Is This the Little Boy at Play?

Admission ticket. Check.
Number 2 pencils. Check.
Water bottles. Check.
Advil. Check.
Diet Pepsi with caffeine. Check.
Bagel with Cream Cheese. Check.

Here is Little Babe, walking to the Ramaz Upper School to take the SATs. He is walking west on E78th Street, from Park Avenue where HOBB and I just dropped him off. The time is 7:44 a.m. Two seconds after I took this picture, he plugged in his iPod earbuds. Five seconds later, a hand reached around and a yarmulke was placed atop his head.

On the way to Ramaz, to keep the adrenaline flowing, we listened to Van Halen, The Police and Rush. We arrived at our destination as "Tom Sawyer" was playing.

This is my youngest child, the curly-haired moppet morphed into a dedicated rock musician without losing one ounce of his innate sweetness, no matter how hard he rocks the cynical vibe.

This is the step before that major step: the leave-taking.

"Are you sure you want to come along?" asked HOBB, skeptical, for I teach Sunday mornings.

I directed an incredulous, acid-infused glare toward my husband. After nearly 28 years of parenting, he has to ask?

I wouldn't miss this moment for anything.

Good luck, Little Babe and to all the Sunday SAT test-takers.

Good luck, young men and women who worry that this test means everything.

I wish for you the insight of Little Babe, which is that while there is the goal of getting a good score on a standardized test and the goal of building a good life, the relationship between the two is entirely unknowable.

Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed. Episode Two.

Here I am, in the fitting room of the T.J. Maxx on Columbus and 100th Street in NYC, where I stopped to return a dress between meetings. The decision to photograph myself in a mirror with my iPad was spontaneous and arose from the numerous compliments I received on my ensemble.

Apologies to Angelina for plagiarizing the leg-thrust maneuver. I only struck that pose so that my cool tights would be visible.

The fashion 411:

• Red pea coat from H&M, acquired about four years ago.
• Black Vivienne Tam dress from Loehmann's a month ago. Super comfy, super chic, super cheap.
• Nude tights with black bows from Loehmann's. 
• Red fake RayBans from Target.

And you cannot see them but I'm wearing my Dr. Marten's lace-ups.

You'll begin to notice a theme with my wardrobe. Short dresses, preferably black. Color that pops. Hats or sunglasses. Minimalist jewelry. I'll do an up close of my earrings, currently from Swarovski. I'm a huge fan as they offer a rich look on a shoestring.

Comments, please!

Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed: Part I

Precious Readers,

I hereby inaugurate a new fun feature to Bungalow Babe in the Big City -- a periodic fashion blog-within-a-blog called Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed.

A tip 'o the hat to HOBB for coming up with that way-cool title.

And speaking of hats... and tights and dresses and other articles of clothing... each post of Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed will include a narrative on the featured garments.

The settings for the photographs will vary from the interior of the Urban Bungalow to any photogenic location where I look relatively thin and wrinkle-free.

Herewith, the first installment of Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed:

Greetings Bungaleers!

Here I am, posing fetchingly on the new floor of my kitchen wearing a favorite ensemble: black sleeveless minidress, kooky tights and a hat I bought at a sidewalk vendor outside of Zabar's, last summer.

As my Dr. Martens are not visible in the photo above, I'm attaching a second pic that shows them:

As you can see, they are cute and clunky ankle-high lace-up boots that HOBB continually complains about as I like to wear them around the house. They are my third -- and most beloved -- pair of Dr. Martens. I am a HUGE fan of this brand, both for its design and construction. Doc Martens aren't cheap but you will end up wearing them until they disintegrate...which will likely not occur this century.

My dress is a StudioM cotton and rayon knit shift that I bought at Loehmann's a while ago. I wore it TO DEATH for a few years, then forgot about it and only found it when our house was being packed away during our recent renovation. As it was musty and dusty, I threw it in the laundry and it emerged clean, softer and shorter. The washing machine transformed the dress from something vaguely Amish into awesome. It is now fitted across the bust and ends about three inches above my knees.

The moral of the story is: NEVER THROW ANY ARTICLE OF CLOTHING OUT!!! You can always transform and repurpose it.

Paired with the dress are raspberry tights from American Apparel, a store I violently hate, except for their tights. Actually, I prefer tights from Hue, but the discount Danskin shop on Broadway and 82nd Street has been carrying the most boring colors lately, so I got lazy and ducked into the American Apparel near Fairway after a recent food shopping expedition.

And as I already mentioned, the hat is a street purchase, made of woven paper. It solves bad hair days and deflects rain. It cost about eight buckaroos.

To achieve these amazing pics, HOBB stood on top of the highly unstable step ladder we brought with us from our home in New Rochelle about 18 years ago. Terrified he would fall and break his neck, he summoned Little Babe to take the rest of the pics and spotted him while I lounged on the kitchen floor.

I'd love your comments.

Marriage, Schmarriage

"Have you noticed that everyone is splitting up suddenly?" said FFCOBB (fabulous female cousin of Bungalow Babe) yesterday as we sat around a backyard pool in that Shabbat no-man's land between lunch and havdalah at the family Bar Mitzvah that was held in the leafy, large-homed community of Englewood, NJ.

The observation -- affirmed by me -- provided ample grist for our gossip mill as we shared tales of friends whose long marriages had suddenly dissolved (with a delicious recounting of post-divorce sluttiness on the part of both the men and women we knew) agreeing that in most cases, the split followed a long period of simmering discontent.

Several hours later, seated around the cozy kitchen table of yet another FFCOBB, the conversation was revived and enlivened, with several themes emerging: relatively fast remarriage among the men, relatively demoralizing relationship prospects for the women...and the sharing of some actual scandals.

"Omigod," said the second FFCOBB to her husband, who joined us at the table. "This is really depressing. Let's not ever split up."

My fabulous male cousin, her husband, laughed with the security that comes from having a solid marriage, the kind that reminds me of what my long-married parents have.

I spent three days this past week hanging with POBB (parents of Bungalow Babe) in their newfound paradise -- Boca Raton's Century Village. In this pristine, perfect sunny compound of over 6,000 apartments, there are many long term marriages, reported FOBB (Father of Bungalow Babe.) Between the water aerobics, balance-training classes, gym visits, new apartment-hunting expeditions and poolside chats I attended with them, I got to see some of these marriages up close.

