A Blustery Day

I'll be back

2006-09-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

I just need to think about stuff first...and figure out what I am writing here

External competition

2006-03-25T23:42:00.000-06:00

Something I have always wanted to know is why I am driven by both extrenal competion, while being pulled equally by internal competition

I have a strong streak of jealousy in me. I really can't stand it when in some way, someone is better than me in a way that cuts at something that I consider to be something that I am naturally.

Of course, being that on some level, I don't trust that i am naturally anything, and therefore feel constantly undercut, I feel a strong need to prove that I am naturally enough of something.

It pains me then, to see that my good friend and my ex are seeminly better at being Jewish on campus and getting better grades than me. And I don't have a good reason either to be so jealous. it is just something I am.

I guess, it is mostly becuase I am insecure with myself. This insecurity has given me hell as I have been adapting through college, making my improvements slow to come by. I finally do not have anymore Cs, and I am finally in the catagory of all Bs (or various types) . I am hoping next quarter to finally start getting some A's as I get the hang of University.

So why does it bother me that thse two people seem ot be getting the hang of it.

True, I am not taking a subject which I know I would do well in, such as the "history" requirement, or certain aspects of biology, both of which require skills of understanding patterns and connections in random sets of Data. (don't tell me polisci and history do not, and do not tell me that they are easy...because on some level, if you can be able to make generalizations depsite the implict bias of both first hand accounts, data sets, and the interpreter's own human nature, you are doing very well in life. Sciences and Math may be very hard to understand becuase of the "numbers" involved, but they have a certain black and white nature that makes the truth in them very easy to understand and inherently truthful once the rules are in place. The social sciences, on the other hand, do not have the same kinds of limitations put on them. They only depend on how much you notice things in the world, and I have met very few people who notice both little details in the context of the wider world...) true, I spend a lot of time goofing off, becuase I don't know how to deal with everything soemtimes (though that is slowly changing). But I still don't see why they are doing better than me, if only becuase when I work, I work my butt off, and becuase from people my age's reactions, I am not writing nor saying things dumb nor irrelevant. So why won't my grades compare?

Part of this is my ability to write. My writing is not the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's a disorganized mess, much like my mind. My hebrew teacher says she finds it fustrating at times to work with me, becuase she can see that I make these implict connections, that show I have something up there, but I can't express them. It becomes more fustrating for her becuase my questions reflect that I am looking for different thigns in the language than the class is, which often veers the class off topic. (yes I am slowly learning to shut up...) It also makes my very broad. ambitious, ideas hard to write about, if only becuase I have a hard time expressing all the logic in it. Sometiems I wish I could write abotu anything for as long as I wanted, becuase at least then I could get more of the little details out onto paper...but that isn't quite realistic. I've also had a really hard trime answering prompts for some reason....mostly becuase I can't always think the way people ant me to, and feel that the connections they want us to write about aren't helpful to deal with. I really need to stop doing that.

I also am finally having some sense of decency about it all being a ok that I am crisising about Judaism. But it is extremely fustrating to be crisisng about Judaism and life, while watching other people seem more sure about it. I don't really care if killing Amaleck is what bothers you deeply on some level (sorry babe), I want to know why the system matters at all, where I am within the system, how I affect the system, how the system affects me, and are all of these influences right, and if so why? It's like walking around in the face of Documentary Hypothesis and ignoring the truths espoused there (thought hat would be like ignoring the Ibn Ezra....which of course some of us do every day...) , while also not knowing about the truths of Umberto Cassuto... I would personally guess the truth lies somewhere in between.

It is also like knowing that we spin interpretation to have certain social customs, but we refuse to accept that fact. it turns out that there is nothing wrong with premarital sex in a relationship if ou are ashkenazi (i don't care what everyone will yell, ashkenazim do not hold by the Rambam consistenly, and there have defiantly beeen periods of time where we did not hold by the Rambam about pilegshot). I would throw my weight on Tamar Ross, who is short says the torah is always being revealed consituously. This cuts close to Conservative theology, which the Orthodox Movement refuses to recongize any truth in (or even that of reform...or reconstructionist....) Considering that Torah and Halacha is supposed to be blind Law., why is everyone reacting rather than acting...preserving through change? And where Do I lie in that kind of world?

Sometimes I wish they were less openly pious, becuase it really doesn't matter very much, and in some ways it is more fustrating, If only becuase piety in and of itself seems half-assed. It matters more to know where your piety and beleif in God and law come from, otherwise on some level you are being Falshe Frum. Don't just do something becuase It has always been right, do it becuase you have discovered why it is right....and don't be afraid of not giving blanket statements about it either. It bothers me so much that no one I know is willing to talk about why they beleive a certain behavior is justified or not....

Oddly, I know these fustrations are all really petty, and if I relax and just compete with myself (once I figure out that I am me and that I am ok), I will do much better as a Jeiwhs person and gradewise. But figuring all that out is really hard. Rediculously so.

I wish I could just make it better.

(and PS...it doesn't matter if you are a merit scholar....but to me at least...it does matter if you can write a theory about something, pushing your mind to create something...that is all...I just needed to say that to make myslef feel better)

As I sit listening to Goa

2006-03-21T19:26:00.000-06:00

I keep thinking about school and life.

I realize I care a little less every day now that people consider me strange. t's so hard to let go to the fact that I am normal, just not the kind of person that other people would like me to turn into (aka become frumified).
What is awkward about all of this though is that in college I lack a sense of community with what I do. There aren't so many orthodox Jews around that are also confornting what I am confronting. When I go home and see my frienmds (as I did yesterday, wehn I got a friend to take me to her commuter college so I could do some research for Model UN), I realize how similar and how different I have become. They also are not confronting the things I am confronting, so they are not changing the way I am changing (though they are changing a lot, I cna see it). On the other hand, becuase we all share the same background, the way we think in some ways come from the same places. It is interesting to watch these changes, as people become more comfortable in thier skins (some needing to take more time to do that than others.)

It is also interesting to see what problems people are confronting. Probably the first one in the orhodox community is suddenly seeing people starting to date seriously, with shadchans (matchmaker people), etc. In some way I am really sheltered from that pressure, becuase I am so far away from home, in a place with a small orthodox community, in a college where marriage is far from people's minds. The most important question is: buisness, law school, or grad school. It's a totally different frame of reference out in college. While I never seen people who are more in love with what they study (or in one case, what she is not studying, for fear of feeling inadequate.), the thought patterns that cause people to live through thier work are so much different than those at home. Sometimes, I notice that at home, people are more in love with the ability to live in society, with family, kids, and the ability to be a pillar of the community at all costs. The competiveness to be part of the community in its fullest forms cause a lot of white collar crime, a lot of unhappy marriages (apparently there is a high rate of infidelities where I live), and a lot of bruised egos among people who feel like they can't keep up.
Out in college, the only people who will eat your ego is yourself. I know one guy who is in some way committed to the fact that he will fail, despite being a very smart guy overall. It seems that people know that they have to be reliant on thier talents in order to survive (which I am managing, thank god), and in order to fall in love with what they are doing.
It seems to be a place where becuase of this love of knowledge is so pervasive in the atmosphere, an eqaul if not greater love of God often falls by the wayside. There seems to be more resoucres for studnets who are not OJ though, if only becuase we are the tiniest minority on campus.(3 people out of about 4,000 undergraduates)(and yes I am happy there)
I wish there were more resources for students like me, but those resources seem to be more prevalient when you have the power of numbers.

In other news, When you think back to high school, and think on what people thoguht of you, your memories might actually be in conflict with what happened. i thought I was always one of those girls ont he sidelines..but apparently there was one guy who was just intimidated..who knew?

I kind of wish I did at the time. Despite from my memory his tendency to be argumentive, underneath he had his very nice moments. It probably wou;ld hav ebeen fun and more respectful than the bf who I did have in high school.

Remind me to write a post abouts sex, etc, instead of just guys.

A proof I saw

2006-03-06T00:20:00.000-06:00

In my previous (aka the really long previous) post, I mentioned that something that was asked of me is to delineate the difference between God and Law.

I saw somewhere (but can't say where...for personal reasons you see, wasn't suppose to find it) a proof written up about why one should follow the torah.
The end results is that it does not matter if God exists in order to follow the torah, becuase the torah is seen as a better system for interpersonal relations. However if there is a God, then it should be innately logical to follows its statutes.

I take strong issue with such a proof. First on a basic level (understanding Jewish law, and later on the very realm of its philisophic proof)

A) Siniactic (did I make up a word?) law is based on the principle of chok, becuase laws of catagories such as purities and impurities cannot be explained, the most famous law being the laws invovled in Parah Aduma. I challenge anyone in the Olam Hablog to explain why the process of creating the ashes to purify those contamentated with impurity of death will make impure the priest who made the ashes.

This proof, in fact, cannot really quantify the existence of any form of impurity, including those who's practices are still around today (ie Tumat Niddah u'Zava).

Further, to call a system better or worse when it comes to interpersonal contact ignores completely the point of this upcoming week's parasha, Parshat Zachor. Running around killing people..yup makes for a great interpersonal system.

Or how about this: Cohanim marrying giyoriot. Unless you can prove by medical examination that she is betulah (a virgin) (something unlikely in this day and age where the hymen can be destroyed by such wonderful childhood activities as ballet!), she ia automatically zonah. That's right, she is like a prostitute. A female convert is assumed to have led a prostitute like life before she converted. If you think this makes for great interpersonal conduct, guess what...you are wrong (I would like to say thank God for people like my rabbi from Israel, who's rabbinic speciality was hard marriage cases for cohanim...he tried finding as many loopholes as possible for love's sake, though it won't work in all cases, so I have heard of a number of situations of what would be assumed as impossible situations actually being solved)

And Judaism is assumed to be the nice religion.

B) There are two huge philisophical assumptions that need warrants in this proof.
1) You can objectively measure a social system as being better or worse.
and
2)If there is god, god comes with the caveat of it being able to communicate with us, and hence can give us directives.

