On Dreaming or The Sarah Lawrence Obsession

I've had to give up on a lot of dreams. As a child, when I didn't grow past 5'3," I let go of the momentary dream of being a firefighter. I gave up the dream of becoming a fashion illustrator when I realized I would never be able to afford the art supplies I would need at an art college. Later, I turned down a full-time internship at Entertainment Weekly after college, and my dream of becoming a magazine editor/writer, when I realized I couldn't kidnap my sister and then raise her on that kind of salary. And then, my teaching career evaporated when my fibromyalgia spiraled out of control.

I've always been a daydreamer. I learned to multitask, drawing and painting for hours, while I dreamed about my grown-up, and vastly improved, life. I wrote poetry about my dreams in-between taking notes for my classes.

And then, I stopped dreaming. Altogether.

I couldn't imagine a future with or after fibromyalgia. It just seemed too daunting.

But now, I'm hungry. For food, of course, since I forgot to eat lunch after going to the gym, twice. But what I really could use is an MFA-in-Creative-Writing sandwich. I want to work part-time and spend the next two years as a full-time student at Sarah Lawrence, where some of my favorite writers worked on the same degree. And if the college were willing to fund my poor Hispanic little butt to do it, it would be even sweeter. Only two years, the exact number it will take Hubbie to finish his rabbinical degree.

I could write and write and write. As homework. I would learn to write well. Better than I'd ever dreamed I could write. Personal essays with my chosen nom de plum would be published in magazines like Glamour and Self and dare I dream, The New York Times magazine and beyond? I mean, this is a dream, right? Let's go crazy.

I would write about life, life in general and my life as it was, is, could be, will be, and people would read it. They would see the world from a whole new perspective or in my words, they would find someone who understood their joys as well as their sorrows, their pains.

I would learn to drive for this dream. I would take the 9A all the way to the lush Sarah Lawrence campus two or three times a week. Going to the gym between classes, tutoring at on the side, I would balance it all.

This fantasy is sweet than any I have imagined in a long time. It's succulent, it drops from my mouth dribbling down my lips. It's the dream of a poor girl who grew up on welfare in Washington Heights could become a writer, truly. Can I put my hopes in the artistic basket, once and for all, the one I have turned my back on each and every time that practicality has assaulted me and irrevocably changed the course of my history.

Don't ask about my uterus...please.

An all too common question after I got hitched was: "Are you pregnant?" and "Are you pregnant yet?" and "When are you having a baby?" and sometimes there would be a statement: "You should get pregnant!" Some people actually thought that because I was home sick and unable to work for a year, I should...get pregnant. Because you know, being pregnant is so easy and then giving birth, also, not a tough thing and that eighteen years where I'm legally obligated to take care of my child (and the years after where I still need to care and coddle from a distance) are a breeze.

It was really hard coming from a culture where there wasn't too much that was TMI (too much information) going to a culture where there are a lot of rules. I don't mean religious rules, I mean formal rules about propriety that I missed during American 101 and had to make up in Jewish American 102. Just when I was starting to get the hang of things: don't discuss bowel movements, aches or pains; don't say anything mildly disturbing (like mentioning your family--this applies solely to MY famliy); and sometimes, even bend over backwards to be polite even when it feels insincere, things went awry.

About a month after the wedding, people started to ask about my plumbing. Wait, don't talk about sex, don't talk about bowel movements and don't talk about...? How did it become socially acceptable after getting married to have people ask me about my uterus all the time? Maybe, I was just a little chunky that day? G-d forbid I was having trouble getting pregnant (I'm not) or I couldn't have kids (not there either) or maybe, just maybe, I wasn't even trying (yup, you got me). Or that scene at the end of Knocked Up where they had a close-up of Katherine Heigl's between-the-legs scene birth scarred me irrepairably?

