Why is the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival better than the New York Jewish Film Festival?  For starters, my mother is on the board of directors (in full disclosure/hi mom!).  In all seriousness though, the answers is focus.

The New York program has come and gone (January 13-28).  I had the pleasure of seeing some of the NY offerings and Ajami aside, which just received a well deserved Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, the options were many, and the quality was low.  I'm sorry, but 32 films?  There just aren't 32 recent and great Jewish/Israeli films.  Hell - there aren't 32 recent and great American films.  I say "recent" because the New York selection committee apparently does not have any restrictions on production year.  This was evident from the screening of the 1935 vaudevillian film Bar Mitvzah, which I recommend skipping even if it's on PBS.  The point is - what's the point?  This is a yearly Jewish film festival and there are at least a handful of great, new, topical, Jewish/Israeli films that could be showcased alone.

Which brings us to the Phoenix Film Fest, and really a vast majority of the other smartly smaller film festivals throughout the U.S.  The Phoenix program is just about to begin (February 20-March 4) and features a mere nine films.

The selection ranges from documentary Stealing Klimt, the complex story of 90-year-old Maria Altmann's struggle to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis, to the hilarious comedy A Matter of Size, a charming tale about four overweight Israeli's who launch a sumo wrestling club.  

So back to the question: what's the point?  Well, I think the point of all of the film fests, and Jewish cultural offerings in general, is to create moments of community that can be easily accessed via culture.  The problem with the superstore 32 films model (besides stunning those who aren't in the know with too many choices) is reduction in quality.  As Jews and consumers, we crave quality, and thus the carefully curated experience becomes extremely important if you are asking someone to spend a few hours watching whatever it is you are peddling.

Moreover, community is often about shared experience.  If the aim is to rally the community and generate buzz for certain films and overall, the richness of Jewish culture...well, you get where I'm going: that's pretty hard to do when everyone you know saw a different random film.

I'm a firm believer in the transformative powers of culture and inclusive environments, but much like the movie camera, focus is key.

Four years ago, when Coleman was born, I sometimes attended a mothers’ group in my neighborhood, an obscure corner of the Lower East Side tucked away beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. Like many new mothers in neighborhoods across the country, I had a rather conflicted relationship with this group. On the one hand, I was grateful, in those early days, for a place to go one afternoon per week, and for a group of women who were going through experiences similar to mine (lack of sleep, overwork, you know the drill). But though I made a couple of close friends within the group—friends with whom I’m still close and whose children have become Coleman’s friends, which is intensely wonderful for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint—I often found myself feeling alienated and alone, even as I sat in some nice person’s living room, picking at a cookie and wishing someone would magically airlift a double espresso from the coffee shop down the street. This was partly because, I suppose, I’m suspicious of groups, in general. In this group, as seems to be common, cliques quickly formed, and it sort of irritated me that these closed units of women felt the need to constantly chatter about the outings on which they’d gone together, the music classes in which they’d enrolled their kids together, the things they’d do over the weekend together, and so on, without thinking that this might, perhaps, make others feel excluded. Why go to the mothers’ group at all? Why not, I thought, just hang out together on Wednesdays between three and five, if you’re only going to talk to each other anyway? I tried to steel myself against the stupidity of it all, but couldn’t quite manage it. In other words, I felt like I’d returned to junior high, or maybe even high school (to be slightly kinder). In the years since, I’ve heard many other women complain about similar situations at their local playgrounds or whatnot, and I still can’t quite figure out what makes it so, though that knee-jerk feminist explanation has crossed my mind: That women are somehow raised to be competitive with each other. Even ostensibly liberal women who exclusively feed their kids organic baby food. The other explanation, I suppose, is that women shouldn’t, perhaps, be allowed to focus on their kids as much as do mothers of today, including myself.

Sometimes, while I was scooting around the hardwood floor of a shiny new apartment, trying to make sure Coleman didn’t inadvertently reset some stranger’s Tivo, I felt like a secret agent, a spy, sent to report back to HQ about the foibles of modern parenting. All around me, women would be talking about sleep training, and eliminating petroleum products (goodbye, A&D ointment), and spacing out vaccines, and the sugar content of YoBaby, and which nannies ignored their kids in the park (much pity was reserved for the parents of said kids), and a million other things that I basically didn’t think about at all. And in a way, I was a spy: I was (am) a writer. At that point, I was working frenetically on my novel—whenever Coleman slept, at the weekend, etc.—while doing some writing for magazines, as I’d done for years, and editing features for an online magazine called Nextbook (more on this in a moment). But somehow my work life seemed unreal and strange to many of the other mothers I met. One woman, when I explained that Nextbook allowed me to work at home, said, “Oh, so basically you get paid to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s nice.” Er, no.

The reason I bring all this up is because perhaps the strangest thing I encountered at the meetings of that group—stranger even allowing a baby to cry in his crib for an extended period of time in order to learn how to fall asleep on his own, stranger than the habit of writing down the contents of every single one of a baby’s diapers (!)—was an insistence that having a baby eliminated a woman’s ability to read. “I haven’t read a book since I had So-and-so,” the women, or many of them, constantly said. “I pick something up and then I just fall asleep.” One woman said she could make it through the whole paper each morning—which I found, and still find, deeply impressive, since I tend to fade out around the “Business” section—but couldn’t commit to actual books, because her time was so interrupted. Whenever I mentioned a book I’d read—generally as part of a conversation with a college friend of mine who’d moved to the neighborhood—someone was, apparently, legally bound to good-naturedly call out, “How can you read? I just can’t read anymore.” That’s weird, I thought, the first time it happened. And then it kept happening.

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I'm grateful to the bagel for introducing me to American and particularly Jewish American labor history.

One British review of my book berated me for ‘devoting an inordinately lengthy section to the history of the New York bakery unions' struggles' but those struggles led to real change for people's lives (and also arguably resulted in more hygienic bread!).    

The conditions in the cellar bakeries of the Lower East Side at the turn of the 19^th Century into the 20^th were grim. Here's one account from the New York Press in 1894:

Trays of pretzel biscuit (that is, bagels) more or less fresh from the oven, stood upon the barrels... the wooden floor was rotten and bent under the weight of a person in every part... and wet, so wet that if a man stepped on that portion the splash of the water underneath could plainly (be heard)... the shop was thorougly infested with a great vareity of insect life... real genuine cockroaches, about an inch long, were seen springing at a lively rate in the direction of the half moulded dough.   

It took until 1909 - with the support of the whole community on the Lower East Side - to establish a lasting bakers' union and set minimum wages. But it would be a turning point for the entire Jewish labor movement in New York. This was the beginning of a period during which Jewish unionists would play a leading role in the wider American movement, most famously in the garment industry.

