victoria wood, c.b.e.

victoria wood has always been one of my favourite comedians. she does not translate at all well to the usa, however. i think that her early tv comedy was quite parochial, focussing on english classes and customs. and they'd never let her onscreen here with her lancashire accent. but i love her. here is one of her more famous early sketches (the waitress is her comedy partner julie walters).

one of my best family stories took place at the aldwych theatre in london during a performance by ms wood. it was my birthday treat, and i was there with my whole family, i.e., 2 sisters, mother and father of ravaj. the first half of the show had as a theme trailing through her monologue a tampon. at the interval, the youngest sister turned to our father (etc) and said, "poor daddy, i bet you didn't understand a word of that!" he gazed at her firmly and said, "darling, when i am in the bathroom, i read everything!"

nu - congratulations to ms wood on being honoured by the queen. long may she reign!

news from my uterus

did i miss the semester when we learned about the changes in female bodies throughout our lives? for an educated woman, i am embarrassingly ignorant about such things, although being nulliparous i see no need to ever learn what an episiotomy is.

warning: if you are squeamish now may be a good time to leave this blog and check out something milder. a panda cam, perhaps, or a nice game of boomshine.

still with me? ok. so recently i've had a bit of trouble with menorrhagia (aren't medical terms useful for distancing oneself from the messy facts?). look it up (i did). the ob/gyn i was originally scheduled to see is called dr. courbain. pronounced 'korban'. which is hebrew for 'sacrifice'. sadly she was not available the day they rushed me into the office. instead i got the divine dr b.p. i usually get a bit anxious in the stirrups, but dr. b.p. was magnificent. he is a gay ex-mormon with a degree in modern german lit. thus it was that i calmed down as we sang together in german the 'kanonen song' from 'the threepenny opera'. he then gave me a first-hand account of the special underwear that mormons wear and before i knew it the exam was over. surreal.

the gist of it was that the spectrum of possibilities ran from hormonal issues, e.g., perimenopause; through polyps and cysts and suchlike, to endometrial cancer which is 96% curable and relatively rare. cancer is a horrible word. at that moment, perimenopause seemed somehow worse. "WHAT?" I exclaimed. it is hard to accept that i am waaaaay old enough for something like that.

on the way home i saw a car with a bumper sticker that said "crone" on it and thought i might have to get one for myself.

nu. the next step was an ultrasound. that was yesterday's exciting adventure. imagine the situation: a waiting room in brookline, mass. it is full of women, who are full of the 40 oz of water they have drunk in preparation for this visit. There is a door right by reception that says 'restroom'. the toilets in most doctors' offices are nowhere near the waiting room. there is a water fountain next to the restroom. the heating is up, and there is not even an ancient bridal magazine lying around for distraction. they are running about half an hour late. there is two-hour parking on the street. we are waiting. we cannot pee. we must wait. the sense of urgency makes it quite hard to be polite.

when i go to reception, they tell me that my appointment is tomorrow. i say o no it isn't. the computer says yes it is. i say o no it isn't. they are magnanimous and say i can wait and they will fit me in. i go back to my seat full of magnanimosity. and 40 oz of water.

30 minutes later, i go back to the desk and ask, please, just give me an idea how long i need to hold on. the nurse tells me that if i am uncomfortable, "you may release". but what about the examination? she tells me she will give me some more water. if that is how it works, then why have i been drinking all bloody morning, eh? although this is new england, so i didn't say 'bloody'. or anything else. i just went back to my seat.

eventually i was called, and prepped, and in came the doctor. he probed, and we looked at the pictures on the screen. he seemed to find them quite interesting. i thought it looked like snow on a television, but i found that interesting also. i could see a smiling face, and the outline of a cartoon donkey.

the news was that there is a fibroid. good to know. the doc took lots of pretty pics which will be sent back to dr. b.p. i called my friend lldoc who explained that a fibroid is made of muscle. what i want to know is how i ended up with muscle in my uterus instead of my biceps or calves where it belongs? as slb said, did it get lost?

