Abacaxi Mamão

I was walking home alone in the neighborhood tonight. It was a dark and stormy night. (Literally.)

A man walking maybe two feet in front of me turns and says, "Young lady..." and I prepare to don my armor, avert my gaze, and walk as quickly as I can away from him. (You know, that "uh oh" moment when a man you don't know starts speaking to you on the street and you don't know if he's going to curse you out or ask for money or say something about your becoming figure. Just part of city living!)

But he continues, with the very slightest accent, "In the 55 years I have been living in this country, I have never seen it like this. Never!"

I don't know what he's referring to, exactly--Covid? opioid epidemic? poverty?--but I say, "Yeah," in agreement.

(I am sure that it has never been like this in the past 55 years.)

Then he says, "May God bless us all" and I respond, "Amen!" with hearty conviction.

Sometimes these random interactions with strangers on the street turn out to be just a decent moment of agreement between two humans, briefly passing each other on the street at 10 pm during a storm.

A block and a half later a sturdy piece of cardboard flew at me, literally, hurled by the strong winds. It hit my elbow and then continued on down the street.

I'd rather be at odds with a piece of cardboard than another person, any day of the week.

Labels: Covid-19, life, New York

One of the ways that I'm handling the stressful hellscape that is Omicron in NYC in late December 2021 is by watching terrible Christmas movies on Netflix.

(It's really brutal out there. People are lined up for hours all over NYC to get Covid tests at public testing vans/tents. It feels like everyone has Covid now. Really, everyone. All the drugstores have big signs up saying, "We are all sold out of rapid tests." If you line up for hours to get a PCR or rapid test at a public testing site, you might not get the results for days. The curve is also basically a straight line going up. And, like the hellish days of March-May 2020, I am hearing ambulances all around, day and night, once again. Maybe not as many as back then, but it's more similar than I'd like.)

I don't usually watch terrible Christmas movies on Netflix, but I really needed them this year. I think I specifically went for Christmas movies because Christmas is not a stressful topic for me at all and watching these movies takes me out of my usual everything, in a good way. Also, these movies are so anodyne that you can watch 20-30 minutes of it and fall asleep after that without caring or wondering what happens next! Perfect for these troubling times.

So far, I have seen:

• A Castle for Christmas (2021) -- I like Brooke Shields a lot and the scenery was pretty, so this one was okay
• My Dad's Christmas Date (2020) -- really terrible!
• Holly Star (2018) -- puppetry was by far the best part, but also a fine, cute movie otherwise and it was supposed to take place in Maine, so the scenery was nice, too.
• The Knight Before Christmas (2019; I watched it purely due to the punny title and it was super duper cheesy (as expected) in a good way, but the historical inaccuracies bothered me--I didn't think a 14th century knight would know how to buy dry yeast and use it to make bread (as opposed to using a sourdough starter) and I thought he would find zippers more surprising than he did. There were also other historical problems with it.

Labels: Covid-19, life, New York

Since I last posted in August, my professional life has changed dramatically. I am no longer a full-time day school teacher. I now work half-time as an office manager in Midtown Manhattan, as well as part-time as a DSP (direct service provider) for kids on the autism spectrum (doing CommHab work, if you know the jargon) and part-time as a freelance editor of halakhic writings. It's a lot! Coffee helps me get through it all, or at least most of it!

Thus, my current life goal: find the best-tasting cup of coffee, at the best price, between Penn Station and W. 28th and Broadway

Some of the prices may include tax and others may not. I'm not sure I was consistent in my pre-coffee-consumption morning haze.

Stumptown (W. 29th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.) ☕️☕️☕️

• price: $3 for a small (8 oz.) drip coffee; delicious; accept cash or credit; have half-and-half
• pros: tastes delicious; has half-and-half; close to the office
• cons: pricey

Paper Coffee (W. 29th St. between 7th and 6th) ☕️☕️

• price: $3.27 for a large (12 oz.) drip coffee
• summary: delicious; accept credit only (cash-free establishment); NO half-and-half (whole, skim, oat, and soy milk only)
• pros: delicious; have a “get your tenth cup free” deal; looks like you could sit and work there
• cons: no half-and-half; I don’t like supporting cash-free establishments because they discriminate against poor people; pricey

King’s Street Coffee (W. 30th St. between 7th and 6th) ☕️☕️☕️☕️

• price: $3.00 for a small (12 oz.!) drip coffee; $3.75 for a small (12 oz.) iced cold brew coffee
• summary: delicious; has half-and-half; very nice sip top lid; have a buy ten get one free card
• pros: tastes delicious; looks like you could sit and work there
• cons: pricey; not on the path that’s quickest from Penn Station to 28th and Broadway

7-Eleven (6th Ave. between 30th and 31st.) ☕️

• price: $1.79 for a small coffee (12 oz.), but I got a deal and paid only $1.09
• summary: I selected the bold/dark roast option, but it tasted like brown water! Also, they had whole milk, skim milk, and a bunch of those flavored coffee creamer things that taste like chemicals.
• pro: cheap
• cons: tastes like brown water; no half-and-half

Of this batch, King's Street Coffee was the clear winner! It gets four ☕️s on a scale of, so far, 1-4.

Labels: coffee, economics, life, New York

Scene: Trader Joe’s in Manhattan, 12:00 pm today.

A man with a basket of groceries dodges and weaves through the line to beat all of the women with carts and children who are making their way to the front more slowly.

He isn’t exactly cutting, since the laden women aren’t precisely in line yet, but he isn’t exactly not cutting, since it is clear that the entire mass of people is heading towards the two lines and splitting up into them. The net result is that this guy (white guy in his 30s?) ends up ahead of people carrying or pushing bigger burdens. It pisses me off, but not enough to say anything. I end up right behind him in the left-hand line, with my (laden) cart. (Laden because I have selected a basket’s worth of groceries at TJ’s, but have the cart to hold two bags of groceries from Fairway purchased earlier and also a backpack, with provisions for the day from my morning run to camp drop-off in downtown Brooklyn. This guy has himself and a basket, so he easily sprinted ahead of me into the line.)