One out of four women miscarry. Isn't that outrageous? It's scary. I feel like most of my life, I was surrounded by women getting knocked up out of wedlock, getting hitched so they didn't seem knocked up out of wedlock or just having babies and forgoing a wedding altogether. I just never knew. I never imagined that so many women around me could be suffering silently until some of them stopped suffering so silently around me.

I'm not suffering silently. Babies scare the crap out of me. The only way one is visiting my uterus is if Mary Poppins agrees to stay for all eighteen years and take care of baby and me. The only reason I've even considering letting babies come out of me is that my husband is entirely too cute not to be allowed to spread his cute genes to another generation. I've never been pregnant. Miscarried. And even though we're having this conversation, I never said it was okay to ask about my uterus.

Did you hear that, people? It's my uterus and it's VIP, you're not invited.

From Religious to Unaffiliated to Me

A NY Times article finds that people are converting all over the place. From Catholics to Christians and all across the religious spectrum. A great deal of people are just becoming unaffiliated.

Finds a Fluid Religious Life in the US

I, officially, stopped being "Catholic" at 24. At the time, I watched a film about atrocities the Catholic church had commited (that didn't have anything to do with priests). I guess, that's when I became unaffiliated. I didn't tell people I was a lapsed Catholic, I told them I had been raised Catholic and at that point, basically wasn't religious at all and didn't affiliate myself with any religion.

My sisters left Catholicism for Wicca in their youth. My aunt took up Buddhism and even my mother converted to Protestant Christianity. Dad, of course, is still staunchly Catholic...but those of you who have heard tales of my Dad, know that what he identifies himself as and what he does are two very divergent concepts.

And so now, I'm the family Jew. The Jew who works at a Catholic university, interestingly enough. Could I have worked here when I was Catholic, lapsed or unaffiliated? Probably not. As a Catholic working in a Catholic school, I would have felt badly about not being Catholic enough and I would have either run to or run from the little cathedral a flight down from the tutoring center. Now, Judaism, with its Star of David, is the religion I currently wear around my neck, gone are the crucifixes of my childhood. When I pass the church downstairs, I feel nothing...neither torn away nor compelled back.

It's in his kiss

Before Hubbie and I got hitched, our rabbi had us read a book by Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage. I had already read books on taharat mispacha, the Jewish laws of family purity, and the laws and the mindset behind tzniut, the laws of modesty, and shomer negia, observing the rules of touching. But these laws were probably the last thing I focused on for my conversion. Though they were explored thoroughly as a unit I studied for my conversion, it wasn't until all this study was given the context of marriage that I really gave them serious thought.

The first time I met my rabbi (different from our rabbi), my spiritual leader and part of the beis din, the rabbinic court that converted me, I reached out to shake his hand. He didn't run away or anything but he didn't shake it. He just averted his eyes in a way that clued me into a rule I wasn't aware of...the rule about men and women touching. My friend I., the baal teshuva who led me back to my childhood dream of becoming Jewish because of his own spiritual return to his Jewish roots, had tried all manner of subtle conversation to try to explain a law that the rabbi managed to teach me in one movement.


I'm Hispanic. I know, isn't it obvious? Well, no. To Jews that I meet in purely Jewish situations, at first glance, I am a darker skinned Jew, probably of North African or Spanish extraction. To Dominicans who see me on the street, I am a light-skinned Dominican, possibly half-white and of questionable Spanish linguistic skill. And to those who know me, I am first and foremost, a Jew, then Dominican and then American.

Growing up Latina means that I come from a people who touch. We touch for emphasis. We touch to show affection. And though my mother rarely touched me in positive ways, I learned from observation that we were a people who always made a point with a touch. This, I think, is the idea behind the mystique of a Latin lover. We, as Latinos, know how to touch.

As I became more comfortable and went farther away from my mother's iron rule, I became the most touchy-feely of my friends. I hugged strangers, acquaintances and friends. I hugged random cute guys. And at my most risque and with utter naivete, I sat in the laps of my guy friends and ruffled their hair. I was unwittingly flirtatious and at the same time, unable to conceptualize the differences and boundaries between boys and girls. I didn't grow up around boys so I didn't understand the power that my touch had, especially, over my male friends. I played with my power and with it, I toyed with many a guy friend's heart.


