I spent this Saturday morning being told I was the byproduct of a silent Holocaust, so my weekend went really well.

It started when our friends had a baby, which, amongst other things, caused my mom to shift into overdrive:

Our friends just had a very cute baby girl and they invited us to the Hebrew naming ceremony at an Orthodox-ish synagogue.  I immediately sensed that this would be a bad experience from the minute we walked in and I was separated from Mr. B and told to go to the right-hand side with all of the other confused and equally Godless Russian women from our friends’ families.

In Orthodox synagogues, women are separated from men by a mechitza, which is,

the physical divider placed between the men’s and women’s sections in Orthodox synagogues and at religious celebrations. The idea behind this is twofold. First, mingling of the genders is generally frowned upon, as this leads to frivolity, which itself may lead to promiscuity. Secondly, even if the sexes are separated, they should not be able to interact to a high degree during a religious service, lest this lead to gazing and impure thoughts. Due to these restrictions, mechitzot are usually opaque (at least looking from the men’s side to the women’s side).

Who am I to criticize this practice? Obviously it works for some people and the way they celebrate God.  People who think that it’s the woman’s fault if a man gets distracted during services.   If only us women were less sexxxy during services.

I don’t have a problem with the separation, per se.  If it’s equal.  Separate, but equal.  Like, if the male rabbi preaches to the males and a female rabbi preaches to females. Or at least if there is as much seating on the women’s side as there is on the men’s. Obviously, this did not happen, and I spent the whole service straining a bit to hear what the rabbi was saying during the parsha before the naming ceremony was underway because he wasn’t really intent on talking to us wymyn as he was on telling the men that there is a second Holocaust going on, and that that particular Holocaust is intermarriage.

I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric in the Jewish community tons of times before and it wasn’t really new to me, but I could hear Mr. B raising his eyebrows all the way on the other side of the men’s section.    I just  couldn’t wait to text my mom and dad and tell them they were the next Hitler and Goebbels.

The service went on for maybe an hour, during which my friend came with her daughter  and all the women, bored senseless by the service which wasn’t explained to them and which was going on forever, crowded around and started fussing with her, and as a result, were thoroughly shushed like kindergartners by the rabbi.   Then,the rabbi stopped and asked if the mother was present, and our friend said she was. Obviously the mom couldn’t go on the men’s side during the ceremony, so he asked her to come up to the mechitza and say the baby’s name over the mechitza so that the men (not womenz!) could bless the baby.  Then, the men on the other side, from what I could see, started performing the hora and through a slit in the mechitzah glanced at the baby, blessing her. It looked something like this:

It’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve experienced in my life, aside from that time Mr. B and I were in Jerusalem and we thought an Arab was trying to shank us but all he really wanted were some cigarettes. That a mother and father are not allowed to be present together and the mother, the one that gave life to the baby was sidelined and portrayed simply as a vessel for more Jews to come through the chute as opposed to a human being, bummed me out worse than that time I wrote about depressing Russian baby songs.  At the end of the dancing, the rabbi asked the mom to hold the baby up to his ear to hear what she was telling him, and what it turned out that she was telling him was for her mom and dad to bring her to services every week from now on.  What an astute baby.

After the dancing subsided and we wimminz were settled down, the prayers continued.  And continued.  For another hour, with the rabbi breaking off to entice us areligious Russian Jews to come to services to “find out what being a Jew is” and to really, really stop mixing meat and milk or we would all go to a hell that would probably include, amongst other things, mechitzot for all.  I’m guessing he didn’t know that I already know what “being a Jew is” for me and- pro tip – it doesn’t include being treated like a baby machine (which actually would be a pretty cool idea to patent.)

After the second hour was over, I stood outside with some other girls as we waited for our husbands to come out.  Unfortunately,  the congregation’s men had jumped on them like white on rice and were proselytizing in full force.   Obviously, we weren’t even good enough to be proselytized at, which is kind of sad, because I was kind of looking forward to discussing the merits of separate-but-equal hell in Hebrew with them.

As we sat down in the car, Mr. B and I looked at each other, and neither of us said anything.  On the way to the restaurant, we got into a huge fight, the tension from the synagogue escalating the initial small problem.  All of the stress and anger we’d both experienced at the synagogue came out, and at the end we realized it, apologized, and relaxed.

I looked at Mr. B.  “Let’s have kids just so they don’t go to that synagogue, “  I said.  “I’m with you, half-breed,” said Mr. B, and we walked, hand-in-hand to the restaurant.

Go see this movie. As soon as possible.

Amreeka (America in Arabic) is the story of how a Christian Palestinian single mom, Muna, and her son, Fadi,  get a visa to go to America from the West Bank town of Bethlehem because it is clear that there is not much future in the territories for them. They arrive in snowy Illinois to stay with Muna’s sister and her family.  So starts Muna’s process of getting on her feet as an immigrant by working at White Castle (having obtained two degrees and 10 years experience working in a bank), and Fadi’s process of fitting in at his new high school.

I’ll let the trailer speak for itself:

Everything about this movie was achingly familiar and close-to-home for me, both in the scenes they shot in the West Bank and the ones in America.

I’ve been struggling  lately with reconciling my Zionism with the realization that Israel is not only a place of ideals, but a country, just like any other, where ordinary people get up, go to work, drink Aroma coffee, and are screwed over by the beauracrcy of what is ostensibly a state created to protect us.  The fact that Israel, even as a Jewish state, is not perfect, has caused me to struggle between loving it and criticizing some of its actions.