From what I could see, they are built on a sweet camaraderie, a life-long chumminess, an emotional intimacy that is nearly reflexive. There seems to be barely a membrane separating husband and wife, so that they have blended into one, two-headed entity.

"The most important thing is loyalty," stated MOBB (Mother of Bungalow Babe) when I asked her what she thought the secret of these long marriages was. "You've got to be the other person's best friend."

"You have to share, from the heart and soul," added FOBB. "Money. Dreams. Big Decisions."

"You are a unit," declared MOBB. "You form a united front. Being a good couple is the key to having a good family."

While in Boca, I had ample opportunity to observe my parents walking the walk of good coupledom in myriad ways. They helped each other throughout the day, often physically. They spoke constantly, sometimes arguing...yet constructively. They laughed frequently. When a new apartment -- closer to the shul -- became suddenly available, FOBB sprung into action, making an offer to the son of the recently-deceased owner even as we walked through the unit.

Though my dad was happy enough with the more affordable third-floor apartment they currently occupy, MOBB has had her heart set on a ground-floor unit a few yards from the houses of worship.

Without even a moment's hesitation, he made her dream come true.

It was a courtly and elegant move.

My eyes still fill with tears when I think about how happy my father made my mother this past week. She clapped her hands like a little girl getting a favorite doll. In that moment, her husband became her hero.

Watching, feeling very much like a little girl myself, I was struck by how loving and selfless his act was.

He knew her dream and realized he had the power to make it come true. It was not his dream and it came with a cost but he was committed to the task of making her happy.

It was one of the most touching things I have ever witnessed.

While lesser couples dissolve around me, I pay close attention to the example and teaching of my parents and their long-married friends. This is not just freelance observation but a personal and professional endeavor. I watch, like Harriet the Spy, and take mental notes. I ask questions, like one of the Four Children of the Seder. I see something that only rarely seems to exist today. I wish to bottle it, to emulate it. I admire the manner in which my parents have elevated their life-long union from an institution to something far more profound.

Marriage, schmarriage.

Stay tuned for more.

Immoral Imagination

Over the first days of Passover -- a world unto itself, cocooned, cozy and magical -- I had a long and painful conversation with a family member about an esteemed relation, now long gone.


The theme was the great man who is a monster in private -- tyrannical, imperious, demanding, punitive, belittling, explosive and dangerous; the beloved public figure who is secretly an abusive spouse or father, the selfless, saintly community head,  respected educator or admired religious role model who morphs into a hideous creature far from the gaze of onlookers.


Invariably, the immediate family members of the great man are shamed into silence, wondering if there was something defective in them that brought out the monstrous behavior in the great man. Loyalists that they are, they keep their counsel until silence is no longer an option. The truth telling is often an arduous process. First it is whispered among the inner circle of victims, then tentatively told to trusted insiders on the periphery of that circle, then shared with a larger audience, with the speakers often experiencing a confusing blend of liberation and guilt in the process.


Sipping mugs of tea and nibbling on Passover chocolate cake at my dining room table this morning, we spoke in low voices. As my relative unpacked her offering, I bore witness to her story, receiving it as a gracious hostess would, taking it off her hands.


She spoke and I listened. The Urban Bungalow was still, with dogs and Little Babe asleep and the men gone to synagogue services and Middle Babe out for a walk. As the story took shape, my family tree changed shape as well, turning from something sheltering and leafy into a more sinister form like the ominous bare boughs depicted in horror films.


The stories carefully unwrapped and handed to me felt hot and weighty in my hands; stones that I wished to hurl at the long-dead great man. At several points my eyes filled with tears and I wanted the speaker to stop even as I wanted her to tell me more, adding the truly horrible details she was editing from her speech.


And then the speaker stopped abruptly and said it was not right to speak of the great man this way, that yes, everything did happen, but there was more, a vertical tail to this story, a comet hurling back in time, abuse upon abuse visited upon the perpetrator when he was a boy by a father dying too early and a mother ill equipped to raise two young children. There was also the background trauma of anti-Semitic pre-war Poland and childhood asthma and hunger and other handicaps...a story sad and layered and complex with many victims.


The speaker was neither recanting her tale nor was she diminishing the horror of her account. An older woman, she was teaching me a hard truth, which is that the truth is often hard to pin down, as it is  never simple.


Her story took place in another time and another place, in a galaxy well before "Harriet the Spy" and "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar."  During the time of the events she spoke about, men weren't yet from Mars, nor women from Venus. No one had heard of a battered wife or even child abuse. No one just said no. Active listening as a parental tool hadn't been invented. Children bullied by adults did not necessarily believe deep in their hearts that they would overcome some day.


Chances were good that the great man hadn't been told that charity began at home. Or if he had heard that maxim, it might never occur to him that it applied to his situation.


Still, I am comfortable terming this great man a hypocrite, even as I struggle to understand the big picture, the complicating factors, the backstory of the monster, his travails as a young, wounded man. And as I sat with my relative on a chilly 21st century April morning, I remembered that just the night before I found myself thinking about hypocrisy and morality and about someone I knew who spoke loftily about having moral imagination* when the truest application of it would be within his own home. This is, perhaps, the most difficult realm to practice moral imagination for behind closed doors there is no adoring public to applaud the great man for small but important acts of greatness: the kindness of emotional steadfastness, loyalty, friendship.


There is the manner in which all of us are hypocrites, trespassing on our stated principles and beliefs.  I know that I am capable of declaring myself dairy-free mere minutes before inhaling a Starbucks Vanilla Bean Frap or of leaving an empty shampoo bottle in the locker room shower immediately after chastising teenage girls for leaving their wet towels all over the floor. Of course, there are other things I am embarrassed to admit to, not as minor, hardly as forgivable.


There is the manner in which we need our small, relatively innocuous hypocrisies, some of which are touching, funny and deeply humanizing.


And then there is the flat-out immorality of the public purveyor of morality being monstrous to those he is charged with nurturing and protecting. There is the utter failure of moral imagination regarding those who require it most for charity begins at home.


Early this morning, I sat with a dear family member in the warm cocoon of time-out-of-time afforded by the festival of Passover. I absorbed the small hot stones of her story, felt tears spring to my eyes, felt rage gather in my fists, experienced compassion and love and sadness and regret. This morning I received her pain and insight -- a portion of my inheritance. And together -- speaker and listener, victim and witness -- we were one step closer to the Promised Land.


_________________________________________________________________________________


 *My truly great friend Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes and speaks most movingly about moral imagination. Check out any of his works.