1) As a person who like reading anthropology and sociology papers sometimes, I can tell you that the David Buss (evolutionary psychology) reasoning works to a limited degree. A society that allows for its people to flourish will be the one that exists, no if and or ors about it. Just because one society works at a given point in time and place, doesn't mean that that fact will always hold true. In order to justify that a social system in a better social system, one has to justify why there is a dropping Jewish birthrate in both Israel and the United States and a dropping affilations in both countries (see both the Jewish population survey see the line about weakening ties among jews and the AviChai study). In other words, Judiasm as a whole, by the numbers, is losing ground to the other world(s) out there, which seem to satisify something that allows an individual to think that he is flourishing.

It seems that in the long term, this trend is going to continue. A religious lifestyle actually has to offer soemthing to keep its numbers up (and yes you can tell me all you want about the gains in numbers by the religiously modern orthodox...this is due to the ba'ale teshuva movement, and less so to actual population increases...a good chunk of those raised religious "fall off the derech" ASAP...plus there is a rising marriage age among the modern orthodox...which will result in this and the many articles here...)

To call it a better system may not be true in the sense of numbers.

Then you have the moral question....of course, this bring up a huge amount of questions as to objective morality, and if we know of whatever that objective standard might be when it comes to communal behavior. Remember, although you think mechizahs are the end all and be all perfect way to concentration in prayer, others might see it as a hinderance. (And this is why we get both the Shira Chadasha and the Belz approach in Jerusalem, let alone lack of mechizahs in UTJ-type Concervative synagoges) Which is the most moral mechizah...I don't know, and if you can tell me, then you have told me a lot, becuase people have perspectives about morality.

it is like knowing that the death penalty is the right thing to do...there is no absolute way to be sure, you can only go with your gut on the issue.

2)This fallacy is a little more straightfoward. This is about the defintion of god. Something that made a strong impression on me in midrasha is that it is impossible to define gods existence (or non-existence) on a yes/no system of logic. Otherwise you end up with assumptions about god (or even that god exists). We have absolutely no way of knowing if the bible hold true as god word beyond that it says that it is god's words....this is a circuitous fallacy and should not be encouraged...this holds true for all religious works claiming that it is god's word. There is no way of knowing anything about God, and to automatically link God and word is a suppostion, and should not be part of the proof itself. The proof only says otherwise that god exists; we know nothing about the nature of god. For all we know, by not going around fornicating becuase of the bible's statues, we might be displeasing God (I mean I doubt that, but still...)

The proof would require a whole bunch of other steps to prove that that bible is true without using the bible's own logic, plus show it's divine authorship, ir order to say one should follow it becuase it is the word of god.

As it is, despite it's awe inspiring beauty, I always wanted to know where the matching pottery shards filled with writing about biblical events have dissapeared to....

The best I can do on the bible is to follow Umberto Cassuto thoughts against the Documentary Hypothesis...so I don't see how his epic poem theory of Shemot translates into the word of God. (I would like to put here that Umberto Cassuto was an italian orthodox rabbi...those italians liberalness)

In conclusion:

Stop trying to walk around with proofs...they can be taken apart easily by those looking.

Note: I have not put foward anything as a new arguement for any of these problesm...to those who ask why..you can still apriciate the tree despite knowign (or in this case, not knowing) where it comes from.

There is

2006-02-20T10:54:00.000-06:00

a really long post coming..A lot has happened.

Sorry school interferes a lot.

It will be about my existential crisis...which undoubtably probably a bunch of you were picking up that I was hiding that fact from myself.

see ya around

Hard thoughts

2006-02-17T02:18:00.000-06:00

It has been quite a month...

This month I managed to help run a Model UN commitee for high schoolers over a shabbat where I could not write, or even manage to use an elevator correctly, let alone get in my room. The high schoolers performed very well, but I do not understand why they don't dress more tzniutly if they cannot manage to find something that is Western Buisness Attire. *Shrug*

U. , is giving me a hard time...Not by being annoying/evil/mean or any other particular appallation that falls into the catagory of not nice guy.

Actually in a wierd way, although fustrated with me, he cares about my psychological wellbeing.

Growing up in frumland apparently has messed up my particular worldview about what I can and should do, and how I feel about how people see me. I'm slowly coming out of that shell....really slowly...thanks a lot to people like him, who just see me as LITW, without the hangups of the Jewish community. I am giving a public shoutout to my living group and my friends on campus...You are all amazing people to accept me as I am, since a good chunk of the world is not like that.

Anyways, back to the stories (or story).

He's managed to pick up that I feel in a lot of ways strongly ambivalent about some religious practices, not in the sense of doing them, but doing them within a community, and the implications of how I practice them. Within that field is also how I think about the world and the religious world in particular.

In the past two weeks, I got an email from my ex in Israel. Good guy, poltically right wing when it comes to the state of Israel. Two things to note about this email
A) I got this email two days after hearing about the Danish embassies burning in Syria, and hearing that Iran was referred to the Security Council. I heard about this event in the middle of the Model UN conference...in a commitee named "Middle Rast Summit"...which was trying to deal with the previous week and a half's worth of news about Hamas winning the elections.
B) The best description of myself when it comes to politics(or any social sceicne) is that I am a pragamtist that trys to see the issues from outside of my own being. Talking about clothes that I wear and are worn in a communal enviroment is one thing...legistlating it is another. As a result, I feel that I am politically the Orthodox jewish equivalent of the far left. It doesn't help that when in an all orthodox crowd, I argue like a Meretz-Yachad member, (a stronger position often helps you find a better middle ground in the argument) while the rest of the Orthodox World around me would vote for National Union.*

(*National Union and Meretz-Yachad are two Israeli political parties..National Union being the very rightwing party and Meretz-Yachad the very leftwing party)

He was responding to a previous email where I was complaining that I feel like the clapper of the bell, hitting all sides of an issue without really moving anywhere. I wrote to him becuase I was worried about the Hamas win, which was accompanied by a feeling of Wishing I could do something about it while knowing that I could not.

He wrote back about the last bit of News...Amona.

This email said the following (note I am parsing things that are extraneous):

"The big issue in yeshiva is Amona. i'm sure you heard what happened, but i hope you heard the "other side" as well. The police acted waaay beyond the provocation of the few violent ppl. they just beat the shit out of everyone.. they bashed the heads on of 13 year olds. 2 of my friends got banged up pretty bad on the head. ppl got trampled with horses.....

I'm not really sure what to think about the violence. im of at least 4 minds on the issue. I guess practically i'm opposed because it's useless, and there's no forseeable end which would justify the means of violence. I'm not gonna get into it now. What i have decided is that one possible solution is to go on a "squatter offensive"- we have to send cadresd of kids and families to take as many hilltops as we can at once, and give the barbaric magav arsim hell (though w/ minimum violence, fisticuffs at worst, no cinderblocks). it'll be too hard for ther govt. to evacuate every outpost, and if we restrain the violence we still have a shot at capturing public sympathy. we may lose some battles, but it's our only chance at winning. i'm not sure anyone will listen... one of these days, maybe when i get married, i'd definitely like to live at one of these outposts for a bit. sounds like a meaningful spiritual experience. Sit on a hilltop, do a bit of drawing, meditate with the wierd bat ayin ppl... sounds fun. i'm not gonna participate in any expulsions, in that i don't want to get evicted from israel."

I did look at footage by the way....after this email...

Apparently, according to U., I was very shaken up by the email, in a situation from a sheer political point of view I should not take personally, especially considering I do not live in Israel currently.

The reason: I didn't know how to respond.

There is the emotional aspect...the very real emotions that you get when even if you do not live somewhere, you feel connected becuase you have loved ones who are there.

Then there is the aspect of being pushed into a specific position based on commonly held beliefs. In this case, mainly the corruption of Rav Yehuda Kook by Rav Zvi Kook. I understood the logic completely....nevertheless I do not agree with the implications of the postion they hold, nor do I neccessarily on an everyday basis agree with the background thoughts on the subject.

To be more explicit...Even if the Chilonim are the mechanism that brings Mashiach...Mashiach is not here yet and nor will you know when he comes. You should act as if nothing but your good deads matter...especially those bein adam l'chavero. You cannot force your beliefs on someone who does not want them, even if you beleive they are the mechanism in which you will be redeemed. Although the redemption does relate to them, it related through the fact they are also part of Am Yisrael (she chai bekayam) and hold a voice in the country that represents all Jews interests, no matter what they are and who holds them....Since they will be embraced by God becuase of their own personal nature... Mashiach after all, comes through our natural relationship with men...just as much if not more so than our relationship to god. The Mitzvah of settling the land is innate to the land, and not to messiah...nor from my understanding does Living and further settling the land en mass is part of the "ways you can force messiah to be messiah" is fase, whereas the I know that it is an explicit mitzvah to Just live in Israel in an unqualified state. if you are going to live in Israel for religious reasons, at least let them not be messianic considering you are not allowed to guess the coming of the Mashiach. If you are going to play in politics in israel...Play to the concensus, beucase consensus is just as much part of the process of unifiying the people in the Land of israel...which is the primary goal before settling it it, espeically in a situation where when you don't form concensus, you essentially destroy possibilities becuase of personal interests, aka the messiah...Mashicah after all, livies within you, not the land.
Further: Both U. and I (and many other people around here as well...but it was in coversation.) you should obey the country-you-live-in's policies on explict law, even if they are not equally applied. Tracing back to Locke (I can do that, I just read Second Treatise and Letter Concerning Toleration.), one should work with the state to obtain your rights back (if you believe they are your rights), especially in a situation where you are in the minority when it comes to who is objectively being abused or not. (the status of everyday abuse of OJ in Israel of course does not have an objective answer, just as the same question of everyday abuse by Orthodox jews in israel by the other sectors also does not have an objective answer...they may have more right ones though...however in this case...look they are being trampled by horses...that you can classify as objectively bad.,,,in a lockean sort of way) In other words....GET YOURSELF ELECTED!!!!!!! USE LOBBYISTS!!!!!! WORK WITHIN YOUR POLITICAL SYSTEM'S MECHANICS!!!!!!!!!

Which is something obviously not happening with the people who were in the protest turned riot becuase of how police presence was used.