meanwhile, as if i have just joined a new club, older women are now sharing with me many stories of their experiences at this particular time of life. this seems to be the welcoming ritual. and thus endeth the news from lake womb-begone.

bobby fischer is dead

this news is a couple of days old, but i have been struggling with what to say about it. bobby fischer was undoubtedly one of the greatest chess players ever. he also turned into an unbelieveably paranoid recluse, appearing in public only to make horrific comments. he was extremely antisemitic, despite the fact that his mother was a jew, and maybe also his birth father. i wouldn't bother to comment at all, except that indirectly bobby fischer was an important person in my life.

when i was in junior school, i was mad about chess. our form teacher started a chess club, and taught us how to play. in those days, girls were not usually encouraged to play chess, but we were. i made it onto the school chess team, and was the only girl. we won the west london schools under-11 league - the only medal i have so far received! meanwhile, my father and i would play chess together. one of my fondest memories is from the time of the fischer-spassky world championship. the moves were published in the newspaper, and my father and i would play them out on the chess board in the front room, and try to understand what was happening.

sadly, in 1974 my new secondary school - all girls - had no chess players, and my sister refused to play me even if i gave up both rooks and the queen before we began. thus i fell out of practice ... and my father started taking me to see qpr!

more on social participation

let us just say that when a friend tries to set up two of her other friends with each other, things that the first friend finds endearing may not be so to one or the other of the other friends ... thence the early dialogue during disastrous date three:

"(our friend) says that you like to drink milk?"
"why yes, i do (goes into cute story about why no coffee or tea)."
"hmmmm. i am a vegan."

BA DUM DUM!

anti-semitism in english football

just read this article in the observer online. i've been away a long time, but i really thought things were better than in the 1980's when i was living on the edges of the world of top-flight professional football as a photographer for qpr.

"'Spurs are on their way to Belsen, Hitler's gonna gas 'em again...' It's not a song you would expect to hear on a family day out at a Premier League game, but it is one of several anti-Semitic chants still heard at some top-flight grounds. While the message about anti-black abuse is in the public consciousness, campaigners say that anti-Semitism is alive - and unchecked."

to the tune of 'one man went to mow', i remember being shocked at hearing 'one man went to gas, went to gas a yiddo' sung at loftus road by visiting supporters. i had no idea what to do about it. i told my friends, and they nodded sympathetically. the thing is, most jews in england don't want to stand out, and so they don't say anything about it when something anti-semitic happens. it has always been like that:

"Many of those approached by Observer Sport declined to be interviewed for fear of alienating themselves in the football world. Others did not want to draw attention to their Jewish identity and in some cases clubs felt it too controversial for their staff to discuss. The reticence reminds some of the days when black players were too frightened to speak about racism."

when i was at uni, the vice-chair of the student tory party was found dead drunk outside the halls of residence with the paintbrush in his hand, having painted 'juden raus' and 'death to the jews' and swastikas all over the walls. the school was prepared to fine him and have him pay for fixing the mess. being students, we were feeling a bit militant and so the j-soc (hillel) members sent a photo of a graffiti-ed wall to the jewish chronicle. it was published, the vandal got suspended for 6 months, and we felt good. a rare response, i think. that was more than 20 years ago.

am i surprised that the reporter has found the evidence she presents? absolutely not. are things going to change? i doubt it. yours pessimistically - the ravaj.

pyramids of mars (old doctor who ep)

while searching to see when the next sarah jane adventure may be available to watch, i came upon a mention of an enemy sj and the doctor fought in the ep pyramids of mars. it was called sutekh, described thus by wiki:

"Sutekh, a member of an alien race called the Osirans, was encountered by the Fourth Doctor in the 1975 story Pyramids of Mars by "Stephen Harris" (a pseudonym for Robert Holmes and Lewis Griefer). The Osirans were an ancient and highly powerful but now extinct race. The renegade Sutekh was a crazed super-being who feared all forms of life might one day challenge his hegemony and so became Sutekh the Destroyer, the destroyer of all living things. This included his home planet Phaester Osiris and ancient Mars. Sutekh's brother Horus and the remaining 740 Osirans tracked Sutekh down to Ancient Egypt and used their powers to restrain and imprison him in a pyramid on the planet Earth. He was placed in a remote location with the Eye of Horus beaming a signal from Mars to suppress Sutekh's powers and hold him an immovable prisoner. The tales of the Osirans were remembered in Egyptian mythology — Sutekh as the god Set, brother of Horus; and in the designations Sados and Satan."

