I'm passing over

This upcoming Monday Jewish people all over the world will celebrate 'Leil Haseder', the first night of Passover (Pesach). I will not.

This night, as suggested by it's name ('Seder'='order' or 'series' in Hebrew), is a long, ordered series of rituals, guided by a text in Hebrew and Aramaic called 'The Haggadah', which loosely translated into 'The story'. The Haggadah is a detailed manual for the evening including text (to be read by everyone around the table, taking turns), songs, ritualistic instructions ("now drink the second wine glass", "now turn to the left and say...") and even food suggestions (the Seder meal is incorporated into the rituals).  There are variations on the particular implementation of these instructions, variations on the melodies of the songs and differences in how tightly we stick to the text, but any Jew, even a secular one, randomly wandering into any Seder in the world would most likely feel right at home, and should be able to participate and contribute to the evening.

All this sounds quite wonderful - a story, songs, food and most of all a global chain of people linked together by these rituals, which had lasted thousands of years ('The Haggadah' itself dates back almost 2000 years).  Indeed, throughout my life, this evening was a reasonably pleasant one. As an atheistic family, with my parents possessing very little knowledge of Judaism, we mostly ate. Since my mother is a good cook and tried her best on these nights, it was tasty. As the only one in my family who went through the religious indoctrination of the Israeli public school system, It was up to me to introduce the traditional content, and so I did, as much as was tolerated. When I say religious indoctrination I don't mean to say that we were taught to believe in god at school, not at all, we just had to study the bible over and over again, as well as other Jewish texts. It is safe to say that we spent the same amount of time studying the bible as we did studying language, literature or Mathematics, and undoubtedly much more than world history or geography.  I always disliked these classes, never appreciated the bible and it's stories, and couldn't care less about god, which I always considered an absurd concept. And yet, the indoctrination worked, since it did teach me that even though you may object to the content of the rituals, you should still perform them blindly because that's what unites us and makes us Jewish. My famaly Sedders weren't the only ones I experienced. Since Passover is also a very hospitable kind of holiday we did attend several traditional Seders with other families, were The Haggadah was followed to a tee, so I got to appreciate some variety.

Now I live in Canada, have my own family, and since society no longer dictates my rituals in the same way it did in Israel, I need to decide for myself what rituals to follow and in what way. Mind you, this is still my indoctrinated self we're talking about, because that's the nature of indoctrination, it never leaves on it's own accord. The default solution for most Israelis in my situation is to find an alternate extended family (congregate with other Israelis in a simialr situation) and keep up the tradition. For most, it actually becomes more important here because of the kids. How are they going to learn about our origins and traditions? How different from myself can I allow them to be? That's what we used to do for a while. Since our friends are as religious as us (not at all) these celebrations weren't what you'd call a Kosher Pesach, but we did attempt to read a bit of the Haggadah and sing several songs - the highlights.

From time to time we'd have some non-Jewish guests present which was an opportunity for me to act  as the teacher that I am, and explain some of the content of Haggadah. This made me much more conscious of how it may sound to someone who never heard it before. On these occasions I was confronted with how terrible this text is. It's basically a retelling of the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. One may think that this story focuses on the idea of liberation, on what it feels or means to be free. It isn't. Instead it serves as nationalistic/religious bonding text based on exclusion, on reenforcing the notion of 'us and them'. What is it that unites Jews as a people, as a nation? It's the fact the we were once enslaved by others and now believe in the God that saved us. The text describes in horrific detail the cruel actions of god against the Egyptians. In an especially gruesome part of the ritual each person dips a finger into the wine and spill a drop on the plate ten times as we recite the horrible ways in which god struck the Egyptians, ending with the killing of all their first-born children, for which we thank him.

I will not go into an analysis of this text, it isn't worth it, it's long, boring and cruel. In the many times that I've read it I haven't found much to hold on to, nothing that is relevant to my life today. God is credited with our redemption over and over (our father, our king, king of the world) and is mentioned many times in every page, hundreds of times in total.

Through the years I've tried several things to tone it down - read only what's inoffensive, introduce new, more relevant traditions. Last year I actually re-read the book of exodus in the bible to try and tell my kids the story in my own words. It always fails.  The story in it's core is made to glorify god and constructed to promote fear and exclusion. It also isn't historically true at all. Jews were probably never slaves in Egypt and just borrowed this mythology from somewhere else (pardon the oversimplification) to use as bonding material.