Of course they were going to send police...although the border guard is excessive. Of course the teenagers should not have been protesting (especially on a school day with their teachers.) members of Knesset should not be caught encouraging others to throw rocks....Nor should anyone be throwing rocks...Especially in order to protect a settlement which there is a consecus that it should be gone, where considering the circumstances the protest was just as much (if not more) about Mashiach rather than the right to live and culitvate property freely.

In other words, I was angry at the students for being sucked into to a philosphy that they cannot judge...with it's strong ability to create a religious identity out of running around building houses as if that is the main mitzvah of life, not matter what the consequences. Especially under circumstances where the Messiah is not there yet!

And I was angry, becuase it is impossible to say that without getting a backlash, especially becuase at first glance it desanctifies the state (no it doesn't..it sanctifies the state thorugh the sanctity of its people, not through the sanctity of the land...That is why the first two words of the Bnei akiva slogan are Am Yisrael...Not Erertz Yisrael...or in other words, a mass grouping of Jews living together and governing together gives sanctity to the land, the land by itself is some carbon, calcium, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.)

Knowing this veiw as heretical in some ways, and knowing that I do sympathize (I Believe in the mashiach too, at least right now, and If i knew 100% that it would cuase him to arrive, I would do the same thing...unfortunately...do we know that anything we do will bring us salvation after death...salvation in the next life..and salvation when Mashiach comes....the answer is no)

I essentially wrote him a long letter at the end about settling the tops of mountains are silly (your goals is not to alienate the antion and make mini nations here) annulling respect for law...and in general, how i feel about Mashiach...After long encouragement to move on by U.

U later on further continued on to ask me questions about the exact relationship of law to God, why does it matter. This is an explict question about why the torah is true. Unfortunately as been discussed by such people as Dovbear (go towards the bottom..it is discussed in length there), the because god says so line of logical is a form of circuitious reasoning (the torah is true becuase god says it is true in the torah, which is true..if that doesn't sound circuitous, then I don't know what does) I had to admit to him that he was right. Which I only admited to in writing. It is one of those things I won't just talk about...for fear of being metaphorically crucified by the community.

The wierd thing that is pains him to see me in such a constricted state. He doesn't understand it. Frankly nor do I. it has put me in a existential crisis, which is oddly relieving, since suddenly what I do matters. It was always hidden underneath my thoughts that all of this needs to matter, and not be something done by rote, as it is with almost everyone I know.

Judaism today, even for the frummies like me, is a matter of choice. Taking away lots of choices is a choice. And if you cannot justify your choice, then why do you contineu to do it.
The biggest failure of the community is that they need kiruv clowns to create reasons that do not hold strong intellectual water. Beucase when you frame all mitzvot as a lack of choice, you have problems with a) ranges of mitzvot observance b) different understanding about what even should be mitzvah observances (hence why we have lots of responsas) c) the way people feel about specific mitzvah observances (there is no feel..just do...swish)

That is a religion of emptiness. To have no strong spiritual ground that shares intellectual ground is pitful, which is why last night I was asked why don't I become a Buddist (even then I would still be a Jubu ala the Jubus that are very close with their Judaism ala those that appear in the begining of The Jew in the Lotus.) Right now my reasoning is that by going through my existential crisis, which becuase of the religion involved, crosses every aspect of identity, I will be able to change the very essence of the Orthodox community (if i choose to say Orthodox...wonderful thing choice) if only becuase I don't shut up in person and hence will not shut up about the fallacies that appear in the way people believes and how it affects their lives.

All in all, a very helpful thing to go through, but extremely hard.

Hard most of all becuase of the conflict between the Marrieds and the Not marrieds over the conflicts within the Marrieds within the Minyan. essentially, the not marrieds are holding everything together on the board (though two of the not married are about to get married to each other..Mazel Tov!...but they have been not marrieds in this community for a very long time and sympathize a lot with us, the not marrieds with no kids), even though for a standard college minyan we would be the marginals, becuase we like doing and beleiving in are own thing.

Any minyan where a person going through an existential crisis is the Vice president of the board cannot be good.

Some board memebrs actually want to dissolve the minayn for two weeks, becuase a vacumn will force people out of their shells. However, the people most dependent on the minyan, My ex and my good female friend, will not even consider it. Everyone esle is just sick of what is going on, the president won't show up anymore becuase of the shtus.

So I feel stuck there....stuck in a place that cannot give me enough support to explore...so I have to find that on my own.

I wish myself luck.

(BTW, thank you Drew kaplan for the trackback...that is sooo ubercool!!! I got trackbacked!)

(My goal is that I get nominated one day as a college writer for the jewish blog award thing...as well as become a better writer...any help in either regard is much appreicated)

Closeness

2006-01-22T12:06:00.000-06:00

I find that I have a variety of close feelings towards different people.

Somehow it makes life very confusing when either they need to change or are changing, or even sometimes when they are not.

Ex-bashert for instance. Three/four orthodox Jews...one of them being my ex with my birthday.

I don't mind the change in types of closeness I mind the awkwardness of getting there and his partially mean responses that are so out of character for him to me.

I wish that change would stop.

My Mom:

Doesn't want things to change and suspects my religioisty at all turns.

Meanwhile anyone here would tell you I am fairly religious...in that cute adorable innocent kind of way rather than the "I live in my room and don't come out" kind of way.

It is really hard too, most becuase of the ability to not daven and the fact that your friends will offer you cheese pizza from dominos and yuou can't accept, as well as having to learn all sorts of practical halacha for the first time. Like how to get to the 27 floor of a hotel on shabbat (answer: push it with your elbow, go elbows!)

I need things to cvhange and let myself establish my own indpendence rather than having to think about how my facebook picture compares to my friends, who are starting to go the beauty 24/7 route.

I also am not her mom when it comes to decision making about her visiting. All the other parents make decisions on thier own, so the same should be true of me.

I hung up with her over the fact that she keeps asking, and also if i am really orthodox becuase like all things in college, the interent connection can break and then fix itself wihtout me touching a computer (leave a computer on for 24 or more hours)

Friend name J:

I miss her terribly...she gave the best advice and kind of understood people so well. She is on leave this quarter, b ut I am afraid that things won't be the same when she comes back.

I leave messages for her on her phone, but sometimes I wonder if that is enough...I know I shoudl really write her an email, but who has the time here?

Poetry boy named J:

Since breakup all my hidden feelings have again resurfaced. They kind of slowly do that whenver I am around him, but now it is worse becuase I realizing that I do not know how to escape this situation, to know if he is a player or if he cares, or anything....It has this stuck feeling.

And I hate being stuck.

Friend R:
Friend R is of South Asian desent. Friend R has a ridiculous amount in common with me, enough so that I can stay up until 4 talking to him. This is a problem because he is an aethist nochri, and I should not be doing things like thgat with aetheist nochrim, becuase how do you limit that kind of closeness. Oddly I know I don't want to date him, but if he were jewish I probably would start to wonder, despite that right now as a point I don't want to date anyone.

BTW to all those that are curious: I maintain the right to have an imagination, and he is impeccably nice/gentleman (beyond the cursing) who actually thinks (though I have to wonder about the norse flag in his room, in which I visited while keeping Yichud....hahaha, take that mom!)

He is also my chair, and Iam playign right hand person at UN. While I doubt this will get messy in any which way, I know form other non-jews (chinatown bus can get you interesting conversations) that jewish women like myself have freaked out around guys who were obviously interested in them and visa versa, except that the male wasn't jewish. I really don't want to have a hyperventiallating moment, mostly becuase I think it is stupid. If I can't have very close male friends who are not nin my culture/relgion..well then I am doing something wrong at college.

So this could be a contentious issue for a lot of people. Oddly, I don't see many of the men I know (who are great, go itlotw living group at college!) as that kind of attraictive, but I can see why. Then again I also don't feel I am spending enough time with them (note to self, stop in on the chill dorm parties but skip the drinking)

Oddly, in a coversation in Person R's room, I got him to understand the purpose of being shomer negia (I think this mostly has to do with the fact that he was being sexually active with his last ex, who kind of burned him. Poor guy, no one should go thorugh that.) My reasoning: So you can create an objective closeness with someone. (Perfectly good reaosning, even if it does come from The Magic touch, which I abhor.) Most peplke respect tghat as being religious here, btu don't understand why bother. Even if he thinks I live a highly regulated life (which I admit I do, and on some level I need to practice the regulations better), it is great to know that someone not jewish actually gets what is going on. This is especially important becuase there are a number of people here for whom I am the first Orthodox Jew they have met. My behavior matters more, along side my explanations.

This bring me to Friend S:

Friend S is part of the Jewish frat on campus. He was an orientation aid for hillel (this is how I first met him). He also is broken up with his previous girlfriend.

A) the same person in the frat is teasing us both how we should date (though not together)
B) he keeps asking why I am shomer..and I keep poorly articulating the same things. Or things which make him think that Modern Orthodoxy that I keep is fringe (which it is totally not!!!), since he feels that most of his friends who are Modern Orthodox are not like that.

Hello! Most of the MO jews are growing closer to halacha (as well at times more radical, such as shira chadasha, go them!) The people who he knows right now are either aware of the trend and are trying to ignore it (lets see how long that lasts, becuase comformity is a good thing *smirk*)

So right now he is annoyed with me about it. he doesn't quite get that although I know I am very (deliciously so even, mmmmmm) human, that doesn't mean this is the right time to indulge. (though i keep wondering about when I will....I should be very interesting at that point) So why bother me about it? This smells of something else going on in his head (my thought is hormonal, but ehhhhh)

In the meantime, though I see him as a great, cute guy, I really wish he would buzz off and let it go, or if that is his interest, to respect my relgious behavior instead of trying to change it.

I am behind on my reading from last week so I have to go!

Hmm

2006-01-13T11:09:00.000-06:00

The postscript to the conversation with the complicated guy:
He told me to stop being concerned about what is going on.

Like that will happen

Also, I have realized that my presence on this campus is going to require major chizzuk.

I'm young, relatively attractive...and in a place where the underrad orthodox population is nil, and the general jewish population is small.

I'm eventually going to be stuck in situations involving non-jews (i refuse to call them goying, it is perjorative) where there will be wierd sexual enegry that normally develops. And I can't allow that to either a) sweept either person off thier feet or b) get really involved with people like that.

But somehow it feels unavoidable.

