happy purim!!

today is my favorite jewish holiday. wishing everyone a happy purim. dont drink and drive! enjoy all of the shalach manot!

snow day

friday was a snowy day in new york. it was fun to see all of the kids outside shoveling and making snowmen. a bunch of little girls told me that they wanted to have their snowperson put in hamodia. i guess they will have to settle for this blog....

suddenly goyish.

i have a friend who always had thought she was jewish because her father was jewish until one day she found out that orthodox jews only go by matralineal descent. so she converted to judaism and became orthodox. i always wondered what someone in this situation feels. my friends mom wasn't alive when she came across this information. all of her family at the time was jewish. they weren't orthodox, but they were jewish.

what would you do if you found out you weren't really jewish? as a kid my first thought was that i would leave judaism. as an adult i realize that my answer is quite different. if i wasn't jewish i certainly would not be christian. christianity seems like b.s. to me. especially after a lifetime of judaism i could not even contemplate being a christian. islam is anti-woman and pro-suicide bombing so that religion would be out as well. i suppose i would consider becoming a member of the "i just believe in being a good person " religion that many secular jews believe in .

the thing is if i found out that i wasn't jewish but the rest of my family was jewish (as they are now) i would find it hard not to be jewish anymore. being jewish is so much a part of my life. the thing is , if i found out i wasn't really jewish as in i was adopted as a baby i would like to think that i would choose judaism. maybe this is because if i would adopt a child i would hope that they would want to be jewish. but on the other hand adoptive children usually want to become a part of their adoptive families lives which includes their religion. i think that unless i had a bad relationship with my adoptive family i would remain jewish. being jewish would be all i would know. and if i would be the same person i am now, i know that i enjoy being jewish and observing the holidays and the mitzvos .

still, its hard to really consider an answer because its hard to choose an answer to a question that isnt. im jewish . im not adopted. three of my grandparents and all of my great -grandparents were born in the shtetls of russia-poland. so whatever answer i might have to the "what would you do if you found out you weren't really jewish?" question are purely hypothetical.

pre-purim in midwood

the best hamantashen of midwood 2010 award in my humble opinion goes to ostrovitsky's bakery on avenue j. my favorite is poppy seed, but im sure the other flavors are good too.

the store with the most purim spirit is pomegranate. they have all of their cashiers wearing purim hats. some are wearing jester hats while others are wearing crowns and cowboy hats. none of them seem to be jewish so im not sure how much fun they are having wearing these get ups, but i can say that im enjoying it.

i really want to get some cute purim boxes or bags with an actual purim design on them . amazing savings probably has some but im dreading the crowds of other last minuters who are searching for the perfect shalach manos supplies.

the frum singles community

as a frum single i have never felt a part of the community at large. i live in midwood, but that's about it. the more i think about it the more i realize that this is not true. im not part of the greater frum community of brooklyn , but i am a member of the frum singles community of the new york . not exactly the community i would have chosen, but its my community nonetheless.

because the orthodox community is really the smug marrieds community i will never in my current state mesh. i will however fit seamlessly in the frum singles community.

the frum singles community is full of never marrieds , divorced and a few widowed. the most frightening part is how i know so many members of this community and yet i am still single. as the saying goes its not how many you know its who you know. quality over quantity. and let me tell you my community has lots of quantity but is lacking in quality.

some people will never leave my community because they are too scared , too mentally challenged , too comfortable or are having too much comfortable fun. i hope i will be one of those fortunate enough to leave this smothering busybody community of singles and actually get married. of course when i leave the singles community there will be plenty more bloodsucking busybodies who are married to make me feel at home, but i still would like to have the opportunity to reach the next step.

the problem is that ive been a singleton for so long that im not sure that i would really fit into the smug marrieds community even if i would be married. ive been through too much that they just take for granted. and given my age, it will be harder for me to achieve some of those cherished rites of the general smug marrieds society. i still would like to get married, but i know that even being married wont be the golden ticket to being accepted .

i suppose the best would be to create a frum community where everyone could be accepted regardless of marital status. i know that this is expecting too much, but it would be nice.

vulnerablility

when one gets to know anyone one gets to know their vulnerabilities. this is a good thing as well as a frightening thing. it makes one realize how fragile we humans are and how easily we can hurt each other once we know each others weaknesses. we have to be careful to be sympathetic as opposed to callous.

in the workplace it can be a challenge. some hone in on others vulnerabilities and try to bring them down . its disgusting. i work with people who are a variety of ages and i see it all of the time. i have a supervisor who is sixty who bullies a twenty-something employee because she is sensitive and is young. it makes me ill. why bring someone else down ? so the person can feel suicidal? so the person will end up cold hearted because they cant take it anymore? so this person becomes verbally abusive as well?

i know someone who could be annoying and the first instinct is to be really nasty back. but i try to hold back if i can. this person is sensitive. i know that if i let loose this person would be totally crushed , so i try to find calmer words to confront this person. i know that this is a the better way. the truth is if someone yells at me i have been so desensitized that i don't give that someone any thought. i just figure they are crazy unless i know that i really did something wrong. then i might feel a little guilty. the truth is when someone raises their voice all i can hear is the anger, not their words.

most likely to...

my favorite section of a school yearbook is the girl most likely to... or the boy most likely to .... section. they don't usually have this section in yearbooks in frum high schools, but lets face it, we've all heard that this is a tradition in some high school yearbooks. now all of us who haven't been in high school for at least five years or more (me being in the many more group) know that people often turn out to be a lot different that they were expected to when they graduated high school. some for the worst and some for the better.

i would like to think that i would not have been the girl in my class most likely to be single in 2010, but that i am. i was in a few school plays , so when i went to a school reunion several years ago someone told me that they thought i would have been an actress. i found it really humorous because though i enjoyed acting in high school, i NEVER considered an acting career. drama queen maybe, but never an actress!

when i was seventeen there was no internet. there were no blogs. if there had been i suppose that i would have been the girl most likely to blog. i would have liked to put my thoughts out there. ive always enjoyed writing and i had a lot of opinions even back then that i would have loved to have had a medium to release them. so retroactively, i fsf , was the girl in my high school senior class most likely to blog....

crumbs for central park

these photos kind of sum up the day today.... central park and crumbs...

wonder if the birds had any? (crumbs that is!)

weather or not?

according to the weather forecast there is supposed to be a major blizzard in new york tomorrow. as usual im in denial. the weather people love to hype this stuff up. the only thing is, what if they are right? then of course there is the question of whether i should go to work. if its already heavy snow and if they are still predicting a foot of snow at six a.m. tomorrow morning then its a no brainer. ill stay home. if there is no snow on the ground tomorrow morning at six a.m. then its also a no brainer. ill go to work. if i get to the train station tomorrow and the train isn't running then i know im not going anywhere. it only gets tricky if i go to work and then the weather gets horrific before quitting time.

the thing is, its kind of nice being at work when its snowy weather because there are less clients . its easy money. of course its only pleasant if i believe i wont be stranded at the seventh avenue train station and have to attempt walking home.

what to do? what to do ? major snowstorms used to only occur on fridays when i used to work on fridays. now that i don't work on fridays .... well you catch my (snow) drift...

dedicated to my bus boyfriend...

they say some people have work boyfriends .( or actually i think they call them work husbands) well i had a bus boyfriend. what is a bus boyfriend you ask? i will tell you....

i live close enough to the subway to walk, but there is a bus that i can take to the train if i so desire. sometimes i take the bus . sometimes i walk. there used to be a mentally retarded man who would ride the bus at that time of the day. he would always give me a big greeting when i would get on the bus and get the bus driver to wait for me if he would see me running to catch the bus. he was even jewish. of course it was hard to avoid the fact that he was mentally disabled. he used to try to wake anyone who was resting their eyes in the morning on the bus. why didn't they just go to sleep a little earlier so they would be more awake? he would say. or he would ask me if i would sit in the front row at his camp production . sometimes he would talk about his roommates at the group home and his counselors.

still in all, he was nice looking and about my age. i kept thinking how it was too bad that he was mentally retarded. at times he rated as the kindest guy in my life for those few years that he rode the bus with me. eventually he moved and stopped taking the bus. sometimes i see him walking to the train and he greets me like a long lost friend.

some people who find out they are going to have a mentally retarded child decide to abort them. and im embarrassed to admit that i would prefer not to have any kids than to have a mentally retarded child. however, after getting to know my bus boyfriend i have grown to appreciate the value of a mentally retarded individual. they may never be of normal intelligence, but they are capable of bringing joy to the world in their own special way.

we have no prophets in 5770

there are no prophets in 5770. this seems obvious, but not to everyone, especially those who seem to have a pat reason for every disaster that has befallen human kind lately.

when i heard that people were saying that hurricane katrina happened because of the gaza pull out i was sure someone was making that one up. why would poor blacks in new orleans who probably never have met a jew in their life be the receptors of the punishment for the israeli pull out from gaza? its too pat. one can connect every dot to form any conclusion one wants. i don't buy it.

after the disaster in haiti someone told me that they thought this happened because the people of haiti practise avodah zarah. well isnt that a simple solution.

others like to say that the holocaust began in germany because reform judaism began there. well, what about the fact that at the same time sara schnierer started the bais yaakov movement to counter the spiritual decline and many of her students were brutally murdered al kiddush hashem.

the problem i have with all these "reasons" for these tragedies is because they make life too simplistic. furthermore, we do not have any prophets in modern times, so there is NO WAY of knowing that any of these conjectures of these rabbis are real or not. there is however a reason we do not have prophets these days. this i do know. probably because if we knew the true reasons for these tragedies we wouldn't be able to handle it or perhaps no one would listen to them anyway, so its better they are not around for us not to listen to. or we would be too petty if we knew the real reasons these tragedies have befallen mankind. oops! we are being petty which is exactly why we dont have prophets or know the true reasons for any travesty .

all this finger pointing is rather useless. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and though we have to believe there is a reason it is not necessary for us to know what the reason is . sometimes its best to just put one's faith in hashem and assume he has his reasons but we as people aren't wise enough to understand them. THIS is what i was always taught.