The Haggadah explicitly underlines the importance of retelling this story (we are instructed by the text to think of ourselves as if we personally escaped enslavement in Egypt). Well, it's working. Millions of secular Jews all over the world indeed retell it, as a tradition that justifies itself - "we do it because that's just what we do". I'm done with it.

Similarly to my decision on circumcision, I decided to reject this tradition, to reject the text and the negativity that goes with it. I also reject the original biblical story and all the references to god. My home has been a god-free environment for a while now and I like it this way. I may continue the meal tradition and let contemporary, relevant content take over this springtime celebration. I do feel a desire to have seasonal festivities, celebrating the revolution of our planet.   

 

The joy of skiing

Ski, what a wonderful thing! The snow glistens like diamond-powder in the warm March sun. I take a confident look towards the slope, strap my goggles on and majestically start down the hill. The light wind feels so pleasant on my face as I make elegant turns, to the left, to the right, a small jump... and a perfect landing. It's an amazing feeling so I empty my lungs in a ritualistic cry the signifies my perfect unity with the universe, "wooooo" - it can't get any better than this. Stop, stop, will you just stop already. That's not exactly how it goes, does it? Let's try again.

It's spring break, all around us we hear about responsible parents who take their kids skiing. How can I deprive my kids of this pleasure? why did I come to Canada in the first place, if it wasn't to allow my kids to enjoy everything this great land has to offer? In 10 years time, when they are the only ones among their peers who don't know how to ski, what will they tell their friends? My parents were dumb immigrants from a warm country and didn't quite get it? Can't let this happen.

A friends invites us to come to Vernon. "There's a great house on a lake that you can house-sit". Wow, that sounds great - free accommodations, a chance to ski Silver Star mountain, who can pass that up? I'm so giddy I make the following suggestion to Noa, my wife, "why don't we all do some skiing, give the kids some motivation, a chance to ski as a family". It's not that me and Noa never tried skiing  before, we've actually done quite a bit of it in our teens and twenties, but decided to stop over a decade ago. Why? I'm not quite sure and don't really care, we're going and that's final!

I immediately make reservations. Here is a simple cost breakdown for one day: lift pass - $80, equipment rentals $40, class - $60. So if we make our own lunches, use our old snow pants and winter coats, and only ski for three days, the total cost will be... $1980. What, this is insane?!  I do my best to minimize cost - Nomi can get a lift pass for 4th graders through Ski Pass Canada for $30 (thank you Canada!), Lior is 5 for another month so he gets a free lift pass. I frantically call for rental deals in the greater Vernon area and find something more affordable. I decide to forgo classes for myself and Lior, and Nomi and Noa will take one lesson only. Then Julie, our Vernon friend, comes through with a great deal on lift passes through a FB friend of hers. So if Noa and I use our old ski equipment (the boots should still fit us shouldn't they?) we can afford it.

The 5 hour drive goes without a hitch. We spend the first day renting the equipment. Turns out that our old boots are way too small. Noa, at list  has her two births to blame for her growing feet, what's my excuse? Next day we wake up at 7am and start preparing for the mountain, make lunches, get dressed, get the kids dressed. Lior protests. Of course he does, it's too early and we're on vacation, but we must make it to the mountain on time for Noa's and Nomi's class. Up on the mountain it takes another 20 minutes to get everyone into their ski boots - we made the mistake of leaving the equipment in the car overnight, and now the boots are frozen and unyielding. By the time we drop Noa and Nomi (just on time) Lior is not a happy camper. I play up the male bonding opportunity "it's just the guys now, man, we're going to have an amazing time". He seems to bite. The ski-lift is fun, but up on the mountain I'm reminded of why I decided to quit skiing all these years ago - my feet begin to hurt intolerably in my boots. No time to think about that, I need to motivate Lior, can't show signs of weakness. We start going down, my skills are surprisingly good and Lior is doing great, but at the bottom of the run I feel like I can barely stand in my boots. Lior is starting to complain about the cold. His hands are indeed frozen to the touch, so I do my best to warm them up, but he starts to get upset. It's a fragile moment, another setback can finish our day. I try to put his gloves back on, but his pinky refuses to slide into place. We try again, and again, and again, to no avail. He is now in complete melt-down mode. We stand there for 23 minutes (even in the bleakest moments I manage to notice the time) trying to put the glove back on. Finally, after blowing, massaging, maneuvering, the glove is in properly. We descend the mountain again, but by now Lior has lost all desire to perform any reasonable ski turns and simply slides down in the snow-plow position, my feet are a catastrophe and as I ski down I dream of the moment when I take my boots off, "it's just like the ending of '12 years a slave' when he finally gets released", I'm hallucinating. We make it back to the village and meet up with Noa and Nomi. As we munch on our egg-salad sandwiches I get the following report: Nomi is content but Noa isn't. Her feet are also killing her. No more ski for her that day. Lior seconds that motion. I go up for one pleasant run with Nomi but by the end of it my feet need to be released from these boots already.

