A version of this essay was presented as a dvar torah on Yom Kippur 5768 at Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley, CA.
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10 Days. 10 Questions. Answer one question per day in your own secret online 10Q space. Make your answers serious. Silly. Salacious. However you like. It’s your 10Q. And it's not too late to start... in 2017 you have until October 1st. When you’re finished, hit the magic button and your answers get sent to the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping. One year later, the vault will open and your answers will land back in your email inbox for private reflection. Want to keep them secret? Perfect. Want to share them, either anonymously or with attribution, with the wider 10Q community? You can do that too. Next year the whole process begins again. And the year after that, and the year after that. 10Q is a reinvention of the ancient ritual of reflection during the 10 days surrounding the Jewish New Year. Over the last decade more than 50,000 participants have taken part including self-identified Catholics, Muslims, atheists, as well as all kinds of Jews, including Transparent's creator, Jill Soloway. I’ve been participating since 2009 and just got my 2016 answers back last week. I laughed out loud at my answer to the bonus question, recommitted to making #6 a reality and am amazed that my answer to #8 is still true. I guess you could say I drank the 10Q Kool-Aid.™ Oh Yeah! Now I’m passing the pitcher around…. Sign up here: https://www.doyou10q.com/about Plus, this year there are some pop-up events in NY, LA and SF. When I started promoting the 10Q thing I went through a file I keep on the High Holidays and inside, in her distinctive handwriting, scrawled on a piece of scratch paper, was a quote from Zora Neale Hurston that my mom had sent me some years ago: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” With the hope that 5778 will include a healthy balance of Q&A, שנה טובהּ ~ shana tova ~ may it be a good year for all! “In Judaism, to be without questions
is not a sign of faith, but a lack of depth.” Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth from 1991-2013
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 4-12-13
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 9-7-12
Evening prayer composed by Rabbi Reuben Zellman
"We are taught: All of us – Leonard Fein, The Hour: Remembering Tomorrow (The Forward 4/29/05)
A version of this essay was published in Jewels of Elul 5770 A tribute to her own mother, P.S. Years later, reading Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, I came across these lines:
“With her Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. Alone in the midst of the crowd on the pier, he said to himself in a flash of anger: 'My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.'” Mine too ;)
בנפול אויבך אל תשמח (Proverbs 24:17) Do not gloat at the fall of your enemy. A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 4-12-13 as RB EYES: Why is it Called Memorial Day?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 5/5/2013 and
I plagiarized myself in one paragraph that was previously published in Sh’ma (10/10)
"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom." Albert Einstein A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 7-20-12 as RB EYES PASSOVER: Do you have a Canadian accent?
The Haggadic imperative: בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאלו הוא יצא ממצרים In each and every generation, |
I’ve never been a punctuation enthusiast. Question marks and exclamation points I can manage. After a few drinks I may admit that periods can be useful. I actually adore the ellipsis… The colon is a keeper. Parentheses are overused (by me) but easy to ignore. And I’ve never attempted a semi-colon on my own so I can’t really speak to that. My gripe is primarily with the comma. My primordial editor (a.k.a. my mom, who edited books professionally) developed a theory about my inability to use commas. “A comma goes where a normal person would pause to breathe before saying the rest of a sentence. You, however, speak full paragraphs before coming up for air. It’s no wonder you don’t know where to put them.” After taking in her insight, I tried to slow down, but it was wholly unnatural and every time I paused I promptly lost my train of thought. I ended up just hyperventilating commas all over the page. “Why pause when you know where you’re headed?” I argued. “You have plenty of time to pause after you’ve said your whole piece.” “Is there any kind of pause you appreciate?” she probed. “Shabbat.” “The way you celebrate Shabbat, it isn’t really a pause. It’s more like a full stop, or an exclamation point at the end of a long week,” she countered. Was there any type of pause that didn’t feel like an unnecessary interruption of my full speed ahead approach (to everything)? The answer came to me at dinner one evening when I was telling my kids—for the umpteenth time—to wait for everyone to be seated before starting to eat. My insistence on this piece of protocol had less to do with etiquette than with a larger agenda of cultivating mindfulness around eating: pause to thank the people who prepared the food, pause to be thankful for having food, pause as an exercise in self-control. Pause to focus on the act of eating in order to be more thoughtful about what is being consumed. I called my mom and said one word: “Hamotzee.” “Reciting a blessing before eating is a pause you appreciate?” “Yes.” Her response: “Extrapolate.” All it took was that one S.A.T. word and I started to have flashbacks to standardized tests past: But is Hamotzee to a comma as bread is to punctuation? No. No amount of time to think it through and no punctuation mark could have softened the blunt point put on her life: she died before I could make meaning from the comparison. Then, three days after the shiva––the intense, weeklong mourning ritual—ended, my older daughter (who was twelve at the time) told me that she’d dreamt about my mother. “I heard Oma’s voice and she said to tell you that she loves you and that you should put a comma between life and death.” “Whoa,” was the only response I could summon. The silence went on long enough that even I knew it would need more than a comma. We talked about the dream on and off for a few days. Then, even though I knew where it was headed, I gave it a rest… until now. |
POSTSCRIPT from March 2017: 72 years ago (next week), Deborah Brodie was born. 50 years ago (this week), she became my mother. 17 years ago (this month), she became a grandmother. For 4 years now we have celebrated (at the end of this month) her life in absentia. We miss her every day. |
This post seems like the right one in which to express my deep gratitude to zstein89
for Oxfordizing my commas, and Osmobotting my family with love and good humor... Thank you, Zach.
Note: All, remaining errors, are my own ;)
This post seems like the right one in which to express my deep gratitude to zstein89
for Oxfordizing my commas, and Osmobotting my family with love and good humor... Thank you, Zach.
Note: All, remaining errors, are my own ;)
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 8-3-12 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Did You Really Want to Go That Fast?