Then, the person who directs people to cashiers from the two lines accidentally sends three people in a row from the left line to the cashiers, so left, left, left, instead of the usual left, right, left. This has the net result of making the dude later to check out by one person. He misses ONE turn. (It’s true. She made a tiny mistake of almost no consequence to anyone present. At most, it sped the left line up by one person and slowed the right line down by one person. This happens on occasion. I usually get annoyed for a second or two and then remember that all people are humans who make mistakes and that any customer-facing job has got to be really hard and that this one, in particular, must be so boring, and so I am just grateful that anyone is doing this at all! Because the line definitely moves quicker with that person directing people!)

He angrily says to the Trader Joe’s employee, “Hey, you just sent three people from that line to check out and no one from this line!”

She ignores him, continuing to scan the checkout people for someone who is free to take a customer.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! You can at least acknowledge me when I’m talking to you.”

She continues to ignore him.

I have had enough. I say, “Lay off it, would you? No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and I’m sure you’ll survive the wait.”

I make eye contact with a man in the left-hand line and say, “I think he’ll survive this, don’t you?” The man nods and agrees and rolls his eyes at the guy yelling at the Trader Joe’s employee.

He says to me, “She has to at least acknowledge that I’m talking to her!”

“No, she doesn’t,” I counter. “Not when you’re being aggressive for no reason at all.”

He sputters and stares at me for a few moments and then she directs him to the next check-out person.

I don't know if I gave him something to think about, but at least I got him to shut up. Yay?

I am directed to the next checkout person. As I walk by her, I tell the Trader Joe's employee, “You’re doing a wonderful job and he is a jerk.”

I’m mildly afraid that the guy will follow me or act aggressively towards me, but I never see him again (so far).

I am glad that my line was slowed down by one person, if only to stick it to the jerk who dodged and weaved through the mass of shoppers heading to the lines to beat everyone who had more to manage.

I think there might be a metaphor here for toxic masculinity, male aggression, unnecessary aggression in modern society, who bears the burdens in society, people (men?) who feel cheated out of something even though they are the cheaters, or the Nine Days, but I don’t know what it is!

Labels: gender, New York

Thank you to all of the daughters, sisters, aunts, mothers, and grandmothers who fought so hard for our right to vote!

99 years ago today, on November 6, 1917, all of the women of New York State won the right to vote.

It would be another almost-three years before all adult women in the United States won the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th amendment on August 18, 1920.

In the lead-up to the 1917 vote, lots of women participated in lots of parades to drum up support for woman suffrage.

Fall of 1917

May 4, 1912

From The World's Work, 1912. Parade took place on May 4, 1912.

See this, this, and this for more information about these three parade images. The full page from The World's Work includes a caption that reports that in the six states in which women had state-wide suffrage by 1912, 85% of women voted! That's amazing and it's sad that it's not that high today. (This fun graphic lets you see how changing turnout for various demographic groups affects the outcome of our upcoming presidential election.)

I won't take my vote on Tuesday for granted; you shouldn't, either!

Labels: gender, history, New York

The Incident
 
I saw this:

Two swastikas on a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker at Bobst Library, around 4:20 pm, 12/29/15

at NYU's Bobst Library at around 4:20 pm on Tuesday afternoon, December 29.

I promptly reported it to the nearest security guard, telling him that the swastikas were on a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker, and showed him the above photo. He said I could try to peel it off myself. I tried; it came off slowly in tiny little pieces and it would have taken me an hour to get the swastikas off. I did not have a spare hour to remove swastikas. He said he would call someone to remove it. When I walked by 1.5+ hours later (around 6 pm), it was still there, and I took a second photo, where you can see that I had peeled off part of it (not because I have anything against Bernie Sanders, purely to try to remove the swastikas!):

Two swastikas on a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker at Bobst Library, around 6:00 pm, 12/29/15

Another friend saw it when she left the library at 8:45 pm. She submitted an online report of the incident to NYU’s Public Safety (police) department that night. I also ended up contacting two of my NYU professors to let them know that night.

Another friend called Public Safety about it at around 8 am on Wednesday, December 30. They sent someone who was at the library to look for it and reported back to him that it had been removed.

The first friend saw it still up when she entered the library at 12 noon yesterday (December 30). She told the security guard, who said that he did not notice it when he looked for it yesterday. (They are admittedly a bit hard to notice as they are scribbled in black over dark blue and white letters. On the other hand, I said they were on a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker and there was only one of those on one door. I also showed the photo of it to the security guard, so he wouldn't have to get up, and so he would know exactly what to look for, since they weren't blatant or huge.) She also told the circulation desk. The security guard said he would take care of it right away.

When I entered the library at 3:15 pm yesterday, that particular door and another were blocked off because they were replacing some light bulbs outside. There was an NYU police officer standing there, guarding the blocked off and locked-shut doors, and I said to him, "So, those swastikas are still there, huh?" He said, "What swastikas?" I showed him. He called someone else over from the security desk, who said, "Yeah, I know about that." That person called a third person over, who had a knife, and I stood there as they took the bumper sticker off the door. It took maybe 10-15 minutes.

Then I went to the main Public Safety office to complain about two swastikas being left on the front door of the university library for almost 24 hours (if not longer; I wouldn't have noticed them yesterday if I hadn't happened to put my hands right on them as I left the library). Of the two NYU police officers on duty, one knew about it and the other did not. They asked if it had been taken care of, and I confirmed that it had. They then seemed to want me to leave.

I said that I thought it was unreasonable that it had taken a day and, at my count, at least five separate attempts by three different people before anything was done. They said it was because they're understaffed this week. I asked if they would try to follow up and find out who had done it, and they said, "We'll take care of it." They seemed not that concerned and, at best, annoyed to be talking to me for more than a minute about something that was "already taken care of." I really wish one of them had said something like, "This is awful and we will treat this with the utmost importance. I am sorry that it was not taken care of sooner. Thank you for reporting it and for following up."


Reflections

So. None of that is very encouraging. I feel that they did not take it very seriously, and had an awful hard time finding and removing two swastikas that I showed in a photograph to a security guard and reported as being on a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker one the middle revolving door of the library. While they may have less staff than usual during this week, they also have almost no students on campus (thus less general mess for janitorial staff to clean up), and certainly had enough staff around to have a police officer standing guard in front of a locked and blocked revolving door while they replaced some light bulbs outside. And with a knife, it took 10-15 minutes to remove the bumper sticker. So I did not find that very convincing.

