A Sukkah of One's Own

Jeremy looked out the window to the office and announced it wasn't raining. "There are a few people with umbrellas," he said. "But, just, the wimpy ones -- you know?"

It was 1:15, a little more than halfway through the day. I decided it was time to make my move. So I jumped out to the street and headed for the Bryant Park Sukkah.



Technically, even during this week when we try to eat every meal inside a sukkah, you don't have to duck into one of those fanciful little bamboo huts if it's raining. And I'm at work today in Midtown, not in my awesome neck of Brooklyn with a tabernacle waiting right outside my kitchen.

So you can imagine my surprise when the sukkah -- which is made to house several hundred people at a go -- was dead empty, except for me and the dude who was minding it, the sukkah gatekeeper. Sort of like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, but, well, less Jewish-looking.

Color me disappointed. I remember last year, I had to fight to get through the doors. And today, after a little rain -- warm rain, at that -- the place is as deserted as a synagogue ten minutes after the end of a fast!? Please, people. This is NEW YORK. You are NEW YORKERS. You aren't supposed to be afraid of rain. Especially when it isn't really even raining.

But I ate. It was actually a really incredible experience -- just me, this huge space, watching people hustle back and forth outside the tiny wooden door. I've said the blessing for eating in a sukkah at least fifty times over this holiday (yes, I snack a lot) but this was the first time I said it with real feeling. Like I'd walked ten blocks and hunted down this sukkah to say it. Like I'd said hi to Rick Moranis and struck up 2 minutes of small-talk with him just so I could say this blessing. So the drops that fell on my head, falling from a decoration posed awry, had purpose. Like I'd earned this blessing to say.

Outside, the sky was gray. Inside, there were weird shopping-mall-like autumnal flourishes of plastic leaves. The zygote-rain gave the inside of the sukkah a fine mist, like the spritz of a squirt-bottle at a barbershop. But do I look wet to you? My hair isn't even frizzing.

OK, well -- maybe it's frizzing a little.

But you can handle it. You are, after all, New York.

A Tashlich Confessional

I am a slacker, but a repentant one. The tashlich ceremony, where we ask forgiveness by praying at the water, is supposed to be done on Rosh Hashanah, or right after. I did it this morning, erev Yom Kippur -- not a new phenomenon, even for me, as I sort of publicly confessed in a book (gulp). But today I did it on the subway, riding over the Manhattan Bridge on the way to work.

Which gave me even more things to confess. Last night we went to an engagement party for the producer of my movie, and afterward stopped near our old home to shlug kappores -- that is, to throw a chicken over your head and transfer your sins to the poor bird. (At least, my wife did. I went looking for the PETA people, but since they'd all bailed, I stood by myself and yelled "YOU MURDEROUS BASTARDS!" at her and all our friends.)





But: back to this morning.

"Yom Kippur is said to be a day k'purim – "a day like Purim." This linguistic and thematic connection reflects on the tone of both days, Yom Kippur giving a sense of life's random absurdity and Purim a feeling that even the most outrageous celebrants are in fact approaching the work of reconciliation with God."

- an article on MyJewishLearning.com



My older daughter ran outside wearing a King Achashverosh mask as I left for work. She is seriously the most spiritual of us all.

Half a Life, by Darin Strauss

In Torah times, when someone accidentally killed another person, the victim’s family was allowed to make a revenge killing. The inadvertent murderer’s only protection was to flee to a City of Refuge–one of six cities where the victim’s family was forbidden to take revenge upon them.

It’s a bizarre concept, but it’s kind of thrilling, in the same way that watching horror movies is thrilling: the inevitable chase, the will-he-get-there-in-time?-ness, the fact that you’re not really sure who to root for: the grieving family, or the poor sap whose fault it was.

Darrin Strauss’s new memoir Half a Life, which comes out this week from McSweeney’s, is a case study of this sort of event. At the age of 18, two weeks before graduation, Strauss was driving when he killed a girl from his school. The police called it an accident. But for the past 20 years, Strauss has been haunted by her memory, guilty for having survived, and tortured by the girl’s mother’s plea to him at her funeral: “You’re living for two people now.” (Strangely — and, as in real life, this is never resolved in the book — soon after they promise not to hold it against them, Strauss finds out that the girl’s parents are suing him for several million dollars.)

Through Half a Life, Strauss’s most painful memories are the ones he causes himself. He confesses the accident to women he dates. He constantly confronts her memory in his actions, in his writing, in major life events like going away to college. And he lets it get in the way of his marriage and his fatherhood: “How often do you think about it?” asks his wife, and Strauss is startled by his own answer: “A lot less than I used to think about it.”