'Twas the Sunday Before Passover

With less than a week to go before Passover, I am camped out in my bedroom, subtly supervising the two Columbia undergraduates whom I hired to box up Big Babe's most precious possessions: the thousands of books he amassed and stored in the bedroom he has now bequeathed to Little Babe by virtue of graduating college and moving to Berlin.


While I catch up on my email, I am -- to appropriate an old-fashioned, equine expression that is under-utilized by humans of the 21st century -- feeling my oats. Literally.


The reason for this is that just before Davy and Dan showed up, I ate a humongous bowl of oatmeal with vanilla soymilk, a nutritious uber-chametzy meal. Returning from my morning of teaching kids at Prozdor, I always have the appetite of a manual laborer and find myself relishing my Sunday brunch like never before.


The Prozdor kids provided some great Passover inspiration, sharing what they liked about the holiday and helping riff on the inherent themes, chief among them freedom.


Returning home to prepare for the arrival of Davy and Dan, I hung out with Little Babe who -- taking note of my meal -- shared with me the important information that the Quaker Oats guy had been redrawn, thinner and a tad younger.


The news utterly unsettled me. Larry, the grandfatherly, benevolent Quaker Oats Man made leaner and meaner????


That's just wrong.


Rushing to Google the horrible news, I was relieved to find that what had befallen Larry was the equivalent of nothing more dramatic than a few shots of Botox and a few weeks on Weight Watchers.


In fact, had I not known, I probably would never have noticed Larry's makeover as I grabbed the legendary cardboard canister off the shelf on my typical fly-by Fairway shopping expeditions.


Perhaps only late at night, I might have found myself staring at the iconic image wondering what was different, thinking that it was probably time I invested in a decent pair of glasses.


Outside of my room, Dan and Davy have made amazing progress, removing nearly all the books that I stuffed into our small bathroom, filling boxes I purchased for the express purpose of storing Big Babe's books. On Tuesday, the guys will come with me to the Bronx location of NYC Mini Storage, where I will undergo a rite of passage experienced by so many urban dwellers: I shall become the renter of a storage unit.


Into it will go Big Babe's books, the clothes and artifacts he left behind, some suitcases and the treadmill I bought on Craig's List for $200 a few years ago and which HOBB has outlawed for noise and aesthetic purposes, something Middle Babe and I strenuously object to, but are powerless to fight at the present time.


Virtually one hour after they began, the small bathroom is free of books, available again to the Bungalow Bunch. Happily, I just welcomed the space back by utilizing it as a water closet and not a storage closet.


And though I am sad to be removing my eldest son's books, clothes and other possessions from our abode, I think of this loss as gaining a bathroom, a welcome development after more than a month of coordinating toilet, toothbrushing and shower visits in the one usable bathroom of the Urban Bungalow.


This newfound freedom certainly puts me in a Passover frame of mind.

Shiputzim

Tonight we reclaimed the living room and the dining room after more than two months of renovations that are not complete but at a standstill in the face of Passover. Our black and red leather couches -- covered by the coats that had been removed from our front hallway to allow access to the construction crew -- shyly reintroduced themselves to us in their naked glory. Our long wooden Ikea dining room table -- pushed up against the far wall -- reasserted herself in the middle of the room, stretching out luxuriously, like a cat or a princess or a beautiful woman posing for a master painter, nude and unashamed.


To achieve this transformation, the long, narrow Upper West Side corridor between Little Babe and Middle Babe's post-college bedroom was temporarily filled with the boxes, clothing and artifacts that had cluttered our two common living spaces.


We will deal with the hallway traffic after the holiday. Then, we will slowly unpack, weed out what is worthy and decide what to do with the rest.


Unless something is broken or heinous, I prefer to hang onto my possessions. In Manhattan, such a preference is a great liability.


Urban dweller though I am, my soul yearns for a sprawling home with an attic and a basement and too many closets to count. Returning my exiled coats to overly heavy coat hooks, squeezing dresses and blazers into closets that are stuffed like rush hour subway cars, I feel frustrated by the constraints of space in our apartment: the classic New Yorker's lament.

Music. Magic. Manhattan.

It is minutes past midnight and I think I screwed up the formatting
here by doing a copy 'n paste of Alicia Jo Rabin's picture but I
could not end the day without saluting the musical magnificence
of Girls in Trouble, the band that the beautiful Rabins formed
with adorable, scruffy-haired hubby Aaron Hartman.

Girls in Trouble performed tonight at the JCC in Manhattan at a
program hosted by comic Judy Gold, featuring bat mitzvah
speeches delivered by the teen actress Sam Mozes, performance
artist Glenn Marla and Unorthodox author Deborah Feldman.

While the spoken word aspect of the show was moving, the
music, performed between acts, was transcendent.

Watching Girls in Trouble, I felt almost drugged, dragged into
a sensual stupor, held hostage to harmony.

The songs. The lyrics. The visuals. The looping pedal. Rabin's
voice. Her glorious pregnant belly. Her synergy with Hartman.

Sitting in the audience, I felt feverish, breathless, as if I were
mortally ill or deeply, dangerously in love.

The band shared the stage with spoken word performers but
nothing held a candle to the ethereal, sophisticated, knowing
songs -- inspired by Biblical women -- that Alicia Jo Rabins sang.

As I prepare for sleep, I feel touched by magic, stirred by music,
awed, grateful, lucky.

I feel as if I have just discovered a new language or a new country
or am tasting a brand-new flavor, never before sampled.

I am touched by a close encounter of the musical kind. I am
different. Better. Closer to the angels. 

Big Ass Moon. West 106th Street. Saturday Night

It had been a day; actually, it had been a week; in fact, it had been a month, or has it been a decade or two...?

So my life is nuts. Chances are, if you live on this island, yours is too.

Which is why a big ass moon, flattish on the top like an elephant had just stepped on it, is a cool sight to see late on a Saturday night, coming back from a party, shivering from cold, tipsy on tequila.

This wonderfully robust yet table-topped moon presented itself to me as I was crossing W106th Street and Broadway. It made me pause and snap a photo.

It made me stop and take stock.

Though I am forever bemoaning the lack of balance in my life, things have been full, kinetic, exciting and unpredictable...in a good way.

Far from perfect but perfectly imperfect if I take a long, moon's-eye view of things.

