HalfSours

The women of my extended Persian family, even the ones well into their sixties, could double for the Kardashians should some righteous members of their crew stage a violent coup, and de-throne TV’s Armenian royalty. They are almost uniformly tanned, expertly groomed, and by all tastes, gorgeous. Yet nearing Passover they become so unrecognizably domestic looking that I would, were I so bold, warn them against spending time in the parking lot of Home Depot, lest La Migra think that they are illegal hired help. This is in small part due to their complexions, but also due to the fact that bebe hasn’t yet come out with a line of aprons (I don’t think).

I have heard it said in Israel, where knowledge of the Ashkenazi/Mizrachi rift is bounds ahead of us in The States, that Sephardi/Mizrachi women are fanatic about Pesach cleaning. I have heard it also said that Hashem judges a woman’s righteousness by the fervor with which she cleans for Pesach. If the Israeli school of thought on this matter is correct, then ipso facto, Hashem loves Mizrachi/Sephardi women more than Ashkenziot.

There is no empirical evidence to prove this. I have mere anecdotes that I hope my readers, of which I believe there to be a good 6, will come through with in kind. I anticipate a good turnout in the comments page; there is always interest in discussing who Hashem loves more, albeit usually between Jewish denomination rather than ethnicity.

In my mother’s hay-day as a balabusta, she used to shriek at us kids like Judge Judy on the rag if we were caught outside the kitchen with chametz. Dad did not have immunity. This wouldn’t start the week before. Oh no, this would begin and only intensify starting from three months before Pesach. I have a faint memory of such a happening on New Year’s day once, though I don’t remember of which year.

Every year she would use rolls of aluminum foil to quarantine off chametz sections of the kitchen. Were it World War II my mother could have halted the entire war effort with the amount of tin foil she used. There were usually just dishes in those sections in any case; no actual chametz ever survived the great purge. Her rationale for this was that she did not want us to confuse chametz dishes with Pesach dishes. The Pesach dishes, of which there are three sets (dairy, meat, and fancy meat), are more impressive than the dishes we use the whole rest of the year.

Most families have the minhag of hiding a bit of chametz the day before Pesach, and ritually hunting and burning it. My mother could not risk contamination for this tomfoolery, even through the protective sheath of a ziplock bag.

The other women on her side are similarly fervent.

When I moved to Israel, and spent my first Pesach without my family, I was adopted by a couple in their early thirties. He was Persian, and she, I’ll call her Nancy, half Ashkenazi, half Moroccan. Nancy, like me, is technically Ashkenazi from her paternal line. She considers marriage to a Persian, which makes her now Sephardi by minhag, a fine fit. These factors, I think, make her an anthropological wonder. She was my on-call person for Halakhic advice throughout the cleaning season. I was invited to her home for the Shabbat of Pesach chol, when she, a charedi woman, outright refused to allow her husband to learn from his sfarim; she was as frightened as a sheep on shear day that there might be crumbs stuck between the pages. And you know what? That actually made great sense to me.

In wrapping up, I am compelled to quote one of my favorite bloggers, and writers in general, Michael, of KosherEucharist.com:

The Cleaning: There are two major schools of thought when it comes to Passover cleaning: there’s the school that gives the floors a good sweep, locks up the plates, pots and pans, buys some paper plates and plastic forks, and goes and does something meaningful with its life; then there’s the school that throws out any food item or utensil ever suspected of having come into contact with leaven or legume, including ovens, sinks and children, and attacks with Lysol and Q-tips the devious chametz hiding, ready for unwitting consumption, in the cracks between the ceilings and floors. As with most things, I belong to a third school: the school that motivates itself to perform a thorough house cleaning through the use of amphetamines. By the end of thirty-some straight hours of awake, jittery and obsessively thorough housecleaning, your fingertips bleeding from the combined action of the rough side of the sponge and the bleach, you will rest content in the knowledge that you have performed a mitzvah - because you have actually heard the voice of God in your head commending you for it. Obviously, this school is not for everyone; I recommend that the faint-hearted among you use a sponge without a rough side.

So where do I live in this mad territory? I’m an interesting case study too. As I’ve hinted at, I take after my mother. When it came time to clean my own apartment for Passover I more closely resembled a dumpster woman than a Long Island Jewess. My four roommates had all scattered on home and left me with an entire apartment to clean. I called Michael, and may or may not have hinted that if he came over I would help him find Adderoll for his snorting pleasure. Michael, by bus or foot, was over within half an hour, and at my service.

Nancy had told me that an alternative to boiling water to purify kitchen surfaces was using bleach. We went through two bottles, and I insisted on going to the neighbor’s to borrow some more. Michael was inspired to write the above piece, thanks in no small part I’m sure, to that unending night he had in my apartment. By five A.M. the place looked like a space station, and the bleach had permanently scrambled our fingerprints. It was, in all earnestness, great seasonal fun.

I was in Penn Station two days ago on, as far as I’m concerned, the worst day of the year to be in Manhattan. I shan’t mention the name of the culpable Catholic holiday on this page, as that would preclude my blog from being introduced into the canon in years to come. The city, especially the train station, was teeming with pasty New Jerseyans with cheap green plastic beads hanging down their chests. The streets of Midtown later, like I’ve trudged over in Dublin, were an expansive swamp of vomit.

