El Yenta Man and I celebrated twelve years of marriage on Sunday, and because we’re kind of weird, rather than throw down for a spendy dinner and champagne, we elected for snacks at Parker’s Market then coffee at the Sentient Bean, where Dan Merchant’s documentary Lord Save Us From Your Followers was showing in honor of World Homeless Day.

Maybe that doesn’t sound terribly romantic, but we did make out for a few minutes in the minivan.

The film itself was interesting–the premise is that Merchant, a Christian, attempts to address America’s “culture wars” by traversing the country wearing a suit of religiously-themed bumper stickers and interviewing folks about their views. He’s honest, fairly objective and downright apologetic for other Christians who have perverted Jesus’ message of “love one another” into their own bloated political agendas, and though I didn’t agree with everything Merchant was selling, it was enlightening to hear a reasonable voice touting the idea that freedom of religion does not actually mean the founders of the Constitution intended this to be a Christian country. The Conservatives Vs. The Media Elite Trivia Challenge was entertaining–though it was no real surprise that the liberals were far more educated about the conservative viewpoint than vice versa.

Senator Al Franken makes a few appearances, notably to say that he is still very much opposed to prayer in schools, but if there had to be one prayer that was acceptable to everyone (except the athiests and the Hindus and many others, which is WHY there shouldn’t be prayer in schools, hello) it would be the Sh’ma: The Lord is Our God, the Lord Is One.

Of course, Franken is Jewish, so that makes sense. The Sh’ma is a nice, general prayer that no monothiest could argue with, right?

Well, whaddya know, it’s even catching on with the non-Jews: Rabbi Jason Miller reported last week on his blog that cotton candy crooner Justin Bieber recites the Sh’ma before he goes onstage for a show. Here’s a ten-second shot of the Swoop-haired One, with Jayden Smith and Usher, in a prayer circle and ensuing high five slapfest:

Special. But when we lay down and when we rise up is plenty–pray at home, pray at shul, pray before you go dance like a bunny in front of ten thousand screaming 12 year-old girls, but even if the Sh’ma were said at public school, it would be still be unconstitutional, and therefore, wrong.

Yenta Boy posted this as his Facebook update recently: “So…life.”

Those two words and the ellipses radiate a weariness that seems rather precocious for a 10 year-old, nu?

Though I do remember being 10, wondering when I could move out and have my own apartment so I could stay up as late as I wanted and read things like Judy Blume’s Wifey (I grew past Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret pretty quick.) I think my mother would agree that I was something like a cross between a prepubscent female Woody Allen and Winona Ryder’s character in Beetlejuice.

But today, I am THIRTY-NINE, and I am happy to report I have gotten less cynical as I’ve aged. Mostly because being squeezed through the portal of motherhood and growing up my precious babies thus far has convinced me that life, even with its constant maintenance (why DON’T bathrooms clean themselves?), occasional severe f*cked-uptedness (such as the red toxic slurry that exploded from an aluminum factory in Hungary yesterday), and insistence on going in directions not conducive to my immediate gratification (Publix stopped carrying Gardenburgers and now I must schlep to Kroger) is just so darn amazing. Each birthday, a gift. For reals.

Since it’s Thursday, of course I’m celebrating with my Home Yentas at the JEA Senior lunch. My lovely younger friends wanted to take me somewhere fancy, but it’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen all my Jewish bubbies because of the fall’s chag-a-week cockamaminess, and let’s face it, none of us are getting any younger. And my dearest mother-in-law, picking up speed on this downward dementia slope, won’t be able to make it to these lunches much longer. So, chicken and overcooked vegetables it is. Yo, Marcia Silverman–if you read this before noon, can a sister get some Texas Pete’s on her birthday?

Anyway. So…life. Maybe what Yenta Boy is beginning to intuit on a small level is that with life, comes death. Always. No matter how good, talented, sneaky, brilliant, kind, observant or deluded we are. It’s a fact. Look it up.

So I’d like to take a minute to honor a couple of important Jews who recently passed to the great deli in the sky:

Eddie Fisher, who I had an aural childhood crush on because my mother played 50’s tunes all the time, died September 22 of complications from a broken hip. He was 82. Though my crush was quickly abandoned after the double-whammy of reading Elizabeth Taylor’s biography and discovering Shaun Cassidy, I still felt a little pang.

