Night:

2007, The Peak of My Religious Piety: It’s 11pm on Yom Kippur eve, but I’m not that tired. I reach for a book about rabbis from the Talmud. There’s one about a rabbi who confronts a Roman empress:

Roman empress scoffs: “What does your God do all day?”

Rabbi answers even-temperedly: “God makes matches between man and woman.”

I believe, with a kind of simple faith that’s synonymous with virgins from Laura Ingalls Wilder-esque novels, that God has made my match. I’ll meet him when I’m approximately 20.

But no later than 22. I silently cry. There’s little room at the High Holiday hearth for a female singleton.

I chase any vestige of fear by reciting the whole entire shema prayer and by learning two pages of the Chofetz Chaim’s “Guard Your Tongue.” I gently wrap a blanket over my chin and breathe happily: There. I’m amassing good deeds so that I can soon be a young Jewish bride.

I don’t know yet that I’ll spend the next 8 years as an untouched, un-romanced woman.

2017, The Peak of Newfound Secular Living: It’s 11pm on Rosh Hashanah eve and I’m alone in my apartment. I watched Stephen King’s It a couple of weeks ago. I’ve slept with a light on since because—yes—the thought of a fictional demonic clown is still too terrible to bear in the dark. My roommates will murder me after reading September’s electricity bill. I’m scared of them too.

And are you not scared of God’s wrath? My brain suddenly shrills. His vengeful wrath as he smites you for being so apathetic on His New Year? He’ll punish you and deprive you of love, luck, and—I try to shut it up.

After watching Netflix’s Jerry Before Seinfeld, it finally dials down to a background murmur. Irreverent Jews will always find comfort in one another. Thanks, Jer.

I manage to sleep.

Morning:

2007: Walking to shul on Yom Kippur morning, I cross paths with a dark-eyed, charmingly scruffed yeshiva boy. When you’re a hetero 17 girl surrounded by only women every day, almost all XY chromosomes emanate sexy musk from their pores. I grow excited.

He’s wearing a black hat and his eyes are pinned to the ground. He can’t bear to look at my hands or face—the only parts of my body that are naked. Everything else (from collarbone to toes) is safely tucked away under a long sheath, patiently awaiting God’s blessing.

I avert my eyes from him too. We’re both conscious of this aversion and it’s so beautifully awkward.

2017: It’s Yom Kippur morning and I’ll walk towards a Dunkin Donuts. (Thank God I won’t allow the Day of Judgement to infringe on my iced latte cravings.) Men will trek back from shul. I’ll worry that they’ll smell my crushing pile of sin. They’ll know, through some inexplicable Jew-y antenna of theirs, that I used to be a servant of Hashem. I’ll pull up my yoga pants to expose less belly.

After I pick up that iced latte, the paranoia will fade. They’re too fixated on their growling stomachs to care about your sin, you self-absorbed little girl. Caffeine works wonders in tethering me to reality.

After a latte, I’ll meet my boyfriend and kiss him three times on his cushion-like lips. Make that ten times. No—20. Lawless lovers will always discover peace in one another.

Afternoon:

2007: Religious Jews are advised not to nap on Rosh Hashanah because it can foreshadow a spiritual lassitude or a physical fatigue that may hang upon them for the rest of the year. Sans nap, TV, or phone, my friends and I have stretches of time to fill before another holiday dinner. We decide to stroll on Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway and schmooze like a couple of bubbies:

Me: “In shul today, almost all the women were wearing Valentino heels and Chanel dresses. Why does shul have to be a fashion show?”

Tali: “It’s loshon hora (gossip) to talk about people like that in your shul! Please stop! It’s Rosh Hashanah!”

Me: “Alright.”

But I hate this. I want my friends and I to be walking copies of an Ok! Magazine: equal parts disgusting and unbridled fun. There’s isn’t any laughter on these days. Always somber. Always serious. I scream internally.

Is this the scream bubble that germinates my inevitable dissent? Perhaps.

2017: This Rosh Hashanah, my boyfriend and I lazily lounge on the couch, our conversation quickly taking the pleasurable shape of gossip. But I soon cut the verbal whippings about neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances short.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because it’s Rosh Hashanah and the pintele Yid, the ‘little Jew,’ does not die.”

My Bais Yaakov teachers warned me about the pintele Yid: “Even the most filthy, immoral Jew will always contain a spark of God,” they said. Now, I know.