while i am not such an old doctor who geek as to care too much about all these details, seeing the name brought back a wonderful memory from my childhood.

well, maybe more of a naughty memory. we had scripture lessons in the old days, especially at a church of england school. the old testament was ok, but jewish kids were allowed to skip nt if they wanted to. i wanted to, but my parents thought it would be interesting for me to learn about it.

anyway, at some point while this doctor who 4 week arc was playing, our class decided to start a new religion. we observed it only in scripture classes. we worshipped the god sutekh. we demonstrated our adherence to our god by sitting backwards on our chairs, doing the endless ommmmmmmmmm, and saying about anything we did not like, "can't do that - it's against my religion". the poor teacher was beside herself. the high mistress herself (the principal) spoke to our entire class. i think we may still hold the school record for the number of times the entire class had to be spoken too by the high mistress in one year. it was our very first year at the school.

i asked my father what he would have done if he had been the teacher. he said that he would have helped us to construct the religion. either we would then learn something, or we'd get bored and stop. rumour has it that shortly afterwards the teacher married a missionary and moved to bahrain.

quatorze juillet chez friedlander

a ford cortina estate mkv
i think i posted about dear old odh197k a year ago or so. my favourite car *sigh*. she looked like the one in the picture, except that she was burgundy.

anyway, i was just remembering that bastille day is one of those days in our family when we know there is no point even trying to go anywhere in the car because something bad will happen. more than three times it has happened on family holidays either in france or on our way there or back. take, for example, one time in belgium. it is 14th july. we are in our car. we are having trouble with our car. everything is closed. few people are around. we finally find a person. this person does not understand my mother's french (which is quite good, actually). this person speaks walloon. my mother tries german (which she speaks extremely well). the person still harbours grudges with regard to world war two. the conversation does not go well.

that is all i remember, but i know we did get where we were going in the end. the main problem with a national holiday is that everything is closed so if you need help it is hard to find. i suspect it is not so problematic these days with the advent of cellphones.

the scariest problem we had was once in the '70's when trying to go from holland to germany or vice versa. it was just my mother and we two girls. we were in no man's land when they took away our passports. for second generation holocaust survivors this is particularly terrifying. we had to wait for hours. it turned out that my mother looked like one of the baader-meinhof terrorists, who were known to use children as a cover. after checking us out and finding us innocent (and handing back the passports), we were promptly informed that our tyres were illegal in some way and we would have to buy some new ones and, o so conveniently, there was a tyre place right there. after paying an exorbitant price for those tyres, we were finally allowed to cross the border.

i must try to remember these things and acknowledge how much better life is these days next time they take away my toothpaste and tweezers (i still dream of hijacking a plane with the immortal words "take me to cuba or i shall pluck your eyebrows!").

ps a note from my mother regarding this post: "There were two different trips. On the first we were constantly crossing the French-German border and were usually stopped for the reason you mentioned. On the second, we were crossing from Holland into Germany and stopped because of the tyres - the tread was below the legal minimum. It must have been 1968, because of my heightened awareness of the removal of the passport."

to quote the chicken lady from the kids in the hall: "memories, they keep coming back to me like ... memories."

the owl of learning (ii)

a second foray onto campus today, to merge deeper within the system by getting a student id card; and to charm the nurse practitioner into writing out some prescriptions for me by revealing my innermost medical secrets (will anyone tell me how to fill the little plastic cup without making at least a bit of a mess?). since my visit to the health centre was to be a brief one, the policewoman on guard at the construction site allowed me to park behind the traffic cones. when i was done, i drove away, and was immediately flagged down. apparently my car had invited one of the cones to continue the journey with us. so embarrassing. is this a driving equivalent of leaving the bathroom with toilet tissue stuck to one's shoe?

