Holidays So Nice We Do Them Twice

When this blog posts it will be the second day of Rosh Hashanah—that is, the second day of celebrating the Jewish New Year.  I have been asked many times by my non-Jewish friends why Jews need two days to celebrate the New Year.  Like all of our traditions, we have very good reasons for the things we do.  And like my favorite Yiddish expression, which translates “two Jews, three arguments,” we have a debate that accompanies every explanation. 

My understanding is that the dates of Jewish holidays are set according to the Jewish calendar, which is based upon lunar cycles.  A lunar cycle is between 29 and 30 days, with the new moon signaling the start of a new month.  In ancient times, the official sighting of a new moon had to be done by direct observation at the Temple in Jerusalem.  Depending upon when the new moon was witnessed, the last month of the year (Elul) could be either 29 or 30 days in length.  In order to comply with the requirement to celebrate on the 1^st day of the month Tishre, Rosh Hashanah was celebrated for 2 days—ensuring that prayer was conducted at the required time in remote towns and villages regardless of when the new moon occurred.  We do not consider Rosh Hashanah to be a two-day observance; rather, it is considered an extension of a single holy day.

This kind of redundancy is typical in Jewish tradition—where the need to comply with law is so compelling that it is better to overdo than risk not doing at all.  It is also important to us as a people to ensure that we are working off the same calendar.   The synchronicity of our observance is an important and powerful part of what we do.  As children of the Diaspora, the small numbers of us have been widely distributed across the globe.  We draw strength from the knowledge that we are united when we celebrate—saying the same prayers, observing the same rituals, and eating the same foods at the same time.    

The two-day rule is important for Rosh Hashanah as it occurs on the first day of the month--not allowing time for witnesses to return with accurate accounting of the new moon.  There are four other holidays during the year where it is tradition in America to practice this redundancy even though they fall later in their months, making them less susceptible to error of new moon observation.  These are the so-called pilgrimage holidays—Sukkot, Shavuot, Shmini Atzeret, and Passover.   The largest family production of the year—the Passover Seder—is recreated in all its glory on both the first and second nights of Passover.  It is interesting that we continue to observe this tradition even though we can now use scientific calculations to predict the new moons without relying on witness observation and the ancient two-day “confidence interval.”  Only Reform Jews in America have abandoned the practice of the second Seder.

In our family we enjoy celebrating both Rosh Hashanah and Passover for two full nights.  It is a reminder of the lengths that we go to preserve our traditions and to maintain the connections with all other Jews.  I have always thought of it as a sort of global “wave,” each of us playing an important role in conveying the holiday spirit around the world.  It is this spirit from which we draw our strength, renew our heritage, and summon the dignity to survive.

Culture Clash

The events of the past week have been a disturbing reminder of the fragile world in which we now live.  Even as we attempt to heal from the still-fresh memory of a terrorist disaster, we are thrust anew into the center of a cultural maelstrom, defending our country’s freedoms in the wake of a perceived American attack on Muslim values. 

With these headlines as a backdrop, I attended a lecture by a US Navy Seal Commander who has been active in the Middle East, and was on the ground in Pakistan during the take down of Osama bin Laden.  His discussion of Navy Seal training was fascinating, as were his remarkably candid comments about recent events in Libya and Egypt, where he was itchy to see us respond with an iron fist.  He talked about the growing dangers in Yemen and Somalia.  He spoke about the role that journalism plays in fanning the fires of resentment overseas.  He believes that in most countries where we see anti-American protests, the majority are pro-America.  Just like in our country, he says, the extremists dominate the airwaves. 

At another banquet, I sat next to a woman who had just returned from a trip to Africa with a dozen women.  There, she met with women activists in Kenya who told of ongoing female mutilations despite being banned by the Kenyan government in 2010.  These radical traditional practices (leaving girls without a trace of genitalia) continue to be forced upon girls—now as young as age 12—in order to make them "fit" for marriage.    This tragedy is not unique to the remote areas of Kenya; such practices are widespread across Africa and areas of the Middle East.

While these two conversations were unrelated, they left me thinking about the extent to which we Americans are oblivious to many of the rituals and practices that define the lifestyles of other cultures.  The growing acts of violence against Americans by terrorists—abhorrent as they are—are borne out of a growing hatred for American lifestyles.  The way our culture is represented in our films, our literature, on You-Tube, and in the media is now widely accessible across the globe.  Our lives and lifestyles are sometimes considered disruptive to the traditions of other established societies.   Whereas we may criticize our leaders openly, other nations view such practices as treasonous.  American women—who have Constitutional rights, opportunities, and control of their own bodies—live in sharp contrast to norms in other societies, particularly in those where poor treatment of women is defended as religiously dictated.  This culture clash is the unintended consequence of the technology age, of the global economy, and of the splintered media. 

