A Dream of Nuclear Winter

The dream presented a perfect facsimile of reality.

It was a Sunday afternoon. There was a warning of imminent nuclear attack. Manhattan was the target. There was a chance to flee but it wasn't taken.

A siren went off. We gathered in the dining room to watch the world around us -- Amsterdam Avenue and the Columbia University campus -- disappear inside nuclear winter.

Opaque white air filled our vista. Little particles dotted the air.

I turned to my husband, speechless with panic. "Are we all going to die?"

And then, mercifully, I woke up.

It was early morning, too early for a Sunday, darkish, quiet, save for birdsong.

Beneath the down quilt, I had broken into a sweat. My throat burned with thirst and my eyes burned with fatigue. Next to me, HOBB slept peacefully. Tempted to curl into him for comfort, I resisted. We had come to bed very late the night before. We were guests at a benefit dinner where the wine was delicious. I had three glasses. Now, through half-opened eyes, I saw clothes scattered on the floor.

Despite my thirst, I fell back into troubled sleep, only to enter the dream again...through a different portal.

We were no longer in our apartment, having moved to the Upper East Side. It was shortly after the nuclear attack. Miraculously, we had survived. We were now cramped into a place with several other families. I was aware that we were refugees. I was sitting on a bed with Little Babe and Middle Babe, taking stock of the meager possessions we managed to take with us. From a large picture window, we watched warships sail right up to the FDR Drive, enormous robotic frogmen jump from the deck into the water, swim hurriedly to the shore, then turn into tank-like vehicles, barreling towards us along First Avenue.

Once again, I awoke out of the dream, this time prompted not by terror but by the ringing of my BlackBerry. It was 9:05 a.m. and my sister, visiting from Israel, wanted to make plans for the week.

The day began and the dream retreated, but not really. First, I told HOBB about it, curling into him for comfort as I recounted the terrifying narrative. Sharing it, I felt no lessening of the horror, indeed, found myself getting sucked back in. Rolling out of bed, I recovered my clothing, pulled on shorts and a sweatshirt, padded into the dining room. Turning on my computer, I searched the headlines for news of a nuclear attack, worried that my nightmare had, in fact, been a premonition.

In my family, I'm famous for foreshadowing dreams. There was, for instance, the tsunami dream, two nights before the terrible tsunami hit Southeast Asia. There was the dream encounter with my late mother-in-law, where she told me that I would give birth to a son...three weeks before I gave birth to Little Babe. There was the visitation by my late Grandma Dorothy in a dream, the giving of a quilt I had never seen before but which was given to me shortly thereafter by my mother.

Thankfully, I found nothing on the internet about a nuclear attack.

The day began. The cold was bracing, returning me to the reality of a Manhattan not currently under nuclear attack. I greeted Little Babe's cello teacher, then rode the subway down to the JCC, reading Moravia's The Woman of Rome on the way. I did several miles on the elliptical, pumped iron, worked on my abs, talked to friends, relaxed in the steamroom, showered, returned home, greeted Little Babe's Japanese teacher, ate the fresh cod prepared by HOBB and then we went to the Natural History Museum, where we wandered for hours before ending up at the Silk Road exhibition. Along the way, there were phone conversations and coffee breaks and a delicious banana bread pudding that we shared and a shopping excursion to West Side Market and walks along Columbus Avenue and a marvelous dinner at home with homemade cream of mushroom soup yet somehow, this terrible memory stayed with me -- the terror, the helplessness, the unthinkable, the swirling white, nuclear winter, the end of the world.

Rabbis and Revolution

THE STEPPYs vs The TIPSYs

A Shavout Sermon

Rabbi Jack Riemer

(Printed by permission of the author who sent an advance copy to Bungalow Babe on Wednesday, informing her that her recent article in the Forward on the high cost of Jewish education had inspired this sermon. This subject is one that preoccupies Bungalow Babe, causing her to continually kvetch about it as a way of keeping it on the communal radar screen. As Rabbi Riemer is the quintessential rabbi's rabbi, whose articles and sermons are read and quoted from by an international, interdenominational rabbinate, Bungalow Babe could not be more honored. In addition, she is newly reminded of the role that rabbis and other religious leaders play in fomenting social revolution. Her Forward article, which ran in last week's paper, can be read at http://www.forward.com/articles/123854/)

This is the holiday of the giving of the Torah. And therefore, it ought to be a holiday on which we think honestly and seriously about the state of the Torah in our time, and about what we can do to enhance it.

I want to teach you two new words today, two words that I believe have much to say about the state of Torah in our time. One is the word: “STEPPY”, and the other is the word: “TIPSY”

Does anyone here know what STEPPY and TIPSY mean?

I want to talk about these two words today, because I believe, in all seriousness, that the future of Judaism in our community will depend in good measure on how these two new words relate to each other. And therefore, if you care about the future of the Torah, hear me well:

I learned the meaning of the term: STEPPY from Shira Dicker, who is a prominent publicist and the owner of a communications company, and who is a parent whose child goes to one of the best day schools in New York City.

She says that some time ago she got a call from the parent of a child in the school, reminding her that the school’s annual fund-raising dinner was going to be held soon, and that she had not yet bought a ticket.

Shira Dicker says that a year ago she would have been embarrassed to tell the woman that she could not afford the seven hundred and fifty dollars that the dinner costs, but this year, she found herself feeling sorry for the woman who was calling her, because she was probably getting a lot of turn-downs. In this post-Madoff, recessionary time in which we now find ourselves, there were probably a lot of people in the school who were STEPPYs.

What is a STEPPY?

The word is an acronym.

It stands for: Struggling, Two-income, Educated, Professionals Paying Yeshiva Tuition.

STEPPYs are people who are struggling to make enough to send their children to day school, which is not easy these days. The cost of day school education has climbed from four figures a year to five figures a year. And now that the economy has gone south, parents who are struggling financially have only two choices, neither of which is very pleasant to contemplate. They can either take their children out of day school, or else they can ask for scholarships, which is not easy to do for people who are middle class and not poor, but who find ten or fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year for tuition a big nut to crack.

And I have just used modest figures. There are some day schools that approach tuition figures of forty thousand dollars a year, and some of these schools now find it difficult to give scholarships because their investments have tanked, and some of their donors are no longer able to give as generously as they did before.

Shira Dicker says that nobody talks about this, but the stress of coming up with this kind of money for tuition has permeated the lives of many people. It has impacted marriages, made wives wonder why their husbands can’t earn more, and made husbands wonder why their wives are always so tired and cranky. It has turned Shabbat in many homes into a day for physical recuperation instead of spiritual rest, and it has made the prospect of college tuition seem out of reach,

A STEPPY is any Jewish parent who has changed careers, or taken on additional work, or who forgoes a social life, or who limits the amount of cultural events she goes to, or who lets the cleaning lady go, or who passes on sending a child to summer camp, or who puts off her own continuing education, or who drives a run-down car, in order to be able to keep her children in a Jewish day school.

Sharon Strassfeld once observed that “In her circle of friends, the cost of day school education is the most effective form of birth control”.

And, as Shira Dicker says, all this is without counting in the costs of having a bar or bat mitzvah, or sending your child on an Israel Program, or keeping kosher or belonging to a synagogue.

Who is to blame for this situation?

Or to put it more constructively, what can we do about this situation?

I think that there are two answers.

One of them is the TIPSY solution, which I heard about recently.

Does anyone here know what the TIPSY solution is?

No, it is not to go out and get drunk in order to forget the seriousness of the STEPPY situation.

The TIPSY solution is also an acronym. It comes from the Kohelet Foundation, which has two goals. One is to lower the cost of day school tuition, and the other is to increase the involvement of parents in Jewish education, because they believe that a home in which parents study Torah is a good role model that will encourage children to take their own Torah study seriously.

What does TIPSY stand for?

It stands for “The Tuition Incentive Program for Subsidizing Yiddishkeit”.

The idea is really very simple.

The foundation has worked with four day schools in the Philadelphia area so far.
What they do is first determine the actual cost per child if the school operated at full capacity.

The school then agrees to lower tuition in order to attract more students.

The Kohelet Foundation then agrees to provide funding to make up for any losses incurred if the class does not reach full capacity.

At the Kelman Academy in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, for example, they lowered the tuition for the first two classes by four thousand dollars, and they lowered the tuition for the third grade by thirty five hundred dollars. They figure that after the families have become hooked on the day school, they will continue sending their children after the first three years, even if they have to pay the whole tuition themselves.

This is one suggestion. It can only work in those schools that are under capacity. In schools that are full and have waiting lists, some other idea will have to be found. But what the Kohelet Foundation has shown us is that there are innovative ideas that can be found to make day schools better and also more affordable, if only we look.

My second suggestion is a simple one—which is that we get over---once and for all--- the idea that the cost of a Jewish education is the sole responsibility of the parents.

