I’m wearing a wig!

Yes, you read that right – Melissa, the woman who doesn’t wear wigs, is wearing a wig.

Luckily, its just for a Purim costume and I shall return to the world of scarves tomorrow, but for today I am be-wigged – and its weird! Aside from the obviously very different look, it feels weird physically, mentally, and spiritually.

@thdpr and @melschol - but who is who? (Post by Melissa)

The first question I’m sure you have is – what were you and what did the wig look like? Well, thats simple.  My dear friend Talia and I decided to be each other at work. We wanted to celebrate but also be work appropriate, and so a brilliant idea was born.  We wore outfits that were totally how the other dresses (and each other’s work name tags just to clarify), but the crux of it was clearly our “hair” – my be-scarfed head and her beautiful red hair are quite distinct. So today, I am wearing a wig. I’ll be back later to reflect on the experience!

***

Ok, it is now motzei Shabbat, and the wig has been packed away and I can take a moment to reflect on the experience.

Overwhelmingly, I just didn’t feel like myself.  Maybe it was that the color was so far from my own, but I think it was more that it just didn’t feel true to who I am and my ideals at this point in my life. Plus, I was super freaking hot! I honestly felt like I was over heating all day, and while it was unseasonably warm, it was still only  ~65′ – I can’t imagine having it on in 85′!

The biggest shock to me though was number of comments I got about how pretty/beautiful/etc I looked with a wig on and subsequently “why don’t you wear a wig.” While I so know that our society values hair as beautiful, it was still striking to see how much it really affects people’s views of each other.  That having on a (very cheap) wig made such an impact on my appearance that people felt compelled to comment as amazing to me. So, while my vain inner voice said “what, so I don’t look pretty normally?” my rational voice reaffirmed the sephardic reasoning for not wearing a wig, and my overall non-sheitel status. (Though ironically on Sunday I am attending a Sheitel Sale, though that is primarily to support the friend hosting it and to get a WiGrip which I have heard such amazing reviews of but would love to try on before committing to.)

At the end of the experience, I am honestly so glad to be back to my scarves and hats, though I do have an increased appreciation for women who wear sheitels daily and there is still the lingering inside me to own one for fancy events.  However, I am sure all I will have to do to sway myself back to reality now is to remember how hot I was and how uncomfortable I was with people telling me how good I looked. For my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being – I really need to stick to scarves.

Reflections on Tisha b’Av and the B’nai Anousim

This year, I was educated in advance of Tisha b’Av (the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, which fell yesterday), about a resolution passed last year by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).  The USCJ unanimously passed a resolution stating that the Conservative movement should educate about the B’nai Anousim and the Spanish Inquisiton during Tisha b’Av.  However, this has not yet become a wide-spread practice. As such, I am taking this space to share some links for your education on the matter.

Who are the B’nai Anousim?

http://www.bechollashon.org/projects/anusim/anusim.php

http://www.alizahausman.net/2009/09/spotlight-rabbi-juan-mejia-and-bnai.html

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/05/18/1005189/the-secret-jews-of-the-southwest

http://koltuvsefarad.com/

What do the B’nai Anusim have to do with Tisha b’Av?

http://www.uscj.org/Tisha_BAv_Observance8243.html

http://www.uscj.org/images/bnai_anousim_out_of_fear.pdf

http://www.uscj.org/images/bnai_anousim_tisha_bav_program.pdf

I think that at a time when we look at the historical destruction of the Jewish people, it is imperative to reflect upon the more recent historical destructions.  The fact that the expulsion from Spain occurred also on Tisha b’Av in 1492, only furthers the need for its inclusion in our commemorations.  We need to think about those who were forceably converted and fought to practice their Judaism in secret for hundreds of years.  These individuals did not allow their Judaism to be wiped out  by others, and that is a critical lesson to learn today.  Today their descendants are finding their way back to Judaism and need to be included in Jewish life the way that their ancestors were not.  Please take a moment to educate yourself, and the next time you meet a Jew with a Spanish last name take a moment to listen to their story – you never know what you may learn.

Reflections on a year of marriage

Ok, so I know this is belated from when I had promised it, but alas – here comes my reflections series.

Post by Melissa

I am still in denial of the fact that I have been married to my best friend for a year.  If  I have learned any one thing this year, it is to keep laughing.  We have a ton of fun and that is something which brings us through the hard times, and we will always have that to share.

