Alef: The NEXT Conversation
Non-Negotiables and Nice-to-Haves
by Erika Ettin
I’d like a large pie with extra cheese, mushrooms, sausage, and broccoli. But make sure the cheese is covering the whole pizza because I don’t like baldness, and actually, why don’t you hold the sausage? I’d like someone who keeps kosher. And while you’re there, make sure those mushrooms are well-educated, like maybe with a master’s or PhD. And as for the broccoli, can you make sure it’s a certain height because I only want it if it’s tall. Could I get that to go? Thanks.
Someone recently told me that online dating was like ordering a pizza. At first I laughed at that analogy, then I cringed, and then I realized that he was right. We are all looking for that on-paper perfect mate. And since online dating sites give so much choice in the matter, we think it’s our right to have everything we’re looking for. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wanting certain things – I did, and that’s how I found my boyfriend, Jeremy, after about 120 JDates. (Yes – you read that correctly.)
It’s first important to pinpoint your non-negotiables. I had two things at the top of the list – Judaism and intelligence. Meeting someone Jewish was very important to me. I’m not the most religious person in terms of upholding every ritual (I can’t lie – I enjoy a club sandwich with bacon now and then), but the cultural aspect was important to me. I wanted someone who understood why I ate kugel and brisket and knew that holidays start at night, not in the morning. I wanted someone who, like me, felt that a shared religious background was important. And intelligence – I guess that one’s self-explanatory. But online, there’s so much to choose from beyond these non-negotiables.
My first piece of advice is to stick with your non-negotiable list, as long there are less than five things on the list. If there are more, it’s time to re-evaluate to see what might be a “nice-to-have” instead. With online dating, you can easily stick to your guns on that. How did I do it? I joined JDate and not another site, like Match.com or OKCupid. Why? Everyone is Jewish. Non-negotiable #1 – check. And as for intelligence, I got around that one by searching only for men with graduate degrees. Sure, there are plenty of very intelligent people with a bachelor’s or no degree at all (and plenty of less-than-intelligent people with grad degrees), but this was an easier way for me to check off that box. Non-negotiable #2 – check. What about the rest of the things on my list, though? A sense of humor, brown, curly hair (yes – I have a type), nice teeth, a good family, etc. These are things that we may want, but in reality, if someone has other qualities that are different and just as appealing, it won’t matter in the least.
So, what if someone out there looks good but doesn’t necessarily fit every little thing we want after those non-negotiables? I’d venture to say – try ‘em out anyway. When we walk into a bar (or Birthright alumni event?) and see someone we like, that guy or girl doesn’t have a chart attached to his or her forehead full of credentials, stats, and dislikes. (Wouldn’t that be a pretty funny sight?!) We trust our instincts; we go with chemistry. But online, we have so much information that it’s almost too easy to discard someone simply because he is only 5’6 or she has a fondness for US Weekly rather than the latest issue of The Economist. (I’m not saying I know anyone like that.)
I was chatting with someone recently who met her boyfriend at a climbing wall. They had known each other for a while, and ironically enough, when they eventually started dating, he came up as one of her matches on OkCupid that week. She looked at his profile and said, “I would have never gone out with him after reading this.” I guess she thought she was in the mood for a Hawaiian pizza, but in reality, what she wanted was much simpler – plain cheese.
So, go ahead, order whatever you want for dinner tonight, but when it comes to dating, there’s no check-box order to place. Stay true to your list of “can’t live withouts,” but beyond that, give people the benefit of the doubt because in the end after meeting in person, chemistry may trump all to give you the slice of your life.
Erika Ettin is the Founder of A Little Nudge, helping people find success in online dating and getting them excited about its possibilities. “Like” A Little Nudge on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.
Photo by barbtrek, licensed under Creative Commons.
Oreos for Yom Kippur
by Rachel Thompson
On Rosh Hashana, we are inscribed in the book of life. On Yom Kippur, the book is sealed. During the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are told to repent for our sins, make amends for our wrongdoings…pound our chests in public and feel hunger.
I always thought that the order seemed wrong. For me, it made more sense to say sorry before moving forward, but what I’ve come to learn is that it’s a cycle.
When I was a kid, I thought that, my avinu malkainu’s wiped the slate clean… absolved me of the sins I committed against my brother, my parents, my friends, myself… and the sins I committed against god… like the sin I committed moments before when I ate an oreo from the synagogue day care center while I was supposed to be fasting, or the sin I commited when I played cards with the kids during the particularly tedious parts of the service. When I’d make it back inside, I’d thump my chest with the best of ‘em – thinking that I was wiping the slate clean
These days, I think a little more critically and a little less literally. I understand now that saying sorry and thumping my chest doesn’t absolve me of my sins, what it does, is mark a point in time when I have acknowledged my mistakes and vow to avoid these same errors in the future.