Every one of us pays public school taxes, whether we have children in the public schools or not.

Why?

Because we understand that the entire society depends on raising the next generation to be good citizens, good people, and good workers. In exactly the same way, the members of the Jewish community must learn to accept the concept that Jewish education is the shared and sacred responsibility of the entire Jewish community, whether we have children enrolled in a day school or not.

All of us have to consider it our obligation to support our local day schools, whether it be by purchasing tickets for its annual dinner, or ads for its journal, or by making donations in our lifetimes and in our wills. For it does not matter whether we ourselves have children in the school or not. The future of the Jewish people---nothing less than that---is at stake!

All of you probably know the Midrash about what happened at Sinai on the first Shavout, but let me tell it to you again. I have heard this Midrash ever since I was a child. But do you know what? Now I hear it, not just as a fanciful legend, the way I heard it, when I was a child, but as the simple truth.

The Midrash says that when God gathered the Israelites together at the foot of Mount Sinai, He said to them: “I have a great treasure which I am prepared to give to you. But before I give it to you, what can You give me as a guarantee that you will keep it safe?”

The people offered Moses as a guarantor. But God said: “No, Moses is mortal. And therefore, He cannot be a guarantor that you will always keep this treasure.”

The people offered the Prophets as guarantors. But God said: “No. The Prophets are also mortal. Therefore, they cannot be guarantors that you will always keep this treasure which I am about to give you.”

Finally, the people offered the children as guarantors. And this time God said: “Yes! Your children are the best guarantors. If you promise me that in every generation, your children will guard this treasure, I will give it to you.”

And then God gave the Israelites the Torah.

Now that I am a grown up, I understand this ancient Midrash better than I did when I was a child. Now I understand that what it means is that with serious Jewish education, the Jewish people will live. And that without it, we will not be.

And so, on this, the day when we celebrate the giving of the Torah, let us reaffirm the promise that our ancestors made on Mt. Sinai long ago. Let us---all of us---whether we have children of our own in the school or not---accept upon ourselves the personal responsibility for the Jewish education of the next generation.

And may TIPSY and other ideas like it help the STEPPYS in our midst so that the Torah may live and flourish from generation to generation.

Amen.

Being Present at the Brooklyn Museum

We missed the mega-fabulous New Year's First Night celebration at the Brooklyn Museum because of an equally fabulous yoga/health food/karaoke birthday party, a situation that reminded me of one of my favorite Yiddish expressions – “With one tuchis, you can’t dance at two weddings.”

Thrown together hastily, the birthday party was a perfect combo of holistic healthfulness and drunken revelry. Our adorable British hostess charmed us with "Super Trooper," "Lady Marmalade," "Ebony and Ivory," "We Belong Together," and other songs that I was evidently too plastered to recall, while I held my own with "Centerfold," "Alone Again, Naturally," "Tiny Dancer," and Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man," – the last song performed atop HOBB's lap while growling into the mike.

We arrived home after 3 in the morning, exhausted yet exhilarated.

It was great fun, yet with the light of day, I was beset by the hysterical fear that I would miss the photo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum I'd been dying to see for months -- Who Shot Rock & Roll?

You see, I knew that once the holiday ended, my life would take on its usual relentless pace and the chances of getting out to Brooklyn before the exhibition closed were slim. Though it sounds geographically implausible, I knew I had a better chance of making it over to Berlin than Brooklyn.

And indeed, that is exactly what happened. I left for Berlin on January 10th where I saw a great many museum exhibitions, but it was only yesterday that I made it to the Brooklyn Museum to finally see Who Shot Rock & Roll. And though I was gratified, gladdened and greatly relieved to finally be able to scratch this exhibition off my cultural To-Do List, what captured my imagination at the Brooklyn Museum was not this energetic assemblage of photos of rock stars and their performances.

Instead, it was a small black and white watercolor, based on a sculpture made by Harriet Hosmer, a remarkable 19th century artist. Created by Patricia Cronin, a Brooklyn artist of my own vintage, the watercolor depicts the interlocking hands of Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was part of the exhibition closing that day, Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found.

Having completed the rock and roll exhibition (my brain on joyous overload from ingesting pictures of a near-naked, Christ-like Iggy Pop, David Bowie with a red punk-shag 'do from his Ziggy Stardust phase, Elton John in platform boots and humongous glasses, the baby-faced Rolling Stones before they even signed a record contract, the famous Avedon portraits of the Beatles, Madonna in the early ‘80’s when she was a quasi-homeless East Village character, the underfed Talking Heads at CBGB’s and other such delights; my husband humoring me by pretending to be interested) HOBB and I wandered happily through the cavernous and largely empty rooms of the Brooklyn Museum, which recalled Berlin’s sprawling temples of culture.

Recalling a listing in the New York Times that Cronin’s exhibition was about to close, we headed down to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on the third floor.

There, just around the corner from the legendary Judy Chicago work – The Dinner Party -- was Cronin’s exhibition, a tribute to the largely-forgotten art of Harriet Hosmer.

There is nothing quite like stumbling onto the work of a master one has not previously encountered. The joy of this discovery is indeed akin to embarking on a new adventure. And so, in this quiet room, on the last day of the exhibition, I avidly read about Harriet Hosmer’s life, learned that she was born in 1830 and died in 1908, lived in Rome for forty years, becoming part of the expatriate artist community; that she was a lesbian; that she sculpted in marble.

Listening to Cronin’s curate her own work on my cell-phone through some newfangled technical wizardry, I also learned that while in Italy, Hosmer became a close friend of the Brownings, whose literary partnership Cronin discusses briefly in the course of her shpiel. Cronin explains the placement of the hands and their symbolism; what the physical conveyed about the emotional, spiritual and artistic bond shared by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Which stopped me dead in my tracks, making me bookmark the Brownings for an upcoming obsession…when I conclude my current obsession with Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante.

It is now Monday afternoon. Between phone calls and emails, I found myself Googling the Brownings, giving myself a sneak peak at the literary couple who might next consume my imagination. (I like the way that Italy forms a perfect thematic segue between my current crushes and those in line for forthcoming consideration.) I realize that at this time last week, I had just landed in New York, leaving behind a madcap, frenetic weeklong adventure with Big Babe, my expatriate American son. During my time in Berlin, I observed and recorded the scene, as Hosmer did during her time in Rome. And while I was missing from my regularly-scheduled life in New York, the truth of that old Yiddish adage was further underscored.

With my one body, I couldn’t be on two continents at once, a source of frustration to those who wanted me to be on Eastern Standard Time in New York – stationed before a computer and next to a landline -- and not bopping through Berlin, with unreliable internet access.

Here’s the thing about life. You have one tuchis but many weddings to attend. Some are local, some are far-flung. Some are fun and others are obligatory. Some you will blow off; others you might miss due to unforeseen circumstances. Some conflict with each other…or with your happy little habits of living or with life itself.

And here’s a reality check: by choosing to attend one wedding, you choose to miss another. You give up one experience to gain another.

Of course, like most contemporary multi-tasking maniacs, I’ve tried to be at two…or three…or ten weddings with my one tuchis, in fact, this delusional modus operandi has characterized most of my professional adult life over the past eight years. Perhaps yours as well.

I’ve tried to behave as if sleep is optional to human functioning. I’ve tried to keep my BlackBerry activated in countries with ridonculous roaming charges to prove my commitment to those who wish to reach me all the time.

I’ve tried to obliterate boundaries of time and space through constant contact.

But we now know the truth about multi-tasking as a way of life, which is that a wee bit improves our productivity but if multi-tasking becomes standard operating procedure, the integrity of individual actions is severely compromised.

In other words, if we are always here and there, we are not really present anywhere.

So, I’m entering into a new contract with my tuchis because it is related to my heart, mind and soul.

From now on, it dances at one wedding at a time.

Flashback to the New Year's weekend. Initially, I tried to engineer a two-wedding solution to the evening, proposed going to the Brooklyn Museum and our friends’ party, catching two hours at the museum first, then meeting up with our friends at the Korean karaoke joint in midtown Manhattan.

The plan was actually doable – and didn’t entail meshuggeneh multi-tasking -- but HOBB doesn’t roll that way. He's a one-wedding guy.

Besides, he was looking forward to the yoga and health food.

I was frustrated at the time because my plan to dance at two weddings was being thwarted, but looking back, I am glad at the way it worked out.

After all, if we had gone to the Brooklyn Museum for New Year’s First Night, I would have likely missed the chance to discover the art of Harriet Hosmer, as interpreted by Patricia Cronin. Three weeks ago, I would have felt no urgency to see the exhibition, would have arrived with my First Night agenda -- dancing in the great hall with the live orchestra, standing on line to catch a glimpse of Who Shot Rock & Roll?, drinking in the spectacle of thousands of people filling the museum on a Saturday night.

