Accidental Southern Belle

They like a discussion

Who can argue with Jackie Mason? The Jews. Obviously. Take a low figure. Still, they have an opinion. Watch this video to see what I'm talking about.

For more Jewy fun. Watch this Daily Show clip about the Israeli elections. Who will win? Definitely someone with a clown name. And also...a Jew!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Indecision 5769 - Jews or Lose

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Signs You Have Jerusalem Syndrome

(This is MINE for a story, by the way, you haters).

Source: Wikipedia

My favorite in bold.

1. Anxiety, agitation, nervousness and tension, plus other unspecified reactions.
2. Declaration of the desire to split away from the group or the family and to tour Jerusalem alone. Tourist guides aware of the Jerusalem syndrome and of the significance of such declarations may at this point refer the tourist to an institution for psychiatric evaluation in an attempt to preempt the subsequent stages of the syndrome. If unattended, these stages are usually unavoidable.
3. A need to be clean and pure: obsession with taking baths and showers; compulsive fingernail and toenail cutting.
4. Preparation, often with the aid of hotel bed-linen, of a long, ankle-length, toga-like gown, which is always white.
5. The need to shout psalms or verses from the Bible, or to loudly sing religious hymns or spirituals. Manifestations of this type serve as a warning to hotel personnel and tourist guides, who should then attempt to have the tourist taken for professional treatment. Failing this, the two last stages will develop.
6. A procession or march to one of Jerusalem's holy places.
7. Delivery of a ‘sermon’ in a holy place. The sermon is usually very confused and based on a plea to humankind to adopt a more wholesome, moral, simple way of life.

Rosh Hashanah Hijinks

I must say that I was spoiled by my temple growing up. It was fun (chestnut wars at Elizabeth Seton!) and never boring and the choir on the high holidays was beautiful (the Avinu Malkeinu soprano lady was eternally fascinating). The rabbi is brilliant and a great speaker. The people are attractive and nice and mostly the entire room isn't over 100 and sleeping through the entire service. Nobody ever asks for money. I appreciate this now that I am out in the world of OTHER synagogues that are NOT SO GOOD.

The one here is pretty in a church kind of way, I mean, the outside looks like a mosque and the inside looks like a church, pews and all. They're nice that they let us pobre estudiantes come on the high holidays, but they do kind of humiliate us by making us sit in the basement and watch everyone else walking by and pitying us until at the very last minute they let us go upstairs and squish into a seat. (Note that so far there has only ever been me and one other person in said humiliating situation, so it's truly horrible).

They haven't asked for money yet (although I've heard that elsewhere) but last night, the president of the temple made a twenty minute HYPER CONSERVATIVE political speech encouraging us to donate money to loony Zionist causes that will help the United States recover from its inferior position in the world. I've never felt more uncomfortable in my life than sitting in this synagoge listening to this guy rant on about public policy. AND THEN in the MIDDLE OF HIS SPEECH his cell phone rings!! Can you believe that? I know that I am supposed to be in the forgiving time of year, but I did spend much of the service glaring at him and wishing him ill. Isn't that horrible?

So, I am now apologizing to him for thinking bad thoughts. I hope he is reformed politically and feels badly about ruining Rosh Hashanah. I'm looking forward to Yom Kippur in New York next week. It's nice to be home on the Jewish holiday.

Oh How I Am Alternately Entertained and Irrirtated By Ridiculous Jew-y Rules

I'm working on my novel and I need to figure out what my character's address is and I know that he lives on 110th street across from that Orthodox synagogue there, so I google the synagogue (orthodox synagogue 110th street) and instead of finding its address, I find out that a good portion of upper Manhattan is an eruv.

Please note though, that everything is contingent, "The intersection of 6th Avenue and 55th Street is not in the eruv. Accordingly, a person walking (and carrying) westward on 55th Street should turn right on the northeast corner of the intersection, crossing 6th Avenue at 56th Street. A person walking (and carrying) southward on 6th Avenue, between 56th and 55th Streets, intending to head eastward on 55th Street, should travel on the east side of 6th Avenue and turn left on the northeast corner of the intersection with 55th Street."