Despite the fact that this is a campus where no one dates, too much work and all.

So i feel caught in a crossfire of having people at home feeling th at I need to date, and here where there are no jews and no possibilty of dating. I'm not even sure if I want to date, I feel like I have too much growing up to do.

This past week

2006-01-08T21:17:00.000-06:00

Although alls well that ends well, this week seemed like it could crash and burn.

First my bf broke up with me. I'm not sure if I was expecting it or not.

I know I was going back and forth about if i should or should not because of communication issues. But still I was hoping we would be able to resolve that.

Then I tried out for the theatre groups, and nearly missed callbacks (at least i got into callbacks). I didn't make it. I hate the emotion that I feel when I make it to a certain level in my personal/professional (if becing a student is proffesional) life and then knocked down to nothing.

I can't completley my algebraic trig homework for calc.

And shabbat started out with some nightmarish qualities, mostly due to my own bad mood and having to deal with the fact that I am one of three orthodox undergrads in housing currently (this statistic will probably change after I graduate to higher numbers, right now the kashruth situaiton is horrible, but when they redo a dininghall on campus , it will have kosher dining integrated seemlessly into regular dining. Same mealplan, different, full food station, just apply into a dorm that will eat there..tentatively that should happen my senior year.)

However, it finally hit me that, overall, people seem to like me and want to include me.

I got asked back to Model UN for high school students as an assitant chiar for the event, from a guy that said I am one of he easiest people in the world to read body language from, but that I am really good at the section I was orignally placed in (middle eastern summit)

People ask me to joing thme for almost parties in thier rooms, and while i don't participate in any substances, people seem cool with that.

And my friends in my ex's part of the dorm still care about me too (and him) regardless of what happened.

I'm figuring it must be somehting about me irrelevant of whether I do the "right" social thing.

The other thing that happened this week:

remember poetry boy (search songs of songs in the page)? He's back.

I emailed him about the last psuedo sexual (rather than last sexual) experience we had. We (he) kind of wanted to escape the interminable cycle of sexual type activty, becuase it was starting to hinder our relaitonship as friends......(i wanted to date him, he prefered sexual activity and just be friends, but it was totally not working that way.)

So we argued in Eilat about the outcome. I was so angry at him but i kind of got the message when he said to me "I am not attracted to you enough to see you every day." I really wanted to go home at this point. (He alrady had taken one shot of whiskey in all of this if i had to guess he was trying to loosen up to tell me that.) We got lost and argued some more. he ended up taking me up to my room, where apparently ( i don't remember this part) he was holding me in such a way that would have been a preclusive to a last time, but i dared him not to, so he didn't and ended up just holding me instead. I emailed him about despite how bad and uncomfortable it was (and still can be), that memory made know that I wasn't hated, and therefore helped me fall asleep the night after this breakup.

He ims me back, telling me that he misses me, our past, he missed seeing me tremble in his arms, my body speaking so many little sentences through my every movement, and the fact that I was falling in love with him every single time I stared into his eyes. (all true)

He told me how much he regreted not taking me that very night, and didn't do so only becuase I dared him not too. Either he has great repsect for me, or there is something up with him.

In some ways he has hurt me badly in my past.

Despite our past, he continues to look out to me, and ocvcasionaly (he is a quiet guy after all) confides in me about hos wants and dreams. I think I am the only person on the planet who knows that he wants his wife to be able to kick his ass into shape. Which I cannot do, nor do I want to. (into self responsiblity here)..perhaps I do want to though...

It hurts in some ways to have him slightly back, and to know he will be dissapearing soon as he always does, neither one of us mature enough to do anything about it, and forever locked in each others grip.

I remember hearing secretly in my heart, this thankgiving, while I was still dating my college (ex)bf, after he walked me home partway from shul friday night, asking myself who i loved.
The top answer was my (now ex) bf, and still is. My (ex) bf was starting to breka me free of the patterns I always knew about love and hate, patterns which just have fallen apart.
The answer swirling around underneath this top love, a love than never was able to grow deeper and truer, was this guy that haunts me always, and it keeps staying that way no matter what I do. This has been going on since the early days that I met him, where I didn't know his name and I kept meeting him randomly in the streets, where he kept listening to me to the point I thought he was attracted to me midly, but I brushed it off. I still remember our fist conversation so vividly as a result. He was walking around with in the nice area where we live, we sat down at a bench, and I explained him the process of how to do a bezel set.

I wish our complicated relationship was not so. I generally don't say this aloud until something happens. Which of course, something did happen.

As long as he is gone, I am fine, happy, and for the most part able to move on.

Back in, and suddenly that all stops

Depending on how there he will be via im, well, how long do you think it will take for me to be back where I started, only this time in a sense even more lonesome.

Un-

2006-01-02T23:08:00.000-06:00

There is no more bashertville.

All i can say is that I am in shock and pain.

Apparently I still care for him deeply in person, hence pain.

Also he apparently is coming after this with a pleasantness, not nice, but pleasant.

so distant and cold, like the surface of the planet oribiting a dying star.

I hate pleasantness, since he is taking this as nice.

No it is worse, becuase you cannot critcisethat fact, becuase he can always counter that he is nice.

He doesn't feel abandoned like I do, especially when one of my darkest secrets is having no slef confidence becuase i beleive that I am good, but I don't see the world as validating that, and hence i might not be good, leavin me in paradox that i work out by trying to be exactly what the world tells me to be.

Right now, I want him to feel the ambiguity of feelings, rather than internalize them and be cold.

I want him to know that if it is just the irritating things, what about the goodness and how that makes you feel, about that paradox.

I wish I could understand unconditional love. It is what I need most.

I feel one moment ready to hurt him so badly, of all the things i could do, and the next i blaim myself, becuase I see him as essentially good, though right now he is hurting me.

i don't understand why he thinks hti sis right. I thought caring was important.

right now i am rehashing all the good things he said,, and how i didn't have the self confidence to beleive him, but how wonderful they are even so.

It would hurt less if i didn't invest myself, but I do.

I wish someone would save me from the pain....or give some of it to him....

I want love so badly it hurts....

I'm exhausted from the day, night

Break time!

2005-12-24T23:09:00.000-06:00

Right now, I am two weeks into a three week break.

Break teaches you a lot of things. Like how I am a lazy bones jews. Or that I need to be prettier in order to impress guys (my slow introduction to the shidduch scene :-( ) Or that one should not to Toy's r Us the friday before christmas (actually i don't think you should go at all..they don't have good toys.)

I think I have discovered that Bashert-ville is much less bashert-ish than I thought, probably due to myown pressure to make it bashert. I have other issues with family to work out before investing time into that. I need to invest more time into me. I also need to realize that right now I want to be curious and not staid, and I feel like I am dating staid guy.

I would like to put here he is an amazingly sweet guy, but I dislike not having a thing to talk about if I call twice a week. This depresses me. What kind of relationship am I in if the guy can't reveal peices of himself to me, and sounds somewhat tired of conversing?

Furthermore, I think I need to get my mom to realize that I am an "open" jewish person. This measn I don't care what religion you beleive in, or if you are of a particular race, or gender/sexual identiy, if your first goal to be righteous and a good, trustworthy person, then I am all for you as a friend. This disturbs my mother, who wants me to have more orthodox friends (not happening..I am particular about that...they need to just let go of thier orthodox selves first) and even would like to not invite them to the wedding I will hopefully have eventually, something which I beleive is very wrong. Why should I not want to invite those who are supportive of me, and why should my mother be angry that they are not necessarily of the same faith I am.

Another thing I need to do is stop being lazy. Or at least less lazy. I think this quarter I want to get involved in the things I am passionate about. I want to get back involved into my Judaism (so hard outside of israel), which for me means starting at the basics, before even prayer (which can move me greatly..see my yom kippur post): Learning. Despite being the resident Undergrad orthodox Spiritualist almost neo-hippy...but not quite, what moves me most in Judaism is in fact learning (as it should be). I also need to learn more zealously (fun) secular things. and do stage.

I figure I should get a whiteboard calander and another stylus for my palm to do this, as well as ship my books to school.

Another thing I have realized, is that I need to grow in college, but just realizing that is growth oriented. I am not sure what that means yet. I'll come back to you to discuss that. I guess right now it means becoming the beauty I secretly am, and to learn to assert myself against the communal things I dislike.

Hmmm

2005-12-03T20:34:00.000-06:00

Apparently I am one of those high stress people who needs hugs when under stress. Aka I am a drama queen.

This apparently is driving the person known as bashert sligtly nuts, becuasein thsi school I tend to crack and then be ok. Then crack. Plus he in the relationship is very laid back, low stress...and also not communicative about feelings. You kind of have to pick them up and interpret what to do with them.

This leaves me very stressed, becuase I often don't know what to do.

Apparently living in the same dorm and then me always being there is giving him space problem, which he kind of didn't say anything about, but was starting to make him meaner and twitchier. Whereas I am defiantely passive agressive, he just kind of is silently acting upon them.

This method scares the hell out of me, becuase it makes me wonder what I am doing wrong in general, and makes me freak out about all the little details.

And knowing that he jsut won't say anything, I have to learn to confront him about him being twitchy.

Otherwise I will drive myself nuts. Which I am. I keep managing to cry over this because he is just such an incrediably good and moral person, and nice....which i somehow A) feel guilty about, becuase I feel like i might corrupt him based on my needs (i dislike shomer negiah with a passion, I also dislike slow with a passion when it comes to feelings) and B)stress about what he is thinking emotionally (type items) becuase he just won't say....

So i end ebing repetive about mine...somehow in the hopes of elciting information, but no. I think ti might be better somehow if i just asked, but sometimes that doesn't work becuase you have to know how to ask.

All i know is that when I canceled a date which he forgot about....he said "I think I am bad for you." I find that far from the truth, becuase at least he is supportive. He somehow manages to think that i would be better with someone equally high maitenence, becuase then I would explode. What i don't think he realizes is that having relationships like that with other people, I tend to go back crying about how I cannot fufill what they need me to do. I get more passive agressive rather than less. And I tend to internalize the worst about myself, and thinking tht I am horrid in thier eyes. At the very least, although he has made me cry about the stress of not knowing what he wants....he has yet to make me cry about being a bad person internally and hence unlovable.