And this week, Tony Curtis, another fleeting object of my preteen swoon after my dad showed Some Like It Hot at my eighth birthday party on this fancy new contraption called a VCR, suffered a fatal heart attack.

I had the honor of interviewing Mr. Curtis for my first newspaper job in Marin County, which I’d love to link you to but this was back before every single printed thing got immortalized on the interweb tubes. He was a silver fox in a smoking jacket, twinkly-eyed and witty, sweet to his lovely wife Jill Vandenberg (I remember that she was wearing a white one-button blazer–with nothing underneath–it was an impressive rack) and charmed that I had seen his old movies and could turn a Yiddish phrase.

May these two men rest in peace, their accomplishments live on and their flaws forgotten.

And may those who are wise beyond their years learn to slow down and appreciate each day.

So…life. At 39, I don’t feel particularly old (unless someone mentions Justin Bieber) but I know too much (and have the left hip of a 70 year-old) too feel young. I own jeggings, but know full well I should not wear them without a tunic that covers my tush. I can stay up as late as I want, but I choose to snuggle down by 10 so I can get to yoga by 6. It’s a blessed place to be.

I dedicate this post to my son, whose brain is still too big for his britches: L’Chaim, little dude, L’Chaim!

I’m sure there’s a lot to say about douchey Rick Sanchez and his “Jon Stewart is a bigot and Jews run the media” nonsense, but the guy’s already been fired. And frankly, nothing I could write here could top our lil’ Jon’s wicked smart and surprisingly compassionate response.

Instead, let’s check out the Jewish stereotypes in the short film “A Reuben By Any Other Name”:

Forget Rick Sanchez–if we’re going to decide that a Reuben isn’t Jewish because it’s not kosher, we have bigger problems.

Thanks to Cathy Skidmore-Hess for the link!

When I think Black Sabbath, I get visions of Ozzy Osbourne in his bat-eating days. But this isn’t about riding the meshuggeneh train.

I was already sold on The Idelsohn Society’s Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations because I have a soft spot for anything involving Johnny Mathis (and Danny Kaye, for that matter.) In spite of its kitschy name, this collection of rare footage of African-American musicians singing Jewish music is clearly the endeavor of educated and passionate audiophiles. And finding this clip of Nina Simone singing a Hebrew song was the clincher:

Sez the site:

The High Priestess of Soul sang this 1950s Israeli folk-dance ode to “a land flowing with milk and honey” (written by Eliahu Gamliel) on the stage of Carnegie Hall in 1963 on the same day that Martin Luther King Jr was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama. Neither Simone nor her biographers talk much about her choice of “Eretz Zarat Chalav,” which she first added to her repertoire in 1962 when she performed on the CBS program Camera Three. A year later, she sang it again on the TV show Hootenany, in front of an all white audience at Salem College not long after the assassination of JFK.

I’m just kind of glad The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations doesn’t include Sammy Davis Jr. as its icon. Not that I don’t love him; he’s just so obvious.

Hey, you know what would really be awesome? Black Sabbath: The Cookbook. Black-eyed pea blintzes, collard kugel, ya feel me? But no bat casserole.

Many, many thanks to Supah Kewl Jewish Mama Mindy Winn for the tip!

Please enjoy more animated holiday fun from G-dcast, featuring Israeli singer/songwriter Hadara Levin-Areddy:

Back to Basics: An excellent theme to take with into the new year as I attempt to plot out a course for practicing Judaism without plotzing.

Look at the amazing sukkah El Yenta Man is going to build in our backyard this week!

Just kidding. This fancy shanty is one of the finalists of Sukkah City, an international sukkah design competition currently being held in NYC’s Union Square Park. Sounds a little like Chabad Meets Burning Man, nu? The winning hut gets to stand all the way through the week of Sukkot, which starts Thursday.

For the new people, a sukkah is a three-walled, open-ceilinged hut built right after the High High Holy Days to commemorate what our ancestors lived in after bailing from Egypt (no cardboard boxes or VW buses back then.) I dig the depth of the definition that Sukkah City gives:

Ostensibly the sukkah’s religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt, but it is also about universal ideas of transience and permanence as expressed in architecture. The sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted. It calls on us to acknowledge the changing of the seasons, to reconnect with an agricultural past, and to take a moment to dwell on—and dwell in—impermanence.

