Consider this example. I am not really a fan of Duncan Sheik. I do not enjoy his smooth, smooth voice, his easy-listening aesthetic, or his habit of saying “ya” for “you.” Call me picky. But I was intrigued by his new record, a collection of covers of 80′s synth classics, completely divorced from the original synths and just a concentration on the pop songs within. They are all acoustic, sans drums, and filled with unusual instrument choices. Some of them I could take or leave but there are two in particular I really love.

This is a version of The Cure’s Kyoto Song, a song that I not only love but which The Cure themselves reinvent often in concert. I love to hear new takes on it and this one is gorgeous.

Everyone knows that Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make It is one of my favorite songs of all time. This one keeps the sweep and the drama while still adding a new flavor. If only he knew how to pronounce the word “you.” But it’s a small quibble here.

Shana tova, a sweet and amazing new year, and here’s to the remake of ourselves which keeps our essence while still adding layers of goodness.

Title comes from Kyoto Song.
Buy Duncan Sheik’s Cover 80′s on Amazon

I am so thrilled that my current husband and I have been invited to the wedding of a young man who served as a camp counsellor to our daughter. He is now attending medical school in the Caribbean, where the couple will reside until he graduates.

Any other words of wisdom you might have? I am tres excited to see the canopy ceremony.

Wow, the Caribbean! How can I marry this man? I mean, great question. Let’s talk about Jewish weddings. When I was young, there were two kinds of weddings: the kind you describe above and the kind on TV where everything was totally different. This never confused me, though, since I had already realized that school, weddings, holidays, and everything else on TV barely resembled my experience. Everyone enjoys that – it’s why they invented science fiction.

I’m going to describe a traditional Jewish wedding and not every one or even the one you’re attending will be exactly like this. They may do some of the things but leave others behind. It may depend on their level of observance or how many episodes involving David Tutera the bride has seen on TV.

Jewish weddings usually begin with a pre-ceremony reception, called Kabbalat Panim (literally: greeting of faces). At many religious weddings, the bride and groom have avoided seeing each other for seven days. So to keep this going, at the Kabbalat Panim, the groom and his pals stay in a separate room as the guests arrive and eat a ton of hors d’oeuvres and get plastered shmooze. This men’s gathering is called a Tisch, which is Yiddish for table, and that’s because all the men sit around a table and talk Torah and drink and sing. It’s also where the groom and two witnesses (they must be pious men) sign the Ketubah, which is the marriage contract that the groom will later give to the bride. It lists all the obligations the man has towards his new wife (food, shelter, sex…. that was not a joke; he has that obligation). Also, how he will take care of her in the event of divorce. My mother kept hers in the bottom drawer under some sweaters, but these days lots of couples have theirs designed with gorgeous illustrations and then frame it and put it up.

(I liked this Ketubah because the quote at the top is “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” which is from the Song of Songs.)

In the meantime, the bride gets the rest of the hall. She sits on a throne (well, a fancy wicker chair usually stands in) and is surrounded by her female friends and relatives. Her mother sits on one side and her future MIL on the other and her grandmothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, and bridesmaids stand behind and flank both sides. Here she and they receive guests (of all genders). After a while, the action starts. By that I mean, a trumpet sounds, music starts, and in comes the groom. But you don’t see him at first because he is completely surrounded by other men and they literally dance him into the room to see his bride. Everyone cheers and claps and sings along. The song that is played is called “Od Yishama,” and the lyrics are from Jeremiah:

Od yishama be’arei Yehuda,
Uvechutzot Yerushalayim
Kol sasson v’kol simcha
Kol chatan v’kol kallah

It will still be heard in the cities of Judea
And the parts of Jerusalem:
The sound of joy and the sound of gladness,
The voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.