One of demands acceded to by the bakery bosses in the 1909 strike was a system which was pioneered by the Jewish unions in the US - a system by which employed workers gave up one night a week to unemployed workers. One of the union leaders described it this way:

The Jewish locals demand from their steady men to support the loafing men, not with money but with work... [We] take the list of loafing men and the list of steady men and [determine] just how much the steady men must give up of their time to enable the loafing men to get enough work to cover their immediate expenses and a little above.

Any lessons there for today's recession?

Maria Balinska, author of The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Last autumn my department produced for BBC Radio 3 a 45-minute documentary about how Yiddish is being kept alive today in New York City. [The audio isn't up anymore but have a look/listen to the audio slide show.] One of the comments that really struck me was from a member of a svive on the Upper West Side explaining his motivation for getting together on a regular basis with other people to talk Yiddish:

"...[T]here is so much memorialising about the Holocaust and yet so few people know anything about who those people were. You never learn five six [million] of them spoke Yiddish another good five ten per cent spoke Ladino in the Balkan countries. People mourn these people and yet they don't know anything about their culture. And I realised you can't mourn somebody without understanding them and to me it became a way of keeping something about them alive... I grew up in the eighties on Long Island, typical conservative Hebrew school and the Holocaust was a very, very large part of our curriculum and yet we learned absolutely nothing about the way that those people lived." 

The story of the bagel in prewar Poland is basically a story of what everyday life was like. For starters almost half of all the country's bakeries were Jewish owned - in other words way out of proportion to the overall size of the Jewish population which made up about 10%. When you see those kinds of numbers you get a tangible feel for just how important those Jewish bakers were for the towns and cities of Poland. And because the bagel was such a popular food you find lots of observations about them - some more serious than others (in 1934 one sociologist did a survey of 129 of Warsaw's 600 bagel peddlers) but all of them provide memorable pictures.  Like the rabbi in a medium sized town whose supper - reflecting his somewhat better off social status - was usually a glass of tea and 'a day-old bagel.' Or the hiding place for the socialist conspirators hollowed out under the bagel kettle. Or the the young woman bagel peddler in Warsaw who lost her leg running away from a policeman (who would have arrested her because she had no licence to peddle) but continued to hobble along on a wooden stump with her basket of bagels because there was nothing else she could make a living from.

I'd argue that this kind of history - this history of the everyday - is crucial to understanding the thorny subject of Polish-Jewish relations.

Within Poland there are a number of initiatives to make this kind of history available to a wider public. In the town of Lublin, for example, TNN a theatre group that started in 1992 on the site of the gate between the Jewish and gentile parts of the city has a growing archive of oral history about life in Lubin before World War II (there are many memories of buying bagels). And then there is Warsaw's planned Jewish Museum which is going to have galleries which commemorate the culture and work of Poland's Jewish community since the 10th century as well as a section on the Holocaust. Yes, it has attracted controversy in the world wide Jewish community - some New York friends of mine, for example, refused to donate any money, for them Poland is a cemetery best left alone. But to my mind those hundreds of years before the Holocaust were crucial to today's Jewish community and to today's Poland. They cannot be completely divorced. Not everyone will agree. Novelist Dara Horn, for example, takes issue with the argument I make in my book that Jews did not live in a world apart in Poland.

Maria Balinska, author of The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Lia Romeo, co-author of 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy.  She shared all sorts of misery with us, including the miserable beginning to her book deal, the misery of being at the inauguration ceremonies, the misery we come into contact with every day, the misery in history, and, last but by all means not least, the misery of New York.  Not quite on Xanax yet?  Buy the book!

A divorced friend has a crush on a mutual, Upper West Side friend and if he could sleep with someone with no repercussions – no pregnancy, or unattractive sexually transmitted diseases or guilt, she’s the one it would be. What about you, he asks me.

I tend to not like these theoretical questions because they imply that I would welcome such an opportunity--which I wouldn’t--but it is an interesting dilemma. As if I might be pressed into making a choice of candidates sometime soon, I clarify the parameters with my friend. Exactly what kind of a make-believe one-night-stand am I walking into? I don’t have to have a relationship and nobody gets hurt and the sex will be good? Yes, yes, and yes.

Okay. So, if everything else were off the table, and it were only about having sex once, let’s see, who would it be? I have to think for a while because this is like asking me what kind of chocolate I would have if I were guaranteed not to get fat – should I go for sweet or intense or foreign or maybe…the possibilities boggle. I want to define the terms further, so I ask does the person have to be alive? No, he could be dead, my friend says. Oh, good. (There are just not enough men alive today to choose from. I need the entire scope of history at my disposal. And I like older men.)

So then I think and think and maybe I’m chickening out, or I lack the imagination required to pick somebody from this world, (or maybe I like really unattainable men, like dead ones in oh-so-last-year’s tunics), but it’s a tie between Moses and Jesus (why settle for Josiah when I could have the biggies?). But here’s where men and women are totally different: the reason my friend wants to have sex with this woman is because of, well, sex; I, however, doubt that either of the objects of my affection is particularly hot, but I view sex in this case as a vehicle to enter a potentially more spiritual world. These two guys each spent 40 days on a mountain communing with God, so even if they aren’t the best kissers, and maybe they’re not as cute as Brad Pitt, I would bet that they know a thing or two about God, and maybe some of that Divine energy rubbed off on them and will, um, rub into me. If there we are, naked together, I might get – I don’t know, something. Insight. Inspiration. Closer to God.

In another lifetime, I might have had the option of spending an afternoon at a temple and availing myself of the services of the temple prostitutes. These were both men and women whose job it was to have sacred sex with worshippers, and, in so doing, insure the fertility of the land and of the people. The Bible makes it clear that it doesn’t approve of cult prostitutes, and in no uncertain terms prohibits their presence: “No Israelite man or woman shall be a cult prostitute.” (Deut 23:18)

The prohibition is necessary because cult prostitutes—at least for the local non-Jewish religions—were common. The Bible tells the fascinating story of Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, who, when her husband died leaving her childless, covered her face, dressed up as a prostitute, and seduced her father-in-law. He, not recognizing her, slept with her, impregnating her. When he returned to compensate her and to pick up his seal, cord and staff he’d left with her as a pledge for future payment, he asked around for the “cult prostitute” on the roadside. I guess he wanted people to think he’d been on a spiritual, not a physical, mission.

I’m still thinking about spiritual sex when I attend an event downtown at which an artist talks about his art work and the creative process. With his paintings and sculptures magnified hugely on the screen in front of the room, he explains how the train in one painting is evocative of sex: the sound of the train’s slow build-up, whoo-whoo-whoo, then the chug-a-chug-a-chug picking up speed, and then the gradual dissipation, letting out air, “sh-sh-sh” as it comes to a halt. Throughout the half hour, during which Kierkegaard and Picasso and Popeye are seamlessly interwoven into his talk, he uses the words “sexuality” and “transcendence” at least 10 times, often together: sexuality transcends… And art is a means of depicting this transcendence, and of transcending as well. Sex certainly lends itself as a metaphor to art and religion because it’s all about union and separation, striving for a higher plane of consciousness and spiraling off into another reality.