The NYU professors I e-mailed about it suggested that I contact the main security/police office at NYU. However, I am no longer at all confident that NYU security is very secure, since they were unable to find two swastikas on the front door of the library after being directed right to them. Several times! (This has also made me question their efficacy in general, since at least one, possibly two security guards couldn't even find the swastikas after being told exactly where they were. If someone, chas v'shalom, lo aleinu, were to assault me in the lobby library, these people will remember how he looked?) I updated them at the end of the saga and they said, "If the problem recurs, let us know, and we will take further steps." I certainly will.

When I first saw them on Tuesday afternoon and evening, I was very hesitant to make a big stink. I thought about bringing some supplies and taking them off the door myself if they were still there the next day. The main motivation of my hesitation was that the perpetrator might actually like some notoriety/a big deal being made, and I didn't want to give that person the satisfaction. But I decided that scribbling two small swastikas with a black Sharpie on a dark blue bumper sticker is not the way to go if one is seeking notoriety! Also, those kinds of arguments are generally just used to silence victims and don't really do anything to protect anyone. I think that in most cases, claims that, "All he wants is for you to talk about it; don't give him the satisfaction" ultimately serve the interests of perpetrators, not victims/survivors. (It might be different in specific cases, perhaps involving suicide or terrorism (including shooting rampages), but I don't think this is one of them.)

I think a second reason that I was hesitant to make a big deal was because I was not actually sure they are a big deal. I am a person who tries not to be "one of those people" who makes a big deal out of nothing. They're very small! And hard to see if you aren't looking! It's really not like a big swastika spray-painted on the side of a shul, on a Jewish gravestone, or at Hillel. I really just noticed because I happened to walk into that section of the revolving door and as I pushed the door around, my hands were literally right on top of two swastikas. But I decided that that was also wrong, and that it was appropriate to make at least a small deal out of two small swastikas. I was never really planning on making a big deal, anyway. I was just trying to decide if I should take care of it myself, or alert the proper authorities, and if the latter, whom to alert.

"It is not upon you to complete the task; nor are you free to remove yourself from it." Ethics of the Fathers 2:21

I have been thinking a lot about what our individual responsibility is to seek out and correct the wrongs that we see, both in this context and in the various scandals that have rocked the Jewish world over the past year or two. How much of the burden of dealing with this is mine (and my friends' who also reported it), and how much is the university's? To what degree do I prioritize this over, say, getting work done or doing my laundry? Is telling someone in authority enough? Going back to check that it has been taken care of within two hours? The next day? Then going to complain to someone else? What if that person dismisses you? If you do not complete the task, so to speak, can you trust that someone else will, or is that naive? Because this is how these things usually work; no one wants to hear or deal with bad things in this world, and if they can get away with letting it slide or passing it off to someone else to deal with, they certainly will. I know that and I was still surprised by NYU's lackluster response.

(As an aside, this is how a similar incident was handled at Fordham University. The NYU library doors are accessible by anyone walking down the street, so it's possible that the Bobst swastikas weren't put there by an NYU student at all, which makes the cases a tiny bit different. But maybe not that much.)

I still feel like I don't want to make too big a deal out of nothing, or out of a small something. But if there's another swastika spotted on campus at some point, I do want it to be handled differently, and I would also want to know if many small swastikas have been spotted across campus, which can only happen if NYU Public Safety takes this incident seriously, which I hope they have.

I am going to think about who else I should talk to or write to at NYU and express my displeasure at how this was handled. But maybe after I've gotten some more work done. After all, letting this distract me further from my work is letting the anti-Semites of the world win!

Labels: community, education, ethics, how to, Jewish community, life, New York

Growing up in Boston, I was always anti-New York. That's just how it is. New York thinks it's the top banana, or, rather, the ONLY banana. I knew better. Other lovely cities abound. So, even though I've now lived in New York City for over ten years, when people ask me where I'm from, I always say, "I live in New York but I am originally from Boston." Short, sweet, and most definitely to the point.

Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, though, I've begun to feel differently. I was in New York City on 9/11 (doing research at the Barnard Archives for my senior thesis for college) and I moved to New York during the August 15, 2003 blackout (I was supposed to move in on the 15th, but had to move in on the 16th, instead, due to the blackout). I was here for the great transit strike in December of 2005, which had me walking to and from work each day. (An entirely manageable 2+ mile walk each way, but I had to wear a lot of layers because it was a particularly cold week!) I was here during the great bungled-by-Bloomberg snowstorm in the winter of 2009-10, when some streets in Northern Manhattan simply NEVER got plowed. I was here for Hurricane Irene in August 2011, and my bedroom ceiling leaked. (For real. A window leaked on the 6th floor, which leaked down to the 5th floor, which leaked down to the 4th floor, which leaked down to my apartment on the 3rd floor. I woke up to a distinct drip-drip-drip and some soggy things.) I was here for Hurricane Sandy.

And...I feel kind of like a New Yorker. Like it is no longer something to be embarrassed about, since I know that there are so many lovely cities out there and New York is just one among many. New York has its faults, but it is also a city that honestly knows how to pull together and whose residents are mostly extremely nice and friendly, given how many strangers they have to interact with every day. People have pointed out when I've dropped things or my backpack pocket has been open, and I've done the same for others. People have held doors, as have I. Someone held a subway door for me recently for about two seconds and I was so grateful. It allowed me to catch a train that I needed to catch. My neighbors regularly hold the elevator for me, and I for them. It's a city full of anonymity (I don't really know any of my neighbor's names, although I say "hi!" to them when I see them), but also full of acts of kindness both large and small, between complete strangers.

Judaism calls this "chessed shel emet"--kindness that can never be repaid. Typically used to refer to acts of caring that we do for the dead, I see it every day in this little slice of urban living, le'havdil (I'm not comparing my anonymous co-residents to the dead!). I may never hold the subway door for those particular strangers who held the doors for me. I may never again see the woman who pointed out that liquid was spilling from my lunch bag. (Argh!) It's okay.

I do not mean to claim that it is all peaches and cream here. There are inconsiderate people here, too. Fellow straphangers who play games on their phones and DSs without headphones. People who fail to move to the inside of the subway car, despite crowding. People who stand and text or check their phone at the tops and bottoms of subway station stairs. (WHY?!)