The first Jewish guy friends I made friends with after deciding to convert were not as subtle as my bestfriend, I.. Over years of practice, these guy friends had honed the art of touching only their closest female relatives and after that, only men. A great number of my guy friends also were Kohens, who take on different levels of kedusha (holiness) in Judaism. As a rule, Kohens cannot marry converts and so all at once G-d blessed me with the perfect Jewish girlfriends. Here were boys that I could treat just as girlfriends the way I had always treated most of my guy friends.


I flirted with these Kohens, I divulged all my deep dark secrets and I made some of the greatest friendships of my life. In a very short time, I made the safest, dearest, deepest friendships I had ever had with men. I didn't know at the time that these friendships were very special because in Orthodox Jewish life it's not common for members of the opposite sex to connect on that kind of level unless they are discussing marriage.


At first, it was incredibly difficult to refrain from reaching out and ruffling their hair, excruciating not to reach for a hug and so as I have with much of my culture-to-culture clashes, I learned to adapt. At the same time, I was honing my ability to stop touching everyone. The nerves in my body hurt so ferociously and so often that I didn't dare touch anyone. In response, my students taught me the art of the air hug. They would reach out in the air in front of me and pretend to hug me as a way to compensate for the teacher-to-student hugs that had become the norm in our classroom and that had been sacrificed to fibromyalgia. I turned this air hug on its head and began calling it "the shomer hug." I would "shomer hug" Jewish guy friends, the way that other people would carelessly blow kisses at one another.


Because of fibromyalgia, being shomer negiah was truly a blessing. All at once, I was doing so much for my emotional and spiritual health. Because it was such a rarity to touch anyone, touching became...well, amazing. It became shocking and exhilarating. The club of people that I let touch me was so small and sensitive. I became hyper-aware of when people touched me in any way. I didn't deny my male relatives the "luxury" of touching me and even in excruciating pain, I would let members of the same sex hug and hold me. All at once, I began to understand how and why touch could be one of the most intimate of the five senses.


Every single time someone touches me, I think about it. And I cherish it. I have learned boundaries. I have learned to be bashful. (No more, ahem, laps.) I have known the exquisite pleasure of marveling at the fact that the only man who touches me on most days is my husband and that's a very special and exclusive club to be a part of, indeed.


I tutor at a Catholic university where a fundamentalist Christian student asked me how "a fundamentalist Jew" keeps up with all those rules. Judaism is all rules, rules, rules, he said. And I smiled. I didn't know how to explain that from so many of the rules, a once thoughtless girl learned so much about herself and others. (And how to think about not embarrassing herself and others.)

And that praying before eating a fruit, reminded me to be thankful for having the indulgence and blessing from G-d to be able to sit afterwards and chew an expensive and sometimes painful mouthful. (I also suffer from TMJD, a painful jaw dysfunction now exacerbated from fibromyalgia and vice versa.) I thank G-d gratefully after I survive my IBS, (yes, yet another) an often debilitating digestive system disorder, in the privacy of my bathroom. In fact, even when I'm angry at the wo/man upstairs, I am thankful for rules that structure my life in such a way that I sweat the small stuff and find awesome value in the little things.


And so though, I didn't kiss my husband in front of everyone at the end of my wedding ceremony and my little sister did, when I look at her wedding pictures, I laugh simultaneously at the "scandalous" photo of her kissing her husband from the direction of two cultural perspectives who value the human touch and so, wield it powerfully. You see, some Jews call it a "G-d consciousness," but I call it having a keen awareness, a sensitivity, to all the little pleasures and minute beauties in the world.

When Dominicans Haggle...

