Alef: The NEXT Conversation
Weekly Pita 10/28/2011
The High Holidays are behind us and we’re ready for a fresh start in the new year! Send us any links you think we should add:
1. Shouting out to Moishe House Rocks! – a recipient of a Jewish New Media Innovation Grant. Check out their video on the Havdallah service for the end of Shabbat:
2. The discussion and debate over Jewish I.Q. continues as Israel adds to its already long list of Nobel Laureates.
3. And for you film buffs – a history of the Silver Screen…in Yiddish.
Big Q’s, small r’s
By Ari Averbach
This post originally appeared on 10-29-2010
The day after Vanessa and I met at a bar (ugh, I know, right?) I got an email from JDate – “We Found You a New Match!” and it was her. No joke. Now, I would take this as a sign, except that JDate sends out this same email every day. Each time with a new match, or with 6 new matches, that might fit into your general parameters for your dream partner.
“She’s Jewish and lives within 100 miles of you! Click here to find out more!”
It doesn’t take much science. (Granted, I know some very happy couples who met on JDate — but let’s leave the tales of fate via JDate for another story.)
So, yes, against everything I thought I believed in, I met Vanessa at a bar. Not only a bar, but a bar called Big Foot Lodge. She was there with what looked like a support group for severe burn victims — turns out they had just come from ZombieFest and were covered in make-up. Vanessa, filled with gall and spunk and half a beer but not wearing any crazy make-up, came up to me insisting she knew who I was. We talked for over an hour. My roommate, who was watching all this, texted me, “For the love of gd, get her number!”
I did.
Our first date was super. Our second date was a shiva call. Third date – I picked her up from the airport and dropped her off at work. Now, it’s been years since I’ve been in a real relationship, but this seemed odd to me. I didn’t think we were playing the game correctly. I realized that I was spending all my free time with her, and talking only about her at all other times. I met her family, she met mine, they met each other. Fretting aside, there were no hitches.
So, here’s what I’ve learned about relationships in the eight months we’ve been together: nothing. There aren’t Relationships (capital R), only relationships (small r). Sorry if that sounds didactic, but they are completely personal. I have two friends who started dating their significant others at the same time I started seeing Vanessa, but decided to move at a different pace. There is nothing about our relationships that is alike, except that we are all happy.
At the beginning, we would compare notes about the juicy details. Have you said I love you? You used the word Girlfriend? You met her parents? What’s third base?
Over the months, the questions morphed into more serious matters. Have you lit Shabbat candles together? Which synagogue will you guys attend for Rosh Hashanah? Whose parents are going to relinquish break-fast so everyone can be one big family?
These are the questions that will hopefully speak of our futures. They are Jewish questions, sure, but more importantly they determine who we are and who we want to be – as individuals and as a couple. Our comparisons have taught us that there is no universal overlay – we are not in a competition with a finish line. The goal cannot be meted out in a rubric to determine what the relationship should look like. Luckily for me, Vanessa and I are figuring out how to answer these questions each step of the way.
Photo by Stefan Baudy, licensed under Creative Commons.
Build a Sukkah!
by Alef Staff
Moishe House, G-DCAST, and Birthright Israel NEXT have teamed up to bring Jewish life how-to’s to the web. In honor of Sukkot, here’s one on how to build a Sukkah. Find more videos on MoisheHouseRocks.com.
Black Jew Syndrome
Originally published to Alef on 7/9/2010
By Ariel Joseph, Esq.
Being an American of mixed-heritage, I have always found dating Jewish women to be a somewhat…complicated endeavor. Sure, my mother was of Jewish heritage, as was her mother, but neither of them married Jewish men. Consequently, in addition to being Jewish, I am Irish, Czech, German, African, Indian, and Carib. Although most people can tell that I’m multi-racial, I am most often categorized as “Black,” at least until people learn that I am part Jewish, at which point I become a “Black Jew.”
I have learned that I am a culturally confusing package for most women, but for Jewish women in particular I seem to create a disruption in their schemas that make our relationships short lived. After much personal analysis and discussion with friends, family, and mentors, including Jewish community leaders, I have come to the conclusion that this is due to a cultural condition that I call “Black Jew Syndrome” (or BJS).