“Ten fingers. Ten toes. Dayenu.” The synecdoche of pregnancy prayer. Primordial hope resonating in the time of ultrasound. And with the press of a magic wand, an image appears: a miracle with a beating heart, ten fingers and ten toes. Exhale with gratitude and inhale with greed. “Just let it be healthy, dayenu.” “Seemingly healthy? Then if my child is also kind, dayenu.” “Kind? Also wise, dayenu.” “Wise? And creative, dayenu.” “Creative? Then also…” A truism of human nature: A desire satisfied yields additional desire. But where does one desire end and another begin? A healthy baby is the culmination of a seemingly infinite number of separate prayers. And only in retrospect can it be said that any one miracle would have been sufficient. At what point should we be satisfied with what we have? And when are we considered greedy for wanting more? Ten fingers, dayenu? Only three hospitalizations before age 10, dayenu? Only a mild form of anxiety, dayenu? “Dayenu” is typically translated as “it would have been enough.” Looking at the list of fifteen miracles performed for the Israelites — as enumerated in the piyut (liturgical song) — dayenu begs the question: “Enough of what?” Enough miracles? Enough of a miracle? Biblical texts point out that the people themselves give voice to the tragic irony of too few miracles (Exodus 14:11 and 16:2; Numbers 21:5): “Did you bring us out of Egypt to have us die in the wilderness?” It would be as if one said after a miscarriage, “It would have been enough to get pregnant, even if I were unable to stay pregnant — dayenu.” Dayenu? Not at all. Even having been freed from slavery but not given the Torah wouldn’t have been enough. Freedom from slavery was a necessary but insufficient miracle in the process of getting us to the ultimate endgame of the exodus — the freedom to serve God. So, if “dayenu” can’t actually mean “it was enough” and not even “it would have been enough,” then could it mean: “It should have been enough”? A guilt trip laid on Israelites past? Or “it should be enough”? A guilt trip laid on us? Many contemporary commentators take the opportunity to encourage us to be satisfied with what we have and not focus on what we don’t have. More than that, we are encouraged to be grateful not just at the end (with redemption or the birth of a healthy baby), but at each step of the way (each developmental milestone). This is not because any one step is enough but because a miracle is a miracle and for that we must be grateful: However small or seemingly incomplete, it should be enough to prompt our gratitude. Gratitude for being on the receiving end of a miracle is one thing, but responding to the challenge it presents is quite another. If God had taken the Israelites out of Egypt and they had been grateful but they’d refused to follow Moses, or if God had given them the Torah but they had not accepted it, then what? For all of God’s efforts, the existence of free will has the potential to make miracles meaningless. Perhaps “dayenu” is a way of acknowledging the partnership between the Giver and the recipients. “God, You did what only You can do. You gave us freedom. So, You’ve done Your part. You’ve given us enough (‘dayenu’). And, now, it’s up to us to accept the precious gift of freedom, of Torah… and to make these gifts meaningful.” Ten fingers, ten toes… Health, in and of itself, is a miracle. But, it’s what we do with that great gift that makes it valuable. While the mandate of the seder — to “see ourselves as if (k’ilu) we had personally left Egypt” — is clearly addressed to the individual, “dayenu” may hold an imperative for the collective. Every generation is obligated to recognize the receipt of miracles past and present, and to act as if (k’ilu) we have been given enough (dayenu) to work with, and now we must work together to continue to make it matter. |
I am the parent of two teenage girls. [Spoiler alert: If you’re expecting me to be cuing the theme song from Jaws right about now, you’ll be disappointed. Not just because I've loved this stage of parenting--I have—but because I recently re-watched that movie. (Full disclosure: Sheriff Brody is a distant relative.) Like most cultural artifacts from the ’70s, it’s hard to believe Jaws didn’t start off as a parody. Bottom line: while I’m definitely not filled with dread at the prospect of more years of parenting teenage girls, I don’t think its safe to go into parody just yet. In the abstract, my image of adolescence is itself as much a product of the ’70s as it is a parody of it: all wild mood swings marinated in Corona and Catcher in the Rye. But the truth is that as soon as teens were no longer my peers, I began to enjoy their company. There’s no irony in the fact that the source of my anxiety about parenting an adolescent comes from the typically teenage characteristics I most appreciate in other people’s teens: emotional intensity and a heightened awareness of paradox (a.k.a. bullshit). It's safe to assume that the teenage attitude and behavior I find compelling during a tutoring session with a pre-bar mitzvah student or when joking around with the offspring of family friends at dinner is somewhat less appealing when it is directed at me. I’ve come to think that’s the rub: I need to learn to distinguish between what is directed at me from what is actually about me. My own mother always said that the most important thing she learned from parenting me was to take things seriously but not always personally. (BTW what she learned from parenting my brother was not to send him to school with frozen peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. For which I have two words to summarize the difference: Second child). But even if I manage to not take it personally, just taking other people’s bad moods seriously can affect my own mood. As someone who is often described as moody, I have been intrigued by the link between hormonal shifts and mood for as long I’ve been PMS (which technically must be since birth). But since becoming the parent of two teenage girls I've become increasingly aware of, and disturbed by, the presumed inevitability of adolescent irritability and instability and the assumptions of hormonal imbalance among girls in particular. "Two? At the same time? That's a lot of mood swings to manage!" This is usually followed by some snarky comment about synchronized menstrual cycles and an offer to provide refuge on a monthly basis for Adam (the only male in our immediate family). At the same time there’s hard science that backs up what most people know empirically: Moods are contagious. With that in mind, and in honor of both my daughters, I’ve redoubled my efforts to learn self-regulation around emotions. I’ve found many techniques for calming down from stress, anger, etc. but fewer that can do more than “just” neutralize emotions. Not that that isn’t important. It is. But I’m still looking for the holy grail of emotion regulation: the capacity to arouse genuine joy. I’ve found suggestions in many places but this one in particular continues to surprise me: Ketut Kiyer's directions to practice the Balinese smile meditation: “To meditate you only must smile. It’s that easy.” My initial response: “That counts as meditation? I don’t have to sit still? I don’t have to focus on my breath? Just smile? I could do that." And I did. I tried it as soon as I read the sentence. Suddenly I was my own human research project. I kept testing the smile meditation under different conditions—in the dark, under ultra violet lights, inside mazes—and it worked! Even in traffic! My experience of the smile meditation didn’t prompt joy or even happiness per se. What it did was keep me from taking everything so personally. And, just knowing that I might be able to summon that perspective on demand, is enough to make me think it’s safe to go back in the proverbial water of parenting. |
R. Nachman of Bratslov, circa 1788:
“If you don’t feel happy, pretend to be.
If you are downright depressed, put on a smile.
Act happy. Genuine joy will follow.”
“If you don’t feel happy, pretend to be.
If you are downright depressed, put on a smile.
Act happy. Genuine joy will follow.”
A version of this essay was published on 3200stories.org on 3-8-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Can I Grin and Bear It?
