You know what makes me angry?  Aside from lite jazz?  When parents feel the need to step in and censor childrens’ libraries.  This time, not only the thesaurus, but Anne Frank is under attack.

A more graphic version of Anne Frank’s diary is no longer available for students to read in Culpeper County, Va.

Unlike other editions, this version contains sexual references. Apparently Anne Frank’s father, who survived the Holocaust, also felt the need to censor his daughter’s most intimate thoughts. He eliminated about a third of the original diary published in 1947.

Here’s what I really hate about this kind of censorship: it makes kids unprepared for the real world.  How do I know this?  I learned 90% of what I didn’t learn about physically (and mentally) growing up  in health class from books like  Are You There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and anything by V.C. Andrews.  Once, when I was nine, I asked my parents how the whole baby thing goes down and my mom let me check out a book from the library that described the process in cartoons for kids.  I never had to ask her again.

Judging from the comments to the awesome (but now unfortunately defunct) series Fine Lines on Jezebel,  that’s how most girls my age learned about sexuality, the  fertility cycle, and boy stuff.  Here are Lizzie Skurnik’s fond remembrances of  Are You There, God, and The Cat Ate My Gymsuit.

How many times have you learned something from a book that sticks with you in a way that something from class never does and that you can apply in real life?  From A Little Princess and The Secret Garden I learned that British people lived in India and the word memsahib and about English moors and London fog.  From Are You There, God, I learned that there were other half-Jews just like me that felt in two separate worlds, and from Heidi, I learned about the Alps of Switzerland and when I actually did go to Switzerland the book and Alm Uncle was playing in my mind the whole time.

How are kids ever going to learn anything real and non sugar-coated if we keep censoring things from them?  Granted, there is a time and place for everything, but I can’t say that I was scarred from the fact that my mom let me run wild over all of the sections of the public library.  Are we supposed to ban books every time they contain sexuality and “inappropriate” scenes as determined by a group of angry overprotective parents?  Like the fact that Are you There, God talks about the word menstruation (menst-ROO-ation) or that The Hobbit contains multiple scenes of death?  Or this other list of tons of banned books that are essential to the cannon of Western literature?

I’m not a parent yet so maybe I’m missing something, but this whole situation just seems sad to me.

When I was in the third grade, I won a contest or got the best grade in some class-I don’t remember exactly.  All the other kids that won had gotten something like gift certificates to Pizza Hut or stickers, so I was excited to get the same.  Unfortunately, all I got was a book called Words of Stone with the words “Happy Holidays! from Mrs. Moyer,” my third grade teacher,written there.

I was really disappointed because  the book had no pictures and no stickers.  I felt really gypped and left it in my room.  A couple months later, I picked it up and read it straight through.

It scared me and fascinated me at the same time.  It was about a lonely little boy, Blaze, whose mom died of cancer several years ago, leading him to be secluded and to just play with his dad and his grandma.  One summer he started seeing his mom’s name, Reena, appear in stone formations in the field near his house.  The work is the doing of Joselle, who comes to stay near Blaze’s house at her grandmother’s after her mother abandons her.  Both are lonely and both form a common bond, although the friendship isn’t what is seems.  That book was one of the first that taught me it was ok to be weird, and about family structures different from my own.

Anyway, the point is that I obviously have treasured this book for a really long time and have picked up a couple of things from it, the most important of which is that Blaze’s grandma, Nova, says rabbit, rabbit, rabbit superstitiously every month, the first day of the month. I picked up the habit subconsciously and now am annoyed if I don’t say it on the first day of the month and expect not such a good month, even though it’s obviously a silly supersition.

Today, I forgot to say, “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.”  Tonight while I was headed to the gym, I got into a car accident.

It wasn’t a big accident and only my left-hand side bumper was damaged, and no one in either of the cars was hurt, thank God.  But, combined with the cold, cold darkness of the the past couple months and the not saying of Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, I am convinced that winter is out to get me.  As an economist, I know for a fact that correlation does not equal causation.  As someone who’s already been messed with, I am ready for April.

Source.

