debka_notion

During learning tonight, Steve, wotyfree and I had a discussion about how we speak about the opposite sex. The starting point was the combination of looking at the curses to Eve in Genesis 3:16 and comparing with Genesis 4:7 (might be verse 6- it's the warning G-d gives to Cain), and thinking about gender, sexuality and sin. From there, things came around to my mention of being at Steve's for shabbos dinner a few weeks ago and his roommates making some comments in front of me that were quite objectifying to women, without thinking about it at all. After some discussion, he insisted that making objectifying comments about women, particularly sexual comments relating to their appearance, was a frequent and necessary piece of male bonding. I objected- there must be some way for men to bond without being derogatory to women, right?

But it has set me to thinking about how I speak about men (I'm generally pretty uncomfortable discussing men's appearance in general, although I will mention that someone is attractive, if it's relevant- I find the notion of saying more than that very uncomfortable in the vast majority of situations. I wonder if that's just me.), and how one can discuss appearance without objectifying the person about whom one is speaking.

Even more so, it is pushing me to consider how men are and are not reached by feminism, and how I'm supposed to react to that. It is becoming more and more clear that the way that feminism reaches women is different from the way that it reaches men, and how complex that relationship can be. It troubles me, but I feel clueless about how to treat the issue.

I attended my first rally tonight. It was in reaction to a woman having been arrested a couple of weeks ago for wearing a tallit at the kotel. It was a walk and then a big crowd listening to some sort of speakers whom I couldn't understand. So after a bit of that, I left early to walk home with a friend who had to get back to working on application essays for next year. The rally was an interesting mix of people, and included a wide variety of folks I knew- I saw many, many of my classmates, some friends from RRC, other friends from the Conservative Yeshiva, etc, etc.

It got a little confusing as part of the rally ended up being more general "take back Jerusalem from the Hareidim" in ways that were about letting more things be open on Shabbat, instead of being focused on the kotel issue and religious freedom there. One of my friends commented that it was like there were two rallies squished together: one of non-hareidi religious people talking about the kotel, and another of secular folks talking more broadly about control of Jerusalem. So the posters around me said things (in Hebrew, but I'm too lazy to type in Hebrew right now) like "There's more than one way to be a Jew" and "Free the Kotel a Second Time".

At one point some folks behind us lit a very small fire and got some sort of hot air balloon lit and going, and then released it, so that it flew away over the crowd. It distracted pretty much everyone briefly. It was a lovely thing to watch, but left me quite concerned as it was this flying thing with fire in it, roaming freely on the winds. I just dearly hope that it burned out before it hit anything inflammable...

I'm bringing a vegetable side dish to Thanksgiving dinner, and I was just thinking that I'd love to bring brussel sprouts- except that a. they're best with butter, and b. I haven't seen any here yet. So I then started trying to look up when brussel sprout season was in Israel, and found out just about nothing.

Anyways, I realize that most people are not so fond of brussel sprouts. I don't think that my tastes are so unusual, but then I suggest beets or brussel sprouts (or often enough even squash) as if they're normal foods, and often enough, I get funny looks. So it's probably best that I don't have them to make, so that I can't bring them to my poor Thanksgiving dinner hostess. (But what to make instead? I don't know, yet. We'll see what inspiration strikes.)

Regardless, something about brussel sprouts is currently striking me as Thanksgiving-ish. Oh well.

I went on Encounter on Thursday and Friday (Encounter being a program to take Diaspora Jews to meet Palestinians interested in working for peace, non-violence, etc and to have a face-to-face encounter with Palestinian culture, people, space, etc), leaving Thursday morning and returning home about an hour before Shabbat on Friday. It was not quite what I was expecting (whatever that was), but it was quite fascinating. I'm still really not so sure of what to make of the experience, but writing never hurts, so here I go.

