Go Prudie!

I fully expected a PC response about how her boyfriend should open up to the wonders of a secular Christmas--the general line fed to us by the media. I was pleasantly surprised by her response. She gets it. Christmas is a Christian religious holiday. And if you want Jewish kids, you raise them in a Jewish house--celebrating Jewish religious holidays.

There is also the issue of disrespect to Christians. Having had a few devout Christian friends over the years, and having spent a year living with a very devout Christian, I cannot help but think that if I were Christian I would find this practice of non-Christians appropriating Christmas as a non-religious holiday a bit offensive. Think about it. Christmas is the the day in which believers celebrate the birth of Christ and the birth of their faith, a new era and so on. This is one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, no? How can it possibly be respectful to effectively say "Yeah, well, I think your religion and your version of G-d is so much bullshit, but hey, I'll take the tree. And the gifts."

Something just seems....off....

Ray, If I Had A Vote, I Would Give It To You

I stumbled across Ray Hanania's campaign for a Two State Solution and the Presidency of the Palestinian State while on Facebook (where else?). Intrigued, I followed link after link until I finally arrived at the Source--the Yalla Peace Website. Where I found outlined, in orderly bullet-point form, Hanania's Platform. How to divide up the land. What to do with the Palestinian refugees and the refugee camps. What to do with the settlers and the settlements. The payment of reparations to Palestinian and Jewish refugees. Apologies...by both sides. Cooperation...by both sides.

Peace.

Do I agree with everything in the Platform? No. Do I believe the Platform to be feasible? For all that the remaining bit of optimist in me says "well, why not?", my more dominant cynical and pessimistic self says "f**k no--the ______ will never allow it". (The blank can be filled in with any number of Israeli and Palestinian groups I believe to be obstacles to peace).

Do I believe the Platform to to be a most sane and most reasonable starting point than anything I have read in years? A proposal that actually takes the needs of both sides and the current reality (we are here, they are here, no one is going to disappear any time soon) into account? Yes. Without a doubt.

Mr. Hanania, I suspect that an endorsement from me, a Jewish and proudly Zionist Israeli, will do you more harm than good. (Not so much harm, as neither I nor my blog are particularly important. But, whatever.) Nonetheless, kol ha kavod, more power to you. I hope you win, because if you do, we all do.

Travails of a Non-Traveller

One of my items on my to-do list for my vacation (because I do not do anything, even go on vacation without a to-do list and goals and all that) is to finish writing up and mapping my ten-year plan. I have been working on the Plan for close to a year now and really, this is getting ridiculous. “Gila” I told myself “at this rate you are going to spend the next ten years just planning the Plan. Dai kvar. Enough already. You are going to finish mapping over vacation and as soon as you are home, you are going straight into implementation mode.”

So, it is now day three of my vacation and while I have actually written anything down, I have been working mentally, you know, thinking about it. And I think I am going to have to change a part of the plan. The part that deals with travel.

You see, my 10-year plan includes a fair amount of travel. This is because I have always thought it would be great to be one of those cool, interesting people who just pick up and jet off to Barcelona for the weekend. Who can toss their passport, a laptop and a change of underwear in a bag and be ready for a month-long trek to Thailand. “You too can be one of those adventurous people,” I told myself. “Just put it in your ten-year plan. Make it happen!”

Sadly, I now see that this is not going to happen. I am just not a traveler. In fact, it is entirely possible that I am the worst traveler ever.

You see, I am one of those nervous, high-strung travelers. The type whose mental circuits are completely overwhelmed by the mere prospect of dealing with an airport. I fret. Days, WEEKS ahead of any trip are spent worrying that: I will not get to the airport on time; that I will forget my passport; that I will forget my e-ticket; that the airport people will not let me on the plane; that the airport people will not let my luggage on the plane; that I will miss the damn plane. My preparations for this trip included emails and phone calls to the US embassy, the German embassy and Lufthansa all to ensure that my luggage and I would be allowed to board the plane.

It should be noted that all of this is before I even get on the plane, at which point I could theoretically start worrying that the plane will crash. However, oddly or ironically enough, that does not worry me at all. Not that I think it cannot happen. Of course it can. Rather, if the plane goes down, I am most likely going to die and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. So why worry?

But…back to why I am not relaxed about. I am a bad packer. Even though I know I should, I do not travel light. How not light? It goes without saying that I travel much heavier than my sister, a seasoned world traveler. But, if my father is to be believed, I travel heavier than he and my stepmother combined. Should he be believed? Probably not. No matter—either way is that the truth is that I do not travel light. But, you know…I need this and I need that and I can hardly do without that…and I pack and repack at least five times and by the time I am done, I have managed to cram approximately a zillion pounds of stuff I need into my suitcase. Which I then have to somehow maneuver to and through the damn airport and convince the airport people to please please please allow me to put it on the plane.

But what about the non-travel part of travelling? The being places part of travelling? I do like being places, but I also hate being away from home. I get homesick easily. I miss my morning regime: 5% gvina levana (a white cheese with the consistency of sour cream) over chopped vegetables with a teaspoon of olive oil and dashes of hot paprika and zahatar. For the last three days, I have been eating fruit yogurt instead. It is tasty—do not get me wrong. My dad, he is good at the yogurt selection. Still…it is not the same. I miss my bed. I miss my apartment. I spend much time worrying about what is happening at the office. I miss my friends. I miss my life.

Sigh….

Okay….out you go then. One less section to map, at least.