Neilah, the Climax of the High Holidays:

2007: I stand united with my congregation. Yom Kippur is racing to the finish line. The heavenly gates are quickly locking, our fates quickly solidifying. Quivers of desperation ripple through the sick, the anxious, the poor, the lonely. For a moment, my burning tears speak when I cannot. For a moment, I see God eagerly collecting our collapsing bodies into his expansive chest. For a moment, we fit.

2017: It’s the last hour of Yom Kippur, the moment when spiritual listlessness crawls up my skin like a hot rash.

As a distraction, I turn to social media. There’s more news about Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy. And I think: How can I daven to a God that allows the Kardashians to infest the world’s collective newsfeed every minute? I grow increasingly fatalistic. And then nihilistic.

But cynicism crumples upon itself to expose a little girl mourning a faith that once felt like home. What do you do when you no longer believe, but miss believing?

I sigh and then slip on my headphones; I know, at the very least, that God is unblemished in music. This turns into passionate, fastidious prayer.

Rebecca Mordechai has an MA in English Literature and used to teach teens. But now she writes about her ever-evolving identity and lots of other Jewy things.

Image via Pixabay

The post Ten Years Later: The High Holidays for an Ex-Orthodox Jew appeared first on Jewcy.

This year’s season of Difficult People is ending on Tuesday just in time for us all to reflect on our garbage person ways Pre-Yom Kippur. To quote Billy’s character, “we did the wrong thing and we still got nothing!”

Dear Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner,

Thank you for letting it be okay to be a dirt person. I constantly struggle to stay away from my garbage person impulses, but Difficult People really leans into the dirt person lifestyle. It is a celebration of all of the worst traits a person can have.    

I would like you both to know that I am not planning to become an all out horrible monster, but just a person who occasionally thinks about herself before others. I really view what your characters do on the show as a form of self-care, because let’s be honest— they only really do care about themselves. It’s cathartic to watch you guys do the things I only dream of doing.

I appreciate your characters’ infusion of Judaism in their everyday activities. It’s not like we often see them doing Jewish rituals or celebrating holidays (though there are occasional examples— shout out to this season’s plot line where Billy’s Orthodox sister became convinced she had a Golem). Still, in the proud history of TV, their background, and sense of humor, infuses every part of their hilarious existence.

I also appreciate Jews mocking other Jews— it just feels right (you know you do it). You crafted characters whose Judaism is expressed through their love of pop culture, for example. Your characters watch The Real Housewives with the same fervor some people bring to Shabbat. They may not live Jewish lives in a traditional religious sense, but they still live Jewishly.  The way they perform a Jewish life may feel wrong to some because it isn’t this idealized version of what we “should” be, but that makes it feel all the more real.

As the Day of Atonement nears, I think of when Billy tells his frum brother on Yom Kippur: “Here’s the thing. You know what the holiest day of the year for me is? The Golden Globes.” His niece exclaims in response: “That’s the most Jewish thing I have ever heard.”

As we move into Rosh Hashanah this evening we are told to be self-reflective and contrite. Difficult People has helped me do both. I am thinking more about how I interact with the world so that I can be less of a garbage person. In this reflection I am realizing all the ways I can be better in the New Year. I will apologize to those I have dirt-personed-to and hopefully be just a bit less like your characters in the horribleness in the New Year.

Difficult People asserts that we as Jewish people will always be the Other in society, and it’s better to just embrace rather than hiding from it. What I love about your show is that Julie and Billy are unapologetically themselves, dirt person ways and all.

Stay Jewish!

-Alex

Image via Hulu

The post On ‘Difficult People’ and Being a Dirt Person appeared first on Jewcy.

It is happening again. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the 10 days of Teshuva— repentance— are upon us once more. While many of us are taking stock of another year gone by, contemplating our acts and wondering how we can be better people in the year to come, I want to suggest something perhaps unexpected: Watch Twin Peaks. Every mystifying second of it.

25 years after its cancellation, Twin Peaks was resurrected this past summer for an 18 episode limited run. Appropriately named “The Return,” like most viewers I took the revival’s title to be nothing more than acute self awareness on the part of the writers. The show has returned! Yay! But, it quickly became clear that the title of the show was signaling more than just a celebration of its own resurrection. Twin Peaks: The Return is about the very nature of returning. How do we do it? What do we even do to return? With the High Holiday season in mind, it is easy to think that the show could have instead been titled Twin Peaks: Teshuva.