friday fun

i'm going back to school next month. for the first time in fifteen years. i went to an english public school. you'd think i'd've had enough. i took a couple of years off and then went to university. the tory students' vp was discovered dead drunk with paint all over himself and the brush in his hand next to slogans on the halls' walls saying 'death to the jews' and 'juden raus'. after graduation i went to work in a field nothing to do with anything i'd studied. most of the time i worked out-of-doors. i had an attack of ethics and went off to grad school. studied my religion and a bit of some others. went to work in my field. found out it wasn't what i thought it was. was miserable and unemployed for a while. now going back to school for training in a new profession.

despite all of this, watching graham chapman getting a latin lesson from john cleese not only makes me laugh, but also has me ahhhhhing sentimentally for the good old days of my own latin lessons.

btw, i spent most of my latin lessons trying to get thrown out of class. my best friend and a couple of others had been allowed to drop latin (and then made faces at me through the window), but the latin teacher thought i had the makings of a classicist. i was very fond of myths and legends as a child, and knew the difference between zeus and jove. anyway, nothing i did seemed to make a difference. at the end of the first term, however, i had a brilliant idea. i would hand in a blank exam paper, fail the course, and not have to do it any more. so i sat through the exam, having written nothing but my name on the page. the proctor kept telling me i didn't have much time left, and that i really should start writing. i did nothing. i was cool. the others thought i was cool. i was really cool :-) nu - at the end of the exam the teacher informed me that my parents would be called. i nodded gravely. i went home. the thing was, my mother had once told me the story of how she wanted out of latin at school so she handed in a blank exam paper. how could she, therefore, get mad at me for doing it?

somehow, things did not work out how i had expected them to. not only did i have to stay in the class, i had to retake the exam. my mother could not get mad at me for what i actually did, but could get very mad at me for consciously wasting a rather expensive education. *sigh*

i do still love this scene though!

barbra streisand

so barbra streisand is doing another tour, and some people consider the prices of the tickets to be a little on the high side. 500 quid for the top end, more than the stones and madonna. the sunday times has a profile of her this weekend here. in the final paragraph it says:

"For her London concerts she may have greater need than ever of the 120 bath towels she demanded on her recent US tour. The media are already raining on her parade over the eyewatering ticket prices. Pop stars are meant to belong to the people, not price themselves as high culture."

hmmm. when i bought a ticket for her absolutely last concert ever ever ever, in sydney in 2000, for $95 (aus) i got a seat in the very back row at the top at a football stadium. they said the seats down on the grass in front of the stage were going for $5k. about half-way through the concert, it began to pour with rain. the posh people down there got absolutely soaked. we were sitting under the overhang, and remained quite dry.

on the one hand, it was not the spectacle for which i had hoped - the guy next to me lent me his binoculars and it looked like she was reading her ad-libs from the prompter. on the other, at the time it seemed terribly cool to be there, live, at her last concert. i think i'm kind of over her now :-)

a moment of connection

sitting on the 137 bus from oxford street yesterday
evening, i was next to a woman reading a book of
poetry. i had my headphones on, but kept sneaking a
glance over her shoulder at the poems. eventually,
she showed me the cover. i took out the earpieces and
said, "i was wondering what you were reading as i
looked over your shoulder." she smiled and asked what
it was that i had been reading. i told her it was a
piece i'd been working on at my writing workshop. she
said, "as i looked at it over your shoulder, i thought
it might be." i smiled at her, and then we reached my
stop. "take care," i said. "bless you," she said,
and i got off the bus.

i wonder who she was. a minister, perhaps, i thought.
i wonder what would've happened if i'd've stayed on
the bus. i did have an all-day bus pass. on the
other hand, it doesn't really matter. it was a brief
encounter (maybe this is a better title for this
post!). somehow, though, it gave me a little bit of hope.

julie christie is back, for a while

the ny times has a review here about julie christie's latest appearance in a major film role. she plays a woman fading away with alzheimer's.