BJS can be broken down into three distinct stages: (1) The Infatuation, (2) the Internal Conflict, and (3) the Reconciliation. Before I investigate BJS in more detail, it is worth noting that I have always been attracted to members of the tribe; indeed, one out of every three women I have dated has been Jewish, so I have significant experience with this issue.
Stage One: Infatuation:
The Infatuation stage is marked by a strong interest/attraction, not unlike that shared by most new couples. What makes it distinct from other new relationships is the fetishization of the Black Jew for his “otherness.” Whereas in “regular” intra-racial relationships both partners engage in physical intimacy for the purposes of attraction, fun, and potential procreation, if an interracial element is added, sex changes.
I have dated women from many races and cultures, and the majority of time I would categorize sex with them as being “normal.” With Jewish women, however, the tone I hear in the bedroom changes. The fact that I’m Black seems to overwhelm other aspects of who I am and I have often times felt objectified. This isn’t always a bad thing, yet the Infatuation stage, unfortunately, almost always leads to stage two.
Stage Two: Internal Conflict:
After the initial obsession begins to wear off, the reality that she’s dating a “Black guy” begins to affect the average Jewish woman’s perception of the relationship. While she will usually continue to date her darker skinned companion at this stage in the relationship, dates in public begin to dwindle in number and any talk of meeting the family is usually put off.
I have witnessed this occur multiple times in my life. In fact, I once confronted a girlfriend with my concerns about the Internal Conflict when she began showing symptoms of it, and was surprised by the earnestness of her response.
“I can date you,” she said. “I just don’t think I can be in a serious relationship with you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, don’t you like me? Aren’t you happy being with me?”
“Of course I’m happy with you,” she replied. “I’m thinking about marriage, though, and I know my family wouldn’t be happy if I married a Black guy”.
“But my mom’s Jewish…” I told her. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Maybe with my parents, but my grandmother would keel over if she knew we were together. She wants 100% pure-blood Jewish great-grandchildren, and I’m sure my parents want 100% Jewish grandchildren themselves”.
The fact that I was both Jewish and Black created a genuine conflict in her. She enjoyed dating, sex, our conversations, and was happy with me as a person. Yet BJS took over and began causing her inner turmoil. She liked me, yet my race made it difficult for her to truly see me as a long-term prospect. I was fun to be with, but she had problems seeing me as boyfriend material.
Stage Three: Reconciliation:
The final stage of BJS manifests itself through an acknowledgement on the Jewish woman’s part that she needs to move on and find a guy that she can feel comfortable taking home to her parents and grandparents. If you are a Jewish woman or have dated Jewish women, you know exactly how intrusive Jewish parents and grandparents can be about who their descendants are involved with. Admittedly, Jewish people have a (somewhat) legitimate desire to see their offspring continue the Jewish bloodline. However, in my experience, it is their desire for Jewish offspring that is the primary cause of BJS. Jewish women I’ve dated usually arrive at an understanding, or Reconciliation, regarding their feelings toward me as a Black Jew based, in large part, upon what their parents or grandparents desire. Unfortunately, due to fear of disappointing their parents, this Reconciliation almost always ends with our relationship ending.
The Reconciliation stage does not seem to be an easy place to be for the Jewish women I’ve dated, and I don’t hold a grudge against them for choosing their families over a guy they’ve known for two or three months. That said, it is frustrating and demoralizing to be devalued due to the color of your skin. Perhaps when the “Greatest Generation” is gone and the “Boomers” become the oldest people in America, we will begin to see more tolerance from more Jewish matriarchs and patriarchs. For now, I just hope to find a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about the melanin in my skin, even if her family does.
Photo by Charles Williams, licensed under Creative Commons.
Huggies for Hanukkah
by Shawn Shafner
“I think I’m going to start wearing diapers.”
For two weeks last December, this phrase was my favorite conversation starter.
I really thought it was a great Hanukkah gift for myself, one with profound psychological and sociological ramifications. Plus I could write off the Pampers as a business expense. Because when you run The POOP Project you can do that.