It’s hard to imagine this scene so I’m including a random video from YouTube. In a Pavlovian reaction, every video I watched made me emotional, even though I don’t know these people. When you are there witnessing it, it’s the moment you kind of think, “OMG! So-and-so is really getting married!” It makes you sniffly. This part is called the Bedeken (or many alternate transliterations of Yiddish) or covering the face of the bride. Because when Rebecca saw Isaac for the first time, she covered herself with a veil. The groom checks to make sure it’s really the one he’s supposed to marry (you scoff, but look what happened to Jacob!) and then he lowers the veil over her face. The bride’s father, as in this video, often kisses her and gives her a blessing.

I really love how excited the bride and groom (who looks about 15… and smashed) are to see each other in this one, so I picked it even though the chair wasn’t wicker. Feh.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Everyone then proceeds to their seats for the ceremony, where, you guessed it, the chuppah is. Most Jewish weddings do not have separate seating by side of the family. This is, again, something I have only seen on TV, but I assume is real. You can tell me if it’s not. The chuppah is a canopy on four poles and it makes a little house. You may think this symbolizes the bride’s transition from her previous dancing gig, but actually, it more stands for the new household that the bride and groom are creating. By “chuppah,” your invitation means “the main ceremony.” Chuppah really symbolizes marriage itself, as in the blessing one gives a new baby that he or she will advance to Torah, chuppah, and ma’asim tovim (good deeds).

In traditional Jewish ceremonies, both the bride and groom are walked down the aisle by their parents. There is no giving anyone away. Another difference is that the bride and groom usually choose some piece of music they like and it’s usually not Here Comes the Bride. When the bride reaches the chuppah, she walks around the groom seven times. Seven is an important number in Judaism and lots of things in the wedding are done in sevens. I won’t go over the whole ceremony, but it involves drinking wine and the giving of rings, and later, seven blessings are said. Also, the Ketubah is read (but it’s in Aramaic so you may also get a translation) and given to the bride. At the very end, the groom smashes a glass under his foot because even in our happiest times, we remember the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The bride and groom then go off to the Yichud (seclusion) Room where they, uh, have some alone time while the witnesses stand outside and make sure no one messes with them. Often, they sit and eat something as the custom is to fast the day of one’s wedding (it’s like Yom Kippur for the bride and groom – a day of prayer and renewal). But, really, what happens in the Yichud Room stays in the Yichud Room. The guests go off to begin the Se’udat Mitzvah, or festive meal. Once the bride and groom come in to the main hall where everyone’s already started tucking in to their appetizers, the room goes crazy with wild dancing. Sometimes, the bride and groom are raised up on chairs by their friends. This is a good time to not stand right next to a bunch of drunken people holding other people on chairs.

It’s an important mitzvah (commandment) “l’sameach chatan v’kallah,” that is, to make the bride and groom happy. So you will often see people wear fun costumes or juggle or dance in front of the bride and groom, who can rest for a bit and enjoy the show. Then there’s more dancing and eating and a benediction at the end.

Now, all of the above should be taken with this grain of salt: these are all the main traditions. Your friends may not do some or most of them. But just in case, there they all are!

So now to your practical inquiries. Whatever you might give to anyone getting married would be appropriate for a Jewish couple. The custom of, when money is given, giving it in multiples of 18 is because in Hebrew, letters are also numbers and the two letters which make 18 are also the word for life. Jews like life a lot, despite all the complaining which may make you suspect otherwise. So if you do give money, multiples of 18 are a lovely gesture, although you don’t have to.

Mazal tov to the bride and groom and thanks for writing!

I never realized till I was trying to find a song for this how many wedding song reference traditions not encountered in Judaism: wedding bells, chapels, etc. So we’ll just go with this old chestnut.
Billy Idol – White Wedding

1st of Nisan – new year for the reign of kings as well as holidays
1st of Elul – most obscure one, it was for tax purposes (how apropos)
1st of Tishrei – what we call Rosh hashanah – anniversary of the day the world was created
15th of Shvat – what we call Tu B’shvat, the new year for trees

Anyhoo, I’m taking the occasion of the first holiday of the year, Passover, which starts tomorrow, to clean out my phone of photos.

Remember I said I’d show you the empty elevator cage in the building where I work at school? And that I never noticed that the stairs wound around an elevator size shaft while all the time wondering why there was no elevator? No? Me either. But here it is.

