9/22/2011

I started out the day early and in ok spirits. On my morning walk through the crisp air my head cleared and I thought about what more could I be doing with the high holiday season almost upon us. My first thought was to include someone, a stranger even, who had no family in the area to join us for erev rosh hashonah dinner. The mitzvah of hospitality even has a name, hanasat orhim so it has to be a good one, although I have yet to find a list of "named" mitzvot but am working on this. I was already thinking about the menu, and contemplating home made challah. But I knew that I needed to clear this with my spouse, and by the time I had gotten home I started to have some doubts which he echoed. It was just going to be the three of us, and he and my son might not be there "on time." Plus it is a known fact that I get nervous and awkward around strangers and sometimes when I am nervous my cooking suffers. So we agreed to hold off this year, but if a situation presented itself, well it was open for discussion. I know that the path to being a better, more hamish hostess is just doing it more, but there is also something comforting about cooking for those who are closest to you. I will be all alone on the prep, from setting the table, to shining the silver, so we'll keep it small.
So no grand gesture (or at least grand for me), but it got me going a bit and sent of Happy New Years notes to a few folks, just using a nice note card, but one went to my cousin whose mom died this year. At this point, I had had a bit of a set-back on the work front, and was just trying to counter-act my foul mood. It is hard to do good or think good thoughts when you are really, really angry. So I wrote the notes, took a shower, did some productive stuff, and now have written some checks; Torah Fund and Women's League which is something, but these small gestures are no match for my bad mood. I was hoping when I started this process that more mitzvahs in my life would be a kind of antidote to my malaise about other parts of my life (professional) that are not in the best shape. Positive energy begets positive energy, but it only goes so far or perhaps my good deeds are just not big enough to shift the universe. And considering how challenging it is to invite a stranger to my home for dinner, I could be a long way from big gestures.
I just found the list of 613 commandments which is supposed to be the foundation of the mitzvah, except most of it is just stuff not to do and a lot of it requires modern day poetic interpretation to make it even remotely, guaranteeing lifetime employment for scholars since there will never be a true answer. I could not find, you should feed strangers or you should offer hospitality anywhere on this list, although I do know there are many torah moments where good hospitality brings good favor.
Guest or no guest, home-made challah is on the to-list for this year, if it flops there is always whole foods.

9/21/2011

First of all, my apologies to the real daily mitzvah blog. A more prudent person would have searched for competing blog titles before embarking on this. I only did it after the fact when I thought changing my url from my prior complain about the world blog title "gimme a break" would make sense. So I now know just how many mitzvah themed blogs there are. The other daily mitzvah does what it says, lists events of note on a daily basis for those inclined to do good and needing a nudge in the right direction. It looks like a very successful blog and a good idea. My idea is so much smaller and personal. I doubt that anyone will ready my blog at all unless they stumble upon it by mistaking. So Sorry! If I can come up with a better name than I will. As for changing the URL that will also have to wait. I am such a novice that just getting to this page and writing something every day is enough learning and practice for me.
Speaking of practice, the whole intent here was to practice mitzvah, or a kind of mitzvah friendly attitude, till it becomes a habit. It is too early to jump to any conclusions. Yesterday's new request for money came from the Los Angeles Mission. As for my baking for shiva, it did not come out great, but brought it anyway, it is hard to feel good when you are embarrassed by your baked goods. So even here, in the world of nice gestures, my competitiveness and insecurity come forward. But I do think that I am working harder to say thank-you, and to greet people with warmth and be a good listener, and that is all ok.
Had a great talk with my mom today, she shared that the cans of pate that she carried back from Spain weren't all that tasty. I shared my disappointing baking outcomes. We both felt better.

9/20/2011

I have just hammered out a bunch of work and am off to bake a zuchinni bread for a shiva at a friends house.  Bringing baked goods is a tradition, but baking is even better.  In searching on shiva baking mitzvah, found someone else with a similar blog idea (of course) who is already written a book as well.
http://1000mitzvahs.org/2011/02/24/mitzvahs-arent-fun/
In her case, she had a quantitative target of 1,000 and a reason, mourning the passing of her father.  It took her two and  a half years and each mitzvah was turned into a story.  Of course, in my less patient view of this you could easily whip out 50 mitzvahs a day particularly if you start blessing everything (the bread, the wine, the food, the toilet (really there is a blessing for after going to the bathroom))  so at that hyper mitzvahed rate you could reach the goal in 20 days!  Of course documentation would be challenging, takes longer to write about then do some of these.  As with so many things in Judiasim, there is room for interpretation.  If you ritualize mitzvot, does it cease to be special and just become rote (like blessings)? 

