Yom Kippur 5774

Shofar, from http://templejudeapbc.org/high-holidays.html

Yom Kippur 5774 (2013 in the Gregorian calendar) is a very different one for me than Yom Kippur 5773.  Last year I davened with my mother at the shul where she grew up in Philadelphia, Kesher Israel.  It’s beautiful and to me has always been the epitome of a shul.  I stood next to my mother and tapped my chest as we atoned for our sins and prayed to be sealed in the Book of Life.  This year I am 1,100 miles away, and tomorrow I will be standing next to my husband in our home on an Air Force base in Florida surrounded by the boxes that were delivered today.  I will still be praying and I will still be asking Hashem to seal us in the Book of Life, but I feel that the major thing I will be repenting for tomorrow is having too much in the way of the material and letting that get in the way of the spiritual and emotional.  I have been here in Florida for 13 days, and we were pretty much living with what my husband flew down here with in July and what I came down with in my car 2 weeks ago…and you know what?  We’ve been happy.  We’ve been blissfully happy just to be with each other.  So when the boxes arrived today, I just looked around and went…do we really need all this? Why do we have so much stuff?  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am very, very, VERY happy to have a real bed (we slept on an air mattress until we had a futon and then we slept on that for the last couple nights), but the rest of it?  I don’t know.  My goal when I am unpacking is that, when I take something out of a box, before it is put away, I am going to be asking myself if I need that item, and, if I don’t need it, do I really, really, really want it?  If it fits in one of those categories, then I am going to find a place for it.  If it doesn’t, it’s getting given away or sold.  I loved seeing my house clean and empty, and seeing all these boxes around is driving me nuts and they’ve only been here for 8 hours.  I can’t wait to get this house clean and organized and set up so that we can enjoy what is really important – spending time together, having friends over, and just relishing every moment of our life together.  For everyone fasting, gmar chatima tovah, and may we all be sealed in the Book of Life for 5774.

New Year’s Resolutions 2011

Here we are once again at the end of one year and the beginning of another.  We all know what that means – it’s time to decide on a new set of New Year’s Resolutions.  I would usually want to do a roundup of the past year, but 2010 was, for the most part, the absolute worst year of my life – bar none.  So, rather than rehashing all that I’m going to say simply that 2010, while it was mostly the worst year of my life, was also a year of some wonderful changes in my life. I’m happy with the way this year ended and I know 2011 will be a better year.  That said, onward to the Resolutions!

2011 New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Lose weight.  There, I said it. Lose weight.  I will, however, clarify that it’s not completely a superficial goal.  Mostly it’s about being healthier in the future.

2. Write in my journal every day and add at least one blog post per week.  I know it’s going to be a crazy year because I have a lot on the agenda, but I want to be sure to find the time to document the things that happen.

3. Keep a log of all the books I read.

I think three Resolutions is sufficient for the year.  Hopefully I’ll have better luck with them than I did last year.

Happy New Year everyone!  May 2011 be a year of only good things, happiness and love for you all!!!

Heads Up! More New Things To Come!

Just wanted to give everyone a head’s up about some new things to come (like you could be any more excited about my blog than you already are)!  So, what are they?

1. I am, in the course of teaching and tweeting and just general cruising around the internet, finding a lot of quotes that I like and I want to be able to share them with you as well as consolidate them into one place for me.  I just love the power of a good quote!

2. Having had some time since my separation and divorce, I am re-entering the dating world with a better sense of who I am and what I want.  I like to think that I’ll have some amusing commentary on dating, as well as some honest reflection to make as well.  Maybe I’ll even share something that could help someone else.  If nothing else, it’ll be cathartic.