Instead, on a Sunday afternoon in late January, I shared a unexpectedly magical and intimate moment with Patricia Cronin and Harriet Hosmer at the Brooklyn Museum.

Instead, I learned about the interlocking hands of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning, was reminded of their love and literary partnership.

Locking hands with HOBB, my own partner in literature and life, I walked through the rare quiet rooms of the Brooklyn Museum, grateful to be doing just one thing at a time, to be fully present in my life, if only for a single Sunday afternoon in January.

If I Wanted to be on Call 24/7, I'd be in Haiti

Attention Misguided World,

Something has happened to the concept of URGENCY.

Something terrifying.

Blurring important distinctions.

Obliterating boundaries.

Producing dire consequences for our humanity and ability to distinguish between the realms of work and life, between the wish to advance one's agenda and humanitarian crisis.

Here's the thing: from teens texting their friends a million times a day as if rapid thumb movement was vital to respiration, to the expectation that one should be on call around the clock for work matters that are removed from life and death considerations, the modern world has gone gaga, losing its soul or simply its mind.

"I have no choice," a friend recently confided, out of sheer exhaustion. "If I'm not always available to my boss, I'll lose my job. I'll be instantly replaced by someone else who is willing to take calls at midnight or sleep with their BlackBerry under their pillow."

"How can you stand it?" I asked, though I am up against the same expectation all the time.

"Where's the organ transplant?" demanded another friend, at her wit's end. "Whenever I get this urgent message about something completely pedestrian -- from my kids or my boss -- I wonder why we're all living as if we were EMS workers, transporting vital organs. Who will die if we do not return a call or text within seconds???"

It is Friday morning, the eve of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, God's gift to humankind. In His or Her Infinite Wisdom, in His or Her Omniscience, a preview of our present reality was requested and made available and the Sabbath created as an antidote.

But here's the scary reality: Shabbat is not enough. It is not adequate to have one 25 hour black-out zone per week.

We need our mornings.

We need our evenings.

Unless you are transporting vital organs, you should be sleeping or partying or reading or making love at midnight...not sending texts to your staff.

And unless you are down in Haiti, pulling bodies from the rubble, feeding the hungry, transporting goods, rebuilding the devastated country, saving lives, there is simply no excuse for a 24/7 -- or even a 24/6 -- expectation of availablity, built upon a perverted concept of urgency.

Shabbat Shalom

First We Take Manhattan. Then We Take Berlin.

In Berlin, the winter sky is gunmetal grey, the streets are covered with a slushy covering of snow, several inches deep, the cold seeps into your bones, no… deeper. Into your organs.

In Berlin, people ride the U-Bahn with or without the proper tickets. On the train, they sport haircuts like Peter Frampton, like Marilyn Manson, like Billy Idol. Sometimes you see someone who is a dead ringer for Dieter, Mike Myer's West German television host. They wear clothes that are old without being vintage. There is no fashion one-upsmanship, no status-seeking labels to be flaunted, no must-have accessory or pair of jeans. There are only curious gazes at the foreigner wearing the noticeably fashionable clothing, the expensive-looking ring.

In Berlin, there are little bronze plaques on the sidewalks telling you that at this location, in the year such and such, a Jew named so and so was taken to the (fill in the blank) concentration camp. Their family had lived in this city until that very date, was part of the life of Berlin. And then they were never seen again.

In Berlin, the museums are plentiful and palatial, cutting-edge or classical. There are three opera houses. There are symphony halls and theatres. Bars and clubs are everywhere. Everyone is drinking. Everyone is going somewhere, up for a party or celebration. Money is optional. Friendly sex is everywhere. People are welcoming. There are no cliques, no In-Crowd. Everyone is getting a free degree at one of the universities. Many are on welfare. If you don't have money and you want to drink or dance, someone will probably pay for you. The city is sprawling and architecturally discordant. The past is alive everywhere.

In Berlin, you will often feel like you are living in the past. Any moment in the past except for that slew of years in middle of the 20th century, which is a place unlike any other, a destination that is impossible to revisit.

But that slew of years permeates Berlin, giving the wind a special sorrowful sound, providing the reason for the gunmetal grey sky, making the bone-chilling cold a metaphysical matter.

In the winter world of Berlin, your feet are always cold and wet. You will take your boots off in restaurants and massage your toes. Some places you visit will have coal ovens you will need to feed with bricks of coal. Even when the embers are burning brightly and the ceramic tiles are hot to the touch, you will feel chilled, unable to remove your clothes to sleep. You'll wonder how anyone survived even one winter night in a concentration camp.

In Berlin, you will sleep with your street clothes every night -- even your bra -- because your fingers will be stiff with cold and unable to manage the unsnapping procedure. You will put your head under the covers, wear a ski cap one night. You will shower hurriedly in the morning after heating up the water for half an hour, stooping beneath the shower spray to get wet, soaping up briskly, bravely applying shampoo while praying for the water to remain hot long enough to rinse the stuff out, then going out on a limb of faith to apply conditioner or shave your legs and armpits.

Inevitably, the water will turn cold too soon and you will emerge from the tub, shivering, onto a cold-tiled floor, the thin shower curtain sticking to your cold, wet, goose-prickled skin.

In Berlin, the winter Spree will be frozen and black with sheets of ice floating on the surface. Crossing a footbridge slippery with snow, you fear that you will skate, slide under the rail and end up in the terrifying waters.

The Spree seems sadly meager as compared with the Thames, the Siene, the Liffey, the Hudson, the Danube. And then you hear about the bodies that were dumped into it and it becomes something else.

Evil. Complicit.

In Berlin, you have come to be with your oldest child who has chosen this place as his (hopefully temporary) adopted home. You bring him goods from Zabar's, about $150 worth of coffee, smoked salmon, salami, babka and coffee paraphernalia. You infiltrate his life while you are there; shadow him around his Berlin world. Thus, you meet his friends. You got to his haunts, see his operas and films, walk through his museums. Together, you crowd into Humboldt University for a free lecture by Orham Pamuk and sit on the floor with the student revolutionaries who have occupied the school for reasons that elude you.

In the morning and at night, you shovel his coal into the coal oven and brew his Zabar's coffee, the French Italian roast, first grinding the beans, then pouring the powder into the Chemex filter, adding the hot water, measuring out cream. You note the prices, instantly translate them from Euro value to dollar value. Things are cheap, generally.

In Berlin, you interview his expatriate friends, finding out why they are in Berlin, what the lure is. You have too much wine and ask a native German if anyone ever asked her what her grandfather did during the war. She laughs uncertainly. Your son stares at you.

The two of you fight, of course. Over stupid things but also over the division of time; how much you get to attend to your work versus how much time you get to spend together. You spend mostly every waking moment together and come home from clubs at four and five in the morning.

And then, it is time to leave. And then you are back in New York, on American soil.

Berlin is a conundrum, a paradox, a destination. To some it is endlessly problematic, forever desecrated. To others, it is a neverland of cheap, easy living, good times at the ready, a steady stream of people making little or no money. Lacking professional ambition or even the desire for a lasting love relationship. In Berlin, you will never feel like a slacker, a loser, an underachiever.

Because my son has chosen it, Berlin is of endless fascination to me. As a New Yorker, I see the lure of Berlin burning most brightly at this moment in time, offering an alternative to the collapsing American scene.

Who's that Girl? Is She on Facebook?

Why, it's none other than me -- BUNGALOW BABE -- enjoying a glam brunch at the home of James Cunningham, the American Ambassador to Israel last month.

This pic arrived with a bunch of photos yesterday, via email, and is actually a cropped version of a larger, more panoramic shot featuring none other than HOBB, who was the DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN SPEAKER that morning.

An upcoming posting might have the original pic, but I present this artfully-modified photo because it warms me to gaze at my sun-drenched visage, allows me to teleport myself beyond the frigid climes of New York City to a more temperate locale.

I also present this photo because it is the face of someone who is about to hit the 300-Friend mark on Facebook.

And while this number might not be formidable for all those less mature individuals who have been promiscuously acquiring "friends" for years before I even considered going on Facebook, I am proud to say that I am actually real-life friends with all my FB pals.

Mostly.

Not that 300 is the total number of human beings that I have befriended in my two-score and change years on Planet Earth. Oh, no, no, no. Don't be silly. The people I know from the four summer camps I attended total over 300 alone. Had I the time, you'd find me avidly trolling Facebook with the intention of picking up friends of friends (as giddily as Zabar's customers when all the baked goods go to half price) in order to further boost my numbers, because it does become a game or race of sorts, doesn’t it?; a sort of cyber-popularity contest.

Indeed, when I saw that my daughter, Middle Babe’s friend list was over the 1,000 mark, I admit to feeling envious.

But more is not always better and besides, my Facebook Friends list is a work-in-progress.

To my list of 300 – I am moved by the special bond we share. To you, I send a group cyber-hug.