I think my biggest moment of "insight" was after hearing a panel of 3 Palestinian women talk about some of their experiences and thoughts. Several of the stories that they told about being Palestinian and interacting with the outside world hit precisely the tropes of diaspora Jewish experience and pain. The ones I heard and remembered were a story of an old woman who keeps the keys to her house in what is now Israel on a chain around her neck, another woman telling us that in one context she'd been asked if she had a tail or horns, and her protesting that she is just as human as anyone- and in an echo (perhaps conscious, perhaps not) of Shakespeare, "offering" to cut herself to show that she bleeds, just like anyone else. The former stories reminded me of dozens of the classic Jewish stories of exile and antisemitism, the stories that became pretty strongly entrenched in my own head just from growing up as a Jewish kid. There's something about that correspondence that made me think about cycles of abuse- that children who have been abused often grow up to be abusers, no matter how much they never wanted to. It made me think about the whole situation in terms of needing healing, rather than just a political thing, which is an entirely different framework, for me at least. I don't know where to go with it from there, especially since I think that the metaphor is, of course, far too simplistic to be able to model from exclusively. Still, it makes me wonder about the adaptation of therapeutic techniques for use in this situation or others like it.

It also gives messages about the experience of diaspora that in many ways clash inherently with the ways that I generally think about it. Diaspora for Jews today is not so painful, at least in the USA, or at least for me. I think that there is even a lot of good that it has done and a lot of good that Jews in the diaspora can do as well. And yet, this paradigm seems to make diaspora inherently a scarring experience, unless you're willing to read the metaphor as the experience of being exiled and being mistreated in that exile as the scarring experience, which I think is a fair read. After all, I did just say that the metaphor was pretty broad-brush-strokes, not specific.

I went from Encounter to a shabbat dinner where politics were discussed and the classic line of "they want to kill us, why shouldn't we kill them first" was uttered. It was quite the counterpoint to the Encounter experience. The thing is, there's a certain realism and undeniable power to that response. Encounter presented one basic viewpoint, but didn't try to pretend that the people we spoke with there were speaking from a majority perspective- it was pretty clear that they didn't.

It's all this question of how power is best handled, and how you recover from whatever use of power you make- because it seems like inherently any use of power is the wrong use, but not using it is also a wrong use. One of the speakers at Encounter talked about how if we can find a way to make peace, it will inherently be acceptable to G-d. That may be, but it seems like it's a game stacked against it in ways that I am finding more and more disturbing as I start to make myself actually pay attention.

It also is making me think a lot about loyalty, justice and mercy, but I don't really have words for that discussion yet, and it's coming up on bedtime (and this post is getting really long), so it will have to wait.

My "Halakha Le'Maaseh" (Practical Jewish Law, in quotes for a reason, as you will soon see) class made me frustrated and angry as all get out, yesterday. This is unusual in degree, not in nature, as the teacher of the class has rather unusual views and standards, (he wants to derive pretty much All his halakhic practice from the Talmud, ignoring or playing pretty fast and loose with all later sources and generally treating them as optional interpretations of the Gemara rather than as powerful sources in their own right) and tells them to us as a major piece of the class- while of course telling us that his purpose is not to persuade us that his way is right. So I'm often interested in what he has to say while being frustrated that it's being presented in a class billed as halakha le'maaseh, because it isn't, generally, and there's plenty of detail on actual practice that would be awfully useful to go into instead. He also goes through it all too fast to really dig in to the implications of various sources and of what he's saying, so it all just gets stirred up and then not dealt with for real. When he brings a gemara, reads it to us quickly and explains it his way, very quickly, and only dealing with the parts he finds relevant- well, it feels like a bit of a cheat to me. But we also do only have so much time, and he already gives us far more prep work than can be done in the allotted amount of time for seder. (I spent the allotted amount of seder time with my chevruta earlier than the regular slot as she has class then, and then spent the next similar amount of time working on reading the articles he assigned, and didn't finish. Yes, I'm not the fastest reader in Hebrew, but still, I got through 1.5 of the 2 Hebrew articles, giving me no time for the 2 English ones. I think that the relevant seifim of Shulhan Arukh, and 4 articles are more than one can prepare responsibly in less than 2 hours, myself...)

