomer Kashruth in a relatively party dorm for a known quiet campus.
Best one yet: One of the guys two doors down has said the following to me:
"Jewish Girls are the new Asian Chicks."
Offensive to both Jews and Asians
Plays up the Mysogynist and Racist usage of the word JAP. Without mentioning the word.
Pretty Impressive for a one line comment.
Though of course if might have all been a joke over his brandy. Which I have been reading into too much, so me.
Meanwhile I need to leanr to calm down.
Signing off
Self
It is funny, writing down how I feel actually is one of the few things that takes a load off my shoulders, probably beucase it gives me a chance to possibly ramble into some conclusion instead of letting it well up internally into nowhere.
Right now I have done two things today.
A) Finished a chapter of the Republic which I marginally understand, mostly becuase I am not reading it the way i want to. I really need to take the time out sunday to rereead and move ahead with the republic so I will feel comfortable with the book. Mostly I feel like I am skimming too much and as a result missing a) key questions where socrates tripps the guests and b) don't get to ask my questions or read the notes.
B) saw a movie in hebrew class. I'll edit in the name of the movie later.
The movie was decent with a fairly good ending.
Two things I want to discuss: a) why do all the people close to my age always end up nude in movies like this? or something sexual happens. WTF?
B) Why does it bother me so much?
Actually it isn't even the sexuality thing that bothers me, it is the use of touch.
Why touch?
If you haven't figured that one out from below, well that's pretyt silly of you.
I guess I am looking for a connection in life I suppose, though I have no idea how permament at this point (I know I am supposed to be looking very seriously form the "worlds" perspective but still) and I guess the need for connection inside me bother.
I suppose I see thios as weak.
Been Such a Long time
So I finally hit University.
That's right! College! From the American Dream, aka our television saturated world, I am now in the process of "growing up".
It's been two weeks since I have started classes. Right now, I'm in what feels like culture shock that will not go awa. I'm also dead tired from the work load (prestigious university types, plus this school has a nutsy sense of work load, plus I am taking a lot of courses this quarter in generally hard classes.)
My room is a mess :( and I can't sleep straight through the night yet. I'm also 110% betting the fact that I don't eat enough and don't excersise is making the dead tiredness even worse.
I also feel like a wrench put into the Orthodox community here. The community seems really all over the place, from a scion of a very famous Rabbinic family who was put through cheder, to the family who will occasionally go to the conservative shul in the area. The guys seem to either a) the most right wing parts of the conservative movement B) ba'al teshuavot c)converting becuase they are really ba'al teshuvot or are dating ba'al teshuvot as they started to become ba'al teshuvot. For some reason I need to catagorize this becuase of my nice Ny upbringing (that's nyer's sarcasm/irony) becuase I am having a hard time dealing with just that people are the way they are, and that mvomenets and behaviors are fluid, and psak halacha probably also could be, and that nothing is reallys topping me form going to a conservative service and somehow being frum at the same time, yada yada, except my own head.
So i bring that guilt trip into the mix, whihc I know I need to outgrow or I will end up hurting people, becuase I can't change people unless they want to be changed and I can't force the NY image onto everything. Even though I know it would be really comforting to have sligfhtly more undergraduates and have everyone looking relatively like me (though of course being the oddball that I am at least half must have obscure jewish bvackgrounds, like from india, or more yemenites, or an Iranian) and the guys to where kippot srugot all the time and tzizit (same goes with the background thing, it just would be funny to trade jewish mom stories and jewish food recipies), I can't make it so.
Secondly, With all my NY hangups, I also bring the seeder issues of NY into the mix. Which is also not what I call healthy. I'm young and the closest "NY" label would be modern orthodox (through frumster might put me as Shomeret Mitzvot, just becuase I am that insane, and I have only the desire to live in the east village and not the UWS) Lets just say that NYers are being ummmmmmmmmmmm historically lax about shomer negia, with the running joke being the UWS, the place with the need for the most al chaits. Although people are aware it is halacha, (or at least some people, I know others who think it is an option and a chumra beucase they are silly) (note the halacha is based on two things: a) unmarried women are not allowed to dip in a mikva, and b i would hesistate to guess that it was meant as a safeguard on the value on a ketubah in an era before women went out to the workforce, there is a hell of a lot of money in an old fashioned ketubah, considering ours really have little value) due to late marrying ages (umm yeah from a talmudic point of view, I should be married with at least one kid possibly two,and my guy friends should be about 1 year into their respective marriages) Jews are essentially putting thier sex lives on hold. This of course is going to cause a) some sort of disruption of halacha and B) disruption of how we veiw our sexuality c) disruption of marriage patterns further.
essentially you have shtupping or almost shtupping in the search for a bashert for engagements that last three months before marriages. These of coursego much further than they have to becuase of the high emphaiss on marriage (litmus testing), but the other perosn sometiems hass the feeling of just not quite becuase either the world person a is so busy that they are not ready or perhaps prioriteis in marriages really have changed that signifigantly along with sexual exposure inot the media that the old form does not work.
To qoute a friend "jewish girls in ny will do anything for thier boyfriends and thier boyfriends alone." with the underlying ucrrently that they get attched to quickly.
He also called them cold fish, ummm he was slightly umm, you know what...not for here. (though i got to say the cold fish comment was in comparison to me about how i ws touch sensitive after getting a mich needed back massage and that I am just really sometiems far out there when i dress, on eht assumption that I probably would be great in bed)
He is right, I am touch smell, taste, sound, and color sensitive. And overly craving becuase of stress. And I have a tendency to bend over backwards for other people when I know them well.(this has not served me well in the past) And a total wrench thrown into the system. Becuase although I am not that seedy, (I know plently of people who are far more) I have plently of that acculuturation in my blood, and I don't want to distrub the community and inidividuals progression of Judiasm with my own problems within it, espeically in a community this small.
I just feel sort of stuck, stuck with a community where it is really hard to get up and pray, stuck where it is hard to keep kosher, and stuck where it just hard.
Oddly I like the fact that it is hard, but it is taking a huge toll on me, and I don't know how long I can just brunt it out. I just wnat to figure out my balance here.
And finally get a good night's sleep.