Right now I want to cry because he feels a need for space (i tend to need the opposite) and the thought that he might be bad.

It just hurts to see in a lot of ways someone caring enough to degenirate themselves when he does not deserve it.

Grammar and Love

2005-12-02T14:04:00.000-06:00

First off, I can slowly see, despite the typos and the lack of edting in this blog (when I have time I will edit it), that my grammar is lsowly improving. This is considered a good thing, becuase of the people that know me well, know that I have a hard time writing.

Right now it is reading period, and next week is finals. I am having a really hard time studying. I just don't have the engery and focus needed to study for two exams and to write two papers. I don not feel like I am getting substational amounts of work done, and this is bothering me intensely. Ahh well.

I hsould also make the statement in response to my last post, I don't think most 16 year olds also have an idea of long term investment. At the same time, I am still in favor of having some co-ed activities, becuase I find that absolute segregation makes for awfully wierd beahvior patterns. The problem is how...I think that some of the problems involving how guys relate to girls does result in not having some academic parity in the classroom in jewish subjects. Often the goals in a coed classroom become just skills and thinking, since how we gender men and women in torah study and academic exellence would limit any other options. It would be nice to see a male character become the next Nechama L. while female becomes the next R. Aaron Lichtenstein, based only on training skills.

In single sex classrooms, it gets harder to try and create parity, but not impossible. I thiunk internal competiti0n rather than external (Stop telling everyone on the planet in other words who is the good learner and then make him/her the head chesed person in high schools!!!) might be effective. if you see everyone as competeing with themselves, then women can effectively compete as well.

This brings me to another topic entirely.

My thoughts on this world tend to make me,ummm, overly attached and appreciative of nice people, and I seem to have grown up somehow thinking that to be happy, one has to make others happy.

In other words I have managed to define myself exclusively on relationships, with external relationships with other people being more important than my own realtionship with myself. This makes me extremely paranoid of doing things wrong, becuase if I can't be perfect for others, then where will I be? I keep wondering if the stress of trying to be perfect is going to destroy my relationship.

It also makes me very needy on some level, more needy that I really should allow myself to be. In other words, I have never really done anything for myself wihout really asking if it will make someone else happy. Or only a few things. And it is stressing me out. And then I need to be comforted from the stress. being extremely tacatile in a shomer negiah relationship is not fun at all. Touch is definately one of the key ways you confort someone, and when one is paranoid about being enough, well then, touch becomes really useful.

I am with someone really wonderful. beyond being really self sufficent, the only things he expects of me is to support him, which I beleive strongly in doing anyways. This somehow is problematic for me, since I haven't convinced myself that it is enough for me to do just that.

I am going to rant on my parents, who baby me a little still. My mother still insits that I need to dress ort of conformist (she hates the ties....) and feels a need to still go shopping with me. I hate it, since I don't want toi be told how to dress.

My parents, except on special occasions, try to keep me out of the kitchen as well for saftey reasons.

Continuing on with safety, I'm still not allowed to sit in the front seat of a car when my father drives becuase it isn't safe enough.

Ok I get it....but it is making me paranoid....

I really want some self suffiency, becuase it is killing me emotionally.

*sigh*

They also think that you need to be very responsible to have priveldge. actually the priledge itself is the responsbilty. hence it is hard to convince them that it is ok for me to go places by myself still at night. That I do not need a curfue, becuase it is my responsibilty to find away home when I am out in the night,m or at least a safe place to sleep, and call in the morning or late in the evening to explain what is going on (which I don't even need to do here)

My parents have a hard time with this.

And it makes me paranoid now, becuase what if I havne't done enough to show I am of age all the time, and hence lovable?

Moody and tiredness kicking in.

And that was slightly rambly.

Bleh, back to math and shabbat.

Ohel Mo'ed

2005-11-17T14:17:00.000-06:00

When I can, the only two blogs I reallly read regularly (sadly) are Drew Kaplans and Josh Yuter's, despite there being many other great blogs out there in Olam Hablog.

Recently, a post came up at Drew's blog about domestic abuse (plus another issue he doesn't want to talk about).

Let's talk about it.

The Jewish community is perfectly built to be rife for domestic abuse, especially the Jewish community in the NY metro area. Appearances are really important. Gender roles are defined, even in the Modern Orthodox community.

What happens when you start to break molds among friends?

I'm going to let go of some of my anonymity here. I went to an Israeli program last year that was left wing. We ran a comparable program to the Buria program at Midreshet Lindebaum, the main differences being: we had slightly less structure (We had more beit midrash time to do whatever we wanted with); the girls could wear pants (We had nine Americans and two Swiss females orignally, including me, integrated to the program. Midreshet lindebaum splits thier programs for foriegners and israelis and has slightly differnt hashgafic content for each. The Israeli program, in theory, had no problem with it, however with the massive number of Americans running around with a move "conservative" orientation, the decision was made to not rub against the grain); and we had no madrichot. (The roshei midrasha by us just felt it was unneccessary.) I was allowed, in other words, to particpate in programs geared towards Americans in things like loose capris and men's ties, as long as it was tzinut. Let's just say it caused more than a few snickers among people who were not my freinds.

One time I wore a long loose, very feminine green skirt with flowers embroidered on it (awww) to a shabbaton with Americans that I knew. I got a comment "You finally look like a girl."

While the comment isn't inherently abusive in any way, it shows a low tolerance for behaviors that do not conform to communal lines, something that I have a habit of not doing. Women asserting thier independence beyond certain roles is extremely off putting. To be an expert in the laws of niddah is fine. To be an expert in the laws of cutting a contract, well, that's just wierd.

Another peice of this puzzle: I was sleeping over a freind's seminary in J-town, and the Aim bait was having a bait cham. The discussion: Should you have a tv in your house?
A) It isn't only your house. What about your husband's (to be) on this? Certain people I would expect to have a tv in thier house (like those in advertising....)
B)The discussion was geared towards raising kids. Are you gendering that discussion? Are they only your kids?

Apparently my role about how to figure this stuff out was quite abnormal. We took one day to talk about marriage, discussed some paintings about love and our preconceptions about various kinds of relationships and external forces on realtionships through the lens of the paintings, and this discussed the realties of the worlds, like dating someone of a different relgious backround or soemthing liek that. (hey we are realists)

Meanwhile, my male freinds where having experience of playing with kids in their spare time in order to acclamate them to that idea, along with having the how to look for a wife discussion. Most of thier time was spent learning, and being guyish.

I've gone through relationships: one guy of orthodox upbring (but is rebelling), one guy of coservadox upbringing in which the school he went to moved the fmaily into an orthodox mode, had a complicated non-relationship with a guy of orthodox upbringing, and am currently in a realtionship with a guy who is for intents and purposes orthodox (but definately not frum...) but went to public school.

I may be blinded by cupid's dart, but the one I am currently in objectively works the best, mostly becuase there is a definately a cultural understanding in part by the secular world of respect of opinions, no matter the person's position of dominance or gender in the relationship. This, added to the shomer negiah bit, has allowed both honesty and privacy to develop, something very new to me. Of course, I am conjecturing that if this very aspect fails, the relaionship suddenly falls apart, which is why there is high divorce rate
currently. It is a high demand on someone. Issues that would appear ina realtionship (like that tv) actually would be discussed there in a real kind of way and debated in a real kind of way, and actually might be compromised on by partners.

The Jewish community does not ask for this in order to make a strong marrige, they ask only for the partners to fufill thier assigned roles. I have been told to find more female friends becuase I will need them in order to discuss how to raise my kids in a very final kind of way. While this may be true to some extent, it shows the lack of influence fathers have in childrens lives. I have seen women compromise thier own hashkafa (both positively and negatively) for husbands. In reality it might not even be the husbands, it might be the community. The reason why spousal abuse is a family issue and not just a women's issue or a men's issue, is becuase we train our lives to be the unit of gendered families, each with a role. Not that it is a bad thing, of course. We have low divorce rates. But there is very little support for odder combinations,Like the homefather and proffessor mom in the relgious community... Or little support for divorce in general. Or the types of jobs women could take. Unless you start out and stay as a working lawyer all through your kids, how likely is it that you are bringing in signifigant amounts of cash in the Jewish community?

Abusive men are still far more probable than abusive women (though that can happen). But it falls within the norm, and to break that norm brings dire consequences becuase you potentially damage the stability of the community.

So then you have to create a new question? How do you demasculinize spousal abuse, especially in a community where unusually it is possible to not come from an abusive family and marry into one?

Further, the issue starts early. My "rebellious" ex (all the way from high school) once told me that there were parts of my body that were not attractive. (Never tell your girlfriend that.) He also managed to tell me that he regretted dating me first (also not that). He was not abusive though. But this attitude of "I am the comforter" was common in both of my ex dating realtionships. And I could not peep, becuase it is defiantely not my role to peep if someone is in love with me. (trust me when I say the bashert is trying to get me to break out of that, becuase it is making me very paranoid)

Now let us segway into part b)

Becuase Of love....or what seems like it, becuase of security, which is hard to find, and becuase of the value of relationships in the jewish community, welcome to what is known as the Orthodox Jewish Whore.

As a freidn of mine would call it, Jewish women are the following:

Won't touch anyone but thier boyfriends.

Do practically everything with thier boyfriends (and as you get later in life, that is everything)

But behave like cold fish while doing it.

In order to be spic- and-span for a mysterious item known as a ketubah.

Pushed with a value known as shomerhood, and within a world that likes to manipulate others for the item known as a relationship, apparently some price is to be paid. But the shomer value doesn't disspaer, once must at least appear, so hence fishiness.

Love costs a lot, becuase there is an expectation of sexual and emotional bulwarks in high school, with the payment of security, "love" and some value on some popularity scale.

And teaching about ribs doesn't neccesrrily help.

Complicated showed me that. He interefered while on "break" with the "rebellious" ex (a half broken up state, while the ex was consdering whether to stay like that indefiantely or not), and interefered when we broke up. While on some level he defiantely cares and is my friend, on anohter he smells just my scent and bored into my mind to chase it. In that context, where it does cross gender roels, but also aspects of my own safety, and I couldn't say no, or when i did it wasn't a powerful enough one from either within me or for him to listen to, what is there to teach, becuase he would still need the skills to understand and recontextualize.