In spite of  this inner conflict,  the minute Israel and the territories were shown in the movie, I became “homesick”.  The director, Cherien Darbis, portrays Israel and the territories with much familiarity.  All the nuances: the pale Jerusalem stone, the small, hot, cramped makoliot with flies on the tomatoes, the constant sunshine, and the crowded markets.  However, Darbis takes all of these things that I am intimately familiar with, and spins them on their head.  She doesn’t show Israel proper. She shows Bethlehem, the separation wall, and the checkpoints.  She shows Palestinians living their everyday lives, and she shows it from their perspective.  True, there is a political tilt, but, for the most part, she just aims to show how Muna and her family live, particularly as non-Muslim Palestinians that have to put up with the same obstacles as Muslims (who are, ostensibly, responsible for 100% of terrorist acts commited in Israel) do.

All of a sudden, everything changes as Fadi pushes Muna to accept the visa.  They fly to Chicago and brought home to live with Raghda, her husband, and their three children in American suburbia.  And this is achingly familiar, too.  The comfortable suburban houses, the American road signs, the snow, and small-town life. Raghda’s children, mostly born in America, are predictably enormously Americanized and look at Muna and Fadi with wild eyes.  They reply in English to Muna’s Arabic and blast rap music.  They sneak out of the house to smoke weed and, what’s most important, the eldest daughter argues passionately about the rights of Palestinians without really understanding what it means to be one.

I really loved this movie because of the way it portrayed immigrant life (with the same type of flavor as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but slightly more serious.) It once again reaffirmed my belief that all immigrants are the same.  Our parents have the same fears that their children will assimilate, that they won’t carry on the traditional cultural mores that they’re used to, that they won’t speak their native language.  At the same time, they know America is really the best place.  Yet, they still have nostalgia.  One scene really stuck with me. Raghda and Muna are in an Arab grocery store, and Raghda says something to the effect of, “Oh, how I want to go back to Palestine.  The food tastes better there,” and Muna replies that everything has changed in the 15 years they’ve been away; the wall is in place now, and the people are much different.  Raghda replies, “It doesn’t matter, it’s still home,” and Muna replies that there’s really nothing left there for them.  This struck such a deep chord with me because the nostalgia, the urge to return, forgetting everything else, is one that is also very prevalent in the Russian community. It also clearly shows the difference between Americanized immigrants and those fresh off the boat, and the sharp difference in family values.

More than relate the immigrant story, Amreeka also humanizes Palestinians, bringing them down from suicide bombers or casualties in the far-away headlines, to real people. They live in Bethlehem, a town that’s in the news a lot, but which we don’t see a lot of in real life.  They laugh, they dance, they are angry, just like normal people.  They’re not all oppressed wretches, and they’re not all Al-Aqsa suicide bombers, just as not all Arabs are Iraqi and deserve to be shunned. Some Arabs, such as everyone portrayed in this movie, aren’t even Muslim.  How do they fit into the web of stereotypes that we construct?

All in all, the honesty, warmth, and genuine hope in this movie make it a must-see for anyone, either to understand Palestine beyond the politics, or to understand immigrant culture in America.  Jews and Zionists, this goes double for you.  It challenged and broadened my understanding of Palestinians as a people, and I hope it will challenge yours, too.

It’s my mom’s birthday.

To celebrate, I came up with a list of ten reasons why she is my favorite mom.

10.  She has a pair of Elie Tahari sandals that she bought by accident (because she never buys brand name shoes), and always tells everyone that she has brand name shoes, but when they ask her which brand, she doesn’t remember, so she says Pavarotti, and starts singing opera.
9.   She loves Mr. B and cooks him lots of foods when we come on weekends so I don’t have to.
8.  Where do you think I get my sarcasm from?
7.   I can hear her laughing from five rooms away. Even in DC.
6.  She’s never afraid to try something new, including sushi and South African food.
5.  She likes feeding fish.

4. She made me literate in Russian.
3.  She cries every time at Fiddler on the Roof.
2.  She’s the most cheerful and upbeat person I know, balancing out both my and my dad’s Russian pessimism.
1.  She’s the only mom I’ve ever had. I can’t be objective on this one.

I’ve really gotten into data visualization lately as a way of conceptualizing the volumes of data I deal with on a daily basis. So far, I’m only observing others who visualize data.  Not by actually doing any, but I’d like to in the future.  For now, I’m just reading blogs that have to do with data visualization.

So I was really excited when Mr. B sent me this link.  The guy who runs this site basically takes stuff in the news on a day-to-day basis and makes simple videos that explain situations without much political bias.  Easy to understand and very effective.  The way data should be.

Here’s one comparing health care between states:

And here’s one on the U.S. federal deficit:

I was listening to Mary Poppins post-workout yesterday. The point is not that I’m 22 and listen to Julie Andrews to cool down.  The point is that kids are given crappy movie-watching choices these days.  Or maybe there are movies as good as Mary Poppins with songs of the same quality (i.e. Wall-e,) but there is an uneven distribution of the majority of songs being crap in the childrens’ song market.  Disney Channel, I’m looking at you.  Why are you unraveling all of your years of good work with Hannah Montana and Cody and Zach and whatevs.   Parents, what say you? I don’t know anything.  I’m just groovin’ to Mary P. This song gives me goosebumps.