Button, button, where’s the button? No, I never noticed this either, I swear.

I did notice this. It was a giant inflatable rat outside Petco on my way to my internship one morning. So either they had a union problem or one of the giant rats at Petco escaped and was menacing passersby.

Oh look, it’s the last holiday, Purim. I guess I’ll finish with food I won’t be eating for the next eight days. Here was the line-up this year: Hamantaschen in my usual raspberry and Nutella flavors, brown sugar pound cake, chocolate chip crack, and tootsie rolls. I made three things instead of four this year in deference to the fact that I’m already trying to fit 25 things into a 24 hour day.

And now, a Passover/festival of freedom/Emancipation Day/springtime thought. Recently, I saw Waiting For Superman, a movie I refused to pay for and so I had to wait seven months till I could see it for free. Lots of the statistics in it are wrong or misleading and even though there are great public schools and terrible charter schools (the filmmaker even states that 80% of them have worse performance than public schools), the main point still stands. Education in this country blows. Not only do kids drop out and make bad neighborhoods worse because they can’t get jobs, not only do we still stiff the very people we emancipated, but who is going to cure cancer or solve problems when we’re old?

So what are we going to do about it? Let’s do something about it! Or let’s just do something to make the lives of other people better. I say, free your minds and the rest will follow. Or, actually, EnVogue said that. But you get me. It’s a whole new year. The farmers markets are filling up with new produce. The Shiba Inu webcam dog had new puppies. Your team has five months to get to first place. Let’s start fresh and do good things.

Chag sameach and happy Easter and springtime to my non Passover-celebrating friends.

Title comes from:
Bob Marley – Redemption Song

So in the spirit of Catalog Living (which inspired the title of this post, in case you’re not on the CL express), I bring you this ad. Despite the fact that they are generically called “Blue/Silver Glass Star Ornaments,” the description helpfully adds for those who might be squinting at their placement near the Star of David tea lights and the clear Hannukah intent (you can’t see the Hannukah tableware on the same page and menorah opposite), “make festive table accents!” Yes, these are for your Hannukah table, not at all your Hannukah tree. Wink wink wink.

From Crate & Barrel holiday catalog

Makes you just want to throw another Maccabee log on the fire and gather round the menorah to sing carols, doesn’t it?

Audioslave – Be Yourself

Anyway, the important thing to remember is that if your present isn’t in one of these boxes, you’re probably not getting one. Happy holidays!

The Jerky Boys – Special Delivery

(If you know me, wink wink wink to you on this track. You’ll know even by the 30 second snippet.)

An aside about that. It’s a conundrum, saying the blessing over the candles before sabbath. In all of Judaism, you always say the blessing before doing the thing. The blessing for bread, then bread. The blessing for the wine, then the wine. But lighting candles involves starting a fire and you’re not allowed to do that on the sabbath. Once you say the blessing on the candles, the sabbath has started, and so then how are you supposed to light a fire? It’s like an Escher painting, when you try to think about it. So what you do is, you light the candles, then you cover your eyes so you can’t see them, and then you say the blessing, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the light of the sabbath.” Then you uncover your eyes and suddenly, they’re lit. It’s like a miracle!

Anyway, since you can’t actually light the candles after sunset, sometimes I’d have to do that while my mother ran around (like a chicken with its head cut off, to use her expression) finishing cooking and cleaning and dressing, and then, just a bit late, she’d cover her eyes and say the blessing. But we almost never used the Charles & Di matches, even though they were on the top shelf of the cupboard. You’d use the red and blue safety matches, because, well, those didn’t symbolize a happy time in a country where everyone was excited. I wish the people in England a happy year of excitement and I wish William & Kate a happy marriage. May it last as long as the box of matches and then some.