Think about it for just a moment: adults are wearing diapers. Right now. 2 million men and 11 million women across the USA, according to one study featured by the National Association for Continence (even bladder control has its advocates). Granted, a good chunk of that number are in nursing homes, where the diaper is standard uniform for over half the residents. Still others are joining you at the office for water cooler conversation. Do they carry a spare pair in their briefcases and purses? Are they peeing freely at meetings while you’re scribbling frantically? Where does the soiled nappy go when it’s old and done?
Of course, it’s no laughing matter for those dealing with this issue. The diaper carries with it great stigma. Even the toddler knows that she who wets her pants is “a baby.” To be potty trained—to gain the physical ability to withhold poop and pee and also consciously release it in a socially ordained place and time—is the primary threshold to civilized adulthood. Those who wish to follow the rules but are physically incapable must adapt means of hiding their deficiency. Those who choose to excrete outside of these bounds just don’t get invited to parties. Or anything else, for that matter. It’s a fundamentally subversive act.
So what would it mean to pee in public? Could I even perform such a feat? Could I actually sit on the subway—or stand for that matter—and will my body to release urine, even into an absorbent adult undergarment?
I soon found myself standing in the aisle at Duane Reade staring up at products called “Poise” and “Inspire,” lofty ideas undermined by adjectives like, “adjustable,” “ultra thin,” and “super plus absorption.” I was waiting to see the in-house doctor because I’d started having pee problems.
In an ironic twist, I had suddenly joined the 1 in 5 Americans over 40 with overactive bladder, except I was only 27. And I really had to pee. Always. On my ride home to Brooklyn, I was stopping off at Atlantic to go in the Subway Sandwich Shoppe and not on the Subway train.
The doctor asked me questions, poked and prodded Sr. Pepe, and took a sample of my urine. There were traces of blood. I left the doctor with an eight-day course of antibiotics and a six-pack of Depends for Men in designer fashions. Because if you’re going to wet yourself, why not do it in style?
An hour later I was celebrating the first night of Hanukkah with 7th and 8th graders in Hebrew school. They begrudgingly sang blessings to consecrate the juice, the challah, the latkes, the candles and the occasion, droning melodies deeply ingrained into their teen brains. But not a student knew about the bracha I was there to teach, the Asher Yatzar, or why it meant so much to me that night.
Asher Yatzar is primarily known as the blessing one says after using the toilet, but it’s also incorporated into the morning liturgy and thought of as a healing prayer alongside the m’sheberach. The basic translation is something like this:
“Dear God, thank you for making an intuitive body with many holes and openings. We all know that, if the closed holes should ever open or the open holes ever close, we would really be in trouble. So thanks for that, and all the other healing miracles in the universe.”
In today’s world, we tend to focus on what’s coming in and ignore what’s going out. We are fixated on incomes, identified as “consumers,” and obsessed with food. We seek out exotic delicacies to satisfy our organic-local-macro-paleo palates, and teach our children how to sanctify meals through invoking a higher power. The final byproduct of our relentless quest is taken for granted, shuttled underneath the floors and city streets, pushed to the subconscious fabric of our social lives, and relegated to the shameful outskirts of infant and elder. And then suddenly there’s blood in your urine and it all comes bubbling to the top.
Eight candles, eight days of pills and eight itchy diapers later, the open hole somewhere in my body finally took to closing. It was indeed a Hanukkah miracle.
Yet during the whole ordeal, I never once actually took advantage of the absorbent underpants. I always raced to the safety of the toilet instead. What if it overflowed? What if it smelled? What if I had to walk around in it for hours? So I didn’t unearth any profound psychological or social revelations. I don’t even know what it all means.
But I do know that there are two clean pairs of designer Depends for Men waiting in my dresser drawer. Any takers?
Shawn Shafner is The Puru and creator of The People’s Own Organic Power Project. His one-man show, “Eat $h*t: How Our Waste Can Save the World” premieres Oct. 19 at Dixon Place in NYC. Learn more at www.thePOOPproject.org.
Photo by simplyla, licensed under Creative Commons.
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