We’re not a blank slate, we’re constantly evolving beings. We set intentions, we set goals, and when we fall short or take a rocky path, we can always step back, focus our energy on learning from our mistakes and move forward with greater purpose.
On Rosh Hashana, I set some goals for myself. I’ve already run off the path, but that’s ok. On Yom Kippur I will make amends for the mistakes I have made during the last year– and I’m going to keep doing that. This Holy day teaches us that it is never too late to say sorry. Never too late to make a new start.
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May we learn from our mistakes, May we be empowered to make a fresh start when we need one, and May we all be sealed in the book of life.
Photo by mihoda, licensed under Creative Commons.
Tzedek in Parshat Ki Tavo
by Rachel Travis
This commentary is provided by special arrangement with American Jewish World Service. To learn more, visit www.ajws.org.
Several months ago, my husband was stopped by one of the ubiquitous young people on the streets of Manhattan fundraising for good causes. He was told that for just $22 a month, he could sponsor a needy child in the Global South. Moved by the pitch, he signed up, and soon after, a photo of an adorable young girl arrived in the mail. When he told me what he had signed on for, I was touched to be married to the type of man who gives freely when asked. But I also wondered about the organization itself—its giving practices and how much of its funding actually reaches the children it was established to support. I did some online research and was surprised to discover that the organization’s CEO makes almost half a million dollars a year and that there was no analysis of its programmatic impact. But its overall rankings on reputable charitable accountability websites were high, and I already felt emotionally bound to the girl whose picture sat on our desk, so we have been supporters ever since. Yet this question—of how to translate our good intentions into effective giving, is one that many of us face regularly.
In Parshat Ki Tavo, Israelite farmers are instructed to “set aside in full the tenth part of your yield—in the third year, the year of the tithe—and [give] it to the Levi, the stranger, the orphan and the widow, that they may eat in your cities and be satisfied…”1 This tithe, which was given every three years, is known as ma’aser ani, the tithe for the needy. And its beneficiaries—the Levi, the stranger, the orphan and the widow—are clearly delineated. Yet, the medieval sages Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni both infer choice into this seemingly straightforward obligation. They write that the farmer may give to whomever he chooses from this list.2 Rashi, noting the language of the verse, adds that the amount given must be enough to satiate the recipients.3 In other words, the ma’aser ani may be given to ten widows, two orphans, or whatever other combination the farmer chooses, as long as the giving is not spread too thin.
The power and responsibility of these types of choices—and the realization that giving to an orphan might mean an impoverished widow goes to bed hungry—is something that many of us grapple with as we decide how to allocate our tzedakah. Even if we manage to give 10 percent of our income to charity—the ideal based on the biblical tithes—our giving capacity is finite, and the list of worthy and important beneficiaries is seemingly endless. It is often a struggle to figure out how our tzedakah—whether $10 or $10,000—can have the greatest impact.
Many of us make these choices emotionally: we strive to be the type of people who open our checkbooks to save the life of a child when asked. And giving with our hearts in this way is often what makes giving tzedakah a personally meaningful experience. Yet it is when we give with both our hearts and our heads—acting carefully to make choices based on our ideals and values and the impact that our giving will have—that we can have the greatest effect on the world around us.
Giving with our heads requires a bit more effort and research, but can also be the key to transforming our best intentions into effective tzedakah. A useful first step is creating a giving plan. Deciding how much we plan to give—and of that amount, how much to allocate to various causes—can help ensure that we meet our goals.
For instance, global social justice—and specifically maternal health—is at the core of my giving priorities. But there are numerous organizations working on different facets of this issue and at varying levels of competency. Rather than choosing an organization haphazardly, or based on the strength of its PR efforts, I need to take the time to figure out which organizations are most effective.
In recent years, thanks to an emerging emphasis on assessing the strength of nonprofit organizations, tools are increasingly available to help us make informed decisions about our giving. For example, there are independent evaluators such as Charity Navigator, which assess how much of an organization’s funding goes directly into programming and how much pays for overhead. There is also a growing emphasis among development economists on analyzing not only how nonprofits allocate their funds but, more significantly, how successfully they achieve their programmatic goals. For instance, Innovations for Poverty Action is a nonprofit that utilizes randomized evaluations to determine the impact and cost effectiveness of different programs and then works to disseminate its findings to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors.4
Before we give, we should take the time to carefully consider the changes we want to effect in the world. With each donation we make, we are implicitly choosing to support one organization or cause over another, so we should work to ensure that each dollar not only reflects our values but also has real impact. The Torah provides us with a framework for charitable giving but also supplies us with a wide spectrum of personal choices for how we will allocate our tzedakah. Each of us has an obligation to give generously with our hearts, but we also have a responsibility to give thoughtfully with our heads. Only by doing both will we see the change we hope to bring about in the world.
