by Bradley Chalupski

Every Jewish household is different.  The anchor of my Jewish household as a child was the love of my Jewish mother to my Catholic father (a love for which I am forever grateful). It’s not surprising then that Judaism, religiously or communally, did not play a large role in my life growing up. We celebrated the Seder on Passover; We had a tree on Christmas. Holiday’s to me, Jewish or Catholic, were “family times”. I always considered myself “Jewish” but had never given any serious thought to what that meant. As for what it meant to me? If that thought crossed my mind even once in the first 25 years of my life it would be one more time than I even remember.

It was against this background that in February of 2010 I was asked a question by a fellow Skeleton racer that would change my life forever, “Have you spoken with Andy Teig, the President of the Israeli Bobsled and Skeleton Federation?”

Before I continue, it must be noted that I just made Andy’s whole year by writing that sentence for public consumption. Seriously. He probably just graved a trench in his monitor from reading it so many times, in the 3 seconds it just took you to read this next sentence. Just had to say that.

By that February I had climbed the ranks of the United States Skeleton Development program for 4 seasons. The US Skeleton Eastern Regional Championship (which is no longer held) in March would qualify three people from the Lake Placid development program for US Team Trials the following winter. Ultimately, I would finish fourth by .2sec (yes, two-tenths of a second) over four miles (yes, over four miles) of racing. That was good enough to be the first person NOT to be invited to the Team Trials for the next season. At that point, I thought my Skeleton career was over. I was already selling my equipment.

Let’s get back to Andy though. He was looking for Jewish Skeleton racers to compete for Israel. My first reaction when I heard about it was to say, “I’m American. Why would I compete for Israel?” That was my base feeling. I certainly thought I had more to give to the sport, and I wanted to continue with it – did I want to continue it like this though? Competing for another country?

It’s called “switching flags” in the business. It happens all the time and I had always believed it to be an intensely personal decision transcendent of the “right/wrong” moniker so many people attach to it without ever having been in that position. The Olympic Games are the pinnacle of the sporting universe. Even Kobe Bryant, multimillionaire superstar athlete, said he “had goosebumps” when he got his Team USA Basketball jersey. Any serious athlete who says they are indifferent to the prospect of competing in them is lying to you.

I went to speak with Andy on the day before I intended to leave Lake Placid forever. Andy does not do subtle. He made two things abundantly clear: 1) If I thought this was the easy route to the Olympic games – I should leave; 2) If I was not serious about representing Israel – I should leave. If I understood these two things and was still interested, we could talk.

But did I want to talk? I wasn’t really sure. I knew I had more to give to Skeleton; I didn’t think it would be easy. Could I do it for Israel though? A place I had never been? A people I knew I was a part of but wasn’t really sure if I belonged to?

For the first time in my life, as I left Andy to go home to New Jersey for the summer, I was asking myself:

What does it mean to be Jewish???

It would be several months though before I realized that the answer to THAT question is intrinsic to the question itself.

Next Time: I ask everyone I know about what I should do. What does it mean to be Jewish? To represent Israel? Can I say “yes?” Or an even more interesting thought…do I HAVE to say yes?

Read Bradley’s first column here.  Photo provided by the author.

1. A Hanukkah Hip-Hop Graphic Novel

2. Rabbi, can you teach me how to dougie?

Smith Magazine has teamed up with Reboot (the people who brought you the National Day of Unplugging and Sukkah City) to bring you “Six Words on Jewish life.” Submit your six-word memoir (www.smithmag.net/jewish) by January 4th for a shot at being included in the book and a guarantee at being on the website.

Not sure where to start? We’re so glad you asked.  Some of the staff at NEXT have teamed up to provide you a list of their own six-word memoirs:

Ruvym ~ Russian family, still fears nonexistent KGB

Terissa ~ Single?! You should meet my son!

Emily ~ Once Kosher-style Texan loves pulled pork.

By Sarah Kornhauser and Leilani Love

Hanukkah is about a light that was supposed to last only one day, that lasted one more day, and then one day more, and so on for eight days.  Miracle or not, there was definitely a collective effort for conservation.  Out of that effort, we as a Jewish people were able to keep moving forward. This Hanukkah, do your part to conserve and keep our world moving forward. Follow these simple steps for each day of Hanukkah…

Day 1: Replace an outdoor light fixture with a motion detector.

Day 2: Commit to public transportation today! Make a plan to reduce car use all year long.

Day 3: Make your own Hanukkah gifts. Knit a scarf. Build a picture frame. Make a headband.

Day 4: Take a day off meat. Buy local, organic produce and go veggie for the day.

Day 5: Get your furnace serviced to keep it running at high efficiency.

Day 6: Create Hanukkah cards online and save a tree.

Day 7: Do a full load of laundry in cold water instead of a partial. Each load of laundry uses between 32-60 gallons of water. Using warm water requires lots of energy to heat the water.

Day 8: Buy your self a present: a reusable water bottle! Commit to giving up plastic water bottles.

Interested in doing more?  This year, Repair the World presents 8 Nights of Service.  Follow along on their blog for a new service idea for each night of Hanukkah.