Is it important for us to ask to what extent are our liberties and hard-fought rights are interpreted as insensitive, blasphemous, and even treasonous by others?  Exposed on the world stage, we are open to scrutiny by the global reach of our own inventions. The reaction in Libya and Egypt to the film clip is a case in point.  We defend our freedom of expression, yet the act of making "that film" is viewed as typical American aggression on the streets of the Middle East.  Can we begin to understand the depth of the wound that the film has caused to some Muslims?  Without a doubt, the attack on the embassy in Libya was an indefensible act of extreme violence.  But as we demand angry retribution, shouldn’t we also be careful not to punish a nation for the acts of a few?

Freedom of speech is a double-edged sword.  We guard closely our ability to speak our minds, but we should not forget that we bear responsibility for our actions.  Free speech is not a free pass.  It is intended to enlighten us as individuals and to elevate us as a nation.  But like anything else, when you use it as a weapon there are consequences.  Although the courts have worked to protect free speech, more and more so-called acts of expression (such as painting a Swastika on a synagogue) cross the line into “hate crimes.”  I find it the height of un-Americanism to hide behind free speech while attacking others for their beliefs or differences.  With free expression comes a moral obligation to listen and learn with tolerance.  That notwithstanding, we must push on, both directly and indirectly, to expose and fight heinous violations of human rights.  It is not an easy task to stay on moral high ground.

These are difficult times.  We have been attacked as Americans and we need to fight back in ways that send a clear message:  we do not tolerate acts of violence and terrorism.  On the other hand, we also need to take a look at our own behavior and ask whether we have been good citizens of the world.  We should not be so arrogant as to think that the rights we enjoy are every nation’s goal, or that others are waiting for us to liberate them with a copy of our Constitution in one hand and a Big Mac in the other.  We have a lot to learn about how and why other cultures do what they do.  Not everyone who holds different values or religious beliefs is a terrorist.  More than ever before, it is difficult to do the right thing.

Cinnabon, O Cinnabon

(This topic was a challenge from my husband--although I have bothered to spell it correctly.)

 

Cinnabon, O Cinnabon

 

My Love is fond of many savory feeds,

Eschewing sweets, he vows to carry on,

But lo! The depth of hidden knavery deeds,

To place upon his lips a Cinnabon.

In truth his palate runs toward stinky cheese,

Of tang and tart his preferential norm,

Defying logic, he’ll ingest to please

A tongue that craves exotic spice so warm.

That aromatic waft assaults the nose,

Caressed with rarest Indonesian bark,

It beckons at each airport where he goes,

The moment he begins to disembark.

But tragedy has struck a favorite store--

My darling’s Cinnabon exists no more.

Willy-Nilly, Silly Blog

(A special nod to my friend Terry for inspiring this blog with a handful of random words.  Can you pick out all eight?)

My friend Terry and I have a relationship of words.  We see each other rarely these days, but keep in touch through a continuous volley of emails.  Terry is remarkably clever; in another life he was probably a stand-up comedian.  In this life he is just a stand-up guy, which suits me (and him) just fine.

Every interaction with Terry keeps me on my toes.  There is always a zinger lurking beneath the subtext of our conversations waiting to catch me by surprise.  And it always does.  So when he responded to my blog request for “words, just words”, I knew some well-considered grenades would be forthcoming.  I covered my head and hunkered down.

Without much in the way of gratuitous fanfare, the words came.  It turns out Terry knows a lot of words, and was only too glad to share.   My sad, pristine screen welcomed the nudge, anxious to host the tale of the day.   I use these word suggestions like flint; some of them spark an inspiration and others do not.  Terry's offer of “loquacious” made me think of the way I get when I am nervous, perhaps evoked by Terry’s own memory of the many hours we sat on his floor during my freshman year, chatting willy-nilly until all hours.  Talking is my personal version of flop sweat.  I used to prevent rambling in job interviews through a mental game.  I would listen to the interviewer’s question, count to three before answering, and then allow myself a maximum of three sentences in which to answer the question directly.  After that, I would either lob a question back at the interviewer, or simply stop talking.

My favorite of Terry’s word gifts is “jejune,” which I hope will not be used to describe this blog.  The only time I have ever heard this particular word used in speech was in the Woody Allen classic, Love and Death.  In one hysterical scene, Allen admonishes Diane Keaton for quoting Attila The Hun at him, a response she labels, “jejune.”  His rejoinder is one of the greatest lines in all of film:  “Jejune?  You have the temerity to say that I am talking to you out of jejunosity?  I am one of the most ‘june’ people in all of the Russias!”  I refuse to touch it, bowing to Woody Allen's genius and allowing him the last word.

On the other hand, Terry's suggestion of “inept” (again, hoping I was not the inspiration for these words) made me think of economics.  Terry was an economics major.  But with apologies for mentioning it, Terry is not the most famous of his family’s economists—his brother having captured one of those big Swedish prizes that remind the rest of us how inept we truly are.  I studied economics in graduate school.  Although I mastered a pedestrian understanding of microeconomic concepts, I never felt particularly “ept” in class.  

Back when game theory was still relatively new, Terry threw one of his brother’s brain teasers at me—a now common instructional dilemma based on Let’s Make a Deal.  It went something like this:  You are presented with curtain A, B and C.  Behind one curtain is a fabulous prize; behind the other two are duds.  With no particular information, you select curtain B.  Monte Hall then opens curtain A to reveal 10 sacks of potatoes.  Unless you are very weird, this is a dud.  He then gives you the option to stay with your original choice of curtain B, or to switch your choice to curtain C.  What do you do?

Although not immediately intuitive to mere mortals, the answer is that you always switch your choice to curtain C.  Despite my unenlightened indignation, Terry argued that this was the case, citing arcane economic theories that made my head hurt.  A few years later I had the opportunity to sit with Terry’s learned brother during the intermission of an amazing chamber music concert.  Patiently and generously, he reviewed the Monte Hall dilemma with me until I understood his rationale.  In the first case, your chance of choosing correctly is 1 in 3; once curtain 1 is opened, changing your pick improves your chance of being right to 1 in 2.  (I would argue, through a statistician’s lens, that choosing to stay with curtain B is still making a discrete 1 in 2 choice, but I have been assured that I am wrong.)

I would love to repay Terry for his gracious offering of inspirational words by sending him some words that cater to his interests.   I know “Fettucini Alfredo,” “Pizza,” and “Cheeseburger” to be among his favorites, all the more healthful when served up in print rather than on his plate.  He has never found vegetables to be particularly succulent despite being presented with evidence of their nutritional value. Thanks to his remarkable wife, he now accepts broccoli and salad the way I accept curtain B.    We’ll call it even.

A Steady Diet of Words

One of the things I miss most about living in California is the influence of Southwestern cuisine.  After moving back East, it took a long time to acclimate to the relative blandness of the food.  To be fair, Southern cooking is not really bland—it is simply designed around a butter-and-bacon paradigm.  When we moved from Atlanta to New England, however, we found the local cuisine to be bland in the truest sense.  Here in the Northeast, we  make up for the lack of amplitude by introducing a breadth of farm-fresh and heirloom flavors.  Not a bad trade-off, actually.

During my San Diego visit, I could not resist heading to Old Town to visit my favorite Mexican restaurant, (aptly named, Old Town Mexican Café.)  Since I first came here nearly thirty years ago, and probably for decades before that, women have stood in the front of this restaurant, open to the sidewalk passersby, making tortillas by hand.  Traditionally handmade tortillas are nothing like the flat planes of cardboard manufactured and sold in plastic wrap at supermarkets. Filled with grilled ingredients, authentic Mexican cheeses, and salsas made daily from roasted chilis, these tortillas are the centerpiece of a menu that makes all other Mexican restaurants pale by comparison. 

A short walk from the café is the Old Town State Historic Park (the original center of San Diego dating back to 1820), an attraction flanked by a commercial area called Fiesta de Reyes.  Tucked away is a small shop that contains one of the most provocative selections of hot sauces I have experienced.  By provocative I mean that the names of the sauces actually made me blush.  But I was glad for the inspiration (and even some of the nasty visuals that the graphic monikers conjured) because these days everything is a blog.  Seriously, stand in one place for too long and you, too, could be my next blog.