I'm working very hard, several projects at once, partying hard, too. Purim was an epic adventure. I was lucky to be out of town last weekend and came back wearing a tan and clutching memories of walking in 80 degree sunshine. The Urban Bungalow is under construction, courtesy of Columbia U (our landlord) and now my room has electric blue walls, gorgeous wooden floors and a smooth ceiling and Little Babe's room is a musician/teen/man cave with similarly beautiful floors and freshly painted crimson walls. Middle Babe's room is a work-n-progress and our kitchen now has walls the color of an autumn sky.

My daughter just got the thrilling news that she was admitted into a grad program in Human Rights at Columbia for this fall. Big Babe, a resident of Berlin, has been a resourceful freelancer, with his coverage of the Berlinale (film festival) appearing in news venues large, small, local and international and his steady stream of thoughtful art and culture journalism. Little Babe and I have started to visit college campuses and are collaborating on a rock'n roll feature story for a well-known news site. He's studying for the SAT's. Distracted by music, given to playing guitar and bass at least six hours a day, he is attempting to hand in his schoolwork on time...or at least by the end of his junior year.

My frantic fear of culture deprivation has been assuaged as I've darkened the doorposts of several museums lately, catching extraordinary exhibitions. My post-J School quest to publish articles -- alongside my public relations projects -- is being rewarded, if slower than I would like. I realize that I've also managed to grab precious time together with friends; not all of them, by any means, but some. And real time, not virtual, although thank God for virtual forms of communication because that at least offers a bridge to people I love and do not see frequently enough.

How to be a Real (Un-Entitled) Mother Superior

The Tiger Mom is so 2011.

New year, new Superior Mom meme.

Welcome, readers and trend-watchers, to the latest mishigoss, the Bebe Mom, aka Pamela Druckerman, author of the recently published instant bestseller Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, which casts a reproving eye at indulgent, no boundaries, graceless American parenting and finds a more commendable model in the way it is done in the birthplace of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. 

(Actually, there is something else far more compelling that relates to Strauss-Kahn and Druckerman that I am ALSO writing about, so stay tuned...but first read on....)

Whether the Chinese or the French have nailed the secret to successful mothering is obviously up for a good, long debate...as is the question of which nationality will vie for the title of Mother Superior next.

One thing is for certain: as of yesterday, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was not even in the running, based on a random sampling of the mommies shepherding their kiddies to and from afternoon swimming at the JCC in Manhattan. For them, I would have to invent an entirely new competition with several, closely related categories: Most Self-Involved Mother; Most Obnoxious Mother; Most Inconsiderate Mother; Mother Most Oblivious to the Elderly Woman Waiting for a Shower; Mother Most Rapidly Texting While Her Kid Slams a Locker Door In Someone's Face; Mother Most Likely to Trammel Over the Needs of Everyone Who is Not Her Own Kid.

These clever categories were inspired by the crop of moms I encountered circa 1:15 p.m. in several areas of the women's locker room -- in the shower section, in the blow-drying section and the section set off by a curtain and festooned with two legible signs that proclaim the area for Adults Only, no kids under the age of 14 allowed.


Last week, I wrote about Subway Blindness Syndrome but this ailment has obviously spread aboveground for as recently as yesterday afternoon, old ladies waiting in towels for showers became amazingly invisible to the young women who were hellbent on showering their kiddies and getting on with their own busy, busy days. You could tell just how busy these women were by the amount of texts they sent during the time they were ignoring the old women -- and most everyone else -- around them.


It evidently never occurred to any of these mothers to let one of the elderly women ahead of their own kid. As I stood in my towel, I can report that the wait for an available shower was at least ten minutes long. Ten chilly, humiliating minutes for a senior citizen to stand in a towel while little kids scampered around her and mothers were utterly blind to basic principles of respect.

Which brings me to the Adults-Only section of the locker room.


In this area, as I previously stated, signs proclaiming the area off-limits to kids are mounted on opposite sides of the room which is set off by a curtain, to further underscore the idea that this area was for people who sought some privacy. 

Which is why I was more than a little surprised to walk into the area and find an entire bench monopolized by a thirtyish mother and her young charges, changing into their clothes after an afternoon swim. Surrounding the bench were mounds of their soggy towels. Surrounding the soggy towels were their open bags, clothes spilling out. 

In short, to access my locker, I had to push a used towel with my foot and step over a bag.

To gain a couple of inches of bench space, I was forced to ask the mother to move her stuff over.

So, when she said to me, "Two more people are coming," instead of "Sure," or "No problem," or -- horrors! -- "Sorry," I felt moved to direct her gaze to one of the wall signs that designated the area for adults only. "Not to be nasty, BUT...." I said.

Still, nothing registered in this woman's countenance except for some kind of miffed annoyance. She moved not an inch. Her little kids, though, stopped getting dressed and became watchful, evidently feeling the tension. Poor things, it wasn't their fault their mother was a failure at the rudiments of social etiquette. 

Certain I wanted to avoid an all-out confrontation, I took a giant step around the mother, her brood and their mess and skipped off to fetch the Ruler of the Locker Room, a sassy, super-competant salt 'n pepper-haired JCC staffer who is regarded as a cross between an oracle, a goddess, a beloved grandmother and a celebrity for her sometimes caustic yet invariably wise, no-nonsense approach to, well, everything. 

Fortunately, she was seated at the welcome desk.

As I explained the scenario, she rose from her seat. "They still there?" she asked me, heading for the locker room, but not before retrieving a moving coat rack from the clutches of a three-year-old boy whose mother or nanny was texting madly (again the texting!!!) on a nearby bench. As she entered the locker room, she turned to give me a look.

It said, "We're in this together, kid."

It meant, "Someone's gotta enforce the rules."

It allowed me to let go, if only for a moment, of my on-going irritation at the unbearable entitlement I encounter daily -- in the locker room of an Upper West Side community center, in stores, in restaurants, on public transportation and private events alike --  that is exhibited by parents who behave as if they and their off-spring were the absolute epicenter of a universe presided over by the God of Extreme and Utter Selfishness, Moral Myopia and Rude Disregard of Others, Especially Old Ladies Shivering in Towels.

Loco Parentis: Or How An Entire Generation of American Day School Parents Lost Their Minds and Sent Their Kids to Wacked-Out, Right-Wing, Repressive and Otherwise Insane Israeli Yeshivot

This afternoon, I was utterly mesmerized by Gary Rosenblatt's column in the recent issue of the New York Jewish Week.


