A bissel Shtisel for your morning

I have a new poem on Hevria and I hope you like it. Without overtly intending to, it covers my 3 big themes: the human relationship with the Divine, imposter syndrome, and public transportation.



In the exiled world, Jews have
phone calls and Facebook to keep up
with yontifs and life events

In New York I come up empty. A funeral across
Boro Park, streets shut off, Hasidim rend clothes
and scream to Shomayim. In Manhattan

I heard nothing. I davened mincha
between meetings, prayed to my food and
nobody caught it but me and G-d.

[ keep reading ]

Me: It's great to see you here. But why did you move to Crown Heights?

Ari: To show the people of Gotham that their city doesn't belong to the criminals and the corrupt.

(I promise, this wasn't a setup. It just popped up in the middle of a conversation.)

Breastfeeding Sucks

On the Kveller blog, and in our personal lives, I've been freaking out a bit. Cholov yisroel formula has been embargoed by the FDA, and I've been doing some of my rare journalism to figure out what's going on.

One thing that parents are best at -- and yes, readers, I'm talking about you, and I'm talking about myself as well -- is trying to tell other people what to do.
Maybe it's natural. Maybe it comes from being parents. You're forced to order your kid around. So, why shouldn't the rest of the world do what you say, too?

Kveller recently ran a story on a shortage of baby formula in the Hasidic community. As can be expected, it was summarily attacked, on here and on my way-too-sharey Facebook page. Mostly, it was that knee-jerk "a-ha!"ness of parents who see a mention of bottlefeeding and leap to point out the wrongness inherent in a parenting style not their own.

Breastfeeding has become a badge of honor. A few months ago, when a brand of formula started advertising itself as "the healthiest choice," tons of parent bloggers (myself included) pounced on it. In parent-heavy environs like Park Slope, there's a type of bottle that actually advertises that the milk inside is breast milk -- which is so self-righteously snotty, conceited, and straight-up ill-willed that it's a good thing I wasn't drinking breast milk when I heard about it, or I would've spit it across the room in shock.

My wife is an ardent supporter of breastfeeding. And our baby drinks formula.

Both of our babies started out on a boobs-only diet. In both cases, however, we had at one point to face the reality that she just didn't have enough milk.

My wife was the first to admit it. The fact that I'm saying this is a testament to her openness and honesty. Not to get all sexually-bifurcated on you, but if this happened to men, we would never talk about it. I mean, the male gender invented the term "pissing contest." If someone were to tell us that a part of our bodies were insufficient? A check-outtable, oversexualized part? Forget it, we'd never step outside again.

But my wife, she knows how to face reality. Her mother is one of the top lactation consultants in Australia and a mother of seven, and she had to supplement feeds for all but one of her children. There are a million things that can cause a situation like this -- stress, exhaustion, genetics, or simple dehydration. Or it could be something more sinister. For us, it was one of each.

When our daughter was 6 weeks old, my wife got a virus. It led to her becoming dehydrated, which caused her milk supply to crash. She was in bed for days. I had to get all Michael Keaton on her, playing at being a single father, jumping rooms from the baby to her and back again. I can't imagine how my mother-in-law (or anyone else) dealt with newborn twins. (Actually: Maybe by getting stressed out and losing some of her milk. Duh.) It was hard. She recovered, but her milk supply took months of hard work to build up again. For our second child, the reason was less dramatic, but we had to face facts. There simply wasn't enough.

We were hard workers. We were vigilantes. We only wanted what was best for our babies. We had homebirths, only fed our kids organic food (my wife made most of it herself), and I read the bejeezis out of every parenting book I could get my hands on. That was the hardest part of this recent formula shortage, and the frustrating lack of answers from the FDA -- we'd decided to only give our baby cholov yisroel formula, since we believe it's especially important on a spiritual level.

So yes, breastfeeders and overachievers, I'm with you all the way. I'm on your side. I hear what you're saying.

But sometimes, you need to just shut the hell up.

Pixies and Magical Miniature Butlers

Here's where I get all confessional: I kind of hate New York City.

Don't get me wrong--I love living near a zillion cousins-in-law and a gabillion kosher restaurants. But you know how people say that, in L.A., people say "thank you" but mean "f-- you" and in New York, they say "f-- you" but mean "thank you"? Well, I'd rather people hated my guts but were still polite about it.

The Village Voice just came up with their list of 50 things to love about New York. And, fresh off another shift at the Park Slope Food Coop, I fell in love in particular with #25:

25. Except in select 'hoods like Park Slope and perhaps the Upper West Side, children are viewed as mysterious beings, rarely sighted and only occasionally understood, like pixies or magical small butlers. Until they scream, in which case, they are banished from the palace.

Admittedly, we sometimes are not very good about that (example: seeing Scott Pilgrim in midtown, when our infant was totally quiet for an hour and 25 minutes and then screamed her head off during the last fight scene. (I know, go figure.) But in all other instances: yes.

