Month: March 2012

  • That Black Eyed Peas song’s in my head.

    (This one.) Ran my second 10k today as part of the Tel Aviv marathon. My head was definitely not as much in the game as it was during my first run (the Jerusalem Night Run), where adrenaline and newbie-ness definitely took control. It was fun, and it’s great to beat my personal best, and especially to…

  • Co-op drama in Park Slope: Daily Show has it covered.

    I left America to avoid places like Park Slope. So I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of the local Brooklyn grocery co-op drama, where half the members wanted to ban Israeli products and the other half were protesting. Decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The most ravaged, tragic victims were in Park Slope Brooklyn all along… Of course,…

  • Running from.

    Sometimes, when I run… …I’m running from the stories that haunt me. I’m running from the stress of being a parent, of propelling a small child’s world, of having so much to lose. I’m running from the cold air nipping at my skin, teething on my bare arms. I’m running from the hourly news reports…

  • Fifty-Two Frames: Birds.

    One of the most fun things for me about participating in the Fifty-Two Frames project is that every week, there’s some new minute aspect of life I get to focus on. Like birds. For instance – I never realized how loud birds are in my neighborhood. Because there are TONS of them on top of…

  • And now for some local horror.

    I don’t miss the part of living in Katamon, in Jerusalem, when a Beitar game would be on. Beitar Jerusalem fans are known for a right-wing/arse/loud/violent combination of stereotype. This, though. This is disgustingly criminal. It’s been a bit buried in the papers – partly because it happened around the time of the France Jew…

  • The new American Hagaddah.

    Enjoyed this. Another moment of awesome by Stephen Colbert at the end. Who’s ready for Passover?

  • Segulah this.

    Shared with me by an old colleague, I thought it timely to post now after yesterday’s  religion rambles and rants. Definition of segulah ranges from folk remedy to supernatural cure. Best Time Tested Segulos Segulah for recovery from illness: Go to a doctor (Berachot 60a, Bava Kamma 46b) Segulah for longevity: Lead a healthy lifestyle (Rambam, Deos…

  • Finally nailed it: This is where I am religiously.

    For years – maybe forever – I never really mentioned here my religious affiliation outright. Part of it was because I didn’t want to be placed in a box. Part of it was because I found it so hard to define. Part of it was because I honestly didn’t know. In an article published today in Jewish…

  • Orthodox Jewish dating gone raw.

    There’s been heightened talk in the last year or so about how the dating practices of Orthodox Jews (not modern Orthodox) – shidduchim, or matchmaking – have gone awry. Connected to that is the issue of hyper-modesty, which has certainly been a volatile topic in the last year and decade, in Israel and outside. The…

  • The magic of being bilingual.

    On the way to gan this morning, Koala spotted a firetruck on the road. Obviously, this made his morning, and for the rest of the way cried out in excitement, “Fire truck! Fire truck woke up! Fire truck is here!” He was still talking about it as we walked up to the gan door, so…

  • Retro Europe: the anti-Semitism still spills the blood of children in 2012.

    In case you were feeling lost in the big bad world today, the world of terrorism, bus bombs, embassy bombs, car bombs, nuclear bomb threats, rocket launchers… Today we are exposed to some run-of-the-mill old fashioned European anti-Semitism. Of the absolute worst kind: the cold-blooded point-and-shoot murder of Jewish children. In 2012 France. The gunman…

  • Nightmare: being a black boy’s parent in America.

    I’m gonna do a lil Jon Stuart here and shift the focus to Camera 2: America. May I have your attention? I have a question for you. For us. It goes like this: What the fuck?  The Trayvon Martin story. This 17-year-old boy was killed in cold blood when a 28-year-old community nightwatchmen (not a…