FBFF: Facebook Friends Forever!!!

Waltz #2 @ Starbucks

Last Monday, I camped out at the Starbucks on Broadway and West 75th Street, working on my laptop for hours.

My perch near the window -- a round table small enough for no one else to consider joining me -- was perfect.

Well, it would have been perfect if not for the woman seated inches away from me who was also camped out for hours, variously sleeping, muttering to herself, eating candy bars, refusing to allow elderly people to sit in her extra chair, watching cat videos on her laptop and laughing hysterically, rolling cigarettes and then ambling outside to smoke them just outside my window so that it appeared as if she were deliberately blowing smoke into my face, then returning inside to settle back into her chair, groaning, while feeble senior citizens stared covetously at her chair, piled high with her stuff, and she complained that my power cord was touching her shoe and that the spoiled babies of Upper West Side yuppies were crying too loudly, and that it was frikkin’ freezing outside and that life in general just sucked.

As experienced laptop road warriors know, once you snag a good table near an electrical outlet at Starbucks, you are not moving except in the event of an actual emergency. And once you snag a window seat at a solo table, you are basically prepared to work doggedly sans bathroom visits AND coffee if your absence will imperil your hold on the table.

Fearing that my scary Starbucks neighbor might smash my laptop should I leave my post to order a coffee while sprinting to the potty, I worked in a state of dire discomfort for nearly an entire hour, trying to concentrate on my work and not the candy bar wrappers accumulating on her table or my increasing need to run to the bathroom which seemed paradoxical given my now-unbearable thirst.

At the brink of near-collapse, I finally made a run for it, scoring a restroom with the beautiful word VACANT on the door without as much as a minute's wait, ordering not just coffee but a bottle of that ridiculously overpriced eco-friendly water, a pack of buttery, ridiculously caloric madeleines and a cheese and fruit platter on my way back...as if I were about to hunker down in an underground bunker for the rest of the afternoon.

I practically sacrificed a goat in gratitude when I returned to my table with my loot and everything was just as I left it.

Thus relieved and fortified with sugar, water, caffeine and protein, I was able to work for the next two hours, willing myself to almost ignore crazy lady who must have gone through six candy bars and smoked about as many cigarettes when she was not having crazy conversations on her cellphone, which I suspected of being a toy.

Checking the time, I realized I needed to leave and started shutting down my laptop.

And that's when the unmistakable intro to Elliott Smith's “Waltz #2” began over the Starbucks sound system, the slow rat-a-tat drum beat, the guitar strumming in three-quarter time, the piano joining the party, the crooning John Lennon-like voice finally filling the air with the song’s opening lyrics:

First the mike
Then a half cigarette
Singing "Cathy's Clown,"
That's the man
She's married to now
That's the girl that he takes around town

I sat up straight in my chair, ears straining toward the music. Omigod, I thought. That song. I haven't heard it in such a long time!

I'm never gonna know you now
But I'm gonna love you anyhow

Where had "Waltz #2"gone for so many years? Or was it there all along, living in the musicsphere and I simply didn't have the ears to hear it? Elliott Smith's stubborn sorrow resides in that song, all his pain and longing, his well of loneliness, his broken heart... and I had actually forgotten about it.

Yet now, at this very moment, it came back into my life and demanded that attention be paid. So I did... and the crazy lady, my laptop, my coffee, the other customers, the fact of Monday and my work simply evaporated. For a moment I couldn't even remember where I was headed once I left Starbucks. It was just me and the music, me and Elliott Smith, locked in a courtly embrace, waltzing through time and space. And, was it my imagination or had someone raised the volume on this song? It sounded loud, good loud but much louder than the previous songs, which I barely even heard. Perhaps one of the baristas also loved "Waltz #2" and pumped up the volume. The effect was holistic. I was surrounded by mournful melody, carried in a bubble of sadness that was oddly comforting.

A week has passed since that magical moment and I must have listened to "Waltz #2" seventy or eighty times. I have brooded over the candid disclosure: “Tell mister man with impossible plans/to just leave me alone/in the place where I make no mistakes/in the place where I have what it takes,” and wondered who was being addressed. His famously abusive stepfather? The world at large?

During this time, I also re-read all the newspaper accounts of Elliott Smith’s suicide and the theories behind it. I contemplated his cosmic despair. I wept over his photograph and the statement released by his family. I downloaded "Waltz #2" from Middle Babe's iTunes library, thereby freaking her out. ("What? That's MY favorite Elliott Smith song! You can't have it! You're a grown-up!") I have run on the elliptical trainer to it on an endless loop for 40 minutes, several times. My BlackBerry ring tone is now its chorus. I purchased the sheet music from musicnotes.com and will be singing it this week with Mary Rodgers. And I am learning how to play it on the piano.

Am I obsessed with "Waltz #2?"

No doubt.

Have I indulged in an adolescent-like fixation regarding the artist, his music and its message?

Possibly.

But if "Waltz #2," or any song, can make crazy people disappear, can transport a fortysomething woman from the mundane reality of a Manhattan Monday into a magical realm of transcendent beauty, it is the truest kind of art and will live on forever.

Hook-Up = Heartbreak? Ask George Clooney!

No one dates anymore, I was recently informed by a young woman of college age. They either do casual hook-ups or rush to get married.

Really?

I've been hearing about this dating-free philosophy for some time now, have even seen signs of the fact that we are becoming a Hook-Up Nation but what I want to know is -- beyond a fling or two or three, who actually believes that emotion-less, commitment-free sexual relationships are desirable?

The quick answer, it might appear, is boys and men, but George Clooney recently informed me otherwise. The no-strings-attached fling can be downright demoralizing, he told me during a recent intimate encounter at the Loews Lincoln Square Theatre where he was seen racing to the home of his hook-up to see her between business trips. And why was this? Because, despite his up-in-the-air lifestyle and allergy to coupledom, it turns out that he actually cared about her. Now that I've gotten the Gospel according to George, I'm intent upon spreading the word that men have feelings too, though I'm all-too-aware that the concept of the sheerly recreational sexual encounter (termed famously the Zipless F^*% by Erica Jong in Fear of Flying some thirty years ago) seems tailor-made to the male species, reputed to be sluttish from birth.

But lest I jump to pre-feminist conclusions, said my college campus spy, I should know that girls were fully complicit in perpetuating this dating-free ethic. They have willingly adopted the Hook-Up habit themselves, thereby becoming hookees, or as our mothers might have wisely said - hookers.

It was liberating, she insisted. Why should boys be the only ones to fool around?

Only under strenuous cross-examination did this young lass confess that her female friends frequently ended up getting emotionally screwed because they cannot squelch the secret hope that the boys they jump into bed with might end up liking them. Significantly, my source admitted to being unusual for her generation, craving neither young marriage nor the casual encounter but that obsolete thing called a relationship which involves a prehistoric life form known as a boyfriend.

It's obviously not only college girls who end up disappointed by this decree of divorce between body and soul. I've heard from single men who are in a state of near-despair, longing for an intimate and caring relationship and fearing that most modern women are infected with the wish to only hook up with them. One twentysomething lad reflected on the general state of things with real sadness, bemoaning the loss of sincerity in human interactions, expressing his desire to bond body, heart and soul as possibly old-fashioned and increasingly unrealistic.

True, I know way more women who weep for the lack of a loving partner but the fact that I even know a handful of men who are disappointed in love informs me that the ethic of the Hook-Up as standard operating procedure is an illusion, if not an outright lie.

And though it is considered to be the new, cool way to relate, the habit of hooking up is actually a two-dimensional trap, killing off the possibility of having a truly erotic or romantic experience, both of which form the whipped cream and cherry on the sundae of life.

Which brings me back to George Clooney and two recent films that riff on the limitations of the Hook-Up habit from a male perspective -- Up in the Air and 500 Days of Summer.

If you have seen neither film and wish to do so, please stop reading this post as it contains a plot spoiler in the next paragraph.

Maybe it's because I just saw these films weeks apart (one in the theatre, the other aboard my Continental flight back from Israel) but I found it striking that both Clooney's Ryan Bingham and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Tom Hansen have their hearts broken by women who treat them all-too-cavalierly.

Who participate avidly in the relationship and then withdraw, revealing themselves to be not the least bit emotionally invested.

Which is striking and kind of Man-Bites-Dog because we know all about women getting screwed over by men. But there is nothing liberating or score-settling about the screw-you shoe being worn by the other foot. Instead, as a filmgoer and fellow human, I felt deep disgust toward Zooey Deschanel's and Vera Farmiga's characters Summer and Alex, indeed, had a fleeting fantasy that I might re-educate them in a Clockwork Orange kind of way, teaching them how to treat the people who care about them with kindness and concern.

And though it is only The Movies, I found this plot twist important and reflective of the way that things really are.

Which is that our hearts are located within our bodies.

