In the Words of My Holy Sister, "The Spirit of Chanukah Continues On!". And So Will I.

Bsd
Chanuka is over. But I wanted to post this special story. And it's still relevant. So, enjoy, y'all!


Lights twinkled from the menorahs on the table, people conversed in corners, and kids ran around madly. It was a classic Chabad House Chanukah party, circa 1986. My mother stood by the door, carefully watching to make sure none of her kids ran outside. They had only moved to Berkeley two weeks before, and were staying in the Chabad House while they looked for an apartment. After living in Crown Heights for the past four years or so, being back in the Bay Area near her dad was great. My father had gotten a job managing the Chabad House he had been BT with, and here they were, celebrating their first Chanukah as a family in Berkeley.
In the back of the Chabad House, where the kids were playing, my one and a half year old sister was admiring the bright lights of a menorah that had been placed in a window. A window with a very low ledge. My sister reached out and plucked one of the pretty candles out of the menorah. Wax dripped from the candle onto her little hand, and she dropped it! It fell and lit her pretty polyester dress on fire.
Polyester burns fast. Really, really fast. My sister was aflame before anyone knew.
My brother Levi, who was three at the time, ran out to my parents, screaming, "Nechama's on fire! Nechama's on fire!"
My parents raced back to the room where she was. Some quick thinking person called 911 and 770. My father grabbed her and dumped her in the sink, thrusting her under the faucet and turning on the water, extinguishing the flames under the running water.
They rushed her to the hospital. She had three degree burns all across her chest and face.
The first miracle was that the doctors let my parents take her home. She had to be brought into the hospital every day in order to have her bandages changed, but she was home.
Thank G-d, the scars on her face faded almost immediately. But the damage to her chest was much deeper, and they scheduled surgery for two weeks after the fire. They were going to take tissue from her legs and graft it to her chest. Major surgery is always dangerous, but especially for toddlers. There is always the threat of them going under the anesthia and not waking up.
My parents wrote and called into the Rebbe for a bracha, of course, and took her to the surgery.
The surgeon came into the pre-op room to examine my sister for the surgery scheduled for later that day.
Result?
She doesn't need it.
That was miracle number two.
It took three months or so for my sister to be fully recovered. Today, no one would ever be able to tell she'd ever had such a thing happen to her, unless you look closely at her left earlobe. There is still a little scar there.
That was our family Chanukah miracle.
And that, about 21 years or so later, my sister went out with her husband for the first time on the seventh night of Chanukah... but maybe I'll save that (and the song we made up in the dorm about it) for next year...
Happy Chanukah!

And a Merry, Merry Chanukah to One and All!

Bsd
It's Nittelnacht tonight, right?
And although tis technically Thursday all throughout the USA, I'm still posting a family story. Appropriate, as after a few months of travel, I'm ensconced on the family couch again. (Side note: It took 8 hours to fly from New York to Oakland. 8 HOURS.)
I'm a fourth generation Californian on my mother's side.My mother recently told me this story about her paternal grandmother, Pauline. Pauline's parents were divorced. Her mother ran a boarding home in Sacramento, and her father lived in San Francisco. Pauline and her siblings starred in vaudeville shows.
Pauline married a non Jew. Her father refused to speak to her after this. When she had my grandfather, she would take him down to the street where her father lived, and would walk my grandfather in the carriage up and down the street. This is how my great great grandfather knew his daughter had a son.
Pauline eventually divorced her non Jewish husband. She moved into her father's home, and he helped her raise her children.

If You Have Pre Marital Sex, Are You Still Frum?

Bsd

This post is intended for mature audiences. Readers, try to act your age, not your shoe size.

I met a girl in Israel. Frum girl. Dresses more tzniusly than me. Has a boyfriend - in all senses of the word. 

I smiled and laughed and giggled and took pictures of her and her boyfriend and cringed (on the inside). 

Tonight, I regaled my roommate with tales of my trip to Israel, the wedding of our friend, my host's three month old baby, and of course, this frum girl who is having sex.

"Frum?" My roommate raised her eyebrow. "I wouldn't exactly call someone having regular pre marital sex frum."

Well, I would. She's shomer Shabbos. She keeps kosher. She has sex. 

She's definitely breaking Halacha, as she didn't go skinny dipping, as per Frum Satire's suggestion. But I think she's just screwing up, like so many people do. Doing something she shouldn't and rationalizing it. 

Being frum, in my definition, is a matter of numbers. How many Halachos do you keep? You keep everything, but you apply makeup on Shabbos?  Still frum. You keep everything but you buy non kosher candy? Still frum. You keep everything, but you cheat the government? Still frum. 

Not a very good Jew, but still frum.

My roommate disagrees. She defines frum as an attitude. It's a way of life, a moral, ethical, G-d fearing way of life. Play around with it too much, and you're not frum anymore. 

In English, I think frum means being observant and she thinks it means being religious. 

What about you?

A Request

Bsd

Tonight, while I celebrate the greatest joy with one of my closest friends, while we stand under her chupah and look up at the stars over the Negev, another friend - my cousin, my sister, my friend - will be hoping and praying and going through something no one should have to.
Please say Tehillim for Chanan Velvel ben Bryna.

What This Was About

Bsd

This started as something. I was never quite sure what. I took my time choosing the title of my blog. I had to find something that captured the essence of this experiment. Confessional? Journal? Diary? It was an amalgamation of all three, and something more.

It took me time to realize what it was that differentiated my blog from all my other writing. 

People could read it. 

Not that anyone did, back then. 

But - they could, if they wanted to. 

It changed the writing. Forced me to polish my sentences just a little bit more, restrain my flow of thought (or more correctly, emotion). It forced me to make allowances for an audience. 

And then one day I had an audience. 

Five people, maybe. 

But my blog changed. 

It wasn't about writing, anymore. 

It was about the audience. All about the audience. 

My blog was another Facebook, a slower paced IM, another link in the chain of social networking. The comments took on a life of their own, one which I enthusiastically participated in. 

Hiatus. 

It's what I should have posted, but didn't have the patience to. 

I'm taking a blog hiatus.

But whoever cared would figure it out. 

No blog reading or commenting or writing from me. 

I took a break. 

A lot happened. 

I didn't do much. 

Isn't it funny (funny odd, funny strange, funny ironically amusing - not funny haha) how often those two situations occur simultaneously?

Now. 

I'm back. 

Back just before I leave again, at least physically. Off to the Holy Land to celebrate a joyous occasion, which I plan on discussing. (With whom? You, the reader. Not the audience, but the reader? I can dream. This is the easy way out. I need to get published for real.)

This is another introduction, like the one I wrote when I began. 

Appropriate for a new beginning. 

Again. 

Like many of my best posts, the most incoherent and introspective, this has been a 3 AM RANT.