The catch phrase for the next month on the Hebrew calendar (Adar, which comes in with the new moon Sunday night, February 26, 2017) is "be happy, it's Adar!" Indeed, with spring approaching and both Mardi Gras and Purim shedding rhinestones and dripping schnapps all over the calendar, many people find it easy to get into the spirit of Adar. But what about the times when we find ourselves out of synch with communally-dictated emotional states? My first memory of contending with this dilemma was in the month of Adar, forty-one years ago. My grandmother (my father’s mother) had just died. We observed the intense period of mourning governed by ancient Jewish wisdom and then, as a family, we slowly inched our way back into the world outside our bubble of grief. When it was time to join our community in the celebration of Purim, I announced that I was not participating. I had been especially close with my grandmother and I was a vortex of many emotions but none of them seasonally appropriate. With the narcissism of most young children and mourners, I wanted the world to cry with me. I wanted Purim to be cancelled. But my father insisted that I go with the rest of my family to the synagogue, to listen to the story of Esther. I did not have to wear a costume, I did not have to actively partake in any of the frivolity, but I had to attend. I had a massive meltdown. He was unrelenting. I was seething, he didn’t look too happy, but off we went. I made a point of sitting alone in the corner. I made a point of not being responsive to the well-intentioned attempts of friends to connect with me. I spent a lot of time in the ladies’ room crying. Walking home I exploded with fury: the experience had only made me feel worse. It was cruel to make me go, how dare he or anyone else tell me how to feel, etc. I couldn’t understand it at the time, but what my father explained to me then and again when I could actually hear him (which wasn’t until about 10 years later) was that while it wasn’t any easier for him to be there, he went to be reassured that even if we weren’t feeling it in the moment, joy, even silly fun, had not been extinguished with the death of this one beloved person. That to know it’s not “all about me” is actually the good news. That while I didn’t yet want to feel joy again, I needed to see joy as essential to our being, vital for our well-being, and within reach. But also that in the same way that the Jewish holidays cycle through emotional states, we as individuals do too. That what I could not have known then and did not want to know at the time was that I would feel better, I would experience joy again… but also grief again and so on. Exactly twenty years later, in the month of Adar, just after Purim and just before my 29th birthday, my aunt sent me Barbara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tuscon. Not sure I was interested in reading it, I flipped it open to a random page and read: |
Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it's impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living. In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again. |
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 2-18-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Be Happy...Or Else?
True story: Summer 1978. Eagle River, Wisconsin. Two children born and raised in New York City step out of a cabin and look up at a cloudless night sky. The younger one, a boy, nine years old, mesmerized by the density of the stars, is the first to speak: “Wow!” (Very long pause.) “It’s just like the planetarium!” This anecdote told about my brother, usually elicits a knowing laugh. But I’m still not sure why it’s funny. Put aside the fact that I’m the other New Yorker in the story and the fact that inversion is a standard trope in humor, and let’s just focus on the premise: Pity the child who has been raised so far removed from the “natural world” that his only frame of reference for a night sky is an artificially constructed replica of a night sky! But fifteen years later, almost to the day, I had a mirrored experience: I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria just after “the changes” (the end of Communist rule) and I saw a big advertisement for a “ground-breaking” Van Gogh exhibit on the other side of town. Eager for a cultural experience from the realm of the familiar (I had been spending a lot of time with Eastern Orthodox icons, Byzantine frescoes and non-English speakers) I made my way to the gallery only to discover that the exhibit amounted to a few posters from Van Gogh shows in assorted Western European countries. “Wow!” I thought. “It’s just like a museum gift shop!” The premise: Pity the people who have been raised so far removed from the “world” of Western culture that a display of posters qualifies as a major cultural event. Scoffing comes from a place of privilege but also from an assumption that “real” is always better than “artificial” (margarine, anyone? Pink Floyd laser light show?). Sure, I believe that there is intrinsic and unreplicable value in our communion with the “natural world.” The experience of staring at a real night sky is not the same as an experience in a planetarium, but is it inherently better? Standing in front of a reproduction of a painting is not the same as standing in front of the original, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feed my soul and expand my mind in both circumstances. They are not the same. But why is one better than another? Maybe it depends on what you’re hoping for from the experience. If I want to gauge the texture of Starry Night, looking at the original is preferable by far, but if I want to see Mars as more than a tiny red-orange spot in the sky (without hitching my hopes to Elon Musk) I’ll get more from going to the planetarium. It really depends on what you’re looking for. Our perceptions of the “real” and the “artificial” are as blurry as the values we place in them. The master of discernment, Sherlock Holmes didn’t make those distinctions. He was clear about his agenda and minimized assumptions. Open to finding value in any person, place or thing, Holmes could filter his perceptions with great clarity. To wit, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson and says: “Watson, look up at the sky. What does it tell you?” Watson ponders the sky for a few minutes and then says: “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, I can see that God is omnipotent and that we are insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we need not be concerned about rain. What does it tell you?” Holmes: “That somebody stole our tent.” |
"Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world." — R. Abraham Joshua Heschel |
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 1-18-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Can You Believe it's not Butter?
There are times when the need to be more selective about where I put my attention is particularly acute. These days I know I'm not alone in trying to match my desire to contribute to positive change in this country's new political reality with the plethora of opportunities that flood my inbox, "There seems to be a pretty remarkable energy right now, even among people who haven't been involved in political action before. I hear a lot of people wanting to do something, but feeling unsure about where to start." (From Rolling Stone, "How to Take Action--and Stay Sane--in the Trump Era.") With some general thoughts on attention and intention I offer this post.
Babysitter, book-shelver, bartender—the best summer jobs I held between the ages of 14 and 21. My worst job ever? Bank teller. The problem wasn’t the job. It was my inability to do it well that made for a miserable experience. Less than an hour into the week-long basic training (bank teller boot camp with cashing out drills, endorsement exercises and night deposit maneuvers) I knew I’d made a big mistake. There was only one area in which I excelled—forgery. I had spent years perfecting the signatures of both my parents, usually under a note that began “Please excuse Rachel from gym class today.” But in the banking world I was on the other side: detection. Turned out I was exceptionally good at identifying counterfeit bills. After feeling like an imbecile all week, I confidently expected to ace the last day of training, which was devoted to my specialty, security. Things went very well at first with a new instructor and a topic I could grasp and soon I began to fantasize about being recruited by the U.S. Treasury Department. Then, a full seven hours into his presentation, the instructor handed out a standard post-robbery reporting form and promptly left the room. Our instructions? Imagine that the instructor had just robbed your branch. Fill out the form. Did he have facial hair? I thought so but I wasn’t absolutely sure. Hair texture? Let’s see, how would I describe what it felt like to run my hands through his hair during the lunch break? Seriously, I had no clue. Identifying marks/scars? Hmm.… After a few minutes we put down our pens and compared notes. The only thing we could all agree on was his gender and the fact that he had definitely not been wearing a ski mask. We had just spent seven hours looking directly at this man! He came back into the room and said, “On average, a bank robber spends less than 60 seconds in front of you. Put intention into your attention.” Now, that I could remember. Even now, more than 30 years later, I find myself playing “bank robber,” using those two words to force myself off autopilot and intentionally search for something I’ve never noticed before about whomever or whatever is in front of me. The thoughts and feelings that flow from this particular kind of attention—tenderness, curiosity, awe—never fail to surprise me. |
ג' באין בהיסח הדעת אלו הן: משיח מציאה ועקרב
Three things that only occur when when you're not focused on them:
the messiah's arrival, finding a lost object and a scorpion bite.
