Someone asked me why the cryptic HKVS when I sign a letter these days. It stands for
Hag Kasher ve’Sameach, Have a Happy and Kosher Holiday.
So many people are overwhelmed with the drive for the kosher part, but the Sameach gets lost.
So I’ll wish you a happy wonderful holiday.
Enjoy your family, if you’re lucky enough to be with them.
Enjoy your freedom, wherever you are.
No, I’m not ready yet.
But my new fragrance is.
I never followed up on my hunt for a replacement smell. But it becomes more important because the other fragrances that I wear are not kosher for Pesach.
Yeah, I might want to swill them, shades of Kitty Dukakis from a while ago, for those of you OACA*.
So I did have very good luck and actually, it was another illustration of wisdom of our sages,
**אתה לא תמיד יכול לקבל מה שאתה רוצה
So I went to a discount perfume store in the outlet stores nearby.
And I asked them if they had something
with lemon tones, light for every day.
And they offered so many choices
but I realized I had to change my ways.
‘Cause you can’t always get what you want…x2
But I found this time,
I got what I need!
da da da da ba da da da
Okay, I’m done.
Burberry.
Vanilla.
Very nice.
And kosher for Passover.
What could be better?
Oh yeah, back to the kitchen.
* Of a certain age:)
**You’ve probably figured out by now what this means…if not, let me know.
I was going to write about bad grammar. There was a message on the phone machine from someone who should know better, but said”
“Blahblahblahblah blahblah blah…
for you and I to get together.”
No. You lose all credibility with that one.
So that’s the theme here that I walked into (into which I walked?):
You should know better.
That’s my feeling about Shlomo Carlebach. I was reminded of him just now by the link provided by Jewish Ideas Daily from the Forward. I am wary in general of anything written in the Forward, since it’s going to have an anti-religious outlook, but this article is so blaaaand. It’s as if the person reviewing the musical had no idea of who this guy was. And I think that’s bad reviewing.
So I will review him without seeing the musical.
Which I will not do.
I will explain. Actually, I will refer you to what I wrote back on June 28, 2009 about my distrust of celebrity, charisma, etc., including my distaste for Shlomo Carlebach. I did not state it outright, but I’ll link you to an article from Lillith Magazine that has been used as an example of Lashon Hara, since it was written after he died and so he couldn’t defend himself against such charges.
The fact is abuse basically by definition means the weak not being able to defend him/herself. So I have no use for this argument. The undisputed fact is that he took advantage of many women, and probably much of it (now this is definitely my opinion, for what it’s worth) could be called abuse.
So how does this figure into his music?
Last Friday evening, at shul, the person leading the services was a Carlebach devoté and he milked all the Carlebach tunes for all they’re worth.
Which, of course, in my book, is not very much.
Most of his tunes are quite simplistic, which most people think means that they’re easy to follow. It happens to be not true. There’s one in particular that people mess up, not able to handle the minor vs. major key that it dips into. But still, yes, I did use some of the tunes when I taught preschool. As I said, simplistic. Fit for that.
I will also link you to a wonderful article about music and prayer by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks that I just received and I will include but a bit here (and you should definitely read the whole thing, if you haven’t already):
There is an inner connection between music and the spirit. When language aspires to the transcendent and the soul longs to break free of the gravitational pull of the earth, it modulates into song. Music, said Arnold Bennett is “a language which the soul alone understands but which the soul can never translate.” It is, in Richter’s words “the poetry of the air.” Tolstoy called it “the shorthand of emotion.” Goethe said, “Religious worship cannot do without music. It is one of the foremost means to work upon man with an effect of marvel.” Words are the language of the mind. Music is the language of the soul.
So if music is indeed the language of the soul, then it will inform what is in that soul. And I’m saying that just like I won’t listen to Wagner’s music because I know what an anti-Semite he was, (and I don’t like Renoir because I know what kind of anti-Semite he was), I will say that Carlebach’s lack of boundaries comes out in his music and we shouldn’t use it for holy purposes. And so the Forward can review the play, but that’s just what it is.
A play.
And he played with people’s lives, and we shouldn’t make music to sing to G-d without realizing where it’s been first.