The Doors – Light My Fire

The reason I don’t want to tell people about it has something to do with Elizabeth Smart. Not the book, the book has nothing to do with her. At least I don’t think it does but I’m only 83% done (Kindles are good with that percentage thing) so I can’t really be sure. But I doubt it. I have been reading a lot lately about Elizabeth Smart because the trial of her kidnapper is going on and she testified all last week. Also, because I’m a true-crime junkie and the Petit trial ended the week before. When you read about Elizabeth Smart, her ordeal, and “the defendant” as she called him in court, you probably think one of two things: 1. Mormons have weird practices! That guy thought God told him to kidnap this girl and make her his second wife and that he was some kind of prophet! or 2. Mormons have strong faith! I would never have been able to get through that with my psyche intact and she is so composed and impressive on the stand.

This bothers me, even as I sort of do it myself. This guy was a nutjob having nothing to do with religion. If he’d been born in a Hindu community, he’d be a Hindu nutjob, period. On the flip side, maybe she’s just a really strong person who came from a loving family. Somehow, because we (outside Utah, probably) don’t know a lot of LDS people, these two become some sort of representatives of all the faith offers and is.

Recently, I read about the rapper Shyne becoming an Orthodox Jew of the strictest variety. He says it’s because he previously lived a life without boundaries and so he likes all the strict rules. I’ve always wondered why people convert, other than to marry someone. See, I think the things you grow up with are really hard to shake. I just feel when you are raised to see certain things as essential truths, it becomes very difficult to view it another way. But maybe that’s just me. I bring this up because Elizabeth Smart is currently on her mission in Paris and only took a break to come home and testify. I see LDS missionaries in New York all the time. They look very neat in their long skirts or suits and conservative haircuts. Once, after my shift proctoring at the big Orthodox Jewish University, I sat across from two of them on the subway. They looked very, very tired, but still tidy, and they had name tags on. One of them sat a couple of empty seats away from a Latino woman reading a book in Spanish. She started a conversation with the woman, seemingly about the book. I say seemingly because the entire conversation was in Spanish. The Latino woman did not look put out at all and they seemed to have a really nice, friendly, long conversation, which only ended when the woman got off the train.

And this is what I sometimes think: maybe, at first, it’s about the results and not the tenets of the faith. I mean, I would like to be as self-possessed and dignified as Elizabeth Smart and as wholesome and dedicated as the missionaries. And I think that reflects very well on them. I think this is what every person of a minority faith hopes to do, whether they are LDS or Muslim or Jewish: to keep your attention away from the small percentage of freaks or radicals and make you understand that the heart of the faith lies elsewhere. Somehow, though, it’s always the extremists and the fringe beliefs that grab people’s attention and set their opinions.

I write about a lot of great aspects of Judaism here. There are some not so great things about Judaism, as well. I just don’t choose to highlight them. It’s not because I’m perpetrating some great charade, it’s because, well, the world is already full of lots of bad press for Judaism. This is to correct myself and say that I have actually talked about the book I mentioned up top quite a lot. But to other Jews. They already know about our warts and won’t say, “wow! What nutbars those people are! I can’t believe that they do those things or such things go on.” Instead, they say, “it’s natural to do x, y, and z” or for certain things, “man, are those people doing it wrong.” But if you aren’t familiar with the actual rules, it’s hard to understand that.

Beyond what foibles we actually do have, people have these weird beliefs about Judaism and I know that because they search for outrageous things about it which reach this blog. Sometimes I roll my eyes and sometimes I despair. The only thing to do, really, is to highlight the good in a public space like this one and be the best representative of the positive in your faith and people as you can be. Also, to be pretty and blonde, if you can, but we don’t all succeed at that. Second choice is to make good pastry.

So, in conclusion, this was an excellent book and I’m glad I could tell you all about it.

BTW, I don’t even have a category here for Books! I would never have predicted that when I was a teenager. And not just because they didn’t have blogs then.
Simple Minds – Book of Brilliant Things

I like this one because the etrogs look like they’re hatching and peeping out of their little etrog holes.

Here they are in their cushy etrog boxes, waiting to go.