And once you past a point, certain people feel owed to, and can't take no either. They need to feel me more secured to make you secure, and you need to be level if that mcuh as before.

So you have this cycle, of people who don't care in the beginning except for themselves becuae of these gendered roles of thigns coming to them. No explains that it comes at xyz costs. No one explaisn the art of negotiating and that it may not be all right now or that it may be a long term investment. Saying that: it is a long term investment, also doesn't help becuase a 13 year old doesn't not understand a long term investment.

Anyways at this point I am rambling...but I tried to respond.

Overly needed post

2005-11-13T16:39:00.000-06:00

Meanwhile HWile I am behind so much work, I am posting a blog entry.

as Bashert would say:

Silly rabbit (just don't ask)

Anyways the news:

I have finally gotten my single!!!
It has its own bathroom and everything

Right now it is a mess, but it is is my mess!

All mine!

The best part is:

Ok this is going to give away a little about the university I go to:

I am in the same dormitory as the bashert (tm) but not the same hosuing group (tm) as him which means I can see him as much as I want but still maintain some sepraration from him when it comes to dorminotry activities. Dormintory activities are not always done by dorm, but usually instead done by housing group. So now I get to take part of my housing group, unoffocially take part of his housing group, as well as all group dorm activities. And see him whenever I want, including on snowy days :-)

In other news: I am still not davening which is depressing. But I am building back to be ready to that point. I am still cathcing up on work from my old dorm exhuastion and holidays. I figure next quarter I will be better *sigh*

The new problem:

We had a shomer negiah acceindet (not a bad one: no kissing at least)

Let some facts be known:

A) he can be made slightly claustrophobic by people.
B) I am definately hedging a bet (considering that I know he never kissed his last girlfriend becuase it didn't feel right, he is a gentleman....) that he has never really confronted his own sexuality, and that I am the first person he really wants to confront it with(you'll see in a minute)
C) I am touch senstive and right now very touch hungry....on both sexual and non-sexual levels.
D) I was very tired when I was doing this...(see below on tiredness and behavior)

Anyways at Hillel, after dinner (Yay for food!) and I was playing seductress (I can be evil in that kind of way, just let that be known to the public). I was starting to make him very uncomfortable in a *yes I am being seduced, and I don't want to be seduced* kind of way. You know make cool it jokes and play back at them in a seductive sort of way(if you have never seen this, you should watch some movie where this appears...) I am leaning in and he decided he is going to push me away to the side, despite the fact that it would be more logical to push me backwards.

He ends up pushing me into his face about four inches away. Lets put it this way:

we both think that when one is very tired, one is like a drunkard.

At that space between the two of us, had I not said this is bad in my own head, and had he not been more awake than I was, that is I am about to move in for a kiss space.

He was acting wierd the entire night and day afterwards.

He kind of sped away instead of walking a group of us back to our various dorms like he said he would, and when cofnroted he cites he is orpheus trying to protect eurydice once he startd to walk, and hence he couldn't look behind him. He would snap at being asked why about that or bolt, and was more mean (in a not him way) all of yesterday.(it isn't only the mean thing, he chose to daven in his room apparrently in a nusach he never uses...it's like aliens took him for all of yesterday)

It apprently has resolved itself mostly by this morning, but he is way more I will not get too close to you, woman, anymore.

All of this is really fustrating, a) becuase I don't know what is going on in his head completely and I feel thsi need to know and help him work it out, becuase it myseriously affects me

b) I feel a need to get comfort that I am ok and that he still cares becuase I know I was stupid, and he is pulling back more.

C)I know I am being protected form something, but what?

I mean he seems to be slowly working through them, but I am not doing so well working thorugh my own parts, becuase they are distancing types, when I want to reach out and say help me understnad you

and he can't help becuase he can't articulate them well. Touchign here is one fo them, but the other, the other I am not so sure about...somehting in my gut says it is about the power of sexuality, and that is why he was snappishly mean, becuase sexuality can make you like that, it can exude that kind of force when it works through you..But I am just conjecturing and I wish i knew more...and I don't...

Oy

falling in love, housing, and learning

2005-10-31T22:46:00.000-06:00

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)

2005-10-29T21:37:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-20T15:45:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-20T14:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-11T21:56:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-11T15:12:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-07T14:41:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-07T08:40:00.000-05:00

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.

Tzelem

2005-08-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

Let's start shall we.

Recently Yu announced that they are starting a new project to teach all us nice teenagers (actually I'm basically an ex teenager) sex-ed.

MAZEL TOV!!!!

Sorry, it's a long overdue subject. When I hear that girls from my area are typical "ny sluts" (and no I am not making this up) becuase they behave badly with thier serial boyfriends, or that rumors where flying that someone from my grade lost thier virignity at my senior dinner (no kidding), it's time for a sex ed program.

Actually it's long overdue.

I really hope they cover everyting, from why seriality is bad (how about do you grow emotionally from the relationship and what that means) to real sex ed stuff (if you can't dissuade at least make sure they also don't put themselves at risk).

I'm hoping that if they approach it with some modicum of modern respect, we'll get a nice overview on both the technical (ok that sounds wrong but I mean like medical) and emotional; side.

ANd I hope they find out that the old message isn't jiving becuase it has to be presented as a matter of choice, like all mitzvah observances. Especially in this day and age. You can't force me to be religious, you have to explain to me why it is fun.

So unless you can be relevant: don't bother.

I also would really liek to see presenting a variety of how it all turned out in the shomer versus not shomer debate (it may be a mitzvah, but that doesn't stop the deabte)

Also degrees of shomerness, and how that affects everything. I don't like the immature attitude associated with it, keeps the people learning about immature.

Just do something really adult and discussion oreitned damn it!!

I realized this is really free-flowing, i apoligize about that.

Hoem is Where the Heart Is

2005-08-02T14:16:00.000-05:00

So, on Thursday morning I will be heading back to the States.

Thigs I realized:

I'm slowly shtarking out...not a bad way to go if you are gonna go down that path. I fidn the whole flipping out thing a little strange, and suprisingly impermanet.

I still don't know what itmeans to be Jewish. *sigh*

I realize I have confidence issues, which I am slowly getting over.

And I don't know how the states will affect that. it's a going to be a long haul.

Leaving On Jet Plane

2005-07-10T05:18:00.000-05:00

I'm dissapearing for the next two months, becuase I am going to have limited interenet access this july and this august-september (up until i start school) I am going to be at home with parents who despise the idea of blogging (grrrr).

On top of that I am behind posting (double grrrr)

So we will see what ends up here. I hope to put something in in July, but august is shot.

Still Sitting Pretty with a Pistol in Hand

2005-07-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

So yesterday, I went to the tekes of my midrasha's female hesder program.

I should mention two things before I go on. About one third of Israeli Dati Leumi (literally religious of the land, it means someone is a zionist orthodox Jew.) women do army service instead of Sheirut Leumi (national service). This is one of the few ways to participate in the army in a religious framework. I'm glad it exists, just liek I am glad there are religious combonations for boys. Always a good thing to experience yourself fully religious and fully secular.

Anyways that wasn't the point of the post.

The point is, I went to my friends' tekes. One of the girls one an award (congradulations!!!! I am proud of you). It was realy sweet.

But it is the Israeli army. One of the best armies in the world. How could thier army ceremonies be so well cute.

I then realized that despite the fact all those people on stage knew how to shoot their M-16. But they don't look imposing. Far from it, they look adorable instead. I now realize that is why the israeli army works. Even though they do fight, they brief thier soldiers in a way that is age approiate, and they provide a lot of non-combat jobs as well to improve moral that army is something everyone could do. (My friends are primairly teaching to make up for people who did not pass state exams, as well as the conversion course, etc.) It is as mucha social machine as it is an army.

Which is why they get away with cuteness. Becuase the army is also about growing up, which these 19 year old girls are doing a wonderful job at.

Teaching is the highest form of understanding. -Aristotle

2005-07-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

So this past week a friend and I have been teaching the kids of the local town remedial English in the morning to prepare for Israeli state exams.

It's been an interesting time, let me tell. I could see the differences and similarities in my own learning of Hebrew.

Unlike the yeshiva system in America, which seems to be losing it's stress on hebrew, the schools here seems to actually care about ESL, moty becuase it is a useful international skill. So it was actually kind of interesting to see that they approached us to teach because we are Americans. The school cares about the fact they learn english, unlike my (ex)high-school, which cared more about Yiddishkeit over hebrew.

Funnily, like in US, kids still abuse the system. I think it was worse in the US, only becuase the system to teach Hebrew is a little messed up (Random Israeli women anyone-I always felt that it might be better to have someone teaching with pedagogy along with fluency who isn't a native speaker rather than a native speaker teaching who has no clue how to teach.). It's funny how much they also cheated (yes Good Morning, cheating is rampant in high schools.) just like girls in my class used to. However it seems to be less tolerate in Israel, only becuase it matter more here. ESL means you get ahead, go to university, etc., enough so that the universities continue to give ESL.

In the United States, people care about your outside frumness, and therefore the general plan is to inculcate the person with frumness. Ironically, the easiest way in the long term to access Judaism is to know hebrew. However, in a climate where schools and the community has "moved to the right" (I always wanted to know right of what, this is religion not politics.), how we connect with Israel and other Jews seem to be getting the shortshrift to how to "properly" connect with Judaism, and therefore Hebrew as a language is being ignored.

I find it ironically funny that up until I attended an Israeli midrasha, I couldn't speak and didn't feel comfortable enough to read. Now I can kind of speak, (at least enough to teach, though I was more dependent on my partner in crime :-) ) and can start to read or at least recongnize shoreshim in what I am reading (I still stutter and have a hard time understanding.) It's opened up a whole new world to me of Jewish connections becuase I learned what kind of religous options I have. Do I want to become more Chababkuk, or more Jewish-Intellectual (I ended up with Jewish intellectual with a spirtual soul who knew?) it caused me to put the hours needed to read three lines becuase I saw a) me growing spiritually) and b)enjoying learning. (though the enjoying learning is not a suprise, since I like that secularly.) Even still, I am dissapointed that I still am dependent somewhat on translations nad dictionaries. i really want to become fluent now becuase I see what a self value this all means.