Entitled, "Lessons from the Rav Bina Story" it was a follow-up piece to an article that appeared two weeks earlier, co-authored by Rosenblatt and Yedidya Gorsetman, a Yeshiva University senior and the younger brother of my friend Atara. The two presented a disturbing portrait of the charismatic but highly controversial Rav Aharon Bina, the head or rosh hayeshiva of Netiv Aryeh, a popular boys Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem's Old City, endorsed by many important Jewish institutions, including Yeshiva University. Netiv Aryeh is one of many Israeli yeshivot where Jewish high school graduates spend a year (or two) before starting college. The trend to send one's son or daughter to Israel before college has grown dramatically over the past two decades, becoming something akin to a religious obligation, a badge of allegiance to Jewish peoplehood, a way for parents to inoculate their nice Jewish offspring against the Sodom and Gemorrah of the American college campus...or so they think.


Returning to Rav Bina, the issue raised by Rosenblatt and Gorsetman in their well-researched article is his, um, unorthodox approach to education and discipline:

Supporters call it “tough love”; critics call it abuse. 

Credited with transforming many troubled American students who had been branded hopeless by other educators, and taking motivated young men to a higher level of learning, the 63-year-old rabbi is praised by several leading American rabbis as having been a wonderful educator for more than three decades. And his yeshiva, supported by prominent philanthropists, including businessman Ira Rennert, is a major — and approved — feeder school to Yeshiva University. 

But a significant minority of former students, employees and colleagues maintain that Rav Bina is controlling, manipulative and emotionally coercive in ways that would never be accepted in other schools. In what has become known throughout Israeli yeshivot as “Bina Stories,” he is said to regularly yell at, humiliate and insult students in public; threaten to expel them for seemingly no reason (and make good on that promise with a few every fall, sometimes without first notifying the parents); press psychologists he hires to share private information about the students he has sent them; and tell those in disfavor that they are cursed.

The January 27th Jewish Week article ignited a firestorm of response, some of it defensive, most of it corroborating the allegations of abuse. Rosenblatt's column in this week's paper opens with the nearly unbelievable Facebook message Gorsetman received from Rabbi Avi Fuld, also of Netiv Aryeh:

“I don’t know who you are and I am not trying to threaten you in any way,” the rabbi began. “I see that you are friends on FB [Facebook] with many Netiv guys and I hope they come to their senses and drop you like a dead fish. 

Operation Red Corduroy Jeans

We've been sleeping in the living room of our Morningside Heights apartment for the past week, our massive king-size bed entirely filling the square of space in our north/west facing living room.

Due to the exposure, sweet cold air swirls around us at night and sunshine spills in early in the morning. Because we overlook the Columbia campus and face classrooms and dorm rooms alike, we dress and undress in total darkness or with shades drawn or in another room.

The renovation, ordered by Columbia University, began a little over a week ago and as these things go, it is taking longer than anticipated. Our bedroom has been a worksite for the past eight days with floors ripped up and replaced, the ceiling pulled down and rebuilt, the walls primed for a fresh coat of paint -- a vibrant Benjamin Moore blue whose swatch card and name and number I cannot find because I am typing on a folding card table in the dining room surrounded by mounds of furniture, clothes and dogs.

I have been circulating the same outfits over three or four days, too stressed at the prospect of digging through drawers that open only a couple of inches or entering the walk-in closet that is stuffed with suitcases and books and other stuff that had formerly been in our room. I am trying to look as clean as possible, make sure that at least I have on clean underclothes.

Because the workers arrive so early and the bathroom is opposite my bedroom, aka the construction site, I am trying to shower at the gym, then again, I haven't been getting there every day.

HOBB and I are about to kill each other, in fact, he went psycho on Sunday night when I returned from  watching the beginning of the Super Bowl at a bar on Amsterdam Avenue. Well, he waited until after we ate our dinner of fresh salmon, which I picked up at Fairway before going to the bar. And then he went psycho, compelling me to leave our apartment/construction zone and watch the final hour of the Super Bowl at another bar on Amsterdam Avenue.

En route to the bar (the second time) I called Little Babe (who was in his bedroom doing a lab report for Physics at the time) to make sure he knew that everything his father had yelled at me was due to the extreme stress he was enduring in the construction zone of our apartment.

Which doesn't mean that I am as understanding...or forgiving.

Subway Blindness Syndrome

In the past week, as I rode the NYC subway, I have given my seat up for:

• One elderly woman late at night
• One tired looking middle aged woman early one afternoon
• One woman holding a baby on a Sunday afternoon
• One man wearing a baby in a front carrier later on the same Sunday afternoon
• One old and shaky man early in the morning during the previous week
• One very pregnant woman later that same day
• One mildly pregnant woman the following afternoon

And these are only the incidents I can recall.

The point of this list is not to brag about my amazingly compassionate nature or to pat myself on the back, God forbid. I hardly think of myself as saintly or extraordinarily considerate for my deed.

The point of this is to state that, in each instance, I was surrounded by scads of seated people, many of them much younger than me.

There were groups of loudly giggling girls. There were packs of tough young guys. There were people of my age in professional attire. There were young women in lycra with yoga mats on their laps. There were tourists and natives alike; parents with children, couples, solitary riders.

And while many of the aforementioned people were thoroughly (and disturbingly) captivated by some electronic device (iPad, iPod, iPhone, etc...) therefore oblivious to anything around them, many were not. Some stared stolidly ahead of them. Some stared stonily at the person in question who unquestionably deserved a seat more than they, or would at least have appreciated the offer to sit.

In each instance I waited a count or two just to see if anyone else would react. In one instance, that of the visibly exhausted middle-aged woman (just a few years older than me, I think) I worried that my offer might offend, so I let two or three stops pass before I spoke out. Yet in each instance, my offer of a seat was gratefully accepted.

Even though it's been a while, I well remember the subway blindness syndrome that suddenly afflicted my fellow passengers when I was pregnant, remember staring down teenage boys and girls, to no avail. (It was my freelance observation that the teen girls were the absolute worst, followed by youngish professional men.)

I remember holding onto a pole or strap with my belly practically in someone's face, yet somehow invisible.

I recall the profound gratitude that swept over me when a seat was offered.

Like littering and seat-hogging and loud cellphone conversations in public and cab stealing, subway blindness syndrome really gets under my skin. It is a selective affliction, of course, a willful obliviousness, a defense, an excuse, a reason not to compromise one's comfort.