I didn't grow up hearing many stereotypes about Jews, I just knew that we (Dominicans) didn't like them. The focus was more on the fact that Jews didn't believe in Jesus and therefore, wouldn't be saved. No Jesus, no free pass to heaven. At least, that was more of the focus than say the stereotype about Jews being cheap. Ron Rifkin, my favorite Alias bad guy, said at the LimmudLA conference that he has refused to play the Jew in The Merchant of Venice several times and I think rightly so. Shakespeare may make up most of the canon of English literature but he'll never be accused of being a Jew-lover.

That said, when I saw my sister-in-law, T., haggle for a discount in Israel, it was quite a sight. She makes haggling a competitive sport. And little Dominican-American me can't even get on the court, forget playing the game. And in Israel, of course, she was haggling against a Jewish guy. The guy was begging for mercy as T. played him for a better price with words, nuances and cleverly delivered body movements.So, maybe getting the right deal isn't a Jewish thing so much as it is a Hausman thing.

For all the culture clashes that occur whenever I look at my baby sister-in-law, N., and think back to my childhood--the biggest question being: if I had done this, wouldn't my mom have killed me?--I have taken to heart that Hausmans stand up for themselves because they have enough cojones AND self-esteem not to let people walk all over them. This is something I've seen in Jewish friends too, more than in Dominican-American friends where I think there is more of an immigrant and a minority fear of the establishment, breaking the rules and diverging from the status quo. And today, speaking to a current green card holder, I was reminded that this fear was often rooted in being afraid of being deported, a fear that was passed on through generations. The establishment doesn't get messed with, it messes with you.

Now, here I am thinking of changing one of my gym memberships. As fibromyalgia out-patient and gym rat, I have two of course. I'm a member of the local Y and Curves. When I don't go to the Y, I feel good about myself. It's not just a gym, it's a JEWISH community center so I feel as if I'm making a charitable contribution. The problem is that lately, with the cold and snow and waiting for the bus in freezing weather, it really has turned into more of a donation than a gym membership. Nuff said, I love the Y. I love that when I'm there, I'm surrounded by Jews and every now and again, I run into a Dominican person and I feel at home doubly so.

But Ballys is down the block, people. Not oh-so-cold 30 blocks away like the Y. It's got that grimy gym feeling I hate. There are no kids or Jews or white people, for that matter, for miles. The pool is tiny and ugly but then no more than 3 people ever use it at a time anyway or well, ever. I'd be the only girl with a skirt over her pants, often the case at the Y anyway, but here, these people wouldn't even know that I was trying to be "modest" or "religious." At Bally's, I'd just be WEIRD, a girl with skirt issues.

And then they tried to haggle with us, two Dominican personal trainers, vying to get us to sign up. I made it worst by leaving and then coming back with a downtrodden, learning-at-yeshiva-all-day-tired husband. They thought they had us hooked. They played the game where there was a one-day limited time offer we just HAD to scoop up now before it was gone.

And I laughed aloud and in my head more heartily than I've done in a while during a culture clash. These Dominican guys are trying to haggle with a Jewish guy, with a Hausman? Fo' shame. They don't even know that they're toying with a grand master who makes the sport a fine art. In my former incarnation, I would have played the game and lost. I would have signed up. Limited time offer! Sign me up! Take my purse, my wallet, my keys, everything, I'm there. Sign. Me. Up. But the new-and-improved me knows that with a double-whammy Jewish and Hausman combo, I can come back and knock them out with a mean haggle.

Sign me up tomorrow, guys, on my terms. Because I own the game.







(Postscript: My family in the Dominican Republic does a mean haggle, too. During one particular haggle-a-thon at a mini-mall devoted to touristy items, my Dominican relatives in "DR" put on quite a show. I wasn't allowed to talk during the whole production, lest my Spanish mark me an American, a gringa, and thus cause prices to rocket into the stratosphere. What's their secret to haggling? I think, again, self-esteem, inherited business acumen, feeling comfortable in one's shoes, country and class.)

What is my full-time job?

I'm at work where there is a serious lack of students to tutor. The one regular is a blind girl who needs things read aloud or typed for her and various other things my disability prevents me from doing. We joke about what two little disabled girls like us are doing in a place like this. I work part-time as a writing tutor in a tutoring center at a local university. She’s a full-time student here.

Speaking of that disability, ever since being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I've had to change my life in a number of ways. I’ve had to stop being an overachiever who abuses her body. When I was teaching full-time, my MO was to work for until my body gave up. I spent Sundays, evenings, any minute I had to spare, really, planning, grading, typing, printing, decorating, and innovating. I never stopped. I was a machine. I would crawl out of four-hour sleep spurts; swig a Pepsi in the morning and go. My students came to class because my class was rarely boring, my anecdotes were totally off-kilter and well, I told them and showed them that I loved them and cared. I kicked their little butts into shape.

Now, nearly two years after leaving teaching, I have to do LESS and do things in little spurts when I do have energy. Instead of Pepsi, I swig down medications with all the side effects they bring. But now my body can give up after an hour or 10 minutes or 5 and when it gives up, it’s like having a full system crash. Body aches and pains. The nerves along my body feel like they’re on fire, having people touch me is torture. And THEN my immune system hits a lower level. I might need to sleep 15-hour stretches. I might be “sick” for days before “my system” stabilizes. It’s all about finding a balance and any imbalance causes physical and mental wars to break out. And most days, there is an imbalance.

Like depression, people don’t talk about being physically ill. They get a cold. They get better. They take care of themselves or someone takes care of them. They get over it. But I’m always some kind of sick. In fact, I’m starting to think that it’s my new full-time job.

When I stopped teaching and went on disability after my second year of teaching, I told people that I was taking a break. My husband still told people that I was a “teacher.” And that would lead to all sorts of confusion. But that’s how he really saw me, I was a teacher. That’s how I saw myself.

When the disability ended, I didn’t go back to teaching. Instead, I helped plan my big fat Jewish Dominican wedding. No one really asked what I was doing and I think people assumed I was either teaching or that the little stint being sick just got better or manageable. But it hadn’t. The stresses of the wedding and the stresses at the wedding caused my body’s equilibrium to go haywire. I got a cold the weekend before my wedding. My immune system completely crashed. My body went into massive pain overdrive and I started crying hysterically when my friend came to hug me at the big dinner table set up in the middle of the wedding hall. Ouch.

So, now I tell people that I’m a writing tutor and some of them don’t know how I got to being a tutor from teaching full-time. In fact, they don’t really understand how a 27-year-old isn’t working full-time, especially since they can’t SEE my disability. So for a while, I threw myself into a certificate to become a Fitness Instructor. I figured if my body responded to exercise well then I should pursue that. Forget my useless Education Master’s, I needed to move on. But I couldn’t work part-time, stay healthy and do all the work for the certificate. That’s when I considered getting a t-shirt that said: “FITNESS INSTRUCTOR SCHOOL DROPOUT.” That way, I didn’t have to answer any questions.

Now, people think I’m a writer. Because a little Jewish publisher is waving a contract in front of me and like a little bull, I’m charging towards it. Mostly, charging. I’m terrified of failing. Terrified of contracts, for that matter. I’m terrified that people will think that I’m not a part-time tutor and a full-time out-patient. They’ll think I’m a writer. That I spend hours (or can spend hours) churning away at pages of Oprah’s next book club choice or win the Nobel prize in Literature.

When I watch how hard my husband works towards his career as a rabbi and see friends buzz around me as they take Master’s classes at night, plan out their life goals, I find myself distressed. I feel like I’m stuck and I’m watching them go forward.

I have no plan. Nope, no color-coded career plan. (Because you know, back in the day, mine would have been color-coded like everything else.) No life plan. I find that when I make plans, they’re too large to fit into my new little life. They don’t make sense.