julie christie was one of my first major crushes. not in dr zhivago, actually, but in 'fahrenheit 451' and 'far from the madding crowd' (alongside alan bates, my other great crush of that era. i have been sworn at by mr bates. i took a movie producer who was a friend of my father's to qpr once, and on our way to the match he pointed out the house in which his friend alan bates lived. a few days later i went back to that house, and jumped up and down in the front garden trying to see into the house. he opened the window and told me to go forth and multiply. i drew a cartoon about it ... must dig that out and post it)

o yes, julie christie. most of all, i loved her in 'heaven can wait'. i think i caught a glimpse of her as madame rosmerta in the last harry potter, but since harry was under the invisibility cloak at the time it was not a clear shot.
anyway, i cannot wait to see her on the screen again.

famous rats

why on earth am i writing about rats today, and before the sun comes up? i was thinking of a list of my favourite children's books, and thought of the rats of nimh, and then the rat in charlotte's web, and thought i'd see how many other famous rats i could come up with and, with a teensy bit of reminding help from google, came up with nine examples:

1. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
the first book i ever read that had something positive in it about rats. still would not consider one as a pet, even though some people do. we once looked after the class pet for a weekend. apparently our school could not afford a hamster or guinea pig so we had a pet ... lemming. it got out of its cage and was eventually found when my sister got into bed and it nipped her toes. my family is really not into rodents. and we never did have any pets while we were growing up :-(

2. The Rats by James Herbert
some boys at the boys' school were reading this when it came out and so i did too. i must have been about 12, and my sister 10. i read her the passage that first describes the mutant rats devouring humans from the inside out. this was during the day. that night, i played the worst trick i ever did. i crawled into my sister's room, reached up under the covers, grabbed her leg and cried: "the rats are here!" her screams turned on lights in flats across the road. nobody was very impressed with me for quite a while.

3. 1984 by George Orwell
winston's fear of rats is how he is forced to betray his lover.

4. Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web by E.B.White
oh how i hate this rat for being greedy and unkind. oh how i cry when charlotte dies.

5. Basil the rat in Fawlty Towers
Manuel the waiter has a pet in his room. The hotel inspector is coming to the hotel to inspect it. Mr. Fawlty sees the pet and identifies it as a rat. Manuel insists that it is a hamster, a "filigree siberian khamster." the rat and the inspector meet.

6. Ratbert drawn by Scott Adams
a rat that has no bite, ratbert is quite a sweet character (for a rat) in the world of dilbert

7. Amy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
i never really liked this character, but she is in one of my all-time favourite tv shows and she is a rat so here she is

8. Roland Rat
one of the first star presenters on tv-am for channel 4 in the early '80's. awwright ratfans!

9. Scabbers
ron weasley's familiar in the first couple of harry potter books that turns out to be peter pettigrew/wormtail, the animagus that betrayed harry's parents.

ok, done with rats. from now on, consider this blog an outpost of the isle of man, where it is taboo and very unlucky to mention a "longtail".

another nail in the coffin of socialism

the maxim that has meant the most to me has always been: from each according to his/her ability, to each according to her/his need.

i see in today's grauniad that kibbutz degania, the oldest in the history of israel, has voted for privatisation.

allan shapiro, a long-time resident, was quoted as saying: "I feel sad and in a way I am nostalgic for the traditional kibbutz, but I have to realise that I am nostalgic for my dream of a community that I had before I came. We depended on loyalty to the community and ideology to take the place of the market," he said. "The socialist part was really sort of minor here. The important thing was that there were Jews working the land with their own hands and if there was a search for anything it was a search for community."