These days, the Cities of Refuge no longer exist. But that feeling of guilt that the Torah acknowledged in creating them is no less real, and our basic human need to let this guilt transform us and give our life a new direction–whether it’s starting over again in a new city or transforming that sadness into a profound and moving book.

My Favorite Jewish Writer

Recently, Moment magazine asked me to write an entry for their "Speaking Volumes" series. They approach current Jewish authors and ask them to write about authors who've influenced them.

Over the course of the next five minutes, a name popped out. I said no, then yes, then noyesno again. And just when I was determined that I wasn't going to ask -- I mean, you can't be a rebel 24 hours a day -- I typed the words "Sherman Alexie" and sent it off.
Unlikely enough, the folks at Moment loved it. My favorite Jewish writer was a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene American Indian.

Alexie wasn’t writing about “every Indian’s experience” and he wasn’t trying to. He’s just this person who happens to be a lot of things—Indian, thinker, queer advocate, zombie fan—and his writing encompasses all of it. He’s not the definitive Indian writer any more than he’s the definitive zombie writer; he’s just Sherman Alexie. And that might be the most profound statement he could make.

MORE >

If you don't know about Sherman Alexie, read more here, or read his short story "Every Little Hurricane." Or just go and read my article.

(Confession time, which should come as a surprise to nobody: I was originally going to ask if I could write about Dara Horn, who might be my favorite Jewish writer. And then I checked Moment's site and realized that Dara Horn had already written her own "Speaking Volumes" column. But the more I think about it, the more I'm pretty sure of my choice: Dara Horn writes about Jewish traditions and ideas amazingly. But I didn't know how to write about actually being Jewish until Sherman Alexie came along and punched me between the eyes.)

Win Stuff With Poetry.

How are you feeling about the New Year? Excited? Trepidatious? Nervous? Whatever's going around in your head, you should get it out of your head -- sit down and write a poem. (Or, if you're more in the mood, stand up and yell it out...but make sure you write it down or record it!)

And, once you've done that, send it to mjl.poetry@gmail.com by 5:00 tomorrow night for the chance to win MJL's High Holiday Poetry Contest -- and the chance to win one of a bunch of really cool prizes from Shemspeed, MyJewishLearning, and Simon & Schuster.

Of course, even if you don't enter, keep your eyes peeled and your RSS feed set to stalk the MyJewishLearning blog, where we'll be announcing the winners and reprinting the winning poems.

And if you need some inspiration, check out MJL's High Holidays section -- and our great guide to the Rosh Hashanah season, 10 Days to a Better You.

The Blaxploitation Shofar

This post came our way courtesy of Alan Jay Sufrin, singer/guitarist/bassist/keyboardist for the band Stereo Sinai. He's also the official shofar blower at Anshe Shalom in Chicago this year (and is tremendously excited about it). Here he is with his newest instrument in the recording booth.

So, here we go.

It's the Hebrew month of Elul, during which it's a custom to sound the shofar every day. The blog HearingShofar (which, amazingly, is a year-round blog about shofars) just reprinted a page from the comic Teen Titans #45, from 1976, in which Malcom "Mal" Duncan, DC Comics' first black superhero, is attacked by a shadowy figure who promises to kill him. Then, randomly, he receives a magical ram's horn from the angel Gabriel.

According to HearingShofar:

[T]he tale seems kind of goyish. But hey, Superman was invented by several Jews and much has been written postulating how Jewish legends and archetypes influenced the creation of his character. And we are instructed to sound shofar in times of crisis, just like Mal is.

Which reminds me of a joke that my friend tells way too much -- as illustrated by the illimitable comic artist Mat Tonti. What do pirates say to each other on Rosh Hashanah?

Happy Elul, everyone. T-kee-yorrr!

Beginnings: Jewels of Elul

I decided to be Orthodox in the middle of college. I was on scholarship to a very big school, and I was feeling very small. One of my best friends had just gotten raped and then sort of ignored by most of our circle of friends, and ran away to Europe. I'd thought I was going to New York for college, then realized that going to New York for college actually cost money, and so I was back in Washington D.C. on scholarship and with noplace to live.

I surfed around on people's couches. Some of them were good friends, but more often than not, they were randoms -- people I'd met once or twice at a concert or a club meeting, the ones who noticed I was looking even shabbier than I usually did. I tried never to stay more than a day or two. I didn't want to impose, but more, I didn't really want these people -- these vague people who faded in and out of my life -- to notice I was changing.

And it wasn't like I was choosing to change. It was a side-effect of being around different people every day. No one expected me to say "the Matthue thing," whatever sort of thing I always said, or to behave a certain way. I was getting born again every day. If I wanted to skip breakfast, how would they know I had a rigorous routine of a bowl of Cheerios with soy milk every day since 9th grade? Boom. Today, I am no longer a breakfast eater.