It’s cold.  Really cold.  And it snowed.  This makes my morning routine even more miserable.  But you know what’s more miserable than a DC-area morning commute?  Living in the Praries of Canada in the last century, as described in this really interesting article

At the turn of the last century, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier declared that the 20th century belonged to Canada. All across the cities of Europe, the Canadian prairies were advertised as the LAST BEST WEST. Back then, to be a pioneer on the prairies of the Americas was still the ultimate contrast to the sophisticated European life. This was useful for those, like my great-grandfather Henry, who were looking to upend their European (and in his case Jewish) identities, and thus, to be a part of re-imagined society. For my family, the early 20th Century launched a life of pioneering, but the idea of Pioneering itself — the creation of a new identity via the land — was already ending. The Prairies really were the last best West.

Today, sandwiched between the skyscrapers and digital networks of North American ÜberProgress, the Great Plains of the 21st century feel like a million square miles of ghost town.

In a large apartment in the Polish city of Lublin, on an unremembered day in 1928, 10-year-old Helen Dresher, my grandmother, said goodbye to the painted angels on the ceiling of her home. The Dreshers, a wealthy Jewish family, were selling it all and taking off to homestead in the New World. Henry Dresher, the patriarch, told his wife and children that the streets of Canada were paved with gold. Perhaps he spoke of the little animals they would own and the quaintness of farm life, Jewish hay-dances and whatnot. Something that would make them all feel better about trading in the good life for the uncertainty of Utopia. For Henry, the promise of the new farm he had purchased in faraway Canada, of owning land, of controlling his destiny, of not hearing the recurrent cries in the streets — “Jew, go to Palestine!” — was worth more than all the pleasures of Krakowskie Przedmieście, Lublin’s grand boulevard. Canada was going to be their Palestine, and it was going to be great.

Whenever I get too cold, I reread this paragraph:

In the 1930s, the Great Depression brought with it a historic drought and “the Dust Bowl” became the new name for the Great Plains. The high prairie winds blew sand all over everything. Across the miles of field, Rebecca wrote, were the hollow carcasses of horses, old bits of bird’s nests, upside-down turkeys that drowned in the sand trying to hatch their young. Dust buried the occasional trees, with the tops of the branches sticking out like little fingers. Gophers infested their land. In the winter, temperatures dropped to 40 degrees below zero, and the children were wrapped in newspaper and warmed with flaming cow turds.

I guess my 45-minute commute isn’t so bad.

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.

Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish festival for the birthday of the trees, is tonight.   Since it’s been a while that I’ve been part of something Jewish (living with Mr. B does not count as doing something Jewish, although sometimes I try to pass it off as such,)  I wanted to celebrate, which involves planting trees and eating fruits of the Torah (pomegranates, dates, olives, and Bamba.)

Unfortunately, we don’t have any Bamba and Mr. B hates olives in the same way that Hamas and Fatah hate each other.   So, instead, I tried to get Mr. B and myself enthused about going to a Tu B’Shvat event, namely this event by the awesome awesome Sixth and I (where we’ve gone for stuff before).  Here is a description of the event:

Embrace your inner environmentalist by joining us for a Tu B’Shvat celebration. Dine and drink your way through a traditional seder as we sprinkle in tasty Kabbalistic tidbits and nature-inspired yoga poses. Tu B’Shvat; its more than just trees.

Tu B’Shvat, traditionally known as the birthday of the trees, is a time to think about relating to the natural world. This holiday can be celebrated by planting trees, eating fruits, and having a Tu B’Shvat seder, a ritual that began with the Kabbalists of the 15th century. At our seder, we’ll enjoy some new and exotic fruits, discuss issues of sustainability, and discover connections between environmentalism and Judaism.

Not to be a drag, but yoga poses?  Really?  And sustainability?  I hate that word more than Mr. B hates olives.   Which makes me wonder, what have we as a Jewish people turned into?

Here’s how hipsters spend Tu B’Shvat:

Please take note of:

• The ironic hipster glasses
• The ironic bright orange almost American Apparel-like tee
• The ironic non-leggings sweatpants meant to resemble sweatpants from the 1980s
• The ironic laugh

And here’s how real Jews spent Tu B’Shvat.  You know, building the land of Israel.  Although Guy on the Left’s yoga shorts look really comfy.  He probably got them at American Apparel.

source

I think, through all of this, it’s incredibly important not to underestimate the blows to his sanity that Mr. B experiences on a regular basis by being married to me: