Category Archives: new york

My NYTimes debut: experience of an expat Staten Islander during Sandy

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My New York Times debut: A journalist found my post on my experience of helplessness as a Staten Island expat, far away during the Hurricane Sandy disaster. After some emails and a phone call, my Staten Island-based mama and I became the lede of his article on New York expats taking action during crisis.

Here’s the article, in this weekend’s paper in the New York Times Giving section:

Tied by Heartstrings to Calamity

It was kinda cool to be on the flip side of reporting as the interviewee. Probably made it a lot easier for the writer, too. And I also got a kick out of collecting info for him to find other local Israeli resources.

The experience reminded me of my old reporter ambitions (which, since abandoning them, I’ve partly pursued here for the last 8+ years; so one might say). It got me thinking that I might want to revive that old life a little, perhaps staying online, maybe starting with guest posts? Might be fun to give it a shot.

Next stop… byline somewhere!

Heels in Israel, heart in Staten Island

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Not over how odd it is to live in the Middle East and watch your North American hometown get knocked around by the Universe.

[Hylan Boulevard is a river... I used to cruise along Hylan for Staten Island Advance assignments...] 

For the past week, my heels have been in Israel, but my heart is in Staten Island. The forgotten New York City borough. I wish I could pick up and fly over and help people sort through their property… hand out warm clothes… pack food packages. Alas, it’s not to be, and all I can do is call my mother a few times a day and make a donation online and hope it helps.

Isn’t it supposed to be the opposite?

Thinking of my family and friends and neighbors in Staten Island, lower Manhattan, Queens, Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, north of NYC…

There are probably tons of lists, but if you got here, this is a selection of online donation spots and volunteer mobilization [UPDATED Nov 6]:

  • Staten Island Assemblyman Matthew Titone’s Amazon Wishlist - purchase items directly c/o the assemblyman, who is taking care to deliver them to Staten Islanders in need (other local groups in NYC listed here).
  • Red Cross Disaster Relief - The American Red Cross response to Sandy is very large and will be very costly, affecting a massive area spanning much of the eastern half of the country. Financial donations help the American Red Cross provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance to those affected by disasters like Hurricane Sandy. To donate, people can visit www.redcross.org, call 1-800-HELPNOW or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
  • The Salvation Army Hurricane Sandy Relief Efforts
  • Jewish Federation of North America: Hurricane Relief Fund
  • Tablet has a comprehensive list for helping schools, communities, social services, and blood donation centers.
  • Brooklyn Based also has a long list of links for volunteering/donating.
  • JCORPS volunteering and events.
  • LBNY Hurricane spreadsheet for donations and mobilizing volunteers.
Plus Israeli local efforts by expats:

There are also local efforts by stores, companies and newspapers… Pretty much a matter of Googling it.

Thinking of my hometown. If you know of more online donation efforts, please leave in comments.

Hurricane Sandy. Gaza rockets. It’s raining, and it’s tragic.

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Being a New Yorker outside of New York when disaster strikes is hard. I think we have some sort of mutated DNA that makes us deal with crap in a different way. A New York way. Like Hurricane Irene last year, only yeah, this time New York skepticism didn’t win out.

Obviously, this is a monster of a storm, doing incredible damage we’re only beginning to comprehend as the images come in from across the east Coast. Since the weekend, as I read friends’ posts about prepping for Hurricane Sandy, and spoke to family members hunkering down at home to wait it out, I couldn’t help but think of Sunday morning, when I heard that schools would be closed for southern Israeli students so they could stay in bomb shelters to wait out the falling missile attacks.

[Note: There's no serious way to compare the two tragedies' damage and experience. It's ridiculous; and yet I've noticed people comparing news coverage of the two events, which is really unfair, so I'm addressing that here.]

Have you heard about the (new) recent round of Hamas rockets raining down on Israel? It’s not surprising that most of us haven’t. It’s a tired daily news story. People take a daily vitamin, daily walk, daily shit, and Southern Israel takes a daily pounding.

There’s a lot going on in the world. So the international media covers a lot. It’s up to people on the ground to share their stories, spread their experiences, and make sure the international community can relate to the daily terrorism in Southern Israel.

Let’s not rely on or blame solely the ‘mainstream media.’ The people’s internet, people.

Anyway, the mainstream media’s ignorance of the Hamas rocket attacks in Israel doesn’t make it less real, less terrifying, less terrorist, less traumatic for children, parents, residents and IDF soldiers who have to carry out orders for reactionary missions.

So maybe a visual will help drive it home – today, Ynet posted a video, apparently released by Hamas yesterday, and it’s pretty clear despite the fact they usually like to blur the background so we can’t tell exactly where they were sent from.

The trick is, this is clearly a populated area of Gaza, which from the launchers’ point of view is wonderful, since it would be hard for Israel to strike back and target the launchers  without causing collateral damage.

Not so wonderful for the men, women and children who live there, who may end up collateral damage before those rockets reach Israel. By the way, Geneva Convention, anyone?

Click for video on Ynet’s site; to avoid annoying autoplay, I linked instead.

Here’s an infographic covering the types of rockets and their ranges in relation to Israeli areas:

Go ahead and share this. It doesn’t matter where you stand. Rockets aren’t good for Israel, and they’re not good for Gaza, either. They’re not good for Palestinians, Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, our children, our economies, our futures.