And that real people don't come in single-use packaging to be used once or twice and tossed, that is to say, to be treated like hookers.

Feliz Navidad 2009

For those who ride the rails, a familiar sight and sound, this one captured aboard the #1 train heading downtown from W116th Street to W14th Street.

This photograph and post is dedicated to our valiant cleaning woman -- Leidy Dominquez -- who keeps the urban bungalow clean and orderly.

Leidy and thousands of others like her are the unsung heroes of this city, the hard-working people who remain below the radar screen in order to keep this town running.

To Leidy and all her amigos -- Feliz Navidad!!!

From Cosi to Carnegie Hall

At 8:10 in the morning, Cosi was sparsely populated by Upper West Siders who seemed dazed to be awake and out in public at that hour.

Wearing a blazer and pashmina incongruously atop gym clothes, I gulped a Cafe Americano, fortified with an extra shot of espresso, and virtually inhaled a rare chocolate chip muffin in an effort to enter the state of alertness necessary for a brainstorming session followed by a workout at the JCC, just around the corner.

The subject at hand was the normalization of Israeli society in the post-Intifada era. The matter we were discussing was how a people who are accustomed to the adrenaline-rush of crisis deal with life-as-usual. Our focus was the cultural landscape of the country over the past couple of years, the facets of life that were now coming into focus, the new direction of contemporary art, even the welcome proliferation of wine bars...a clear indication of a society that can finally relax.

Not that things are perfect, as we were quick to point out to each other, noting the political and religious issues. But still...for those of us who pop back and forth between New York and Jerusalem as if were a Metro-North commute from midtown to, say, New Rochelle, there has been a profound sea-change.

"I find myself un-obsessed with checking the news from Israel every hour for the first time in over a decade," I confessed.

"Me too!!!" affirmed my breakfast mate, smacking the table in solidarity "It sometimes feels like something is missing without the constant sense of emergency."

"The question is -- can Jews handle calm for long?" I mused aloud. "We're so excitable. Were we born this way or conditioned by our history?"

That question hovered in the air as I took my seat, twelve hours later, for Part II of the Messiah performance last night at Carnegie Hall. Unlike the public sing-ins of the Messiah which I have attended, this performance was dull and pro-forma, kind of like a religious service one was duty-bound to attend or an endless funeral for someone you hardly knew. Sitting between HOBB and a German tourist, I felt trapped, bored and increasingly sleepy.

Indeed, just before everyone rose for the Halleluyah Chorus, HOBB roused me from sleep.

Dazed and somewhat embarrassed, I was also amazed. I had never fallen asleep in public before, rarely slept on planes, had an abnormal ability to endure sleeplessness.

Just before closing my eyes (having tried first to read the novel I lugged with me, yet failing, due to the dim lighting) I remembered thinking that the performance was not just boring, it was truly soporific, should be marketed, indeed, as a sleep-aid. I recalled looking around and taking note of the vast sea of placidity, the calm Christians who had come to hear this, the ultimate Christmas-time cultural offering, realizing that their perception of the performance likely differed dramatically from my own.

I tried to focus on the message of Handel’s Messiah, tried to try on the theological underpinning, share, perhaps, the sanctity of the impending day for those who believe that Jesus was the son of God and that this hugely commercialized holiday marked his miraculous, virginal birth.

Tried and failed miserably. Failed to rustle up even an iota of empathy. Found myself feeling, instead, confrontational towards Christianity for its history of persecution of Jews, found myself sneering as I spotted classically goyish faces or outfits, wondered if I appeared overtly Jewish to those sitting around me with my dark hair and eyes and cynical mien.

As the chorus sang “Glorious,” I longed for the campy, sacrilegious glory of Jesus Christ Superstar instead, for the critical gaze of Constantine’s Sword, for the music of Madonna.

Standing, dazed, during the Halleluyah Chorus, I wondered at my ability to fall asleep when normally I would be beset by that ultimate of Jewish existential modes -- shpilkes -- roughly and inaccurately translated as being on pins and needles, more aptly described as a state of extreme and pervasive agitation.

I thought about the various catalysts of artistic inspiration, wondered which would be proven by history to be the stronger muse -- heartbreak, hysteria or Halleluyah.

Sitting in the balcony of Carnegie Hall last night I felt alienated by my Jewish tendency towards shpilkes, my interpretation of the calm beauty of Handel's Messiah as totally and utterly boring, an assault of normalcy evoking in me the desire to tune out and seek refuge in my haunted dreams.

Morante & Moravia: A Brand New Obsession

I will be brief...as brief as Elsa Morante's outfit in the picture to the left.

Just three books into my love affair with Alberto Moravia (Contempt; Boredom and The Conformist), I learned from my brother-in-law that if I loved Moravia, then I would really, really love his wife, Elsa Morante.

I was vaguely aware of Morante, knew that her novel La Storia (History) is regarded as a 20th century masterpiece. I also knew that both writers were half-Jewish, a fact of great consequence in Europe during the time of the Second World War.

Already, a stack of Moravia's novels awaits me, bedside; to these, I must now add Morante's works. Considering the output of both, I think my literary dance card will be full for a few months. And that's without even consulting the biographical works, which I most certainly will have to, in order to feed my voracious interest in the lives of writers who are married to each other.

I wrote last month about my penchant for burning through the complete works of a single writer, immersing myself in his or her life, supplementing their work with biographical data -- sometimes in the form of books, other times cribbed from cyberspace.

Even more fulfilling, though, is discovering a literary couple, reading him, reading her and reading about their shared life. Over the years, I have become a groupie of Paul and Jane, Diana and Lionel, Sylvia and Ted, Jean Paul and Simone, Dash and Lillian, Vera and Vlad...to name a few. (No matter that Vera didn't write; her partnership with her husband was entirely literary.)

I was even briefly obsessed with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris (who committed suicide) and found myself wondering about Stan and Jan Berenstain, authors of the Berenstain Bears series. The teenage Joyce Maynard who lived with the much-older J.D. Salinger for a while in the seventies was fascinating, if disturbing, for me to comtemplate. More recent writing couples, however -- Nicole Kraus and Jonathan Safran Foer; Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, for instance -- evoke not a shred of curiosity in me.

The literary marriage is both a glorious ideal and a total nightmare, dangling the paradoxical promise of soulmate and eternal nemesis. There is shared ambition and deadly competition. There is the clash of ego; the clamoring for all-engulfing attention. There is the desire to serve as The Muse. There is the infantile demand to be read and savored; to be held, to be heard, to be seen as one sees oneself.

And then there are the complicating factors of sex, money, children, family and overlapping circles of friends.

And success coming to one but not the other.

Though I try to enforce strict rules with myself, refraining from reading biographical information until I have completely swallowed the literary ouevre of the respective writer, sometimes I weaken and take a peek.

Usually, this is a deadly mistake as the information I discover proves so enticing that I am in grave danger of abandoning the reading of the work prematurely and diving headlong into the heart of the marriage...where I never wish to leave.

And when a photograph of the couple is glimpsed -- invariably showing them as impossibly glamorous, as in the case of this picture of Morante and Moravia -- it has the same effect as portraits of movie stars have on the young and impressionable, blinding and dazzling me, seizing hold of my imagination, making me lovesick, nearly delusional, providing me with a portal through which I can understand my own life and marriage, a context within which I can view my own life as a great dramatic work.

The Midnight Scream

Exactly 45 minutes ago a bloodcurling scream rang out through the frigid night. Rushing to the window, I saw scores of Columbia students hanging out of their dorm windows, arms flailing, mouths agape. It was a surreal, horrifying spectacle.

Oh yeah, I realized, as the melodramatic keening continued, looping into arias, traumatizing the winter air. The Midnight Scream.

The Midnight Scream, a biannual ritual, typically takes place the night before finals commences but I understand from Jody, Middle Babe's friend who is currently sitting on our dog-chewed red leather couch, that the test schedule got a bit screwed up this semester and the Midnight Scream is towards the end of exams.

No matter. It is a quirky, oddly-reassuring thing to witness: this witty expression of exasperation and panic in the face of finals. This expression of solidarity in the face of stress. This communal ritual of catharsis.

"Today is the greatest day of my life," proclaimed Middle Babe to me last week, the day after her last final. It had been an intense semester for her, having switched in her junior year to a philosophy major. I recall when Big Babe was a Columbia student and participant in the Midnight Scream, not so very long ago. I make a mental note to drop him an email about hearing the scream tonight.

Or perhaps I'll tell him in person when I visit him in Berlin in three weeks' time. I can casually mention it as I unpack the goodies I have brought him from New York, which might include the following items, thoughtfully itemized by him in an email he sent me earlier; the first installment of his annual Berlin Wishlist.