Over the course of our first year of marriage, we have been through some very difficult experiences, as well as some truly wonderful ones.  We were lucky enough to be able to celebrate the marriages of some of our closest friends, welcome new babies into the world, and be honored guests at B’nai Mitzvah.  On the flip side we also have had to deal with death and divorce.  The cycle of life keeps on reeling, and even just a few weeks into our second year of marriage we’ve already attended a funeral and a Brit Milah.  Every time I get to share a special event in the life cycle with D, I smile internally.  Even for sad events, having him by my side makes it a better moment – and I hope that never goes away.

As mentioned, we have been able to celebrate the marriages of numerous friends throughout the year.  At every Shabbat Kallah (a gathering of women to celebrate the bride the day before her wedding, keeping her calm and surrounded by her friends and family) I was asked for my insights on having a happy marriage, and I had to think back to the best advice I was given.  A good friend of mine got married the week before I did, and her mother told her that a marriage is not about giving 50-50, or 60-40 – it is giving 100-100.  Each person must give 100% of themselves to their marriage in order to make it a truly happy union. Those words truly stuck with me.

To add my own insight would definitely be to keep playing and laughing.  D and I have a very playful relationship, as I have mentioned before.  I truly believe that being silly and playful is something which will always keep us young and help us through the difficult times in the years to come.  Though our playfulness can sometimes annoy one another, we know that at the end of the day, we are each bringing our 100% to the table and we may just need to step back for a moment and see what the other is going through. Some days need hugs, not pokes. Some weeks need serious discussions, not goofy banter. All of which is ok and keeping up with it keeps us happy in the big picture.

This all ties into the almighty key word of any relationship: compromise.  Our regular readers know by now that this has been a big part of our Sephardekenazi life, and it only grows more prominent with every passing week.  While I have made many compromises this year, I know there are many more to come, and as long as we can talk through the options rationally and laugh about it later – I think we are prepared to handle come what may.

{For the record, while I typed this post, he washed the Shabbat lunch dishes and made me fresh popcorn. I have an awesome husband.}

Od y’shama…… Wait, its been a year?

Tomorrow is my first wedding anniversary, I know I am beyond blessed to be married to my best friend and to laugh every day.  I know this sounds cliche’, but I cannot believe that I have been married for a year already.  I still feel like I should be planning for my wedding or picking out something, but nope, its all done. I even have my photo album on my mantle and my ketubah hanging above it to prove it should I ever truly forget.  Not that I could, because the day I married D was hands down the best day of my life.  (Ask me again when I have children, I’m sure I may have to claim that I have multiple best days.)

Post by Melissa (Photo copyright RealPhotography.com)

Our wedding was a wonderful celebration of us and our love.*  In fact, yesterday we received a bracha (blessing) from our Rabbi during the Torah service, and as the congregation sang “siman tov, u’mazel tov” our Rabbi turned to D and said “That was a fun wedding, lets do it again!” – which was exactly what we wanted people to say about it. D and I have a very fun and playful relationship, our wedding was definitely a reflection of what our marriage would be – which I think is very important.  Even looking at photos, people who were not present are able to tell that everyone had a lot of fun and that it reflected our personalities.  We were blessed to be able to have that much fun while surrounded by our friends and family, also all having a fabulous time.

Our wedding was also the official start of our Sephardekanazi life together.  We had the Ashkenazi style Tisch, Bedeken, and Yichud.  However, the format of the Kidushin/Eruvin (ceremony) followed a Sephardic custom which D felt connected to, and our ketubah has the Spanish-Portugese text.  I had henna on my hands and feet, and D did not wear a kittle.  Neither of us fasted. As we each made compromises that day, so too have we made compromises throughout this year of wedded bliss.

As much as our wedding was a reflection of our lives, so too the first year of marriage has been a reflection of our life together, so I thought I would take a few weeks of posts to reflect on some of the big (and not so big) life changes which this blessing has bestowed upon me.  So far, I intend to write about my first year of marriage in general, hair covering, observing taharat hamishpaca (laws of family purity) and mikvah.  If there are any other topics which you think would be interesting to include, please feel free to share them with me, I’m always happy to write what you want to read!

*Since people always ask “What would you change if you could do it over?” here are my only two answers: to have been able to have my brother home from his deployment (which I had no say in) and to have had a dress which was shorter and fuller and had sleeves attached (I love the dress I wore, however I got very hot, tore my dress in many places, had a hard time dancing without hiking it up, and was fighting with my jacket).

I Love Water

post by Jessica

As mentioned a few weeks ago, we decided to take on mikvah as an observance.

I got a lot of nice feedback from that original post, and I am pleased to say that I enjoyed my first experience, and I wanted to take a moment to examine the experience as well.