Okay, I’ll be really honest. Enough with the sex and spirituality crap. It’s not just the opportunity to get closer to God that makes me fetishize the prophets, nor is it my fantasized, post-coital discussions on the location of Noah’s ark that makes me reach into the pages of the Bible for my meaningless fling. I continue to be curious about the notion that “holy” people are different from the rest of us. I know: I’m probably just channeling the deep-seated, Christian notion that bodily urges are, if not wrong, definitely inferior to spiritual aspirations. But I still want to know: does a holy person’s “spirituality” carry through when he is naked and flailing about? Are there certain things that Moses or Hosea would do better, or wouldn’t do? Lights out? Chatty? Experimental? Not? In Judaism, none of the “holy” men are described as being any different in this regard than any other man. They got married and had children, and the idea that sex might hinder one’s ability to be close to God is nowhere to be found in the Tanach. So, whether they spent 40 days on the mountain or 40 years, it has nothing to do with what happens between the sheets.

Maybe my friend has it exactly right: for one night, it’s not about transcending (to where?) or intimacy or love or commitment; be in the moment, stay put on the earth and partake of earthly pleasures because, anyway, this is earth. And for one night don’t, like Judah did, pretend that you’re involved with a cultic prostitute, and thereby try to elevate it above what it really is - a piece of strange.

An article in today's House and Home section of the New York Times made me squeamish and guilty.  It was about families that not only allow, but enjoy having senior mothers in the house.  Inspired by the fact that Michelle Obama's 71-year-old mom will be moving into the White House, the article suggests that it is only this new crop of middle aged boomers who are beyond the hangups of the hippie-era parents who invented the generation gap.  Without much of a fuss, adult children are accepting parents into their homes these days, in some ways not unlike African tribal societies, where elders are made to feel useful and respected. 

It pains me to admit it, but the idea of having either of my parents living with me when they were still alive seemed like a fate worse than death. 

In my book, Assisted Loving, which is about me helping my father find love after my mother died, there's a scene in which he proposes we move in together.  He suggests buying us a house in the Hamptons, an area I've always loved and not all that far from our Long Island home of 50 years.  Idealistic as it might have been as a proposal for bringing together a bachelor son and newly single, octogenarian Dad, I could not imagine it.  He would talk my ear off.  He would want to control my life as a writer, pounding me with suggestions for what I should and shouldn't write.  He was a slob who left trails of bank statements across any surface he touched, along with free newspapers, half eaten sandwiches, dirty clothes and bridge contract sheets.  How could I stomach waking up in the morning to find him at my breakfast table pouring orange juice and Splenda into his tea?  It would be impossible, in my mind, to see him before the first cup of coffee in that ski parka he liked to wear over his pajamas until noon.  And what if he were to pick up my phone calls or intercept my mail?  He was a terribly friendly man who wanted to be heard, and wanted to feel useful.  There was no way I was going to live under the same roof with him.  I could never even consider the notion of letting him get that close to me and shanghai my autonomous bachelor life.  

President son-in-lawYet, my parents had done such a thing years before for my mother's father.  Grandpa Moe, a craggy, old-school, tough little retired salesman was there, across the hall from my childhood bedroom when I moved home after college.  Grandpa Moe wasn't much of a presence my whole childhood.  He lived far away in upstate New York with a second wife, with whom my mother and her sisters were not close.  When his second wife died,  he needed company and care.  So he moved in with my parents.  

At first, I was peeved.  Why did I have to share my bathroom with this old man?  Worse, why did I let him push me into getting up several days a week at 7 am to take him to Minyan?  In the course of our year under my parents roof, I had to force myself to pretend to like him - a conservative Jewish man at the end of his life who read the National Enquirer for his news, and drummed his fingers on our formica kitchen table because he had nothing else to do.  By pretending to like him, and forcing myself to converse with him, I became interested and amused by his humor, and I did come to like him in the five years or so he was in the house.  I also came to like the minyans I drove him too, seeing, at his shaky side, a hidden world of little old Long Island men reveling in their devotion to Judaism.

Seeing my parents reamain so patient and welcoming to an old chauvinist who they had plenty of reasons to find disagreeable, gave me new respect for them as people.  Their careful upbringing of my brother and me was one thing.  Now they were doing it again, this time for the older generation.  My father, who had every reason to silence Grandpa Moe as he talked through the news on TV, was terribly patient with him, never raising his voice.  

So of course, it plagued me when my father suggested he and I live together when he was 80, and alone and in need of companionship.  Never, I told him.  Instead, I went into full gear in helping him in his search for new love, thinking if he wasn't so lonely then I wouldn't have to worry.  Of course, it turned out that the more I concerned myself about helping him find love, the more I came to love him myself.  Pimping for my father was the best way for me to learn about his charms.  Just not while we were living under the same roof.    

Today's New York Times article about mothers living with their children.

Bob Morris, author of Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

 

I deplore Japs even more than the people who throw a fit over the use of the word. I don’t mean the people responsible for drawing alcohol from rice grains; I mean the ones who say their holiday weekend was awe-some while they toss their hair and speak louder than necessary into their mobile phones as they leave their Murray Hill apartments en route to "fourbucks" for their coffee enemas. I know Jews get offended by the term. Get over it. It’s not a Jew thing; it’s regional. While I only know a handful of jappy boys and girls, the ones who are, are japtastic with a vengeance. There's no middle ground. Just like the girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead. Japs get their forehead curl straightened with Japanese chemicals.

To set it right, Japs can be male. I regret to say I’ve met a few too many Juvenile Affected Princes who go to Boston to get their eyelashes tinted. They’re not just heteroflexible, they’re judgmental. A jappy guy won’t date a woman with the "wrong" family, friends, or clothes. "Wrong" consists of blue collars, a propensity for hermitic inactivity, and sans logo apparel.  You've got a nice rack, but if you don’t have a Lexus, BMW or Mercedes lease on life, he’s having second thoughts. Japs don't think Saab; they live sob: Oh vey is mir.  You’re his accessory and door, but here’s the real rub: he doesn’t want a jappy woman. See Jewish men detest Jappy women. They complain about how long it takes her to get ready, and how she spends too much money on her hair, tank tops, plaid waders, and doggie treats for a yapping pooch named Gucci. It’s the goyish mensch who covets the Tiffany Bean clad girl. Goys love high-maintenance woman. They love her manicure pedicure time, her affinity for valet parking, and the backbone, heard periodically in a fine whine. It’s the Japman who nibbles on exaggeration and feasts on schadenfreude. I could never let a man who dabbled in Yiddish touch my triangle. I can’t imagine foreplay with a guy who says “fakakta.”

Japs are rarely women; they’re always girls. I can’t take them seriously; it’s the voice. It’s her inflection. It’s not necessarily what she says but how she says it.  It's a four-letter word: tone.  Even her small talk butchers. “Oh, hoy. How awe you?” Talk fucking normal. And learn to pay for your own gym membership. I don't care if real estate is slow. Your parents shouldn't be paying for your life if you're in your twenties.

Even when she’s over forty, she still dresses like her teenage daughter hoping to be deemed M.I.L.F., gets her hair blow twice a week, and buzzes around town in her SUV with a Tasti-D-Lite cup in her like-linen manicured hand. She’s a yenta with a slim cell phone tucked into the back pocket of her I-have-no-ass Habitual jeans. On Sundays she slums and does iced hazelnut coffee from the bagel store, where she orders low-carb bagels and diet lobster salad after her pilates class.  And then you hear her open that glossy lined mouth (you can always see her liner globbing up in the corners. You don’t know why it happens, but it always does.), and you flinch.  These are the jap snobs, not to be confused with the pearly pink and green society snobs. I can bear the WASPS; at least they volunteer and enunciate words.

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I returned to my homeland today, to the historical enclave of Jews which, for generations, has been synonymous with Jewish culture, with Jewish identity; with the aspirations of the 5,800-year-old People of The Book; I refer of course to Long Island, NY.

I did a reading for my novel, More Than It Hurts You, in Huntington today. When you drive far East enough, Long Island, despite being relatively close to New York City, could be any suburban flatland, anywhere. The strip malls, the chain stores - Manhattan's nearest neighbor seems to aspire to... what? Exurban Atlanta?

It's a bummer, and yet I have fond memories of it: sweet sixteens, bar/bat mitzvahs, day camps - all the things that my Protestant wife makes fun of me for now. (What does she know? Has she ever played "Coke and Pepsi"?)

It's an interesting place, Long Island: on the map it looks like a tailless crocodile with its mouth open. The island's far shore yawns into a pair of peninsula's a hundred miles east of Manhattan. Huntington is about halfway down the crocodile's cragged back. And the farther east you go on Long Island, the odder it gets -- until you reach the Hamptons, which don't really count; they're like an outpost of Manhattan. I think the reason it gets weirder as you go (more stories of murder and hate crimes) is because there's no one passing through. It's an island, after all, with all the isolation that the word implies; the only people who go out to Eastern Long Island towns are on their way to Eastern Long Island towns, and who wants to be on their way there?

It seems most of Long Island's Jews live closer to the city, which is only right; we are called "rootless cosmopolitans," after all.

Still, I grew up only 25 minutes from the city, in a town that was mostly Italian and Irish. And my being Jewish started a school-wide brawl, One kid, let's call him Tony (since that's his real name) called me a dirty Jew in fifth grade. This insult simmered for a few days, and then it all boiled over, a huge rumble - his friends (some of whom were Jews) against mine (most of whom were Italians). This fight taught me the hardest lesson I ever learned about human nature. Tony was punching me in the face while one of his friends held my hands behind my back. But then my friend Frank came and freed me, and - at the same time - grabbed this guy Tony, and held his hands. "Hit him!" my friend Frank said. "He's been hitting you, right?"

I was about to slug him, but he looked up at me with eyes that said, Can you really be so cruel as to exact the same punishment from me? Can't we let bygones be bygones? I walked away, feeling saintly (if a Jew can feel saintly). Tony freed himself and clocked me in the nose. Which only reinforced my belief: Jews shouldn't fight. (My friend Rich Cohen, author of "Tough Jews," would doubtless disagree.)

I don't go back to Long Island very much.

Darin Strauss, author of More Than It Hurts You, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

On a flight from Florida to New York, my mother-in-law was chatting with another grandma, and one thing led to another, and they exchanged phone numbers.  Not their own: rather, those of their respective unmarried grandchildren.  When my mother-in-law gave my nephew Josh (who was 33) the other granddaughter's phone number, he inquired, "What's she like, grandma?" 

"Oh, she was lovely," my mother-in-law began.

"The girl, not the grandma." 

"Oh.  Well, she said she was lovely, too, I'm sure she was very lovely.  She's very successful, she's Jewish, she's lovely."  **

My children are still teenagers, and not yet needing intimate intervention from grandma.   But recently at the kosher bagel store here on the Upper West Side, I got a glimpse of my children's potential future - and I almost called the grandma hook-up hotline. 

It's Sunday, late morning.  I'd ordered bagels and whitefish salad and other assorted items in the hopes of heading off my children's ever-present, "Mom, there's nothing to eat!" While I'm waiting, I can't help but overhear a man sitting at one of the small tables saying very loudly, "I've had some non-Jewish girlfriends and it's hard.  You like them, they like you - I've had struggles, so yeah.  As you get older it's more difficult.  When I was younger, I saw guys who were my age now who weren't married and I thought there was something wrong.  I thought I'd be married by now.  I'm re-evaluating myself."

Ever so casually I turn my head to look at the man who is baring his soul.  He's 40'ish, and his companion is a woman in her early 30s.  Her voice is quiet, so I'm forced to edge closer to the refrigerated drinks and frown as if in deep thought over my Iced Tea selection, while unobtrusively perking my ears.  She says that her two sisters are not married but that her parents don't put pressure on any of them. 

Her parents' forbearance is unfathomable.  Someone should report them for child negligence. 

The man continues.  He grew up conservative but then became orthodox and observant.  For a while he didn't work on the Sabbath but now he does.  "I would never mix dairy and meat," he reassures the young woman, "or eat pork or shellfish."   This implies that he does or might eat chicken and beef out.  While many modern Orthodox people will eat vegetarian or fish in non-kosher restaurants, chicken or hamburger that isn't certified kosher is barely a step above consuming shellfish.

My food is bagged and I pay, but I'm not ready to leave, so I sit at the counter, drink my coffee, and surreptitiously pull out a piece of paper, and start transcribing this couple's conversation.  With great effort,  ( as if I need more space, I push my stool out, a few inches closer to their table) I manage to hear the woman say, "I read an article about how people in general are staying single longer, but in the Jewish community it's even higher.  Jewish women are more educated and more independent."  The subtext, I imagine, is, "I'm single because I'm smart and independent, and you better be okay with that!"  The guy goes on to mention somebody who got engaged and then broke up - I'm not sure what that signifies.  They are throwing information at each other without saying a thing about their favorite movie or book or a weird dream they had or how they love falafel on King George Street in Jerusalem.  It is as bloodless as a job interview.  They are taking great care to skirt anything personal.  If their criterion for a partner is first and foremost that he or she be religiously observant, why don't they talk about how they feel about God, or ways in which God is important to them?  Were they Christian, they would already be offering to pray for one another.