We ended up switching boots, went up the next day (this time later, so everyone was more relaxed) and spend the day skiing together. It was great fun. My feet still hurt but it was more tolerable. We decided for forgo our third day and went hiking instead.

So here are my thoughts on skiing - it can be fun, when everything is perfect - the equipment works, the weather is favorable, and everyone's in a good mood. But even then, the overhead is overwhelming - so much time spent getting there, getting ready, going up the lifts, and it's so expensive. Here is an efficiency formula for experiences: pleasure/(time+cost).
Ski rates pretty low on that scale.

When we got back I went to play indoor soccer the same day. It took me 15 minutes to get there and 10 more minutes to put my shoes on and get warmed up, than I had great fun for 2 hours and it took me 15 more minutes to get home. The cost was $10. Much more efficient.

Hummingbird

The other day a hummingbird flew into our house. I was just about to leave, opened the front door, and what seemed like a huge bug just flew over my head towards our dining room light. We quickly realized that it was a hummingbird - this most amazing creature that can hover in space, flapping it's wings up to 80 times a second. The bird was in obvious distress and so were we. We opened the windows and the door to allow the bird to fly out, but it kept flying inside the house, from room to room, around our light fixtures. When it flew by a window it kept banging on the glass instead of taking the available opening. Finally it flew into the kitchen, hit the wall and fell behind some bottles. There was no further movement behind the bottles and we all thought that what started as an exciting encounter came to a sad ending. At this point I noticed some interesting differences between my kid's reactions. Lior, my five year-old boy, when realizing that the bird wasn't moving and was probably dead, couldn't wait to come closer and look at the dead creature. He was very curious and not at all sad. Nomi, my ten year-old girl, stepped away and started crying inconsolably. "we killed it" she kept saying. Back to the bird - Noa, my wife, without a moments hesitation, picked up a large jar, scooped the bird inside and released it outside. The hummingbird was up in the air in a flash, and immediately disappeared out of sight - a happy ending.  After congratulating my wife for her swift actions I went on with my business, not before exclaiming "it's considered good luck when a hummingbird flies into your house". This wasn't according to any tradition that I knew, but I felt that Nomi needed something extra to help her calm down from what was obviously very traumatic for her. I was struck by her ability to identify with the tiny creature and it was in complete contrast to Lior's total lack of empathy for the bird. It could be an age thing - we all start life as sociopaths and learn to become empathetic to others as life progresses. But It's obviously also a gender thing as women sociopaths are very rare.  I'm not concerned about Lior's ability to empathize, he is a very loving boy, with an ever growing concern for others, It's just interesting to see how the small sample size that we have in our home can reflect larger social tendencies. Yesterday, we all went out to beautiful Iona beach and while Noa and Nomi (with her friend Deven) spent their time enjoying the beautiful scenery and looking at the birds, me and Lior spend three hours searching for the best driftwood 'guns', and then proceeded to kill each other over and over again - boy stuff.
        

Chickpeas and Tofu

Just before the new year I decided to become a vegetarian. Since this is very new I have no moral ground (or interest) to preach on the subject, I will just say that this is motivated by my desire to stop participating in the killing of animals. It's also an attempt to act-out on a moral belief even though it entirely contradicts my deeply engrained eating habits.

I come from a Jewish-Lithuanian family were food seems to be made out of only two ingredients - potatoes and pork. There are dishes like ground potatoes filled with pork (Zepelins), or pork intestine filled with mashed potatoes (Vedarai). As Jews we were prohibited to eat pork, but as soviets we were prohibited to be practicing Jews, so eat pork we did. Lithuania's specialty is smoked pork. It can be a type of a salami (Skilandis), ham, bacon or even just smoked pork fat (Salla).