I’m looking forward to writing more and I hope you guys are looking forward to

New Series of Posts: Family

For some time now, actually, since everything got blown out of the water a couple of months ago, I have more than realized how important family is to me.  I am very, very, very lucky to have the amazing family that I do.  As much as I would love to be able to share with the world the things my parents have done for me, I can’t, some of them are just frankly too personal to lay out for the internet.  I do want to write about family, though, and how important they are to me and my relationships with them.  Fortunately for me, I am lucky enough to have not just blood family, I have friends and other people who have come into my life who have become family to me.  So, not only will these posts be dedicated to my blood family, but also my chosen family.

Moments That Take Your Breath Away #1

So I was just thinking and I decided that I want to start a series of blogs entitled, obviously, Moments That Take Your Breath Away.  It is inspired by one moment in particular that I was just thinking about for some reason that I still can’t quite figure.  Anyway, here is that moment.

La Pieta (1499) by Michelangelo

My first moment (well first on the blog, not first chronologically) that took my breath away was the moment I saw the Pieta for the first time.  A pieta is a Christian theme in general showing the Virgin Mary cradling the body of the dead Jesus Christ.  La Pieta is the ultimate of these works of art.  It should be obvious that anything done by Michelangelo would be at the top of the list of anything (the statue of David is another thing that took my breath away but that’s another post).  Anyway, in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is La Pieta, which is shown at the left (which I got here, thank you).  Let me tell you, I am Jewish, and very much so, but this statue absolutely took my breath away.  It is in an unassuming alcove in the Basilica and my sister and I knew it was there so we were looking for it.  We found it at the same time and just went…………………wow.  It’s just one of those moments that, well, takes your breath away.  My sister and I literally stood and stared at La Pieta for 30 minutes.  It wouldn’t seem possible that such a seemingly simple piece (a mother holding her dead son) would be so completely and totally captivating, but it is.  It, at least for me, the content of the statue that captivates me.  I don’t believe that Jesus was the son of G-d or, frankly, that Mary was a virgin at all (note to self, discuss the house where Mary died in a later Moments post), so it certainly isn’t the religious meaning.  The only way I can figure is that the image itself is so realistic, so lifelike and so powerful, that you can’t help feeling your heart break for this woman cradling the body of her son who had been brutally crucified.  The statue is so realistic that you almost expect to see the subtle movement of breath raising Mary’s chest or see a small tear trickle from her eye.  Of course, these things don’t happen, but it is absolutely incredible to me that Michelangelo was able to create something so lifelike from a block of unfeeling marble.  It almost seems impossible, but Michelangelo is such a skilled artist that you get a sense of seeing the musculature under the skin, the tendons appear to be really there connecting the legs and arms together…it’s so hard to explain that I would say you just have to see it to know what I’m talking about.  I have seen many sculptures during my time in Europe and I have to say that none are so lifelike, so real looking, as the ones done by Michelangelo.  It doesn’t seem like an image carved from marble, it seems to be a real person suddenly frozen into stone.  So, in the summer of 2005, my sister and I stood staring in awe at La Pieta, a deceptively simple, yet utterly amazing work of art.  Seeing that statue is one moment that simply took my breath away.

Couple of interesting facts about the statue: it is the only work that Michelangelo every signed (across the sash on Mary’s chest after a visitor told another visitor that the statue was done by another artist), the piece now sits behind bulletproof glass after a mentally ill man attacked it in 1972 with a chisel, the whole thing was transported without incident in 1964 for the New York World’s Fair and the depiction of Mary as young as she is (even though she was estimated to be near 50 at the time of Jesus’ death) is interesting and unique. It further amazed me to find out that Michelangelo was only 24, my age, when he completed La Pieta.  Image how talented you have to be to produce this work of art at such a young age. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_%28Michelangelo%29.

