03:37 pm - my article on purim, re-print

this was in Zeek Magazine in March 06, and I'm thinking that some of you LJ purim friends may be interested in it... for a little backstory...
xoxoxoxo killer

Wrestling with Esther: Purim Spiels, Gender, and Political Dissidence

In 1999 I won the Philadelphia Drag King contest with my portrayal of metal-head bar mitzvah boy Ben Hesherman, whose speech broke into a rendition of “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest. Onstage, I told the crowd, “I don’t want to grow up be a man like my father or the rabbi or the Israeli heads-of-state. I want to be like David Lee Roth and Gene Simmons of KISS! Members of my community, friends of my grandparents, I hope you’ll support me. I don’t want to learn Hebrew, I want to learn to rock!” I stripped off a too-big suit to uncover leather pants and a sleeveless Metallica T-Shirt. Someone threw me a plastic toy guitar, and a star was born.

The truth is, at five feet tall, with short hair and chubby boyish looks, the character wasn’t a stretch: my family often jokes about how much I look like my dad at his bar mitzvah. The next year at the contest, I brought Hesherman back for a scandalous performance involving a rabbi, a rocker drag queen, tefillin, and some honey (so that the Torah should be sweet to me). The soundtrack was KISS’s “Charisma.” Some might find these performances disrespectful and sacrilegious, but for me, creating and performing as Ben Hesherman enabled me to come out to my queer community about my Jewishness in a celebratory and sexy way. At the same time, performing an explicitly Jewish masculinity provided a space for me to connect and celebrate with other queer Jews, offering a language for communicating my gender-queerness in a way that my Jewish community (including my parents) could recognize.

Somewhere in the haze of the glittery King’s crown, cross-dressing, and sweet treats I realized that my performances were inspired by memories of childhood Purim celebrations. As a child, I attended Purim parties dressed up as Esther in my grandmother’s costume jewelry and done up with blush and lipstick, which my hippie mother rarely used. The glamour of the Purim celebration was like a second Halloween to me. As a teenager, I gravitated to identifying with the character of Vashti as an icon of feminist resistance. At the time, my early queerness gave me a feeling of vulnerability, a sense that I could be thrown out of the community for being true to myself, as the King had exiled Vashti.

My experience of Purim as an opportunity for boundary-crossing transgression is nothing new; in fact it’s a very old tradition. The oldest surviving text of Yiddish Purim parody-plays (called Purimspiels) is a manuscript from 1697 known as the “Achashverosh-shpiel,” a play considered so vulgar at the time that it was burned by the government of Frankfort, Germany. In 1728, the government of Hamburg banned the performance of Purimspiels entirely. Today, purimspiels are common in yeshivas and religious communities. But the celebrations have also been reclaimed in recent years by Jewish feminists, queers, and progressives of all types, in part because of the possible feminist readings of the story and in part because of the topsy-turvy carnivalesque nature of some Purim traditions. These groups, marginalized by the mainstream Jewish community, are building on the rich history of Purim theater to create powerful spectacles and performances that critique, amplify, and challenge the politics of our times, the Jewish community, and the Megillah’s story itself.

2. The Shadow of Marginalization

A quick refresher on the Book of Esther: Ahasueros, the King of Persia, sends away his disobedient first wife Vashti, who refused to dance naked for the king and his guests. He holds a pageant for a new wife. A young Jewess named Esther (Hebrew name: Hadassah) enters at the urging of her uncle Mordechai and wins, having kept her Judaism a secret. Later, Mordechai uncovers a plot to kill the king by two eunuch guards. Through Esther, he alerts the king and foils the plot. Mordechai’s good deed is then recorded in the royal book of chronicles. Soon after, Mordechai refuses to bow to the King’s assistant Haman, stating that, as a Jew, he will not bow before a man. Angered and incensed at Mordechai's being honored for saving the king's life, Haman arranges to kill Mordechai and all the Jews in Ahasueros’s empire, with the blessing of the king. After a period of fasting and prayer, Esther saves the Jews by outing herself (as a Jew) to the king, who, while not rescinding his decree, allows the Jews to arm and defend themselves. Everything turns upside down: the Jews are victorious, instead of being annihilated; Mordechai is given the honored role that Haman had held; and Haman is hanged on the gallows intended for Mordechai.