Twin Peaks addresses Teshuva from two distinct angles. The first is by telling the story of our hero Agent Dale Cooper returning from the Black Lodge (an extra-dimensional place of evil) to our plane of existence. As we watch Cooper readjust to the world, as Lynchian and weird as his circumstances are, it seems reminiscent difficulties each one of us have in returning to God, to our families, and to our friends after we have gone astray. When we see our gallant hero comically bumble through life under his new identity of Dougie Jones, we see just how easy it is to lose our way and forget that there was ever something noble we strove for. When we see the once commanding Agent Cooper being mindlessly pushed through life by his wife, his boss, and his coworkers, it should make us wonder if we are still the masters of our lives, or if life is dictating our paths for us. When Cooper wistfully reaches out for a police officer’s badge, a symbol of the life he once lived, it should make us calls out: “Wake up Cooper! Wake up! You’re so close.” I imagine that God often cries out for us to do the same.

Of course, Agent Cooper isn’t the only one returning to Twin Peaks. We, the viewers, are as well. However, the world we encounter now is startlingly different from the one we were introduced to over two decades ago. The Twin Peaks we left was filled with captivating raw emotion and teeming with life. Whether it was the confused feelings of angst, lust, and romance of teenage youth, the goofy and quirky charm of the community’s many eccentric characters, or the nightmarish horrors bubbling beneath the surface of the innocent town, the original Twin Peaks always felt alive in a way that was both unsettlingly and accessibly real. The Twin Peaks we return to, though, is one that all too often feels sterile and cold. Sex is used to assert power or, for the banality of obtaining moments of selfish pleasure. Characters no longer stare out contemplatively into the moonlit forests; instead they gaze blankly at their computer screens. And it is silent. So silent. Gone are the lively jazz accompaniments or the rising musical refrains. The sound of Twin Peaks: The Return is mostly a barren stillness that leaves us constantly wondering where the warmth of this plane has gone.

It’s easy to reduce Twin Peaks to a cynical take on nostalgia. That we can’t ever return to the world that was, and oh— by the way, that world never existed in the first place. But like all good art it’s more nuanced and complicated than that. Just because we can’t return to that world, doesn’t mean that we can’t return to ourselves. We may lose our innocence, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose our goodness and be corrupted by the grayness of life’s journey.

This third season of Twin Peaks serves as an 18 hour meditation on the journey of return. It can be baffling and confusing, and truth be told the show often seems to have no internal logic or any semblance of a coherent plot line. But that’s OK. Too often we are looking for clues and signs in an attempt to figure out an order to the world. To treat the High Holiday season the same would be a tragedy. Teshuva should not be reduced to a transaction with God – that with enough prayer and good deeds God will tear up that bad decree and reward us with a good one in the year to come. If nothing else, Twin Peaks reminds us that at this time of year it is most important to give ourselves over to an emotional logic, to take the time to embrace the powerful symbols around us and submit to the feelings they evoke.  That’s how we return. As the Torah teaches, Teshuva is not hidden in the heavens or distantly across the sea. Rather, the power to return is found within each of us. It’s in crisp suits, cherry pie so good it’ll kill you, and a damn fine cup of coffee.

You may be far away.
So listen to the sounds.
You will find your way back.
To a place that is both.
Wonderful and Strange.

Shana Tova.

Photo via Showtime

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I moved to New York a bit over six years ago. My aunt and uncle live here, but they aren’t Jewish, so I was left without anyone with whom I could spend the High Holy Days. When I was in college, I would go to the Hillel meals, but since that only covered one meal, I started organizing meals at restaurants for my friends and I to try. I have been to a bunch, but I always go back to my old standby Jack’s Wife Freda. But while that might be my favorite, New York City is full of great Jewish restaurants to have your festive meals. For this list, I have avoided the expected choices like Katz’s and 2nd Avenue Deli. This is all about that new Jew Food.

Jack’s Wife Freda–  224 Lafayette Street or 50 Carmine Street

Jack’s Wife Freda is the perfect place to go for a hip (not kosher) Rosh Hashanah meal — or let’s be honest: any meal. They do a festive menu for both the first and second nights of Rosh Hashanah, with apples and honey on the table along with some challah. It’s hyper instagrammable so I highly recommend making a reservation. And if you would like to see me, I will be there on night two.

Mile End Delicatessen- 53 Bond Street

If you are looking for a Montreal-style Deli then you have come to the right place. I usually go there for their poutine, but they are offering a pretty amazing prix fixe for Rosh Hashanah. For seventy-five dollars (thirty-five for kids under 12) you get a lovely seven course meal that includes a shaved apple salad that sounds divine. And what New Year would be complete without brisket! They will be serving this menu for both the first and second nights of Rosh Hashanah.

