CELLPHONES, DRUGS AND ROCK-HARD ABS Part Three

(NOTE TO READERS: Since posting this entry last night, I had a personal realization and have updated the post as a result. If you saw this post anytime before 11:30 pm on 3/14, you haven't seen the latest version.)

Last week, I was really burning to write about anorexic women at the gym and how upsetting it is to watch them wander listlessly through the workout floor, barely managing to lift weights, traipsing feebly on the treadmills, drowning in overlarge clothes, staggering through workout class, publicly engaged in a war against their bodies.
I wanted to communicate the horror of seeing these women naked in the locker room – stripped of buttocks and breasts, skin invariably turned a waxy yellow, Auschwitz-like victims of their own internal concentration camp transplanted onto the pleasure-oriented landscape of 21st century Manhattan.
I wanted to write about the complex reaction they evoke in me – a mixture of pity, worry and outrage. Like coming upon a homeless child on a street corner or walking through a cancer ward, my soul contracts at the sight of these skeletal gym rats. They are pathetic, these dying women on the workout floor, come to absolve themselves of the sin of imaginary fat.
I have spent entire workouts covertly monitoring them as I sweat my way through 45 minutes of Law and Order-fueled treadmill torture, worried that they might drop dead any second. I have been disturbed by the failure of fitness trainers to remove these women from harm’s way with a gentle intervention…and quick call to 911.

I have pondered the responsibility of fitness clubs towards anorexics and concluded that any facility dedicated to health and exercise needs to install vigilant monitors who might offer intervention in the same way that restaurant managers would be compelled to administer a quick Heimlich maneuver to a patron who has started to choke.

It is not, as the director of the Dodge Fitness Center at Columbia University once told me when I voiced my alarm at the growing number of anorexic students at his facility, an invasion of privacy to intervene. That is utter bulls#*t.

Intervening when you witness a suicide-in-progress is a moral imperative.

And while I fear for my starving sisters, I admit that I also experience anger at them for failing to overcome the habit of denying their bodies’ basic needs, a habit popularized by adolescent girls running from their sexuality, their mothers, the encroachment of adulthood, their emerging selves.

Rather than embrace the often-fattening pleasures of life, adult anorexics are stuck in a romance with the concept of self-abnegation, they practice masochism every minute, feeling purified by their hunger, strengthened by their resolve to forego pleasure.

Spiritual purists, they disavow interest in their corporeal existence. And though they intend to make themselves holy, they inadvertently sin, dishonoring God by tampering with God’s most glorious design – the human body – desecrating it through deprivation.

So, this is what I was burning to write about last week, this and the fact that, lately, as I observe these bony, brittle women at my beloved gym, I am aware that my extra winter poundage has necessitated the addition of cellulite-control leggings beneath my little black running shorts.

However, as this week dawned, the issue began to recede from my radar screen. Feeling duty bound to tackle the matter (having referenced it in the past post) I began writing but the prose didn't flow out of my fingertips. I found the going difficult, the subject eluded me, seemed foreign, barely held my interest.

Still, I soldiered on, determined to make good on my promise, choosing to segue from the scenario of starving women to my own winter weight gain. Here is the rest of what I wrote:

It is also impossible to ignore the fact that my abs are hardly rock-hard due to my winter penchant for eating pretty much whatever I like, including the vanilla Haagen Dazs I am currently inhaling…straight from the half-gallon container, I might add…with little spoonfuls tossed to Alfie the Pomeranian who has magically appeared computer-side, lured, no doubt by the scent of vanilla wafting through the apartment.

Yes, it is weird writing about anorexics while eating ice cream at midnight. Weird and ironic... or weird and appropriate.

Life affirming, even.

Haagen Dazs at midnight is the opposite of anorexia. (Unless you go and throw it up afterwards, but that is really bulimia.)

Indeed, I am feeling elated as this creamy confection melts on my tongue even if my belly is not bikini-ready and my thighs and butt need to be encased in slimming black spandex before I’ll appear in public. I am feeling elated even while acknowledging that I'll need to wear those leggings a little while longer before my inner fitness dominatrix prevails and chains me to an elliptical trainer and carb-free regime.

HOBB is away in India with Big Babe, Middle Babe is studying in Israel and Little Babe is asleep in my bed next to the pile of clothes I’ve neglected to put away since HOBB left the country last week.

Like amassing piles of clothes, eating ice cream at midnight is one of the pleasures and privileges of adulthood.

That, and watching late night television, perhaps an episode of Law and Order, until I wrest myself from the couch to return to the deadline project due at 10 am tomorrow morning. And that is where the original post ended.

But readers, as I read and re-read the post obsessively, I felt agitated. Yes, I had written about my honest reaction to starving women at the gym, revealing myself to be less than, or more than simply compassionate towards them in their plight. However, there was something else going on, something I was afraid to touch. Something that was at the core of my annoyance with anorexic adults, something that explained just why I felt compelled to dive into a half-gallon of Haagen Dazs to make it through the writing.

It had to do with my adult self confronting my starving teenage self, seeing myself in the extreme waif-like women, averting my gaze from the reminder of what it was like to be obsessed with overcoming my appetite, being unable to bear what I might have become.

It had to do with standing inside and outside the mind of the anorexic, feeling the draw of denial as a sham way of gaining some control over my life. It zapped me back to a nightmarish time of being forced to inhabit a role I did not choose, of feeling like a prisoner in my own life.

And though I have moved beyond that time, travelled light years out of that hell, the default mode for the stress and disequilibrium in my life is still the mode of self-denial.

So, what was left unstated in the original post is that I see myself as I was in the desperate dieters at the gym. And because of that close identification, I want to yell at them, shake them out of the hell they are in, move them into adulthood where autonomy generally allows us to create our own reality, rewrite our destiny, even.

In my life, I have slain the false god of self-destruction, refusing to capitulate to his decree.

The midnight Haagen Dazs is therefore my trophy, elixir of sticky delight and sweet dreams, the essence of my healing.

CELLPHONES, DRUGS AND ROCK-HARD ABS Part Two

It has often been stated that youth is wasted on the young.

How true.

But infinitely truer…and hardly ever stated…is the fact that drugs are wasted on the young.

Remember back to your high school and college days? As much fun as it was to get totally wasted then, it is infinitely better to get trashed with the brain and body that you have now.

After all, there is so much more to escape when you are an adult.

Two nights ago, I found myself at an Oscars party on the Upper West Side. Minutes after the arrival of a giant hero sandwich stuffed with (kosher) cold cuts, the host pulled me aside.

“You seem of the generation that would be cool if I asked you something,” he said in subdued -- if ungrammatical -- tones.

“Yeah?” I was suspicious and curious all at once. Every babe in the big city knows to be on guard for pervy questions at parties.

“I have some pot-laced cookies. Would you like one?”

I must issue the following disclaimer: I am against the use of illegal substances. I have told Big Babe and Middle Babe (Little Babe is too innocent to even contemplate doing drugs…or even talking back to his teachers) that I would be most unsympathetic if they were ever busted for possession of drugs.

The only time in recent memory I smoked dope was three years ago in Amsterdam where it is illegal NOT to smoke dope. I did it more for the experience than the buzz. The truth of the matter is that, debauched youth aside, I never really liked pot. It made me feel dumbed down, like my mind was trying to run in a swimming pool.

But being offered a marijuana snack on the Upper West Side was an irresistible offer.

“Sure!” I agreed, looking towards the couch where HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) was cramped uncomfortably, watching the early, irrelevant Oscar nominations and winners. The confection would not be up his alley.

“Have you eaten anything?” my host suddenly asked.

“Uh, yeah…apple slices and peanut butter before I came here,” I offered. He looked relieved.

“I meant, you didn’t have any of the meat sub, right?” he explained, “because the cookies are milchig. They're made with butter.”

I laughed. Where else in the world – outside of the Anglo-populated neighborhoods of South Jerusalem – would anyone be simultaneously concerned about his guests getting high and inadvertantly mixing milk and meat?

My host handed me a baggie filled with biscotti-shaped blondies.

“How much?” I inquired.

“I ate two before the party and I’m totally wasted,” he said, looking totally wasted. “It’ll take about an hour to kick in.”

I didn’t want to stagger home to Little Babe through the snow in a state of utter intoxication. “I’ll have one,” I said.

The blondie tasted surprisingly hearty, made evidently with whole grains, real creamery butter and actual pot. I was envious of the baker: I personally had no idea how to bake such treats, or to bake in general. Finishing the snack, I wove through the crowd, found HOBB and squeezed in next to him on the couch.

“I just ate a pot-laced cookie,” I told him. “In case I start to act weird or anything.”

HOBB looked at me like I was a teenager who had just broken curfew...again.

“Do you want one?” I asked, uselessly.

The party wore on. The Oscars unfolded. Ellen changed her outfit three times. The winners staggered to the stage, grateful, astounded, triumphant. The montages were cool…especially the one of the foreign films. Everytime the camera landed on Jack Nicholson, I suppressed the urge to leap through the television set and smash him on his billiard ball head with a golf club. Our host devised a plan whereby he would lower the TV volume and play Zydeco music during the commercials, which was clever, if a bit annoying.

Around 10 pm, HOBB stood up, stretched and announced his intention to go home. I stated my intention to stay. We arranged for me to call home at 10:30 to say sh’ma (Jewish bedtime prayer) with Little Babe. Guests came and went. I called home at 10:40 to say sh’ma with Little Babe and sent kisses over the phone. HOBB told me that Big Babe was coming to the party. I looked up and there was Big Babe, standing in our host’s bedroom.

This was the second party he had come to in search of his parents. We had left the first one, hours ago, it turned out, but he didn’t know that. He had left several messages on my Blackberry but I hadn't checked it for hours. He looked chilled and annoyed from shlepping through the snow.