I really do live in two worlds. At home in Brooklyn, everyone has kids -- often 5, 7, 12 or more. When I'm at work, or hanging out with my non-Hasidic friends in the city, though, my kids are like aliens. (Friendly, curious Gizmo-like aliens; not like Alien aliens.) They are treated with curiosity, amazement (childlike amazement, you might say) and utter wonder, the kind given to roadshow zoos and Times Square subway dancers: Do these things really exist? Can people be that cute without the assistance of Japanese animators?

In general, I prefer the Brooklyn side of things. We live there. We don't have to watch what we say, translating every Hasidic idiom we drop and making sure we don't talk about our kids too much. But the other thing about kids is they wear you out. You have other things on your mind that have nothing to do with them (job, bills, the Buffy season you're in the middle of watching), but the things that they have on their mind (food! peeing!) always involve you.

And therefore, it's a relief -- sometimes a huge one -- to remember that the island of Manhattan exists, to jump on a subway and watch your hipster friends fawning and E.T.-ing over your miniature heirs. Oh, you will say to yourself,they really ARE wonderful and miraculous -- and you'll be right.

Of course, there are limits. Whilst hanging out with my friends Jason and Emily a few weeks ago, I casually mentioned how it's hard to find a good babysitter -- whereupon they jumped at the opportunity. "Call us!" they raved. "We love kids! We won't even charge you!" You do realize, I asked them, that we get babysitters at night, when our kids are asleep? "Oh," they said, shuffling their feet. "Never mind." And then they bought me a beer -- as a consolation prize, I guess.

The Rebbe and the Forty-Nine Hipsters

Last week, I told you how the Biala Rebbe was coming to our house. And I've gotten a bunch of emails/Facebooks/twittery questions back, asking the question that should be self-evident: What did he say?

First, let me tell you what I think. I think the Rebbe sees things that the rest of us don't see. I don't know if he's hooked up to any otherworldly powers or has a direct line to G*d that the rest of us don't. But I do think that he's a professional at this sort of thing. The same way that, more than a normal person, a psychologist is going to watch me chewing on my cuticle and know that it probably relates to the fact that I'm always hungry -- I mean, of course they will, it's their job -- the Rebbe also picks up on stuff. Maybe it's tiny physical movements. Maybe it's our auras. I don't know.

My wife and I sat down with the Rebbe. Immediately, before he asked our names (he always asks our names), he turned to her and said: "You're loved from above, and you're loved below. Why are you always stressing out?"

Case in point. It's not like other people aren't stressed. It's not like 98% of the people there weren't stressed. But, in her case -- this week, and the certain circumstances in our lives and what was going on -- yeah, it was pretty freaking relevant. If I would've had to pick a single topic to talk about, it would be the amount of stress that we (and, specifically, she) are under.

So, go fig.

It was a really weird night. Awesome, but weird. I'd kind of figured that it would be a party of sorts, since the Rebbe sees people one at a time and a bunch of us were waiting -- but it wasn't that kind of atmosphere at all. We sat around. We made small talk. It wasn't fun small talk, though; it was the kind of small talk that you make while you're waiting for the results of a particularly invasive exam. Everyone was half in that room and half in their own heads, thinking about what they wanted to say. When a random man with whom you have no straight connection flies from Israel, and you can talk to him about anything, it's a horrible kind of freedom. What's the most important thing in your life? How do you sum that up? What do you ask for a blessing for -- your kids, your job, your books? Everything?

In cases, like ours, you don't even decide. The Rebbe just starts talking. He spoke Hebrew, which I mostly understood, but it helped to have it repeated back in English (by Rabbi Davide, my old teacher at yeshiva) a second time. He asks the questions, and you fill in the blanks. He asked why I spread myself so thin -- to which I could only say, yes. I told him about my new movie and I asked what I should be writing now -- another screenplay, a teen novel, a real novel, or what. He said, it doesn't matter. Just pick something, and go on it 100%. Don't divide myself up.

I think we got lucky -- or unlucky, depending on your vantage point. We were the second people to speak to the Rebbe, so I had the entire rest of the night to chew on what he said. Meanwhile, people in the living room were looking at me for answers, like I'd gotten out of there successfully, so what do they do? The people on their way out didn't look at me like that. They had their own mental stuff going on.

Two Israeli girls who went in there came out satisfied, like they'd gotten the exact thing they asked for. My one stodgy, rationalist friend came out a little shaken, like the Rebbe'd pulled one of his Jedi mind-reading tricks. The person who was the most excited to go in came out crying. It sounds like a collection of riddles, or stories whose answers I'll never know, but in the moment, it was amazing -- like watching one of those grainy family videos that you shouldn't have a right to see, but you do. It really wasn't about fortunetelling. It was about what you boil your life down to, when you've only got one thing to say.

Halfway through our session, the doors to the room slid open. Rabbi Davide stood up, ready to intercept whoever was interrupting. Then my two-year-old daughter, who'd gone to sleep hours ago and who never woke up, ran in through the crack. She wasn't crying or afraid or uneasy. She just ran up, held her arms out, and demanded, "Up." I scooped her up, plopped her on my lap, and introduced her to the Rebbe, and introduced the Rebbe to her right back. Sometimes you don't even need a Hasidic sage to tell you what the most important parts of your life are. Sometimes you just need a conduit.

photos by Dan Sieradski