*Sigh*. I’m not even going to pretend the Yentas are putting up our own this year, though El Yenta Man did lend hands to build one at the home synagogue yesterday (and apparently climbed a ladder, an act that shows his true dedication to Judaism as he his fear of heights is second only to his aversion to construction paper chains.)

As the trees begin to let go of their leaves and the air loses its hot summer grip, my children get taller and my hair gets grayer and my mother-in-law transitions further into the recesses of what’s left of her mind, the stress of wielding tools to honor the impermanence of life seems redundant and unnecessary.

As much as I would love to have a designer sukkah in my backyarden to give thanks for the bounty of okra, peppers and eggplants, we’ll have to make do with a communal rituals and our favorite striped blanket under the crape myrtle tree.

But next year, I’ma show up all these fancy shanties by making something craaaazy out of kudzo and chicken wire.

There’s a pretty heavy religious poem that’s recited in synagogue during the High Holy Days called the Unetana Tokef that lets us know that this whole Being Judged Business is no joke. It says that our Creator is paying very close attention to all of us at the New Year, deciding who will live and who will die by excoriating circumstances, including but not limited to being burned by fire, eaten by wild beasts or crushed by an earthquake.

The takeaway line of the Unetanah Tokef is “on Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed,” which means we’ve got about ten days to get it together and up our stakes for a better year using the spiritual currency of tefillah (prayer), tzedakeh (charity) and teshuvah (repentance). Considering just how badly we humans can screw things up, I think giving us a week and a half to turn things around is pretty darn generous.

I take this in-between time kind of seriously for someone with such an elastic approach to religion. Maybe I’m superstitious, or maybe I don’t need last year’s monkeys following me into 5771. (Speaking of big monkeys left behind, this holiday season marks five years since I’ve had a cigarette.) I try to release old grudges, pay any unpaid debts and examine and apologize for my many, many flaws, including but not limited to hostile impatience, delusions of grandeur, inappropriate sarcasm and disrespecting authority.

I’m having a difficult time with that last one. There’s been some serious issues in my synagogue of late which I haven’t addressed on this blog because 1) I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings (thus adding to the list of things I need to atone for) or 2) add to an already shockingly ugly situation 3) more and more and more, synagogue is becoming the most irrelevant part of my Jewish life, since I can’t seem to find any inspiration nor an example of how to be a better person coming from the bima.

Ouch. That wasn’t very nice, was it? But here’s the deal: I chose to attend a different synagogue for Rosh Hashanah so as to avoid the political messiness and lack of spiritual connectivity happening at the home shul. When we arrived, I saw quite a few other home shul families who must’ve been thinking the same thing: We just want to have a quiet morning of learning how to repent, pray and ways to give without all the other crap.

Instead we were treated to an hour-long sermon about the rabbi’s personal fears about Islam, his perceived disingenuousness of moderate Muslim leaders and whole bunch of other negative stuff that seemed wholly inappropriate for the bima, let alone the one service of the year when everyone actually shows up. Those who didn’t leave after he announced “I am an Islamaphobe” the third time politely waited until he finished and then cleared the room immediately. I stayed with the 30 or so remaining folks all the way through the Musaf service, more to test my stamina than anything else, as it was awfully hard to regain any spiritual mojo after such a strange and uncomfortable tirade.

All I could think was “What is my religion’s freaking problem with simple faith? What does a Jew have to do to get a little ruach in this town?!” Friends at the home shul reported that the sermons I missed there were also offensive, though for different reasons, and we all agree that it’s been a disappointing way to herald in a new year.

Given the opportunity and the audience to do so much good, why would a rabbi choose to speak about fear over love on Rosh Hashnanah—or ever? My understanding is that a rabbi’s role—in the Conservative and Reform movements, anyway—is to interpret the Torah, lead the congregation in prayer and in song, to emulate sagacity in times of trouble and to provide words of hope and faith—especially during a time when we’re all trying to turn the Divine tides in our favor.

During this in-between time when what is written can be transmuted into something I want to be sealed, I apologize for questioning the rabbis of this community and ask for forgiveness for the anger and frustration. I also pray for solutions for this community, for connection, for peace and for prosperity.

I don’t know where I’ll be listening to those last shofar blasts at the end of Yom Kippur on Saturday, and I guess all this confirms is what I’ve suspected all along: It’s up to each of us to cultivate our own faith, and in lieu of examples, we must do our best to be our own with what we’ve got.

That said, I may bring in 5771 with a webcast from L.A and a kazoo.