It's not just the random, inconsiderate people who make living here hard. It is an awfully crowded and expensive place to live, at least in Manhattan, where I reside. I share a converted one-bedroom with a roommate, and I'm 35. ("No fake walls," I proudly tell people, "so it's not too bad!") It's getting a bit old. (The rent is *really* cheap, though, which is a huge blessing when you are a graduate student or a freelancer.) The streets are full of garbage most of the time. The elevators in the subways sometimes smell like urine and sometimes smell like crack. (I didn't know how crack smelled, but when sharing an elevator with a particularly strong odor that wasn't urine, a fellow rider told me that it was crack. You learn so much living here!) It's very, very loud. Most of the time, in most places. A quiet apartment is a relative term--there are always buses and cars going by.

But it's also not just random acts of kindness between strangers that make this city great. It is also extremely convenient. Public transit runs all the time. I feel safe taking it until midnight, and sometimes even later (just don't tell my mother). Public transit is a quick and relatively inexpensive way to travel between 1-100 miles. (I don't really know the outer limits of MetroNorth, NJ Transit, and LIRR, but it seems to be that or much, much more.) When I've visited friends in other cities with good public transit, the public transit is sometimes slow or doesn't take you where you need to go. That's never the case here, as far as I can tell, at least within the areas that I travel. In other cities, you need a car plus public transit. You really don't need a car anywhere in Manhattan. At all. There are sidewalks everywhere, and most of them are wide enough to walk four across (two people going in each direction). There is live music to be heard, for free, at all times of day and night. Grocery stores and drugstores open early and close late (not as much in Washington Heights as they did on the Upper West Side, but, still--a 24 hour pharmacy is always, at most, a short cab ride away).

So...against my better judgment, I seem to have become something of a New Yorker.

Labels: life, New York

I am trying to write this from not-my-computer, but rather a mobile device, so we'll see whether it works or not. I've actually been missing blogging a lot. It feels very 2005 to me, but I miss the longer form. I've been having great conversations on Facebook and Twitter, but I am really more of a long-form person, which longtime readers probably know without my explicating it. I have 147 drafts in my drafts folder, stretching from May 2006 to October 2013, so you may seem some of those backlogged posts soon. Maybe. I thought I would start blogging again before, and that didn't happen, so it may not work this time, either.

I recently saw this posted on Facebook:

Labels: economics, New York, real estate

At long last! A follow up to this post from more than two months ago. I am sorry for the delay. This is what happened, as much as I can recall at this late date.

I was on the subway this morning, late to a meeting. As I got on, I noticed a man occupying three seats. (He was sitting in one and a half and had his bag on the third.) I had to stand for a bit, until someone else got off, in order to sit. Before someone else got off, I thought about asking him to move his bag, but realized that he seemed to be down on his luck, so decided not to bother him. As I stood up to get off at my stop, he first fell sideways, into the empty seat beside him, and then off the seat entirely, on to the floor. The teenagers near me tittered and got off, but I said, "Sir, sir" to him as loudly as I could muster to try to wake him up. He did not move or appear responsive to me. But I was late for a meeting! And this was my stop! What would you do?

I got off the train after seeing that someone else was trying to wake the man, and telling someone in the next car what had happened. By the time I hurriedly left the scene, other responsible citizens were on it. I think that I thought about alerting a subway official, maybe upstairs as I walked out, but I was leaving from an unstaffed entrance, so that didn't happen. Also, it seemed that the train conductor might already be aware of the situation, since the train was delayed in the station. Oh, right! Some other people called out from the open doors, to the conductor, "Someone needs help here!" I think. In any case, by the time I left, it was clear that others were involved and feeling responsible and actually acting on that feeling of responsibility towards their fellow citizen.

This experience so bothered me--mostly that the teenagers would titter and get off the train, although, also, to a lesser extent, that I hadn't stayed to help--that when I heard that a man was lying on the front steps of my apartment building on Thanksgiving afternoon, I rushed down and tried to see if he was okay. Again, I said loudly, "Sir, sir, are you okay?" No response. A fire truck went by and still no response. He was lying there, not moving. I called 9-1-1, but before the call was completed, an ambulance pulled up and some EMTs jumped out. They took his pulse and he didn't move. One of them shook him, and he jumped up immediately and said that he was fine. They asked him where he lived and things like that, and I went back inside to continue my Thanksgiving cooking.

You see someone crying at a Starbucks as she puts milk and sugar into her coffee. What would you do?

This was me. I was crying at Starbucks. That's where I rushed after I got off the first subway, and I was totally emotionally overwhelmed and feeling terrible about being late to my meeting and I just started crying. It was really, really nice that two people (not one, but two!) asked me if I was okay and if there was anything they could do to help.

Lesson: New York City has a reputation for being large, harsh, and rude, but there can, at times, be something charmingly caring about it. Strangers taking care of strangers, in tiny little ways, every day. If you live here, and see someone in distress or with something dripping, say something. It's what makes living here moderately tolerable!

Labels: community, ethics, life, New York

I was on the subway this morning, late to a meeting. As I got on, I noticed a man occupying three seats. (He was sitting in one and a half and had his bag on the third.) I had to stand for a bit, until someone else got off, in order to sit. Before someone else got off, I thought about asking him to move his bag, but realized that he seemed to be down on his luck, so decided not to bother him. As I stood up to get off at my stop, he first fell sideways, into the empty seat beside him, and then off the seat entirely, on to the floor. The teenagers near me tittered and got off, but I said, "Sir, sir" to him as loudly as I could muster to try to wake him up. He did not move or appear responsive to me. But I was late for a meeting! And this was my stop! What would you do?

Labels: community, ethics, life, New York

I was trying to figure out what to do on Sunday in commemoration of 9/11, and nothing that came into my inbox felt right. There was a morning of community service planned in my local Jewish community, which included cleaning up parks and preparing synagogues for high holiday services, but it conflicted with another engagement and it didn't strike as what I most wanted to do. Somehow, hanging out with local Washington Heights Jews felt wrong in commemoration of the day of chaos and bewilderment that I experienced in New York City ten years ago today. It feels too parochial, somehow.

Labels: life, New York

I just changed my Blogger location and the time zone for this blog from Jerusalem back to New York. I guess I'm really back now. (I changed Facebook and Twitter awhile ago, but somehow forget about changing it here.)