i too feel sad and nostalgic, although i think i felt like that 25 years ago when i was living on a kibbutz. already then the grandchildren of the founders had neither memory nor experience of the early days of hardship and toil. they wished not for the advent of running water, but for american sneakers. i remember my very first day at work, dressed in shabby blue work clothes that had been worn by many before me. as we bounced around in the truck on our way to the grapefruit trees, i wondered why we weren't singing pioneer songs (hey, i was 18!). at 8 am, after 2 hours in the sun being yelled at by our overseer and shlepping grapefruits from tree to truck, i was a little less naive :-)

novocaine is cool

and the first exciting event of the gregorian new year was a visit to the dermatologist. as the direct progeny of two moley people, i am blessed with markings on my back that if you were to connect the dots you would discover a detailed map of a norwegian fjord. in any case, a mole in a visible and non-embarrassing place went funny the other day. having just watched an episode of 'bad girls' where one of the julies has a lump and doesn't want to deal with it and ends up having a mastectomy, i decided to make a call immediately to my gp for a referral. she took one look at it and told me she would be removing it right away. that's where the novocaine came in. i was a bit surprised, actually, since i have no teeth in my thigh, but after the initial stick, and the strong burning sensation, a lovely calm feeling came over my leg. i wished my whole body could feel like that :-)

the mole is gone, and in a week i shall know more about it. meanwhile, a little bit of austin powers and his need for novocaine when dealing with a mole ...

mobile phones

had a lovely few hours in the mall today. i went to the verizon shop to get a new battery, since my phone cannot stay awake for more than 60 minutes. i bought it only 2 years ago, and it has served me well.

the gentleman in the verizon shop gave me the following advice: you can buy a new battery for $40, or you can sign up for 2 more years, and then you can have any new phone in the store for up to $150 absolutely free, if you pay $50 and then get a rebate. well, a free, fancier phone - or a forty-dollar battery and an old battered phone. no brainer, right?

i did get the new phone. unfortunately, while it came with a home charger, the old car charger that i had bought for the old phone would not work with the new phone. if i were to buy a new charger, it would work with the old phone, although that phone would be deactivated once i bought the new one. but it would only be $29.99 plus tax for a new one.

i did get the charger as well. after all, it only cost me 2 more years of verizonitude, and about $80. great deal, eh?

random telephone calls

my mobile just rang at 11:30 pm. when i picked it up i said hello, and a guy at the other end said, "who are you?" "hey, you called me," i said, "who are you?!" sounds like the beginning of a comedy sketch, or a sneaky new kind telemarketing. in the week before the elections, i assume that nothing is sacred. does anyone know how to set up my telephone so that anyone trying to canvas me automatically receives my recorded message instead? something along the lines of: "your candidate and cause have been recorded. please note that as a result of your call i shall be voting for anybody else. thank you and have a nice day."

o, and the guy? he claimed he was responding to a call from my number. i told him he wasn't, and we parted. where is 717 area code?

the death of a flying rat

if you check out noam's myspace blog this week you will see a record of her current rat infestation. the first rat that was killed was shot three times by the ratman before it fell. shot with poison pellets from a rat rifle it was.

i have been a vegetarian since 1975, and to this day find the snuffing out of any life a painful experience. the only exception to this would be mosquitoes (i have always believed that mummy mosquitoes tucked their babies up at night with the promise that one day they too would feast on friedlander) and london pigeons. ever since a trip up to town in the early seventies, when we visited trafalgar square, i have hated london pigeons. our kind parents paid their tuppence for a right guard lid full of bird seed, and we tried to feed the birds. you know those beards of bees that you see photos of every now and then when the news needs a little light refreshment? imagine a toupee of flying rats, whose talons got tangled in your naturally curly hair and then they tried to fly away.

nu, i don't like pigeons, and therefore rather enjoyed the following bit from a.a.gill in today's sunday times:

"It's all a bit hard to swallow

It’s a bird-eat-bird world. The pelicans in St. James’s Park are swallowing the pigeons and the usual swooning battalion of critter lovers is reaching for the smelling salts and the green ink. Pelicans should breakfast on fish.

Though I can’t for the life of me see the qualitative difference between the life of a haddock and a feral pigeon. We go to watch pelicans being fed fish in the zoo; how much more amusing to chuck them a flying rat. I think urban pigeon coursing would be an exciting day out and fun for all the family.

We’d start with a mad woman throwing breadcrumbs as bait while we hit behind trees with our trained pelicans at the ready. Maybe packs of them would go for foxes — riding after a squadron of killer pelicans coming out of the sun would be brilliant.