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 7-27-12 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Did You Mean to See That?
Notes from left field:
Here’s what could happen if you weren’t paying close attention to:
- Moving images: www.MovieMistakes.com
- Written words: www.RegretTheError.com
- Instructions: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html
- Bank robbers: Richard Ford’s 2012 novel, Canada
As we get closer to the inauguration of America's 45th president, the words of Martin Buber speak to both the fearful realist and the reluctant optimist in me: “We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.” With a few thoughts on being "cautious in diction" I offer this post.
Unexpected admission #6: I hitchhike. Regularly. Before I started commuting from Berkeley to San Francisco my hitchhiking experience was rather limited: once, as a child, with my whole family in Northern Israel; twice, as a stranded motorist, in rural Connecticut; and one time too many, as a young adult living/traveling abroad. But over the past 5 years I have become a regular participant in the East Bay’s Casual Carpool system which despite the patina of credibility and the puts-the Queen-of-England-to-shame etiquette is really glorified hitchhiking. I like to think of myself as street-smart with the proper suspicion of friendly strangers (i.e. anyone I don’t recognize who makes eye contact with me) that marks me as a former New Yorker or a current employee of the TSA. (Full disclosure: I have never worked for the TSA but I have been annoyed with them.) Yet, I regularly get into a vehicle with two strangers or allow two strangers to get into my car to travel to San Francisco. As a driver I save $3.50 and 20-40 minutes of MacArthur Maze-Toll Plaza traffic. As a passenger I get a seat (unlike BART at that hour) and the opportunity to judge the interior of people’s cars, despair over the compulsion to speak about weather and traffic patterns, and occasionally enjoy eavesdropping. Before the ubiquity of cell phones, listening in on other people’s public conversations required some skill. It was a skill I honed as a “frequent flyer” on Manhattan city buses when I had plenty of practice under less-than-optimal conditions. Later, as a bartender I mastered the art of multitasking under the influence (the patrons were under; I was just enabling), learning how to speak and eavesdrop simultaneously. No matter my skill, the circumstances of one particular incident of Casual Carpool “overhearing” was edifying not because it took any skill on my part to listen, but because it highlighted a casual classism that seems to require some consciousness raising. The scenario: I’m the driver. Two women approach my car. Woman 1: Would you mind if we sat together in the back? We haven’t seen each other in ages and want to keep talking. (Note: this type of seating arrangement is an explicit violation of one of the cardinal rules of Casual Carpooling. Funny that she did not ask if it was okay for them to continue talking, another big no-no unless initiated by the driver.) Me: No problem. (Note: it really was fine with me. I know some people object to being put in the position of Driving Miss Daisy but as the mother of two I was accustomed to it.) Woman 1 speaks non-stop for the next 20 minutes. Woman 2 listens. Me too. The topic: the upcoming bat mitzvah of #1’s daughter. The speaker’s entire monologue is a diatribe against the rabbi, the caterer, the girl’s peer group—pretty much everyone and their mother. I knew just about every person she complained about. Midway across the Bay Bridge it occurred to me that I should have revealed myself right away. However, by that time, it had gone on so long and had been so vicious (a.k.a. interesting) that I felt I had missed my chance. While I wouldn’t have minded shaming the speaker in the name of teaching her a critical life lesson, I felt like I’d compromised my position by letting it go on so long. In retrospect, I think I made the wrong decision. When I let them off I began to wonder about the dynamic that was involved. In many ways Berkeley is a small town and I’d bet there are no more than two degrees of separation between two stereotypically Jewish, middle-aged women from the same neighborhood. Why didn’t it occur to Woman 1 that I might know someone she knew? Why didn’t she consider being more discreet in such close proximity to anyone, even someone she’d classified as a stranger? I began to wonder if, not only had she assumed I was a stranger, but if something about the seating arrangement unconsciously reinforced my invisibility. I was “just” the driver and (as in a taxi) it was all too easy to think it didn’t matter what I heard (or thought or felt) because I was an extension of the car. It’s not that taxi drivers have taken an oath of confidentiality but I have it on good authority (NPR) that like many people in the “service” industry they are privy to behaviors (including speech) that would otherwise be considered unacceptable in public by the very people who do/say those things in their presence. But like many babies who cover their own eyes and think others can’t see them, most people who have worked in the service industry have been affected by the absurdity of a similar illusion. Other than “stranger danger” in the context of Casual Carpool, my thoughts about strangers tend to peak around Passover. In many cases, the “punch line” to the retelling of the liberation from Egyptian slavery is the ethical imperative to treat strangers well because we must endeavor to empathize with them, not just from historical memory but also through personal experience. Personally, I’ve had plenty of experience being a stranger and I find empathy to be a powerful motivator. But the (lack of) interaction I had with Woman 1 and Woman 2 reminded me of the many experiences I’ve had in the service industry. Those experiences have led me to this takeaway (a riff on a favorite Jewish proverb): You don’t need to engage every stranger but neither are you free to ignore them altogether. |
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
- Marge Piercy
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
- Marge Piercy
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 3-15-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Does the Lady Want a Tremp [sic]?
"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
This is the interrelated structure of reality."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
This is the interrelated structure of reality."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
My understanding of King's sentiment was deeply influenced by my family's involvement with the Struggle for Soviet Jewry—a movement that catalyzed a generation of human rights activists, and found support of luminaries such as Dr. King. In 1966 King stated: “The denial of human rights anywhere is a threat to the affirmation of human rights everywhere,.. While Jews in Russia may not be physically murdered as they were in Nazi Germany, they are facing every day a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide.” This post is offered in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 88th birthday.