In the background, John Mayer is crooning, "Say what you need to say, say what you need to say."  Over and over the words drone, but the couple doesn't seem to hear, or maybe they do and this is exactly what they need to say: I don't eat lobster. 

The last thing I record is him recounting a Shabbat dinner at which the question was posed: if your mother told you that she was not, in fact, Jewish, (which would render you not Jewish according to Jewish law,) would you convert or not?  He said that everyone at the table had said they would convert if such a thing, God forbid, happened.

At home, I find my 19-year-old son, David, in the family room clutching his golf club and practicing his swing.  I relay the conversation I'd overheard, and how weird it was that they hadn't seemed interested in discovering who the other person was.  All they'd talked about was their level of Jewish observance, because obviously that was the deal breaker.  If that wasn't compatible, then nothing further could transpire.  My sense had been that it was all about how the other person fit into the larger Jewish community, not whether he or she fit well as an individual.  David shrugs and pulls the golf club back in a mock swing.  "I better not find you in the bagel store 20 years from now," I warn him. 

"Ha ha.  Very funny," he swings. 

With effort, I control the urge to suggest to David what my father routinely (and seriously) advocated to us kids growing up.  My father believed (and believes) that the Biblical ways were the right ways.  Consider him a Christian Tevye - Tradition!  Back then, parents were responsible for finding their children a partner, and Daddy felt that he could do a good job of it.  The mere thought of Daddy choosing anything - a pair of socks! - for me was frightening.  Not that he wasn't discerning and didn't have decent taste.  But I figured if he'd had the chance, he'd choose a guy who could change spark plugs, drink shots of whiskey and discuss Eternal Salvation, as opposed to the swarthy, foreign type that I wanted.   I found someone who would not have been my father's pick, nor was he my "type," proving I guess that there is no formula, but by dumb luck it's worked out, anyway. 

But the thing is, luck doesn't always prevail, and then you end up on endless Dates-To-Nowhere, in which you recite your resume while mentally evaluating how well the other person meets the requirements of your check list.  Why not let mom or dad or Grandma help out?  And that is why when I'm at an Orthodox synagogue on a Friday night, and the man on the other side of the mechitza, (the curtain that separates the men's section from the women's), pokes his head through to ask me to get his daughter's attention, I whisper back, "That's your daughter?  She's lovely!"

"Thank you," he whispers.

"My son," I mouth and point at David.

"Oh!" he says.  "He's very handsome."

"It could be good," I suggest.  At this point, we've practically pushed aside the mechitza for the sake of making a match for our children.

When it comes to my children, I'm not above collecting phone numbers or pulling aside the curtain.   It's Anatevka all over again.  Call me Tevye.   I'm gonna play the fiddle, even if I know they will dance to their own tune.

**Josh did call the girl, and they met for dinner downtown.   "She wasn't terrible looking...she was a runner, so she had a nice body.  She had no personality, though.  Worse than that, she didn't react to anything I said, and she had nothing really to offer.  We had a horrible table...my feet were jammed up against a floor unit/space heater, and it was blasting hot air on my legs.  When we walked out, I saw the actor David Cross (from Arrested Development and Mr. Show), and that was by far the highlight of the night.  I can't even remember if she and I really said good-bye to each other.  We basically just walked in different directions homes.  Never spoke to her again."

Next week: Part II  She/He Was So Lovely.  So What Happened?

 

I'm walking on West 90^th Street talking on my cell phone when I spy my friend, Leslie, shuffling toward me in flip flops. Leslie looks up from her introspection, sees me on the phone, lifts a foot revealing chipped toenail polish, and mouths, "Pedicure!" I nod my head up and down, and she flip flops away. We are pedi-buddies, and when we sit in those vibrating chairs - after spending an undue amount of time trying to choose the perfect red or hot pink pedi-color - our conversations veer this way and that, a little lashon ha-rah (gossip) here, a little shtuch (pointed poke) there, whose children have tutors up the wazoo, and whose kid could use a good shrink, whose spouse is clinically depressed but you'd never know it, who has cancer but pooh, pooh, pooh, will be okay, and whose child we suspect might come out as gay in a few years. The usual.

In addition to being a pedi-buddy, Leslie falls into my own personal category of "children of Holocaust survivor" friends. At times, the Upper West Side seems to be one big reunion of "2G's" as my friend Eva would say, the second generation of the Holocaust. Many of those 2Gs are my friends, and because this is the small community that it is, I know their families' stories.

Leslie's mother was hidden as a child in a Polish neighbor's attic. My friend Ulrika's father was taken in by a cold, fanatic, Calvinist family in Holland, a family who didn't love him and forced him to show his circumcised penis to guests, not as humiliation but to re-enforce how strange Jews were, and isn't it wonderful that we are taking care of this little Jewish boy? Eva's mother picked cotton in below zero temperatures in Uzbekhistan, and to this day, even when it is eighty degrees outside in Miami, she will tell her daughter, "Eva, put on a sveder, a sveder, Eva, it's cold outside!" My friend Judy's mother improbably survived several death camps, camps where she'd been sent to be exterminated, but in being moved from one to another, she'd stayed ahead of the game. Her mother is in a home now, and she will curse at the nurses, "You're all Nazis! Nazi bastards! You should all rot in hell!"

It wasn't until I went to college that I met any Jews or had any Jewish friends. Today, I'm hard put to scrounge up many non-Jewish friends. But one friend, Alise, dates way back. She befriended me at church when I was eleven, a few months after my older sister, Abby, had died. Alise confessed not so long ago that the dead sister, not my engaging personality, was the big draw. Luckily, after the initial morbid thrill had worn off, Alise discovered she liked me well enough on my own to continue our friendship, and now, when we see each other we slip into our giggling, girlish ways.

I haven't set out to collect 2Gs as friends, nor do I look at them and immediately see Auschwitz. But initially, I will admit, I was drawn to their stories, much as Alise was drawn to mine. Their stories of loss, of not having extended family, and of their sense of being displaced are so different from my story, for I grew up playing with my brothers and sisters and mob of cousins in the log cabin my great-great grandfather had built in 1850. I've found that 2Gs are tenacious about family and friendships. If I had my appendix out or screwed up my hair color, my 2Gs would come to the rescue. Perhaps they actually look for opportunities to rescue to compensate for their parents not having been rescued.