Funnily, because of the learning hebrew expereicne (though not to fluency), when I cam home for pesach, I was the only girl who borrowed the local beit midrash in my old high school (I learned about haggdah from The Historical Haggadah and the http://www.pomeranzbooks.com/m-pomeranz/details.asp?bookID=3612 the Torat Chaim Haggadah, which I highly reccomend.). I didn't dress any differently, I was trying to pray three times a day (gee I am really bad at that) but I still was the only person out of over 60 girls who came back to learn. My pricipal, needless to say, was shocked. (not about the other people, but about me). I attribute that to me learning hebrew. It makes learning and Judaism really meaningful to me, a feeling which isn't displayed by the general community in my age group. A real pity.

I see the same girls in the lowest level hebrew class dropping out of Seminary (DAMN IT I WAS A MIDRASHA STUDENT NOT A SEM GIRL!!!!!) or alternatively going out to cafes often. They (in some ways) spent more money than I did, and ekpt talking about spirituality (not that I find a problem with spirituality, but if that is it, go hiking!) The ones most into their learning, ironically, where the ones who appreicated the hebrew and aramaic and the texts around them. They were also the ones (usually) most normally shtark, becuase they saw options. With that in mind, teach hebrew.

The students from the local town reminded me of me when it camer to hebrew and life. They thought they could stay that way forever. As a result, the aren't so connected with the world around them. Pity, they don't know what they are missing, a whole other world that could become completely accessible if they would just learn. It was so fustrating to force this one girl who was really weak, like I was to learn, becuase once she did, she actually was doing really well for a weak student. Distaste and lack of familial importance (my mother always oked me being bad in hebrew/judaic studies, a mistake which I will not make.) enforces.

Different rant: If I dressed the way of these girls, people would call me a ho. I wonder why that doesn't happen in Israel. The skirts and shirts are too tight, and why do these just out of 10th grade girls tease their hair and wear black eyeliner. It isn't neccessary (and this is from a person who loooooovves makeup). If i dressed like that, I would hope that my friends would sit me down to some degree (A little sex is ok,becuase continuing desire in a relationship is neccessary,even when you aren't dating someone. It's about making sure you are attractive more than caring so much about the sex.). I wish I had the authority to sit them down and tell them they still had baby round faces to dress like that, and even if they didn't they look umm innaproriate.

Anyone about secular Israelis and the way they dress?

Lots of posts

2005-07-07T16:42:00.000-05:00

Ok So i need to back-write a whole lot of issues.

From Teaching, Religion, Tekes, to more jewish political issues.

So this is going to take some time.

Hope that whatever linkage/readers I get will enjoy (or whatever they do)

Wedding, revisted

2005-07-04T15:08:00.000-05:00

As someone must have realized from my all-over-the-place essay last night.

About the wedding itself: It was the first wedding of a friend (not family) that I had been to. The bride and groom were both Israelis. Parts of it were extremely wonderful, especially how the (younger parts) of the crowd got to participate in singing for simchat chatan u'kallah (the happiness of the bride and groom). Literally every part of the ceremony itself were groups of young adults singing. It was so incredibe to be supported at wedding by your friends. Defiantley communal. I didn't love the cocnept of a catering hall though, seems nice-cheesy in the end.

I will admit though, it does bring a number of issues to light.

Namely to quote myself

"Mostly becuase they remind me of my own inadequacies and hopes. I don't even know who or what is right anymore as a result."

This mostly has to do with my issues with Judaism (see below).

I also think it has to do with the fact that I am afriad of growing up. The Kallah is only 21 and I am a mere 19. We learned together in Midrasha. The age difference there seemed hardly apparent. Her getting married means I could get married soon (in theory...I'm not dating anyone to speak of so obviously I can't get married)

It means dealing with all those mitzvot that I don't want to deal with, mostly becuase I am afraid of them. It means entering the "shidduch" (the set-up through friends, families, coworkers, and proffessionals for marriage) scene.

There you end up facing all your (what looks like now) insignifigant little quirks. There they suddenly become "issues" becuase your life is up for grabs. All of this for the sake of a Jewish continuace.. I want to know only one thing, and it is a selfish thing at that: Where am I and my needs in that balagan?

I think the worst part is that knowing me, I might subsume those in order to create the needed familial/social unformity and end up unhappy. Right now I think I am under even more pressure from my point of view, sicne my cousin is engaged to be married this fall. Guess who is the "next" one according to birth order? Me.

And it makes me nervous. The girl is two years older than me (I think). She'll be in college married. Could I do that? Especially in a secular college like of the one I am going to?

More pressure also comes from people (family people) telling me how to dress, that I need to look and act pretty, wear makeup, ect. What if I want to be a flaming intellectual and work in hebrew school in order to go see the Himalayas instead? Or backpack through Europe?

It doesn't help my shidduch prospects, I can tell you that much. Having a goal to read nietzche and plato and Aristophanes (I liked Lysistrata thank you very much) and to broaden my mind isn't appealing in a world which thinks I should concetrate in the practical. Practical=appealing. I need to create a Bais Ne'eman b'yisrael after all. It doesn't require me to know anything important about the world around me.

But I can't imagine a life like that.

As a result, I'm going to be an inadequate Jewish girl-chick. Rather I should say grrl-chick.

But still inadequate. I'm defined by the community and hence without a boyfriend, without a fiance, without a husband, to help define me, I will be inadequate. I think even If I won a rhodes the community might not see me as just me. I would still need to have the status of attached in the long term.

Though nicely right now there is always this tosefta to throw at people for my lack of jewish normalacy (though person normalcy i seem to have in spades :-) ) Sotah ה:ו. (thank you good rabbi friend)

But of course, although it may be halachic: Is it practical?
I would think if that was the case then a large number of jewish marriages would never come to fruition. Ultimately the community has a high degree of influence. Whether that be good or bad is a whole other issues, but still it doesn't serve its purpose when it comes to independent people. Of course, the mitzva of having children also doesn't help the independent lifestyle, but I don't think that will stop me (Let's take the kids to Bangladesh to help out flood victims honey!)

We'll see.

2005-07-03T16:32:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to write now about the wedding that I was at.

I'm too tired to.

And it makes me re-evaluate my feelings too much.

I have a love/hate relationship with weddings it seems.

Mostly becuase they remind me of my own inadequacies and hopes.

I don't even know who or what is right anymore as a result.

I rather go get smashed right now, fuck.

Mostly I feel incoherent with myself.

I'm lacking somehow to just enjoy. And it bothers me.

I'll write about this tommorrow when I don't have to feel it so much. I'll analyze it there.

To Be A Jewish (young) Woman

2005-07-02T16:51:00.000-05:00

As someone has probably noted by now, I'm very Jewish young lady. Not only Jewish, but I try to push myself (in a kind of babies who crawl, then walk but fall a lot kind of way.) to be more shomrei Mitzvot (I like that term better than Modern Orthodox...Sociologically, I don't fit into the American Paradigm of what those two words mean, but Mitzva-wise, and my understanding of Mitzvahs I do.). I just finished studying in midrasha for one year and this Septmber I will start my undergraduate AB at a prestigious Midwest University.

Basically, in short, all of this means is that from the "normal" Modern Orthodox, "strictly" Orthodox, Chassidshe, Litvak Chareidi worlds (the Orthodox Velt if I have to call it anything.) is that I am either marriagable, or nearing marriagable.

Also from below we know that like most people in my world, I have trouble keeping all the Mitzvot, especially those that shall we say, seem to have a feminine Peragotive attached to them.

I should note here that I am really a FFB (frum from birth)- BT (ba'al teshuva). I grew up in an Modern Orthodox home, in which in my spare time alone away from my own house I can honestly say I tried bacon. (Shocking....) This year has been a semi-reversal for me (I have always beleived in some form of diety, getting back to my jewish roots has been the reversal, not neccessarily the believing in God bit.) and I can say honestly it has been really hard, and still is. i still can't manage to pray all the prayers at their regualrly scheduled times. I still don't feel like I know enough about what to do. One thing I have discovered is that learning seems to make my jewish world a better place becuase it makes me comfortable with my jewish practices, and it gives me the strength that I need about going through the ups and downs of re-becoming Shomrei Mitzvot. (Of Which there are plenty...) Right Now my big ones (on a personal level) Is praying at least once a day (Since I prefer the morning prayers, If i oversleep that is it) and maintaining concertration while I do that (I am a disctractable person with both ADHD and Bipolar Disorder Type 2, and you can't completely medicate it all away). I want to be able to move to praying all three times, feeling more comfortable with all of the stringecies of Kashruth, to how to dress modestly in pants. I also really want to try some form of shomer negiah (no touching men....) (though I think derech chiba will be allowed is some form...I have a real life to attend to with real not-jewish people who won't get it...)

For the rest of the world, which assumes becuase of the background (not knowing about my side trips to the rest of the world),the assumption that I really do have to "flip out" (become more religious/religious in my case), and that it won't be easy still has yet to hit them. It is hard to get understanding that I'm like a semi-knowlegable child, knowing without experiencing, and that re-trying all of this out provokes a flurry of feelings, from excitement, to becomign upset, to annoyance, to embracement. I'm lucking to have gone to an ultra-understanding Israeli Midrasha (open is it's halmark) (though they don't know about the background) and to know an Ultra-understanding, extremely patient, american Rav (or at least he is patient with me, but that might be becuase I am his friend). They all kind of "get" the concept that I (and the few other americans who came here) live in a modern world with all of it's pressures, and navigating it all means admiting that you can fall down as well as get up.

Those people are understanding, the rest of the Velt though is a bit cruel. I'm expected to know and act without my why's ever answered.

And acting in this case means growing up fast.

It means that people want me to deal with Married Female Persons halachot now.

To do that, I need to get married (obviously).

The funny thing is, I am nowhere near ready to deal with those issues, becuase I am only starting now to resolve my own Jewish Issues. How will I resolve those involving marriage just yet.