So, I guess I’m a full-time out-patient? And having fibromyalgia means more than changing my BIG life to cope with it, it means changing the way I think about the future, the past and the present. It means my life doesn’t fit into the little boxes people put in front of me:

Are you pregnant? Are you trying to get pregnant? (And therefore, on bedrest?)
Are you a stay-at-home mom? (Because, otherwise, why don’t you have a job?)
Are you still in school? (Why else would you be working part-time if you already have a Master’s and don’t have kids?)
Are you switching careers?

No, I guess I’m trying to get better full-time. I’m recovering from the diagnosis of a chronic illness. And recovering means learning how to live with it and the new me. No easy feat when pain levels are at a 10 out of 10, I need to be at work in 15 minutes and I have three doctors appointments scheduled for the week and five and a half hours at the gym to put in. And yea, maybe, on the side of all that, I’ll write a book, become a super Rebbetzin, a conversion guru, a buff gym rat and well, whoever I was meant to be.

(with my homies--er, students--at THE wedding)

Oscar's Recap Numbero Dos

Helen Mirren is my new Latina big sister. She said, with her badass British accent no less, COJONES on the air. And notice her Latina use of color!

And all the movies that I didn't see, um, like won awards. And now I have to see them even though their long titles have no meaning for me. And, um, sound boring.

Points to the man

Okay props to Jon Stewart for bringing Marketa Irglova back to get her moment on after the orchestra ROBBED HER!

:)

Oscars Recap Numero Uno

Ellen Page was robbed! ROOOOBBBBBEEEEDDDD!

Why wasn't Amy Adams singing all her songs from Enchanted? (And why weren't songs with less hilarious lyrics chosen this year?)

And is Javier Bardem Latino because he's a Spaniard? Yes! (Well, Wikipedia says so.) Spanish white boys are Latinos, too!

Damn I should have seen that French film. Seriously, all I Best Picture nominees I saw were Juno and Michael Clayton. (Hubbie dragged me to the last one.) Oh and I saw Atonement. I thought the titles of the other nominees were too long. Don't judge.

John Stewart...um, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all! Not his fault that he had to write all his lines last minute because the Writer's Strike people didn't give him a month's notice.

Attack of the White People

Part of Aliza's Series on Race Relations! See previous: White People Sensititivy Training

According to Latina magazine, there's a new show on Broadway called "In The Heights" which looks at "three generations of Latinos as they struggle to forge an identity in a community on the brink of gentrification."

Gentrification? According to Google: The process in which a neighborhood is transformed from low-value to high-value properties.

My husband, being Latino by injection (I stole this from Jessica Alba's white momma), says this is racist. You know what they really mean, he says. Meanwhile, I'm wondering why don't they just write what they really mean? You know..."ATTACK OF THE WHITE PEOPLE!"

NEW Definition of gentrification: WHITE PEOPLE ATTACK THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND TAKE IT OVER!

I practiced this theory with my husband last night.

"Honey, come over here!"

And as he approached the room, I yelled: "ATTACK OF THE WHITE PEOPLE! ATTACK OF THE WHITE PEOPLE!"

We fell down laughing. Well he did. I was already curled up in bed with my Latina magazine.

Yes, we have our own sick sense of humor.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

I was raised by wolves. This makes things like human manners and decorum a very foreign concept.

My mother on manners:

Don't talk (lest you embarrass me and I have to kill you)!
Talk (lest you embarrass me with your shyness and I have to kill you)!
Don't embarrass me (you get the picture?)!
Don't leave guests unattended in the living room (and for this infraction, my sister Alys was beaten within an inch of her little life)!

Basically, I was raised in an environment that thought children should neither be seen nor heard. We only ate at a table together twice a year--Thanksgiving and Christmas. We looked at both holidays with dread, just waiting to screw up year after year--an easy thing when Mom knows all the rules and doesn't tell you what they are.

My childhood friend, Tipper, lived in a very proper home. She lived in the fanciest digs of any of my friends in Washington Heights. Her parents were college educated. They made sure that though Tipper was materially spoiled, she was a vibrant, warm and genuine kid. Her mother was one of those PTA moms that was always involved despite being strapped to a wheelchair because of a disability. Her father was an anamoly in a neighborhood of single mother households.