Russ and Daughters Cafe–  127 Orchard Street

I am obsessed with Russ and Daughters! Their babka french toast is, as my mom would say, the bomb dot squad and I would highly recommend getting it for dessert. If you can’t make it in for a festive meal, they are still taking catering orders, so you can bring some Russ and Daughters home with you! For Rosh Hashanah they will be offering a special of gravlax with apples and honey served on rye bread.  

Shalom Japan- 310 South Fourth Street, Williamsburg

Shalom Japan is the perfect spot for the festive meal if you are feeling something more off the beaten path but still amazing. Their tagline is “Authentically inauthentic Jewish and Japanese food in South Williamsburg from chefs Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi.” I spoke to co-owner Aaron Israel early this week, and he told me about some very exciting specials. For example: They will be serving bass cheek with mushrooms. To fulfill the apples and honey requirement of the meal, they will be serving roasted honey and garlic duck breast surrounded by apples and Brussels sprouts.

L’Shana Tova! Good luck getting a reservation to get your Rosh Hashanah nosh on.

Image of Jack’s Wife Freda dish via Instagram.

The post Rosh HaShanah Cuisine— Minus the Family appeared first on Jewcy.

Regina Spektor is out with another album, her first in four years, and the indie queen is in fine form with an album up to her usual standards: deeply thoughtful and emotional, a bit experimental, but all the while still playful, quirky, and melodic.

It’s no secret that Spektor’s complex Jewish identity (her family left the Soviet Union when she was a child) informs her work; this is often overt, from songs exploring Biblical themes (like the beautiful “Samson“), to moments like her cover of “Eli, Eli.” This new album is less explicit in its influences, but they’re no less present.

For starters, it’s entitled Remember Us To Life.

If that title sounds familiar to Jewish listeners, it’s because it’s a refrain during the High Holy Days (“Zochreinu L’Chaim” in Hebrew), when we await God’s annual judgment of each individual, and express both hope and fear for the coming year. Similarly, Spektor’s new album, released immediately before the High Holy Days began this year, struggles with ideas of justice, mortality, and the harsh passage of time.

At moments, the album seems to evoke “Unetanneh Tokef,” the part of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur liturgy in which worshippers question who will die in the coming year, and by what methods (Leonard Cohen took this on directly in his song “Who By Fire“).  In “Tornadoland,” for example, Spektor looks death in the face, one’s end as a classic act of God. The song’s refrain is: “Everybody’s time has come/It’s everybody’s moment, except yours.” The holidays that make us face our individual mortality in a huge group often bring up thoughts of not only your demise, but that of everyone around you.

In other cases, Spektor uses this time of year to express not an immediate anxiety, but an ongoing melancholy about the years slipping by in several songs, such as “The Visit,” which could be read from the perspective of an elderly woman looking back on her life.

Every Jew, regardless of their personal belief, has considered on the High Holy Days the unfairness of praying for a favorable fate (i.e. not dying) based on the year’s previous performance, as well as present repentance. If only the wicked or unrepentant died in the ensuing year, the world we live in would look far different. Spektor seems to express this in “The Trapper and the Furrier,” where she explores the world’s injustices, summing up: “What a strange, strange world we live in/Where the good are damned and the wicked forgiven.”

While these songs are largely metaphor,”Sellers of Flowers” is more literally autobiographical, in which Spektor summons a memory of walking with her father through a Soviet marketplace, and notes that the flowers alive despite the cold are still doomed (If not “Who By Fire,” then a sort of “who by ice”).

In a recent conversation with NPR about her new album (and on becoming a mother!), Spektor said:

“To explore Judaism for the first time — it was really hushed in the Soviet Union and I knew I was Jewish, but we didn’t get to celebrate any of the holidays really, or know anything about our culture.”

While this album is universal in its themes, its timing and title are reminiscent of the heritage Spektor reclaimed in the United States. She recently remarked to Reddit how the album’s release date is a happy coincidence, and how yes, its name came to her during a Yom Kippur service.

“I think that people’s culture and heritage are such a great part of who they are,” she wrote, “They of course come through art.”

Remember Us To Life shows she has the capacity to both love and fear the High Holy Days with ambivalence.  As we already knew, she caught on Jewish culture just fine.

Finally, the deluxe edition of this album includes a song titled “New Year.” While the lyrics do reference a midnight countdown and Times Square, signs of a Gregorian event, for an album released in the early fall, what other new year could she be referring to than 5777?

Images via Wikimedia

The post Regina Spektor’s New Album is Perfect for the High Holy Days appeared first on Jewcy.

