Alef: The NEXT Conversation
New Years, New Resolutions
by Meredith Druss
Last Monday was my birthday. I’ve finally hit 25 and with it, all the quarter-century crises attached to the nuanced age. Having a September birthday, I’m often looking towards my next year at the same time the Jewish community is looking towards our new year. Falling near, if not on, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, causes me to reflect a little deeper during my birthday: Did I accomplish everything I wanted to? Am I happy with the direction of my life? Do I still have the same core values? What do I want to change about myself in the upcoming year?
This month, for me, has always been filled with renewal and reflection. Therefore, as my first contribution to the Alef Love Column, I bring you four years of my New Year’s resolutions. Being Jewish gives us two New Years each calendar year, which means we get a second chance to look back and declare a resolution. As I share my reflections on the past four years of resolutions, I welcome any feedback, guidance, or advice from readers on what your resolutions may be. Beware, there may be a little TMI…
JUST SAY YES – New Years 2008
Winters in New York are rough. Add to that a recent break-up and unemployment, and that’s the situation I found myself in as I Auld Lang Syne-d my way into 2009. Friends of mine can attest that I’m a fairly happy person, but depression sets in quickly when you have no reason to leave your tiny NYC apartment.
The terms: Unless I had something better to do (and sleep does not count), I had to say ‘Yes’ (within my means/values/morals). “Meredith, will you be my wingman at this friend-of-a-friend’s party?” “Hey, you’re cute, can I take you out for a drink?” “Mer, will you join this kickball league with me?” That winter, I made new friends and nurtured old friendships, repelled a cloud of depression, got better acquainted with New York City, and yep, went on dates (this is the love column, right?). Lots of them. Having to say “yes” wouldn’t let me get away with judging guys at first sight. And trite as it may sound, the lesson was learned. There are some great guys who aren’t packaged in a buttoned-down shirt and Ivy league degree. Sometimes the dork in a kickball shirt dancing to Britney ends up being a Jewish boy-next-door type with Mets season tickets, the same taste in music, and a incredible sense of humor.
RSVP ‘YES’ – Rosh Hashanah 5770 & New Years 2009
Just saying ‘Yes’ is exhausting. Rosh Hashanah 5770 let me amend it a little bit. New terms: RSVP ‘Yes’. No balking on an official invite and be open to invitations for new or out-of-the-box things.
FIVE – Rosh Hashanah 5771
As one can imagine, Just Say / RSVP ‘Yes’ has it’s repercussions. Finding myself single after being in a very serious relationship throughout college had me saying yes without being too discriminatory. Faced with a similar situation, my friend L joined me and we ushered in Rosh Hashanah 5771 together with a new resolution: five
The terms: Quality, not quantity. We were not allowed to get involved with more than 5 guys this year. L and I are both passionate and emotional, so who was really worthy of an emotional investment? Which guys are the ones who deserved to be laughed over, cried over, and everything in between? Thanks to five for proving that it’s not the one at the bar telling you “You’re gorgeous, but I’m not sure your haircut does you justice…” It’s not an ex either, we know where those stories end. For us to waste a number on you…you’d better be worth it, and in the process, we figured out what was most important to us.
RAISE THE BAR – New Years 2011
In NYC it’s easy to get into a rut. You found a nice, polite, cute Jewish guy with similar interests and lives within walking distance of your apartment?! He’s a keeper. NYC is a city of convenience. In 2011, it was definitely time to raise the bar.
The terms: Evaluate your situation and set your expectations higher. He was boring (we broke up). Under-appreciated and over-worked? Ask for that raise (I got it!). Be kind, even on the mean streets of NYC (all it takes is a smile). When the status quo is comfortable, it’s tough to pull yourself out of it. After raising the bar for myself, I saw that people looked at me in higher esteem. Knowing that I wouldn’t settle, they respected my decisions and conversely, raised their own expectations of themselves.
Judaism allows us to make two fresh starts a year, and I’ve found it’s the perfect opportunity to renew my past commitments or alter my values and the direction of my life. With 5772 just around the corner, I’m open to suggestions for a new resolution and catch-phrase, but I know that I’ll get the opportunity to revisit it in a couple of months…for 2012!
Photo provided by the author.
A Very Rosh Hashana Weekly Pita
Brought to you by…
1. Your favorite Apple device:
2. Dancing Yeshiva boys:
3. Some ominous guitar (?) playing:
4. The Jewish Women’s Archive and their Rosh Hashanah Video Roundup (for all the great ones not already featured here).
5. The Chief Rabbi – via Jewish Ideas Daily.
6. Apples and Honey…or rather, going beyond apples and honey with the Washington Post.
Lisa Eats Everything
by Lisa Radding
Bacon cheeseburgers don’t need ketchup. As a child, I thought every burger should be accompanied by a bottle of Heinz. It’s true that if you obtain quality ground beef or doctor it up a little, it can have exquisite flavor of its own, but at BBQs I’d douse my burgers in ketchup. Of course, a burger meant a hamburger, plain and simple. I grew up in a kosher (style) home where meat and dairy stayed separate and traif didn’t exist. Only recently did I learn how cheese and bacon add layers of flavor and texture that complement the meat of this sandwich, rendering all condiments unnecessary. They bring a salty, smoky, and gooey blending of flavors that accentuates the ground beef for a really (artery cloggingly) excellent burger.