Labels: Israel, life, New York

This is probably too late for most of you, who have already arrived, fresh and naive, to my fair city. For others, it may be helpful. This is mostly useful for those looking for apartments with shomer Shabbat/kashrut roommates on the Upper West Side and in Washington Heights, although it can also help with those looking for new apartments, with or without roommates. Some of it may also help in other areas of New York City.

As I'm sure you've already discovered, apartment-hunting in NYC can be very stressful, although it may be better now that fewer people have jobs and thus fewer people are flocking to NYC.

There is a website called BangItOut.com with lots of apartment listings, especially if you're open to moving into apartment with one or two other usually SS/SK (shomer-Shabbat/shomer-kashrut) roommates. It is best for the Upper West Side, but also has a few apartment listings in other parts of NYC and other cities. You can put an ad there if you're looking, although it's best to be proactive and read through the listings. This is true in general in NYC, since there seem to be a lot more people seeking apartments (especially of the less expensive, not gross variety) than apartments/rooms available. The burden is really on the seeker to find a place, not the people with the apartment to find new roommates.

Labels: New York, real estate

If you aren't going to read this whole post, the take-home message is: You should see this film. It's playing at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan this week and elsewhere soon.


My earliest political memory is of the 1984 election season. I remember being driven home from school by another mom (remember carpooling?), and asking her why there were signs in everyone's lawns. She explained about the upcoming presidential election.

My second earliest political memory is of the Geneva Summit between Gorbachev and Reagan in November 1985. I remember reading about it in the Weekly Reader. I was in the first grade.

The truth is, though, that at around this same time, I was partaking in politics much more directly by sending drawings to refusenik Ida Nudel when she was in exile in Siberia for requesting an exit visa to leave the Soviet Union.¹

I think the only reason that I remember sending drawings to Ida Nudel² is because my father once commented admiringly on the perspective in my drawing. In a Purim letter to her in 1985, I drew a picture of a clown in shul, with the benches that were further away smaller than the ones that were closer to my point of view as the artist.³ I must have written to her or others more than once, but that's the only time I remember writing. When I was a little bit older, I remember not going to the big Soviet Jewry rally in Washington, DC (although I knew it was taking place), and going to a much smaller rally on behalf of Soviet Jewry in front of the Massachusetts State House. I also remember going on the Walk for Soviet Jewry, right before going to the birthday party of a classmate, during which we all put on makeup, I think under the direction of a Mary Kay woman. I missed the beginning of the party because of the walk, and I remember thinking, even then, that makeup was kind of stupid. I wonder if it's because I was coming from the Walk for Soviet Jewry. I think that both the Boston rally and walk took place in the fall of 1988.


I knew, when I was a kid, that I was doing these things on behalf of Soviet Jews who were being persecuted. Until I saw REFUSENIK at the Quad Cinema last night, though, I didn't really understand what that meant. It's interesting, when you know something as a child, and then don't think about it for twenty years, and then return to it as an adult. It's a bit eery, actually, but also very cool. What I knew as a kid, I now know entirely differently as an adult, and this film deserves 100% of the credit for that.

For example, I had no idea--I'm not sure how I missed this--that Soviet Jews were refused entrance to universities and were denied jobs. I think I had a vague idea, when I was a kid, that Jews who asked to leave the Soviet Union to go to Israel were fired from the jobs they already had. However, as a kid, I had no notion of what that meant.⁴ I also did not understand, as a kid, about the Cold War⁵ and the interplay between that Geneva Summit, the earlier Helsinki Accords, and the plight of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews. Watching this movie was like one big "Oh....!" It was very informative in that way. I understood how a coalition of Jews and others were able to put pressure on the American government to tie incipient trade agreements with the USSR to the signing of human rights accords, which were then used to hold the USSR accountable for human rights violations.

I also understood how none of this would have been possible without letter-writing campaigns organized by college students and housewives, as well as some others, all across America. It was incredibly inspiring. All of these people putting pressure on their congresspeople, as well as pressure on the Soviet government by sending letters to refuseniks, along with "ordinary" women and men smuggling bits of film and pieces of cameras into and out of the USSR, is what did this. It directly saved lives. That's crazy! In a good way!

What was most inspiring, of course, were the interviews with the refuseniks themselves, both contemporary and original footage from the 1970s and 1980s. The resilience of the human spirit in incredible, and it shines through this film.

The film also showed a great exchange with Mikhail Gorbachev, which, alone, is worth the price of admission. I don't want to give away what he says, but, well, just go see it. I guess it's not surprising, but with skillful editing, it packs quite a punch.

My only critiques are that, at two full hours, it was a bit long and I thought it could have been edited down by about 20 minutes, albeit with some loss of content. Isn't that what the DVD is for? Secondly, there are a lot of subtitles of both Russian and Hebrew interviews. That's not really a critique as much as a warning. So if you're short, or even if you aren't, get there early and get an aisle or otherwise-guaranteed-to-be-unobstructed seat. I got there late and was sitting behind a tall man who was wearing a hat! Tall dudes, take your hat off in the theater!


One of the best parts of the screening that I attended yesterday was that Laura Gialis, the director, and Natan Sharansky, one of the most famous refuseniks, were also in attendance and took questions afterwards. (I read his book a long time ago--when I was in high school--and it's possible that if I had a better memory, the film would have been less revelatory to me. All I remember from the book is the chess.) It took Laura five years to make this film.

I asked MK Sharansky (does he still get that title now that's retired from the Israeli government?) two questions. The first was about whether he got the letters that I and other sent him when we were kids. His response was great and quite moving. It was that it didn't matter whether he got letters--the KGB always got them, and that saved his life. He could tell, based on how they were treating him, whether letters were flooding in or not. They would not kill him as long as the eyes of the world were upon him, and the letters were direct proof of those eyes. After his longest hunger strike of 110 days, they gave in to all of his demands and he attributes that to the letters. Without the letters, he would have died. Others who were incarcerated with him, but who were Ukrainian or Armenian dissidents, did not have letters sent to him and one of them, a friend, went on a hunger strike and was allowed to just die, rather than the KGB ceding to his demands.