But I had all this time. I'd been hanging out with my friend constantly and now she was gone. I'd been searching for a place and now I was promised one; I just had to wait three weeks for the old tenant to move out. It was maddening. I didn't know what to do with all this time. Study more? No; it was college. Why would I do that? Write a book? I'd just written a book. It took time, but not the time I had free -- that was for late nights and early mornings. In my life now, where I used to call my friend constantly or hang out in the privacy of my room, there was just an empty silence.

On Friday I was crashing with the guitarist from my band. He was going to a concert in Alexandria; he left me the keys on the bureau and headed out. Faced with a rare weekend night with no plans, I asked myself the question that, in college, surrounded by a million other people, you never actually ask: What do I WANT to do?

I went on a walk. I didn't carry anything -- not my phone, not my wallet (which was falling apart anyway), not even an ID, just in case I got lost and drowned or the Washington Monument fell on me or something. I was a notorious worrier. I actually thought about these things constantly. But not tonight. I didn't want to worry about anything.

I ended up at synagogue. I'd always known where it was; it was in the middle of Georgetown. I'd just never gone inside. But a hundred other people walking in at the same time, I could do it without anyone noticing. I prayed in the back of the room, alone and with my prayerbook in front of my face. A hundred other people prayed under their breaths; it was a huge noise composed of whispers. In that noise, I could say anything I wanted.

That's when I decided to start coming back every day.

They say, when you want to become an observant Jew, you should do it with baby steps. Stop watching TV for one Shabbat. Give up the Internet a few Shabbats later. I didn't work that way. I dove in. I had all this time, remember. What was I going to do with it? Something productive. And it ended up being something productive in a way that wasn't going to be like publishing a story or playing a concert. Praying is like giving up your time and your energy and your creativity. But it's like giving it up for a reason; saying that I don't just need to impress the people around me. Believing that that's not all that matters.

I talk a lot; you could say I've made a career out of it. But this talking alone -- talking where nobody else can hear you but G*d -- is, in my very small way, saying that not everything I do has to have a specific reason, for work or for my friends or for my writing. Sometimes, you're just giving it up for G*d. Are my prayers going anywhere? It almost doesn't matter.

I became Orthodox overnight. But becoming religious -- that's taking a lifetime.

Crossposted from Mixed Multitudes. This post is part of Jewels of Elul, which celebrates the Jewish tradition to dedicate the 29 days of the month of Elul to growth and discovery in preparation for the coming high holy days. This year the program is benefiting Beit T'shuvah, a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles. You can subscribe on Jewels of Elul to receive inspirational reflections from public figures each day of the month. You don’t have to be on the blog tour to write a blog post on “The Art of Beginning... Again”. We invite everyone to post this month (August 11th - September 8th) with Jewels of Elul to grow and learn.

We Are Not Eaten By Yaks

The noble explorer C. Alexander London, who was last seen blogging about visiting Jews in strange places for MyJewishLearning, has a new book coming out. It's called We Are Not Eaten By Yaks.

If you don't want to read a book called We Are Not Eaten By Yaks, I probably can't have a meaningful conversation with you, but just in case you need further convincing, Mr. London has created this book trailer. And tell me he doesn't look exactly like Doctor Who, and every time he opens his mouth and an American accent spills out, you want to say, "really?"

Which I hope he doesn't take umbrage at. Most of my friends don't even look like Doctor Who in the first place.

Jews of the Future

Oh, hey! Check it out: My article for Patheos on Orthodox Jews and technology got picked up by the Washington Post and Newsweek!

(I know, it's exactly the same article as I already told you about, but I'm still pretty psyched. Okay. Now I've got to get back to the wedding parties...but I'll see you when I'm back in the States.)

Oh, and thanks to Natasha Nadel for letting me know!

Schindler's List and Hip-Hop Remembrance

When I was in Junior Congregation services at OCJCC-BI in Philadelphia, we spent Tisha B'Av -- the holiday that's the anniversary of the Temple's destruction -- watching depressing Jewish videos. Some of them (Shoah) conveyed the appropriate they're-dead-and-it's-sad response from my 12-year-old self. Some of them (Schindler's List -- specifically, the scenes of Oskar Schindler in bed with the naked bouncing-breasty women getting all pogo-stick on top of him*) left, uh, a different image in my head.

The London-born, Jerusalem-based poet Danny Raphael just laid down some rhymes of remembrance. It's only 2 minutes long -- and, back in 8th grade, I wasn't very open to appreciating hip-hop -- but I'd like to think that I would've appreciated this.