“I have something to tell you.” (Insert spontaneous ulcer here.) My father pulled out a brand new Magic Slate ™ and started doodling. “I’m going on a mission.” Until that point, the only missions I knew of were either Impossible (of the Rollin Hand variety) or impolitic (like those undertaken by Jesuits in the 1700s). My dad seemed an unlikely recruit for either one. “I’m going to visit the Refuseniks.” (Insert shock and awe here.) It was 1978 and he was referring to Russian Jewish dissidents who because of state sponsored anti-Semitism, had been refused the right to emigrate to Israel (or anywhere else). As a result many of them were treated as enemies of the state and deprived of basic human rights. These were the real-life heroes of my post-Holocaust, mid-Cold War, pre-internet childhood and my dad was going to meet them! For an idealistic, Jewish 11-year-old (in 1978) this was the height of cool. He described the plan and the purpose of his trip in broad strokes, emphasized the need for confidentiality and reassured me about his safety. (Insert red flag here.) “Why wouldn’t it be safe?” He talked about the KGB, bugs hidden in hotel rooms, and tails everywhere you went. All I could imagine was monkey costumes (tails) and cockroaches (bugs) and mustachioed men in trench coasts lined with fur loitering in front of onion domes (KGB). (I’d have inserted the word “surreal” here, if I’d known it.) “Is that for a Refusenik kid?” I asked pointing to the Magic Slate. “No, it’s for secret communications. When rooms are bugged people pass notes to each other but then the paper has to be destroyed. If you use a Magic Slate you can write, they can read and then, voila!” He lifted the acetate with a flourish worthy of Doug Henning. “It disappears!” Panic set in. “But not completely!” I held the shiny, impressionable black pad beneath the gray acetate sheet up to the light. The red plastic stylus had gouged permanent lines into the padding. I could make out the word “Russia” as clearly as I could picture my dad imprisoned in Siberia. “I guess there’s no such thing as a clean slate,” he said wryly. His allusion to a central theme of the High Holidays was not lost on me. Just a few weeks before, on Rosh Hashanah, with its themes of judgment and fresh starts, we had spent hours talking about jury duty and the phrase “strike that from the record” and how you really can’t. Seemingly baffled by this technological glitch in the highly sophisticated world of counter-espionage he suggested I look for a solution by playing with my own Magic Slate over the coming days. This prompted a flurry of experiments on my part, all to no avail. A few days after he left on his mission I went to the school nurse complaining of a headache. She had me lie down on a cot in her office with the lights out. My eyes were closed and I was lying very still and then suddenly there it was: a solution to the Magic Slate problem. I sat up and said, “I have to call my mother!” My mother listened to me as I babbled excitedly, my headache forgotten, before reminding me that we had no way to reach my father while he was away. My anxiety about his trip erupted in a geyser of tears. She tried to soothe me, but I was inconsolable. The nurse took the phone from me, listened to my mother explain the situation and calmly turned to me and said: “Your mother found the Magic Slate on his dresser. He didn’t take it with him.” (Insert a final sob and an overwhelming sense of relief here.) When I got home I went right to his dresser and took down the Magic Slate. I hugged it tight, wrote “hooray!” and pulled the acetate up. There was the word I had just written surrounded by a smooth, shiny black surface. Wait. Smooth? I ran my hand over it and then held it up to the light just to be sure. This was not my father’s Magic Slate. I ran out of the room. “Why did you try to trick me?” I demanded of my mother. I wasn’t angry. I just remember feeling sad and old. She looked the way I felt. “I wanted you to stop worrying.” “Well, it worked… for a little while anyway. Can I keep it?” She looked skeptical. I promised not to look at it as a failed trick, and instead, to just see it as a short-lived gift. Which, when I think about it, is a helpful way to think about any kind of clean slate. Update:
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"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." - Martin Luther King Jr. מותר לשנות מפני השלום “It is permitted to tell an untruth (literally, “to change” the facts) for the sake of peace." - Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Yevamot 65b |
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 8-24-12 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Have You Seen This Trick Before?
“Rachel, you put the ‘hyper’ in hyperlink.” (This from a regular reader of my blog posts.) I smile sheepishly, unsure if I’ve just been invited to feel offense and play defense (or not). I like to think I give good hyperlink and really, what’s the objection? “You don’t have to click on them,” I offer. “I know, but it’s hard to resist. It’s like trying to ignore someone yelling ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ while I’m trying to read.” I get it. The sudden appearance of a blue (or, in this blog, a "Caucasian flesh tone") underlined text in the middle of an otherwise straightforward piece can be distracting, but I think it beats the alternative. (I used to abuse parentheses. Those are harder to ignore [I think].) They’re better than footnotes, less annoying than long digressions, able to both broaden and deepen a concept at a single bound… If I was granted one super power, I’d give up the invisibility cloak and pass on the ability to fly. I’d want the ability to generate hyperlinks instantaneously. My colleague David Green observed that hyperlinking is just the latest iteration of a more ancient text-based tradition. “The Talmud?” I asked. “No. My grandmother’s clipping service. Newspaper articles, chunks of magazines sent by mail, or left on a desk chair. Usually with a scribbled: ‘Here’s something I thought you might find interesting.’ Subtext: I’m thinking of you.” I too come from a long line of clippers. Recipient of poorly cropped articles from the New York Times, The Kansas City Star, The New York Jewish Week, People, Real Simple, Publisher’s Weekly, etc. And the ultimate treat, an erratically trimmed swatch of The New Yorker that meant only one thing: cartoon! It didn’t matter if it made me laugh, smile, groan, or feel confused. The mental tingle that comes from the anticipation of being amused is almost always better than the cartoon itself. While there is a lot to recommend an emailed link, and while I don’t miss the newsprint that tinted the pads of my fingertips after handling a freshly cropped article, I do miss the handwritten notations that appeared on the clippings: a comment, a heart, something handwritten in a way that said, “I’m in a hurry but… I’m thinking of you.” Or, some variation of: “I hope we’re still connected enough that I know your interests. “Or, “I love you.” Or, “You do still want to know everything about Tim Roth, right? Anyway, I’m thinking about you.” Two months before she died, my mother emailed a link to a review of some art books including two about the contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer. Her email read: “Are you still interested in Kiefer? Do you want the Jerusalem book?” I read the review which described the reproductions as “especially sumptuous, the artist’s life force pulsing in each brush stroke.” I had already begun to feel my mother’s life force slipping away and with each keystroke of those last emails we exchanged I tried to imagine my life without her. No more envelopes with articles. No more emailed links. I’d grown dependent on her clipping services. Who else would know I’d want to see that article from the Science Times on fetal surgery as much as the ones from People Magazine speculating on Kate Middleton’s pregnancy? More than that, who else could make me laugh by scribbling: “Seriously?” on both of them? Last week while preparing for a course I’ve started teaching, I opened a file folder (the manila kind) that contained a clipping from my freshman year in college. It was a New York Times mention of an Israeli foundation awarding Anselm Kiefer the prestigious Wolf Prize for Art. My mother’s signature green ink loping across the bottom of the page, seemingly unfaded after 27 years: Still want to know everything about Anselm Kiefer? Thinking of you. Love. 1/4/90. Seriously?? Yep. I think of hyperlinks as invitations to a scavenger hunt, each one a clue that allows you to follow a less-than-linear mind, and to do some off-roading with your own curiosity. They’re my way of saying: “I’m in a hurry but I wonder if you want to know more about… Anyway, I’m thinking about you.” |
"We think we no longer love the dead, because we don't remember them
but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears."
Marcel Proust
P.S. Do you know about Pocket? It's become my save-for-later life saver...