Today, however, the whole situation just rose to a higher level of insanity. Our topic of the day was concerns of food and wine prepared or handled by either gentiles or idol worshippers, depending on how you read the texts. So after he explained that the prohibitions on such folks' oil and bread were either no longer in effect or loosened in effect, and that the reason for the prohibition was the prevention of intermarriage, he went to a very interesting set of places. First, he voiced his opinion that if these two prohibitions are indeed kept- no eating food or drinking alcohol with non-Jews, that indeed the people keeping those prohibitions will not intermarry, because eating and drinking are the ways in which people really get to know each other and build relationships. It was interestingly phrased and framed, but not so bad thus far. Then he went on to say that if this was the case, then indeed these rabbinic prohibitions Ought to stand, However he had a way of saying that perhaps marriage to or sex with non-idol-worshiping gentiles might not be actually forbidden.

Then he made his case. In doing so, he applied a rather interesting combination of texts that were in fact cleverly assembled. However, in doing his reading of them, he gave two interpretations, one of which he gave and then appologized for because it was racist (it suggested that we view all non-Jewish women as if they're in niddah, married, etc and therefore it is bad for Jewish men to sleep with them), and then gave another reading, saying that because these categories (the same ones as before, as it was the same text) don't apply to non-Jewish women, one shouldn't sleep with them because then when you slept with a Jewish women, you might come to violate those very significant categories of prohibitions. Technically, this is fine. However, the way he discussed it made women into total sex objects with a. no will of their own, and b. nothing to distinguish them except being Jewish or not.

He totally brushed off my classmate's comment about whether his interpretation was valid in the reverse, i.e. for non-Jewish men, saying that they were just lumped together- which is absurd when all the issues are specific to which direction the gender arrangement is set up. It also seemed to suggest that he thought that this might be a good idea to permit, which felt similar in style to the much earlier disastrous decision to find some way of legitimating (sort of, if you look at it with one eye, squinted just right) driving on Shabbat, only more so. Not to mention all the bad sociological trends that it would just reinforce. The Conservative movement desperately needs to find ways of being inclusive and being seen as inclusive and welcoming without finding wild ways to permit things that aren't permitted and just make the situation worse. Easier said than done, but I'm firmly convinced that in the matter at the Very least, this is not the way to do it.

We don't actually yet have a fruit and vegetable peeler in the apartment, and I of course forgot this fact when I set out to make apple crisp. So A. my roommate got a call saying "can you get a peeler while you're out" (and she did), and B. I peeled the apples with a knife. It's not something that I'm good at- but I got substantially better by the end... And now we have a peeler.

Having acquired the pizza recipe that zodiacmg  , Steve, and Steve have used in the past, which I'd had and appreciated, I made pizza for the first time tonight.  It was something I'd told both roommates about and intended to be for all three of us.  One roommate ended up going elsewhere rather than home tonight (I presume either to her sister's or to another classmate's to do work), so it was just two of us.  However, the pizza came out pretty well, especially given that I do not yet have a cookie sheet (I tried to find one at two places on Friday and neither had a cookie sheet, so I guess I'll try at the shuk on Wednesday), and that I was using regular tomato sauce.  Perhaps next time I'll invite some other friends to share the pizza, since at least this time we have enough to bring for lunch tomorrow too, which should be a nice change from the yoghurt plus other leftovers that has been my most usual lunch lately. 

Before that, the school day was an interesting one.  Hebrew class had me more frustrated with our teacher than usual, so I spoke to our administrative type about it, and he's said that he'll have a word with the teacher with our hopes for more work on speaking, and less pointless competition.  I'm very frustrated by the class- I feel like it's on a level well below what I've done in the past, and with expectations that cause me to do less well than I could, because that's all that's asked for.  It makes me crazy.  