Rules like these truly irritate me because people spend so much time figuring out how to get AROUND the rules (by walking on the east side of 6th avenue instead of the west) instead of just frickin' following them that it makes me want to slap them and say, "Stop being so high and mighty."

Anyway, what I'm really annoyed about is this kind of messes up a small detail in my book which is that a character leaves her apartment open on Yom Kippur so as not to carry her keys to temple and then another character is able to break into her apartment. According to this eruv rule, she'd be able to carry her key on Yom Kippur because she lives in the eruv on 98th Street. Maybe her synagogue is north of the eruv. We'll see. I'm not sure yet. But regardless, these rules are hilarious.

I don't even know what this MEANS: "Arrows along the borders of this map mark areas where the sidewalk on only one side of the street (not including the space between the lampposts and the curb) is within the eruv."

What if there were just a bunch of loony Jews walking BETWEEN the lamposts and the curbs so that they could walk on the theoretically non-eruv side of the street. And then what if they got struck down by lightening? That would be hilarious.

Maybe we should add that to ORTHO.

Jewish Crackers

Last night, Matt and I went to Wal-Mart to get the major necessities for our seder: brisket, seder plate stuff, matzah. He is being lovely and is humoring me in this endeavor even though he is sort of confused, ("Why do you need lettuce AND parsley?" "I just DO!" "Why do you need a bone?" "For the seder plate, so I won't have to draw one on a piece of paper and cut it out like I did last year.")

So, we had everything, including the egg dying coloring because I've always wanted to color eggs and I just never have, so I'm going to color one and then write the Hebrew word for egg on it with the special egg-coloring crayon.

Since there was AN ENTIRE AISLE of Easter stuff in this Walmart and there are a number of Jews in this region of Virginia, I figured that this Wal Mart would have Matzah, which I didn't buy in NC because I didn't want to crush it in the car. I look all over for it, but I JUST CAN'T FIND IT. So, I go up to this helpful-looking guy and say, "Do you have Matzah here?"

And he looks back at me and says, "What's that?"

So, I'm kind of at a loss because I've never MET anyone who didn't know what matzah was before...so I come up with, "It's kind of a cracker. That Jewish people eat? On Passover?"

And he thinks about it for a minute and says, "Well, then it'd be in the cracker aisle!"

So, I accept this. And then, trying to be more helpful, he says, "Or in the Ethnic aisle."

I say thank you. "The Ethnic aisle is aisle 4."

I don't REALLY think of myself as "ethnic" per se. Nor do I think of myself as a "minority" (which is what this Jew I met the other night said and it made me want to strangle her. She's like (paraphrasing), "I need to raise my children with a Jewish iron fist because they are a MINORITY. I always felt like a MINORITY." (empasis hers. She just kept saying minority over and over again and I could tell that the girl who was listening (not Jewish) was like, I have no idea what you are talking about.)

But, needless to say there was not ONE BOX of matzah in that entire Wal Mart (I found something they don't have!!!). So, we had to go to Kroger. Where we also got a box of 72 Holyland candles. I will have candles for the rest of my life.

Now I just need candlesticks.

I Read Two Books Yesterday

I didn't really mean to. But all of a sudden, I was reading all of You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem and kind of enjoying it, in a relaxing reading kind of way. And then I read A Disorder Peculiar to the System by Ken Kalfus. They were both about breakups. But the Lethem was less of a downer than the Kalfus

And then I went to our town's fancy new gourmet store and they did not have ONE PASSOVER ITEM. Not even mattzah. What kind of asshole fancy gourmet store doesn't even have matzah the DAY BEFORE PASSOVER?!

I Like This Cartoon

So, this "Campus Crusade for Christ" was handing out carnations on campus with warnings about not doing anything that Jesus wouldn't do on Valentine's Day today. And this reminded me that I really like this cartoon:

What Would Jerry Falwell Think?