* -- It feels like heresy to say, but as a geeky barely-teenage boy who'd just seen Jurassic Park (loved it) and was expecting something I could do a Hebrew School book report on, it was unexpected, to say the least. There was plenty of stuff that depressed and inspired me, as well, but when I left the theater that day, the sole image that stuck with me was not a skeleton-thin man behind a barbed-wire fence but a full-bodied woman who touched off a strange chord of both attraction and haunting in my spread-wide-open impressionable mind.

Now, this isn't to say that I disapprove or disagree with the film. I think the only people who wouldn't say Schindler's List is a work of art are either anti-Semites or jealous (the latter category includes all you film-school snobs). The most common feedback I get from my book about becoming religious is that it'd be a great story except for all the cursing and sex. Real life is real life, and portrayals of life are going to contain stuff that isn't exactly ready for prime time. Was I ready for it as a kid? I don't know. Although, on the other hand, most of my formative life-changing experiences were things I wasn't ready for. And this would be the footnote that's longer than my actual blog post.

Out of Office, But Still into You

Hey! So by the time you're reading this, I'm going to be far, far away, running to Israel for this odd Young Jewish Innovators convention. If you miss talking to me, TeensReadToo just posted a pretty lengthy interview with me about Losers, Neil Gaiman, the ZZ Top/Hasidic Jewish episode of The Simpsons, and a bunch of other stuff. And A Wrinkle in Time comes up for the fourth time this week. Here's a cool deleted-scenes type moment from Losers:

You have the chance to go back and change a scene from one of your previous releases. What book would you choose, what scene would you change, and how would you alter it?

There's one scene in LOSERS about a girl Jupiter likes, and how they both wind up in a very random and very suddenly emotional place, and he winds up discovering her eating disorder...and then something big happens. I totally understand why we took it out -- it was too much of an unexpected turn in the book, and it didn't really fit with everything else that was happening to Jupiter -- but I still think it's a great scene, and it still fits into the Jupiter chronology. It's been getting under my skin, how a 14-year-old guy deals with dating someone who has an eating disorder, and I think it might be growing into its own book.
keep reading > 

Punk Torah Prayerbook

On MyJewishLearning, I interview Patrick Aleph and Michael Sabani about the Punk Torah Siddur that they wrote designed, and released. My favorite part:

Some of the prayers — especially the bedtime shema — are surprisingly peaceful for, well, someone who shouts for a living. How’d you swing that?

Patrick: That’s fair. I’m in a band where I scream and roll around on the floor, but there’s a place for meditation in every person’s life. This is the best example I can give of this: I was at Jewlicious, and I was working in the kitchen with Sasha Edge and her father, who catered it — they’re screaming and there’s knives everywhere, and fire. But then when it was time for Shabbos, we ended up making motzi over a vegan cookie and drinking Kedem grape juice and some of the back-of-the-house volunteers had a great, awesome, totally spiritual and peaceful moment. If you’re a rambunctious person like myself, it’s even more important.

read the rest >

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

Almost a Restaurant Review

There's a new kosher restaurant right near our office. It's called Tiberias. The food looks yummy and the decor looks great and, rarest of all for a kosher restaurant (or, as I'm given to understand through reading way too many Anthony Bourdain books, rare for the restaurant business in general), the owners are actually perched by the door, welcoming people, and happy for you to be there. Oh, and hey -- they're giving out free coffee.

And yet, I'm not there.

Let me start from the beginning: Last night, I made the Best Sandwich Ever. (I know because I Twittered about it and everyone else on Twitter agreed.) And, over the course of arguing with one daughter about the social propriety of wearing a bathing suit to school and changing the other daughter's diapers, I kinda forgot to put it in my backpack.

So here I am, at work, starving, and the day is close to half over. I weigh my choices with all the usual overanalysis -- can it be vegan, or do I need protein? how cheap is cheap enough? when's the last time i ate pizza? -- and decide to hit the local kosher Dunkin' Donuts for a bagel.

And, on the way, I stumble into Tiberias.

At first I don't even know what's going on. All I see is two grinning guys out front, kissing hands and shaking babies and looking like they just won the lottery. One of them stops me -- the owner, it turns out. Today's the first day of business. He's super excited to be there. There is, he mentions several times, free iced coffee.

But the reason I stopped drinking iced coffee is the same reason my brain is working overtime: because I have an anxiety disorder, and I think too much, and caffeine only exacerbates it.

I'm peeking in the counters, and there are actually vegetables (another kosher restaurant rarity) and they look beautiful -- the eggplant sliced thick and juicy; corn as yellow as a field of radioactive flowers; perfectly grilled zucchini and red peppers. The menu in my hand lists the prices, and there's nothing less than $6.95. Except for soup, but I'm talking real stomach-filling food. The real meal meals are closer to $15.