Want to indulge in a meaty Jewish staple, but, well, without the meat? Have a vegetarian or vegan friend coming to your Rosh HaShanah meal? Fear not! You can have this tasty brisket-substitute with no animal products.

This recipe is adopted from the Meet the Shannons food blog.

You will need:

3 Small Leeks, sliced
6-8 Red Potatoes, quartered
1 Cup Baby Carrots
2 Packages Gardein Beef-less Tips (defrosted)
1/4 Cup Olive Oil, plus an extra 2 tablespoons to brush over your “beef”
1/4 Cup Kosher Red Wine (Manischewitz or similar)
1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
1 Can Tomato Paste (6oz)
1/2 Cup Strong Brewed Black Coffee
3 Tablespoons Light Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Vegan Worcestershire Sauce (optional)
Kosher Salt and Black Pepper (to taste)

Directions:

1. In your slow cooker, mix leeks, potatoes, carrots, 1/4 cup olive oil, red wine, and soy sauce and cook on high for 2 hours.
2. In a small bowl, mix coffee, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar with a whisk until sugar has dissolved.
3. Brush the defrosted gardein with 2 Tablespoons of olive oil. Put the gardein in your slow cooker on top of the vegetables (don’t mix them in).
4. Pour the coffee sauce over the top and cook for another hour.
5. Pre-heat oven to 400.
6. With a ladle, move your gardein and vegetables from your slow cooker into a glass baking dish. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the top begins to brown. Turn your oven down to 200 and cook for another 20 to 30 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven once your sauce has reduced to saucy gravy. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Go forth, and enjoy!

Molly Moses is a music therapist practicing in Central Florida, working primarily with children with special needs. She enjoys cooking and discovering new vegetarian recipes, especially for the holidays, and sharing them with family and friends.

Image via Wikimedia

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Beef-less Brisket with Vegetables appeared first on Jewcy.

The transgender Jewish punk band Schmekel (Yiddish for “little penis”) is, alas, defunct, but at least we still have their songs about almost every Jewish holiday. For this time of year, there are numbers about the upcoming Tishrei parade of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah. These holidays are vehicles to explore what it was like to be transgender in conjunction with being Jewish, and they used some very Jewish tools to do so— like nerdiness, humor, passion.

Schmekel saw Jewish holidays as a resonant, familiar path to discuss that topic in varied ways. When interviewed for my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, Schmekel singer/guitarist Lucian Kahn said that Schmekel aimed to “talk about all of these different times in the cycle of the Jewish calendar and find ways of relating those things to trans experience.”

“The Binding of Isaac” is a poignant song, in part because of an evocative “Avinu Malkeinu” interlude. The lyrics discuss how a transgender Jew named Isaac presents himself as male, binds his breasts, and sits in the men’s section in shul on Rosh Hashanah. “Old Marvin from the Y,” whom Isaac has known since childhood, asks Isaac’s father how his daughter is doing. The father brushes off the question by saying Elaine (Isaac’s birth name) “is fine,” as if Isaac isn’t present. Heartbreakingly, while the father just continues praying, Isaac looks down in dismay and his knees buckle.

As the listener hears the story, Isaac’s father is to blame for failing to acknowledge the presence of his transgender child. But Kahn explained that the situation was “based on snippets of truth” and wasn’t so straightforward.

Kahn said, “Old Marvin’s not a real person, but he might as well be, because all of us have had an experience … running into … some sort of not core person in your life, and having that experience of, okay, they don’t recognize me … because the last time they saw me, they thought I looked like a woman. … Should I reintroduce myself? Should I pretend I’m someone else? Should I just ignore them?” These questions represent complex practical considerations related to transgender transitioning. “The Binding of Isaac” puts them into a fictional context where listeners can understand and relate to the plight of a transgender person in this situation.

Whereas “The Binding of Isaac” was one of three Tishrei holiday songs on Schmekel’s 2013 album, The Whale That Ate Jonah, “I’m Sorry, It’s Yom Kippur” appeared on 2011’s Queers on Rye. The lyrics discuss “atoning for some shit I might have done wrong.” The atonement included transgender-related examples like assuming a heterosexual person was ignorant, coming out in an “awkward way,” and putting breast binders in the drier. The song includes a shofar blast as well as Schmekel’s take on the “Al Chet” prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy.

The prestigious Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem praised the song as a venue for “atonement through punk (and traditional Jewish music).” In the article, Kahn explained that the notion of “screwing up” was more relatable—and applicable to his life—than “sin.” He said that it was “more productive” to “reflect with a sense of humor upon my mess-ups.”

“I wrote that song when I was not supposed to be writing that song; I wrote it while I was fasting,” Kahn told me. “So I was also really amused that a song that I wrote, definitely breaking a commandment or a mitzvah or something to actually write it, ended up getting analyzed by” the Jewish Music Research Centre.

“Occupy My Sukkah” is a Sukkot-themed, X-rated song about a “broke-ass queer” looking for “somebody from the one percent.” The song includes Hoshana Rabba, the seventh of Sukkot’s eight days. The lyrics ask: “If you’ve got abundance, won’t you be my sugar abba [daddy] / And smack me with your arava [branch of a willow tree] ’cuz it’s Hoshana Rabba?”

“Maybe She’s Shomer Negiyah” has the strongest lyrics of the Tishrei songs, but it adheres the least to a holiday theme. The setting is a Simchat Torah party, but the holiday isn’t discussed beyond the opening line of the song.

Shomer negiyah refers to men and women not touching each other, and in the song, the transgender male narrator dances the hora with other men. He realizes that the men probably wouldn’t want to hold his hand if they knew he was transgender. He also discussed not shaking hands with a woman when he said “chag sameach” because “she’s keepin’ it kosher like Shmuley Boteach.”

Schmekel’s songs were more than just catharsis for the band members as they dealt with their transitions. The humor in their songs served a larger purpose: Schmekel deliberately used humor to lower the defenses of non-transgender audiences and make the topic seem more approachable. From there, people could learn about and empathize with the transgender experience.

The Jewish part of making the transgender experience seem relatable had to do with Schmekel’s expertise with Jewish topics. Kahn explained, “It’s probably a little unusual to have within one band somebody who has a master’s degree in history of religions and somebody who studied Jewish education and someone who was a Jewish studies major. It’s like … a brain trust of people who have studied Jewish history.” Writing clever lyrics like the “sugar abba”/Hoshana Rabba couplet would be beyond the capabilities of most Jews with casual knowledge of their religion.

Schmekel disbanded in 2014. Kahn still has a decent chance of making some High Holidays music, though. He lives in Crown Heights, and in his own words, “I cannot make it between my building and the subway two blocks away on Rosh Hashanah without being handed a shofar at least three times.”

The post Trans Tishrei: A Little Schmekel for the Holidays appeared first on Jewcy.

If you’re getting excited for the upcoming election debates, then I admire your ability to keep a sense of humor and sanity throughout this soul-sucking election cycle. Also, you may want to check your Jewish calendars; the High Holy Days fall around the same time.

In particular, the only vice-president debate is set for October 4th, the same evening that Rosh HaShanah ends.

All of the debates are held from 9 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the holiday ends a few minutes after seven, so that gives East coasters plenty of time to turn on a television or get to a watching party. But those in different time zones may be in a bit of a bind.

If you’re in Los Angeles, for example, the holiday ends at about 7:10 p.m., which is 10:10 on the East coast, which is towards the very end of the debate. So if you’re traditionally observant (e.g., no electricity on the holiday), you’re in trouble. If you’re living in Mountain time, you’ll miss the beginning, but still get the bulk of the evening.

Is this as anti-Semitic, as, say, tweeting an image of your opponent with a Jewish star to represent corruption? No, but it is mighty inconvenient.

While we don’t yet know who will be participating in the VP debate (but we will in the next couple of weeks!), given the antics of this election it may make the SNL Palin vs. Biden skit seem realistic and measured. The odds of an observant Jewish VP candidate is low (unless Trump pulls in his son-in-law, and anything’s possible), but even if that were the case, they could rush to the debate and be there on time; it will be held on the east coast, at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

The other debates as they’re scheduled seem to be near misses with holidays: the first presidential debate is before the holidays begin, the second is between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, and the third is during Chol HaMoed Sukkot (will the Las Vegas debate be held in a neon sukkah? We can only assume so).

At least this way, all the candidates will have the opportunity to ask for forgiveness for their debates between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.

Image credit: Wikimedia

The post Heads Up: The VP Debate is at the End of Rosh HaShanah appeared first on Jewcy.

 And then there’s the Jewish holidays: the cost, the timing and the general toll of transatlantic travel mean I’m more often absent than present when my family sits down at the table together.

 Passover remains the exception. When I left for Brussels, my mother and I reached an accord that I would make it home every spring to celebrate with them. I’ve kept that promise and next Thursday I’ll be boarding an Air Canada flight (well two) to Toronto. Truthfully, I wouldn’t miss my family’s seder for anything: the debating of the historical inaccuracies of the story, the good-humoured ridiculing (my late grandfather still gets the brunt of it) and the off-key singing are hard to substitute.