It makes me want to yell, to shake my fellow riders out of their selfishness, to don a prophet's robe and preach from a hilltop or street corner or subway platform.

Instead, I react by example, hoping that someone else is paying attention and feeling shamed -- or inspired -- into giving up their seat next time...before I do.

It's Not My Bag, Baby

For the space of nearly two decades, the space between my maple dresser and the west-facing wall of my bedroom has served as a cubbyhole, bin, repository, open air closet and erstwhile storage area for an assortment of handbags -- some commodious as duffel bags, others modest as sandwich-size baggies and every size in between.

Predominantly black, of course.

Accompanying the handbags in this pile were tote bags from such far-flung places as the Berlin film festival and a flea market in Ireland, those ubiquitous recycled shopping totes from such local emporia as Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Urban Outfitters and nearly a dozen trademark glossy black and white Sephora bags in a variety of dimensions, bearing mute witness to my consumer habits.

There were also three $12 faux fur handbags purchased from Old Navy more than a decade earlier, a set in red, black and leopard print that accompanied me to scores of parties and never failed to elicit rave reviews for their blend of whimsy and elegance. There were ironic fake vintage lunch boxes from fifties/sixties TV shows ("I Love Lucy," "Lassie" and "The Munsters") that I employed in lieu of grown-up evening bags and as repositories for my keys, lip gloss and other essentials for synagogue services on Shabbat and holidays...lest I be seen toting a regular workaday purse on the Sabbath.

There were a few actual evening bags -- the tiny silver embossed bag I saved from my mother's discard pile when she recently cleaned out her Great Neck home, a black crocodile clutch from my late mother-in-law, a velvet handbag from Nine West I swore I had never seen before and therefore must have snagged on sale at a place like Woodbury Commons in a fugue state induced by retail overload.

There were stylish bags I had utterly forgotten about -- a crazy Zebra skin satchel from Loehmann's accented with red patent leather, a microfiber backpack purchased in Paris several years earlier, a handsome Italian leather number my sister had bought in Italy and never used, a lush suede bag my mother had purchased from TJ Maxx, complete with tags, never worn.

The pile of bags has bothered me on and off but like so many other household projects, it took a backseat to other pressing items: work, family, exercise, hosting, cooking, travel, haircuts, manicures, the need to have a full extracurricular life. If our Amsterdam Avenue apartment wins praise for anything, it is for its laissez faire, eclectic style, which blends vibrant walls, artifacts of our travels, an insane amount of books, movie posters, unique (and cheap!) artwork, nutty chachkas and cool cast-off furniture with the best of Ikea and Bloomingdale's warehouse...together with the somehow charming domestic detritus of a family of five.

The west and northfacing views of the Columbia University campus also have something to do with our apartment's appeal. So do our Pomeranians, Alfie and Nala, whose sheer cuteness serves as a visual distraction.

I make no secret of the fact that though I am an avid cook and host, I consider cleaning (and most household projects that take more than, say, 10 minutes) a vast waste of my time and talents. Even when we could not afford to do so, we have had a cleaning lady in because I cannot abide a dirty home and hate doing laundry.

Though I recoil from filth (click below to read the rest of the post)...

The Eighteen Minutes

It's been a week, the kind of week that makes you want to shout "THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY" if only you could find enough strength to speak above a hoarse whisper.

Or, if you are of the observant Jewish persuasion -- "THANK GOD FOR SHABBAT!!!"

That's where I'm at right now, sleep-deprived, working at home in my goth nightie (a faded black Converse sundress that I got at Target and should have discarded centuries ago), red woolen lumberjack shirt, thermal socks and Zabar's baseball cap, thinking of the weekend that looms before me.

Passing the front hall mirror as I just returned from locking the door after HOBB, I note that I look homeless yet happy. Cold air from the building hallway whooshes into the apartment with the opening of the door and I feel reluctant to combat the elements, consider staying inside for the day, watching a few episodes of Law and Order on Netflix, cooking for Shabbat in a leisurely manner, perhaps taking a long hot bath with lavender oil.

But as quickly as this joyfully slothful vision appears to me, it is stamped out vigorously because the entire point of Shabbat is to have it serve as a counterpoint to the crazy stressful kinetic nature of the workweek.

And this Shabbat holds special relaxation potential as it is our second pre-empty-nest Shabbat in as many weeks. With Middle Babe spending the weekend at the Long Island home of her Gentleman Caller and Little Babe attending the Junior Shabbaton at SAR High School (and Big Babe residing in Berlin) HOBB and I will be alone. Again. Last week saw us lingering over a delicious dinner, reading like old married people (which I guess we are) and then having a killer Scrabble tournament that lasted for hours.

HOBB fell sleep before we played out but in case you are wondering, I was winning by nearly 100 points.

To unleash the full power of Shabbat, a frenetic Friday is an invaluable asset. Therefore, I'll be springing into Yiddishe hausfrau mode in minutes to cook (fresh tuna, sauteed green beans, spinach souffle, baked apples). Afterwards (we're talking 30 minutes, max. I am the original speedchef. I have domesticity A.D.D.) I'll be dragging myself out of my gothic nightie and into workout clothes for a turbo workout. Following a midday conference call, I plan to head to the ICP to catch the Weegee exhibition -- Murder is My Business. At 3:15, HOBB and I are planning to meet at the Met to see the new American Wing and hear The Asphalt Orchestra. 

We plan to grab a cab home at 4:40 (the start of the 18 minutes*) so we can be home for Shabbat.

More than anything, it's the fresh tuna and Scrabble that I cannot wait for. And the reading. And the coziness. And the empty-nest feeling.

Thank God it's almost Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom!
_______________________________________________________________________________
*After the start of candlelighting, there is an 18 minute "emergency" extension in which to perform necessary tasks that are not otherwise appropriate for the Sabbath, aka, riding in a taxi crosstown. Yes, I'm taking liberties with the concept of "emergency." I'm not Orthodox but I am observant and doing the best I can to uphold the law of Moses and still lead a life that makes sense to me.

Matza with Anthony, Flea, Chad and Josh

It is late in the evening of the day that Big Babe went back to Berlin after a three week visit to the Urban Bungalow. It was a period of intensity and hilarity, of conflict and connection, of sweet sibling bonding and new fellowship, especially between my two sons, separated by a daunting gulf of eleven years.

In my iconoclastic eldest child I discerned a diffuse dissatisfaction during this visit, a grumpy touchiness that signaled to me that he was possibly paused between stations along his life's journey, contemplating the next leg of the adventure.