Hanukkah begins in mere days!  To kick off the season, here are some of the tidbits on the holiday from this week:

1.  This week’s cry heard round the world: Matisyahu shaves his beard!

Check out Heeb Magazine for the follow up video.

2. The Editor of Tikkun Magazine suggests on HuffPo that we Occupy Hanukkah and Christmas.

3. Also, it wouldn’t be a Jewish holiday in 2011 without a new Maccabeats video.  Watch and talk amongst yourselves.

by Joshua Einstein

My name is Joshua Einstein and I have been a MH (Moishe House) Hoboken resident for almost 5 years. It has been an incredible adventure in friendship, programming, and community building. When I first applied I was post collegiate and as an only child I really needed to get out of my parents’ house. As things worked out I would land a job and an MH in the same week. Most residents move into pre-existing houses, my roommates at the time and I were new to Hoboken and had to build an indigenous social network from the ground up. Sure, Hoboken has a shul and sure that shul had a Jewish club that was focused on social events in bars but we weren’t there just for drinks and shul just isn’t my scene.

See, I’m not against the concept of god. I believe there probably is a god. It’s just that as an agnostic I know there is no way for me to confirm that god exists. Moreover, the secondary questions of whether or not god gave anything to any group of humans seems rather pedestrian. Every religious group thinks god spoke to them and gave them something unique. As such, religion matters not to me, nor does theology, services, spirituality, the soul, prayer or religious tradition. In my almost 5 years in town I have been to the shul less than a dozen times, Baruch Hashem.

So what makes me Jewish? The answer is simply our people, history, and shared culture. The religion element is a historical addendum. Religious Judaism has been a convenient vehicle for the transmission of our shared culture, the propagation of our amazing experiment through history, and for the inculcation of Jewish peoplehood. In and of itself, religion has no value, that doesn’t mean I’m against people having religion, nor that religious people are inherently anti-intellectual or unintelligent. It does mean I do not plug into the religion of the Jews – Judaism.

When we moved to Hoboken I wanted to create a new Jewish community rooted in Jewish history and interested in exploring the world intellectually. We were in Hoboken to make a new Jewish scene and we were here to do it deliberately. To some degree we have succeeded. Part of intellectualism is a healthy dose of skepticism and the community we have built and been built by is definitely skeptical. Perhaps it’s our Greater Hoboken Area (GHA) origin’s (most of our community is from New Jersey with many others from the tri-state area), that comes with some inherent cynicism genetically pre-programmed into those in our region. It may be an outgrowth of the Jewish neuroticism that requires we look for a motivation behind mere meaning or the minority status of outsiders that makes Jews supra-naturally inquisitive. I know not the reason, but whereas many Jewish groups are obsessed with defining themselves by action, by posting a thin film of Jewish identity over the broad agenda of making the world a better place, we are just the opposite. The community we have created (and been created by) in Hoboken is in command of its Jewish identity, knowledgeable of our shared history, fluent in our culture and without the larger agenda of transforming the world.

As a contrarian and agitator I am naturally unsatisfied. It is as if my MH community has settled in an unhappy medium in which it is comfortable with intellectual challenges but uncomfortable when considering turning those challenges into actions. That the intellectual world does not exist in the abstract makes this a fundamentally untenable position. Moreover, it is also an anti-intellectual position because it is inherently and patently false. The question is how to connect our community’s inquisitive minds and intellectual notions with actions? How do we, at MH Hoboken, connect our salons, facilitated discussions, informal and impromptu debates regarding the economy, politics, homelessness, security, inflation, Israel – the Jew and the world around her/him, to some sort of action?

To this I do not have an answer. I welcome any and all suggestions.

Photo by pauldwaite, licensed under creative commons.

By Erica Brooke Fajge

If you’re a young, single, Jewish female, have I got the book for you: Secrets of Shiksa Appeal: Eight Steps to Attract Your Shul-Mate by Avi Roseman,  a New York native/Washington D.C. resident/IT consultant/singles columnist/yenta who makes this book a pleasure to read.

A friend of mine met the author, herself, at Club Getaway in Connecticut (the Jewish weekend, of course) and then told me about the book. Soon, I had a copy sent to me, and I was getting my reading on!

The thesis of the book is that, according to Roseman, young Jewish women should “shiksafy” themselves (a.k.a. act more like those gentile girls who buy Christmas gifts every year) in order to attract quality Jewish guys, as they often are drawn to shiksas. The book dispenses a lot of advice, some of which I agree with and some of which I disagree with – always a given. I have to admit, though, just a couple of weeks after finishing the book, I am beginning to agree with the author’s ideas more and more.

Throughout Shiksa, advice is given regarding dressing for a date, playing “hard to get,” meeting Jewish men, dealing with online dating vs. speed-dating, etc., defining a relationship, hooking up, and more.

Shiksa is quite a quick read, mostly due to its use of humor. Roseman, known throughout the book as “Ms. Avi,” tells it the way it is. You’ll find yourself nodding your head and saying, “Yes! Exactly!” many times while reading this book.