I’m learning all this on my “Lisa eats everything” yearlong adventure. It was a Rosh Hashanah new years resolution. The rules of the game are as follows: If someone offers me a food/drink I’ve never tried before, I have to try at least one bite. Nobody can make me pay for food I don’t want, but if they offer a taste, I can’t say no. The point is to be uninhibited, to look at a menu and order exactly what I want to eat, to order it the way the chef prepares it, even if there is a hint of shellfish in the sauce of an otherwise innocuous dish. Although at times I’ve considered this my chance to try a Cuban, clam chowder, chorizo (insert your favorite traif here), it is really an opportunity to learn about people, culture, and the world I live in.
Take for example the day I suggested that my friend Erin order a breakfast sandwich for us to split. Sausage, egg, and cheese on a croissant? Eww. But it wasn’t the sausage the irked me, it was the croissant. In my experience, breakfast sandwiches belong between savory carbs, like toast or bagels. Croissants are for jam or nutella, a sweet spread to soak up those buttery flakes of pastry. But Erin grew up sandwiching her savory breakfast in sweetness. It tasted as delicious as it sounded revolting. Thus I gained a token more insight into mixing flavors. Although the flavor profile in question here wasn’t the traif, only by allowing myself to eat everything could I try this combination, since the entire ensemble required consumption of sausage.
But resolving to experiment with taste and actually ordering ham are wildly different. A few days after Yom Kippur I stood in the adorable deli on my block struggling to say “croque monsieur.” While it’s gotten easier, placing a traif order and subsequently taking a bite still make me slightly uncomfortable. It’s not because I kept strictly kosher before last Rosh Hashanah, or because I have firm beliefs about the importance of Kashrut. In fact, I feel more confused about religious dietary laws than governed by them. More likely, the uncomfortable feeling is because in this exploration of people and culture through food, I suspend my own culture, which is closely tied to Kashrut, and is the right/wrong of food with which I was raised. On the other hand, eating everything has done for me what Kashrut does for many others: it has made me think sincerely about my sustenance and specifically about which food I am choosing to eat. This year I may not have eaten as the Torah prescribes, but neither did I take my food for granted. And I do see purposeful eating as a meaningful message behind seemingly archaic dietary laws. Despite feeling uncomfortable, I also feel exonerated by the fact that this project is designed to be thought provoking: I am more conscious of both what I consume and of how others understand food.
Although gaining food cultural knowledge is a life long project, as Rosh Hashanah approaches again, I’m ready to let the project change forms. I can stop this NYC bacon cheeseburgers tasting mission. When I travel, however, I’ll want to taste the local dishes… “When in Rome.” I have yet to discover where October will lead me, but I think it will be far from the ketchup bottle. Even if I grill an unadorned hamburger, the way I was raised to eat ground beef, I think I bring enough experience in the mixing of flavors to turn it into an exquisite sandwich in its own right. But maybe, before September ends, I’ll need one more reminder of that salty, smoky, and gooey sandwich that is so quintessentially American.
Photo by Savory.Recipes, licensed under Creative Commons.
05: Death and Tragedy
This week we introduce Issue #5: Death and Tragedy
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It may seem strange to have the first issue of the new year focus on death and tragedy. The beginning of a new year is typically a time for excitement and enthusiasm, an opportunity to create new beginnings and improve ourselves through resolutions. But the American New Year, or in general, the secular observance of the new year in the Gregorian calendar, is a moment in time, a clock striking midnight. In that second, one year is completely gone and a new one is suddenly upon us. This concept, however, sits in stark contrast to our observance of the Jewish New Year – a period of 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that serves as a time to embark on a process of repentance, reflection, and renewal.
While it is nice to imagine that a singular instance can bring about all the change that hope for, the reality – and particularly the Jewish reality – is often not so simple. While this is the perfect time to start over or try again, it is also a time to ponder what we have lost and learned, and to use the lessons from our lives to help us become better people for the coming year.
We have all experienced loss. Many of us have lost grandparents, parents, or friends. As Jews we are also affected by the vastness of our collective historical death and tragedy, underlined most violently by the Holocaust. Just as the Jewish New Year is a 10-day stretch that takes us from one of the most joyous Jewish holidays (Rosh Hashanah) through to the most somber (Yom Kippur), grieving, healing from that grief, and growing from it, is all part of a very similar process, one that isn’t an instantaneous transformation, but is rather one that takes time.
In this issue, we explore death and tragedy as a way of reminding ourselves that, as Jews, we have a responsibility to remember those who have come before, even as we celebrate the possibilities inherent in the concept of a new year. We’ll look at how death has affected some us, maybe changed us, or in certain cases, not affected us at all. Although this is an incredibly vast topic, we hope these stories will shed light on how we experience death and tragedy through a Jewish lens.
- Alef
Photo by jpc101 licensed under Creative Commons.
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Death and Tragedy Posts:
Grave Recollection
Clear
Inglourious Basterds
To Mom With Love
Sitting Shiva in the Land of Oz
My Jewish Jeanne
January 14
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