Jennifer and the Wicked Bitch

Once upon a time, long ago, in a land far away…. I was an extremely odd, socially backwards little girl, and then a pre-teen and then a teenager. I was called Jennifer, in those days. In that same distant place and time also lived another little girl who also became a pre-teen and then a teenager. Let us call her the Wicked Bitch, shall we? We will call her that because she went out of her way to make my life miserable. School, summer camp…you name it, the Wicked Bitch was there with taunts and cruel nicknames.

Yesterday, the Wicked Bitch sent me a friend request on Facebook.

To say that this came as a shock is an understatement.

I knew she was on Facebook. My 20 year high-school reunion was this year, and the organizers set up a Facebook page. I saw her picture (and those of her associate Wicked Bitches) and thought to myself "Oh my, it is the Wicked Bitch! Man, but I do hope she is having a terrible life!"

Mature reaction? No. Understandable? Yes.

I considered contacting her. Not to be her friend, of course. I wanted to tell her off. To tell her that she is evil. To remind her how mean she was to me. To make her acknowledge the pain she caused me. To make damn sure that if the day ever comes that one of her children runs home crying because someone was mean to him or her…that she will remember that back in the day, she was the one causing pain. I thought about giving back some of the pain she caused me. Let it eat at her a bit.

In the end, I refrained. There were several reasons for this. First and foremost—it would have been stupid and immature. I did have a disorder and I was weird and I did have major social issues. Had the roles been reversed, would I have been nicer? Perhaps…but probably not by much. Children are children and teens are teens. What, if I had been normal I would have been the Mother Theresa type? I doubt it. "Gila" I told myself "be honest here. Okay, maybe you would not have tormented you, but you would not have been friends with you either".

But no less important is that for all that her name is the same, and her face is the same, the Wicked Bitch I knew and loathed simply does not exist anymore. The Wicked Bitch was a child and then a pre-teen and then a teenager. An entirely different person, an adult who has spent the last 20 years growing and learning and living and maturing, now occupies the corporeal space that the Wicked Bitch used to occupy. This new person may be just as cruel as the Wicked Bitch was…but she may also be a wonderful person. A good person. A tolerant person. A person I would be happy to have as a friend...if only I could bear the contact.

I have changed. I took, and still do take, great pride in having transformed myself so thoroughly. It would be a devastating experience to find people relating to me as the person I was then. And other people change, too and other people are happy to keep the past in the past. I keep on telling myself this. "Grow up, Gila. That statute of limitations ran out years ago. Whether or not she has used it, she is entitled to her second chance, her fresh start. Even from you. And besides, you do not think it is just a little bit ridiculous to tell off a 39 year-old woman for shit she did when she was 12?"

Sometimes I talk back to myself. Because this is not fair. How could it possibly be right, and just, that she could do wrong and never pay for it? My arguments never go far. Mah la'asot? What are you going to do? In my heart and in my mind I know that life is not fair and justice is not always right. In this case silence is correct. I cannot say anything to the Wicked Bitch because she is no longer there to tell.

My pain is mine. There is no giving it away. Eventually I will learn to forget and I will learn to let it go. And eventually I will forget who and what I was, and everything I went through and everything I missed out on because of who and what I was not. Or, if I do not forget, at least I will let that go. The pain, the regrets, the "what if's" and the "if only's" will all be silenced.

In the meantime, the friend request sits, unanswered, in my inbox. I will continue to ignore it. Eventually, it too will disappear.

Damn, but these folks are brilliant....


Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire

On the Subject of Air Travel....

On Saturday night I was listening to Reshet Bet when the announcer broke in with a special report on a dramatic saga currently gripping the United States: that of the balloon boy. An Israeli living in the US had been drafted to provide the update. As of the time of his report, the balloon had recently landed. The boy was not inside. There were reports of a portion of the balloon disengaging and plummeting to the earth. Millions of Americans had watched the drama live and were praying for a miracle. The announcer solemnly thanked the guest reporter and added her own prayer for a positive resolution. And now, back to the music.

The song they chose to follow up the report? Fly Away Fly Away Fly Away. (Happy-clappy version from the 70's which does not appear to be on Youtube).

Gotta love Israeli radio. I changed the station. One, that was bad taste even for Israeli radio and two, I hate the song.

In other flight related news, I am coming to the States! I have a ticket and everything--November 13-28. Philly, Maryland and Florida...here I come!

A Sad Day for Afgani Women

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091009/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_afghanistan

I simply cannot believe it. I read this article in something of a state of shock.

"The administration is prepared to accept some Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said. That could mean paving the way for Taliban members willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government — the kind of peace talks advocated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to little receptiveness from the Taliban. It might even mean ceding some regions of the country to the Taliban."

In those regions of the country--a country far away, so no one has to care about it, really--what is going to happen to the women living there? Obama wants to work with 'moderates' in the Taliban. Moderates in what way? Where do the women stand?

Well, here. Or here, if you will.

Do I support a US war in Afganistan? Honestly, I do not follow US news enough to know at this point. But the thought of millions of women being tossed to the wolves as part of an exit strategy is both horrifying and heartbreaking. There is right and there is wrong...this cannot possibly be right.

Let's face it--apart from (often very brave) human-rights activists, pretty much no one gave a rats ass about the women under Taliban rule until 9-11. Not the Right and not the Left. The Afgani women suffered alone. But 9-11 did happen, and the word did get out and (I thought) people started to pay attention, and to care.

What sort of policy is this? Stay away from our buildings, and you can do whatever you want to your womenfolk?

Oh G-d, no. What sort of America is this? I will not give credit to Bush where it is not due--he also cared nothing about Afgani women, until 9-11. But all of you who voted for Obama in the hope that he would signal a more just America, a more caring America and a more peaceful America...will you be silent now? Is this peace? Is this caring? Is this justice?

Some things are worth fighting for.