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 1-11-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Do You Still Want to Know
Morning traffic on I-580 is worse than usual, Joe McConnell calls it congestion and I can’t help but wonder if he should see an E.N.T. I’m driving my kids (ages 8 and 9 at the time) to school, attempting to get them there before high school. The conversation began like this: Older One: “Did you know that the Bay Bridge is made of recycled forks?” Younger One: “It is?” Older One: “Hah! You’re so gullible!” Me: “Did you know that ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary?” Both kids, in unison: “It isn’t?” Really?! Who falls for that joke? I guess if you’ve never heard it before… and that’s when it occurred to me: they hadn’t. I guess it should have been obvious that every “oldest joke in the book” gets heard for a first time, but in that moment my response was purely emotional. I was overcome with a feeling that this was a momentous occasion. A “first” on par with my child’s first smile and step, the first time she spoke a sentence, the first time she read a word, the first time she made her own lunch for school… that kind of life altering “first.” Me: “I think we need to say Shehechiyanu.” They groan. They think I’m being silly. Plus, they’ve heard me describe that blessing rather cynically as “the little black dress for rituals.” What I meant was that because it expresses gratitude for being alive at this particular moment, it’s become something of a default in almost any particular moment that someone decides calls for a Jewish blessing. But earlier this year I said to myself, “Come on, Rachel! Really?!” The idea of being frugal with that blessing, that I would begrudge anyone the opportunity to express wonder and gratitude, to acknowledge both the mystery and the gift of existence, whenever they wanted was perverse. So there I was, sitting in traffic, saying Shehechiyanu on a very bad joke. Explaining a joke is an exercise in cognitive humility. What made this particular situation particularly difficult was that I was trying to explain a joke to its own punch line. It’s the ultimate inside joke: It’s only funny because if you don’t think it’s funny you are the joke. I worked so hard at dissecting that joke for my kids that my brain was ready to float in formaldehyde. Finally I said, “It would be like if I started a joke with ‘knock, knock!’ and you went to the front door.” They laughed. I laughed. Which, unfortunately, kicked off a round of Knock-Knock jokes (“Interrupting Starfish,” being the most dangerous one to attempt while driving) but that still didn’t fully explain how the gullible joke worked. Later that day, when they were getting ready for bed, the Younger One turned to me and said, “Did you know that ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary?” Before I could laugh, the Older One says: “Yes it is. That’s the whole point you Idiot." I was about to start in with a sharp “don’t-call your-sister-an-idiot” retort when the Younger One says, “Did you know that ‘idiot’ isn’t in the dictionary?” Then she turns to me and says, “It is though, right?”
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A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 8-7-12 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: What's so Funny About That?
Many floors below the monumental fortress of the central branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, well-past the sardonic stares of the decorative lions that guard the building and the fidgety masses obstructing the main entrance, was the site of my first paid summer job (at $70.00 a week). Fourteen years old, working papers in hand, I walked through the staff entrance for the first time. A flood of emotions—excitement, anxiety, and pride—was immediately followed by an outpouring of sweat. I barely had time to be embarrassed when a young man passed me on the stairs, turned to look up at me and said, “T.H.I. today. I didn’t even bring lunch.” A huge grin on his face told me that this was good news though I had no idea what T.H.I. meant. I gave him a vague smile and proceeded to the supervisors’ area. I was hired to be a “runner” in what was rather ominously referred to as “The Stacks”—an underground maze of bookshelves that ran seven floors deep and two city blocks wide. It was closed to the public and requests for books were placed in pneumatic tubes that were sucked with great force into The Stacks. Books were then retrieved by “runners”—assigned to specific collections—placed in a dumbwaiter and sent up to the Reading Room. More than two million books and an even greater collection of dust particles were the primary tenants of The Stacks, uneasily sharing the space with a small crew of library employees that (briefly) included me. “First day and it’ll be a short one,” was how my boss, Mr. Kruger greeted me. He wasn’t smiling. My initial thought was that I’d lost my job before I’d even started. Mr. Kruger explained that there was no air conditioning in The Stacks and that from May to September on days when the Temperature-Humidity Index (T.H.I.) went above 90° and 71% humidity for more than an hour we were paid to go home. It was barely 9 a.m. and the temperature outside was already in the high seventies. Inside was at least ten degrees warmer. Mr. Kruger gave me a quick tour of The Stacks that included a stop at the THI indicator, a small thermostat-like device that was watched more closely than kids in a pool. The young man I’d seen on the stairs just a few minutes earlier was standing squarely in front of it, though he turned around when he heard us coming. Mr. Kruger introduced him by saying, “You can’t will it to rise. It’ll get there on its own. This is Rachel. Get to work and take her with you. You probably only have a few hours today.” Marlon had just finished his sophomore year at the College of William and Mary. He had a football scholarship and the physique to go with it. He also had a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for mischief. These proved to be ideal qualities in a co-worker, though at first I was seriously intimidated. Mr. Kruger walked away and Marlon took a better look at me, raised an eyebrow and said, “You blow dry your hair?” “Huh?” He repeated the question. The answer was “no” but I responded with “Why?” “Bring your hair dryer in and we can make the T.H.I. go up whenever we feel like it.” “Well, I don’t blow dry my hair.” “I could tell.” “Ouch!” I said and we both laughed. Then he added, “I bet you wouldn’t do it even if you had a blow dryer.” “What do you mean?” I asked feeling defensive. “You’re Jewish, right?” I hesitated, “Yeah.” My stomach clenched. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone that I went to an Orthodox Jewish day school or that my dad was a rabbi. I was hoping to pass as a civilian in this new setting. “I could tell. My roommate freshman year was a Jewish guy. He told me Jews aren’t supposed to do things like that. You seem like a goody-goody, you’re paler than a polar bear and you’ve got frizzy brown hair. You’re Jewish.” “But small nose. I live in Harlem. And I used to stick the thermometer into the heater to get to stay home from school.” His eyes widen in mock horror. “That’s different,” he says. “How?” I asked with exaggerated annoyance. After he explained his thinking I explained mine. Much to my surprise I found myself sharing a concept I’d studied in a Talmud class in seventh grade, it’s called “gnayvat daat”--it literally means to steal someone’s mind—and it treats deception as a form of stealing. Marlon bombarded me with questions. He took the concept apart like a Talmudist. I told him so. He was genuinely upset. He accused me of “trying to turn him Jewish.” It got ugly but by the end of the week he led me on a field trip to the Judaica section (we were in a library, after all) and made me find texts that unpacked the concept. It kicked off a conversation that went on for six more weeks. What started as an argument about whether heating the THI indicator was any different from heating the thermometer, and whether either one should be considered stealing, led to arguments about the ethics of torture, the pleasures of contact sports, the use of slang, the death of Jesus, the cost of college… From Bryant Park to the Olympia movie theater we argued all around the city. On Marlon’s last day at work before heading back to school I told him that I wanted to say something without it seeming like I was trying to “turn him Jewish.” He laughed and said “just don’t call me a rabbi!” It was my turn to laugh. I told him about the concept of a hevruta—the ideal study partner—that involves a meeting of minds that push and pull each other, stretching without snapping, sparking new thoughts and enjoying every minute of it. He took it in. Then added, “Let me return the compliment, but in my own terms. It’s like football…” I didn’t let him finish. “Oh no!” I yelped. “Don’t turn me into a jock!” “Don’t worry,” he said. “Not even your God could do that.” |
Have YOU worked behind the scenes? If so, share below.