As I see it the Irish paid their dues to the city when they built all those bridges and whatnot. Where I’m concerned, they can have their one day to run amuck of the city. Heck, when I was a senior in high school and working as an intern in the publishing racket I got to watch the parade in person. My office was right off of Fifth Avenue, and every third Irish boy had cut school that day to run around, red heads blazing, asking girls to kiss them in the merit of them being born of the clan. Fortunately, my usual penchant for red heads was curbed by the smell of the fresh morning puke.

This year I experienced a different unpleasantry: rollicking anti-Semitism. An older frum man with full beard and fur hat (not a striemel, but a fitted, Russian style hat) was walking on his way somewhere. A group of about 10 of the aforementioned pasty New Jerseyans passed him in the terminal. The tallest of the group, flanked by women, pointed his long arms out at the frummy and said; “Yeah, there’s my man right there.” The frum man then said; “what is wrong with you?”, and continued walking in the opposing direction. Another guy at the front of the group then said loudly; “this is America, ya know?” Not one member of their group chided either of them. Some laughed along with them, some paid no mind.

I was a bit taken aback by this. The Irish and the Jews by all accounts should have a strong kinship forged by a similar history of subjugation. Ireland’s history is one of the least tarnished by violent anti-Semitic crimes. There was one incident known as the Limerick Pogrom which, as pogroms go, was actually pretty pathetic; thank G-d no one was actually even killed. The rest of their record is relatively clean.

Irish-Americans have a more extensive history of anti-Semitism, which culminated in 1902 during the funeral of Rabbi Jacob Joseph; Irish workers from the R. Hoe company attacked mourners, throwing iron and other projectiles at them. The police called to the scene, mostly Irish, then came and indiscriminately clubbed the Jews in the crowd. Prior to and after that incident it was not uncommon for Jewish peddlers in New York to have their beards pulled by dock workers.

The jerks in the train station were not pulling on the frummy’s beard, but in my mind there was still an injustice done; the guy was just walking through the hall, looking a bit different and minding his business.

I wish I had the wherewithal to say something to them. I was in the midst of a long trip back home from Vermont, was balancing several irregularly shaped objects in my arms, and looked too disheveled to want to draw attention to myself. My usual biting tongue did not feel that it have the go-ahead to lash out at that moment. Quite honestly I’m not sure that protesting that kind of behavior really helps in any case. Ethnic tension is as old as ethnicity. We’re all guilty of ethnic bias; until Messianic days it is here to stay. I like the approach of Eileen Scully, an Irish-American history professor, who once taught me that you can’t use logic or persuasive argument to sway people out of their set opinions. Your actions and behavior are your best modus operandi to sway minds.

So Harvard chose to allot separate time for women to work out at one of their gyms. Then all the little co-eds with no other cares in the world started going ape-shit. It turns out that the Ivy-class is only tolerant of the religious and cultural sensibilities of others when they aren’t inconveniencing them. So one of the campus gyms is closing its doors to men, and allowing modest (mostly Muslim) women to work out sans their presence. People are trying to make this out to be another Plessy vs. Ferguson. Big woop. I have faith that the spry Harvard Renaissance man can hoof it to another campus gym during the six hours per week that particular one is closed to them. And don’t ever let me hear a peep out of Harvard when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. Those people can’t even share a gym facility with Muslims. We share a country.

Read this if you can stand to:
“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521876″>thttp://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521876

I have no opinions to opine on future prevention or retribution. I just thought that it should be acknowledged that at least eight people were senselessly murdered today at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav today in Jerusalem.

‘Terrorist fired 500-600 bullets before he was killed’

I virulently disapprove of the eroticizing of butt-cleavage. It is, aside from the wrathful jellyfish, the least appealing part of any Tel Aviv beach. Every time I see a sexy lady drawing attention to herself in that way I wonder if she also thinks toilet plungers make cute accessories.

As an expert aesthetician (10 college credits in photography), I can certify that a person’s body, in the public realm, is most alluring when it is left mostly unrevealed.

Too much exposure to a good thing can lead to its ultimate under-appreciation (think Seinfeld in syndication). I find that this is a general truism for nearly every good thing in life. In fact, at the moment I’m typing this I can’t think of a single exception.

Women in the Western world have dressed progressively more revealingly since the middle of the last century. The fashion industry, not to be degraded to anything less than a community of true artists, has always sought to push the envelope. Artists, I find, have this drive to be so in your face, that you’re often left in need of a handkerchief to remove the smear marks left behind.

If we are constantly stimulated by revealing, sexy persons around us, do our senses not become frayed and numbed? If, what is meant to be erotic is so ubiquitous that has becomes commonplace, how can it possibly hold the same power?

Time was that a woman dressed just so could stop traffic. Today, undaunted by that diminished possibility, we have billboards with nearly naked women on practically every major roadway.

And so sexuality has become less sexual.

Do we really want to live in a world where nothing, not even the G-d given blessing of sexuality, is sacred?

Even for some of the biggest packers and pushers of sexuality, like Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Jester Turney, the over-exposure has become ad nauseam.

Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy