Ableist family bullshit

I am in an absolutely "don't fuck with me" mood. For those who don't know, my sister is kicking me out so she can spawn with the lazy douche she's married to. So I'm back up in my college town, trying to find an apartment. The hemming and hawwing of my cosigner already caused me to lose on the best options. Now I have to go through property management, request access, call my doctor at home and get a letter, background check, blah, blah, blah. I didn't have to do any of that for this other place, I have a personal relationship with them. Just sign the rental agreement, pay the deposit and be done. My mom and sister are already packing my stuff.

I call my mom today to tell her about this place I am looking at and to see how my rat Ginny Weasley is. Then my mom dropped a bomb on me.

I'm ending this trip to go to my cousins  (who couldn't identify me in a Starbucks line) Bat Mitzvah which is a Jewish coming of age ceremony. It's at a private venue, owned by a synagogue. It's a summer camp that many of us went to and there's lots of wildlife.  My cousin says they said no dogs. I email their offices as a camp alumnae. I went for 4 summers. I get an email back from and Max is welcome. After I tried to get a hold of my cousin to no avail, I just said that I'm going and Max is coming. I find out that the RSVP wasn't mailed for weeks after.

My cousin's dad calls my parents. He couldn't call his own first cousin to tell her that her medical equipment isn't welcome at this family event. My uncle wouldn't even call me. They couldn't say it  directly to me. "Sorry, your life-saving medical device isn't welcome." It's at a fucking summer camp next to the beach! You own two dogs you twat! Do just not want my "problems" to ruin her special day? Without him, it would be even worse. I'd scream in the middle of someone talking, storm out of the room in tears and probably hurt myself trying to get to the beach via the old basketball courts. Can't have the oddball cousin ruin your princess's big day! It's a Bat Mitzvah at a summer camp, not a debutante ball!

This shouldn't surprise me, almost that whole side of the family is filled with narcissistic, snobby assholes. Only 5 decent people. My grandfather was my major childhood trigger. I wasn't good enough, I wouldn't make it, why was I doing something stupid like that? That asshole verbally tore me apart.  Now I'm supposed to go to an event full of people who love without one of the best tools in my toolbox? My family didn't even stand up for me, they just took it! My mom telling me how she'll help me. I don't want my mother to help me! I have several things  to assist with independent living, just let me use them! Being doped up the whole time won't help.

I'm sorry but if Max isn't welcome, neither am I. He saved my life, I wouldn't be here without him. So no Max, no me.

Leviticus 19:14-"You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God - I am your Lord."

I am highly medicated on controlled substances right now. I will likely spend the rest of the day eating trail mix while watching shit on YouTube.

Shira's Last Song

At 10 years old, Shira Banki was playing with muscians 4-7x her age.

At 16 years old, Shira was supporting friends in Jerusalem's Pride Parade when a Jewish extremist ripped through the crowd where Shira and 5 others were stabbed. Shira died in the hospital from her wounds.

10 years before, unbeknownst to Shira, this same extremist also went on a stabbing spree at Tel Aviv Pride. He had only been let out a few weeks before. I don't think if Israel has the dealth penalty or if this man will be forced into solitary confinement. But he deserves no mercy from anyone.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet
Blessed is the True Judge
May her name be for a blessing always.

http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/shira-bankis-last-song/

The Origin of the Orange on the Seder Plate

In the early 1980s, the Hillel Foundation invited me to speak on a panel at Oberlin College. While on campus, I came across a Haggada that had been written by some Oberlin students to express feminist concerns. One ritual they devised was placing a crust of bread on the Seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians ("there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the Seder plate").

At the next Passover, I placed an orange on our family's Seder plate. During the first part of the Seder, I asked everyone to take a segment of the orange, make the blessing over fruit, and eat it as a gesture of solidarity with Jewish lesbians and gay men, and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community (I mentioned widows in particular).

Bread on the Seder plate brings an end to Pesach - it renders everything chometz. And its symbolism suggests that being lesbian is being transgressive, violating Judaism. I felt that an orange was suggestive of something else: the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life. In addition, each orange segment had a few seeds that had to be spit out - a gesture of spitting out, repudiating the homophobia that poisons too many Jews.

When lecturing, I often mentioned my custom as one of many new feminist rituals that had been developed in the last twenty years. Somehow, though, the typical patriarchal maneuver occurred: My idea of an orange and my intention of affirming lesbians and gay men were transformed. Now the story circulates that a MAN stood up after I lecture I delivered and said to me, in anger, that a woman belongs on the bimah as much as an orange on the Seder plate. My idea, a woman's words, are attributed to a man, and the affirmation of lesbians and gay men is simply erased. Isn't that precisely what's happened over the centuries to women's ideas?

Susannah Heschel, April, 2001
Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies Dartmouth College

http://www.miriamscup.com/Heschel_orange.htm

Without this blog post, Pesach is over. I'm going to go have some sourdough bread!

Leonard Nimoy and the Jewish Blessing

This blog post was updated after Nimoy passed away. May his memory be for a blessing.

http://jewcy.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/leonard-nimoy-vulcan-salute-yiddish

It’s no secret that Star Trek’s ‘Vulcan Salute’ comes from the Jewish priestly blessing performed in synagogue on certain holidays (or, if you’re in Israel, every day). Leonard Nimoy (AKA Spock) introduced the greeting to the show himself based on what he’d seen in shul as a small child, and wrote about it in his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock.

But here’s something new! The National Yiddish Book Center’s oral history project recently released an extended interview with Nimoy, in which he memorably mimics the duchening and describes seeing the hand gesture for the first time:

“So I’m with my father, my grandfather, and my brother, sitting in the bench seats—women were upstairs. Five or six guys get up on the bimah, the stage, facing the congregation. They get their tallits over their heads, and they start this chanting… And my father said to me, ‘don’t look’. So everyone’s got their eyes covered with their hands or their tallit down over their faces… And I hear this strange sound coming from them. They’re not singers, they were shouters. And dissonant… It was all discordant… it was chilling.

I thought, ‘something major is happening here.’ So I peeked. And I saw them with their hands stuck out from beneath the tallit like this… Wow. Something really got hold of me. I had no idea what was going on, but the sound of it and the look of it was magical.”

There’s an equally delightful segment in which he recites the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ soliloquy from Hamlet in Yiddish, and talks about growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family in Boston’s West End.

Earlier this month, Nimoy announced that he was suffering from chronic lung disease, and turned to Twitter to urge smokers to quit. May he live long and prosper.