I do the lunchtime math in my head. Packing my own sandwich costs $2 or so. Buying pizza, which is filling but not healthy, is $5 or $6. For another dollar or two, I could eat here, except that that's 20% of a meal, which is to say, I could eat out 5 times at a junky restaurant for every 4 times that I eat at this place. Or I could just pack lunch, save all that money, and spend it on my kids instead. Or save it for our trip to Australia. Or that subscription to McSweeneys that I really want.

But, really, is all this worth arguing about (or doing math over)? Kosher food, as Tamar says, is expensive. Kosher food in Midtown is expensive squared. We pay for convenience, and that convenience is multiplied when you're Jewish -- you're not merely paying for the food to be made for you, you're paying for someone else to pick out your vegetables and look for the kosher markings on the hummus carton and the bagels you would otherwise be checking out yourself. Elie Kaunfer wrote a couple months ago that most Jews don't know how to make their own matzah, and that's true, but that's just the tip of the iceberg -- there is no Jewish working class. There are upper-class people who can pay $20 for lunch, and there's this scraping-the-barrel class that packs our own lunch...or forgets to.

I do the Walk of Shame. I shuffle my feet the three storefronts down, to the donut store. I order a bagel.

The woman beside me turns around and checks out my yarmulke so deliberately that she's either making sure I'm Jewish or sizing me up for her niece. "You know," she remarks casually, "there's a new kosher restaurant that just opened up down the street. They're serving free iced coffee and it looks really good."

My face goes from zero to blushing. "I know," I manage to stammer. "I'm going to check it out when...when I'm eating lunch for real."

"I'm sorry," she gasps, seeing that she's offended me, but not knowing why. Meanwhile, I gaze at the intrepid worker who's currently toasting my bagel, enabling me to make it to 5:00 today...and wondering whether I shouldn't be toasting my own bagels instead.

http://store.mcsweeneys.net/index.cfm/fuseaction/catalog.detail/object_id/aa5ec80d-0bc9-45ea-9bce-275ed0c28bb9/McSweeneysIssue27.cfm

The Orthodox Jersey Shore

When Frum Satire showed me In Over Our Heads -- billed as "the first unscripted Jewish reality television series" -- my knee-jerk reaction was, is it good for Orthodox Jews? The first episode followed women on a trip to the mikveh, a bath used for, uh, spiritual cleanliness (or, "ending the period of not having sex and transitioning into having sex," as one character puts it).

The second episode is less abrasively sex-centric, but manages to be even more sexual: Our heroes leave their religious community for the night, go into the city, and stay up all night at a dance club.


The verdict's still out. When new, odd Orthodox articles or stories or videos come out, I get a surge of overprotectiveness, because if you're Orthodox, every non-Orthodox person you meet over the next month will make all sorts of sweeping generalizations that your life is exactly like the thing they saw on YouTube. (If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not -- you won't believe how many people asked me which Hasidic folk song Lady Gaga stole the hook to "Bad Romance" from.)

The show has its stronger and weaker moments. I'd be the last person to argue that dancing isn't a form of spirituality, but I cringe watching one Orthodox character struggle to defend her spiritual practice, eyelids fluttering from being up all night while scarfing down coffee, while sitting next to some non-Orthodox guy who keeps cutting her off and cursing at her. "A lot of people are afraid of what's inside them and don't express it," she says. "But if you express it, then you're free." On the other hand, it's flippin' reality TV. Of course these people aren't at their most coherent state.

The series has some moments of blinding clarity, and they've picked strong, smart, and likeable characters. We want to know these people. In some way, we do know them. Not just those of us who have friends, family, or who've even been those kids sneaking out at night from Monsey to the city, but for all of us who've been different.

I think I will keep watching In Over Our Heads, even if I'm not totally with it yet. It feels like we're watching a rehearsal for something. I'm not sure what it is yet -- they might not know either, either the producers or the stars -- but I'm excited to see it when it happens.

Sports Kippah

Like we told you before, real Jews wear hats. Don't wear a hat? Then you're not a real Jew. Unless, of course, you wear a doily, in which case you're the Jewiest Jew of all.

But, you might ask, what if I don't like wearing a kippah? What if I think they're too showy? Or too holier-than-though? Or all of mine are in the wash? What if -- you may thunder, evoking a wrath like the first time G-d saw the Golden Calf -- I care about global warming and the ozone layer and cancer and all that stuff, and I want to keep the sun out of my eyes? What if I play sports? What if I'm an outfielder in baseball and I need to block the sun out of my eyes to call out someone? What are you trying to say, Roth -- that real Jews don't play sports?