The second question I asked was about whether we could learn anything from the ultimately successful struggle for Soviet Jewry in terms of what's now going on in Darfur, Tibet, China, etc. First, Sharansky disparaged those "so-called liberals" (his words) who talk about Darfur because it makes them feel good about himself. Then he said that he feels very lucky that he was a Jew in the Soviet Union and not a Ukrainian or Armenian, because similar atrocities were perpetrated against Ukrainians and Armenians, and there is a significant Armenian diaspora, but they didn't organize protests and put pressure on various governments the way the Jewish diaspora did. He mentioned that his wife, Avital, tried to get the Armenian community in Israel involved on behalf of the Armenians stuck in jail in the USSR, but she was unsuccessful. Then he said that the talk was silly--the only way to prevent these human rights abuses it to put pressure on all of the governments that deal with and help them. In the case of Darfur, he said that it was the Arab countries in the Middle East that support them. He said that the only way to solve this is for the US should not have dealings with any country that supports what's going on in Darfur, but that everyone (including "so-called liberals") is in favor of appeasement these days, not the absolutes that ended up working in the struggle for Soviet Jewry. If we would refuse to trade with China, they were clean up their human rights act.

Mr. Sharansky was also quite funny. Someone in the audience asked, in a sort of accusatory tone, what he was doing for the State of Israel, now that he was free. (Was this person living under a rock for the past ten years?) He made a few jokes about how his ten years working in the Israeli government were worse than his nine years in prison. When someone asked him how he managed to survive for so long, he said, "Where--prison or the Knesset?" When someone said something about how amazing his wife was in her tireless efforts to get him freed, he acknowledged that the smartest thing you can do before going to prison for nine years is to marry someone who will work tirelessly on your behalf.

So, go see this movie. And then go work tirelessly on behalf of someone else who is stuck where they shouldn't be.

____________________________________
1. For that, I thank my parents, especially my father. I don't think that most kids grow up in such a strong culture of "You can help me save lives" as I did. I don't think you have to do it that often for it to make a strong impression on kids or create in them a sense of "can do" and global responsibility. I am only afraid that I have totally failed to live up to these childhood sentiments in my adult life.
2. who was freed in October 1987, when I was eight years old
3. I remember thinking that it was funny that my father was surprised--duh! Of course things that were further away looked smaller. Wasn't that just how it was when you looked around a room? Why should a drawing be any different? Only I didn't know the word "duh!" then because it hadn't been invented.
<--- This is it! A small reproduction of the actual drawing from Purim 1985 that I sent to Ida Nudel! It's a GIF made from a PDF of a scan of a photocopy, but there she is. I have not seen this since 1985. Weird.


4. I learned, from this film, that many Jewish scientists and engineers who were fired from their jobs got new jobs as elevator operators in hospitals. Every elevator operator had at least one PhD at once point!
5. I remember the day the Soviet Union collapsed, but I also remember not understanding, really, what the big deal was and why my grandmother was basically crying with joy. Part of the problem was that it happened in August, when I wasn't in school. I felt similarly about the collapse of the Berlin Wall almost two years earlier, but at least with that, we spoke about it during the Current Events part of our school day. I remember when it happened, and by then, I had a slightly better understanding of why it was a big deal, but I didn't really understand until much later. And, heck, I probably still don't really understand any of this stuff.

Labels: childhood, history, New York

I took DC2NY from Manhattan to Washington, DC and I took Bolt Bus from Washington, DC to Manhattan for the first days of chag. Here is my review of the experience.

Qualifications: I am a veteran bus-taker. That's what happens when you have no car and no money and friends up and down the Northeast corridor! I have previous experience (since 2003-ish) taking Vamoose ("More Bang for Your Buck - No Bull" tee hee!), Washington Deluxe, and Greyhound on this route, and experience taking Greyhound, Peter Pan, and Fung Wah between Boston and Manhattan (since 1996).

General Observations about the DC-NY bus options:

• Greyhound has the most travel times and a convenient departure location from New York.
• Greyhound is currently comparable in price to these other companies, at $38 for a round-trip ticket or $22 for a one-way ticket.¹
• DC2NY only makes trip twice a day, I think--once at 9-something am and once at 4:30 pm. Bolt Bus seemed to have departures every two hours or so during the day. Greyhound has buses every hour or half hour.

DC2NY was, overall, a more pleasant ride (nicer driver, free water, less nauseated). The only downsides to DC2NY, besides the paucity of daily trips, is the leg room, and the fact that I might not get two seats on future DC2NY bus trips.

I really didn't like the nausea-inducing decals on the windows of the Bolt Bus, but on the plus side, the bus was emptier, which was nice, and the WiFi worked on my Palm, which means that I can be online even without dragging out my computer. However, if those decals make me nauseous, I can't be online anyway. (It's as bad as, or worse than, trying to read on the bus.)

The upshot is that I think, in the future, I would decide between Bolt Bus and DC2NY on a per-trip basis, based on the price and timing options of individual trips and on whether I want to be online (and how thirsty I think I'll be). Greyhound only as a last resort!

The full scoop is below.

	Greyhound	DC2NY	Bolt Bus
location in NYC	Port Authority Bus terminal (42nd St. and 8th Ave.)	34th between 8th and 7th Ave.s (across the street from K-Mart)	34th and 7th Ave. (across the street from Sbarro)
location in DC	Greyhound bus station (annoying walk to the nearest Metro station at Union Station)	Dupont Circle	11th and G, right near the Metro Center Metro stop
price range between NY and DC	always $22 one way or $38 round trip using their e-fares2 I think you can pay $5 extra and get "priority boarding," which means that you get to pick a window seat or a seat near the front of the bus if you want to.	always $22 one way or $40 round trip	varies from $10 to $20 per one-way ticket; no discount for round-trip purchase
travel time	probably comparable; I don't remember; I think it can take up to 6 hours if it's a weekend or especially a holiday weekend	4.5 hours (middle of the day, weekday, not holiday weekend)	4.5 hours (middle of the day, weekday, not holiday weekend)
amenities	none	free bottle of water upon boarding the bus! what luxury!	none
trash	one at the front if you're lucky	one near each seat	one at the back of the bus
electric outlets	none	didn't see them, but think they have them	conveniently located on the back of each seat, but I noticed that the seats vibrated when the bus was in motion and I'm guessing that those of you with those boxy Apple power sources might need to bring your extra cord along, since it would probably fall right out
Wi-Fi	none	yes, password-protected, didn't try it	yes, not password-protected so it worked on my Wifi-enabled Palm TX! woo hoo!
number of seats I've gotten	usually one	two! and got a window seat near the front! however, some people definitely only had one seat, so this may not be true on future rides	two! and got a window seat in the first half of the bus! tons of empty seats throughout the bus; I think there were even entirely free two-seat units.
movies	sometimes	passengers vote if they want a movie, and which of two movies they want, during the second half of the trip only -- this felt very nice and democratic even though the movie I didn't want to see ended up winning by one vote	none
nausea considerations	sometimes they smell funny, which makes me feel sick; also, with fewer seats to choose from, you can end up stuck near the back (bathroom stink, gross) or in an otherwise nausea-inducing seat	smooth ride, was even able to read a little (with the help of Dramamine) and got a great nap!	smelled like a new bus (bad for motion sickness) and the windows near the front of the bus had those decals that made it hard to look out and definitely made me feel sicker
leg room	varies	the seat that I got (because I wanted one near the front of the bus) felt very cramped	the seats were spacious and I had plenty of leg room (I'm 5'8" with a lot of that height in my legs)
cup holders	none	on the back of every seat! you can put your water bottle right there and have it handy! also, there was a hook on the back of every seat, which was also handy	none
foot rests	sometimes? I don't remember. I think usually not.	yes - makes bus travel more comfortable!	yes - makes bus travel more comfortable!
driver	often seem surly and rude	very sweet, pleasant, had mediocre English skills for which he apologized (how novel!), asked people not to speak on cell phones	didn't say much, a little surly when he did say something, didn't ask people to avoid cell phone calls so there were people yapping the whole time