He was tired on the drive to the airport and so I kept my conversation gentle. Yet when we hugged goodbye outside the Continental Airlines terminal at Newark, I found myself telling him to think about coming home soon for the first time since he left the U.S. to live as an expat American in Berlin.

After four years and much creative and entrepreneurial productivity, I believe it is time for this chapter of Big Babe's European adventure to draw to a close. It is not that I am ideologically opposed to his living abroad; I simply see his path as leading back home, at least for now. There is a process of professional education and building that needs to take place. Berlin, more than any other city I have visited, facilitates a form of long-range slackerdom. It is too easy to drift there, stoking a low-grade ambition, living comfortably in that exciting, low-cost cultural mecca.

As critical as I am about the American impulse towards overachievement, I want my son to be reanimated by the quest to succeed wildly in his chosen profession -- arts journalism.

Arriving home, I put myself on a marathon of productivity, playing catch up on some of the pressing tasks that took a backseat during the time of Big Babe's visit and the holiday season itself, which brought a great influx of family members. Once I was satisfied that I had set the requisite number of plates spinning, I set upon a dreaded task: getting American Express to reschedule my non-refundable/non-changeable flights and hotel for my January 25th trip to Charlotte, NC with Little Babe to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers perform to April 9th, when the band will be performing in Greensboro.

This switch had nothing to do with my personal preference. Instead, it was dictated by Anthony Kiedis, the band's frontman, who broke his foot so completely that, as a result, the band had to postpone its performances for two-plus months in order to him to recuperate.

As my flights and hotel were purchased through Amex Thank You points (which has ten million pages of rules about the complete and utter non-refundability/non-adjustibility of tickets) I spent about half an hour screeching insanely earlier in the day when I learned about Kiedis's injury... and that the January 25th concert in Charlotte, NC was postponed for April 6th, aka the first Seder night and Shabbos to boot.

Emerging from the shower, Big Babe came running out of the bathroom in a towel to see why I was carrying on so. The reason was that I had saved up 61,000 Thank You points for this adventure. The reason was that had I meticulously planned every last aspect of the trip for maximum fun with Little Babe, whose RHCP fandom got me into their music to begin with. The reason was that just earlier in the day, I sent article pitches out for a story about my impending adventure. It was supposed to be the last word in awesome, a mother/son road trip to remember. Now, everything seemed to be evaporating before my eyes.

Yet I harbored hope that some compassionate Amex agent might hear my plight and declare Kiedis's broken foot an act of God and therefore completely beyond my control, which indeed it was.

Red Hot Chili Mess

File this under really sucky karma.

While visiting Spin's website half an hour ago, I learned that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' American concert tour was FREAKING POSTPONED because Anthony FREAKING Kiedis broke his FREAKING foot.

The reason I am freaking out is because I had two FREAKING tickets to the January FREAKING 25th concert in Charlotte, FREAKING North Carolina for me and Little Babe.

Moreover, just this Monday, I sent a FREAKING article proposal to a major FREAKING publication to do a road-trip article. I also spoke with the RHCP's FREAKING press agent in LA. I am attaching said proposal below.

Adding insult to injury (oy, now I have to get my plane tix refunded and hotel refunded and concert tickets refunded) the new FREAKING concert date is April 6th, which has the distinction of being not only the FREAKING first night of Passover BUT also Friday night, aka SHABBAT.

To paraphrase John Goodman, I am "Shomer Freaking Shabbos!" and that presents one FREAKING problem for me.

In other words, I cannot go on April 6th. In other words, I have to see if there are available tickets elsewhere. In other words, I want to run screaming down Amsterdam Avenue.

At this moment, I do not want to ruin Little Babe's day so I'll wait to share the news with him when he returns home.

In the meantime, there's probably a story in this....

And I am really sorry, TMZ, for using your picture without permission. I'm just really freaking out.

Oh, and here's my article pitch:

On January 25th, I will be attending the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Charlotte, NC with my 16-year-old son, a rock musician. Yes, we are journeying from Manhattan to Charlotte for this show. Yes, I am taking him out of his private school for two days. Yes, everyone thinks I am a terrible mom with an age-inappropriate crush on a rock band.  

My proposed article deals with my belated awakening to the RHCP through the fandom of my son Judah, now renamed Jude in his too-cool-for-school adolescent phase of life. I only started listening to their music in earnest two summers ago, after Judah returned from a teen trip to Israel where his friend Joe Teglasi turned him on to their music. 

Suddenly, my classical cello-playing kid had taught himself electric guitar and bass and heretofore unheard songs filled our Morningside Heights apartment: "Aeroplane," "Soul to Squeeze," "Wet Sand," "Dosed," "Otherside." The serious fascination with the Peppers started, for me, when he played Stadium Arcadium (the double album, not the song) for me and now I am a full-fledged fanatic who runs four miles every day to their music, sings their songs at Karaoke bars, cooks to their music, belts out their songs while driving and analyzes their lyrics as I would a literary text...or page of Talmud.  

I am riveted by their harmonies, their personalities and the evolution of their band. I thought I would not survive the 2009 departure of John Frusciante but Josh Klinghoffer has filled the void. As a contemporary of Anthony Kiedis and Flea, I want to talk with them about turning 50.  

Though I do not think that "I'm With You," their latest album, is anything approaching a masterpiece, there are moments of RHCP transcendence therein. As with all enduring romances, I continue to love the band despite the disappointing tracks. In the course of my article, I hope to identify just what I find so compelling about the Peppers' music. I also intend to capture a phenomenon that is specific to my generation of parents, namely, our willingness to be influenced by the culture of our kids. My RHCP road trip is a manifestation of intergenerational cultural openness that simply did not exist in my parents' generation. The prospect of my mom and dad inspired to attend a Talking Heads, Ramones, Squeeze or even an Elton John concert with me is an hilarious thought. 

I intend my Peppers piece to be culturally compelling, lively and insightful, "On the Road" meets "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" meets "Thelma and Louise," minus the drugs, sex, female bonding and death. But mom/teen son bonding will be part of this story. In advance of my trip, I reached out to the RHCP's press agent in LA who tells me he can get me an interview with the band after the show...with an assignment from a solid publication. 

What I am proposing is an offbeat, funny, touching and thoroughly memorable mother/son road trip to the Red Hot Chili Peppers January 25th concert in Charlotte, NC, complete with photographs and possibly video from the concert for the website. With advance planning, we should be able to videotape my interview with them, which would also include my son. 

