I intend to write a post about the holiday, but again find myself very tired. So for those who want a serious explanation about the day I offer you this link.
Holidays
Chanukah Begins Woohoo- Night One
I think that I am in a bit of a blogging rut again. I am just not happy with the quality of my posts so I keep nuking them and starting over. Every time I say something like that the Shmata Queen accuses me of trying to generate more comments to feed my ego.
I usually respond to those accusations by making fun of the burning river and reminding her that she has lived more than half of her middle aged life outside of that place. 1…2…3…DUCK!
In case you are wondering that was strictly for myself. The queen has this big black purse that your grandmother would be jealous of. I can’t believe how much junk she has in there. I think that she thinks it is sort of like Felix the Cat’s Bag of tricks.
Let me tell you, the last time she managed to hit me in the head I saw stars, they were in her eyes. Those bright eyes positively glowed. All hail the lovely queen. Ok, enough of the fake fawning and homage and back to the point of the post, it is Chanukah.
It is one of my favorite holidays. I can give you a million reasons why. I can talk about how even though it is a minor holiday in importance, it is quite significant. But it is really late and I am not in the mood to be very serious. So instead I’ll opt to say that the serious post comes later.
Right now let’s say that I like the holiday because of the memories of the past and those that we are creating now. The look on my kid’s faces is classic. Let me tell you if you really want to have fun tell your children that you are getting them socks and underwear for gifts and then really give it to them. Watch as they try to maintain their composure and be grateful.
It is a great tool to use to teach, the holiday that is. We always spend time talking about why we celebrate it and why we should be thankful for what we have. And they also get my lecture about why I hate the holiday season and the message that there is one time of year to be good.
We usually give the kids something every night, but not every one of those gifts is a major one. The formula is to try and give them each one big gift and a bunch of little ones.
Dear Santa Take a Memo
So you might be wondering what the Jewish kid is doing writing Santa a letter. I know that I would be, but since I am the one writing the letter I know what is coming. Ok, scratch that, I write from the hip, or is that shoot from the hip. Whatever. All I know is that I am the guy who can say and do anything. But as a side note just because I can doesn’t mean that I will.
Alright, now that we got that out of the way let’s try to dig into the meat of the matter, or in this case the meet of the matter. Santa and I have a funny relationship. A couple of years ago I was described by another blogger as being a suicidal Santa Claus. And it is true that I did wish death upon Santa not to mention that I once beat him up.
There are any number of reasons why I just don’t like the guy. Perhaps it is because I associate Santa with guys like this one, not to mention that I still hate the holiday season. So here I am Santa, forced to deal with you again. A couple of years ago I had a conversation with the big kid about you. I had thought that it was kind of a one time deal. I explain that you are fake and that would be the end of it.
Apparently I was wrong. You see I got to have this conversation again last night. It seems that the dark haired beauty and her big brother got into a long discussion about who you are. She may be four, but she really doesn’t miss a beat. She told her brother that not all Santas are fat and that means that they play tricks on kids. Her brother told her that all you Santas are fake and she got angry.
The little one put her hands on her hips and started lecturing me about grownups being mean to kids. She thinks that you are rude and inappropriate…Santa. You might think that it is strange that a four year-old would use that sort of terminology, but apparently she can be a good mimic. If nothing else she has learned the art of the female look of death accompanied by eyerolling, sighs and all sorts of hand waving.
I was ordered to make you stop being mean to kids. You aren’t allowed to fool them any longer. She wants you to go away so that kids know that their grownups are giving them gifts. I tried to explain to her that it is ok for other kids to believe in Santa and that she doesn’t have to worry about it. But apparently she has decided that among my many roles I am also the official protector of children. I was instructed to punch you in the nose, kick you in the butt and then push you out the door.
Santa, you are getting off easy because if she was familiar with eye gouging, fish hooking and the fine art of getting kicked in the crotch she would have insisted upon those as well. So dear Santa, I tried to get you off. I did my best to convince her to just let it go, but you know how women can be, especially when they are tired and hungry.
So my advice to you is to start running because if she sees you I am going to be ordered to go Muhammad Ali on your noggin.
Have a nice holiday season.
Best Regards,
Jack
Thanksgiving In The Snow
I am a California boy. Born and bred here in paradise I can count on both hands the number of times that I have been in the snow. If you search through the archives you’ll find the post that in which I shared that I have never driven a car in the snow. Been a passenger, walked through it, but never been the driver.
As a point of interest some of those experiences in the snow have been in Buffalo and Toronto. It was pretty damn cold. Cold enough that I got the general idea for what it must be like to be snowbound which is part of why I have never wanted to torture myself by being forced to live that way on a regular basis.
It occurs to me one of the reasons that I haven’t really ever gotten into the holiday season is that I don’t really relate to all of the winter imagery. When people talk about how hard it was to shovel snow or walk through snowstorms on their way to school I smile and nod my head. I get the general drift. It is wet, cold and uncomfortable. I get it. Walked and driven through plenty of rainstorms.
Anyhoo, this past Thanksgiving marked 19 years since I spent my first and only Thanksgiving in the snow. As I sit here typing I am trying to recall how it was that I ended up in Georgetown for the holiday. Ok, that is not entirely true, I more or less remember. A good friend of mine went to school there. What I don’t remember is how we came up with the plan for me to go out there for Thanksgiving.
What I can tell you is that we were joined by two other friends. They went to Vassar and so they flew in from Poughkeepsie. Ok, so there were four of us. Four friends there for the holiday. Four friends ready to enjoy each other’s company, but only three of us were really equipped for snow. Can you guess who didn’t have snow gear.
Ok, there really wasn’t much snow. But for a kid from Los Angeles it was different to wander down the street and worry about slipping on the ice. It felt a bit like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
Over the years the Shmata Queen has told me all sorts of stories about how people hate L.A. and or make fun of it. I think that she was surprised when I told her that my experience had been very different. I can’t tell you how many times people have found out that I live in L.A. and asked me all sorts of crazy questions about what life is like here. Do I know ever see any actors, is it really sunny all the time, how close do I live to the beach, have I ever seen any shows being filmed.
Before the wacky woman inserts her two cents let me say that I have had people make disparaging remarks about L.A. in front of me, but it has happened relatively few times. More often than not I have gotten either the gushing or ambivalence. Either way, I don’t care. I have always liked it here. Truth is if more people left it’d be better, but I digress.
I’d write more, but I have a four year-old sitting on my lap. She just woke up and has found that tugging on my beard is an effective way of getting my attention. They say turnabout is fair play, so I grabbed her pony tail. Did I ever tell you that she is cute even when she looks at me with fire coming out of her eyes.
See you later.
Abba Was The Torah
Yom Kippur was…………great.
Yom Kippur was…………terrible.
Yom Kippur was…………long.
Yom Kippur was…………hard.
Yom Kippur was…………meaningful.
Yom Kippur was…………well I am not really sure what else to put there. I suppose that if I thought about it I could come up with a few more adjectives, but I think that I am done with Mad Libs for the moment.
I spent a good part of the day with my tallis over my head and I am sure that more than a few people figured that it was an attempt to sleep. To be clear I certainly wouldn’t try to go to sleep with a wool blanket over my head, far too hot. Really it is just an attempt to focus on davening.
Davening is not something that comes easily to me. It is something that requires a fair bit of effort, especially when I am battling hunger, thirst and a raging headache. A good friend of mine once suggested that I combat lack of focus by only davening in Orthodox shuls. The idea was that I’d find it easier to focus with more likeminded people and a mechitza.
I laughed at the idea. Been to plenty of Orthodox shuls and had no problem finding plenty of people to distract me. These three guys are talking, that guy over there keeps wandering in and out and the dude over there thinks that if he doesn’t mutter loudly G-d can’t hear him.
And let’s not get started about the mechitza. I have a very graphic and active imagination. The inability to physically see women won’t prevent me from engaging in any sort of thought about them. In short, if I don’t work hard to stay focused it is easy to get distracted.
Truth is that I prefer to daven outside, but that is a story for a different day.
Read Torah again this year. New usher gave me grief about reading, decided that he didn’t like where I was sitting and suggested that I was too far from the bima. Thanked him for his concern and told him that I started reading during the Reagan administration. This was confirmation that my headache was in full force.