Hair Covering: My Journey

On Thursday I recieved my first headband fall (see picture of the product at the left, although that’s not me wearing it) which I wore when my husband and I went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Friday night.  I never in my life thought that I would buy anything that I bought off of a wig website. Then again, I never thought I would be covering my hair for religious practice either. As a figure skater for 14 years, I was accustomed to wearing hairpieces for things like competitions and testing and whatnot; I also have worn hairpieces (a very long ponytail) for things like sorority formal to make myself look prettier (below) and once I even wore a long wig on Halloween as part of my costume (my boyfriend at the time said I looked so different that he felt like he was cheating on me).  I’ve always used them strategically to achieve a certain look that I couldn’t otherwise because my hair was short.  I remember very well an incident at a synchronized skating competition where my team was doing a certain move and someone hit me by accident in the back of the head, right where my hair piece was; I thought that the hairpiece I was wearing to make me look like I had a bun was going to go flying off and skittering around the rink like a ferret (thus the nickname my team gave my hairpiece).

Me at my 2006 sorority formal wearing a long (fake) ponytail.

I have never, however, worn a hairpiece in order to hide my own hair due to religious reasons. I never even considered it growing up. Then, after I met my husband and started rediscovering Judaism, I read a lot of articles and blogs about hair covering and something about it just spoke to me on a deep level. I’m still trying to figure out why, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to. I believe that my observance on this part is twofold: one is that I like the idea that there are things that are specifically reserved for my husband’s eyes (I’m not so sure how sensual my hair is though) and two is that I am just getting very, very tired of the superficiality of the American culture. I hate being overlooked or looked down on because I’m overweight; I can’t stand how everything nowadays is advertised using sex; I really despise with a passion how women are objectified in the media and advertising world. It really just drives me up a wall.  I want to throw something at my TV every time I see a GoDaddy.com commerical and I flat out refuse to watch rap videos because I am so disgusted with the way women are portrayed.  I will admit, I have used my sizeable *ahem* assets to my advantage in the past and frankly I usually have a pretty tough time de-emphasizing them (not that I really want to most of the time) as they are pretty good sized.  However, I have always gotten more of what I wanted due to the fact that I have brains rather than just a chest.  I am very proud of my intelligence and I am extremely saddened by how women are portrayed in society.  Anyway, I think part of my desire to cover my hair is because I choose to focus on intelligence, logic, my studies and things that are far less superficial.  It’s difficult in a city like Miami where people are so focused on the superficial, but I do manage to do it and I feel that covering my hair helps me focus on what really matters.

Nathan (my "Big Brother"), my husband Andrew and I at a University of Miami basketball game.

Anyway, I’ve been covering my hair with tichels since I started covering my hair and I managed to have about 30 of them I believe now so I manage to match them to just about everything I wear (including my orange one that perfectly matches my UM shirt in the picture at the left) and if all else fails I just throw on a black one and call it a day.  They’re quick to put on, comfortable and cover a multitude of hair sins, including the fact that spiral curls + humidity usually leaves me looking like a Jewish version of Bozo the Clown.  I also happen to really like the way they look on me and they usually let me feel like I have hair, like if I leave them tied with the tails hanging down instead of twisting them into a bun, I can let the tails hang in front of my shoulders or I can flip them back over my shoulders just like I would with hair.  However, there are times when I struggle with what to do with my hair – I want to look pretty for an event, so I want to have my hair down, but how do I do that without showing my real hair?  Well, I found my answer – a headband fall.  It lets me cover my hair while still looking normal and it makes my life a lot easier because my hair has a nasty tendency to frizz up as soon as I’m done straightening it (my fall, of course, does not frizz because it’s synthetic hair).  So how did it go, you might ask?  It went fairly well.  I felt like I had long hair again while still keeping my hair covered, which was a great thing.  However, it was not the most comfortable thing in the world.  The wefted cap has to be tight to stay on properly and the headband has to be right too, so, as you can imagine, this caused a headache for me.  Yeah, it looked pretty, much I’m pretty sure I will be sticking with tichels and maybe some snoods and whatnot in the future.  I’ll probably wear it every so often, but, given the choice between looking like everyone else and being comfortable, but not looking like everyone else, I will take the latter any day of the week.  This is where I’m at right now, but who knows, it may change in the future.