Palestinians suffer when Israelis suffer when Palestinians suffer when Israelis suffer…

 

Candle.

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“Ima, what’s this?”

“That? That’s… a candle.”

“But why is it here?”

“Why is it here…

…Remember how I’m from New York? I was a kid in New York. Like you’re a kid in Tzur Hadassah. I grew up there… with Grandma and Grandpa… It’s where I went to school. You know?”

“Ya.”

“So… many years ago… something… very bad happened. In New York. And… a lot of people got an ow-a.”

“And Grandma?”

“…No… not Grandma… people. People I don’t know. But they lived in New York, like me. And they got an ow-a. So every year… after my yomuledet…   I light another candle. For those people. From New York.”

“Oh.”

My firehouse.

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For months, Koala and I have been discussing our plans for New York. For months, he’s been obsessed with firetrucks, firemen, סמי הכבאי and hoses. And for months, the top of the list was visiting a firehouse.

And I’ll freely admit, I was as, if not more, excited about this.

Firemen were always curious characters to me. When I worked at the Staten Island paper during my college years, I had a co-intern who discussed, and later became, a fireman.

Then September 11, 2001, happened. And I was working at that paper. And suddenly, firemen were everywhere. Even the ones who had died. And the heroes became super heroes to me. There’s a special place in my heart for the FDNY.

So we stopped on the side of Engine Company 166 in Staten Island, where Fireman Tom kindly (and really enthusiastically) showed us around, even as Koala was a bit… intimidated… after months of building up the occasion. And truth be told, I think it made me even happier.

Thank you, 166!

Little boy’s heaven.

Yup, this is the truck he meant.

Everything seems to be working.

Inspecting the goods.

An offer to change places.

Home.

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I looked up when, among the mumbling, I heard the word ‘מעליב.’

Standing in a long, slow-moving line at a Staten Island department store, I suddenly felt at home. And yet, it wasn’t because I was in Staten Island, or a department store.

She turned around to complain about the long line in English, and then we chatted about the headphones she was holding. Helping her out with the specs, I was filled with a sense of wanting to hug this woman. Who, once upon a time on listening to her loud, unashamed Hebrew complaints, I would have smirked and thought, Oh, Israelis. But like seeing Sabra humus in a Costco, I had discovered a piece of home right there under the fluorescent lights of American shopping culture.

I had to say something once she mentioned she wanted to use them for a plane she’d be getting on shortly.

“So, you live here, or in Israel?”

We ended up switching to Hebrew and talking about our lives in short… She had moved to New York, and ended up in Chicago. I had left New York for Israel. She spoke Hebrew with her kids at home, and actually, her daughter has excellent Hebrew, “better than Israelis back b’aretz.” My kids speak English, and of course, expand their Hebrew vocabularies at their daycares. Her kids attend Jewish day schools – “absolutely, in America, you MUST give your children that.”

We parted ways to pay for our things and wished each other luck. In a way, I felt like this was my parallel universe, maybe ten years from now. With switched accents.

We make choices… we put faith in them… and some of us are fortunate enough to know deep down we’re living the right choice.

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll always have Jew York…

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A new study’s findings on the Jewish demographic(s) in New York City is challenging some long-held assumptions/notions regarding… Jews in New York.

Specifically:

“The study… challenges the entrenched image of Jews as liberal, affluent and well educated. Over the last decade wealthy, Ivy League graduates like those on the Upper West Side have increasingly lost population share relative to Orthodox groups, like the Hasidic population in Brooklyn, where college degrees are rare and poverty rates have reached 43 percent.” (NYTimes)

Some fun frum and not-so-frum facts:

  • After a decline, it seems Jews are on the upswing, and (not shockingly) the numbers hike is attributed to the Orthodox/Ultra-Orthodox populations.
  • New York area’s Jewish population is (still) the largest outside of Israel. One-third of the entire American Jewish population is located in that area.
  • The numbers: 40% of NYC Jews identify as Orthodox, up from 33% a decade ago. 74% of NYC Jewish children are Orthodox.
  • The less observant are becoming even more less observant. The Conservative and Reform counts are in decline.
  • Unsurprisingly, the Orthodox communities tend to lean to the right on political issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and how Israel handles Palestinians.
  • 316,000 Jews on Long Island and 136,000 in Westchester. Combining the eight counties makes for 1.54 million Jews, up 10% from 10 years ago.
  • Less affiliated Jewish children are less likely to be attending any sort of Jewish structure, while at the same time, overall, more local Jewish kids are going to Hebrew day schools or yeshivas. About 50% of Jews ages 18 to 34 in the area had gone to those types of schools, whereas it was only 16% of their parents/ages 55 to 69.
  • Intermarriage is hanging tight at 22%, but has increased specifically in the less affiliated.
  • 12% of Jewish households include a non-white person, often from adoption or intermarriage.

Nothing about this is shocking. It makes me a bit worried though. I didn’t ‘flee’ New York per say, but I’ve had trouble understanding how modern Orthodoxy can sustain itself in this type of environment. As people get pulled to the left and right, to the unaffiliated to the fundamentally affiliated, what’s left for those of us who want to practice traditional Jewish lives?