When I return home several hours later from my various errands, I see Zoe on her cell phone. Zoe smiles and waves really big at me, as I did to Leslie, and then she's on her way. I am both happy and sad to see her. Bittersweet, I guess, is the feeling. She was my daughter Anna's best friend since they were 2 ½. Anna practically lived at Zoe's home, eating Shabbat dinner there almost every Friday night, a proper dinner with proper plates and silverware that included vegetables and fruit. Zoe's father is a 2G, who grew up in Europe and has an old-world, European sense of civility. Anna spent weekends at their summer home in the Hamptons, she and Zoe played dress-up and took baths together and skipped, literally, down West 90^th Street hand and hand. Sunrise... Then they grew up and grew apart. Sunset... Different schools, different friends, different interests. Yet when I look at this seventeen-year-old, tall, graceful, cool-looking, lovely, 3G Zoe chatting animatedly on her cellphone, I still see the four-year-old girl in the bathtub with Anna, white soap bubbles covering their smiling faces. And I see friendship.

Fleet Week in NYC: tattoos, booze, and...jews?My mother recently learned how to text-message. She’s addicted now, and several weeks ago, I received the following message: “JUST RAN INTO SUSIE FEINSTEIN @ SUPER-MARKET. JACOB ENGAGED TO GENTILE! OY VEY!”

Mr. and Mrs. Feinstein are a couple of conservative Jews, long-time friends of my parents, and Jacob is their oldest son. I met Jacob when I was five, so now—almost twenty-five years later—I know a lot about him: I know he’s got a taste for buxom blonds with Southern accents; I know he likes a lady with a tiny gum-drop of a nose. I also know his parents would rather lose a limb than watch him date a gentile.

It’s a familiar situation: Jewish parents spend a lifetime configuring Marriage To Another Jew as the end all be all accomplishment, all the while counter-productively setting the stage for their child’s Shiksa-rebellion. They station us Jewish gals up on the pedestal of proper dating and, in so doing, nuzzle the rest of the female world into the seductive corner. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve had a Jewish boyfriend parade me around at some Briss or Bat Mitzvah and then later, behind closed doors, ask if I wouldn’t mind a little Catholic school girl role-playing action, I’d have, well, a dollar. It’s happened with disconcerting frequency, and I’m getting exhausted.

We Got Married in a Fever, Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout: we've been talking 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went outI want to be the manifestation of rebellion for once! But for whom is a Jew Gal a novelty? Is such a thing possible if you live in New York City?

Well, it is if it’s Fleet Week. Which it was in New York, just two weeks ago.

In humiliating and unrestrained anticipation of the ‘Sex and the City’ movie, and in pathetic homage to the T.V. episode wherein the four characters celebrate fleet week by attending a sailors’ party off Chelsea Piers, I decided to celebrate two weeks ago by trolling for sailors myself. I met one, goy-lifically named Jackson, in a West Village bar. Jackson was 6'3", from West Virginia—“they might both have ‘west’ in ‘em,” he’d drawled in reference to both the village and his native state, “but they ‘sho different!”—and in an effort to keep our belabored conversation afloat—HA!—I tossed off this numb-skulled hypothetical: “Alright Jackson, so let’s say this. Let’s say you’re on your ship and it’s sinking—God forbid!—and you end up stranded on a desert island and you can only take three items with you. What would they be?”

Jackson didn’t seem bothered by my insensitive mention of a sinking ship; it was the equivalent, I later decided, of someone saying to me, “Alright Sara, so let’s say this: you’ve just been diagnosed with Melanoma. Who do you tell first: your mom or your dad?” Jackson considered my question for a moment, then answered, “Well, there’re only two things I’d need, really: a twelve-pack of cold beer, and a good woman.”

“Interesting,” I replied. “And what constitutes ‘good’?”

“Well if I had my pick,” he said, “I guess I’d like a lady with tattoos.”

Sinking Ship: vs melanomaI have no tattoos, of course: I want at least the option of a Jewish burial. (Also, tattoo parlors instill in me an unmatched sense of fear – I can’t handle the idea of people strapped in chairs or the voluntary puncturing of human skin. The by-product is fine—even sexy, as Jackson suggested—but when I see the reality of where the magic happens, I get queasy.) Jackson praised tattoos and all they tend to connote, and I felt disappointed. West Virginian Sailor struck me as being one of the more exotically attractive types I’d ever get the chance to meet (Eskimos or Tibetan monks notwithstanding), and I’d banked on the feeling being mutual, but apparently not.

Or so I thought. See, I told Jackson I was sans tattoo, offered up the aforementioned reasons as to why, and he said, “Jewish, huh? That’s cool. I never met no Jewish gal before.” Then he inched in closer and put his hand atop my knee. I’m not sure this meant I was his forbidden fruit per se; and frankly, I didn’t care to probe lest I unearth some genuine strain of anti-Semitism on behalf of his parents. Instead, I reveled in the moment, this chance to act as someone else’s novelty.

An hour later, Jackson invited me back to his ship, but I declined. I mean, I’d won my Rare Bird status and shouldn’t that suffice? Did I want to chase after the prize of middle-bunk sex in addition? Didn’t that seem greedy? I thought it did. I felt reinvigorated, after all, and so decided: quit while you’re ahead.

This way, when I get Jacob Feinstein’s notice telling me to Save the Date, I’ll have the strength to listen.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer was elected overwhelmingly in 2006 on his promise to finally bring transparency and efficiency to New York, a promise brokered on his glamorous Wall Street-busting successes as state attorney general. Well, it didn't take long for his administration to plow right over public expectations.

First came the disclosure last year that members of his staff had been spying on Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, and using tax-payer dollars to do so. (More distressing to New Yorkers with a nodding acquaintance with Mr. Bruno is that they didn't turn up anything good on him.) Spitzer took a fall, then rebounded, owing, I suspect, to his lantern-jawed, comic book hero visage which you just want to believe in, damn it. Now comes word that he was involved in a prostitution ring. (Batman never paid for chicks.) His career in politics is effectively over today.

The New York Times just posted this story to its website and Drudge and Fox News have gone all woo-woo in their inimitable ways:

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

But a person with knowledge of the governor’s role said that the person believes the governor is one of the men identified as clients in court papers.

The governor’s travel records show that he was in Washington in mid-February. One of the clients described in court papers arranged to meet with a prostitute who was part of the ring, the Emperors Club VIP on the night of Feb. 13.

Which of course doesn't prove anything except that Spitzer was likely getting fucked by someone who isn't his wife for $5,500. That's how much the Emperors Club charges for its finest ladies per hour, and everything the Spitz would have us believe about him suggests he's no compromising, part-time lover.

NBC is also reporting that cell phone records are the damning evidence that makes this a no-spin situation.

The Emperors Club website is down now. If it stays that way permanently, a balanced budget and the end to the Rockefeller drug laws can't be far behind.

UPDATE: Spitzer is apparently listed as "Client No. 9" in the prosecutor's brief against the Emperors Club. I just heard on CNN that the call-girl frequented by him said one of their sessions went "very well." So the day hasn't been all bad for the governor, after all.

Congratulations! You’ve managed to get through the first 2.5 weekdays. To help you get through the second half of your week, Jewcy is happy to present you with Hump Day Art. Think of it as an opportunity to devote your attention to the more cultural things in life, or at the very least, to zone out at your desk for a few minutes while you look at some pretty pictures.

I've loved Maira Kalman ever since I first read her children's book, Max in Love, as a kid. A native of Tel Aviv, but thoroughly a New Yorker, Kalman incorporates color, fantasy, and humor into her art with a style that walks the line between sentimental and strange. Here are a few of my favorites from her year-long project with the Times (recently published as a book), The Principles of Uncertainty.

Last week: Peace Through Graffiti?

Te’DeVan “Rocketman” Kurzweil is the quintessential Jewish New Yorker bohemian weirdo. A six-foot-seven-inch faith healer, freestyle rapper and former nude comedian, Te’DeVan is a local legend who makes his living in tips from those whom he cures and entertains. (I first interviewed him for New York Press in 2002 when he tried to convince everyone in Times Square that terrorists were operating a Queens grocery store.)

Now he is taking his message to the national stage through a bizarre presidential campaign. He has garnered supporters at numerous music festivals and university campuses—from California to Tennessee to Washington, D.C.—and on the Internet at his personal blog.

Six feet seven inches of presidential candidate: RocketmanAre Americans ready for a six-foot-four Jewish faith healer as their leader? Can you "heal" this nation with your supernatural abilities?

Actually it is six-foot-seven-inch Jew. See how the media is already lying trying to diminish my physical size? Because everyone knows that height matters in political campaigns.

I would not consider my healing to be mine, but rather God's healing. With enough willpower, clarity of mind, and compassion we can all heal this country.

Are you running an actual campaign or is this a work of performance art?

I am not honestly sure if the two differ these days.

When you don't have a lot of money or the high brand name visibility, you have to incorporate a high level of entertainment to get everyone's attention.

Are you registered as a candidate in any state? Can people actually vote for you?

Our team of lawyers is attempting to get me registered as a candidate, but the combination of ageism and anti-Semitism might make this a serious challenge. Since we live in a democracy, of course people can vote for me and my wing-mate Smiley along with our ever-expanding Infinite Cabinet. People are voting for me as a write-in candidate while other people are merely voting for me in their hearts and minds.

Anti-Semitism is keeping you off the ballot? What?

Ageism, not anti-Semitism. The Constitution supposedly says you have to be 35 years old, but the government doesn't really follow the Constitution anymore on most matters. To follow it because I am not of legal age seems absurd to myself and the Infinite Cabinet.

He's no Lieberman: Te’DeVan's running mate Who the fuck is "Smiley"?

He is a lifeguard, Ferris wheel operator, bouncer and philosopher, currently residing in New Jersey until we get the biodiesel buses ready to roll. His first words to me on top of a beach pier across from a police station were: "Hey, you want to start a revolution?"

My response was "Hell to the yeah." A great friendship was forged.

What is your platform?

1) Stop killing people we don't know. Start helping people we do know right at home who are struggling with healthcare, the economy and the price of education.

2) Fess up to global warming and take serious initiatives to clean up the planet. We need clean air, water, and organic apple pie.

3) End the war on drugs. If we can't keep drugs out of prisons, why are we spending billions to keep them out of the country? Decriminalize pot. We have too many people going to jail for this -- it's flooded the courts and it's a waste of taxpayers' money. In many cases, prescription pills are more dangerous gateway drugs.

4) It's insane how many people we have in prison. We went from a prison population of 300,000 in 1981 to 2.1 million in 2004. At that rate, by 2027 we'll have 14.7 million people in prison. That is absurd.

5) Lower the voting age to 12. We will settle for 16. If we're going to turn these kids into pill poppers, we might as well make them lever-pullers, especially if we're going to try them as adults for murder.

6) Bring sexy back to the White House. Justin Timberlake was onto something. All these other politicians don't know how to act.

7) Give out three million college scholarships. Being educated and being in debt should not go hand in hand.

Eyes like Isaiah and a beard like Moses: Te’DeVan the prophetWhat inspired the campaign?

Once the primaries are over, it's business as usual for the major candidates. Issues become forgotten. Voters focus on the next pop star instead. Who can blame them? We have unlimited choices of shampoos and conditioners but only two choices for our world leader.

How are you using the Internet to campaign?

We are using MySpace, Facebook, Tribe, and YouTube, and we're selling the campaign on eBay. Smiley said that if big tobacco and the oil companies can buy a campaign, why not the American taxpayer? So eBay just might save the American democracy.

What do you mean, you're "selling the campaign"?

Politicians are bought and sold all the time. Campaigns are commodities. They spend over $300,000,000 to get a job that pays about $400,000. Obviously something is skewed here. I don't know of any servant position-public or private-that pays less then .013 of what it costs to obtain it. That is total insanity.

We are offering a service to bring back democracy in America. We will spend the money on biodiesel buses, food, and video equipment to document our great adventure.

What is your most memorable campaign experience so far?

I would say the overwhelming response we received at Bonnaroo (a music festival in Tennessee) where the other candidates dared not tread. We got some coverage from Current Television and Country Music Television. A lot of hands were shaken and pictures were taken. A lot of support was pledged.

Are people volunteering to help your campaign? Do you have any kind of staff?

We have staff working around the clock. We can't even keep up with all the different efforts. The staff is affectionately known as the "Infinite Cabinet" and is always expanding.

I think it's gonna be a long long time: On the campaign trail How many states have you campaigned in? How many do you plan to campaign in?

We have Infinite Cabinet members in all the states, including overseas, spreading the word about our campaign and the Infinite Cabinet. I am pushing to focus mainly in Hawaii knowing full well that surfers love us and that victory will be assured. Of course, the Infinite Cabinet in their infinite wisdom have a different plan of action.

How have colleges responded to you showing up and spreading the gospel to students?

We have rocked the college campuses hard, but until last month we were understaffed. We move more rapidly than plates of cocaine through the White House. And sometimes we garner too much attention. We're the bad boys of American politics. Just like the Pistons back in the days of Isaiah.

You have told me that you consult with psychic advisors. What do they say about your political quest?

According to our spiritual consultants, we are certain to be a factor in the outcome amongst the spirits polled in the Gallup poll. There is a margin of error of about three to five percent. We are certainly one of the most unique and all-encompassing campaigns, and we are going the long haul to the finish line.

What do you want to accomplish with this campaign?