BIG BABE'S BERLIN WISHLIST, 2010, VOLUME I

1. A study, heavy-ish coffee tamper with 49mm (2") diameter (should be easy to find at Zabars) + a thermometer for heating frothing milk (we might have one of these at home, in the drawer with all the non-silverware cutlery stuff)
2. 6 lbs of Zabar's whole bean coffee (3 French-Italian and 3 dark espresso)(I'll write more about food later, but you know the drill - babka, lox, cheddar, melinda's etc...)
3. The myriad dvds that have arrived to dad's office over the past two weeks: feel free to open any and all boxes. The DVDs I'd like to have close by are: Pandora's Box, Le Plaisir, La Ronde, The Earrings of Madame De..., The Seventh Seal and Last Year at Marienbad.

From the couch in the living room, Middle Babe requests a Snapple. She is wrapped in a blanket, Alfie the Pomeranian sleeping happily in her lap. Jody's snowboots are melting onto the wooden floor. Shara, visiting from England, checks information online for a train to Newark.

As for me, I'm frankly falling asleep.

The Midnight Scream, after all, was 45 minutes ago.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Today, I booked my flight for Berlin next month to visit Big Babe and research my forthcoming article on the young ex-pat hipster scene in Berlin.

Not that Big Babe is a hipster or anything. But he's part of the scene. And it is crying out to be documented, especially by a post-Holocaust era American Jew whose son has decided to make the city his adopted home. It'll also be great fun to hang out with Big Babe and his friends in Berlin's clubs and bars in the name of reportage.

Speaking of fun, at this very moment, a marching band is making its way across the Columbia campus towards our apartment on Amsterdam. The ability to witness such acts of chutzpah and silliness is one of the best parts of living across from a university. I rush to the window and watch the parade; the band members are decked out in military uniforms, feathered hats and all. There are tubas and cymbals. A true celebration... except for those who might be asleep at 1 am.

I've been sitting at the dining room table, writing in the dark -- a favorite habit. At this hour of the night, the dark settles around me, velvety and lush. About an hour ago, I fell asleep next to HOBB while watching Mad Men on DVD in a desperate effort to catch up with our friends who have been following the show since it first aired, succumbing to jet-lag from my recent trip to Israel.

Roused from my slumber by HOBB, I staggered to our bedroom, drunkenly undressed and slipped shivering beneath the covers. Thus delivered to bed, I was therefore surprised to find my mind suddenly snapping to attention, the delayed result, no doubt, of the strong cup of Zabar's French Italian blend I brewed just before running out for the screening and talkback of Inglourious Basterds at the Jewish Theological Seminary earlier tonight.

So, here I am, writing in the dark, burning off the caffeine, listening to the Columbia marching band play "Sweet Dreams," trying to recollect the highlights of my trip to Israel.

We returned Sunday night. HOBB had been away for three-plus weeks; me, for only one. As always, the trip was mindblowing and all too brief. There was Tel Aviv and Herziliyah and Jerusalem; dinners, drinks, endless cups of cafe hafukh, huge salads that were impossible to finish, gallery openings and parties, the famous Israeli breakfasts, transcendent davening, epic conversations, three different places to sleep, passion of the variety that only seems possible in hotel rooms, business meetings, friends, relatives, the lighting of Chanuka candles, red wine, schwarma, Hebrew in my lungs, King David whispering love poems in my ear, an ancient song in my heart.

There were the imprints of all my previous trips, beginning in 1968, when I first came to Israel as a young girl. Amazingly, I have reached the point where I lost track of how many times I've been, so frequent is the fact of my eastward travel. The amount has far exceeded thirty, possibly more. Last year alone, I journeyed to Israel three times -- four, if you include last week's trip.

There was the international writer's conference on the theme of exile at Mishkenot Sha'ananim and Beit Avi Chai. There were the unforgivably boring sessions on what it means to be a Jewish writer, there was music and poetry, there was the thrill of rubbing shoulders with the writers in attendance; there was the magic of hearing great authors talk about the experience of exile in their lives and work.

There was the visit to Ruti the psychic in Rehovot - my first such foray - the startling truths she told me about myself and my life. There was the joyous discovery that Ya'acov, the ancient Jerusalemite who managed the kiosk near the German Colony apartment I lived in during our sabbatical year in '97/'98, was alive and well...and still stationed behind the manual orange squeezing machine in his tiny shop on Emek Refaim.

And then, before I knew it, there was the return to New York and Little Babe, whom we had left behind. There was the joyous anticipation of Middle Babe's return from college for winter break. There was the comical, near-hysterical reunion with Alfie and Nala, our loyal Pomeranians.

It is now 1:30 in the morning. The activity of writing appears to have burned off the Zabar's coffee. The marching band has gone to bed, or was arrested for disturbing the peace. As my hyper-alertness wanes, I recall the film I saw earlier tonight, marveling at its artistry, power and message. As was amply noted when it first came out, months ago, Inglourious Basterds is not for the faint of heart, nor does it make apologies for the desire to exact vengeance on those who seek to kill us. On this, the sixth night of Chanuka, I think of the Maccabean spirit of the Basterds of the film and feel a deep bond of kinship.

Some of us are natural-born warriors. I am one, endowed with the instinct to fight for what is true and important and mine. There is no universal experience or agreed-upon quantity when it comes to an individual's experience of struggle; some are fated to face down Nazis while others are privileged (or stunted) by the lack of adversity in their lives. Most of us are delivered something in between.

I'd never visited a psychic in my life, heeding the Biblical verse, "Do not let a witch live." That, coupled with my basic skepticism about the validity of soothsayers and tea leaf readers kept me away. But it was my sister's birthday gift to me and Ruti the psychic -- Yemenite, crippled by childhood polio -- won my confidence, intuiting secrets and intimate details ofmy life. She told me that I arrived into the world like Superman, of mysterious provenance. She told me that, like Superman, I had a hidden identity because I had to adapt myself to my adopted surroundings. She spoke of fortitude and solitude. She spoke of my path, the struggles I have endured and their meaning. Looking into my eyes, she spoke the truth about my unique experience of exile -- both artistic and existential.

My time with Ruti was time out of time, a goosebump-inducing adventure, one of many in the Holy Land. I did not fear the Divine retribution that comes from consorting with those who channel dark forces, having recently learned that witches and ogres more frequently come disguised as holy people. Instead, I was mesmerized by Ruti's kindness and her smooth, coffee-colored skin, comforted by her respectful regard for the stranger who sat before her, captivated by her cheekbones, her apartment, the pictures of her family in long-ago Israel, the one I remember from my own, ever-accessible childhood.

At this hour, there is a blending of here and there, then and now, what once was and what always will be. At this hour, Hashem's hashgacha prah'ti feels as accessible as my memories of childhood; it forms a thick and cozy blanket, like the quilt I will shortly be pulling up to my chin. As I recall my recent visit to Israel from the epicenter of a New York night, I see it as complete, a lovely little package, a charming collection of short stories, a ballad, the pillow on which to rest my increasingly sleepy head, tablet for my dreams.

Gimme Al Maysles

"Hey, you're dressed perfectly for the movie," said a young woman as I burst into the lobby of the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, ten minutes into the screening of Gimme Shelter, the iconic documentary of the Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour, directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.

Having shivered my way through the day in my black mini-dress and over-the-knee socks, I had to admit that I was, indeed, channeling some of the spirit of the era. The compliment lifted a bit of my dismay at arriving late, rain-soaked and chilled.

"It literally just started," the woman added, soothingly, reading my thoughts. I smiled gratefully, stepping inside the screening room.

I had seen Gimme Shelter two and a half decades earlier, nevertheless, the image of a stunningly young Mick Jagger on the screen startled me. Slumped down in his seat as lawyer Melvin Belli negotiated over the phone with the management of the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco in advance of the band's performance, Jagger is boyish, barely out of adolescence, the same age as my oldest child, Big Babe.

Though it was conceived as love 'n peace Woodstock West -- with other performers on hand, such as Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young -- the Altamont concert turned into a complete disaster, with security provided by the local Hell's Angels, members of the audience repeatedly rushing the stage, kids climbing the scaffolding, stoned people dancing naked, women giving birth and violent confrontations.

The most infamous of these confrontations resulted in the stabbing death of a young black man named Meredith Hunter by a member of the Hell's Angels as the Stones performed "Under My Thumb." The filmmakers accidentally captured footage of the killing, revealing that Hunter had a gun. The fact of the killing -- often erroneously referred to a murder -- overshadows the film, providing an extreme if accurate depiction of the lawlessness that was the flipside to the social, sexual and cultural revolution of the times.

Gimme Shelter is a revolution of its own in terms of filmmaking, documenting in an utterly unscripted way, interacting with the unfolding drama, revealing by telling detail, asking the audience to engage in a personal way, capturing the zeitgeist unlike any other film of the time.

But it wasn't just the prospect of revisiting Gimme Shelter that drew me out of my house on a rainy Wednesday night; it was the post-screening talkback with Albert Maysles and cameraman Kevin Keating.