Suddenly, the dope took effect.

Here’s the thing about being a parent: you have to maintain a semblance of responsible adulthood at all times. Even if your kid is 22. Even if they have probably done harder drugs than you. Even if you are at a party.

“Hey, your mom’s cool!” one cute girl told Big Babe, as we stood near the food table. She had just come over to talk to us and perhaps pick up Big Babe. I don't know what I said, or if I even said anything at all but she thought I was cool. Maybe it was the red velvet jacket I wore or my long strand of black beads from Paris or my four-inch high Isaac Mizrahi boots or my H&M black dress. Whatever. It was cool to be cool.

The dope made me dopey. I started laughing at things that might not have been remotedly funny. I cannot remember exactly what they were except for one thing, when Big Babe was leaving the party. The host stood by the elevator and it seemed like his 5 o’clock shadow had deepened appreciably over the past hour. I shared my observation and the two of us fell over laughing hysterically.

“Hey, your mom’s a real party animal,” said the host.

Big Babe left with an inscrutable look on his face.

Fast forward to later in the evening, after I arrived home to catch the final awards. HOBB was sitting on the couch, annoyed (it turns out) that I had not left the party with him. Little Babe was snuggled next to him, upset to have awakened and find his mother still not home. He had been wrested out of sleep, he reported, by the theme song to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which played during the Lifetime Achievement Award segment for composer Ennio Morricone.

(Little Babe had recently discovered this theme and had been humming if for the entirety of the previous week – one night, when I asked him to cease and desist, he claimed he was unable to get it out of his head! -- and then, on another night we had both burst out laughing when our cabbie’s cellphone rang with that very melody.)

Imagining Little Babe lying in bed, lured to the living room by that iconic cowboy movie theme, I laughed. It was funny, after all, that Little Babe was being stalked by the theme to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Then I noticed Big Babe, sitting on the other side of his dad and little brother, looking at me with disgust.

As best as I can remember, my behavior at the party earlier that evening was unremarkable. I didn’t dance on the tabletop, say anything off-color, behave in an undignified manner. Nor was I completely wasted, just loosened to the point where everything in the world seemed funny to me.

And I had returned, after all, to the bosom of my family. It was not even midnight. Soon I would be walking through our overheated apartment decked out in a t-shirt and shorts. Because he was still awake, I would shortly tuck Little Babe into bed. The next morning, I would be hauling his little butt out of bed to get him ready for school. And after the bus left, my work day would kick into motion.

It sure was great to escape the deadlines, demanding clients, difficult decisions, family responsibilities and general sense that the world sucks at the Oscars party. It was great to not think about our financial woes, upcoming meetings and programs and the terrifying To-Do list that crowns every day of my work life.

One little pot-laced cookie at an Upper West Side Oscars party. It was a milder high than two glasses of red wine. It was soothing and fun. It was unexpected.

It was great and all, yet a mom is a mom is a mom, even if she is a Bungalow Babe.

And the message I got loud and clear was that there is a motherly code of behavior that precludes the ingestion of certain substances when the kids – even if they are the same age that you were when you got married to their father – are present.

Next Up: Rock-Hard Abs

To hide her winter weight gain, Bungalow Babe opts for cellulite-control leggings at the gym while worrying obsessively about the anorexic women...and whether they will die during their workout.

Moral dilemma of the day: Do gyms have a responsibility towards their obviously anorexic clients...the ones who look like Auschwitz survivors? Should they continue to let them work out or intervene?

Personal ethical dilemma of the day: Why, when faced with these sick -- if not dying -- women, does Bungalow Babe experience more anger than compassion?

Stay tuned for the final installment of Cellphones, Drugs and Rock-Hard Abs

CELLPHONES, DRUGS AND ROCK-HARD ABS

PART ONE: Cellphones


For anyone who has doubted the existence of Divine retribution, I present the following tale:

On a recent Shabbat afternoon, Bungalow Babe found herself in a nail salon. Being shomer shabbos (in a frum Conservative way) getting a mani-pedi would not normally be on the list of kosher activities for a Bungalow Day-of-Rest. However, due to her vigorous treadmill workouts (and penchant for traipsing through the streets of Manhattan in Isaac Mizrahi boots with four-inch heels (http://www.target.com/), there were formidable calluses on the soles of her feet. In addition, her hands looked like hell from several months of nerve-wracking, business-related stress that caused her to gnaw on her cuticles and ignore her nails to the point that they had become lethal weapons.

As there was a bar mitzvah that night…and as Shabbat would be over by the time it came to paying… Bungalow Babe decided to slither inside the salon (glancing hither and yon to make sure none of her Ortho friends were anywhere to be found) and chap some Me Time.

Selecting an appropriately f*%k-me color for her toes and more understated tone for her hands, Bungalow Babe removed her sneakers, rolled her running pants above her knees, climbed into the upholstered pedicure throne, lifted her feet onto the rim of the tub -- bubbling with aromatic hot water -- and awaited the removal of nail polish by the subservient woman who knelt before her.

A shock of icy cold as an acetone-saturated cotton ball assaulted her toenails and then the hum of mindless relaxation as Bungalow Babe picked up the Us Magazine (or was it Star?) left on the pedicure throne beside her. It was the issue with a recently baldified Britney Spears. Ah, joy. Service to one’s feet and celebrity gossip. Stripped of their chipped polish, Bungalow Babe’s feet were firmly tapped, signaling that it was time to dip them into their bath.

Ahhhhhhh. Bliss so extreme that it obliterated Bungalow Babe’s desire to even open the magazine. The hot soapy water surged and swelled around Bungalow Babe’s feet, every foot-cell singing in joy. Her eyes closed, her head rolled backwards. The pedicure lady lifted one foot and then a tinny symphonic rendition of the William Tell Overture filled the salon.

“Yeah! Hiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!! How are you????? No, I’m getting my nails done. On the West Side. A little place, I don’t know the name. Hey’d you get my e-mail from yesterday???? What’s going on????????????????”

Bungalow Babe’s eyes popped open. She turned her head towards the front of the salon where the manicure stations stood. She trained her ears and focused her eyes. There were three people having their nails done: an aristocratic older gent, a middle-aged woman in a winter white corduroy pants suit and a thirty-something woman in a velour running suit – the type favored by suburban moms -- long frizzy hair obscuring her face, cellphone balanced between shoulder and ear.

“Really? That’s great!!! What are they asking per month? One thousand? For a three-bedroom! That’s amazing! You can’t get that in New York!!!”

Her voice rang out through the relaxed quiet of the salon. The elderly gentleman looked at his manicurist and raised an eyebrow. The lady in the white pants suit shuffled the photocopied pages on her lap that she was attempting to read. My pedicurist turned her head towards the front of the store, frowning. The proprietress of the store stepped outside to talk on her own phone.

For the better part of twenty minutes this one-sided phone conversation went on. Inane tidbits of some bimbo’s personal life filled the air of the salon, invading Bungalow Babe’s private space...as well as everyone else's. Even as Ms. Yappy-Pants moved from the manicure station to the nail dryers, the conversation kept going. At about the 21-minute mark, Bungalow Babe blew a fuse.

“Hey, Big Mouth,” she shouted from the pedicure station towards the dryer. “We’re tired of hearing your private conversation. Take it outside.”

The lady in the pants suit immediately smiled at Bungalow Babe and mouthed “thank you.” The storeowner gave an exasperated shrug and glanced desperately towards the inconsiderate client. The gentleman looked like he might skewer the Taliban Talker with his walking stick. The nail technicians simply seemed resigned. Having spoken her peace, Bungalow Babe settled back in her seat, opened up Us or Star Magazine and prepared to find out who’s taking care of Britney’s kids while she publicly self-destructs.

“I don’t know. It’s about an hour’s drive from the Valley. Not during rush hour, that’s longer. You should really consider living inside the city….”

A flash of rage shot through Bungalow Babe. Unbelievable. Was it possible that Motor Mouth didn’t hear her? Was she deranged? Some new breed of insensitive, self-absorbed, entitled monster? Did she have no desire for privacy? And if not, wasn’t she at least worried that someone was going to beat the crap out of her?

“Shhhhh!” At first gentle and then insistent. It was the pants suit lady, now actively upset. “Shhhhhhhh!”

“Well, first I’m going to go to the gym and then I’m meeting friends and then…”

Pants suit lady and Bungalow Babe locked steely gazes. The store manager breathed fire. The senior citizen was bursting out of his suit like the Incredible Hulk. Something was about to go down.

“When did you see him? Yeah? Did he tell you that we spoke last week?” Logorrhea Lady finally stood up and put her coat on without dislodging her phone from its spot between her shoulder and ear. Her hair still hung over her face. It was impossible to see her face but I knew exactly who she was.

She was the Avenging Angel of Shabbat, come to remind Bungalow Babe of the importance of honoring the spirit of the Day of Rest, created to protect us from the ubiquity of commerce and our contemporary modes of communication…the myriad assaults of the modern world that wear us down as we make our way through secular time and space.


Next up: Drugs


It has often been stated that youth is wasted on the young.

How true.

But infinitely truer…and hardly ever stated…is the fact that drugs are wasted on the young.

Remember back to your high school and college days? As much fun as it was to get totally wasted then, it is infinitely better to get trashed with the brain and body that you have now.


Read more in the next posting of Bungalow Babe in the Big City

KEEPING IT BRIEF

Brevity is the soul of wit…or lingerie, depending on whether you are Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker.

Evidently, brevity is also the soul of blogs.

Or so Bungalow Babe recently learned in an e-mail from an exhausted reader. The knackered-out reader wrote:

I read the blog post about the shabbat guest from hell when you first posted. Ok, I read about a third, and then stared wild-eyed as I scrolled through, amazed at how LONG it was. Have you read other blogs? This is a medium where brevity is prized.

Hmmm. Or… hrrrmph! Then again, hmmm.

So, my posts go on a bit, ay?

Let me think about this a bit…okay, I'm finished thinking.

As I knew the writer to be a thoughtful, friendly chap, I did engage him in an e-mail dialogue about the matter. As I also know him to be closer in age to Big Babe, I view him as a member of the Sesame Street generation, trained to tire of information unless it is being presented in byte-size snippets by Big Bird, Count Count or Cookie Monster.

Bungalow Babe doesn’t do byte-sized snippets.

Then again, because my weary reader is part of an important target audience, I will waive my commitment to ponderous, essay-length posts to present the following:


SESAME BUNGALOW
Brought to you by the letters A-Z

A is for Anna Nicole Smith, who is dead, and anti-Semitism, which is alive
B is for Britney Spears, now bald on the bottom AND the top
C is for carbohydrates -- friend, enemy, lover
D is for Death, which I blogged about yesterday
E is for England, the only place more depressing in winter than snowy NYC
F is for Fairway, where I’ve bumped into Ed Koch twice, and Jake Gyllenhaal once
G is for Gawker
H is for Hashem, because Hashem is my homeboy
I is for Israel, where Middle Babe is spending her year
J is for Jerusalem, city of my soul
K is for kleptomania, an urge I suppress every day
L is for Loehmann’s, opening “early 2007” (like, when exactly?) on the Upper West Side
M is for Mendelsohn, Daniel, whose book I intend to start reading tonight
N is for narcolepsy, a disease I used to confuse with necrophilia
O is for Oprah Winfrey, hero and humanitarian
P is for Paris Hilton, whose celebrity signals the end of civilization
Q is for Queens, borough of my yoot (youth for those who never saw My Cousin Vinny)
R is for Reality TV, a trend that makes me suicidal
S is for Sarah Silverman, genius; Sacha Baron Cohen, genius; and Sephora, the ultimate girl playground
T is for tuna, my main food group
U is for underwear, a rare article of clothing in Hollywood these days
V is for VAGINA, because it has its own monologue
W is for the retard in the White House
X is for SEX, because it is more fun than xylophones
Y is for YOU, my reader!!!
Z is for….help me out, here, reader.

Please send in your entries for the Sesame Bungalow alphabet, Letter Z.

Next on Sesame Bungalow:

Bert and Ernie, rumored to be gay lovers, apply for admission to rabbinical school.

The Only Thing to Fear

Little Babe stood in the doorway of our bedroom calling to me in a stage whisper.

“Mom! Mom!!!”

It was the Friday night that capped a week of endless workdays, and now sleep – overdue and entitled -- gripped me like a possessive husband. I was drugged with exhaustion, glued to my dreams but my maternal instinct proved too strong. My eyelids parted like heavy drapes. I turned my face to the door. Seeing me, Little Babe closed the door in back of him and tiptoed to my side of the bed.

“Mom,” he said, leaning in towards me, sitting on the bed. “Mom, I’m scared…but I don’t know why.”

“C’mere,” I mumbled, my mouth refusing to cooperate with my wish to comfort my frightened child. I pulled back my blankets and Little Babe slid gratefully inside, molding himself to my left side. I pulled the blankets over the two of us and felt him trembling.

“Wazzamatta?” I asked, stroking his head. I heard his teeth chattering. Outside the room I could hear the voices of his sleepover buddies – all three of them. Turning to the right, I found the digital display of the alarm clock.

12:35.

It was too late for Little Babe to be awake. It was too soon for me to get pulled from sleep.

“I don’t know,” said Little Babe between chattering teeth. “We started talking about death and what happens after you die and I suddenly got all hot and cold and scared and shaky.”

“Shhhh,” hissed HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) grumpily from beneath twenty layers of blanket. “Shhh yourself!” I snappishly muttered. Jeez. If you’re not gonna be the go-to parent, the least you can do is be an uncomplaining member of the support staff. After all, no one is interrupting your sleep with talk of death fears.

“I don’t know why I’m so scared,” Little Babe repeated. “But I just started feeling really strange….”

“Anxiety attack,” I interrupted my small son, speaking so incoherently that the word banana came out of my mouth instead.

“What??” he asked, his body still humming, but a bit less so. HOBB grumbled in his sleep. Alfie the Pomeranian trotted out of the closet and arrived bedside, peering up inquisitively into our midnight tete-a-tete.

“Hey, look,” I told Little Babe, now fully awake. “Alfie knows you’re upset. He’s here to comfort you!”

Instinctively, we looked towards HOBB whose back was turned to us. HOBB had outlawed Alfie’s ability to be on our bed. Naturally, I defied this edict at every turn. When HOBB was not home, Little Babe and I were in the habit of jumping on the bed and inviting Alfie to join us in a big snuggle, which always ended with him licking the insides of our ears and thoroughly grossing us out.

It was too tricky to include Alfie into our family snuggle right now, so I just patted his little blond head, then turned my attention back to Little Babe, who had lowered his hand for Alfie to lick.

“An anxiety attack is when you get scared about something and your body reacts in a fight or flight way.” I could hear Little Babe listening. “Nature gave us a superpower, which is adrenaline, in case we need to run away from bears or lions or whatever. But sometimes, even when the bear or lion isn’t there but the fear is – and we aren’t using the adrenaline running away – we get an anxiety attack.”

I was impressed at my ability to give a biology lesson in the middle of the night. So, evidently, was Little Babe. At least, the trembling in his limbs stopped.

“They were talking about what happens to your body after you die and being buried and where your soul goes,” he said. “It just began to freak me out.”

Thantaphobia.

Little Babe and I looked it up a month ago when we were surfing the web in search of strange fears. Among the laughable (to our minds, at least) phobias were aeronausiphobia – fear of vomiting secondary to airsickness; aulophobia- fear of flutes; coprastasophobia- fear of constipation; Dutchphobia- Fear of the Dutch; hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia- fear of the number 666; lutraphobia- fear of otters; octophobia - fear of the figure 8; pentheraphobia- fear of mother-in-law; Walloonphobia- fear of the Walloons; and that classically inexplicable phobia -- zemmiphobia- fear of the great mole rat.

But other phobias seemed reasonable. Such as trypanophobia- fear of injections or spheksophobia- fear of wasps. Or thantaphobia -- fear of death. Thantaphobia hardly seemed like it deserved to be lumped in with phobias.

Who was not afraid of death? Wasn't the absence of a fear of death more of a pathology?

It strikes some of us sooner and deeper. One of my earliest memories is that of crying bitterly at the concept of my own non-being and my mother attempting to comfort me by painting a picture of a parallel universe: a heaven that included our house with all the furniture and toys intact and every member of the family in a neighborhood that looked exactly the same.

I remember nodding and sniffling, wishing to be reassured, failing, feeling like I was falling into an abyss.

What could be more human, more central to the human condition than the fear of death?

Wilbur’s hysterical cry, “But I don’t want to die!” in Charlotte’s Web goes straight to the heart of the matter. Whenever I contemplate the prospect of imminent death, I am certain that I would never be among the noble ones who greet the end with stoic dignity.

Instead, I envision myself like Wilbur the Pig, crying, “But I don’t want to die!!” snot and tears running down my face, making noise, screaming even, grasping onto a banister, an ankle, a tree, refusing to let go.

Big Babe was hit with severe fears of dying when he was four years old. About half an hour after I put him to bed, he used to call for me from his room, first faintly, then more vociferously. When I arrived in his room, I would invariably find my child pale and wide-eyed with fear. “I started thinking about it again,” he would inform me and we would talk about it until he fell asleep. A few years later, he became obsessed with the words “Game Over” on video screens and formulated his concept of death around this.

We sent Middle Babe to a therapist when she was ten after her teacher reported that she seemed obsessed with death. What occasioned her obsession was the fact that her beloved Grandpa Marvin had just died. Middle Babe reluctantly went to the therapist – whose wandering eye and West End Avenue hippie décor distracted her – for exactly two visits before she informed us that she wasn’t obsessed, merely sad.

Fear of our mortality seems so natural to our humanity that the consciously-dying among us need to be given special kudos. My late mother-in-law Judy summoned us to a bedside “living will” chat when she was at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, letting us know her dying wishes. The beautiful, gifted and expressive Shira Ruskay invited friends and family to healing services led by the singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman and I marveled as Shira wept openly, knowing this was her leave-taking. Rifka Rosenwein wrote about her terminal cancer and what it meant to know that her death would leave three young children motherless.

I am breathless with awe in the face of this bravery.

“Mom,” said Little Babe, yawning as he stretched out beside me. “Can I stay here a little bit?”

I scuttled over, closer to HOBB who slumbered deeply, a log fallen in the forest of sleep. “Yes,” I said, fully awake now, my mind racing to recreate the scene that unfolded in my living room, the conversation between four pre-adolescent boys on a Friday night on death and dying.

Among the four boys was a child of a prominent family whose uncle was killed in a freakish accident a few years earlier and who just lost an aunt over the summer. Over Shabbat dinner earlier in the night, the child had made an off-hand allusion to “people dying” in his family.

HOBB and I exchanged glances; we were friendly with his grandparents, the parents of the young man who had been killed, the in-laws of the young mother who lost her battle with cancer.

Did this child, whose family the Angel of Death had recently stalked, initiate the midnight conversation? Or did the subject arise as it inevitably did after the telling of ghost stories late at night during a sleepover?

The world of Little Babe and his friends is indeed more death-saturated than even that of his older siblings. My own childhood and early-adolescence seem like a Disney dream by comparison, sheltered and sequestered from such monstrous realities as suicide bombings, terrorist seiges of schools, videotaped decapitations, pictures from executions by hanging, war casualties, AIDS, the memory of 9/11.