Whoa, there, imaginary person -- calm down. People like you are the reason that the YamuKap was invented.

Now, one of my friends called it "the most hideous article of Jewish clothing ever invented." And that person does have a point -- it's not like a yarmulke has a special power that an average everyday hat, doily, or towel thrown over one's head can't replace. But I do have to admit, there's something beautiful if inelegant about wearing a Yamukap -- a yarmulke is supposed to keep you mindful of God, and I don't think I could forget for a second that I was wearing this thing, if I was wearing it.

Which I'm not. Because I'm a geek and a tech and a writer. I use the internet, learn Talmud with Rashi, and I never go outside. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't. And for that, you'll always have the Yamukap.



Thanks to Aaron Roller of Mimaamakim for this one. You're a prince.

The Great Parade

I've got my first music writing gig in a while, reviewing the new Shondes album for the Forward. And while it's weird to be listening to music in the middle of Sefirat HaOmer, it's also kind of cool. The other day, right before my gig, I got a song stuck in my head ("Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, if you were wondering). I was fasting from music, but I could still taste it, so to speak -- much like Roger Ebert, who can no longer eat food due to cancer, writes about still getting ghost tastes in his mouth.

And then yesterday was Lag BaOmer, the joyful day that ends it all.

No matter where in the world you are for Lag BaOmer, either Meron or not in Meron, there are crazy celebrations. In Crown Heights yesterday, we stumbled upon a huge parade, a parade that was more like a March on Washington -- literally thousands of little Hasid-lets in bright orange T-shirts worn above white long-sleeve shirts. In the grand tradition of Hasidic events with superlative non-descriptive titles like The Big Event, yesterday's festivities were known as The Great Parade.

And I know this won't mean anything to 99% of you, but it was sort of the Hasidic equivalent of a Beatles reunion show, if the Beatles had never played on stage together before. The (Great!) Parade's three headliners were all one-namers, like Madonna or Prince: Lipa! MBD! Avrohom Fried (who, okay, isn't a one-namer, but has that star appeal nonetheless). And -- and, okay, this was a big one, especially for those of us who are under two years old -- Uncle Moishy!

The biggest show going on wasn't even on the stage. It was in the streets. Intent on making my family happy, I trudged to the end of the line that snaked outside the barbershop, where dozens of men waited for their first haircut in 33 days. Ahead of me, a bunch of people were recounting the age-old debate about whether the Lubavitcher Rebbe is really the Messiah -- since the star-studded event brought in thousands of newcomers to Crown Heights, and there's really only one thing that newcomers to Crown Heights talk about. Behind me, people were discussing the merits of Uncle Moishy's music. As you can imagine, I have some pretty strong opinions -- I'm a huge fan, and I think that Uncle Moishy honestly gets what kids want to hear. My only serious gripe is that, since my Hebrew name is Moishy, there's really no way my daughter can have an Uncle Moishy. Unless he's an uncle-in-law. But, uh...no.

The day went on. Highlight: the What Will Happen When the Messiah Shows Up float, which had a bunch of plastic action figures rising from elaborately-done Styrofoam graves, and a conveyor-belt of babies with impromptu pasted-on cotton-ball beards going around and around in a circle of resurrection. Words can't begin to express how cool it was, and I honestly pray that the real thing, when it happens, will look as cool. Low point: The petting zoo. I honestly don't think I've ever seen more depressed animals. I think the kids were picking up on it, too -- kids were prodding the giant turtle to come out of its shell, which, if you were that turtle, was no incentive to; and there was a monkey inside a cage that was alternately brooding in a corner and having a psychotic meltdown. I'm pretty sure it was mostly the fault of the booking company, and not the parade managers, but still: not cool, folks. And I highly doubt that Shimon bar Yohai's followers had giant turtles or monkeys or ibexes around when they went into the forest for their Lag BaOmer celebrations.

Oh, other high point: Bumping into the awesome singer Dov Rosenblatt (and my brother-in-law Boz, who teaches awesome classes) at a booth for Jnet. In his post-Blue Fringe life, he's moved to Los Angeles and started making musical iPod programs. I was hoping he was performing, but he was just there to have a good time. As is, on Lag BaOmer of all days, totally acceptable.

And now that I can listen to music, it feels like I should binge. My biggest urge so far has been to hear the They Might Be Giants song "Subliminal," which isn't even one of my favorite songs of theirs. But who am I to judge? Like Roger Ebert and his food memories, I don't have control over what my ears want.