 As for upping my personal mitzvah count, I worked hard at stopping at four way stops and saying hello to everyone on my morning count.  These small kindnesses could add up, but then felt like I blew it all away by honking at a vehicle that decided to just stop at in the middle of a green light at a busy intersection; that plus driving by the grizzled guy with the homeless sign outside the target parking lot, it was harshing my good vibes (to pull a phrase from the 70s).  It seems every day brings myriad opportunities to send checks or volunteers, each one poses potential for good doing.  But now at least I am trying to think about these events, not just view them as annoyances.  I researched the Walter Hoving home, and based on what I learned passed on writing a check.  I read the thank-you letter carefully from Planned Parenthood trying to remember if I already gave them money.  I had, but they had cleverly thought of asking for more with the thank-you.  And when my  husband "stole" the front page while I was getting a hot cup of tea, I kept my annoyance to myself.     I really did not expect or wasn't cognizant of how many opportunities to extend kindness or contribute to the greater good there were sitting on my doorstep, in my mailbox, email or phone machine each and every day.  So maybe this isn't just about doing more..it is about making choices that begin to deepen my own understanding of what I care about it and how I want to live my life.  Something to think about while I'm sifting flour.

9/19/2011

Maybe it is the approaching high holidays or just a nagging sense of life not being as good as it could be but when last weekend's bnai mitzvah spoke about practicing mitzvahs it really resonated. Doing good doesn't necessarily come naturally and isn't always felt to be necessary. Each person walks this path in their own way, but I had the thought for sometime that I should do more. Sometimes this was the guilt of not answering the nightly calls for money from Doctors without Borders among others. The feeling of resentment towards the solicitors for various causes that set up tables outside my local Ralphs. The requests for money at a time that worrying about money is a constant mantra in my life seemed never ending and I felt that the more I turned a way, the harder my heart was. So I wondered, could I each day do small mitzvahs as practice that would lead me to a different place, perhaps one of greater clarity about what I do and don't do. The goal of this blog is to do just that and then talk about it.
It is just past lunch on a Monday and already I have a number of choices to make. I have been asked to usher during high holiday services which I am not sure I want to do. I have a flyer from the Walter Hoving Home sitting on my kitchen counter which I am not sure what to do with. I have already agreed to deliver plants prior to the high holidays to those in need of healing but that is for another day, and I am dropping off stationary so someone else can write thank-yous for our Sisterhood. Is doing something courteous that takes you a bit out of your way, and burns gas, is that truly a mitzvot?

According to Wikipedia, yes! The meaning is quite broad ranging from commandments and laws that are captured in writing to just something as basic as a human kindness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvot
Under these guidelines, I could work up to a mitzvah a minute! Open doors, let cars cut in front of you, think about God, say a prayer and call your parents! But it also seems like Talmudic scholars have argued (big surprize there) about how intentional mitzvot should be, in other words if you are thinking about it in a sort of look at how good I am way, it defeats the point. Perhaps getting the list of 620 commandments and working may way down the list (like that TV show Earl) is just too structured, although it's tempting. So for now we are going free form and trying different things, and see if I can get to something, some place that matters.

Election Year

It was 1970, a time of tremendous change for our nation. I was in 8^th grade, far removed from these changes, in a town so small we only had one high school, and it included grades 8 through 12. Having had some success as 7^th grade class representative and at what I would later realize was the height of my popularity; I stepped up to run for freshman class president. I was nervous about making a speech in front of all 100 of my classmates from a podium in the auditorium with a real microphone. But I practiced and I wrote and re-wrote. It was all sincerity and hard work.

I only had one opponent, the younger sister of a cheerleader, who drove a vintage aqua T-Bird around town, and lived up on “the hill”, in the better part of town. After giving my serious speech, my heart sank as she walked up to the podium with a sign that her sister had made. “I have laryngitis” it read. The audience roared with laughter and sent their approval with their votes.