Walked up to layn/lein and suddenly I hear my daughter’s voice “Go Daddy Go!” It made me smile. Smiled bigger when I heard her argue with her mother about being able to cheer for me.
Later on that day she proudly walked up to her grandparents and announced that “abba was the Torah.” Got to spend the next ten minutes trying to explain to her older sibling that she is four and he really didn’t need to correct her. He then told me that I am a person and I couldn’t be the Torah.
By that point in time my head was pounding. I was tempted to put on a Torah cover and breastplate just to prove him wrong, but I couldn’t figure out where to place the rimonim and what shoes to wear with it.
BTW, if you took that last paragraph seriously you need more sleep.
Anyhoo, I am glad that we’re in the home stretch. This time of year always makes me feel a little bit crazy.
Wrestling With Atonement- Yom Kippur Kraziness
I am willing to bet that few people have written a post about Yom Kippur while listening to Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. It is not really the sort of music that one thinks about as setting a proper mood for introspection but it happens to be what is playing on iTunes right now. In another moment I’ll shift gears and put on something more appropriate, but this will work for now.
In a relatively short period of time the sun will rise and set and rise and set and another Yom Kippur will have come and gone. And so I find myself sitting in the dark contemplating what it all means to me and what I have learned.
I’ll start out by quoting from Moments When I feel Closest To G-d:
“I have written a number of times about my struggles with G-d, how I Yelled
at G-d and the challenges I have had with davening. If you are really interested you can read more here, here and here. There are probably a couple more links but that is enough time shilling for my own blog.If you are here you are probably interested in what I have to say or trapped beneath a heavy object and unable to do move away from the keyboard. If you are trapped and without an internet connection I encourage you to search for meaning in what I say, I do all the time because what is the purpose of living if there is no meaning in life.
That is not really tongue in cheek, it is just my wry sense of humor saying that we all need to find a reason to be here and that it is an individual thing that does not have to mirror your neighbor.”
I used to dislike Yom Kippur immensely. I didn’t really find meaning in it. It was a day that seemed to be predicated upon enduring being uncomfortable. I didn’t find the davening to be significant, meaningful or interesting. Most of the people around me spent the time in shul complaining about something and few had anything positive to say.
At some point that feeling changed, but I can’t say when. I have been trying to figure out when and what changed, but it is like grabbing smoke. The harder I try the harder it is to determine. So if you’ll bear with me I am going to to just ramble a bit.
Unetaneh Tokef grabs me
“On Rosh Hashanah it is written and Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall pass on and how many shall come to be;
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall see ripe old age and who shall not;
who shall perish by fire
and who by water;
who by sword and who by beast;
who by hunger and who by thirst;”
Part of me shrugs my shoulder at it all. It is easy to blow it off and say that people die, earthquakes happen, fires burn and the world goes on. Certainly I won’t say that divine punishment is the reason for natural disasters. Neither will I say that some people die early because of some unknowable divine plan. That is not how I roll.
But I have come to appreciate setting aside time to sit down and take a hard look at my life. It is not always easy to engage in that sort of introspection, to take a hard look at the good and the bad. And that is what I do.
I try to take time to consider who I am. I am a flawed individual. There are many things that I need to improve upon. It would be unfair, unreasonable and unwarranted to suggest otherwise. I have made mistakes that I am very sorry for. I have traveled upon some dark roads that I wish that I could have avoided.
I don’t expect to find salvation by admitting all my sins. I don’t believe that with a few words they can all just be forgiven and washed away. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Neither do I believe that I should engage in endless self-flagellation for them.
What I will try to do is the best I can to improve. I’ll do what I can not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to try and be better for the future. A large part of that effort will be spent on trying to help my children avoid the pitfalls that I fell for and into. It was a challenging year, but that is how it goes.
So here we are at the end of the post. Have I learned anything more about myself? Nope. Not sure that I have done much other than babble. But I am a believer in the exercise so if I am still blogging you can expect to see this kind of post again.
And for what it is worth, if I have offended or upset you my sincere apologies.
G’mar Chatima Tova. I wish you an easy fast. May you be inscribed and sealed.