 Passover aside, I’ve had to adapt and forge my own traditions – specifically when it comes to Rosh Hashanah. When I lived in DC, it was rather fluid. I joined a synagogue and celebrated holidays with others who, for whatever reason, did not travel to their families. It was beautifully simple.

 Brussels is in some ways similar and in others rather different. Like DC, it is a city replete with young professional “orphans”. But the Jewish community within the EU bubble is rather small and most travel home. So I’ve become more industrious.

 And so Jew Year’s Eve was born.

 It started rather modestly: my Israeli flatmate and I invited ten friends – some Jewish, some not – for a home-cooked dinner and a fair bit of wine.  In five years, the celebration has morphed into more of an extravaganza. Last year’s affairs (well this year if we’re going by the Jewish calendar) was attended by nearly 40 people, raging from one and a half to 55-years of age, and lasted until the wee hours. The simple dinner is now a vegetarian smorgasbord of traditional dishes and other culinary delights. There’s challah (affectionately known as Jewish brioche), soup with matzah balls, lokshen (noodle) kugel, tzimmes (roasted carrots, pineapple and prunes), and honey cake (paired with a salty cinnamon vanilla ice cream), to name a few. Still all homemade. It’s a two-day labour of love.

 For my Jewish friends not able to make it home, it’s a comforting alternative. What’s most interesting, however, is how my non-Jewish friends – who comprise over 90% of those in attendance – connect to it.

 One Greek-French friend noted it was the first Jewish celebration of any kind he had ever been to and was overwhelmed by the cultural experience (so much so that he washed all the dishes, bless him).  Another friend of Korean heritage was surprised by how similar lokshen kugel is in taste to her mother’s yakbap, a sweet rice cake. And indeed they are, as I discovered a few week’s later when over at her place for dinner.

The best aspect of it all, however, might just be the curiosity my friend’s bring to the evening. They don’t just want to eat (and drink), but they want to learn more about how what is in front of them became a part of my tradition. It has wonderfully forced me to trace my history and I think I’ve learnt to appreciate it all a bit more.

 I may leave Brussels before the next Jew Year’s Eve and if I do, I will truly miss this wonderful tradition. How I celebrate Rosh Hashanah in the future will depend on where I next land. But to keep the Brussels memory alive in some form, I think I’ll forego the lokshen kugel and serve yakbap instead.

Joshua Goodman is a Brussels-based radio host and an LLM candidate in Public International Law at the University of Kent, Brussels. Follow him on Twitter @lumber_josh.    

(Image: The famous Jewish brioche. Credit: Joshua Goodman)

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I’m not an observant Jew. Maybe if I’d grown up in Montreal or New York or another Western capital, where WASPs drop “oys” like ice in scotch, and where being openly Jewish is a non-issue—maybe then I’d attend Kol Nidre or give up beer for Passover.

But back in the USSR, I knew next to nothing about Judaism. Religious practice as a whole was marginalized, and if you happened to be Jewish, keeping it to yourself was a survival skill. The sum total of my knowledge of 5,775 years of Judaism was equal to the contents of the cardboard box that landed on top of my dresser every spring. The box contained the spoils from my father’s clandestine run to the city’s old shul, which operated unofficially on some holidays. There, on Passover, a handful of resolute Jews lined up for boxes of matzoh to take home to their families. The matzoh sheets were stacked inside the boxes underneath pink paper napkins. As soon as one of those boxes arrived at our apartment, it was stuffed on top of the dresser to be accessed with caution, away from gentile eyes. To my non-Jewish friends, who sometimes spotted a renegade piece of matzoh lying around, I would nonchalantly offer said piece as a cracker. Frankly, that’s what it was to me anyway: a Jewish cracker.

We fled the USSR in 1988, when I was 16—thousands of Soviet Jewish refugees leaving in a modern-day Exodus. On our way to the States we were stationed in Ladispoli, a sleepy coastal town outside of Rome, where we waited for our U.S. visas. There, on the Mediterranean shore,we learned for the first time about Jews as a people. A Chabad mission was set up in town, headed by Rabbi Hirsch, who worked morning, noon, and night reaching out to every lapsed Soviet Jew. That spring, we sat down to our first seder inside an Etruscan castle. Hundred-foot tables were filled with families like ours, and we finally heard the story behind the matzoh we used to hide under the pink napkins. For many Soviet Jews, that first seder marked the beginning of their return to their lost faith. For me, it marked the beginning of a life-long love affair with jarred gefilte fish.