First, I really enjoyed learning about mikvah. My teacher (incidentally, the same woman who taught the class on the Rabba controversy) was amazing. Not only was she totally understanding about where we were with our observance and why we wanted to start this now, but she helped us understand the variations in practice (especially important since we are Sephardic and the rules are slightly different).  She had a perspective that I really appreciated as well. This wasn’t about my being pure or impure or about sex or women being “bad.” Rather, it was about the ways in which Jewish people limit things that are good in moderation. For instance, eating is good and we encourage eating, but there are certain things we don’t eat and certain times we don’t eat as observant Jews. So too do we encourage people to have healthy sexual relationships, but in a certain context and at certain times. It was incredibly enlightening.

Despite all that, I still felt nervous as I began the unfamiliar procedure of counting days and all the things that go with mikvah observance. I worried if I was doing it correctly, and reviewed my notes several times to make sure. When I had determined when the fateful night would be, I placed my first call to the mikvah to make my appointment. The attendant who called me back was very nice (although, I admit it was awkward, since I was nervous) and we set up our time.

Our mikvah has the most amazing bathtub. There are not many apartments in the city that have bathtubs that you would want to spend any time in. So I spent a good forty five or fifty minutes enjoying the bathtub while slowly getting myself ready. It was powerful for me to spend that time in water, since I was that little kid who couldn’t get enough of the water. After hating the bathtub until I was about six months old, you could not drag me out of there or the swimming pool. So after just about drowning myself in the big tub, it was time for the mikvah.

I think the most difficult part for me was the fact that I couldn’t see anything with my glasses off. I think I underestimated how that would be, so it was tough. I like being able to see where I am, and especially when it’s important to have a good concept of where the sides of the mikvah are. I did not have a huge spiritual awakening, but it felt good and then it was time to get dressed. I had brought fresh clothes with me for going home, and I think the act of putting on new clothes made the spiritual difference manifest.

Bottom line: Good. Enjoyable. Something I look forward to continuing.

On All Other Nights

post by Jessica

When R and I knew we were going to be leading two seders last year, we decided to use it as an opportunity to create our own hagaddah (the book used to guide the seder). The hagaddah would probably win the award for the Jewish text most often adapted, re-adapted and adapted again. So why create another one? Seriously, we don’t have enough to do in our lives?

Multiple reasons. First, we had some unique needs. We loved the way R’s father led the seder, in that he brought a lot of sources to the seder, really enhancing the basic text. However, no one else had the texts in front of them, damaging the interactivity of the event and sometimes making the seder seem a little less coherent. We also wanted to incorporate a lot of Sephardi traditions, as well as some modern interpretations and readings. We were aiming to create something that addressed a lot of the “whys” of the seder, especially those in which the tradition came first and the explanations were derived afterward.

Our first step was to buy the Davka Writer Hagaddah. For those of you who don’t know, Davka Writer is the software that allowed typing in Hebrew before Word knew how to do it, and definitely still works better with Hebrew than Word does. In any case, we bought the text and immediately had to set about working on it. R wanted to include some more of the Sephardi Hebrew phrases, and many of the English translations were really awkward or weren’t as exactly accurate as we would have liked. Translation is interpretation, and having the translation to work with was definitely valuable. As we were working on the text, we were also working on getting our source materials together. We bought a few books, waded through lots of materials, and created lists of possible inclusions.

It was  a long process, made longer by our desire to do a different seder on each night of Passover. We edited and edited and made changes and edited. We got it printed at Kinkos the night before Passover, and it looked great. It also felt great to see all our hard work printed. We really engaged the text in a way that we hadn’t done before, and had to really think about the seder. And the response of those who came to the seders was also gratifying, to say the least. R’s family has a tradition of long seders, and so we really delved in-depth with the material.

This year, thankfully, the family is healthy, but we asked if we could lead the first seder when my in-laws host. We hoped to make haggadah version 2.0, since, as with any first version, both of last years versions had typos, things that fell flat and a few things that we didn’t get to include. This was our opportunity to do it again, make one definitive version (at least for now) and enjoy the fruits of our labors.

If you have a desire to work with text in this way, I say go for it! It was a lot of work, but it was worth it in the end, and I am glad we did it, both last year and this.

The Unexpected Seder

The seder plate we received as a wedding present - post by Jessica

Since we started dating, R and I have spent at least part of every Passover seder together, generally at his parents house. However, in January of last year, my father in law (FIL) had successful shoulder surgery, a month after successful back surgery. After two successive surgeries like that, you can imagine that the recovery time was not short. As FIL explained the recovery process over dinner at the local kosher Israeli place after his first follow-up appointment for the shoulder, I realized that we were going to have a problem with Passover. Traditionally, FIL had done most of the preparation, and MIL didn’t have extra time to chip in, since she was still working at her very demanding full-time job.