-----------------------------------------
1. As an aside, in 1996 and 1997, after Greyhound bought out Peter Pan, or at least bought out their Boston-NYC routes, their prices went way up. I think at one point they were charging as much as $40 for a Boston to NYC bus ride! One way! The cheapest I ever remember Greyhound or Peter Pan being was $25 one way. The cheapest I ever remember Fung Wah being was $10 one way. I think it was on one of those $10 Fung Wah bus rides that the side view mirror of the bus fell off. We had to stop (it's illegal for a bus to drive without one) and wait by the side of the highway until the next Fung Wah bus came by an hour later, which all of the passengers from my bus fit onto, luckily. Those were the days!
2. If you don't know to click through there, you can pay up to $62 for a one-way ticket! You'll be at least paying $29 for a one way ride without the e-fare, whereas with it, it's $38 round trip.

Labels: New York, travel

This is the sort of thing that amuses me:

A woman standing on 42nd Street at 10:30 am on March 25, a sunny day very close to the spring equinox, asking a police officer which way was east.

The sun was shining very brightly from the east. It was an absolutely lovely day.

Are people so cut off from the natural physical world that they don't think to use the bright, shining sun to help them navigate the (nearly) north/south/east/west Manhattan grid? After I was amused, I had this second, sobering thought, which made me a little bit sad.

Labels: New York

Or while I'm sick. I've been over the flu and back at work for two weeks now, but I'm still totally exhausted much of the time and my throat has been hurting, on and off, also. So I went back to the doctor today. It's probably nothing, but if it isn't nothing, it may be mono. And how wasteful is it to get the kissing disease without any kissing?

Anyway, carry on. I might have blogged about all of these things (and LimmudNY) if I weren't so busy sleeping and taking acetaminophen. Also, working my paying job. And, you know, reading the newspaper and Scientific American Mind and stuff. (That and Wired are my current two favorite magazines.)

Science fun

• The Secret to Raising Smart Kids (Scientific American Mind, December 2007)
  
• Bored? (Scientific American Mind, December 2007)
• The Claim: Never Drink Hot Water From the Tap (New York Times, 1/29/08) [My mother always told me this and now I know it's true!]
• Using Music to Lift Depression's Veil (New York Times "Well" blog, 1/24/08)
  

Education fun

• Anybody thinking of graduate school? (The Daily Princetonian)
• Brain Enhancement is Wrong, Right? (New York Times, 3/9/08)
• In Oil-Rich Mideast, Shades of the Ivy League (New York Times, 2/11/08)
• Did I Miss Anything, by Tom Wayman (awesome poem, originally from The Astonishing Weight of the Dead, Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.)
  

Eliot Spitzer...fun? No, power-hungry and delusional.

• How Do These Shits Get Their Wives To Come To The "I Am A Shit" Press Conference Anyway, And Other Marvels (Jezebel)
• The Myth of the Victimless Crime (New York Times op-ed, 3/12/08)
• Spitzer's Downfall Means Free Market Moves Merchandise (Gothamist, 3/12/08)
• What Spitzer Was Doing Before Seeing "Kristen" (Gothamist, 3/11/08)

Random fun (if you consider either sadness or shopping to be fun)

• How Sadness Can Turn You Into a Shopaholic (U.S. News and World Report, 2/11/08)

That's all I've got for now. Stay healthy and far away from germy people!

Labels: links, mental health, New York, science/health/environment

Two men, looking 70+ years old, sitting at the back of a room where an Israeli film was about to be screened. One grumpily said to the other, "This isn't a film! This is a DVD!"

One adorable four-year-old, on the last day of LimmudNY, to her parents: "I am going to be very sad and cry tomorrow, because there will be no more Camp Limmud, the funnest camp there is!"

From the very young to the old(er), there was something at LimmudNY 2008 for everyone!

Overall impressions and thoughts about LimmudNY 2008:

• I don't know if I got as much out of it as I did in 2007. Or maybe I just had less fun?
• Everything that I went to was great, but very little was surprisingly fantastic, which was a little bit disappointing. I don't know if that was about the programming, my over-saturation in Jewish education by this point in my life, or what I chose to go to.
  
• I had already seen a lot of the Israeli films that were shown.
• I found myself really too tired to stay up late and socialize at night, so that part of LimmudNY was less fun for me this year.
• It felt to me that there were fewer live performances, or maybe only fewer live performances before 11 pm or midnight, when I am most likely to enjoy them. I didn't hear as many cool music performances as I did last year.
  
• Also, I didn't go--by my own choice--to the cool, creative sessions, the ones that might have helped me learn something amazing about myself.
• I gravitated towards straight rabbinic text sessions (midrash, gemara, halacha) during the day, so, I guess I learned that about myself. I didn't feel so strongly pulled in that direction last year, and certainly not three years ago, at the first LimmudNY.
• I think that I am also less open to introspection right now (I mean this week and last week, not at this point in my life overall), and less introspection means less growth.

I did learn one interesting thing about myself.