I can't deal with the concept of Covering My hair (how much to cover, how to cover..yada yada yada) or Nidda U'Zava (I refuse to call it taharat hamishpacha...you are being purified to a limited extend, not your family, they are not dipping in any mikvahs or counting any days.)

Yet the pressure is on. My mother is telling me I need to dress pretty and still thinks I am going to wrong school becuase of the need for marriage. Marriage marriage marriage. All I her today is the word Marriage. Or meeting guys (closely aproximated with marriage.)

Funnily, I am not adverseto me marrying young. Nor am I adverse to marrying someone older/younger than me by more than a few years. The big deal is, I can't marry into the Orthodox Velt, becuase I cannot guarantee they will be willing to put up with the fact that I am only now going over my issues with a fine toothed comb and resolving them.

I also still display all the self conciousness of someone just coming out of the bloom of youth into the flower of young adulthood, compounding the matter. How am I supposed to become norma on some level to them, if I still have a hard time accepting myself as normal?

I don't want to date someone who cannot grow with me, communicate with me. Who will help me along until I am more ready to confront the "married people" issues (which I just can't deal with becuase they are so outward, I need help with the inward ones first.) I want to find someone who will just help me along. Not someone who's name is Pressure.

Unfortuantely, all I see around me is a world full of men with pressure.

I dated someone (we're not getting into the how good we were issues) who's first and last line was marriage. And he went to the Gush, not the school known for bringing out those issues. He's a great guy, but it ws a huge strain on me to have to cronfront those issues without having resolving the earlier ones. I wish that I could find someone who just let me take it a step at a time instead.

I'm afriad no one like that exists. And I don't think I can build a life with someone who won't both be there and yet give me space to resolve issues.

But I am under pressure to forget about Issues and just do. This is what made me so disgusted with the orthodox world in the first place. And what makes me so afraid to think seriously about marriage now.

The Honeymoon

2005-07-02T15:22:00.000-05:00

For some reason, this did not post when i published it originally.

I suppose that is a good thing, my thoughts are still swirling about the original post.

The post, the post was about Disengagement. Or closer to the matter, a friend of mine's post-training honeymoon with Tzahal. Her posting:Gaza.

She wasn't trained primarily for combat either. She's a teacher, helping bring the unpriveldged of the army, from backwaters and slums, to the standard level of education. To give them a second chance. I don't even think that most foreigners realize that most of jobs Tzahal provides are non-combant like hers and the rest of my friends, and that a good deal of jobs don't even relate to "normal" military service as civilians think of it. As a national unifying force, they do everyhting from providing healthcare to teaching patrioism. Very few people actually make it into combat. And for those who do, the army publishes moral material about how one should handle it. It's a court martiable offence to call the enemy any curse word in breifing, or to lay any real insults.

To see her describe what she will be doing over the next few months, those very few words and body language, was a bit horrifying.

I never seen someone describe with their hands what they were about to do ad if they were dumping garbage. The look on her face was a combination of forlorn and tired. She simpley put what she was doing as "moving people"

While I supporrt disengagement, reactions like these from the soilders who participate (such as my friend) makes me wonder how it will all work out.

The majority soilders in elite units are dati. As a group, I could generalize that the do not support Disengagement, or at least the removal.

I always wanted to know, even I understand the asnwer, why can't we leave the settlers there. The answer stares out to me in the form of Joseph's tomb. At the same time, I'm uncomfortable with that rhetoric. There must be more out there.

I have respect for people who at least know what they beleive me, quite unlike the Jewish state (though democratic, it still can't decide what Jew and Jewish mean.). Until the Jewish state decides to put some priority on the very fundementals of it's defintion, no one group should take it over. Yet disengagement manages to do just that. Hoepfully the result of disengagment will be that dati people at least force the rest of the population to take a strong look at what it means to be loyal Jeiwsh citizens. I hope they also manange to examine that themselves.

I support disengangement, thought I beleive these are the days that willmark the Harbringing of the Messiah. There is no one correct path, and sometiems two steps foward and one step back to look at some of the more important issues at hand about Judaism might be prudent. Hoepfully getting out will allow those issues to finally come forth. More so, I hope that all of those conflicts are resolved peacfully.

I don't think neccessarily staying in all of the territory is going to help that.

And my priority right now, is for the state to define itself. Becuase without that defination, how else to I define my own Jewishness.

Cowboys and Indians

2005-06-30T17:43:00.000-05:00

I dated someone in Israel.

He's a new oleh. In other words, an American ex-patriot.

19 and a child. Free with his emotions, beleiveing what he want

He be chasing his indians one day, and it won't be fun and games anymore

He'll have an M-4, bullets. Will his idealism stay, telling him this is the way the world hurts.

He's my friend, and I can't heal the battle wounds to be. I can't prevent scars, I can't stop the light in his eyes from going out every once in a while.

Although I disagree with him, who says I want war to change him? Who says it is good to watch death and suffering? Of the enemy, of his friends. I can't protect him in the end from how those lines will be crossed.

Yet I have to try and maintain that connection so his soul has a place to be soothed.

Even from far away.

Innocence

2005-06-30T17:06:00.000-05:00

How do I stay innocent in this world?

I'm being drugged with information.

Should I know what I know? About sex, drugs, and alcohol. Or if not that, continue the process of gaining information?

It keeps me high, and crashes me low, becuase the only way to find out is through experience.

Innocence. Who even has it anymore?

I don't know so much about typical items, but as time goes on I can't protect my head.

Yet innocence is what we strive for.

and I can't keep mine.

The Signs on the Wall

2005-06-29T17:18:00.000-05:00

Right now I am finishing up a year of learning in Israel.

Probably the most maturing thing was walking the streets. Midrasha isn't real, it is too idealized, the streets are.

I wish i had a camera to take photos of the roads and alleyways that litter Jerusalem.

Whereever I go, no matter how far I travel, the graffiti stared at you the most.

It's political, or anti-politics. Written up in bright colors, it explains the world around you.

Why is there MJ decorating Emek Refaim? Who put up the I heart wall in town? What is the meaning of che? Maybe we're more tired of the world around us than me thought.

The of course there is the explicit. Those that memoralize rabin, hitnatkut. Politics scream from the wall. The need for change cries at you.

I suppose people here feel more, ad there souls have been touched. The walls must absorab all that extra energy. But it is exhuasting to be on the streets. To empathise so much with the paint, the chalk upon the board.

At home, people were never this explicit. The politics never painted my streets. Violence and ownership did.

Who owns this land? Becuase the walls are fair to everyone here. Everyone's voices clouds your mind with their sound.

It leaves me perenally careful. Careful that one day, the walls will need to hold my song too. My sign upon the walls.

A Time to Grow

2005-06-23T06:31:00.000-05:00

I'm taking time away.

Until tuesday night.

I have things to do. With friends.

The boy from last night's essay, well I was drizzling tears as I wrote that. So I wrote to him via email, that right now I want to go travel the milky way on my own. Maybe I wll come back later. Right now, it hurts to much to comment on that comet with him.

I hope he doesn't mind. I hope he realizes how much it stings my already swollen and bruised back to tell him that I need to say "Peace unto your house" for now.

I wonder if I can stay strong to say that to him, for as I have also said, no matter what, he is a pillar of marble for me to lean on.

Song of Songs

2005-06-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

A pile of fragrant cedar wood encircles me.

That heap will be saturated with oils, oils of nard, myrrh, spice, cinnamon, aloe, saffron, and frankincense. It is studded with briar roses, dripping with perfume.

I am tied to a stake in the center with the vines of our groves, molded to a beam of cypress, A crown of henna marks me as one your daughters of Jerusalem. It will all be lit aflame soon. Burning with my desire.

I was meant to labor beside you, to dine on rasin-cakes, pomegranates, grapes, apples, wheat, and honey and to drink the finest wine.

I recall your eyes on me, full of light, with the image of me covered in jewels that make the weapons of God's army.

I smell incense rising. The fire has been lit by the dart we both shot. Leaves from my garden lick my feet.

Do you ever relive our first kiss? Headier than wine, you held my body close to yours, becuase I could no longer stay poised. You tried to carry across the snowdrifts that night, with your hands of gold. I wouldn't let you of course.

Red, yellow, and orange caress my face. Your essence fills the air, lashing out against me.

Through the blaze I see your shadow. Townsmen, friends, guards-why does he waver? Why one moment unavailable, the next minute my friend, and the third, an echo of the mandrakes you gave. You attribute the last to your manliness, further stoking the fires. What do you actually feel deep inside?

Like vines of thorns, perfumed fire is eating me alive.

And yet, if there was a real stake, a real gun, you would be the one to untie me, to keep me alive. Why?

In the end, that is why all the water from our springs instead banks this fire.

Save me. Please save me. Even if I never see you or speak to you again, at least it means I am not emblazed by you anymore. I need to become the gazelle you attribute to me and you the stag.

Help. For I am being burned alive in a hill of spices.

Blastocyte

2005-06-22T18:54:00.000-05:00

One thing I am glad about with this open diary, is between the spaces, curves, and lines that make up these letters, words, and sentences, I have a world to become myself. I can think what I want to think. And here, it can burst forward like a sprout from a seed. Here I can voice secret thoughts and dreams, and limn my true image.

It means I need to illunimate the world I see, the people in it.

What if they want to see this? To behold in my illustrations?

Then how truthful can I be? Through my nom de guerre, I am free to effect. Through my name, my vitality is diminished into a box created by others.

Should I let people who are all tangled in the spider's web of social connections read this, and thereby diminish myself?

On the other hand do I actually have a voice if no one reads this? Part of the point is to touch others. I cannot do that if this remains a solitary voice that no one heeds.

What to do?

Leaves

2005-06-22T05:57:00.000-05:00

I was told to write this blog by a friend of mine. He said it would ease my weary soul, plus improve my lackluster writing skills. While I know writing in general will help focus my thoughts, will it help me pick up the scattered leaves that is my life?

To be fair, I may not be picking up those scattered leaves, but chasing after them in the wind. The leaves of my politics, my friends, my inner being, all swirling in the wind like multi-colored foliage on a blustery day. Who am I? If I gather a bouquet of vermilion, apricot, and saffron blades, and pepper it with fall blooms, will I know?

Maybe I will find out here...