Dodging Suicide Bombs

This morning I was walking to work from the subway station, nose stuck in a book as usual. We are the People of the Book, after all; and I follow J.K. Rowling's advice that, any time you're not doing anything else, you should read. I didn't stop until I reached the I HEART N.Y. gift shop on the ground floor of our office building, and then I looked up from the page, saw a kid, and froze. Half of my body wanted to throw up, and the other half wanted to cry.

Sorry -- it's a really emotional week. But let me explain:

That book was Almost Dead, the novel written by our recent Authors' Blog correspondent Assaf Gavron {read his posts here}. It's a book about an Israeli tech geek who lives through several suicide bombings. All the reviews so far have been describing it as a comedy -- and it is funny, you should be warned -- but more than that, it's a real fast-moving, cerebral jaunt through the mind of an average Israeli.

And Eitan Enoch is an average Israeli. He's a chilled-out guy who has his normal routine, taking the Little No. 5 maxi-taxi to work every day in Tel Aviv, working at a time management company, living with his ex-fiancee Duchi (which is a common-enough Israeli nickname, but only occurs to me now that it wouldn't be an out-of-place name on Jersey Shore). When he stumbles into celebrity as a result of his bizarre survival talent, the press demands that Enoch feel angry, or grateful, or demand revenge on the Palestinian population. He does none of them -- he's just more than a bit perplexed, and, as he says on the country's most popular TV show, he doesn't really hate anyone.

Enoch's reactions to the bombs -- and to his bizarre survival skills -- are funny, embarrassing, honest, and real. It's not the gruff caricature of the Israeli (although there is plenty of that, too, especially in his relationship with Duchi). More than any other attempt I've seen, Gavron gets to the heart of the Israeli attitude about Palestinians, and about living in a country where going out to dinner is as dangerous as walking into a combat zone, and doesn't reduce it to an equation of settlers and refugees. Israel is a place where peace is a very fragile and very carefully-constructed illusion, and Gavron depicts both parts with spine-shivering accuracy: both the world behind it and the illusion itself.

So that's what I was thinking about when I was reading this morning. And then, standing outside the T-shirt store, I spotted a boy, maybe six years old, with a vivid shock of red hair. And he looked exactly like the boy in M.I.A.'s new video -- which, if you haven't heard, is the controversy of the moment, depicting red-haired men and boys being rounded up by the U.S. military, taken into the desert, and brutally shot. Starting with the six-year-old boy.

I don't know what to think. Is the world around us getting more violent because our books and movies are? Or are our books and movies getting more violent because the world around us is? Dammit, most of the books that I feel compelled to run up to everyone I know and shake them by the shoulders and shout, "READ THIS!" are books that make me feel good. Almost Dead is definitely not a book that makes me feel good. But it's still a book that I think nearly everyone I know can benefit from reading -- so that's my recommendation.

Any Given Hasid

This morning I got an email from my friend Dugans (of the awesome band Dreams in Static) asking, "Hey, isn't that you on some random person's blog?"

Yep! Turns out it is. Tess Lynch, a writer and actor in LA, weighed in on the Hasidim-vs.-hipsters debacle in Williamsburg. I guess she was scrambling for a picture of Williamsburg folks, and even though my memoir about becoming a Hasid took place in San Francisco and the photo was taken in Jerusalem, I looked the part.

Her observations about the bike-lane controversy are actually pretty astute and non-one-sided. To wit:

Obviously religious beliefs, particularly ones that have their roots in the way-back-in-the-day, aren’t what one would call “flexible” or “evolutionary” or “susceptible to the charms of trends like the sort sold at American Apparel.”
...
Because you are doing something great for the environment, you bikers can have my respect (1 point for you); but because you ignore traffic rules so much of the time, I am going to award one point to the Satmars.

I've never wrote about the issue, although a bunch of people (including the editor of BrooklynTheBorough.com, where, coincidentally, the photo of me was lifted from) have asked. But, for about five minutes, I'm going to let it fly. Hasidim, hipsters, hold onto your outdated hats: All of you are kind of wrong.

So: I've always believed that one person's autonomy stops where another person's starts. Bikers (and bike lanes) are inevitable when you live in the city -- the same way billboards in your face and taxi drivers honking at 6 A.M. are inevitable when you live in the city -- but I think what's really an issue, as you astutely pointed out, isn't the *actual* bike-riding; it's the in-your-face-ness of both the Hasidim and the hipsters.

No one lives in Williamsburg because of convenience. It's expensive, it's crowded, pretty much every wall in the entire borough leaks; it's actually pretty gnarly. My cool-kid friends who live in Williamsburg keep saying they live there because it's cheap. (It's not. A few years ago, I was paying $800 a month for a closet; now that closet is something like $1200.) My Hasidic friends live there because it's where their families have lived there forever. But the kids are drawn to Williamsburg because of the scene and their friends, yes, but also because of the ambiance of living among the Hasidim and the abandoned-warehouse aesthetic. The Hasidim living there don't move out to Monsey or Kiryas Yoel because of family and friends and because they've lived there forever, but also because living in Brooklyn is special -- as one of my cousins put it, "we like to be around a little diversity."