In politically correct 2007, at my daughter’s private school this would never happen. There is a long list of requirements for eligibility to run for student office of which a “real” speech is one of them, but the lesson I learned about elections still seems to matter, both at the high school level as well as on the national level. We vote for who we like, and not always who will be the best at the job.

So as my daughter contemplates running for student body president at the end of this year, I worry that she will be hurt. She says that she would always regret not running, that she has the teacher’s support, and that she has worked really hard this year as Assistant Commissioner for Spirit, an appointed post. I too had the teacher’s support, so much so that after my election loss, they gave me an adjunct position to the student council, so that I participated in the running of the school and leadership events, but I knew without the imprimatur of my peers, what did it really mean?

I was sharing my worries over the phone with my mother a few weeks ago. My daughter was spending an incredible number of hours in the middle of finals week preparing for the school’s winter formal. She believed her effort would influence the other kids to be impressed with her, perhaps like her more.

My mother asked a question that was so far out of left-field I couldn’t even process it for a few minutes. “Do you think being Jewish matters?” “Of course not!” was my indignant response, and “Why would you ask that?”

“Because, that was why you weren’t elected.” It turns out my mother had a secret that she never shared with me, that long before my ill-fated speech, she had heard from another parent that the word in the halls of the high school was they weren’t going to vote for me because I was Jewish. It had nothing to do with my speech, or my sincerity. I was just a bit too exotic for that small town.

My immediate reaction was, “Why didn’t you tell me?” “It was too painful” she replied. My mother came to the United States in 1939 at the age of 9, getting out just in the nick of time. She doesn’t talk about the holocaust, she doesn’t talk about death, and she has never dwelled on the difficulties she encountered matriculating in a small town in upstate New York.

For me, growing up as one of three Jewish kids in my high school (and one of the other kids was my sister), I took a don’t ask, don’t tell approach to my religion. Every year I would be asked at Christmas if I had my tree yet, or what I got for Christmas presents. So I learned to just say, not yet to the tree question, and just translate my Hanukah experience to whatever was being asked. I wasn’t lying is how I looked at it. When I sang Christmas carols in choir, I was silent during the JC mentions. All of this was benign in comparison to the bizarre Easter question, “Did Jews drink Christ’s blood?” that I got more than once. Sure, just had some for breakfast, I wanted to reply, but typically I would just blow it off and move on.

The more I didn’t fit in, the more underground I went. I went so far as to attend Young Life meetings, and in college to avoid the topic completely. My grandfather was near tears when he heard from a congregant that they had run into me on my way to a football game on Rosh Hashanah. It was only after moving to Los Angeles for graduate school, that I began to reconnect with my Jewish identity.

One of the things as a parent I am most proud of is that both my children, despite attending a catholic prep school, have never felt the need to sublimate their own identity. They get Hanukah presents from their Christian friends, and matzo is shared at school lunch during Passover. So no, I don’t believe it is a factor, I don’t want to believe it is a factor. It is hard enough to believe that prejudice carried the day in 1970.

I hung up the phone and wondered. Would it have made me feel better, to not question my speech making abilities or to know walking up to that podium I had no chance? That my opponent had to do nothing to win, by having the “right” background the right heritage. I have tried my whole life to not be defined in the work place by my gender or my religion, but I know deep down, it is still sometimes a factor.

We are watching the presidential primaries closely in our house. This could be the year we elect a president not based on race or gender, although clearly charisma still matters. And for those of you who voted for my opponent in 1970, well shame on you!