We should know better.
Yesterday our internet was veeerrrry slow so I had to wait a bit to load more. Here’s a little bit more for now.
We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was one as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mysticAnd when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when the fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don’t have to fear itAnd I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will fold into the mysticWhen that fog horn blows you know I will be coming home
And when that fog horn whistle blows I got to hear it
I don’t have to fear itAnd I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will fold into the mystic
Come on girl…Morrison remarked on the song: “‘Into the Mystic’ is another one like ‘Madame Joy’ and ‘Brown Skinned Girl’. Originally I wrote it as ‘Into the Misty’. But later I thought that it had something of an ethereal feeling to it so I called it ‘Into the Mystic’. That song is kind of funny because when it came time to send the lyrics in WB Music, I couldn’t figure out what to send them. Because really the song has two sets of lyrics. For example, there’s ‘I was born before the wind’ and ‘I was borne before the wind’, and also ‘Also younger than the son, Ere the bonny boat was one’ and ‘All so younger than the son, Ere the bonny boat was won’ … I guess the song is just about being part of the universe.”[6]
I can’t seem to get the photos to go in ascending order. Just know that the darker ones happened after the lighter ones. Click on the photos for them to open up. If you’d like.
How did I get to that?
Who knows?
But it was today’s earworm.
It could be worse. It could be Reading Rainbow.
I don’t think I saw any birds, so it wasn’t a visual cue.
And I don’t remember reading any other Leonard Cohen poems today.
Here’s the song.
And here are the lyrics.
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
And here’s what someone (Jarkko Arjatsalo in Finland) says about what the bird on the wire signifies:
Bird on the Wire began in Greece, when Cohen first arrived in Hydra, there were no wires on the island, no telephones and no regular electricity. But soon telephone poles appeared, and then the wires. I would stare out the window at these telephone wires and think, how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn’t going to be able to escape after all. I wasn’t going to be able to live this eleventh-century life that I had thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning. Then he noticed that the birds came to the wires. The next line referred to the many evenings Cohen and friends climbed the endless stairs up from the port of Hydra, drunk and singing. Often you see: three guys with the arms around each other , stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds. He finished the song in a Hollywood motel on Sunset Boulevard in 1969.(2)
2) from the book Various Positions by Ira B. Nadel.
I don’t have a photo of a bird on a wire. I will have to look for one. In the meantime, I have this one I took.
I think I’m getting ready for a sparse winter.
It seems my little big boy picked up a few things from his friends in Israel, including the use of the word “chutzpan”, but I guess it’s in the air. Chutzpah is the newest catchword, according to this article and Michelle Bachmann. But notice that I wrote “chutzpan”, not chutzpah. The difference is the actor versus the act. In Yiddish, it would be called acting “chutzpahdik”. And there you have my conjugation lesson for today.
It makes a lot of sense that there would be a noun for the person in Hebrew, since I think everyone would agree that you need a lot of chutzpah to live in Israel and manage your way there successfully. You need chutzpah to get through the myriad of lines, of bureaucracy, of living under stressful situations of all kinds. You need chutzpah perhaps most of all to deal with other Israelis. That sabra image, of the tough on the outside, sweet on the inside? Yeah, you need chutzpah to deal with that.
So it’s not surprising that the big boy would pick up that word to sling around, while doing his best to learn to live up to his own sabraness. And, of course, since he’s only 2 3/4, he’s perhaps not using the word as carefully as Michael Wex would like. So he throws it out basically when anyone would dare to do anything to him, even though it’s usually as a result of something that he did to someone else. Like when he was eating a cookie while climbing all over my living room sofa (it’s always just the week before Pesach in my house–a very very big no no!) and I told him to take the cookie and his shoes back to the dining room and so he hit me and said “Chutzpan!”
So he should have said Chutzpanit, first of all, since, I am a girl…
Okay, no more grammar today. Probably.
At least for now.
So I am by this point laughing at him, which is not the reaction he wants. And only the kids are getting upset, mostly because of the swiping that he’s doing along with the name-calling. But the best moment comes when his older cousin by 5 months says after another incident,
“Chutzpan means kisses.”
That, apparently, is what his father told him.
Don’t you love it?
But here’s an interesting thing–I just found a song by Avishai Cohen called–what else? Chutzpan!
said ISHI to me earlier today. What did ISHI say? Can you guess?
I figured I’d make a list of things it’s time to do and then I’ll get around to the correct answer provided (what he said).
If I were really good at doing graphics (okay, if I could do them at all, rather than just copy stuff), I would make two very large circles and then make them intersect. You know, Venn diagrams. And I would list all the things that were the same in the intersecting parts of the circle, and all the things that were different in the two unshared parts.
Oh, what am I talking about?
You know the phrase “You can’t dance at two weddings?” Oh, I can provide a graphic for that:
Apparently, the Yiddish improves upon the German phrase with the addition of the tuchus.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, at two weddings. But they couldn’t have been more different while being the same.
So I’ll start with the same.
They were both Jewish weddings, both in the same approximate area (so we could think about attempting to drag our tuchusses to the two), both in the evening, both first marriages, both with family drama in the background, both with many non-Jews attending, both with beautiful flowers, beautiful brides, and beautifully beaming families. And smaller crowds than many weddings I’ve been involved with. Oh, and ISHI was not officiating at either of them.
I think that covers the intersecting area.
Now for the differences:
The first wedding had a bride who was 20 years old. It was low-key, mostly filled with young women who looked like they had never been to a wedding before. They didn’t come up to the bride when she entered the room, and had to be coaxed to come see her. The men went in their little room and there wasn’t really a chance to see what they were like. Although really for the first time, I did not have any interest or curiosity to see what was happening. There were also a number of people there who were so informally dressed that they must have thought they were going to a wedding in Israel. Israel weddings are nicely informal, so that the emphasis is on the joy and the simchah, rather than the production of the event.
Although I’ve never seen anyone bring food to the chuppah and sit down with their little kids on the runway so they can continue eating.
One of the little children, whose mother was letting wander around, was headed right to the keyboard to play something interesting, I’m sure. One of the (2) musicians sat quickly down to prevent any mis-notes. The photographer, who was poised at that part of the runway to catch photos, took a moment to show the toddler (who was a girl, btw) her camera. Someone from the family came over to take a photo of that, which was a sign of the times. You know, the picture inside the picture, which I guess is what we all experience. Are we living in the moment, or are we running to catch something for another time, thereby missing the experience we’re so eager to catch?
This was a wedding where the bride is in a hurry to grow up. I suggested to the mother that she remind her daughter to play. Not to play house, but to play. The chosson looked scared to death.
The irony is that this 20 year-old looked older than the other bride, who is twice her age. She and her husband don’t need that reminder about playing. They’ve got that down nicely.
So that leads me to the second wedding.
Since ISHI was asked to read the ketubah for the first one, we had to wait and wait for the first one. So we didn’t get to the second one for a while. The first one was supposed to start at 4, with the chuppah at 5. The second one was scheduled at 5, so that’s why we had the thought we could do both. We didn’t get there until 6:30. The first people we saw were the bride and groom. That meant not only was the chuppah long finished, but so were the photos. Although, since it was not an Orthodox wedding, perhaps they had all the photos earlier. I do know that they looked relaxed. They were having fun.
As I mentioned, the second bride was 40 years old. She had a number of rotten relationships and I think she was convinced she would never find the right guy. Well, thank G-d for friends. An old friend (who she’s been friends with almost as long as the other bride has been alive) had met this wonderful fellow and persisted for a year and a half until they agreed to meet.
Not a shidduch. A real friend.
Now, the reality was that we could not dance at either wedding. The first we didn’t stay for the dancing; the second, well, it wasn’t quite appropriate musical style or opportunity. Sure, they had a “horah” opportunity, but well…not for a proper Orthodox rabbi’s wife to join.
And the big band with the black singer perfecting Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, but still not an opportunity to dance.
And the title of this blog?
How else do you bentch?
via http://improveverywhere.com via TED talks via Facebook.
T, please make sure that S sees this:).
Enjoy, seriously.