That year, I also heard the sound of the shofar for the first time. My main memory of that Rosh Hashanah was the rabbi talking about praying to be sealed in the book of life for another year, and the obligation to purge one’s pockets of ‘sins’ into the nearby canal. I had 2,000 liras in my jeans, which I lifted from my dad’s wallet earlier that day with the intent to buy licorice. Despite the Rabbi’s passionate sermon, there would be no purging on my end. I was not giving up my stolen licorice money, High Holidays be damned.

We finally made it to Chicago. No longer scared of being outed as Jews, we were now discovering what it meant to be Jewish. We settled in West Rogers Park, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood filled with synagogues and kosher pizza parlors. But there was so much more than Judaism for a curious a 17-year-old to explore: my daily existence was divided between running to painting classes at the School of the Art Institute in the morning, and running the cash register at Dog On It (a kosher wiener joint) in the afternoon. My classmates introduced me to their friends as “Inna, she’s from Russia.” There was no time to think about being Jewish: I was too busy trying to fit in as a Russian among non-Jewish, non-white, non-conformist art students.

I suppose the physical proximity to all things Jewish precipitated a gradual awakening of my Jewish identity. The Jewish holidays arrived in West Rogers Park with a bang; religious or not, you were greeted with a “Gut Yontif” at every turn. My first Yom Kippur in Chicago was appropriately bleak: my grandmother had just died in a Chicago hospital. She’d been ill for most of her life in the USSR, and arrived in the U.S. too late to benefit from Western medicine. Dog On It was closed for the holidays, so I spent my day shuffling around the neighborhood. I tried thinking about the meaning of Yom Kippur and my babushka being with God, but the concept felt as foreign to me as the rest of America did at the time. There was no God with her or me that day, just the bad weather and the reality of her death and—a combination that felt almost clichéd.

Then I went to Israel. In Ladispoli I’d met some Israelis who had come specifically to encourage the Soviet Jews to immigrate to the Holy Land. Some of those “ambassadors” were particularly good looking, and I decided that Israel was worth a visit. So, during my second year in Chicago, I saved my cashier money, enrolled in an overseas program at the Hebrew University, and flew to the land of milk and honey—and good-looking people.

In Israel, the divide between religious and secular Jews felt bigger than the divide between Jews and Arabs. A Jew like me would get frowned upon for wearing a sleeveless shirt on a bus full of religious Jews, while on her way to visit an Arab friend. Still, a measure of superstition infiltrated secular Israel on Yom Kippur: no one got behind the wheel that day, just in case there was a God, and He decided—God forbid—to punish you for driving. On the eve of Yom Kippur, crowds poured into the streets in every neighborhood and children skateboarded safely on car-free roads. People fasted because, you know, tradition. I fasted too, out of solidarity. God knows I didn’t do it out of faith.

I returned to Chicago a year later only to find that my family now kept kosher and went to shul on Friday nights. There was no picking up the phone or driving on the Sabbath. I didn’t get answers to how it happened—it just did. That’s when I first felt conflicted over competing definitions of Jewishness. I had just spent a year in Israel and felt more Jewish than ever; but I simply didn’t see how giving up the car on Saturdays would make me a better Jew. My parents eventually downgraded their religiousness and found a middle ground, which balanced their yearning for a Jewish identity with their modern-day needs. My brother continued on a religious path. Today he’s an Orthodox father of seven living a few blocks from our first home. He goes to the same shul, keeps kosher, and observes all Jewish holidays. As I write this, he’s probably saying selichot.

Perhaps the closest I came to the Jewish faith was during my return to the former USSR a few years ago. I came to Kiev to work as an advertising executive and went to shul on Yom Kippur to see for myself the state of post-Soviet Jews. They had come a long way from lining up for camouflaged matzoh; there was even jarred Manischewitz gefilte fish at break-fast. On that Yom Kippur, I felt thankful for their freedom and mine, though I still wasn’t sure who I was thanking.

On this Yom Kippur I’ll walk around my city as I often do, remembering past Yom Kippurs. I won’t be asking for forgiveness or praying to be sealed in the book of life. I will be thinking of that early Yom Kippur morning in Jerusalem, 20 years ago. I saw an old lady who seemed lost. She summoned me over and asked, “Is today Yom Kippur?” I said yes. “Oh good,” she said, “I’m glad I forgot to eat.”

I’d like to think God was good to her for another year.

Inna Gertsberg is an advertising writer. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two sons and a cat. You can follow her on Twitter at @twigstr.

(Main image: Yossi Gurvitz via Flickr)

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