Why a Flying Bubbie

On the previous post astute readers get a flash of a couple of my ainikul.* I haven't done this before, posted pictures of my grandchildren. But I got tired of blogging and not sharing like everybody else. On my other blog all you get is a back of a head. And a few marine fish.

All this has changed because my daughter kept making annoying comments like, Why blog if you can't even put up a picture? When I told her about some of the lovely people who have threatened me on that other blog (did you know that this is a crime, threatening bodily harm on the Internet?) she backed off.

But it got to me. And I have a lot to say about being a bubbie**, a grandmother, one who has to get on an airplane to see her kids (some of them) and their kids. Why should I be kept in a box? And I figure they'll grow up, they'll look different.

Okay, enough of this. I have to go. Getting older and older by the second, eating soup sounds like the proper Jewish thing to do right now.

Flying Tired

*ainikul is Yiddish for grandchild, rhymes with "may-nickle"
**bubbie is Yiddish for an old lady with pins in her hair, rhymes with "tubby"

Oh, oh

After learning all night long for the yuntif, our newest member of the family apparently can talk. He says this over and over:

"Oh, Oh, Oh!"

What's he think is going on? Why the drama?



You know, they say babies at 8 weeks can't reach for things. But this guy went right for the plastic bag.



And here's his brother showing him how, if you move the furniture just a little, you can make a really good slide.



This is a new blog for me, and I know it's an abrupt introduction, no fanfare, no glory, but since I'm a kind of emotional bubbie, I think I'll sign off as the hairpins are making me feel.

Flying Above Average

Part 2 of the Post Below

Anyway, we were eating with some friends on a Friday night. The food was good, the conversation intellectual and funny. Seven adults, one kid. This happens, sometimes. And when it does, the kids hear what we have to say.

Only this time, the conversation was decidedly AGAINST hypocrisy.

An American who made aliyah tells the story of a practicing Catholic female colleague who came to visit Jerusalem.

He took her on a tour. They stopped at a winery. We have wonderful wineries in Israel. Anyway, when a man travels with a woman in Israel it is assumed she is his wife. And if that man is wearing a kipah, it’s assumed that he is Jewish. People assume she is, too.

The tour guide, seeing that this is a married Jewish couple said, “We’re going to taste the wine later, but don’t worry! No goy has ever touched one of our bottles in the vintaging of our wine!”

Flying Cheers

Them

THEM always means “goyim,” right?

Goyim means “other people”, as in not Jewish.

And even though the word goy means “people” as in nationality, it’s somehow not a compliment. Similar to the way being “frum” IS a complement. We’re a People, the Jewish People, they’re goyim.

This way of speaking, thank G-d, is disappearing from the lips of many G-d loving Jewish person.

After all, the angels were severely chastised for singing as the Egyptians drowned chasing the Jews into the sea. And He objected:

Those are MY creatures! He said. How could you sing?

Flying Equal

TV

So I heard that in Flatbush, when frum (Orthodox) people buy television sets they have the sales people box their new TVs in air conditioner boxes.

That way no one knows they have bought a television. We're not supposed to watch television. Certainly not Desperate Housewives.

So if people bring home teevs in air-conditioning boxes, then if they by an air-conditioner, it stands to reason that this will come home in a television box because maybe the store is out of AC boxes. And all the frummers on the block see the cardboard TV box and say, Don’t tell anyone, but the Schwartz’ just bought a new air conditioner. The proof’s in the alley! They’re not fooling anyone!

Crazy, right

Between Breakfast and Lunch

On Rosh HaShana there's an introduction to the Artscroll Siddur that impresses upon us that we're supposed to be better than we are, and all of us are supposed to be chastising ourselves (to a degree) for not being better than we are, on a regular basis.

Chazal, early behaviorists, suggested that we be in a constant state of improving, look back between meals and regret how we’ve messed up the past couple of hours. We’re supposed to do tshuvah , repent and change, between breakfast and lunch, before we eat dinner, and then again at bedtime. By the time we get to Yom Kippor we’ve done tshuvah for the year, need only think about the day.

Great Jews do this.

Flying Hungry

ba’al tshuvah: new to Orthodoxy

This phrase, ba’al tshuvah, literally means a person who has repented, changed his ways, returned to the fold. Frequently it is associated with people who never were religious, rather they turned inward at some point in their lives, sought out spirituality and meaning, and found it in Yehadus, Judaism.

When the find is Orthodox, then the Orthodox call them ba’alai tshuvah, persons who have returned. Of course this bothers me. They didn’t know anything much about the religion before. What’s this return, thing?

And it’s another way of stating that those who have been raised Orthodox are superior, which may be true in some ways. I'm in awe of some of the people I know, to to you the truth, those raised religiously, meaning to always look for opportunities to be helpful, who never miss an opportunity to do the right thing. This is how we see service to the Creator.

So they are superior, for sure.

But they're modest and wouldn't own any of that, pretty much beat their chests, beat themselves up all the time for not doing more.

Not every Orthodox person does, but many do, whereas the non-observant who do that are thought to have low self-esteem.

Flying Humble