The pelican is the ancient symbol of selfless charity. They were thought to feed their young with the blood from their breast (they don’t) and the pigeon of course is cousin to the dove, harbinger of peace. Some might think that charity eating peace was an augury of some imminent catastrophe or perhaps it’s just an elegant bestiary metaphor for the end of the Tony Blair years?"

a new meaning for footprints

had a delicious and almost healthy dinner at the cheesecake factory - d. got me with a slice of cake with a candle in it and the waitress singing. fresh banana cream cheesecake. it may shorten my life by a day or two, but it tasted worth it. afterwards we went shoe shopping. in the shoe shop i learned two things. first of all, there is a make of shoe, licenced by birkenstock, called betula. strangely enough, this is also a biblical hebrew word for virgin. interesting choice ...

secondly, i began to look at the patterns on the soles of the women's shoes on sale. i noticed that the clarks shoes had their trademark daisy on the bottom of some pairs. the thing that got me going, however, was a pair of naturalizer shoes. on the soles were two circles the diameter of a large pill box lid. it took a while to figure out the pattern within - turns out it was the word 'naturalizer' backwards. mmmmmwohaha! (evil laugh) so you hand over your money for these lovely shoes and not only does the company make a profit but every time you leave a footprint somewhere you also leave a little ad printed on the ground. i cannot decide whether to be furious at this kind of manipulation, or in utter awe of the genius who came up with the idea.

a walk in the wilderness - the mikva

ok, so i should write about my shabbat this past weekend at the women's weekend at elat chayyim. before i say anything, please look here to see the velveteen rabbi's take on her experiences at this jewish renewal retreat centre.

first of all - why did i go? short answer is that h. was going and asked if i'd like to go to and i thought why not - it'd be nice to spend shabbat as a congregant.

i also thought that it would be healthy for me to be a little uncomfortable and push my boundaries a bit and the main thing to do that was the mikva that would begin shabbat. although i have witnessed for many women in the mikva, i have never actually been dunked myself. the reason has nothing to do with religion or theology or anything like that. the reason has always been that i am ashamed to be naked in front of a stranger. look, i grew up in england which means i haven't seen myself naked since i was small enough to share a bath with my sister; and i'm hung up about being fat - two strikes to start with.

i got there about an hour before the mikva, and wandered around emanating anxiety. when we finally gathered, those of us with body-image issues gravitated to each other and discussed whether or not we would be disrobing. meanwhile, i had noticed that the women who were leading and guiding us had badges saying 'kohenet', and i figured they had been there for the whole week and had volunteered to help us integrate into the group. they then began to smudge us. i decided not to have this done as i wanted the mikva to be my method of purification and the mikva alone. it was the mikva i feared (not to mention the thirty naked women who were about to share the swimming pool with me). we were told to find a partner so we could witness for each other. the woman standing next to me offered herself and so it began. everyone was disrobing, so i did too. once i took my glasses off, i couldn't see anyone else, and so of course they could not see me. my partner asked me how i was doing, and i said i was in complete denial. she asked if she should tell me i was naked and i said no thank you i do know that why don't we get into the water?

gosh it was cold. a couple of the kohenets were cavorting in the deep end, while the rest of us inched gingerly along until the water covered our naughty bits. a few of us went deeper, and squealed when our nipples hit the water. nu - we held hands in a big circle, and shared some of the things we wanted to wash away. nobody mentioned anger. (when i told d. that she just said, 'liars!') once i was in the water everything was fine. i have now been dunked. afterwards one of the women for whom it was also the first time said that she was disappointed that it wasn't a more spiritual experience. i told her that i had not looked for that - for me the important thing was actually, finally doing it.

i guess it was kind of like virginity, or treif food - a taboo that seems scary to violate but if and once you do, it turns out to be rather nice :-)

later i hope to write about kabbalat shabbat, and shabbat morning, but i am a bit tired. laila tov.

ps am wondering who it is in the burg who pops into the blog every now and then. say hello my virginia friend!