Outside of the warmth of my bed, the wind from the Hudson whipped the west-facing windows that overlook the Columbia campus. Alfie the Pomeranian had settled down bedside, vigilant and protective, curled up atop my discarded sweatshirt, breathing in the scent of his beloved humans.

Beyond my bedroom, Little Babe’s friends spoke into the night, their voices growing fainter as the minutes ticked past. Snuggled next to me, now breathing evenly, was their 11-year-old host, deeply asleep.

There are boys who fear ridicule, there are boys whose worst nightmare is to appear soft or babyish or uncool or tethered to their mothers. Little Babe is not cut from that cloth. His biggest fear – at the moment – is fear of death. And the comfort for this fear is not to be found within the depiction of a parallel universe, a celestial apartment overlooking the campus of Columbia university inhabited by the ghost version of our family, but in the heaven of the present moment, the tangible reality, his trust, my love, the warmth beneath the blankets.

Endless Life/Endless Lies

Earlier this week, one year after the prolonged torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, at the hands of the self-named Barbarians -- a band of mostly Muslim thugs living in the slummy outskirts of Paris -- the Halimi family had his remains disinterred from a French cemetery, flown from France to Israel and buried at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem.

It is not clear to me if this cemetery is the same as Har Hamenuchot, where my paternal grandparents and my father-in-law are buried.

Whether it is or isn't, imagining Har Hamenuchot as Ilan Halimi's final resting place brings me some solace for it is the most noble and awe-inspiring cemetery I can imagine.

After reading the moving account on JTA’s website (see the story at www.jta.org) I sat in silence for several minutes, thinking of Ruth Halimi, Ilan’s mother. I thought about her missing her handsome young son every single day, torturing herself with thoughts of how he died, “like a dog,” as Kafka would have put it, wandering naked, bruised, burned and mutilated through the Parisian outskirts, bleeding to death.

I thought about the 23-year-old Ilan Halimi slipping from life, wondering why he had been singled out for such a fate. I thought about the shoddy investigation conducted by the Parisian police who refused to treat this case as racially motivated. I thought about the mostly-Jewish crowd of 1,000 who turned out in the streets of Paris to demand justice for his murder. I thought about the myriad citizens of Paris -- passive, silent -- with Ilan’s blood on their hands.

Ilan Halimi was tormented for 24 days before he was released to die like a wounded animal in the open. Each day must have felt like a year or a lifetime, indeed, the days parallel his life exactly…24 days for 23 years, plus one for good luck, as they say in America.

But there was no good luck for Ilan Halimi. Only the hope that his posthumous homecoming would bring him, his mother and all their loved ones some peace.

May his soul be bound up in endless life.

It would have been nice to end on this poetic note and yet, the perpetuation of endless lies compels me onward.

If it weren't so serious, the surreal story about to unfold could almost be categorized under You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

I read earlier today that Israeli-Italian author Ariel Toaff, a professor at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, is “astounded” by the horrified worldwide reaction to his book on blood libels, Pasque di Sangue (Bloody Passover).

The book, published recently by a private Italian press, reportedly raises the possibility that there is a factual basis to the timeless anti-Semitic canard -- the rumor of Jews using the blood of Gentile children to bake matzot.

Blood libels run through history like a recurring nightmare, spanning centuries and countries, inspiring the deaths of millions of Jews. The recent PBS special on the resurgence of anti-Semitism had a clip from last year’s hit Egyptian mini-series that treated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact. Sitting on my living room couch, I watched in disgust and disbelief as a troupe of Egyptian actors played out a scene where a young boy’s throat is slashed by stereotypically hook-nosed Jews. The very next scene features the villainous Jews eating matzah made with that special secret ingredient -- Christian kiddie blood.

This image was broadcast around the world and seen by millions of unquestioning viewers. The series' young female producer defended the show on camera, denying that it was anti-Semitic in any way. She seemed to be affronted that anyone would view it as such.

But screw her and her Jew-hating countrymen. I’m more interested in the pathology of Toaff.

As of today, though Toaff claims to be utterly baffled by the outcry against his book, he has halted its distribution, issued an immediate apology for passages that might be misrepresented, misconstrued and used against Jewish people and offered to donate the proceeds of sales of his newly-edited book to the Anti-Defamation League.

Quite a stunning turn-around.

But here is the most stunning aspect of the story: Who is Ariel Toaff? None other than the son of Elio Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome.

Omidog.

That is no typo.

It is an expression of the world turned upside down.

I have just read a Daily Telegraph article on the affair (www.telegraph.co.uk) and pass it onto you. In this particular article, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome substantiates the blood libels, saying, in the same breath, that no one should take it out on contemporary Jews because those who actually crucified Christian children were fundamentalists and small in number.

A comparison is even made between these alleged blood-guzzling Jews and Muslim terrorists, that is, the college professor says that one shouldn't conclude that all Muslims are terrorists -- and persecute them -- because a small number of fundamentalists indeed are terrorists.

Omidog.

(Let me suspend my disbelief for a second and get all compassionate. Could this guy have some kind of organic mental disorder, like a brain tumor???? Is there a doctor in the bungalow? Could someone weigh in on this one??)

Even the cursory research I have conducted indicates that Ariel Toaff seems to speak out of both sides of his mouth, stating that the so-called ritual murderers both did and didn’t occur. In this vein, I must link to the following: http://krumasabagel.blogspot.com/2007/02/bloody-confusion.html, which has a good overview of this matter.

And hopping back to the Telegraph article, it states that Elio Toaff has been among those to speak out against his son publicly and vociferously.

In the hierarchy of parental pain, just a few notches beneath the rung occupied by the parents of Ilan Halimi, there is surely a place for parents whose children are murderers – or accessories to the murderers – of their own people.

Elio Toaff now occupies this place.

And the blood of Ilan Halimi, not fictitious Gentile children, has been used to bake the bread of our ongoing affliction.

I Almost Stabbed Someone at My Shabbos Table

She was 22, the same age as Big Babe, my oldest son, a senior at Columbia University. Thank G-d he wasn’t at the Shabbos table, ‘coz I swear, he woulda killed her first.

Anyway, it was a recent, freezing Shabbos afternoon on Manhattan’s Morningside Heights and our wonderfully overheated apartment was a refuge of delish smells and cozy camaraderie. Having spent the morning at our synagogue, the six-block long walk formed a perfect segue from shulworld to the sanctum of our home. We had two beloved families joining us – one with two adorable tykes, the other with an almost supernaturally beautiful baby – and then this newly-wed couple…he in his mid-twenties, she, just 22, barely out of her adolescence.

Except that she was already Lady Macbeth – calculating, conniving, nakedly ambitious.

She knew what she wanted, this little pisher* with her glam Shabbos sheitel*. And what she wanted was for her soft-spoken, pious, scholarly husband to go to Law School, make lots of money and enable her to stay home, raise kids AND have enuf disposable income to hire a housekeeper so she could go to the gym, get her nails done, go to movies, come into “the city” with friends, shop without dragging the kiddies along and generally be a pampered princess (and devoted mommy) for the rest of her life.

But it wouldn’t be like she didn’t really have a career because his career would really be her career, you see. She was pushing him to go to Law School! She helped him with a recent speech! Everything he achieved in life would be because of her! Men, especially when they were smart, were surprisingly inept in areas that women were really good at!

As her ill-informed words fell like hailstones on our Shabbos meal, I wondered if this girl had been raised by the Jewish version of Kathy Hilton. Looking across the table, I saw my other friend, an assistant principal of a high school, the one with the new baby – I’ll call her Esme – looking nauseated.

Though there was a war waging in Iraq, the recent shocking death of Anna Nicole Smith, a black guy and a woman running for US prez and the impending opening of Loehmann’s on Broadway and 74th street, my gold-digging guest went on and on, oblivious to world events other than her own.

Over salad, turkey and cholent, she laid out her life plan for us, couching it all within a campaign against working mothers, plying our full-time mother-friend – I’ll call her Jen – with saccharine praise and enthusiastic approving nods, poking her husband in his bony ribs with a triumphant “you see??” every time Jen said something remotely positive about being with her children, exclaiming “a working mother could never have made a dessert like that!” when Jen revealed her glorious chocolate cake, completely ignoring the hilariously obvious fact that most of the pre-dessert meal had been shopped for, paid for and cooked by a full-time working mother (the cholent and turkey having been shopped for, paid for and cooked by a full-time working father).

Get out, I silently implored her young husband as he sat there, conditioned into a comatose state by his relentlessly-yappy Jappy wife. Get out while you still can. I was driven to bite my cuticles listening to her grating voice hammer home each point aimed at proving the unworthiness of women who actually toil to earn money while at the same time raising their children. I glanced at Esme, evil working mom, as she held the beautiful child whose life she was obviously screwing up by supporting her in addition to breastfeeding her.

When the sweet young husband had the temerity to point out that his own mother raised him well, despite being a physician, his know-it-all bride actually qualified her mother-in-law’s achievements by proclaiming her a workaholic.

It was at that moment that I had the urge to drive the challah knife into her chest. With violin music screeching in my ears (ree, ree, ree, ree…think of the shower scene in Psycho), I picked up the knife and…

The fact that I am blogging from the comfort of my overheated apartment instead of Rikers Island is proof that I restrained myself, excusing myself from the table to bring dirty silverware and plates into the kitchen. Jen followed quickly.

“What an idiot!” she whispered, eyes wide, mouth contorted in horror. I stared at Jen who has never said anything mean about anybody in her entire life and then the two of us collapsed in giggles next to the refrigerator.

Omigod, I thought, steeling myself to return to the table. If Big Babe ever showed up with a monster like this…

But Big Babe was raised in a prince and princess-free environment, together with Middle Babe, his 18-year-old kickass sistah, now spending her post-high school year studying and raising hell in the Holy Land, and their baby bro Little Babe, an adorable 11-year-old anime enthusiast and cellist whose truest passions are for small animals.