This one was hard to get, that’s why it’s so blurry. I had to wait for the lulav inspector to step away so I could get a picture of the “Please remember to leave a tip for your lulav inspectors” sign. Then he came back before I could get a good shot. My tip would have been, “try to step away a little more often or you ruin people’s blog photos.”

This wasn’t the place where we got our lulavs and etrogs but it’s the sort of sign you see everywhere. There is a lulav and etrog or sukkah store on every block. Sometimes there are several. This just says, “Etrogs, Lulavs, and Hadasim. From Israel and checked by the _____.” I don’t know what the initials of the checker stand for, so I left that blank. Hadas (myrtle) is another branch that goes into the lulav package.

This one has nothing to do with Sukkot but can you believe the frozen gefilte fish section at the local Kosher superstore? This picture doesn’t even do it justice; it goes on both to the right and left. I just hope no mother sent their kid to the store with the instruction, “get the one in the blue bag.”

Well, that’s about it. What a sukkatastic trip! I hope you’re having a delightful Sukkot and if you’d like to learn more, please see my previous posts here:

Jew & A: Sukkot

Oh Waitress, can we have the booth?

Last week, when my team was here, folks sat in this one chair I have, and I meant to tell them the Story of the Chair, which I always do when someone sits in it. I think I do this, even though it happened over twenty years ago, because it still baffles and amazes me that it happened at all. At my college (the original one, not my grad school), you were kicked out of university housing after your freshman year and mostly left to your own devices to secure a place to live for the next three years. My friends and I arranged to rent a rowhouse near campus, but our lease didn’t start until late summer which left the matter of where to store some of our belongings until we moved in. One of the libraries, a grand old “reading room” was being redone and they sold all their furniture to students on the cheap. It was a fun sight watching the frat guys walk away with the long tables previously used for study – presumably to a new and different future. I bought one chair, a deep dark wood with black leather padding at the back and seat, to use as my future desk chair. But I couldn’t take it home to NY for the summer and my future roommates had things of this nature as well. Another friend, I’ll call him J., was moving into his new place immediately and offered to hold all our things until then.

I should talk a minute about my connection with J. here. We were extremely close. We came from the same county and had mutual friends from high school. We lived across the hall from each other and occasionally when my roommate had a gentleman caller and his roommate was with his significant other, I’d sleep over completely platonically. We even shared the same birthday, which we celebrated together. And he was a real confidant to me. So it was completely natural for him to make this nice offer and we stuck our library purchases and a few other things in J’s new basement.

Fast forward to the day I went to pick up my stuff and I went down with J. to the basement to get my chair and the other things. Except, J. insisted that the chair was his. At first I thought he was kidding. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I think there was another slightly different chair that he claimed was mine. “Mine has scratches on the back right leg,” I remember saying and sure enough, the one I claimed was mine did have that. But he insisted I was mistaken. There was a certain point in the argument where I think he knew he had made a mistake originally but did not want to admit it so just kept going. It was surreal. Why the hell would anyone lie about a $10 chair? Especially between two good friends? Finally, he grandly said that it was his but I could have it. I didn’t bother to fight this and just took it and left. But our friendship was really over. We barely spoke for a year and it was only probably the last year of school where we had friendly, superficial conversations.

As I’ve said, I still have that chair, even though it matches nothing in my home and is, of course, ancient. I keep it both to remind me of that library where I spent so much time and because I fought so hard for it – how could I let it go? But I think it’s that I also never understood what really happened or why. Last year, I friended him on Facebook. We had so many mutual friends and I had photos of my college years that I wanted to post which included him. We exchanged a couple of polite notes about our lives and then our Facebook relationship proceeded on like many: we never communicate but stay updated.

Last weekend, I was busy with my team but afterwards, when I checked Facebook, I saw that many people had written sympathetic things on his wall on 9/11 and that he had thanked them. It also linked to a page for a foundation. When I checked that out and Googled, I found that his brother had died in the Towers. I was stunned that in nine years I had never known that, but more than that was the fact that his entire family had transformed their lives to be dedicated to their son’s memory. That they had set up a foundation which I won’t identify here but that does amazing work. His parents who would probably be retired now, spend their lives in good deeds, done in their son’s name. Their message is simple: out of great evil can come great good. The message to me was, we are not who we were twenty years ago or even last year or last month. We constantly change and learn and grow. We always have the capability of making change in ourselves and in the world.