Having met Al the previous year at a party held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (and subsequently having been invited to a Christmas party in his Harlem brownstone) I was utterly charmed by him... as is everyone he meets. For the first ten minutes we spoke, I had no idea that I was talking to the most renowned documentary filmmaker of the day (though I knew he was someone extraordinary) and then Big Babe whispered to me that we were in the presence of Al Maysles. Entirely without pretense or self-importance, Mr. Maysles is remarkable on many levels. His warm candor -- coupled with his menschlichkeit -- is not a small part of his legend.

And then there are the glasses, spoken of by many, fetishized, elevated to celebrity status recently by Barneys New York, which started an Al Maysles Eyewear line.

I was greatly looking forward to the post-film talkback this past Wednesday evening, having not seen Al for an entire year. While I knew that I could expect memorable stories and valuable behind-the-scenes glimpses into the making of Gimme Shelter, what I did not anticipate is that I would leave the event feeling as if I had just sat at the feet of a master who imparted valuable life lessons.

Over the course of a generous hour and change, Al Maysles and Kevin Keating provided the longed-for glimpses into the making of the film (including ample insights in Grey Gardens, Salesman and other film projects), but what left me nearly breathless -- every cell in my body standing at attention -- are what I call Pirke Albert or the Ethics of Albert. In other words, his teaching. His Torah. Herewith, I have reproduced some of them:

Turn on your camera and let it capture life, unscripted, as it unfolds. Let it record spontaneous conversation, unseen moments...the parent weeping against the bedroom wall, the banter of six-year-olds, the spoken last will and testament.

To pay attention is to honor, not to exploit. To film is to immortalize.

Much of contemporary culture is entertainment, which is merely distraction.

Greet life with curiosity...and compassion.

Seek to understand people.

The human face is not the only canvas of expression. Sometimes hands tell the story better.

Form relationships...and nurture them.

Learn to recognize genius.

Identify what is authentic...and focus on it.

Challenge misinterpretation of your work. Take arms against the judgment of critics.

Remember important insights handed to you by others.

Heroes are often found where they are least expected.

Serendipity and coincidence have a connection to the Divine.

Be there.

Be unafraid.

Embrace life.

Shira Means Song

Mary Rodgers teaches voice in her tiny studio apartment, well-situated in the heart of the Upper West Side – West 72nd Street, next door to Ricky's, down the block from Fine and Shapiro's, a hop, skip and a jump from Columbus Avenue.

Like Mary, the apartment is neat and spartan. Students come and go on a half-hour turn-over schedule throughout the day. Doobie the dog is the only other steady inhabitant. It is rare that the lessons start on time so I treat my 30-
minute lessons as if they were actually one hour long.

Mary is Middle Babe's professional coach, discovered when my daughter embraced singing as her art while yet in elementary school. I first encountered Mary’s empire from the perspective of the parent who sat on the couch in the dining room/living room during her child's lessons.

During those years, I loved to sink back into the cushions and hear my daughter discover the range and possibilities of her voice in the other room, adored hearing Mary give out praise and guidance, thrilled to the thought of my child getting the proper push to pursue her dreams.

When Middle Babe hit high school, she went to Mary's on her own, sometimes on the way back from her school, located on the East Side, nearly straight across the park from W72nd Street. During the gap year after high school, Middle Babe went abroad and the lessons stopped. From there, it was off to college in Maryland and only nostalgic visits back to Mary; a half hour here, 30 minutes there, separated sometimes by an entire year.

Last spring, Middle Babe developed polyps on her vocal chords with weeks left to her school play, in which she had a prominent singing role. She had to drop the part -- and her major -- start therapy and concentrate on healing.

Virtually overnight, my songbird became a philosopher, excelling in her new pursuit, stoically redirecting her energies until such time that she might resume her musical trajectory...if so she chooses.

Paradoxically, it was during the autumn following Middle Babe's voice trauma that I underwent a series of personal cataclysms that pushed me to contemplate an untapped instrument that I possessed -- my singing voice.

And while I harbored no illusions about the professional potential of my endeavor, I believed strongly in the power of my breath, in the passion I might express -- the anger, the disappointment, the pain, the hope, the quest for transcendence and redemption -- through the act of allowing melody to pass through my lips.

I wished to reclaim something that had been taken from me and singing was my means.

So I called Mary and set up regular sessions. On my first visit, I told her about my name, which means song or poem. I told her that this pursuit was spiritual, not artistic or career-directed. I spoke to her about the singer-songwriters I love, the lyrics that speak to me; the music that has provided the soundtrack to my life.

Thus we began. Mary’s lessons are half vocal exercises, half singing. The choice of the music is entirely up to the student. I told Mary that in about two weeks, she would begin to see a pattern to the songs I selected.

It began with “Sisters of Mercy,” morphed into “Halleluyah,” moved into “The Gypsy’s Wife,” turned into “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues,” and is currently perched on “Alone Again, Naturally.”

Singing alongside Mary is unlike anything else I’ve undertaken. It makes me feel goofy and graceful at the same time; self-conscious and weirdly self-satisfied. Though I’ve sang along with each of the aforementioned songs dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of times, the experience of singing while standing by her piano, facing a mirror, is entirely new.

I mostly read the lyrics from the sheet music or close my eyes when I know them by heart, but every now and then I catch my reflection and regard it in a combination of embarrassment and admiration. Do I look normal singing, I wonder? Could I do this in public? How should I set my features? Should I even think about what my singing face looks like?

“Ogod, your singing face!” groaned Middle Babe recently at the Shabbat table. We were singing Shalom Aleichem and I was really into it, closing my eyes, swaying, clapping my hands. Little Babe joined his sister in snickering. Over the past couple of years, I have learned from my children that I have a variety of highly amusing faces, chief among them - the dancing face. Middle Babe has lampooned this to no end, affecting a hipster’s expressionless mug, shaking her hair, shimmying her shoulders, mouthing the words, “I’m so cool.”

But much more than the startling reflection of my face in song, it has been the lyrics that have jumped out at me over the past five weeks, providing commentary on my life at this moment in time. I have hugged certain words to my heart, been shocked and pained by others, soothed and comforted by still others. The melodies that accompany the words seep straight into my soul. Like an adolescent fixated on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or the Beatles’ White Album, I am obsessed with reading meaning into these songs.

Within and without the cocoon of Mary's apartment, the words of Leonard Cohen, Elton John and Raymond O’Sullivan have befriended me on my personal journey. Even now, there is a multi-colored swirl of lyrics in my head, forming a magnificent cloak of sorts, perhaps like the one Jacob fashioned for his favorite son, Joseph. It goes like this: we weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be alright and even though it all went wrong I stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Halleluyah she said my body is the light my body is the way more than ever I simply love you more than I love life itself seems to me that there are more hearts broken in the world that can’t be mended left unattended what do we do what do we do?

Columbia Campus 12/1/09 7:40 p.m.

The view earlier tonight as I crossed the campus on my way to the subway at 116th and Broadway from Amsterdam.

Magical.

Eight Hours on Saturday Night

One hour after Shabbat ended, I sat behind the wheel of our Honda with Middle Babe, Little Babe and our Pomeranians Alfie and Nala, negotiating where we would pick up our salads for the impending trip to Towson, Maryland, home of my daughter’s college.

It was the Saturday night of the Thanksgiving weekend and the plan was to start the trip before the traveling madness set in, spend a day in the charming town of Hampden, do some local Target shopping, settle my daughter in her dorm and get on the road sometime in the range of 5 pm on Sunday afternoon.

At 6 pm on Saturday night, I didn't have food on my mind but Middle Babe made the case that instead of eating Cinnabons and guzzling Starbucks from the endless rest stops along the New Jersey Turnpike, we could enjoy decent dinners. Though I was eager to hit the road, I had to admit that her suggestion made sense and relented. Thus did our first stop on the Bungalow Family Saturday Night Road Trip become the new Whole Foods outpost on Columbus Avenue.

When I say that I sat behind the wheel of our Honda, what I really mean is that just before our road trip commenced, I was rendered temporarily immobile due to a combination of post traumatic stress and pre-trip stress. The previous fifteen minutes had been a scene out of a dysfunctional family drama -- or comedy -- with a Marx Brothers-like failed first attempt to leave the apartment en masse that ended in Middle Babe's lava lamp flying out of my arms and crashing to bits in our hallway while our pooches fled in terror and red viscous matter spread all over the floor.

Sitting in my car -- sans lava lamp - daughter texting frantically on her BlackBerry, son plugged into his iPod, I contemplated the three hour journey ahead, wondering if I had lost my mind completely. Though I didn't know it at the time, the broken lava lamp was a premonition.