Having cast my analytical eye across the offerings, I concluded that there were no less than three distinct genera of sauces.  The first stood behind fairly benign names, and by implication, less effective hot sauces.  Most were simple signatures that could be considered euphemisms for “extreme.”  Among these were such classics as “Da Bomb,” “Raw Heat,” and “Afterlife.”  I was a fan of a particular variety called “Pappy’s White Lightning,” which boasts “all the love you’ll ever need.”  This appealed to my inner chef; all chefs know that you always balance hot with sweet.

A second level, which on my scale follows the imagery of the infernal and descends, rather than ascends, contains hot sauces named for mortal hazards and perils.  This genus appeals to our greatest fears: “Satan’s Rage,” “Mad Dog,” “Arch Nemesis,” “Vicious Viper,” “Acid Rain.”  Included in this collection was a mixture called “Slap Ya Mama” and another that warned “Beware: Comatose heat level.”  I blanched a bit at “Sancti Scorpio,” (scorpions are to me as snakes are to Indiana Jones) and wondered whether a product called “Widow: No survivors” might be gender specific.

The final genus was notable for its anatomical references, articulating a consensus of physical side effects from ingesting the products.  As I assigned products to this final level, I visualized the marketing strategy meetings where names and concepts are pitched to top executives.  What were the candidates from which “Butt Pucker” was selected as the best among other options?  Was “Colon Cleaner” a trademark left over from another division of the company?  Did “Ass in the Tub” derive from an R & D department report detailing the rigorous testing of the product?

It betrays a quirk of our society that such fearful warnings and graphic imagery help to sell these products.  To me, they seem rather akin to the unadorned FDA warnings on the sides of cigarettes, designed to deter rather than encourage.  Suppose other foods were named reality-style, using this standard of graphic scare tactic.  I wonder if one of my guilty pleasures—lobster macaroni and cheese—would be as appealing if it were offered on the menu as “poached bottom feeder bathed in rennet-cured, coagulated milk protein and starch.”

Maybe this brand of truth-in-advertising is the key to our nutrition and obesity problem in America.  Instead of promising our children they can “Have It Your Way,” we should offer them the stark truth of what they put in their bodies.  I doubt that I would enjoy a juicy, aged Texas Rib-Eye if it were billed as “fire-roasted cow muscle hung on a meat hook for thirty days until dry.”  A rack of barbequed ribs would not be appetizing as a “slow-cooked and basted rib cage of a hairy, foraging, even-toed ungulate.”  I could easily give up the carb content of “milled wheat infected with sugar-fed yeast,” or “slivered tuber roots bathed in hot fat.” 

Perhaps the key to health is to talk up our food choices.  When I consider the “fruit of the apple tree” it sounds as good as it is.  If the words make us cringe, maybe the food should, too.

Father of Invention

Today would have been my father’s 78^th birthday.  He was taken from us before his time, the result of complications from a knee replacement he should never have been allowed to have.  It has been nearly three years and yet I have not broken my habit of reaching for the phone to call him.  In his last few years he spent most of his time at home.  An engineer by training, he never stopped tinkering with or marveling at the latest in electronic bells and whistles available on a desktop platform--computers that contained orders of magnitude more processing power than the room-sized systems he used to design and sell.  He loved to burn mix CDs, try to stump his voice recognition software, play online games, pay his bills with a few clicks, and experiment with social networking.

My father was a difficult and complicated man whose opinions and points of view were normally and sometimes deliberately off-putting.  Nonetheless, he could be respected for the depth of his conviction and the depth of his love for his family—particularly his grandchildren.  I had a very difficult time dealing with him as a child and into young adulthood.  His inability to deal with variation was manifested in a need to control both actions and thoughts.  He believed in free will if it was his but did not suffer it well from his children.  In light of the fact that his approval was rarely forthcoming, I learned to coexist with him by moving away and pursuing my own dreams.  But typically and predictably, my father could never turn his back on family.  He learned to accept my freedom, my husband, my career choices, and eventually, to be a guest in my home.

The best thing about my father was his sense of humor.  He loved to be entertained and he loved to laugh.  It took me years to realize that this was the key to defusing his anger.  He was made easily pliable by a good joke, a reference to a funny anecdote from the past, or even an ironically well-executed sticking out of the tongue.  His laugh was infectious; it filled a room.  And it turned his steamy, sometimes piercing eyes into kind green pools, framed by the gentle lines of age and experience.  That’s when I loved him most.

Over the years, my father became incredibly close to my own little family, always remarking that he loved my husband as if he were his own son.  He loved my children to distraction, enjoying wrestling on the floor with my son (even when it was no longer advisable) and cuddling with my daughter as he scratched her back into rapture.  My kids loved to write him letters because he always wrote back, signing them “Love, Grampa” by turning the letters into musical notation, the L into a natural and the G into a treble clef.

