What Makes You Happy

Hand-written scrawl on a bright orange piece of photocopy paper hanging on the street in Crown Heights:

ADAR IS NOT
OVER YET

WHAT ARE YOU
DOING TODAY
TO BE HAPPY?
For all my misgivings about living in the seat of religious Brooklyn, there are things which make me happy. Wildly happy. For all the weird and sometimes uncomfortable social things that happen -- I grew up secular, and yes, I still sometimes extend my hand to shake when meeting women (some of them in my family-in-law -- double ug), I will never tire or de-inspire of seeing these simple, devotion-motivated, joy-inflicted singularly happy testaments to God. Like remembering the commandment that we're supposed to be happy for all of Adar.

So, full disclosure: Yesterday, I danced with my daughter and invited a friend over for sushi when I ran into him in the street and watched the Muppet Show before bed. What can I do to top that today? I'd love to go to the NYC Teen Author Festival, but my #1 contender makes me sound like a total loser: get to bed early.

Punk Rock Parsha

While Googling for Torah texts, the last thing you expect to pop up is the kinetic face of your new favorite band. But Patrick A., the lead singer of Atlanta-based Can Can, just started posting his thoughts on the weekly Torah portion on YouTube -- starting last week with Tetzaveh, and onto this week's confrontation of the Golden Calf.

In Patrick's reading, the Children of Israel emerge from the sin of the Calf with a valuable lesson learned -- a lesson in the importance of avoiding groupthink and learning to think independently. In short, he says, the Torah teaches that individuality and nonconformity is the only way to go, and especially the only way to form a meaningful relationship with God -- which, to me at least, seems like the most punk-rock thing of all.

Shalach Mones Madness

Someone driving through our part of Brooklyn honked at Itta and I, waving us over from the sidewalk. "What's going on?" she said. "Is this a bank robbery, or is it some kind of Jewish holiday?"

It was a fair question, considering we were standing next to a seven-foot-tall in all black clothes and a Mexican wrestler mask. This was my first Purim in a Hasidic neighborhood, and it was literally swarming with people: pre-tween geishas hammered on our neighbor's door. A woman in full turquoise burqa walked down the street next to a man in a streimel and those tight white stockings. People ran everywhere, literally throwing candy at each other at times, and squeezing chocolate bars into people's mail slots at others. "This is like Halloween, but the way Jews celebrate it," Itta pointed out. "By giving people candy instead of demanding it."

I've always been a Halloween-positive boy myself, but yesterday, I had to agree: it was pretty much a madhouse of goodwill and thanksgiving. We made thirty-two of our shalach mones packages, and by the day's end we were down to three. (Frum Satire and his friend, paying us a surprise visit, knocked it down to one.) All told, 'twas better to give than to receive, and it was a mad amount of fun as well.

But, because it's not bad to receive as well, here are my shalach manot highlights of the year:

• A family friend's house had do-it-yourself shalach manot -- there were a row of boxes, both new things and (packaged) food traded in from other shalach moneses earlier that day. "So you guys would like, what, nice chocolate?" she asked, ready to drop in a big old bar that was fancy and Swiss. "No way," I said. It's true -- we're not chocolate people. "Your wife wouldn't like that?" she said. "What should I give her..." she rumbled through the box, pulling out a tin and making a face -- "sardines?" "Actually," I said, "she loves sardines." (Don't worry -- they also gave us two pineapples.)
  
  
• Somewhere along the line (post-Shushan, pre-me becoming observant) a custom started that, ideally, you should give two different kinds of food -- that is, for which you should say two different kinds of blessings -- for Purim. We couldn't find the source for this anywhere, and this year, my in-laws gave wurst and vodka. 40% alcohol, 110% Russian.
  
  
• Berwin, the aforementioned Mexican wrestler, handed us a bodega-bag with a really nice bottle of wine and a three-pound box of granola. I don't understand it, either.
  
  
• Matisyahu and his family gave out falafel, hummus, and vegetables in reusable enviro-plastic containers, along with a plea to keep the Purim-related waste to a minimum -- which was both good advice, and necessary.

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Oh, NOES. Coming slightly behind the Watchmen Babies on The Simpsons is this -- a funked-out '80s recreation of the Minutemen. I love the nod to Scooby-Doo cartoons, but the nod to Jem is what you'll need to rewind and watch in slow motion to catch.

O, Monday.

Jewish Divorce: What You Need to Know

Among the religious community, there's a huge problem of agunot -- that is, women who want a divorce from their husbands, frequently because of abuse or other severe problems, and whose husbands refuse to grant the divorce. Because a Jewish legal stipulation puts divorce solely in the husband's court -- a safeguard from when husbands were required to provide food, money and shelter for their wives, whether or not they were still "together" -- it's become a huge problem in recent times, when to be spiteful, malicious, or merely because of indifference, some men will divorce their wives, sometimes even dating or remarrying, without granting their wife a get.

Among the religious community, there are also a number of insanely heroic people who have made it their life's work to stop these miserable excuses for people. At the forefront of this battle is Mavoi Satum, whose former president, Inbal Freund, is also a gifted writer and performance poet.

She and artist Chari Pere (whose work, btw, you'll be seeing on MJL pretty soon) went to visit one of Mavoi Satum's clients, spent two hours interviewing her and listening to her story, and developed this three-page comic. Pass it around. Spread it everywhere. And let people know that prenuptial agreements aren't just for Donald Trump and his prospective ex-wives -- they're for anyone who wants to avoid years and possibly decades of heartache, legal battles, and trauma for kids that you haven't even conceived of yet.

Go here to read the comic, or here to download a printable PDF.

How Jews Look

A while ago, I got an email from some chick saying asking if I could talk about about being shomer negiah. Yes, it sounds totally sketchy, but Judy Prays was a filmmaker and making a documentary, and you all know how much I like to talk. So, in that context, it was less sketchy -- not much less, but less.

When I started working at MyJewishLearning, one of my first gigs was to start producing short films. I called in the heavy artillery -- by which I mean, Judy -- and we set to work on creating a sort of anti-how-to series.

By which I mean, instead of showing how people should do things, we showed how Jews actually do do them.

The first one premieres today! Check it out:


And this all comes just in time for this week's Torah portion: It's all about the clothes of the High Priest! Whoo, mysterious.