Eight hours later, when we finally pulled into the driveway of the Sheraton North Baltimore after a hideous crawl down I95, due to an earlier accident in Delaware, I felt certifiably insane, not to mention homicidal (though I shouldn't really use that word in this context because last year, a father of two from Long Island killed his wife and daughters in this very hotel. The room was on the 10th floor. We made a point of requesting any floor but). For about $60, I could have put Middle Babe on an Amtrak back to Baltimore and gone out dancing instead of staring at the ironic license plate of the car in front of me – Bashert – wondering if it was all a cruel joke.

And yet.

Here’s the takeaway from our Saturday evening adventure. For eight straight hours, I was locked inside an increasingly messy vehicle with two of the people I love the most in the world…and our adorable, uncomplaining pups. For eight straight hours, we listened to rock count downs, local news and Spanish music, played Elton John and The Talking Heads, told family stories and talked, talked, talked.

Middle Babe and I talked about relationships and friends and dreams and disappointments. We talked about food and our bodies, her ambitions and her studies. She explained just why she hated the movie A Serious Man, which I took her and Little Babe to on the night of Thanksgiving. We talked about Judaism and God. I was overcome with pride in her intelligence and integrity.

In the back seat, Little Babe dozed on and off, listening to his music, interjecting a comment here and there, providing entertainment and comic relief. Every now and then, he joined the conversation. Middle Babe responded to him, sounding like a sister, a mother, a friend.

Sometimes we vented about the horrible waste of our Saturday night, laughed ruefully at our foolishly optimistic plan to crawl into bed at the Sheraton around 10 pm and watch a scary movie together, or maybe SNL. Despite our Whole Foods salads, we ended up buying Cinnabons and Starbucks, finding excuses to pull off the road at the various rest stops in the vain hope that the traffic would ease once we inched our way back onto the highway.

The takeaway from our eight hour traffic jam is that we were together. Is that our eight hour drive became an awful yet awesome adventure, a moment in our shared history and that one day, when we looked back at this night, we would remember it as magic.

Erev Thanksgiving

It is the day before Thanksgiving, gunmetal grey, chilly, harbinger of winter.

Though I haven't called to check up on her, Middle Babe should be en route to her 8:20 Acela from Baltimore's Penn Station and Little Babe left 10 minutes ago for his half-day at school.

This year -- with Big Babe in Berlin and HOBB in the Holy Land, it is the three of us for the holiday, plus FOBB and MOBB -- Father and Mother of Bungalow Babe. Whether our Thanksgiving feast will be at their home in Great Neck, a local restaurant or the hospital is up for grabs. Yesterday, FOBB underwent surgery for kidney stones and had an overnight stay in the hospital. While he was in good spirits when I left him at midnight, the doctor will determine whether he can go home today.

Though my dad is itching to get out of the hospital, Thanksgiving will be wherever he and my mom are. In my childhood home, Thanksgiving was celebrated with enthusiasm and great emotion. My dad recited the special Hallel prayer. It was, and still is, considered a Yom Tov of sorts.

Among the recent extremist developments in Jewish life, the one that has bothered me no end is the decision not to celebrate Thanksgiving, because somehow it is "goyish" and in conflict with Judaism.

This notion -- small-minded, based in ignorance and generally silly -- is especially galling because America, of all countries, has been especially hospitable to the Jews. The very notion of giving thanks draws on Jewish tradition, obviously, and there is no denominational claim on gratitude.

"Thank God," my father sighed last night when the Percoset began to take effect. He sat in the straight-backed chair in his paisley hospital gown, looking somehow regal, reminiscent of the pulpit rabbi he had been. We had been talking for hours and I was reminded of the silver lining of these hospital stays and visits -- the extra time we take with friends and loved ones in the aftermath of surgery or illness. Some of my sweetest memories of being with my parents have taken place in hospital rooms; some of our deepest conversations have occured during these times. As the eldest daughter, it is my privilege and honor to be with them in this way.

The hour approached midnight and my father looked concerned for my trip homeward. Though it had taken me two hours to get to the hospital because of the holiday traffic out to Long Island, I knew my trip back to Manhattan would be a breeze, likely under half an hour. I asked my father if I could help him to bed and he dismissed the notion; he was now doing just fine.

I love you so much, he said to me as I kissed him on his forehead.

I love you back, Aba, I said, tears of gratitude springing to my eyes for my father, our conversation, the memories we share, this moment, this good recovery, Thanksgiving looming.

Pink Dress from New Orleans

Nala the Pomeranian has found herself a comfy perch beneath the pink dress from New Orleans that hangs in my closet, the one with the cabbage roses and slim fifties waistline.

I wore this dress last night to a Swing Dance party at the JCC in Manhattan, hoping that the charms of my outfit would compensate for my inability to do the fancy footwork I would surely see on the dance floor.

To complete the look, I added a silk flower to my hair. My dress-for-success strategy both worked and back-fired, prompting compliments, yet also making me highly conspicuous as the klutzy girl in the back of the room, turning the wrong way, knocking into people and generally dancing with two left feet. (Shout out to everyone who saw the ultra-hilarious film, Best in Show)

Thankfully, there were lessons given in this method of dance and as the evening wore on, it became immaterial whether I officially knew the moves or not. I danced happily if hazardously, found people I knew, made new friends and thrilled to the sight of the pros on the dance floor. Had I not been famished, I would have stayed even past midnight.

As HOBB is in Israel, I went stag, only slightly concerned about being taken for a single woman. From previous experience, I knew that the chances of my actually dancing with a man my age were slim; more typically, I have danced with 80-year-old men, women or boys the age of Big Babe at the JCC.

And that's basically what happened last night...with the exception of the boyfriend of a friend or the guy in his sixties who was insistent upon teaching me the moves and spun me perilously on the dance floor, then pulled me in so hard he almost cracked my ribs.

When I wasn't dancing or talking to people, I tried to focus on the feeling of being alone at a dance party, aspired to recollect the experience of singledom, of being unpaired, of waiting to be asked or chosen or courted.

It was odd for sure, standing on the periphery as a married woman without her mate, having to tell a few eager guys that I was indeed married -- just to put it out there – then finding myself in the middle of a rather hilarious conversation with a guy in his early 30's, the kind of funny, flowing conversation that's only possible once the boundaries have been established.

With HOBB out of town this time, I set up a whirlwind social schedule, to echo the rather frenetic extra-curricular life we've been pursuing over the past month, a kind of jumpstart empty-nest reaction, though we still do have one chick in residence -- 14-year-old Little Babe.

Not that he minds being left alone...as long as there is Gan Asia to deliver chicken lo mein or Cafe Viva to bring the pizza or Fine and Shapiro to send up the cold cuts. And friends for the weekend. And the ability to text or call me.

Still, total child-neglect is not a good thing and I found myself hanging around till mid-day today, taking care of work, finishing a press release I had started previously, walking Alfie and Nala, being on hand during his cello and Japanese lessons, making phone calls.

It was sweet to be able to get bagels for my young adolescent and his friends this morning, grab a hug or two from him after they left, hear him pick out the notes to a Coldplay song on the piano, listen together to Elton John's Pinball Wizard, live, from his Captain Fantastic tour, play my favorite George Harrison song for him, note his darkening moustache as I said Shma with him on the mattress that is yet on our dining room floor, a vestige from his frat-house weekend with his buddies.

"This would make a sick dorm," he said sleepily as I kissed him on the forehead.

I was reminded, in that moment, of the incredibly sweet times the two of us have shared when HOBB has taken to the road, our sleepover parties, Sunday adventures, film-going, shared meals – in and out – travels and museum-hopping. Over 25 years of being a mom, I especially treasure the times I have solo-parented my children because of the magic bond of intimacy, the little world of Mom 'n Me that we created, our little clubhouse, just the two -- or three or four -- of us, Bonnie and Clyde, co-conspirators in the pursuit of fun.

But now Little Babe is a teen. "Do you mind if I go out?" I asked on Friday night before heading over to the Shabbat prayer, potluck dinner and Open Mike Night hosted by Romemu at the church on 105th and Amsterdam.

The boys were in the middle of a poker game. There was a moment of silence and then they burst out laughing. What a lame question, I thought as Little Babe assured me in his deep baritone that the boys would be great and the house will not have burned down in my absence.

It is now Sunday night, technically Monday morning. The house did not burn down but it is a huge frat-house mess. Though I threw out all the empty cans of soda, bags of popcorn, pizza boxes, cups and random plastic bags that littered the living room, the place is still in shocking condition.

I sit on my bed in running shorts, writing on my laptop well past the hour of midnight. Inside my closet, Nala has vanished but my pink dress from New Orleans still hangs pretty, reminding me of my adventures last night, of the store on Decatur street where I bought it, of times yet to come when I shall wear it and it will make me conspicuous, a grown-up girl in a flowered dress with a slim fifties waistline and pleats so plentiful that when I twirl around, it blossoms around me like a ballerina's tutu.