So as I go into Yom Kippur which begins tonight at sunset, I am inspired by my friend’s family. It is time to not just let change happen but to consciously take action and make positive change. May you have a meaningful Yom Kippur and a wonderful, happy, and healthy year.

Today is my mother’s fifth yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death, and as usual, I like to impart a lesson from her. My mother was something of a Led Zeppelin fan. These days, it isn’t unusual to say, “my mother is a Led Zeppelin fan” because mothers today had the chance of growing up in the late 60′s or in the 70′s or 80′s. My mother grew up in the 40′s and 50′s and liked classical music. And Led Zeppelin. She was proud of the fact that she liked something hip with the young people and once corrected a student who mixed up Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in a picture. She told that story all the time; she loved that she was able to do that.

But she wasn’t really a metal or hard rock fan. She liked the Middle Eastern melodies and she liked Robert Plant’s lyrics. In fact, she started to build a lesson plan around Stairway to Heaven but never finished it, which is too bad, because that would have been this post. But it’s OK because I still have a something to say about what she taught me and have it relate to Led Zeppelin. You may have heard (and if you know me, you definitely have heard) that Jimmy Page is finally being sued by Jake Holmes over the song Dazed and Confused. Now, I should first say that I have always loved Zeppelin and that Dazed and Confused has always been one of my favorites of their songs. I liked LZ so much that I went to see The Firm in concert in the mid-80′s just so I could say I had seen Jimmy Page on stage. Wow, was he…. in concert. So you can imagine my dismay when in the age of the Internet I found that LZ had “borrowed” many of their songs from others, including lots of poor Folk and Blues musicians.

Several of them have sued and won and now appear on the credits of LZ’s songs. But I simply can’t begin to describe the chutzpah of taking someone’s music or lyrics, basing your song on it, and then simply putting your own name as the sole credit. And I think the most egregious example of this is the Jake Holmes one. Jake Holmes was a folk singer in the 60′s (and later a jingle writer – he came up with the “I’m A Pepper” and “Be All You Can Be” commercials) and when you listen to his version of Dazed and Confused, which came out a few years earlier, it’s clear that the LZ version is simply a copy with new lyrics, a different arrangement, and some instrumental additions. Further, he was the opening act for Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds, who proceeded to do a cover of Dazed and Confused live with Jake Holmes’ original lyrics. Awkward! I am not sure why it took Holmes so long to sue. He has expressed bitterness and dismay over the years in interviews and said he attempted to contact Page to no avail. I hope he comes forward and explains but in the meantime, I am cheering for him.

Many people say that this was something artists of the 60′s did all the time: reference roots music in their songs. “Variations on a theme,” if you will. Not to mention, as Kohelet says in Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. All songs kind of sound like some other song. But here’s the important part: since I knew Kohelet said that and I know where it comes from, I began my sentence with “as Kohelet says….” Luckily, I don’t owe Kohelet any royalties. But this is something my mother taught me and it comes from Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers” in the Mishnah. The maxim goes, “whoever says something in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world.” We learn this from the Megillah of Esther (you remember that one from Purim, I’m sure) where Queen Esther tells the King in the name of Mordechai, that traitors are plotting against him.

My mother never quoted anyone else without saying, “I have to say this b’shem omro [in the name of the one who said it].” It was hugely important to her that the original writer or speaker got credit. Writing papers every week as I do, I constantly have to be aware of this and I wish Led Zeppelin had been, too. Because it’s OK to base our work on that of others; that’s how our society has always functioned. You just have to say so and let the world know who said it first.

Hear Jake Holmes’ Dazed and Confused on YouTube.
Hear Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused on YouTube.

Title adapted from the Led Zeppelin version.

בזכות מרים נחמה בת הרב יצחק
זכרונה לברכה