Halakha was an interesting mix of useful and interesting information combined with statements that drove me off the wall.  It's supposed to be a halakha le'maase class (practical Jewish law), but our teacher places his emphasis in a way that I find very foreign to the notion of practical halakha, and then tries to apply it.  Understanding what the relevant Talmudic passages originally meant is very nice, and can even be a factor in your interpretation of the later law- but they oughtn't be the factor that causes you to disregard hundreds of years worth of later tradition.  It is occasionally infuriating.  Today had a few of those moments- although not all, and I did learn some very interesting things in the midst of it all.  
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After not managing to catch each other over the last few days, and not even quite managing to try to catch each other the first few weeks that I was here, my sister and I finally found each other on Skype this morning (well, this morning for me, last night for her...).  We didn't get to talk long, since I had to get ready for the day, and she was hitting bedtime (ahh, time zone difference, how I loath thee), but she told me that she saw the chuppah, and really likes it.  (Since it's for her wedding and I basically didn't consult with her on it at all, this is a very good thing.)  We talked a bit about Israel and dancing and such things, but mostly it was just really nice to talk to her, regardless of the topic. 

I found myself musing about how I get to know people.  Not how I meet them- that's either obvious or random enough.  But the actual process of going from "hmm, I think this is a person whose company I will appreciate" to "this is a person I am getting to know" to "this is someone I actually know".  Sometimes it happens so fast that I don't really notice it, especially people I meet at intense sorts of programs, or where we have enough friends in common that I've heard about them before, and things just sort of fall into place.  But other times, it seems to stretch out for so long that I spend months and months being friends with someone without feeling like I actually know who they are, or metaphorically where they live.  The first time that happened that I was aware of it (not the first time that it has happened of course) was my first year in NYC, where I started having friends I saw pretty much only on the weekend, and mostly on Shabbat, and here were these people I was very fond of (and still am,  I certainly don't mean to imply that that aspect of things is only in the past) but whom I didn't know particularly well at all for quite a while.  I found it quite disconcerting.  

Some of that is happening here as well, which is hardly a surprise, since I'm with my classmates with a few additions during the week, and see other friends much less often.  I'd like to see them more- I'll have to find ways to work that into my schedule, as we can manage it.  In the meantime, I'm often left with this sense where I am assembling my image of someone sort of by cutting-and-pasting aspects of my perception of them into a mental image by using who else they remind me of in different ways.  So one new friend reminds me a bit of noam_rion , and a bit of my talmud chevruta from last year, and a bit of a friend from youth orchestra from high school, etc, etc.  As I fill in more of who Steve reminds me of, he/she becomes more and more him/herself, until I can drop all the "reminds me of x"s.  It's a little bit more nuanced than just labeling character traits, at least.  But of course, like any crutch, it's overly vague and can still lead me wrong.  It gets frustrating, and I get impatient, sometimes.  However, it sure beats not meeting and getting to know people. 

I spent a good chunk of Friday in the kitchen, as I had a rather substantially sized (for me) Shabbat lunch here- the first time that I have hosted a meal here (roommate 1 had a meal a couple weeks ago, and the other hosted a small dinner which I attended Friday night, but this was My first).  The guests included a college friend, a JTS friend, hotshot2000 , both roommates, the guest who was staying with us through one of said roommates, a friend I met here through zodiacmg , and a young man I met Wednesday night who needed a place for Shabbos lunch.   Somehow this wildly random crowd managed to have what seemed like quite a nice time, and there was sufficient food to go around- and also to leave us with a significant amount of leftovers for the week, which I am quite pleased about.  Lunch was primarily salads and then dessert, following my usual inability to think in terms of a main dish, but plates were full, and things went well.  After we finished eating, a good number of folks adjourned to play games in the living room, and I and another friend hung out and talked, and someone else managed to nap on our couch, just a yard or two away from the folks with the game.  The shabbos nap is a very powerful thing, that way. 

After Shabbat, I walked over to another friend's house and watched the first Harry Potter movie in Hebrew with a delightful mix of people, talked for a while afterwards, and then walked home and even had company for much of my walk.  It meant that I got home rather later than I perhaps should have before the first day of school for the week, but oh well- tonight I will hopefully call home and then go to bed early.