So, if he couldn’t prepare and we don’t live close enough to do it for them, how were we going to have seder? The options looked uninviting, and most involved spending the holiday away from my husband’s parents. I started considering the viability of hosting the seder in our apartment. Given what I wrote on Thursday about our first Passover, you might be surprised that I even considered it. There were some things working in our favor, however. One of them was that my new job was a lot less stressful, and although it didn’t free up any time, it freed up A LOT of mental energy. The second was that we’d be able to get the seder catered through the Hillel that my husband works for. The cook was already making meals for several seders, and he said that if he was paid, he was willing to make another one for us.  There were other motivations – hosting a seder sounded like the good kind of challenge, and it would be a chance to make our dream of writing our own Hagaddah a reality. And we’d be able to use our seder plates – one we’d bought for ourselves and one given to us as a gift.

The Hagadda, in particular, meant it was a lot of work, but there were other issues we faced. One of the big downsides of having the seder at our place verses my in laws was that my parents were too far away to attend. We also had to work in our incredibly tiny kitchen, which meant borrowing a mini-fridge from Hillel just to have enough space to store all the seder food. On the day of the seder, we had my in-laws working (FIL was just out of his sling and doing great) and my friend E came over early to help out. There were eggs to boil, gefilte fish to put out, tables to assemble and set… Once we sat down to the seder, with the Haggadot we’d made ourselves, and had a really fantastic seder with a lot of people we really enjoyed having there – all the craziness was worth it!

On Thursday – I’ll tell you all about the Haggadah we wrote!

The First Annual Sephardekanazi Seder

Post by Melissa

As we have well established by now, my husband is Sephardi (Spanish-Portuguese to be exact, though he learns about a variety of Sephardic customs and adopts what he identifies with) and I am Asheknazi. We are both very tied to the customs and traditions of these  identifications, and when it comes to Pesach (Passover) this is only intensified.  We have found ways to combine our heritages before, but hosting a seder for the first time somehow was a much bigger ordeal.  In fact, it led to some very interesting conversations and a lot of compromise because neither of us was going to win on everything. I wanted to share some of the big things which we had to think about.

Hagadot: We discussed making our own hagadot but decided against it after having heard what friends of ours went through in the process (Jessica will be writing about their experience with it on Thursday, actually).  So if we weren’t going to make our own, what would we use? I grew up with the Maxwell House hagadah, though a few years ago my family upgraded.  In college and grad school I used various Hillel compilations, and since moving have encountered a wide variety of hagadot. D has mainly been exposed to traditional Ashekenazi hagadot.  So while I was apathetic about what I had used before and comfortable with them for the sense of familiarity they provide alone – Dustin was eager to try something new.  We just received ten of Rabbi Marc Angel’s Sephardic hagadot in the mail.  Now we just need to familiarize ourselves with the differences.

Food: As mentioned last week, my husband eats kitniyot and I do not. Some of our guests will, and some will not. So how do we make a meal which everyone can enjoy, and feel their traditions are recognized? Serve a little bit of everything! To start the meal we will have eggs and gefilte fish, and hummus and turkish salad. As side dishes we will have roasted potatoes, and rice and lentils. Plus of course some meat and salad and matzah ball soup. Luckily, we have someone in our community who makes amazing flour-less chocolate torts for Pesach which we can serve for dessert.

Birkat Hamazon: So now that we know which hagadah we will use and what we will serve, how much do we want to push the comfort level of our guests? We can do the Sephardic birkat hamazon (grace after meals) which has some different wording and a totally different melody to accomodate as such. That is probably what makes the most sense since it will be in our Hagadah after all.  However, we have some guests who have less of an understanding of the nuances of birkat hamazon who may get lost with a new tune and words.  So we will likely use the birchonim (aka – benchers, the books which contain the various blessings around mealtimes) from our wedding – since they are userfriendly, complete with transliateration for those in need.

To round it all out, we will be using the tablecloth my grandmother embroidered for my future wedding present (before marriage was even really on my agenda) and the matzah cover and seder plate which were passed down to me from my grandparents, as the person most likely to annually host a seder and truly appreciate these items.  You can’t get much more Sephardekanazi than that!

