Magic Jewball

This post was supposed to appear before Sukkot, but like most holidays, I ran out of time. I am not known for my time management skills, but more for my ability to get distracted by pretty much anything. In case you’re not up on your tabernacle knowledge, Sukkot is the holiday where we build temporary booths and spend lots of time in them. Then we tear them down. You may remember this from your whole “Christmas tree” concept. But it is still Sukkot, which goes on for another several days, so I am free to share with you these scintillating photos of my family’s excursion to the heart of Jewey Brooklyn to buy lulavs and etrogs from the same guy from whom we have bought them since… a really long time ago.

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?

I didn’t have the holiest of Rosh Hashanahs but I have spent some time in this week of repentance in contemplation of myself as a person and thinking about things I could improve. I’ve made a lot of changes in my lifetime, but somehow, I think, we all encounter the same issues whenever we think about changing ourselves. It’s the same each year: I won’t be so judgey! I won’t be so irritable! I’ll be nicer to people! And then, somehow, you’re just the same. I wondered what it does take to make change in one’s life and then, strangely, I was presented with a huge example.

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.

About how many things can you say, “I have been obsessed with that since I was a child?” I think some things are just inborn and they follow you around throughout your life. For me, one of these things has always been “this song sounds like that song.” I remember being fascinated by the George Harrison My Sweet Lord/He’s So Fine case as a little kid and just about any other music plagiarism case I came across. I just find it freaky and strange when two songs sound remarkably alike. By a stroke of luck, when I grew up and ended up in the music business, I sat for ten years in an office next to the one of the legal clearance person, who had the job of both clearing our artists’ samples (those are the pieces of other songs that an artist will deliberately build his/her song upon) and reaching out to the violators of our copyrights. What I found from sitting there is that the legal department counted on the honesty of the artist in reporting whose work the song was based on… to a degree. But then the clearance person would sit and listen to all the songs and try to figure it out. if she couldn’t, the song was sent to a musicologist. So there was always a lot of repeating of passages of loud music and a lot of me jumping up and running next door to say, “this sounds just like Paranoid Android!” and so forth. Since it wasn’t my job, I found it great fun.

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

And so, my 613th post.

Numbers are mostly arbitrary. I love the title of the Simpsons clip show, “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular,” because really, just because we live in a base-ten society, does that mean there’s something so fantastic about numbers ending in zero? Numbers in Judaism really mean something but, as the Passover song, “Who Knows One?” shows you, there’s something special about pretty much every number. As promised, 613 is the number of mitzvot, or commandments, in the Torah. Now, you knew Jews had a lot of rules, but did you know how many? (Teachers guide says: 613). I like 613 mostly because it doesn’t really mean anything else. When I was a kid, I had a silver bracelet with three silver balls on it. I liked to think that they represented the members of the Police, about whom I obsessed all the livelong day. Clearly, they were a Christian symbol. Or a family. Or, you know, the whim of the jeweler. But when I see 613, I know that’s what it is.

No one can follow all 613 rules because some are for men and some are for women and some are for parents and some are for people with parents, etc. And even in the best of times, I never followed all that I could. But what I like about them is that they correspond to every aspect of your life. That is, with the smallest thing in your life, getting up in the morning or crossing the street, you could be doing those things in a way that benefits the universe and mankind. I know that seems heavy but I think it’s really a relief. Because one of the signs of growing up is that you start to search and think about what the meaning and purpose of your life and the world and all that exists is.

That could be the end of the post but just for fun, it’s actually the intro. I wanted to talk about growing up and random numbers because very soon, I’ll be hitting a round, base-ten number birthday. Not for a few months, but Summer break was when I always started thinking of myself as the next year older because I spent my summers as a child in the camp where my family worked and was surrounded by a different set of kids. Kids who had all had their birthdays in March and April. So in order to not seem a year younger than everyone else, I just pretended my Fall birthday had occurred in the Spring with the result that by the time my actual birthday rolled around, I had already mentally been that age for several months.

On my last zero-ending birthday, I spent a long time worrying about it. And then one day, for some reason I still am not sure about, that all vanished and I embraced it. I took a day off work, went to a spa, and had lunch with my parents and dinner with friends. Really a perfect, perfect day. But the day wasn’t that important in the scheme of things. The important part is that each decade has been better than the last. I mean, think about it. While new experiences are great, there’s something to be said about knowing what you’re doing and having the maturity and wisdom to handle everything that comes at you. I’m still not totally there but I wouldn’t trade the confidence I have now for any part of my “youth.” And I’m sure when I look back in ten or twenty years, I’ll laugh at how much I thought I knew at this age. Because that’s the way I look at my teens and twenties now. Excruciating. Don’t get me wrong, I miss the culture of my teens desperately (you may have noticed this) but not at all the awkwardness. And the wondering about what life would be. And the desperation of (gasp!) trying to find a guy to complete me. To be comfortable in your own skin is priceless, even if that skin isn’t as dewy fresh as it used to be.

A friend of mine from my youth, Molly Ringwald, just wrote a book for women of our age group, apparently. I doubt I’ll read it but I did like this one thing she said:

“When you’re a teenager, you’re forever thinking, ‘Do they like me?’ ” she writes. “When you’re a grown-up, as anyone over the age of 30 can attest, the question becomes, ‘Do I like them?’ ”

“I never thought I would be glad to be older,” she said, finishing her pinot grigio, “but it is kind of a relief.”

Amen. So in the end, I think numbers are really as meaningful as you want them to be. If you want to use a base-ten birthday to celebrate how far you’ve come and to be thankful for another year on this fine earth of ours, that’s all well and good. And if the 613th post on your blog reminds you to add meaning to all your actions, I’m sure that’s just what God and Al Gore intended when they invented the Internet. But I think every number is special.

Now, we all know the meaning of life is also a number: 42. But now that I’ve grown up a bit (and really, just a bit), I think I’ve come back around to my original view, that it’s about giving to others. And maybe this is the decade where I’ll really make that happen in the way I promised to in my high school yearbook. I’ve certainly gotten smart enough to have a better haircut. But of course, I’m no longer a person who needs to express who she is through her hairstyle, so that’s already a contribution to mankind.

Just as I was finishing this post, Postsecret appeared in my feed reader with this as its final (oops, not final… just where I stopped reading!) postcard:



I considered making it a whole other post but decided that it worked in this one. I sometimes think that my twenties were spent trying to relocate the life that had been sucked out of me by that place. All I can say to this person is that life is a journey and that your sacrifice made you the person you are… not your education. This person may be talking about an entirely different sacrifice, but for me, I never think about whether it was worth it. It happened, I got through it, I like who I am, and even though seeing this picture made me want to cry, it’s all good now. It will be good, I swear.

Lene Lovich – Lucky Number

At my worst days in my old job, when my boss was being his most evil, the way I dealt with it was to look like I was paying attention to whatever he was saying, but sing in my head the classic Jewish song, Esah Einai, which is a gentle tune which goes around and around and has the words to Psalm 121.

In Hebrew it’s:
Esah einai el heharim,
me’ayin me’ayin yavo ezri
Esah einai el heharim,
me’ayin me’ayin yavo ezri

Ezri me’im Hashem,
Oseh shamayim va’aretz
Ezri me’im Hashem,
Oseh shamayim va’aretz

If you left your Book of Psalms in your other pants, it’s this one:
I lift up my eyes to the hills
From whence will come my help.

My help comes from the Lord
The maker of heaven and earth.

About two or three times around that song, I could pretty much forget he existed.

Today, my former co-worker who ended up with my job and is the son of a preacher and a very churchy guy himself, has this as his Facebook status message:

I am blessed even with all the problems I have to face. I stand strong! I am able to stand because my faith is solid. I look to the hill which cometh my help. I say to you, stand strong on your faith.

Now, Pious B is laughing at this because I like to send her this guy’s mangled inspirational status messages for fun. But I do NOT think this is a coincidence. Seriously, you need Psalm 121 to survive that job; it should be listed in the requirements.

Even Korean tourists to Israel love Esah Einai!