For example, I loved her description of “socially awkward guys” at Jewish events trying to pick up women. I am an avid lover of Jewish events, as many of my friends know, yet I have to agree this can be true (although there are definitely a number of exceptions, of course). She is right, though, when she says there are definitely some good looking, intelligent, ambitious, etc. Jewish guys there you’d want to meet, but that “they probably think the sun shines out of their asses.”

In many chapters “Ms. Avi” will mention a phone number that she has given out before: 867-5309 (no, not her real number). Sound familiar? If you’re younger than, maybe, 24, you’ll probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but it’s a reference to that fabulous 80s tune we all know and love.

I have to admit that I agree with her view on letting a guy do the pursuing; if not, how do you know if he’s really into you?

I love how she categorizes the different types of Jewish guys out there you’ll meet including the “Kosher Player” and how she advises to always let the guy pay on the first date and not even to bother with “the reach” – you know, when you pretend to reach for your wallet and offer to pay, even though you’re thinking, “If he takes me up on it, I will never go out with him again.”

What did I disagree with? Well, Roseman’s theme throughout the book is that we, Jewish girls, need to act more like shiksas in order to attract quality Jewish men. While I do agree that Jewish guys can sometimes get intimidated by the “Jewish mother,” I don’t think that Jewish females are that different from non-Jewish females. Yes, we probably are under more pressure to get married and procreate, but the author seems to think that Jewish girls are always more “desperate” than their non-Jewish counterparts. I have to admit; I’m sure there are also just as many desperate shiksas out there throwing themselves at guys as we speak (and also many non-desperate, independent girls, both Jewish and not).

And while I do agree with a lot of the old-fashioned advice in general, I think it is totally okay for us, women, to contact a guy on JDate or any online dating site – something Roseman does not mention at all in the online dating chapter. There could be some great guys you’d be missing out on if you always waited for them to find you. Sometimes you do have to put yourself out there a little more – in my opinion.

I could probably go on and on forever; there is just so much good stuff in here. Whether you agree with the advice or not, one thing is for sure: Secrets of Shiksa Appeal: Eight Steps to Attract Your Shul-Mate is entertaining and is a “shul” winner!

Erica is a Birthright Israel Alumna and a guest book reviewer. Interested in reviewing a new Jewish book for Alef?  Contact alef@birthrightisraelnext.org for more info.

This week…

1. The New York Times reports on a new Jewish edition of the New Testament, edited by a Brandeis University Professor.

2. Tablet presents comics by Jewish women about comics by Jewish women.  Was that tongue twister enough for you?

3. Speaking of Jewish women, the Latitude blog of the International Herald Tribune discusses the issue of what it means for religious Jews to hear a woman sing.

Pita photo by VirtualErn, licensed under Creative Commons.

by Zahara Schara

A rose by any other name is still as sweet…yeah I don’t buy it.  For as long as I can remember I never liked my name, I blame it on the fact I was not named for almost a week, believe it or not I was difficult from the beginning I nearly killed both my mother and myself. Then as a child I proudly declared that I was going to change my name to Zipporah, to which my father replied since I am named after him he would have to change his name to Zippy. I still think this plan would work…Zippy has a nice ring to it.

So on twitter the past couple of weeks a couple of people I follow have been examining Hebrew names, for those of you who don’t know we have a first name, a middle name, a last name and sometimes a Hebrew name, excessive I know. It can be that your first or middle name is also your Hebrew name…it is a bit confusing but I have a point here.

Zahara is my Hebrew name, Lauren my legal name. But what does that mean? Is it simply some sort of quarter life crisis …no. When I moved to Israel partly because their chronic mispronunciation of Lauren, I went solely by Zahara, or Zaza for short. Here is where the important part of the story is, as Zahara I feel creative, curious and more the person I want to be. As Lauren I feel older, cautious and worrisome. I don’t have multiple personalities, even though I am sure this sounds a bit crazy! I swear this isn’t like All About
Eve!

But why is the idea of actually or legally changing our name so scary to us? Will we forget who we are? Jacob became Israel, married women take their husbands last name, sometimes hyphenating it, ’cause hyphens are sexy. As a way to shed the past or create a new future. Changing names is not only for mobsters hiding out in suburbia. So Hebrew name, middle name, name from a book or TV, who are you? Who would you be with a different name? Who do you want to be? I might always be Lauren on paper, but I will always be Zahara in my heart, or until 2012 when my passport expires and who knows I might make it legal…

Zahara is a member of the NEXT Shabbat Advisory Committee – to learn how to join the NEXT Shabbat movement here.  You can also read more from Zahara’s blog here.

Photo by Milica Sekulic. 

It’s almost Thanksgiving!  Here at Alef we are thankful for our readers, our writers, and the fabulous reporters and journalists who bring you the links that we collect and share every Friday.

1. If you haven’t already heard about the Hazon Israel (bike) Ride, then this is your chance to learn more. One of the riders has been traveling with a helmet-cam and reporting from the road (literally!).

Israel Ride 2011 – Highlights from day 1 from Elahn Zetlin on Vimeo.

2. This Rabbi has a radical suggestion — push back the Bar Mitzvah age to 25.  Thoughts?

3. The Jewish Daily Forward sits down with funny Sarah Silverman and her Rabbi Sister, Susan.