When we immigrated to Israel, where it was finally permitted to practice Judaism, it was already too late to stop eating pork (or start practicing anything religious, for that matter). But pork wasn't easily available in Israel in the 70s. In our neighborhood the solution was Uncle Leo. He operated a mobile pork supply business, delivering pork products to neighborhoods like mine - densely populated by pork-craving immigrants from the eastern block. Every Thursday night me and my mom would walk to the end of the block where Uncle Leo's beat-up Ford Transit van was already parked. At the back of the van several hundred sausages were hanging on hooks. The predominant language in the line-up was Russian, with Romanian, Hungarian and Polish also heard. Not a word of Hebrew though.  Other than sausages Uncle Leo used to sell liquor filled chocolates, just to help solidify my conditioning. When we got back home me and my mom used to tear off a chunk of polish sausage and eat eat it with some dark and heavy bread and raw onion.  

When I came to Vancouver I quickly identified the best places to buy smoked pork - the huge deli section at Santa Barbara market and the smoked pork Mecca - J N Z Smoked Meats. Since both are on Commercial Drive we moved into that neighborhood. J N Z is a stationary replica of Uncle Leo's van - hundreds of sausages are hanging above, the customers only speak some Eastern European language and they even have chocolates from Poland. Buying a Hungarian farmer's sausage and coupling it with fresh Rye bread from Strawberry's bakery quickly became a weekly ritual. I almost never made it home with all the meat I bought, some had to be consumed on the way.

All this to suggest that lasting vegetarianism doesn't necessarily have the highest odds in my case, after all, what's a moral conviction compared to decades (and perhaps generations) of conditioning.

It's been just 8 weeks so far and I'm doing fine. It would have been wonderful to write that it's been enjoyable - a discovery! To say that I feel lighter and healthier, that Tofu is surprisingly flavourful when done right and that I'm excited about cooking chickpeas twice a week, but I'm not a liar. It's not that I miss the meat so much, and I've always eaten lots of fruit and vegetables, it's just that I realized a couple of things that should have been apparent-
1. I've lost the joy of cooking - one of my main hobbies (I may still find it).
2. Eating out isn't fun anymore.

Both facts are a bit of a blow to my short-term quality of life, and the benefits are as abstract as can be.  Perhaps I should point out to myself that not eating out has much needed financial benefits and that cooking less will free up time for more physical activity and eventual health, but as a pork-adict in withdrawal these thoughts bring no relief.


      

Yogurt

Wow, my first post. Exciting. I'll get right to it. My 10 year old daughter Nomi, threw a yogurt container at me today. A big, 750 ml container of 3.5% fat, organic yogurt. It was half full. The lid was luckily on, and did not open upon contact with my face. I just started laughing. There was something so surprisingly outrageous about her act that made it very funny to me, at least for a moment. I quickly forced the smile off my face and took on a much more appropriate, angry expression. The moment was full of drama and I was the queen. I looked at her intently for a long while, then, without a word, turned  sharply to my five year old son Lior, and quietly asked him to go to shower. I was hoping that the moment's gravity wouldn't be lost on him and for once he would comply. He didn't. It took several more request and finally a threat to get him in there (my big threat these days is that if he chooses not to shower I will choose not to read to him - for now it works). Nomi, in the meantime, vanished somewhere in our huge, 800 sq ft mansion.
Why did she throw the yogurt? well, we were going through our usual night-time ritual - I ask the kids to go to shower and they come up with other must-do activities instead. It works something like this -
me: "Nomi go to the shower please"
her: "I'm just finishing my bracelet on the Rainbow Loom dad".
5 minutes go by.
me: "Nomi go to the shower please"
her: "I just have one page to finish in the chapter"
me: "I thought you were doing the loom thing, go to the shower NOW!"
her: "but I'm hungry"
me: "Nomi, it's too late for that now, please go to the shower"
her, in her super-winey, annoying voice: "but I'm soooo hungry"
At this stage I can't help myself and do my best impersonation of her voice  - "I'm sooooooo hungry"
and before I know what's happening a container full of yogurt is flying through the air and hits me in the face.  

And so, here is a dilemma, what do I focus on? On the one hand, throwing yogurt containers is  a bad idea, on the other hand mimicking people to their face isn't nice either. The key word here is people. What I did in the situation was to treat her as something less than an equal person, which is easy to do -  she isn't entirely equal, is she? For one she is smaller. She also depends on me in a way that I don't depend on her, so, to speak of equality is perhaps irrelevant. But our need for respect is obviously equal. Perhaps the right reaction would be to reprimand her for her act of violence and then to acknowledge my own transgression? Or perhaps the other way around, to apologize for the mimicking and at the same time explain that throwing yogurt containers at people is disrespectful? maybe, but I think that the best reaction is to apologize for mimicking her. That's all.

I hope to post to this blog weekly, and share small scenes from our home. My moto for now is - more intimacy, less opinion, and almost no information.