Our home, for all its clutter and loud voices and – until last year – lack of normal furniture, dishes, tablecloths and cutlery, was built on the combined efforts of parents who both earn and nurture. It has been messy and imperfect and yet marvelous in many a way. Our kids were raised by a father AND a mother who had equal responsibility for keeping the family ship afloat, equal parenting authority and equal decision-making power.

Our kids were read to and shlepped to our business meetings. Our kids were hugged by us and by our babysitters, who were mostly terrific. Our kids overheard our business calls when we were compelled to work at home because they were sick. Our kids were raised on daddy's chicken soup and mommy's roast chicken, daddy's paycheck and mommy's paycheck.

Sometimes it was – often still is -- hard as hell. We work well past the end of conventional work hours. But everyone does. We take our laptops on vacation. But everyone does. Our kids get sick at the absolute worst times. But that is always when kids get sick. Important meetings have to be cancelled. We’ve walked into conferences utterly unprepared. Projects are done on deadline or late.

Unless you have made peace with the prospect of complete child-neglect, all efforts to balance home and work are both noble and ridiculous. There is no balance. You just have to get used to having a lumpy life with days where it feels as if you are f*&#ing up your job and your kids and your marriage and your sanity, days where simply brushing your teeth is an achievement.

And sometimes you feel literally and physically lumpy. You haven’t been to the gym or even on your home treadmill in a week…or a month. You can feel your cellulite recruiting new terrorist cells. You are developing a secretary’s spread where your firm round buttocks used to be. You are eating Doritos because you are so stressed out. At 11 o'clock at night. And you’re allergic to corn products.

And there are times that you wish you married someone rich because this truly sucks, to be working all the time…to be feeling like crap, to have to endure the glares of your co-workers who think you’re a slacker because your son’s heart has been broken and you needed to spend two hours listening to him vent on the phone, or your daughter got in trouble for sneaking her boyfriend's puppy into her Jerusalem dorm room, to have cancelled your haircut appointment more than six times in the past two weeks because you simply do not have any free time, to have not read more than three opening chapters in as many novels over the past year because you fall asleep every time you turn your attention to something other than kids or your work.

And there are times when your heart feels like it will break from the sorrow of not having the time to really do the things you consider crucial to living: time spent with friends, time spent in nature, time spent pursuing higher education, time spent fulfilling your calling as a writer if you chiefly earn your income through another means.

But that is not unique to people with children and demanding jobs. The world is filled with the heartbreak of the unfulfilled.

It just feels more pressing and poignant for those of us who have been raised with the chutzpah to envision everything we might have, everything we might be.

There is a lot to this issue of men and women, marriage and money, fulfillment and responsibility, childrearing and career-building. Yeah, the presence of a high wage-earning husband would have likely made my life much easier in many ways. I’m sure that HOBB would likewise say that a rich wife would have made HIS life easier in many ways as well.

But we married each other without a checklist.

We married each other. Complete and imperfect.

We may have argued and bemoaned our insolvency and our 24/6 work schedules and 24/7 parenting responsibilities but we never set out to mold the other into a Stepford Spouse, according to our own specifications. We made a home and a family that has felt full unto bursting with ideas and adventures and passionate discussion and friends.

And I will happily admit to a tremendous feeling of pride in my ability to provide financial support to HOBB and the Three Babes, knowing that the sweat of my brow has helped to sustain my family and create opportunities for them. And because of my work, my world has been broad and challenging, taking me beyond my own family, whisking me off to faraway places, putting me directly in touch with important issues and people who have changed the world.

Between the bleary-eyed exhaustion, there has also been a tremendous amount of soul-satisfaction.

Thinking about the transparent ambitions of Little Miss I-Want-It-All-And-Dammit-You-Better-Give-it-To-Me I want to applaud her clarity of vision, the peace she has made with her inner spoiled brat. Honestly. She knows what she wants, and it ain’t deadlines and conference calls at 8 am. She wants the decorated home and the kids and cute European fashions for them…and for herself. She wants her hair done. She wants her sheitel restyled. She wants a housekeeper. And then she can cook when she wants and keep house and boss everyone around.

The girl does know what she wants.

Still, it was a shock for this product of 1960 to hear that among people my children’s age, the Mommy Wars are more compelling than the threat of global nuclear war. It was unbelievable that a shallow girl from Queens, born in the eighties, could so easily diss hardworking women of her mother’s generation, seeing neither valor nor value in their contribution to the world she lives in.

But maybe that’s what it was about, after all. Rebelling against mommy.

And what was her mommy up to, anyway, when Lil Lady Macbeth was small and impressionable?

“My mother wasn’t really into being a mom,” she revealed at one point in the meal, tossing her fake hair and shrugging. “She would leave us with my grandparents and run around, doing stuff. She didn’t work but she didn’t enjoy being with small kids. Recently, she said that she regretted not being around for more of my childhood.”

The sins of the mothers are visited upon the daughters for seven generations.

Seems like someone should look into spending some quality time on the couch getting in touch with their inner abandonment and rage instead of trying to force their husband to capitulate to an extreme make-over while compulsively trashing working mothers whose ability to operate in two realms only shines a brighter light on her slacker mom’s inability to even be present in one.

COMING NEXT:

Hey, Bungalow Babe is back! So much to say, tons to catch up on. Yeah, yeah…I know I haven’t blogged since the summer. Life has been crazed yet interesting and some big changes are just around the corner. I’ll fill you in. Read on. Hugs.

__

*Do I really need to explain pisher??? A callow youth, based on the concept of a baby, known for wetting its pants.

*Yiddish for a wig worn by religious Jewish women, ostensibly for reasons of modestly. More often than not, the faux hair is way more attractive than their G-d-given locks. Explain the concept of modesty here, please. If ya wanna be modest, put a shmatta* on your head.

*Yiddish for rag

I'm Back

Old School

Little Babe was having trouble remembering his math facts
(i.e. -- his multiplication tables), so a meeting was suggested at his excellent, loving and innovative private school in the Bronx to address this matter. And while we were on the subject, the fifth grade teachers also thought that his reading skills could stand some improvement, and perhaps his level of concentration, so how was Monday morning at 10?

On said Monday morning, HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) and I drove up in our red Dodge Caravan to the sprawling, open and utterly enchanting school that had successfully educated Big Babe (now a junior at Columbia U) and Middle Babe (graduating a superb private school in NYC). We knew the school as dedicated to its nearly 1,000 students and committed to working with each child on their level and according to their learning style. While Middle Babe had been an ideal student, the learning style of Big Babe had been decidedly quirky. Little Babe, we knew, was probably something a bit beyond quirky, and HOBB and I had been deeply touched by the school's continuing dedication to supporting him and us.

This was not the first time that we were meeting to discuss Little Babe outside of the chaotic institution known as Parent-Teacher conferences. Due to his penchant for finding the machinations of his mind more interesting than the classroom discussion, Little Babe -- though beloved by his teachers and acknowledged to be bright and creative -- often gave the impression that he was residing on Pluto rather than inside his little bespectacled self and while there, was building a museum to house facts relating to Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Xiaolin Showdown cards, Alfie the Pomeranian, dogs in general, cats, hedgehogs, hamsters, prairie dogs, goldfish, chipmunks, play dates, friends, sleepovers, birthday parties, the summer, the solar system (including his Alma Mater, Pluto), junk food, cellos, knock-knock jokes, Scooby-Doo, Hitchcock films, Marx Brothers films, Harry Potter, the Series of Unfortunate Events books -- including information on Daniel Handler, the author behind Lemony Snicket, his forthcoming Bar Mitzvah (only two years away -- June '08), the menu for his Bar Mitzvah, his Torah portion and the Sunday party we are planning to hold at our summer community upstate, his cousins, his siblings, "The Misadventures of the Minersteins" -- an ongoing story I had made up concerning a family of kids who discover the diary of their great-great grandmother Tilly Minerstein and go on entirely implausible and ahistorical mining adventures -- and a variety of things that have nothing to do with math facts, phonics, current events, science or fifth grade in general.

We've had Little Babe tested just as we had Big Babe and Middle Babe tested before him. We had Little Babe in therapy just as we had Big Babe and Middle Babe in therapy before him. If I were to pause and use my math facts to add up the cost of a variety of tests and therapies, I would weep.

So it came to pass that on a recent Monday morning, at this glorious elementary school built on the banks of the Hudson River, a team of no less than eight educators sat around and tried to puzzle out the learning style of Little Babe, which thus far had eluded testers and had stumped his teachers. He didn't have anything specific, that is, LD or ADD or ADHD or dyslexia or anything for which there is a pill or a special course of action. What he seemed to have was a case of CLCCCTORPRTWHFGC -- Cute Little Creative Child Choosing to Reside on Pluto Rather Than Within his Fifth Grade Classroom, coupled with a bit of prolonged childhood, that is, somewhat slowish development, confirmed by his pediatrician whose stern advise to me last year (after the bone-age scan performed at Columbia-Presbyterian proved normal) was: He's a happy little kid developing at his own pace. Leave him alone.

Dr. Van Gilder's advice ringing in my ears, I was still obviously concerned with the challenge of helping Little Babe space shuttle down from Pluto to visit his classroom every now and then and therefore threw myself into the process of hearing Little Babe's various teachers provide their observations of him. Leaving the crowded principal's office one hour later, a plan of action was in place: more supervised reading, more math review...and more testing to possibly pinpoint something that the earlier testing had missed.

Don't get me wrong. I am not satirizing a process that I am deeply appreciative of, though the contrast between today's child-focused educators and the model of utterly clueless neglectfulness that I grew up with does strike me as inherently hilarious. Sitting amid these concerned educators who were committed to studying my ten-year-old as thoroughly as a page of Talmud served to zap me back in a Plutonian time-travel capsule to my own childhood of woefully inadequate educators, imperviousness to a variety of learning styles -- not to mention stuff like LD or dyslexia or ADD/ADHD -- and a punitive approach to any school-related failures or shenanigans.

Peeling back the years, I recalled my own fifth grade misadventures at the North Shore Hebrew Academy in Great Neck, now a large and wealthy institution with several campuses, then a shleppy little school housed at the Great Neck Synagogue. There were eighteen students in my entire grade. Looking back, I feel confident in saying that at least half of them had issues and syndromes that would require medication and therapy today.

Though I had attended North Shore from kindergarten through second grade, my third grade was spent at a girl's school in Jerusalem (our family was on sabbatical; my rabbi-father and dozens like him were inspired to live in Israel following the stunning victory of the Six Day War) and my fourth grade at another Jewish dayschool housed in a synagogue in Queens, whose education was so substandard as to make North Shore look like Horace Mann.

Anyway, I arrived at North Shore Hebrew Academy in the fall of 1970, marked for social ostracism. In honor of the occasion, my well-meaning mother had sewn me a dress of gingham plaid...perfectly matched to my lunchbox. The dress had a Peter Pan collar, little puffy sleeves and heart buttons coming down my boyish chest. Somehow, I got talked into saddle shoes and anklets. At five foot four, I was the tallest girl in the class, not fat yet pre-pubescently stocky (anorexia kicked in two years later). I had buck teeth (the torture of braces began in sixth grade and ended in eighth grade), long, thick dark hair invariably worn in two high pigtails on the side of my head, heavy bangs cut nerdishly short and black octagonal glasses which would be all the rage today but back then made me look like a Mad Scientist.

In other words, standing in the doorway of Mrs. Hayden's class was Frankenstein's young female sidekick, the very image of a social reject, the last kid you would ever want to be friendly with.

Imagine sitting in class on the first day of fifth grade and the door swings open to reveal the New Kid dressed in a dress straight out of The Wizard of Oz, freakishly tall, carrying a lunch box and (I nearly forgot) a briefcase, wearing shoes last seen during the fifties, teeth courtesy of Bugs Bunny, smiling so widely as to appear Chinese. And when the New Kid opens her mouth, it is revealed that the first four letters of her last name are interchangeable with "penis."

Now, I'm not saying that the raucous laughter which greeted my dramatic fifth grade debut completely accounted for my classroom misbehavior and failure to do any homework that year. But given my tomboyish, scofflaw personality, my strict home environment, the creative bent of my mind, the presence of one nightmarishly bitchy Queen Bee (skinny, fashionable, slutty daughter of Holocaust survivors) who mysteriously wielded great social power within our fifth grade (as Queen Bees tend to do) and my reliance on the Gospel of Tom and Huck, each new day of school was a new opportunity for juvenile delinquency.

Bored out of my mind, I read novels, Mad Magazine, Archie comics and such porn classics as The Happy Hooker in class, threw hate notes to the kids I hated, wrote perverted lyrics to television theme songs and commercials, shared shocking sexual trivia with the boys in the back of the classroom, cheated on tests, had arm wrestles in the back of the classroom or leg wrestling matches in the carpeted hallway outside the class, played hide and go seek in the darkened bathroom with my best friends Jackie and Sara (also unfashionable creative types like myself but less socially ostracized) escaped to the roof during class to have screaming contests or write musicals, played Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare during Chumash class, fantastized about changing my last name some day (I never did...not even when I married someone with a non-funny, non-sexual last name), stalked the Mexican or Puerto Rican or some kinda Spanish maintenance crew, snuck into Great Neck Synagogue during the school day to simply sneak into Great Neck Synagogue during the day, flunked math tests, acted outrageously in the classroom and no one, but no one even thought to sit down and discuss anything about my learning style, why I couldn't hold onto math facts, why I was such a lunatic and what to do about it.

Which is not to say that I got away with my behavior. I was yelled at and punished when my parents got a call from our principal, Rabbi Horowitz to tell them that my behavior was abominable. I got yelled at by Rabbi Horowitz himself. My report card reported that I did not have "self-control," which always made me think that I had a bladder problem, not that I couldn't stop laughing or shouting in class. It included the word "immaturity," which made me see myself as an unripe tomato. My teachers also noted that I was "not living up to my potential," which made me envision myself dwelling in a trailer park some day in the near future. I do remember that Rabbi Horowitz told me that I had a great potential for leadership, but he wasn't sure whether it was going to be for good or bad means. I foresaw myself as a female Hitler, adding his trademark moustache to the dark hairs that were beginning to sprout, most attractively, on my upper lip with the onset of adolescence, misusing my gift of leadership to inspire Jew-haters around the world.

(The yelling/punishing/neglecting-the-real-problem approach to kids like me during the sixties and seventies also extended to my anorexia, begun in seventh grade with severe calorie restriction (i.e -- starving myself), laxative use, stenuous exercise and fainting spells from hunger and weight loss which transformed me from a solidly built child to a long, leggy, dramatically underweight girl who looked, as my mother lamented, "like a survivor!!")

Ah...the good old days when none of the adults wondered why Allen A (not his real name) couldn't read fluently by the age of 10, or why Jon S (not his real name) would injure himself numerous times during the course of the school day or why Denise K (not her real name) came to school with red-rimmed eyes or why Jackie G (absolutely her real name) was such a colossal bitch and what dysfunction might have taken place in her Holocaust Survivor home to make her this way.

I hardly feel persecuted when I recall my elementary school "education" because I know I wasn't alone in being properly cared for by the adults in my life. During the fifties and sixties, smallish Jewish day schools were often outposts of the Wild West with a whole host of beyond-the-pale classroom behaviors, bullying, kids failing, kids falling beneath the radar screen, kids not learning and unqualified teachers at the ready. Strangely, our parents had the idea that the education we were receiving was much better than what was available at our local public schools, which were staffed by that golden generation of committed (mostly Jewish) educators and not yet subject to the overcrowded conditions and budget cuts of today.

(The real victim of persecution as a result of adult neglect was SOB (sister of Bungalow Babe). Today, a beautiful and gifted singer-songwriter, SOB was tormented every single day of her elementary school life by a band of kids whose raison d'etre was to make her life a living hell. When she and I discuss her terrible school experience, it is with horror and no small measure of disbelief. We both find it impossible to believe that the adults in her life did not take steps to protect her from what was going on. Then again, when I was nearly gang-raped at the age of 11, I got yelled at, not comforted or protected.)

Yet the Wild West tales of my own early Jewish day school education (near-gang-rape aside, which actually happened during the summer, up in the country, with teenage townies serving as the would-be rapists) kinda pale by comparison with that of HOBB, for instance, who remembers going to a school on Manhattan's Lower East Side where the kids would kill stray cats during the school day, throw furniture out the window, beat the crap out of weaker boys, steal from local stores and give their rebbes heart attacks. (Come to think of it, we once sent a teacher to a mental institution. I remember the day Rabbi Horowitz came to class to fix us with a weary, woe-filled gaze of defeat and tell us that we had "destroyed that poor man...just destroyed him." Though we thought this was hysterically funny at the time, I am haunted by this years later.)

And if my learning style was being ignored, if my parents and teachers failed to figure out the kind of learning environment which would work for me, then HOBB's host of learning issues -- many of which are well-documented today -- went criminally neglected, leading to a less-than-stellar academic career and his family's belief that he was bound for a future as a forest ranger.

Not to knock Forest Rangery as an exciting career choice, but HOBB turned out to be a professor at an Ivy League institution and the author of many books. Somewhere along the way, he was rescued from the bad educational environment and sent to a good school which lead to a good college. In fact, many of the super creative and bright guys I know today were problem students who morphed into bright and interesting adults. Many of them have achieved renown in creative careers. Sometimes, however, I think that the ghosts of uncorrected childhood problems continue to haunt them -- us -- in a variety of ways.

That was then. This is now. That was the age of parental neglect and ignorance, of teachers who thought that one size fits all. Some kids did okay. The rest of us -- the quirky, the creative, the learning disabled, the dyslexic, the hyperactive, the differently-abled -- muddled through and survived, but let's face it -- we would have been better off had the adults in our world been a bit more focused on us.

Now we are in the era of the focused attention on the student. We all know the results of overly-anxious parental vigilance, coupled with a mania to excel academically. We know about frantic applications to competitive schools and too many after school activities and a misguided compulsion to give children Mozart in the womb and French in pre-K and all kinds of expensive tutoring and enrichment to turn them into the people we wish we were.

I am not talking about the loopy, misguided, even pathological fringe of the right-minded impulse to focus on the individuality of the child which is prevalent now in good academic settings. I am talking about the caring, concerned, enlightened village of adults who work in concert to raise up our children, one by one. God bless them. As I sat in the crowded principals's office with Little Babe's personal group of cheerleaders, the ghosts of my sadly delinquent elementary school years past started to fade.

Tony Ahmadinejad Bin Laden and the I-Hate-Israel Lobby

It had been a cold, soggy and hectic Sunday in the Big City and when I finally logged onto CNN.com late in the evening, it was deja vu all over again.

Sing-song voice captured on an audiotape (so 20th century!) that had been slipped to Al Jazeera, there was the psycho-prophet of doom intoning his poisonous and paranoid philosophy of the world from his uber-undisclosed location...and, as an extra bonus, hinting at impending terrorism against American civilians.

Networks, cable stations, newspapers, analysts, commentators and pundits went instantly meshuggah, because, let's face it, bin Laden is the biggest celebrity there is, the baddest of the bad, completely elusive, eschewing power suits for shmattes, refusing to grant live interviews, pissing off paparazzi the world over, cooly confident that his every syllable will be deconstructed and duplicated.

So, nu? What pearls of wisdom did Osama leave us with this time?

The usual naarishkeit, for the most part -- Islam is under seige by "Zionists and crusaders," blah, blah, blah -- but there were some chiddushim as well. Osama alluded to the war in the Sudan, creatively spinning America's effort to halt the genocide in Darfur as an attack against Islam. He called on his minions to "prepare for a long war against the crusader plunderers in western Sudan." He was as furious as the mother of the geeky kid who is routinely excluded from other kids' birthday parties, chastising the international community for its refusal to fund the Hamas government, stating that that very action "proves that there is a Zionist-crusaders war on Islam."

Most troubling, Osama lumped American civilians together into one mushy, indistinguisible Bush-supporting mass, holding all of us -- in our glorious diversity -- responsible for the war in Iraq and therefore fair game for beleaguered Muslims who try to protect themselves against Big Bad Us.

Something tells me that the defensive behavior he is alluding to is akin to what Hamas labelled its own act of self-defense last week in Tel Aviv. As of the posting of this entry, it is not clear whether the horrendous attack yesterday on the Egyptian resort town of Dabah was the brainchild of Al Qaeda. What is, however, abundantly clear is that many "crusaders" were killed in the attacks, including a German child.

The experts' consensus on the authenticity of Sunday's audiotape is all-thumbs-up. It is bin Laden's second public address in the last three months, taking a markedly more confrontational approach to his last tape, which offered Westerners peace in exchange for withdrawal from Iraq. While no one should be overly-surprised at the contents of Osama's newest missive, it is nevertheless creepy news to wake up to... or try to go to sleep by.

The creepiness of Osama's desert ramblings, however, reminded me of something else. The edge of hysteria, the hatred, the illogic, the nose for conspiracy, the obsession with Zionists....oh, yeah...Tony Judt, as most recently captured in his New York Times Op-Ed on April 19th, the seventh day of Passover.

Like Osama's misplaced Mama-rage at the world for not giving money to his little mamzer, Hamas, Judt vented his maternal rage at the world for ignoring the blabberings of his little maziks, John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, who published a work one month earlier that essentially plagiarizes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

By this time, most observers of the Middle East are aware of the publication of "The Israel Lobby," a whittled-down version of an 83-page paper that appeared in the London Review of Books in late March. By publishing this piece safely outside of the Jewish-friendly borders of the United States, its authors -- Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government -- hoped to secure some measure of support for their central, unoriginal idea, which is -- Omigod! The Jews control the world! Or at least the government of the United States and its foreign policy!

Much ink has been spilled on this silly document and refuted by minds greater than mine, or at least bearing more academic credentials. I could (but won't) include a list of links to lead the interested reader to websites that offer a point-by-point rebuttal to each of the authors' paranoid points regarding Jews and world domination. I could (but won't) shoot arrows through many of the arguments myself as they are so flimsy and fueled with equal measures of hatred and frustration at Israel's unpardonable sin -- her continued existence in the face of so much hatred.

Suffice it to say that following the appearance of this pseudo-academic treatise, a battalion of brilliant Op-Eds and essays emerged from such venues as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, US News and World Report, the New Republic, the Forward, the LA Times and so forth....and kicked the s&*t out of the Walt/Mearsheimer paper.

Hence, Tony Judt's Op-Ed of last week in the New York Times.

Beginning with a completely false premise -- that the"mostly uncontentious" Walt/Mearsheimer paper has been deprived of its natural right to be debated in an open manner, Judt charges that the piece has instead elicited a "somewhat hysterical response" that he traces back, by innuendo, to the "powerful Israel lobby." Evidently miffed that wackos like David Duke have been the predominant endorsers of the Walt/Mearsheimer argument, Judt throws his own wacko politics onto the pyre, trying to give his pals some gravitas by arguing their case for them in the journalistic public square, oddly impervious to the fact that many of the readers of The New York Times also read his foaming-at-the-mouth 2003 rant in the New York Review of Books which built the Judtian case for dismantling Israel.

As the author of one of the most disturbingly hate-filled public cases against Israel (move over, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky), Tony Judt has not one iota of credibility among the non-Israel-hating public.

As infuriating as it was to open up the Wednesday Times and see the majority of the Op-Ed page obliterated by this failed effort to resuscitate the Walt/Mearsheimer POV (all the while acutely aware that observant Jews reading the paper would be prevented from expressing their outrage in letters to the editor until Thursday night, when the holiday ended), Judt's piece only served to remind readers that, in his 2003 article, he blamed Israel for the war in Iraq, insanely charged that Iran has been a "longstanding target of Israeli wrath," falsely foresaw settlers choosing to wreak devastation on Arabs rather than relocate (eat your heart out, you hate-sickened meiskeit), and exonerated attacks against Jews by "young Muslims" as "misdirected efforts...to get back at Israel."

"The depressing truth," scrawled the Jewish Englishman at the end of his earlier article, "is that Israel today is bad for the Jews."

Re-reading the 2003 NY Review of Books essay in the wake of last week's Times Op-Ed, I was struck anew by the depth of Judt's rage against Israel -- a bottomless rage that feebly attempts to masquerade itself as the bold and analytical critique of an historian but ultimately reveals itself for what it is -- a pathological displacement of some other, more personal issue in his life, stemming perhaps in his English childhood, which included (by his own admission) a certain measure of anti-Semitism.

As a freelance observer of public Jewish anti-Zionists, I have noted certain parallels in their reasoning and the presentation of their points and am forming my own working hypothesis on the origins of this syndrome, which I view as more pathological than political. Let me give a hint of my hypothesis by stating that I believe there to be a fundamental flaw in the thinking of these (mostly) men. It is exceedingly interesting to me that the "critique" offered by folks like Judt is not a critique at all but a wholesale bashing of the entire Israeli enterprise.

In the writings and verbal rantings of Judt and company, which sadly includes some Israeli academics, Israel can do no right. The public Jewish anti-Zionists write out of a sense of personal broiges with the Holy Land and, by extension, Jews. Deconstruct their arguments -- or simply pay close attention -- and the transparency of their personal problem with the existence of the Jewish State becomes embarrassingly evident. According to the Judenfrei worldview that they have constructed, the world would be better off without Israel (the Jews). Time and again, Israel's supposed sins are trotted out within a context that is weirdly devoid of any mention of the ongoing threat to her existence that Israel has faced, or any of the truly bad guys in the region, for that matter.

Or, horribly, as in the case of Judt, the threat is repackaged as the Hamas "defense" defense of last week...poor "young Muslims" simply trying to "get back" at Israel by attacking old Jewish men in Moscow, young Jewish men in Paris, a shul in London.

Judt's obscene justification arises out of the same weltanschaung as Osama's blanket threat against all American civilians. We are fair game now because our alleged victims are simply trying to "get back" at us.

And most disgustingly, tucked into the presentations of the public Jewish anti-Zionists, there is always the implication of Israel and the Jews using the memory of the Shoah to rationalize their "Nazi-like" behavior. Perhaps the most stunning, nausea-inducing statement of all in Judt's recent essay is the following:

"In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that an Israeli soldier's great-grandmother died in Treblinka will not excuse his own misbehavior."

Writing this blog on the morning of Yom HaShoah, I am moved to ask: Tony, are you for real? What particular misbehavior are you referring to? Is it the exemplary manner in which the IDF evicted its largely-peaceful settlers, the ones you predicted would erupts in an apocalyptic orgy of violence against Arabs? Do you read the papers? Have you visited the hospitals where the innumerable victims of Arab hatred against Israel are recuperating from wounds inflicted because they are...Jews? Like you. How on earth can you even write these words days after an 18-year-old Palestinian boy blew himself up on a busy Tel Aviv street, taking innocent lives, not all of them Jews?

The last time I checked, Israeli soldiers were no more guilty of misbehavior than any other soldiers in the imperfect -- and sadly necessary -- institution known as the military. It is your ability, no, compulsion, to selectively hone in on the alleged "misbehavior" of a grandson of a Treblinka survivor, just as it is to rant about Israel's global "misbehavior" in the face of the barbarous actions of the nations around it who have committed themselves publicly to the destruction of Israel that is, frankly, pathological.

Was it horrible being a Jewish boy in England in the 1950's? Did you have the s*%t beaten out of you walking home from school? Were you skinny and short with glasses and a prominent nose? Did you lose relatives in the Shoah? Are you tired of belonging to a nation that becomes, in every generation, the scapegoat for the world's ills? Do you think that by standing on a chair and yelling "I Hate Israel!" louder than all the goyim, that you will somehow become the good Jew in the eyes of the world's anti-Semites? Do you think that the support of Jew-haters the world over -- including Iran's President Ahmandinejad who basically parrotted your point of view yesterday, reiterating his belief that Israel should not exist -- is your reward?

Or is it something more painfully personal, having to do with Mum and Dad? Do you rage against Israel because you really rage against your Jewish parents?

I admit it -- I am fascinated by you and your fellow public Jewish anti-Zionists. I have gone to hear Daniel Barenboim bring the house down with his condemnation of Israel, I have been in the audience when that serious psycho Norman Finklestein damns Israel and denies the Shoah in one amazing feat, I have read the confused confessions of Michael Lerner which truly attempt to transcend personal woundedness but always end up socking Israel in the eye, mouth agape, I have read Noam Chomsky with the riveted attention one gives to a public act of indecency or madness.

And I have read you, Tony, in an attempt to understand what the hell happened to you to make you so sick on a spiritual level.

Regarding you and your chevre, it has occurred to me that the compassionate and proactive response of the Jewish community (yes, we are a community even as we're busy being a sinister and influential lobby) would be to announce a campaign to raise funds so that the entire bunch of you could be trundled up and sent to a comfortable yet undisclosed location where a year's worth of free psychotherapy would be provided, because you guys are all so profoundly and pathetically fu*&ed up.