My husband and I speak often of how much we miss my father.  I miss the way he would call in the middle of the afternoon because some work of Chopin’s played on the radio and brought tears to his eyes.  He always told me that I played it better, a lie that only a proud father can get away with.  My husband misses having him as a drinking partner.  They loved sampling and tasting together, whether it was a pitcher of sapphire martinis or a flight of microbrews.

For over fifty years, my father and I yelled and screamed, laughed and cried, stormed away and hugged again.  It was his way, and—regrettably—it became my way.  I think confrontation was how my father became close with people.  If he did not scare you off, you became lifelong friends.  He loved the art of the argument in his personal relationships as much as he loved the art of the deal in business. 

Had my father written his own life’s script, he would have chosen to leave this Earth without any advanced notice.  So it came to pass that even in this, he had his way.  During the last conversation I had with him he was talking about his family and laughing so loudly that the nurses asked him to keep it down.   It was an apt ending to the story of his life.

I miss him still.

Charging Bull

In Spanish bullfighting, the greatest demonstration of bravery is to turn your back on the bull.  Take a wild animal, anger it with physical abuse, humiliate it with a display of senseless domination, bloody it to the point of diminished capacity, then turn to the cheering crowd, proving to the bull that he no longer poses a threat.  This great tradition of man’s supremacy over beast brings admiring throngs to their feet in admiration.  

Sadly, our heroes are commonly made in the wake of bloody spoils, hoisted upon an altar of violence or greed.  It is a regrettable failing of ours as humans that to achieve our own success we must do so at the expense of others.  Thus we spend our efforts—whether economically or militarily —trying to redistribute the pie rather than making it bigger.  Your loss is my gain.  It is the reason why history continues to repeat itself.

These are my reflections on this most somber of days, September 11^th.  On this particular day, I have boarded a morning plane from Boston to California, much the same as hundreds of people did eleven years ago.  Logan Airport was unusually quiet this morning.  Absent was the usual electricity of business travelers, filled with a sense of purpose and urgency.  I saw no families corralling their broods of small children with promises of Disneyworld or Grandma’s house.  Security was high while the volume of travelers was low.  It is a good day to travel; it is a bad day to travel.

As I write, I am in the air at high altitude.   The mood on board is subdued.  Passengers leaf through a variety of newspapers; the headlines declare in bold print what no one will acknowledge openly.   I can sense the pain and the sadness that lingers even now after a more than a decade.  It is a wound that never heals.  It is a memory that remains in the collective conscience, bonding all of us on board.  We are strangers; we are brothers.  

For the first time in my history as an air traveler—I am a Million Miler on Delta—the boarding was accomplished in a quiet and orderly fashion.  No one rushed the counter or pushed ahead of others.  Everyone waited patiently for their “zone” to be called.  A handful of passengers approached the check-in counter to request their oversize carry-on bags to be gate-checked.   We were boarded at full capacity a full fifteen minutes before flight time.   The door was closed and the plane pushed back with five minutes to spare.  

Caught as I was between family and business commitments, I had little choice about traveling on this day.  Months ago, as I worked out the logistics of this busy week, the date gave me pause.  All things being equal, I might have chosen differently.   Then I realized that it would be wrong to fashion a series of unnatural acts to avoid what needed to be done.  We need to take back this day.  We need to live and work and serve and play, perhaps with heightened awareness but not with a sense of defeat or retreat.  

September 11^th, 2001 is one of those days—like the day JFK was shot—where I will always remember what I was doing.  I was talking with another baseball mom when she said “Hang up the phone right now and turn on the television.  Just do it.  Now.”  I was just in time to see the second plane hit the towers.  I remember the shock at viewing the incomprehensible scene before me.   It had not been long since we had met some friends in New York and taken our families to Windows on the World. Dumbfounded, I busied myself calling and emailing every single person I knew living and working in New York.  In some cases, it took hours to hear back and account for everyone.  In retrospect, it was a silly exercise, but it was all I could think to do with the helplessness that filled my being.   Everyone I spoke to seemed to feel the same way:  glad for the human contact and relieved to be able to express their own sense of horror and sadness.

It is a token effort that I make as I sit on this flight.  My nerves are on end, yet I am proud to be flying like it is any other day.  It may be the “new” normal, but it feels normal nonetheless.  And today, that is a small victory that comes at no one’s expense.