(And yes, there will always be the creepy outsiders, like all those Craigslist stories of a Hasidic guy who proposition a random woman for sex -- but they're a huge minority. I mean, I've met Hasidic pervs, but in a microscopic amount compared to the amount of non-Hasidic pervs I've met; even proportionally.) Again, that's the price of living in New York City -- there are several million people in a very small space, and you will come into contact with most of them.

That said, there's one thing I've learned from living in a very cramped Brooklyn apartment with a wildly copulating couple on one side and someone with every major sneezing disease on the other: You learn to ignore things. You learn to let people have their privacy, to avert your eyes when immodesty rears its naked head, and to politely turn your music up to cover up the mucous and the "Yeah, baby, just like that!"s. You also learn to respect other people: You give your seat to a pregnant woman on the subway. You step out of the way of a person with a cane. And whether you're a dude in Spandex shorts or a chick in Spandex anything (or vice versa), you don't shove yourself in front of people who have never in their lives wished to see that much of you.

Ms. Lynch herself gets it. As she writes:

By the way, in case you didn’t know, as the hipster in the NYMag article seemed to not know: don’t go around damning God in front of a Hasidic jew. It is a bad idea and makes you look like a real idiot. I can do it here because I’m posting a blog and there is no one around to make uncomfortable but myself.

That said, it's also kind of creepy that she lifted a random photo of me and my rabbi and plastered it to an article talking about Hasidim at their worst. I'd hate for one of my kid's friends to be reading about Hasidic protesters and Hasidic perverts and then they look up and think, hey!, I know that guy. We can talk about autonomy, but it's important to remember that it's not "the Hasidim" or "the hipsters" we're hating on -- it's a bunch of individuals who happen to live in the same neighborhood.

Ms. Lynch ends the article with a great proposal: that a cross-cultural barbershop should open, specializing in beards. The idea is a great one, but sadly, it'll never happen. We don't cut or trim our beards. That's why they're all bushy and upside-down Jew-fro-y. But maybe we can all sit out on the stoops and drink Manischewitz together out of brown paper bags some time?

Where Are You At Sunset?

Three weeks into Sefirat HaOmer, and I don't want to ayin hara myself, but it's the first time that we've gotten this far.

I'm usually really good at doing it for myself, at completing this strange and obsessive ritual that us Jewish people have. Starting on the second night of Passover, and lasting until the first night of Shavuot exactly 50 days later, we count Omer. Omer used to be a measure of wheat that was brought to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. These days, omer means a number. And that's basically it. On the first night we say "today is the first day of the omer," and on the second we say "today is the second day of the omer," and so on, up to and including Day 49. Usually, I say it during the evening prayers.

This year, though, I'm draggin' my wife along.

I don't mean this to sound sexist, although given the circumstances, it almost inevitably will: gung-ho religious-nut boy yanks his lady friend along with his particular brand of fundamentalism. But the reality is more like, in my wife's family, the men always counted omer and the women never really did. Until now. (Cue lightning striking.)

We've worked it into a little ritual for our family. Usually we count right at sunset, after we've put the baby to sleep. We'll have dinner (both of us! eating together! the same food! every night! for us, this is revolutionary). We'll hang out a bit, pack for our upcoming move (tomorrow, bli ayin hara), and watch the sun go down. And then as soon as it's dark, one of us will inevitably remind the other by running up to shim and saying, with no prelude, "Baruch!"

Baruch, of course, is the first word in most Hebrew blessings. Including the blessing over counting the omer.

There's a big rabbinical debate over counting omer. Not whether you're supposed to or not --more or less everyone agrees (a rarity, for Judaism) that the omer counts as a mitzvah, or a commandment. But is it one big mitzvah to count all 49 nights, or is counting each night a different mitzvah? The conclusion that the rabbis of the Talmud reached -- which, of course, is more of a compromise than a conclusion -- is that, if you remembered to count every night so far, then you should say a blessing. If you forgot, even for one day, then you can still count -- but you can't score with the blessing. (All of this, of course, is a way-simplified version of the more-or-less official account of how to count the omer on MJL.)

And that's also a roundabout way to say: We haven't forgotten yet. And we're still counting with a blessing.

Yes, it's a bit self-serving. But that's because I'm a little bit proud of us, and a little bit astounded at us, too. Wonder Twin powers, activate.

Image thanks to DWallach.