1 Deuteronomy 26:12.
2 Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni on Deuteronomy 26:12.
3 Rashi on Deuteronomy 26:12.
4 “Scaling Up What Works,” Innovations for Poverty Action. http://www.poverty-action.org/
Photo by JollyUK, licensed under Creative Commons.
A Not-So-Dangerous Tradition
By Stephen Rosenberg
In my family, most traditions seem to build themselves around the tasty, the inebriating, and the downright dangerous (seeing a movie over the holidays no matter what the weather). We also tend to over-complicate things. Case in point, an email from my brother-in-law about New Years that I received this morning: “I have not chosen my appetizer, however rest assured that it will be very labor-intensive, involve several special ingredients that may have to be mail-ordered, and delicious.” While everything about his plan is amazing, and follows our family’s custom of cooking together on New Years, some are more simple and based on a shared Jewish family history.
One of my favorite parts about Judaism is the sense of being connected to history through a shared set of customs and traditions, practiced through the ages. That’s probably why I like Passover so much. Jewish or not, though, we’re all part of a greater human narrative, and the connections we make–or don’t make–to our ancestors, helps define who we are. Those connections come in all forms. I am proud that one of my favorite family traditions connects me to my Zadie, a proud man that I wish I had been able to know better. That same tradition connects me to my father, who shares a rich memory from his own childhood, and also tells a special story about his relationship to Zadie, his father-in-law.
As a boy in Bloomfield, CT, my father fondly recalls helping out at the synagogue on Shabbat, where davening old men celebrated with shots of Canadian Club blended whiskey. Years later, after completing his residency, he and my mother moved in with her parents for six weeks until they shipped out to England — he as a captain in the Air Force, she as the smart, lovely bride who had to put up with him. During that brief time, my dad had an opportunity to get closer to his father-in-law. Zadie, an honest soda company owner, who turned down bottling Coke to continue his own brand, wasn’t exactly the chatty type. Turns out, though, he was fond of cigars. Grandma forbade them in the house, so he and my father frequently enjoyed each other’s company on the porch, occasionally with cocktails. Zadie wasn’t much of a drinker, but when he did indulge he favored Canadian Club. From that period on, for decades thereafter (long after Zadie stopped smoking cigars on doctor’s orders), my dad would offer Zadie Canadian Club when he and Grandma visited, remembering his drink preference and honoring the memory of their brief time under the same roof.
It is remarkable how much history can inhabit a simple tradition. When the hearty of my family breaks the Yom Kippur fast with a shot of Canadian Club, we connect to our past and rejoice in the present. We also, with a loud “l’chaim!,” honor the memory of loved ones not in the room.
Stephen fancies himself a web entrepreneur, and is a self-described beach bum, cooking enthusiast, and geopolitical junkie. He’s currently building brainpik.com, and is co-organizer of StartAtlanta.
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Photo provided by the author.
25: Changing Traditions
Does the word “Tradition” make anyone else think first of this unforgettable scene from Fiddler on the Roof?
Actually, the story of this Broadway-musical-turned-film is a pretty accurate representation of what Alef writers are talking about in this issue: Changing Traditions. Just as each of the daughters of the Old Country grappled with Jewish traditions in their lives, so did each of the generations that followed.
When we first started putting this issue together, we thought that maybe it was a generational phenomenon – that the Birthright Generation is reinventing older traditions to fit a more modern life. Boy, were we surprised to find the story of a 105 year-old Jewish woman whose remains had been held onto since September because she wanted to be cremated instead of (more traditionally) buried. It seems that even our grandparents were making waves when it came to maintaining age-old Jewish cultural practices.
With so many laws, rules, and rituals to be evaluated and either kept or challenged, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Be a part of this conversation for the next few weeks and share with us the traditions that you’re grappling with as well.
Photo by Jemsweb, licensed under Creative Commons.
Changing Traditions Posts:
Cross to Bear
The First Cut is Always the Deepest
A Not-So-Dangerous Tradition
My Journey in Judaism
Punk Rock Prayer Space
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