So, I'm walking on campus today, going to drop off my student's paper in the campus mail and I'm stopped by a student-looking type carrying a notebook. He asks me if I'd be willing to answer two questions in a survey. I say okay, helping out the educational process, I figure. He asks me my name and if I'm done with finals and then he cheers a little bit about being done with finals. Typical student. Right? Not.

Then he asks me, "Where do you think people go after they die?" (I should have known right away to cut and run, but I am a sucker first and foremost, so I stuck around.)

And I think about it for a second, and I say, "I don't think they go anywhere." And he writes it down.

Then he says, "You're going to need a little bit of imagination for this, but if you did think people went somewhere after they died, where would you go?"

And I say, "You mean where does Jerry Falwell think I'm going or where do I think I'm going?"

And he doesn't really answer. So, I say, "Well, I guess if we're going to play this game, I'd be going to hell."

And then he says "Well you can be sure if you know what the Ten Commandments are. Have you ever broken any of them?"

And I think, "I've probably broken them all" But I don't really say anything because all of a sudden I'm feeling really nervous.

He says, "For example, number nine is, You shouldn't lie. Have you ever lied?"

So I say, "Yeah, all the time."

And he asks, "So what would that make you?"

And I say, "I don't know, someone who lied."

And he says, "A liar."

Then we go through the same script with stealing. And then I realize what's happening (I'm a little slow, I know) and I say, "Are you going to give me a lecture, because I have things to do."

And he says, "Not a lecture..."

And I say, "I have to go." And then I go into the heathen Creative Writing office and repeat the story about 100 times. And I think of all the snappy things I SHOULD have said, mostly that I don't care if HE thinks I'm going to hell. But it was really one of the more awkward things that's ever happened. I miss runnnig away from the Jews on Columbia's campus and having them shake lulavs and etrogs at me.

Sigh. Happy Hanukkah! :)

I Found This on a Jewish Blog, of course

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Accidental southern belle's Disease
Cause:	overconsumption of sausages
Symptoms:	extremely red skin, going bump in the night, bleeding gums, dizziness
Cure:	trepanning
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

Happy Religion Day

Oh my, are you in ASB withdrawal? I've been running around, mostly at the beach, for the past few days and so updates have been sporadic. I do have a lovely tan though, so I think it's worth it.

I arrived in Virginia last night to help Matt move into his new apartment. We finished that this morning, he's even all unpacked!

After we finished the schelpping portion of the day, I went to the coffee shop to work on the novel, which is not in AS bad shape as I feared, at least in terms of me getting to the end of this draft before school starts. If I work every day between now and school, and I expect to do that, I should be able to get it done, assuming that nothing super complicating happens in the next sixty pages that would prevent the book from being the length that I expect it to be. So, while I was on my way out of the fly-infested coffee shop (they have great coffee, and usually, good bagels, although they haven't had bagels for the past month or so, which is HIGHLY disappointing), a frizzy-haired woman in scrubs stopped me and asked me if I belonged to the Hillel here.

I said no, that I didn't go here. And I was a LITTLE offended that she thought I was a Jew just by   looking at me (although, really, there's no question about it, I mean, the curly dark hair, glasses, big nose and pale skin pretty much give it away) but she said it was because of the chamsa that I wear around my neck. And then she told me that she was thinking of opening her home to members of the Hillel on campus to create more community and having a movie night or something. I wanted to tell her that that was the stupdest idea I had ever heard of. But, I just said that I lived in North Carolina and that I didn't know anything about the Hillel here. Anyway, there was just something weird about the whole thing. I'm always wary when someone asks me if I'm Jewish because it makes me think of the crazy Orthos that would roam the campus of my college trying to get us to upgrade to being real Jews.

And then, on my way back to Matt's office, a guy tried to convert me to Christianity with a pamphlet that had a picture of the world on it that said "Are You Sure?" on the cover. I said, "No thank you."

Apparently, it's religion day. Hope you're enjoying it as much as I am!