I loved visiting Tipper, an only child, because she had a giant bedroom full of toys that had not suffered at the hands of little sisters. Still, I winced each and every time Tipper's mother invited us over for dinner. I was slapped for being shy at one evening party. I was slapped for putting my elbows on the table at another. I was slapped for pretty much anything and as you can imagine, slapping does not a Miss Manners create.

My husband says I'm a raicist when I tell him I don't want to learn white people rules. Ironically, I spent most of my teaching career telling my students that they had to learn to code-switch because it was a neccessity in being able to navigate a world of rules they wouldn't naturally understand. I don't really do justice to Dominicans everywhere when I pretend that my bad manners are a cultural heritage. There are definitely different rules about the way people talk and treat each other and the kinds of things little old Dominican ladies, the queens of the kvetch, share with each other. My cousins in the motherland though are paragons of manners: "Yes. Please. Thank you" come easily to them while I stumble along, mostly on my face.

I've been working on teaching myself to have manners ever since I ran away and escaped from the jungle into the real world. I've learned most of my manners from the modeling of good friends. It's easier that way. The hard times are when people point out that you have no idea what you're doing and they think they know the best way to fix it. Now, the hard part is realizing that I had just been about to figure out how to do it all when I decided to switch over to the Jewish world, a world of new rules.

As a Jew, I am surrounded by people who have spent most of their lives meeting up over elaborate dinners on a weekly basis. They are used to sitting around tables laden with three or more different types of forks, fish plates, dessert plates and the list just goes on. My husband joked during our presentation on conversion at LimmudLA that I have as difficult a time identifying which utensil to use as I do identifying what is actually being served before me. The most common question I ask, he says, is "What is that?!" and I ask it at every meal.

If conversion is like being transplanted into another world, then I am a cultural astronaut. I've been one ever since my escape from the asylum. Being raised by savages, I always feel that I am on the periphery of all cultures, learning to abide by the rules in the most haphazard manner. And now adding on a disability to the mix, I have to figure out which is more important...being healthy and staying healthy or being a good guest. Because where good guests, I've been told, don't do yoga moves during dinner while the next course is being passed, good FMS (Fibromyalgia Syndrome) patients do.

The World in Frum-Colored Glasses

I identify with a lot of people. I identify with the handicapped, Hispanics, women, and now, of course, Orthodox Jews. I used to overlook the handicapped and the Jews since these pieces weren't always part of my identity.

And now, I sit here, while I should be doing yoga, heading to the shower and getting ready to work staring at the Price is Right awarding a frum guy $30K as his frummie friends hope and dance around him. Hey, they look like me! I feel like $30K bucks.

Stand-Up Comedy from a Convert

Here's a stand-up comedy routine from a fellow convert to Judaism, Aaron Freeman.

I really enjoyed his show at LimmudLA and I hope you'll enjoy this clip!

A little snipet: "Judaism is the world's most obsessive compulsive book club."

Aaron Freeman Performing in Israel

Jesus Christ Superstar

Stuff like this only happens to me, right?

Hubbie and I just got back from the LimmudLA conference ("celebrating the kaleidoscope of Jewish life") in Costa Mesa, CA. We had an awesome time (will post about it later).

Meanwhile, when we got off the plane at 1am in the morning, a Spanish-speaking cleaning lady at the airport approached me to discuss religion while I waited for hubbie to get out of the bathroom.

"Are you Jewish?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Well, let me ask you, because you speak Spanish...."
"Yes, what?"
"Is it true that your people are still waiting for the Messiah?"
"Yes."
"Well, he already came. His name is Jesus Cristo! Don't you think he was the Messiah?"
"No."
"Then what was he?"
"Some Jewish guy."
"Well, then you're expecting the Messiah to be born to your people?"
"No, well, I guess, he could be born to anyone. But we're still waiting."

Honestly, now.