I hope you think that the NAME BLOCKED OUT is a good venue for such a piece of writing.

Riding in Cars with Boys

One month ago, Little Babe broke his hand in a bit of teenage drama that I will leave for him to tell one day, if he so wishes. This morning, the cast he has worn for the past three weeks came off, together with the metal rod that had been inserted into his hand to allow his metacarpal bone to fuse and heal. Had he not told the orthopedic surgeon at the ER that he was a musician, surgery might not have been recommended. But when the bone didn't set at the hospital, we were referred to a hand surgeon who works with members of the New York Philharmonic.

Because of his injury, HOBB and I have been picking our sixteen-year-old son up from school to spare him the draining bus 'n subway shlep back from SAR High School in Riverdale. As we live just opposite Columbia University on Amsterdam Avenue and W116th Street, this is hardly a major imposition on us. Door-to-door, barring traffic, the journey is typically less than 20 minutes.

Little Babe's easygoing yet wry disposition never fails to make the journey entertaining. Armed with his iPod and the auxiliary cable, our trips home have been somewhat like being inside a DJ's sound booth or what I imagine a date with Fresh Air's Terry Gross to be like. Playing his favorite songs by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie, The Talking Heads, Cake, Pink Floyd, the Kinks and a host of other bands whose music I actually like, the time is spent singing, talking and often laughing.

When I picked him up from school last night, I was aware of the completion of this small chapter in our lives wherein our mature and self-reliant youngest child reverted to a state of dependency upon us, for at least his transportation home from school. As we drove down the West Side Highway, Cake's "Wheel" was playing.

"Man, I love these lyrics," Little Babe exclaimed. "They are completely insane! Especially the third verse." I paused to listen:

In a seedy karaoke bar
By the banks of the mighty Bosphorus
Is a Japanese man in a business suit
Singing, smoke gets in your eyes
And the muscular cyborg German dudes
Dance with sexy French-Canadians
While the overweight Americans
Wear their patriotic jumpsuits

I laughed, agreeing that the lyrics were indeed insane.  "Listen to the horns," my son further instructed me.

I listened to the horns. They were great, lending the song a sly Klezmer quality. "Wheel" featured a fusion of cynical and lyrical qualities, rock 'n roll for a cerebral, sophisticated 21st century teen. I could see why he loved the song. The concluding wail, "Why you say you are not in love with me?" repeated over and over, lodged inside my heart.

Passing Fairway's uptown location on 12th Avenue as we eased off the highway "Wheel" gave way to "Comfort Eagle" whose beat can only be described as the percussion equivalent of pure testosterone. I made a note to add the song to my workout playlist; it was funny and irreverent and sharply snide, a critique of the recording industry, it seemed.

"Did you catch that synth?" he asked me, my instructor, my youngest son.

I smiled. Because I was listening with him, there was no chance I would miss the synth.

This morning I drove Little Babe to school after his rod was removed. After the procedure, he had spent not less than 10 minutes scrubbing his hand and arm to rid it of the "cast smell." The car smelled like Axe Shock. Mock-sternly, I told him that the end of the period of his teachers' compassion had arrived; there were assignments to write, tests to take now that he had command of his right hand again. While we spoke, Cake's "Sheep Go to Heaven" was playing. There was something about these days that called for Cake's go-to-hell funk and horn-driven madness.

When we arrived at school, Little Babe pulled his iPod from the auxiliary cable, kicked the front door open with his right foot, grabbed his knapsack from the back seat, shut both doors, bending to give me a salute and a sweet half-smile. It was quiet in the car with him gone. I sat for one minute longer than I needed to, watching my youngest son enter his High School, the period of his broken hand behind him and everything looming ahead.

Then I pulled my own iPod out of my gym bag, plugged it into the auxiliary cable and headed for the West Side Highway with the music of The Red Hot Chili Peppers playing way too loudly for any sane adult, the percussion of "Hump De Bump," acting like sonic testosterone, pumping straight into my bloodstream, the smell of Axe Shock faintly discernible, the memory of these past three weeks lodged inside my heart.

Hearing Occupy Wall Street with a Jewish Ear

READERS: Here is my second Jerusalem Report article on Occupy Wall Street. I hope that my reporting corrects some of the misleading views of the demonstration.

Demonstrating Jewishly

12/30/2011 20:42   By SHIRA DICKER

Jewish activists in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Judaism movements aim to 'reoccupy values.'

Photo by: Courtesy/Liz Nord

BY ORDER OF NEW YORK Mayor Michael Bloomberg, city police raided the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstration November 15, storming Zuccotti Park, evicting the protesters, and clearing the area.

To Daniel Sieradski, founder of the Occupy Judaism movement, the ad hoc group of Jewish OWS activists who had organized Jewish events, including Kol Nidrei services, at the site, the desolation of the area that had held the tents and the energy reminded him of nothing less than the exile of the Jewish people from their land.

Passionately, he wrote in the November 16 online edition of the New York-based “The Forward”: “Occupy Wall Street is in exile. Her benches, once bountiful, lay barren. Her sidewalks – a wasteland. Where there were tents bustling with life, there is breeze. As the Book of Lamentations wonders, ʽHow does the city sit solitary that was full of people?ʼ”

Using the portal of Jewish history and liturgy, Sieradski posed the question “how does the city sit solitary” and presented the solution: “As Jews we know: Exile is not nearly the end.”

Although Zuccotti Park was the “ground zero” for both OWS and Occupy Judaism, Jewish participation in the movement has not been restricted to the park. Congregation Ramath Orah in Morningside Heights hosted a contentious public conversation at the synagogue in early November featuring Sieradski and Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz, an educator involved with the tent protest movement in Israel.

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun has inaugurated a series of public programs directly inspired by the protest. “Occupy Wall Street is putting on the table one of the most important conversations that this country should have about values, our relationship with money, the dream of America and where we want to go,” congregation rabbi Marcelo Bronstein tells The Report. “We don’t believe in blaming Wall Street, or in class warfare. We believe in the fact that this is a tremendously important conversation. We want to reoccupy values.”

A heavy spirit hung over the former encampment at a Rosh Hodesh celebration in late November. Following the service, most of the participants dispersed, since there was nothing else to be done – no petitions to sign, no drum circles to join, no ragtag protesters to feed. A lone demonstrator held up a poster, worn and weathered.