Kitniyot and Me

post by Jessica

My first memory of Passover happened at our synagogue in South Africa’s communal seder, when I decided I didn’t like the matzah ball soup.Unlike in the US, in South Africa, the soup was only brought out on Passover, maybe in deference to the tropical climate. In our first year in Canada, we visited my aunt in Florida for the seder, but after that year, we stayed and just did the seder with the three of us, and sometimes family friends. We even have a videotape of me at almost 8 years old, practicing reading the four questions and answering questions about them with my mom, who was at that point (and for much ofmy childhood) my Hebrew teacher. Once we moved to the US, we had a home seder for the first seder, and for the first time I could remember, we participated in a second seder, in the form of the annual community seder, one of the biggest events of the year in the congregation. It was a really enjoyable experience, and allowed us to participate in at least one seder, even during the years in high school when my mom was sick with chemo.

I loved all those seders, but that was often the extent of our food observance of Passover. I remember eating matzah sandwiches in high school, but with matzah hard to come by where we lived, sometimes we’d run out of matzah before the holiday was over, and we’d just go back to bread. My first year in college, I was surprised to see that the dorms had some Passover foods available all through the holiday.That minor experience combined with my growing understanding of kashrut meant that through my college years, I was working on my understanding of kashrut during Passover as well. By my senior year, my roommate and I were covering our counters with aluminum foil and buying as much kosher for Passover food as we could. I first found out about kitniyot when a friend asked if I had found anything in the convenience store by the dorm that didn’t have any corn syrup in it. I had no idea what she was talking about, and, once I found out, didn’t worry too much about it as I never really made a commitment to keep kosher for Passover, even as my roommate and I made an effort to make the apartment as kosher as possible for her sake.

It was during our year in Israel that really made me understand what it meant that R was teaching me about Sephardi kashrut, rather than Ashkenazi kashrut. I decided that year to see what the kitniyot thing was about. Israel was, of course, the perfect place to learn more about kitniyot – it was everywhere! Matzah, cheese and hummus sandwiches are amazing, kosher for Passover Doritos? Unbelievable! Back in America, without a strong family connection either way, I was more than happy to take on my husband’s kashrut practices in general, and kitniyot in particular. We make our own hummus with chickpeas, sort through the rice, and make sure we don’t serve kitniyot to anyone who doesn’t want it. Coming from a family with very little tradition for Passover, having fewer restrictions on foods for Passover has really been a blessing.

But your husband is Sephardi!

Post by Melissa

Yes, but I am not.  There, I said it. I do not believe that because I married a Sephard (Spanish-Portugese), I lose my Ashkenz (Eastern European) roots.  I have adopted many things over the years, but some I do not want to give up.  I light candles like an Ashkenazi woman, and I celebrate Pesach like one.  I mentioned previously the importance of my grandfather’s influence in my life – and Pesach was the premier holiday of that.

I would go to my grandparents home in the morning before first sedar and spend the day cooking, cleaning, setting the table, and learning about the family and traditions.  The last time I spent with my grandfather was a Pesach meal.  My grandfather died on the 5^th day of Pesach.  With this knowledge, is it surprising that I don’t want to let go?  Never the less, marriage is about starting a new family and making compromises in traditions, so we do.

Every day is an adventure in blending our traditions, and Pesach is no different.  While we’ve done it before, this is the first year doing it as husband and wife and the first year where we will be hosting our own sedar.  Both of these add unique layers of expectations and difficult conversations.  Neither of us can truly understand why the other cares so much about certain things, so we have to have some interesting moments of attempting to explain it.  The biggest topic is definitely Kitniyot* (I’m sure any regular readers are not shocked at this), and the second is Haggadot (but I’ll save that for an upcoming post).

My husband is a card carrying member of the Kitniyot Liberation Front, as am I.  However, I don’t eat it. It is not hametz and we will both tell you that until we are blue in the face (that is beyond the point of this post, and if you comment on it, I may delete it).  I chose to uphold my family’s minhag (custom) of not eating it, and D chooses to eat it.  We made an agreement that our future children will eat it, and at that time, I may reassess my choice to not. We serve kitniyot in our home and our community all knows it.  We have found those who will eat it and D has them over one afternoon for Cholent, and I go to my Rabbi’s house for Matzah Brie instead.  However, that does not stop the endless comments from D and others that since I married a Sephardi man, I can eat it without regard to minhag. Yes, but I don’t want to.

Marrying a Sephardi man did not undo a lifetime of Ashkenzai traditions. I can embrace what my husband does to honor his ancestry, without denying my strong roots in the process.  I don’t know what my grandfather would say about rice next to his sedar plate, but I hope I have many years of happiness before I will find out.

*For more information about Pesach and Kitniyot see the following articles at MyJewishLearning.com (Kitniyot and What to do with leaven)