I walked into the room in which Orthodox services were to be held, right around candle-lighting time on Friday. The room was empty, except for one man. The mechitzah was a huge, navy monstrosity that cut the room in half, with the shat"z standing at the front, on the men's side. It was maybe 15 feet tall, and made of dark fabric. I am generally tolerant of mechitzot, but, then again, most mechitzot I come across are constructed of lattice or semi-sheet material, not dark, heavy, navy blue cloth. Also, most mechitzot I come across seem to be 4-6 feet tall. I felt like I would absolutely not be able to focus on my davening at all if I tried to daven in that room. After waiting for a few minutes, I davened mincha quickly to myself, because I wasn't at all sure that they would gather a minyan before shkiyah [sunset], and then I went to explore other options.

The only other option that seemed doable was the traditional egalitarian service. This is a whole other kettle of fish that I don't think I want to get into now, but, basically, my current position is that I will daven at an egalitarian minyan, not let myself be counted as part of the minyan, and only answer the shat"z when I feel halachically comfortable with the combination of the sex (not gender) of the person up there and the precise prayer that person is leading. Also, I won't daven in an egalitarian minyan on a regular basis, and will basically only do so if I have a good reason (generally, the aufrauf or bris or baby-naming of friends). I am not at all claiming that this position makes any internal or external sense at all, but that's where I'm at right now, at this particular moment in time. As I said, this is for another post.

I left the mechitzah, led-only-by-men minyan and went to the traditional egalitarian service, which also had not started. When they did start, they started with mincha, which was led by a man and was totally fine for me content-wise.

But kabbalat Shabbat, which followed, confirmed my worst suspicions about liberal services in general. The shat"z was facing the congregation rather than the front of the room, and this, as well as the way he was leading, made it seem like he was teaching the congregation a song rather than leading davening (or pre-davening tehillim, which is a more precise definition of kabbalat Shabbat). It irritated the hell out of me. He told us that he was going to teach us a new, special melody and it was one of the Carlebach standards, which, judging from the speech with which the congregants picked up this "new" tune, most people were already familiar. Also, he spoke a few sentences, it seemed, between nearly every chapter of Psalms. Page numbers were definitely called out before each chapter of Psalms, despite the fact that we were going in order, and there was nothing fishy about the page numbers in the texts that most people had. I feel like I would have been able to follow along even if I had not known any Hebrew. Also, he stopped a congregation in throes of singing to ask us to switch the melody to Licha Dodi after every verse or two. It drove me crazy! Licha Dodi is one of the highlights of my week, when I make it to shul in time. (Surely few things exemplify the transition from Friday to Shabbat as well as "קומי צאי מתוך ההפכה"!) I had to walk out two verses before the end. Other people walked out long before that.

This is also an issue for a longer, separate post, but one of several reasons that I prefer Orthodox services to any other service is because I think that Orthodox services aim for the highest common denominator among congregants, rather than the lowest common denominator. It's easy for me to feel this way, because I tend to be among the higher, rather than the lower, common denominator in terms of Jewish education or davening skills in most shuls. If I didn't know Hebrew, or couldn't find my way through any siddur, I'm sure that I would feel differently. But since I do, and can, I have little patience for constantly interspersing commentary and page numbers amidst the davening. It breaks my kavanah [concentration], such as it is. (I don't object to a little introduction to the parsha, or to the haftarah, or calling out occasional page numbers when pages are skipped or things are in a funny order.) People who need help following the davening should be helped quietly by the people sitting next to them. There should be learner's services. Shuls should offer classes on tefillah [prayer]. I'm sure I would gain from such a class. But shul should not become a class. I realize, admit, and partially apologize for my elitist position, which I am only able to hold because I was lucky enough to go to shul from a young age and to otherwise get a good Jewish education. (And, yes, I am well aware that there are liberal services all of Manhattan that have the kind of davening I like, without constant commentary and page numbers. This is not the only reason I prefer Orthodox davening.)

Anyway, so I walked out and went back to the Orthodox service, which had grown so large by that point that it had expanded beyond the back edge of the ginormous mechitzah, so someone had set up a few long folding tables to extend the mechitzah. I davened back there, next to that reasonable mechitzah. Also, the ginormous mechitzah didn't look nearly as stark and awful when the room was full of people on both sides of it.

At the end of davening, someone who was making announcements apologized for the mechitzah, said that it had been set up by the hotel without any input from the minyan organizers, and that its height was not at all reflective of the esteem with which women were held by the male minyan organizers. I was very glad that someone apologized. It mitigated my anger a little. Then someone from the men's section jokingly called out that it should be taller. Then the daveners dispersed.

I went to mincha/maariv during the rest of the conference, and davened beside that ridonkulous mechitzah, and sort of got used to it. I'm sure that the other egalitarian services were more "normal," which I put in quotes as an acknowledgment that I what I mean by "normal" is "more similar to the Orthodox services I frequent."

The same thing happened last year, by the way. At LimmudNY 2007, the mechitzah was also very, very tall. It was white, which made it slightly less obtrusive, and I think we managed to modify it somewhat by replacing some very tall panels (15') with shorter panels (5' or 6').

On Shabbat morning, I went to the "Darkhei Noam style" minyan (my name, not theirs), which had a totally normal, 5 or 6-foot tall, lattice-work mechitzah. Clearly, such a thing existed. Maybe they didn't have enough of it for both minyanim on Shabbat morning, but there was only one minyan on Friday night. Maybe it was too short for the long room in which Friday night davening was held. I don't know. It seems, though, like a Jewish resort in the Catskills ought to have some suitable mechitzah arrangement on hand. If LimmudNY is held there again, I hope they work out something better.

Having said that, I want to report that in terms of logistics, this was the best LimmudNY yet. I was expecting Friday night dinner to be utter chaos (850 people eating together is more likely than not to turn out that way), and it was one of the highlights of Limmud. I ended up at a table with some people I didn't know and some people I knew, but few of whom knew each other. We had a nice, full-table conversation about Limmud and what makes it so awesome. I heard a lot of different perspectives. The facilities (the Nevele) were great. There were no screw-ups, no hitches, and fewer room and program changes than at the past Limmud conferences I've attended. Really, a huge yasher koach goes to all of the staff and the volunteers.

I am hoping to write about some of the very cool Rabbinic texts I learned at some later point.

Labels: New York