But perhaps I am being unfair, or even unkind. I was taught as a child that it is mean to make fun of people who are disabled or retarded or otherwise impaired. And if your Israel impairment came as the result of something horribly traumatic, I would like to know about it. It would make me understand your personal anti-Semitism a bit better.

So here is a legitimate and public invitation: I am asking you to join me on a two- to three-hour hiking date at the setting of your choosing, wherein I might have the opportunity to hear you out. Sitting in a restaurant would give me shpilkes and I want to create an opportunity for conversation to flow freely, unimpeded by the eavesdropping of neighboring diners. Besides, I love the great outdoors. While I can recommend numerous wonderful settings within an hour's drive of New York City, such as Bear Mountain, Harriman Park, the Adirondack Trail, the Heritage Trail, Hook Mountain and other such places, it would be nice if you got to choose your favorite hiking spot.

In the course of our hiking date, I would like to get to know you -- intellectually and spiritually. Don't worry about anything romantic, I am a married woman. But I think we would get along, after all, I'm a good listener and we've got a lot in common. You teach at NYU, I live across the street from Columbia University -- we're practically neighbors. You're Jewish and I'm Jewish -- we're practically mishpocha. You are obsessed with Israel and I am obsessed with Israel -- there is no danger that we'd run out of conversation.

So let me reiterate my sincere invitation: Tony, would you join me, on a hiking date somewhere in the New York area, so that I may get to know you? You can reply to me via e-mail at shira.dicker@sd-media.com.

I look forward to spending time together and challenging my personal opinion about you and your sadly fu*&ed-up views.

Diary of the Daughter of an Escaped Hebrew Slave

At 8:40 yesterday, I strode into Skyview Wine and Liquor on Riverdale Avenue charged with a mission -- to outfit Seders #1 and #2 with numerous bottles of sophisticated Kosher for Passover wine, predominantly red, with one bottle of the sweet stuff thrown in for tradition's sake.

At 8:41, I stopped dead in my tracks, completely and utterly overwhelmed. Whereas my friendly Manhattan liquor store had a nicely-contained kosher section from which I grab the same bottle of Noah Merlot at every visit, this entire emporium seemed devoted to the task of getting Jewish people totally tanked and to this end, offered scores of kosher offerings from the four corners of the earth.

I had a moment of sheer vertigo as I stared down racks and rows of merlots, chiantis, cabernets, bordeaux, burgundies, chenin blancs, reislings, chablises, beaujolaises, riojas and other types of wine I had never heard of before...all blessed with rabbinic supervision. Holy @#$%! I thought, glancing wildly around the store for some assistance. So many wines...so little knowledge!

Fortunately, a savvy young dude in a suit and kippah appeared by my side -- drawn, no doubt, by my audible hyperventilation -- and offered his assistance. Five minutes and $180 later, I walked out with my case of sophisticated reds, respectable whites and a bottle of barely-alcoholic Kool-Aid disguised as Kedem Concord Grape.

I have no idea what I actually bought, only that it was met with a cocked eyebrow of approval by HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) and by disbelief by 17-year-old Middle Babe when I pulled up in front of our apartment building in our red minivan to unload both the booze and the last-minute Fairway shopping from pre-Passover trip #1000.

"How much did you buy?" she demanded as Alfie the Pomeranian strained at the leash. BOMB, her adorable curly-haired boyfriend, waved in greeting. He wore sandals in celebration of the springlike weather. I know they had tried -- and failed -- to get into a Ranger's game earlier this evening and ended up going for dinner in midtown. Now they were bound, with Alfie, for a Starbucks on Broadway and W115th Street for a quick tea before we launched into b'dikat chametz -- the ritual of hiding -- and seeking -- pieces of bread in one's house in preparation for entering the leavening-free zone of Passover.

About 20 minutes later, the wines all shelved, the food from Fairway squeezed into fridge and the Passover pantry, HOBB and I dispatched 10-year-old Little Babe to hide chunks of an Italian sub (purchased a couple of hours earlier from Hamilton Deli) throughout the apartment. "Only ten," HOBB admonished Little Babe. "And remember where you hid them!"

As Little Babe set out with his bag of bread, chuckling diabolically, Big Babe, our eldest son, a junior at Columbia University, showed up from his dorm across the street at East Campus. He had interrupted his writing of a paper on James Joyce to participate in this beloved ritual. Shortly, Middle Babe and BOMB returned with Alfie from their walk, Little Babe crowed that the bread was hidden and the whole family gathered in front of the dining room table to commence the ritual.

B'dikat chametz literally means "checking for unleavened food," and it is the penultimate ritual prior to the official beginning of Passover. (The final ritual is biyyur chametz, or the burning of the chametz, where one takes the assembled bread from b'dikat chametz and burn it in a bonfire the following morning -- though some people also participate in that legalistic fiction exercise of mekhirat chametz, the selling of one's non-Passover food to a non-Jew, which enables one both not to own nor get rid of one's unleavened food during the holiday. Afterwards, one simply "buys" it back.)

In any case, by the time one tip-toes through one's abode, candle in hand, seeking out hidden crumbs, the house has to be thoroughly cleaned and prepared for the holiday. For people like us -- who merge traditional observance with a decidedly un-OCD attitude towards cleaning -- the preparations for the holiday are actually fun, even if they do entail a certain amount of physical labor, such as the shlepping of Passover pots, dishes and silverware out of their storage places and marathon food shopping.

Though Jewish law mandates perfoming b'dikat chametz immediately following sundown on the night before the Eve of Passover, we decided to wait until the older children could be home as b'dikat chametz is a beloved ritual, solemn yet goofy, performed in darkness and silence. Walking in a line through the unlit night apartment, we search by the light of a lone candle for pieces of bread, refraining from speech yet making all kinds of noises to indicate confusion or revelation or appreciation for an especially witty hiding place.

When all the bread is discovered, we bundle the pieces, the candle, the feather we used to sweep the surface clean and usually a handkerchief into a package to be sent for burning the next morning. We utter a prayer in Aramaic that renders us free of responsibility for all further, unknown leavened products lurking in our abode. We have only 12 hours left at the point within which to eat such foods -- outside of the house, of course -- before the observance of the eight-day Passover holiday begins.

It is now morning, the Eve of Passover, and I am writing these words as Little and Middle Babe are sleeping. HOBB and Big Babe went to an early synagogue service -- siyyum bechorim --- the feast of the firstborns, which caps a ritual for first-born Jewish males who might normally be required to fast in homage to Pharoah's decree to kill their ancient counterparts and the final, horrific Plague -- death of the first-born sons -- from which all Hebrews were exempt due to the painting of their thresholds with blood to avert the Angel of Death.

All is quiet and ready for Passover, save for the cooking of the first seder meal, which I will undertake around 3 pm. On the phone last night, my sister-in-law, who is sailing off to a hotel for the entire holiday with my parents (for the past fifteen years or so, my mother has refused to make Passover at home), asked me if I finished cooking yet. As I was on my way to Fairway to track down meat, fruit and walnuts, I had to laugh. I have never cooked anything more than a few hours in advance over the course of my entire adulthood and hope I never do. The secret ingredient in my cooking is adrenaline.

But truly, the secret ingredient in my Seder meals is love of the holiday. As HOBB and I cleaned and shlepped and shopped and planned -- often deep into the night -- a deep joy and relaxation spread over me. While I love all Jewish holidays I am especially fond of this one, which mandates that we meet up with our ancestors, the escaping Hebrew slaves, and cross the Red Sea together, sharing with them that moment of nation-making and freedom.

Dipping into the moxie of our great-great-great-grandparents every year for the duration of our history as a people is a key element of the so-called Secrets of Jewish Survival. Sitting around the Seder table, we recall their refusal to accept slavery as their lot. In the most privileged and most dismal of circumstances, Jews have observed Passover, told tales from the Hagaddah, sang songs from the Seder, tasted bitter herbs, hid the afikomen, banished leavened products from their households. The result is an awesome, millenia-long chain of observance, indestructible.

And though there has been a growing tradition of retreating to special Passover hotels and resorts -- in the Catskills, in Arizona, in Mexico, in Israel, in California, in Florida, aboard cruises and ever more exotic locales -- for staggering sums of money (about 10 K for a family of 5 for the entire holiday), I staunchly defend the endangered practice of making Passover at home, centering it within the place we conduct our normal lives.

Passover is an opportunity to enter into a realm of complete otherness and dwell there for eight days, connecting with one's past and future, emerging transformed.

So it was that last night on Morningside Heights, a family of five plus a visiting boyfriend and the resident Pomeranian, stopped the rhythm of their 21st century lives and entered into the ancient ritual of b'dikat chametz, checking for unleavened bread products, forbidden during Passover. With exaggerated hand-motions and lots of silly sounds, they proceeded through the darkened rooms of their Columbia apartment, seeking out the 10 pieces of bread that their youngest member had planted, awaiting discovery.

Between last night and 3 pm today, there is still the business of the professional world to attend to...classes to be taught, press releases to be sent to the media, students to meet with, ads to be written, calls to be made and returned. Yet, in about six hours, the parents of this family will haul out their pots and pans and embark upon the cooking of the first Seder meal, remembering to set out bowls of salt water to recall the tears of the slaves, sprigs of parsley to designate springtime, the delicious walnut, wine and apple dish called haroset which pays homage to the bricks built by the slaves, the burnt turkey neck to recall the sacrificial shankbone, slivers of horseradish root to recall the bitterness of affliction....and, of course, matza, the uber-unleavened product.

The ritual items of the Passover seder will dwell alongside the roast turkey, savory meat, steamed asparagus, herbed potatoes, eggplant stew, salads and desserts of the sumptuous feast that is a symbol of our freedom. And when the children and guests fill the table with conversation and the ancient text of the Hagaddah, the celebration will be complete.


Happy Passover!