I gave at the grocery store

I started this blog to have a place to vent on stuff, but then decided that I had better things to write about. But today I have decided to vent. I am tired of being hit up for donations every time I go to the grocery store, and now that Christmas is approaching we have the usual bell ringers at the front door, but that used to be a short term deal. It seems like 365 days a year the store is asking for something for someone at the register, "Would you like to add $5 to your bill today for -----add your own disease or need of the moment..while outside there is a table collecting money for homeless people or a barbecue for needy kids. So I guess I sound pretty scrooge like but this isn't about money for me. I write my checks and donate my time to causes and groups that I care about. I even went door to door for the American Cancer Society one year. But I'd like to just go to the grocery store, buy my stuff and leave without feeling like I have to duck out to avoid the conversation about a charity I never heard of. This seems like a short step up from panhandling. Matter of fact eliminate the middle man and just throw dollar bills at the people standing at the freeway entrance, who cares if they spend it on the largest bottle of fermented potato water you can buy at Ralph's. Of course there are panhandlers outside some of our stores as well, but according to a sign just posted they aren't welcome. So what about the other charities....and why this huge influx? It used to be that besides girl scout cookies and the christmas bell ringers, you could pretty much shop in peace. What's in it for Ralph's? Altruisim? Who gets the tax credit for the money they collect? And do they keep a management fee. I hope not, but this all seems like United Way DejaVu back in my corporate days where there was a big strong arm to give or you might not get promoted. And then it turns out United Way is running this big organization and keeping quite a bit of the proceeds for themselves. So maybe I just don't like getting hit up by big businesses to donate to non-profits that are basically big corporations themselves. I'm sending my check to Dafur. Hope some of the money gets there.

Have Chopsticks Will Travel

We turned the corner at San Gabriel Boulevard and Valley, and were astounded to see 2 miles of high rise shopping plazas, each one a kind of multi-story strip mall, most in the common Californish architectural style of cheezy Spanish Revival. And each plaza, a palate of competing neon, all of it in Chinese. Dorothy, you are not in Los Angeles anymore. Unlike it's predecessors, the original downtown Chinatown, a ghost town at night, with its great kitchy pagaoda style buildings, or Monterey Park to the east off the 10, where low slung strip malls intermix with the occasional big white building holding a seafood palace, San Gabriel the next stop on the Chinese immigrant chain heading east, seems most like another city, Shanghai perhaps or Beijing, a blur of bright colors and signs, and throngs of people walking the streets on a Sunday night. At first glance all those signs look like restaurants but on closer examination, there are dentist offices, and tea shops, and lawyers, furniture, jewelry, clothing stores, and at the far end a multi-story Hilton Hotel. You could get off a plane, check in and never have to use a word of English. We are definitely talking english as a second language territory. And in the newest version of questionable labor practices, foot massage parlors abound where for the inexplicable price of $15 someone will massage your feet and back for an hour. And the places were packed at 9 pm on Sunday.

We were here to meet friends for Chinese food, but after a short walk around, the question becomes what kind of Chinese food...Shanghai, Hunan, Hong-Kong Style, and if that is not enough Japanese options like Tepanaki, Ramen noodle houses and Shabu. And everybody seems to be doing brisk business. There were at least 200 places to eat in that 2 mile stretch. I was thinking about checking into the Hilton myself and just eating my way up and down the street.

The difference between eating Chinese here and Pasadena (perhaps the last Caucasian bastion in the San Gabriel Valley) is that in Pasadena the choice is between expensive and cheap Chinese, but region is not even an option. As someone who has always shuddered a bit when someone orders their fried rice and orange chicken, it was kind of amazing that not even 6 miles from my house there was food so authentic I have never even heard of it or seen it.

At Green Valley, a Shanghai style place which our favorite critic Jonathon Gold gave a thumbs up to, we were confronted with an completely new menu and a waiter who didn't speak enough English to translate. My favorite, stewed chicken and chesnuts, couldn't be further from almond chicken, simmered in a hot pot in a terrific brown sauce. The downside, no won ton soup which I promised my daughter I'd bring home. No problem, made a quick stop at "Tasty" on the first floor,which specializes in fruit custard desserts but also has a noodle soup menu, and we were headed back home with our soup. And the best part, while we were waiting we watched some Chinese rock star who along with his back up dancers got his styling tips from early Pat Benatar meets Liberace with metal studded ripped t-shirts the main look. This guy could be huge in China, or perhaps he is just their Clay Aiken. We'll never know.

On the way out we had to take a quick drive through a huge shopping plaza, with a Ranch 99 and a New Capital Restaurant, an old favorite from Arcadia that vanished, and now we know why and where. There is a lot more competition down here but the number of people eating, shopping and strolling, more than offsets that. Being here made me think about how we have this singular view of China, when it is a huge country with disparate regions both in terms of language and culture. If you come down to San Gabriel, you won't find a Panda Inn so you better do some research and know what kind of food you want. We'll be back. Hong Kong is calling.