Judge a book by its cover

Somehow, the publisher whose contract I have yet to return has decided that my book is tentatively called: Black. Latino. Jewish: Choosing to be Jewish.

People, help! Vote on something. Make up your own. Help. They obviously want to work in the multicultural angle.


American. Dominican. Jewish.: Becoming Jewish in a Multicultural World

BEFORE & AFTER Jewish: Tales from a Latina convert

So, I married a Rabbi (snicker)

Dominican? American? Jewish. or maybe Latina. American. Jew. (Makes me think of Rebecca Walker's title, Black White Jewish.)

Funny, You Don't Look Jewish: Choosing to be a Jew

Dominican to Jewish and Back Again

A Nice (Dominican-American) Jewish Girl

Once Upon a Time I was Catholic

Giving up Christmas & Other Tales from Becoming a Latina Jewess

Not-so-Accidentally Jewish

In The Zone

Finally finished The Ten Commandments According to My Mother. It's in its second draft before I hope Devora and hubbie take it apart and help me work on it some more. Deadline's two weeks away.

How is it that I am talking about relationships at LimmudLA? I plead insanity. What am I Dr. Phil?

I spent three and a half hours at work writing. That must explain my swollen fingers. The tingling sensation all over. But it was worth it. 

Finding my place in the world...

There is actually a guidebook for converts. Of course, I didn't know this. I didn't even think to look. I had to get through all 50 odd books that the rabbi listed on the curriculum, forget going out there and looking for myself. The thing is, as I page through many books about conversion in preparation for my LimmudLA (limmudla.org) lecture on New Jews: How Converts are Changing the Face of Judaism, I wish there had been a book on converts and more specifically, conversion. It was fine reading stories about other converts but I definitely could have used some sort of GPS system on the whole process.

So, a big thing in the guidebook is finding a community, not just after but before, during and after conversion. That's a place I haven't done too well in. I love the Upper East Side. The age group is skewed in many directions but my own and yet, because I'm surrounded by so many people that are new to Judaism, I feel at home. Yea, it's also where I found my first shul and met my first rabbi.

When I moved to Washington Heights, it was like falling off the derech (the path). I found a community of friends, people my age, but they were all former day school students, rabbinical students and with few exceptions, we just weren't on the same page spiritually. Plus since the crowd was already very learned, there was no need to serve the minority (me) population with programs for beginners.

And now Riverdale.... It's homey. I love my apartment when the ceiling in the bathroom isn't caving in, leaking or moldy, especially. But the community is similar to that in Washington Heights but everyone's getting their Master's (been there, done that) or making a baby (you couldn't pay me to go there any time soon). I can't really discuss my lofty career goals of being a writer, dreaming that I'd have cash and time and energy to devote myself to an MFA in Creative Writing because honestly, these goals are really lofty. Fantastical really. And there are tons of parents here with little rugrats. And I don't have much to say about nursery schools, though I tell pretty good stories about potty training my sister.

Dream area to live? Morningside Heights, right by Columbia so the hubbie could walk home and we'd be close to THE CITY. We could walk to the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side. I could run around going to classes and tutor bratty, posh kids for lots of moula. And there are tons of people like me. Jew babies...just starting to grow in their Judaism.

Ah, perchance to dream.

Aish

I have been staring at the AISH building in LA for years now and wanting to go in and take some classes. It's really conveniently located to my LA digs so it just taunts me while I'm in Lala land.

I took a Drisha parsha class last week and found out that "multi-level" means know Hebrew or else be lost. This is the second Drisha class I've dropped out of and I'm starting to think this is an ongoing habit.

Thank G-d for Maya and the Internet who helped me uncover some other juicy spots to get my learning on.

So, for now, I am in love with Aish (and the Magic Mystery Torah class) and all the fun people there. They think I'm a freak, of course, after announcing that my husband's a rabbinical student (ie, so what are you doing at Aish)? I am thinking of doing the one-on-one learning thing.

Mood: Happy:)