We want to galvanize the apathetic, disenchanted, disenfranchised masses. We want to make the election prospects better for politicians who actually want to enact changes. We want to say, "Your vote may not always count but your voice certainly does, so speak up."

Shimon Waronker: the jewish joe clark?Here's the next in the inspirational genre of films that includes classics like Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds: the story of Shimon Waronker and the South Bronx junior high school that he has singlehandedly brought back from the throes of urban death.

A Hasid originally from South America, he speaks fluent Spanish, has a background in the military, is a former public school teacher, and is Yeshiva educated. Though it took him a while to get a job after graduating from the New York City Leadership Academy, he has worked wonders since becoming the principal of Junior High School 22, where students once "roamed the hallways with abandon" and attendance was a joke.

Despite critics who claim that Waronker is "more concerned with creating flashy new programs than with ensuring they survive," attendance is now above 93%, and Junior High 22 is no longer on the city’s list of the 12 most dangerous. Better yet, Waronker's students now have course options such as French and Spanish dual language programs and etiquette training. He's added "two guidance counselors, one psychologist, two social workers, three family workers, and one attendance teacher to the school staff."

Students and parents at Junior High 22 have even learned a thing or two about Jewish stereotypes: "One parent, Angie Vazquez, 37, acknowledged that her upbringing had led her to wonder: 'Wow, we’re going to have a Jewish person, what’s going to happen? Are the kids going to have to pay for lunch?'"

Just like your best friend in junior high school who returned from summer vacation with boobs and a haircut, two New York Jewish landmarks are getting some extra attention due to recent makeovers. The Eldridge Street Synagogue, once home to pigeons and decay, has been refurbished to its 1907 glory, while the Kaufman Center has a new airy redesign thanks to Robert A.M. Stern. For more, check out this article in New York Magazine, or better yet, go catch a glimpse of these historic places in person.

This week's New York magazine is the annual "Reasons to Love New York" issue. Last year, Jewcy mocked. This year, we were asked to contribute:

Last year, Michael Weiss, an editor at the hip online magazine Jewcy.com, thought that our list of “Reasons to Love New York” was, to use his word, “malnourished.” So he solicited his friends to come up with their own. Their reasons ranged from simple, straightforward appreciations—“Because New York has the highest per capita rate of beautiful women on the planet”—to decidedly backhanded ones—“Because even the most obnoxious, shallow, empty-headed dickwads around here are at least pretty intelligent.” We asked him to solicit more for 2007. Here’s what he and his readers/friends came up with.

80. “Because understanding the dullness and poverty of contemporary art is made easier once you know that it gestates in Chelsea. But mostly I love New York because there are few places that can make you suspicious of high proportions of 'cool' people, where everybody has an informed opinion about Proust or Gravity’s Rainbow, owns records by Brian Eno or John Cage, and endorses the politics of Noam Chomsky. Once such refinement is revealed as canonical, you’re in a great spot to do the work of locating the space where something truly radical might emerge.”
—Josh Strawn, lead singer of Blacklist

81. “Because of the Partisan Review crowd and how the Ansonia reminds me of Bellow’s Seize the Day. Because of the British expats in Brooklyn Heights who try to blend but still occasionally talk as if Zabar’s were located somewhere east of Suez. Because of the late senator Pat Moynihan and the fishbowl-size Bloody Marys at Sarabeth’s (oddly related in my mind). Because Morrissey just decides not to show up at the Garden one night and everyone’s cool with it. Because the subway series extends to presidential races, too. Because my older sister took the Preppy Killer’s high-school-yearbook photo and knew then he was no damned good.”
—Michael Weiss, your humble compiler

82. “Because when I’m on the subway trying to read a book about zombies, and a man gets on and starts talking really loudly about how he’s found Jesus and Jesus is what’s kept him from performing fellatio on the side of the BQE, and I say to him 'Excuse me, I’m getting toward the climax of this book, so do you think you can ‘reel it in’ a bit, like, you know, ‘take it down a notch’?' he nods and says, 'Why, certainly, I meant in no way to disturb your reading pleasure,' and continues his spiel in a delicate whisper.”
—Eli Valley, cartoonist

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels What: Mystical reflections of Yom Kippur When: Saturday, September 22, 3:45 PM Where: Quadrangle Club, 1155 E. 57th St Why: Explore the oneness of time, space and consciousness with a totally far-out discussion by Rabbi Yossi Brackman on the mystical dimensions of Yom Kippur.

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels What: Yom Kippur meditation and break-fast When: Saturday, September 22, 9 AM Where: 1404 Greenfield Ave #1

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels What: Yom Kippur services with special speaker Cindy Sheehan, followed by vegetarian potluck break-fast When: Saturday, September 22, 9 AM Where: St. Mark's Lutheran Church, 1111 O'Farell St. Why: This might just be the ultimate hippie Yom ...

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels What: Interactive Yom Kippur services When: Friday, September 21, Kol Nidre 7:30 PM; Saturday, September 22, Morning Service & Yizkor, 10 AM; Neilah, 4 PM Where: The Lincoln Theater, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach Why: The Mosaic club’s goal is to bring Jews together and promote environmental awareness through worship and outdoor activities. They’ll all be at these services in ...

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels What: Maayan Tikvah's Yom Kippur services and break-fast When: Saturday, September 22, 4 PM Where: Rabbi Allen's home (email for address: rabbikza@verizon.net) Why: Like you, ...

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and BagelsWhat: Tashlich drum circle and nature hikeWhen: Thursday, September 13, 4 PM and Friday, September 14, 9 AM Where: “where Venice Beach meets the sand”Why

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and BagelsWhat: Kabbalistic erev Rosh Hashanah servicesWhen: Wednesday, September 12, 8 PM Where: The ...

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and BagelsWhat: Jewish Drum CircleWhen: Sunday, September 9, 2 PM Where: North Lakeside Cultural Center, on Sheridan Rd just north of GranvilleWhy:

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and BagelsWhat: Interactive Rosh Hashanah ServicesWhen: Wednesday, September 12, 7:30 PM through September 14 Where: The Lincoln Theater, 541 Lincoln Road, ...

The Hippie: Dreadlocks and BagelsWhat: Tashlich, a nature work, and a pot-luck vegetarian dinnerWhen: Friday, September 13, 5:00 PMWhere: Meet up at Rabbi Katy Z. Allen’s home ...

Diverse Jewish events abound around the holidays, but they tend to concentrate around certain cities (especially New York), and they’re none too easy to find. Luckily, we’ve done the legwork for you. To match our readers up with the best Rosh Hashanah events in the country, we’ve identified seven common Jewish archetypes and found events for each of them in six major U.S. cities: New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. From traditional services to drum circles to the ubiquitous Chabad hoedown, there's something on this list for every Jew. Which one are you? Options below: The Hippie: Dreadlocks and Bagels ...