A version of this essay was published on 3200Stories.org on 6-7-13 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: You're Jewish, Right?
You thought eight nights of gifts was over the top? How about 29?! I must admit that when I first heard about 29 Gifts I thought it was a nice idea for people who live in some Kumbaya kind of place like Berkeley. Then I remembered that I live in Berkeley. In fact, I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1997 and though I still don’t know the words to Kumbaya, I love living here enough that either Berkeley has changed, or I have, or most likely a little of both. (And the only people who bemoan both those changes are the people who knew both me and Berkeley in the ’60s.) I first learned about the “global movement” called 29 Gifts in 2010 as the recipient of someone else’s gifting practice. I had parked on Shattuck Avenue in (where else?) Berkeley and was stepping out of a store to put more money in my meter when, from across the street, I saw the “meter maid” pulling up behind my car preparing to write me a ticket. Just as I started to run (against both my better judgment and the light) I saw a woman casually slip a coin into my expired meter and then continue walking past my car. The “meter maid” stuck her head out of the window in her little cart and yelled something incomprehensible. The woman kept walking. The “meter maid” moved on. I stood at the curb, brow furrowed and mouth open. My first thought was simply a reflection of my surprise: “Do I know her?” Followed by—and I’m not proud of this but you can take the girl out of New York, etc.—“Is this some kind of scam?" I walked over to the meter and found that she had put in a quarter and left a note the size of a cookie fortune that said: “You’ve been Gift Tagged. Now You’re It.” When I got home I Googled that phrase and discovered a website devoted to a project called 29 Gifts. The official back story: “One month after her wedding day, 33-year-old Cami Walker was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and the life she knew changed forever. Cami was soon in and out of L.A.’s emergency rooms with alarming frequency as she battled the neurological condition that left her barely able to walk and put enormous stress on her marriage. Each day brought new negative thoughts: I’m going to end up in a wheelchair. Mark’s probably going to leave me. My life is over. Why did this have to happen to me? Then, as a remedy for her condition, Cami received an uncommon prescription from a friend, an African medicine woman named Mbali Creazzo: Give away 29 gifts in 29 days." "‘By giving,’ Mbali told her, ‘you are focusing on what you have to offer others, inviting more abundance into your life.’ The gifts, she said, could be anything, but their giving had to be both authentic and mindful …. Many of her gifts were simple—a phone call, spare change, even a Kleenex. Yet the acts of kindness were transformative. By Day 29, not only had her health and happiness turned around, but she had also embarked on creating a worldwide giving movement… 29 Gifts offers inspiring lessons on how a simple daily practice of altruism can dramatically alter your outlook on the world.” My eyes rolled to the tune of Kumbaya (though I secretly delighted in thinking of this practice as a medical prescription) but what really annoyed me was that I couldn’t stop thinking about the gift I’d received. It wasn’t just that I’d been spared a $43 ticket. It was something else... it made me feel restless… to reciprocate. Not to the woman who fed my meter since I had no idea who she was but to reciprocate by being an anonymous gifter to someone else. I felt like kindness was contagious (I Googled that too. Not that I needed the scientific backup, but I found that confidence is contagious too and there’s nothing like a scientific study from a fancy university that use clips from Oprah to test their theories to make me feel certain.) So I did it. Later that same day. And it was good. And now I take one a day… I take the opportunity to do something (a gesture, a favor, a response) that is intentional and sincere and “extra.” I treat it like a prescription to decrease my cynicism and increase my own sense of well-being. If kindness is contagious then I want to be a carrier. What I’ve liked the most is that it keeps me on the lookout for opportunities to do a little something that I would not otherwise have done and in that frame of mind I wander around, part of a grand experiment—from a fancy university that has me watch Oprah— with faith in a scientifically proven thesis: kindness is contagious. With the wish that all the good you give and get goes viral... |
Have YOU ever been on the receiving end of this kind of giving? If so, share below.
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Luxury or necessity? Our family game was invented in an effort to help our kids learn the difference. The game works like this: We take turns asking “luxury or necessity?” using any object that comes to mind (hiking boots, avocado maki, dental care). Sometimes we ask for an explanation and sometimes not. It’s always entertaining and usually leads to memorable discussions about values, privileges, and even dental hygiene. I actually think my children have learned that there is a difference between luxury and necessity, even though we can’t seem to agree on the appropriate category for a hamster. This time of year, the luxury vs. necessity debate has quietly begun inside the heads and homes of most of the folks I know. “Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.” (Attributed to Kin Hubbard.) There are always people who gift “necessities” (underwear, umbrellas, oven mitts) and appreciation for this method varies wildly. You might be a person who does this on principle, or one who actually prefers this type of gift, or just someone who defaults to this type of gift because you’re short on time or imagination. All good. Still, I think that especially in the case of children, go for at least one thing that they’ll perceive to be a luxury. When a gift is greeted with genuine excitement, you can be pretty sure it was perceived to be a “luxury.” (I’ve seen a child—whose family was homeless at the time—thrilled to receive a pair of used sneakers because it meant he’d own two pairs of shoes at the same time. Obviously, necessity and luxury are relative terms.) When it comes to gifting the necessary, I reframe it as a luxury and get adults something they need but wouldn’t get for themselves. But all of these mental gymnastics raise the question: "What is the role of a gift?" Dr. Erica Brown, in her thoughtful post “The Gift,” says: “It is odd that people drain their savings and spend weeks picking out gifts that are often exchanged the week after. Gift giving in our society has created many psychic and financial pressures: to get it right, to know exactly what another person wants and needs, to make the right impression. When gift-giving becomes less about pleasure and more about pressure, we’ve missed the point.” Dr. Brown goes on to cite the words of the highly influential 12th century Jewish scholar, Maimonides: “We must lavish gifts on the poor rather than enjoy feasting and gift-giving among those who already have so much. Maimonides writes this in reference to holidays when it is all too easy to indulge ourselves…. [He encourages us] not only to give to the poor—doling out the leftovers or the unwanted clothing that gets bagged and taken to second-hand stores. He asks us to lavish gifts on those who are truly needy to bring them joy.” There are many ways to think about this type of gift giving and I want to share one man's list of suggestions—journalist and humanitarian Nicholas Kristof writes: "Sure, you can buy your uncle a necktie that he won’t wear, or your niece an Amazon certificate that she’ll forget to use. Or you can help remove shrapnel from an injured child in Syria, or assist students at risk of genocide in South Sudan.... [ouch!] But this year my annual holiday gift list is special. I’ve tied some items to the election of Donald Trump..." With the hope that this helps spread the joy, I’ve rounded up some of my favorite bits-o-advice about gift giving and as my gift to you I present: 1) TEX’s GIFT: Tex is a friend of a friend and he has a gift for giving gifts. His strategy appears to be: Rather than start with what he thinks you would be interested in, he starts by thinking about which of his passions would be interesting to you and then uses his personal knowledge of that area of interest to gift you something unique and presumably awesome.... Works uncannily well. 2) CAVEAT DATOR—Let the giver beware: Trust a “big boned” (a.k.a. fat) woman when I say that I’m starting an online petition for a U.N. resolution to force the garment industry to change clothing labels to: “One size cannot fit ALL. See manufacturer of planet earth for details.” I thought to share this not because I expect to get many ponchos this year but because I saw this quote on a mug (itself a gift, no doubt): “A hug is a great gift—one size fits all, and it’s easy to exchange.” If you can quiet your inner cynic, consider the words of Charles Dudley Warner: “The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.” 3) BYPASS THE FISCAL CLIFF: “Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.” (BTW I found this quote attributed to “author unknown” and I didn’t look any further not because I’m sloppy about research, rather because I figured it was a strategy to avoid debt collectors and I chose to respect that.) The best family gift rule I’ve heard is “We pay for gifts in cash. No one is allowed to go into debt to buy presents for others.” |
Have YOU acquired any gift-giving wisdom? If so, share below.
A version of this essay was published on 3200stories.org on 12-7-12 as RB EYES@Hanukkah: Do You Really Think I'd Buy That?
She lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a part of town that wouldn’t be gentrified in her lifetime—even if she’d lived to 120. She was one of the librarians at the educational institution where my father worked and we had just moved into her building. The formal introduction occurred in the elevator and went something like this: My mother: Rachel, this is Miss Kleban. Me, (age 5): Hi…. Why is your hair orange? Well, it was! Bright orange. Turns out it wasn’t her hair. It was a wig, but still…. Now, if my daughter had said a similar thing I would likely have launched into an apology followed by some statement about “developmentally-appropriate” curiosity, meant to school Miss Kleban in the newest thinking about what she simply called “rude.” Shame flushed my cheeks a bright pink that clashed terribly with Miss Kleban’s coloring. I apologized and then waited until she got off at her floor before bursting into tears. Back in our apartment, my parents strategized: How to smooth things over without making me feel worse? The decision was for me to go downstairs with my mother and some cookies, the traditional Jewish peace offering. I was told I did not need to apologize again. My mother would do the talking. What none of us had anticipated was Miss Kleban’s insistence that we come inside and have tea with her (and eat our own cookies). Eventually, my mother conceded and we entered Miss Kleban’s light-filled, immaculate, and very over-furnished apartment. Tea was served and cookies eaten, and as we were getting ready to end what had been an excruciatingly boring interaction (for me at least) Miss Kleban insisted I choose something from her jewelry box “for keeps.” My mother’s vehement protests were met with a stony silence. Some combination of Miss Kleban’s age and stubbornness had a magical effect and ultimately, my mother gave in and sent me to the jewelry box with the whispered instructions that I pick something small and without stones of any kind. Very likely I understood this injunction as a Jewish law of some kind and not her attempt to keep me from taking something too valuable. That was the first in a series of visits that lasted until I went to college. At first I wouldn’t go without my mother but later I would go to “tea and trinkets,” as Miss Kleban called it, by myself. I kept a sparkly pin on my Raggedy Ann doll, wore her purple ring at my bat mitzvah ceremony and referred to Miss Kleban as “my oldest friend.” My first inkling of the monetary value of the jewelry occurred after Miss Kleban died. Before her apartment was dismantled I was invited to pick one more piece of jewelry. The executor pointed me toward the “really valuable” pieces and marveled at my good fortune. I just took what I liked. Fast forward: I moved to the Bay Area in 1997. A box of jewelry came with me. A shoebox full of castoff pieces that reflected my changing taste from bat mitzvah to age 30. It also contained some of Miss Kleban’s jewels. Just a few pieces, since I’d discarded most of it along the way. I’m not particularly sentimental, I don’t wear much jewelry, and I abhor clutter, so a few years later the box was sitting by the front door on its way to be donated to my children’s preschool for a rummage sale. But before it left the house I met with a former student, a delightful young woman who I had helped prepare for her bat mitzvah ceremony. We rehashed the event and reflected on her experience. On the way out the door I offered her, in a completely off-handed way, a chance to poke through the box and take something she liked. As she searched I found myself thinking about Miss Kleban. Who else even remembered that Miss Kleban existed? I felt like crying. “Can I tell you a story about picking out jewelry?” I asked. When I was done with my story and she had made her choice, she thanked me for “The Miss Kleban earrings.” “Oh no, those weren’t hers,” I clarified, “I was just reminded of her and wanted to know that someone else in my world might think about her.” “Yeah, I didn’t think these huge silver hoops would have belonged to an 80 year old, even if she did have orange hair. It’s that you got the idea from her and are passing it on to me that makes them a gift from her in some way.” I put the box back in my closet and since then most of my bat mitzvah students have heard the Miss Kleban story before choosing a piece of jewelry. I’ve removed all the actual Miss Kleban pieces, and although I have no interest in getting those pieces appraised I do imagine that there is a Raggedy Ann doll somewhere in a landfill on Staten Island wearing a very fancy pin. |
Have you been given a gift of lasting value? If so, share below.
N.B. from Reading
While looking for her obituary, I found this clipping from a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1950 announcing Miss Kleban’s guest appearance at a local synagogue. The mention wasn’t particularly enlightening but some of other articles on the page were. Check out: “Plunging Neckline is a Fad that Failed” and “Cosmetics Popular with Indian Women."
While looking for her obituary, I found this clipping from a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1950 announcing Miss Kleban’s guest appearance at a local synagogue. The mention wasn’t particularly enlightening but some of other articles on the page were. Check out: “Plunging Neckline is a Fad that Failed” and “Cosmetics Popular with Indian Women."
A version of this essay was published on 3200stories.org on 8-10-12 as RB EYES FRIDAYS: Where's the Value in That?
To see the whole diagram, click here: TAXONOMIES of IDENTITY