That’s where the storytelling usually ends in Sunday school classes and Purim parties. But the Megillah actually goes on to describe a massacre of over 75,500 Persians, as well as Haman and his ten sons. The story of Esther and Mordechai’s heroism on behalf of all Jews is a great reason to celebrate, but how can we wrestle with the implications of the end of the story, the brutal vengeance-lust of the Jewish people, if we don’t even talk about that part of the scroll?

At a recent Barnard College conference on “Jewish Women Changing America,” I asked performance artist/drag queen Amichai Lau-Levi (presenting in chararacter as Rebbitzin Hadassah Gross) to talk about the work s/he’s done to reclaim and reinterpret Purim in productions such as “ Esther Don’t Preach: A Purim kaBLAHBLAH Bash!” As the Rebbitzin, Lau-Levi reflected that while we are all starving for ritual on our own terms, Purim is also about the shadow of genocide, marginalization, and hating “the other,” and reminded the audience of the events of Purim 1994. That year, Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslims, and injured a hundred more, who were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Survivors of the massacre killed Goldstein, a member of the Jewish Defense League, and an IDF doctor. Israeli right-wing extremists see Goldstein as a holy martyr, claiming that he pre-empted the mass murder of Jews by Arabs. Witness the message on Goldstein’s gravesite:

Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754 (1994).

Those who eulogized Baruch Goldstein remembered his actions as a kind of “pre-emptive strike” against those who wish to kill the Jews. Did Goldstein see himself as a modern Mordechai? The 1994 massacre makes it clear that those of us who wish to celebrate Esther,Vashti, or Mordechai’s resistance to unjust authority must also deal seriously with the alternate Purim-interpretation of heroic vengeance and security-through-brutality, values that influence not only Baruch Goldstein and his supporters but also our own Israeli and American governments. By avoiding the end of the story, Purim revelers risk giving uncritical license to the fundamentalism and xenophobia found in the text.

In reality, the Purim story may never have happened. Scholars believe that King Ahasueros may have been the Persian king, Khshayarsha, whom the Greeks called Xerxes, and who ruled from 486 to 465 B.C.E. in Shushan, the capital Persian city. The descriptions of Ahasueros’ giant kingdom, which spanned 127 countries from India to Ethiopia, match the size of the Persian Empire under Xerxes, who was also known for his big fancy feasts and parties. On the other hand, no historic records verify the Megillah’s story, which has much in common with ancient romances, fairy tales, and other fantastic literature. As Rabbi Arthur Waskow writes, “Most Jews today understand the whole story of Esther not as an historical chronicle but as a novel.”

3. The Politics of the Party

Whether fact or fiction, the Purim story begs for modern critique, midrash, and creative re-visioning rather than the lazy revisionism offered by mainstream Jewish education. In 2003, I was one of the organizers of the “Suck My Treyf Gender” Purim party, an event which offered some opportunities for that creative critique. Suck My Treyf Gender featured hostesses from Hadassah Ladies for Homos (a sister organization of Church Ladies for Choice), a wrestling-match between Kosher and Treyf, and an alternative Megillah reading, all while raising funds for Jews Against the Occupation and Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. At that event we distributed a manifesto, “The Politics of the Party,” which included this quote:

On Purim, we are religiously obligated to get so shit-faced [drunk] we can’t tell the difference between “blessed” haman, and “cursed” mordechai. Binaries, dichotomies, opposites are emphasized, exaggerated and celebrated. We masquerade as Good vs. Evil, Male vs. Female, Oppressed vs. Oppressor, but the goal is not to reinforce these dichotomies, but to realize that they are false separations, that there is a beautiful space inbetween all opposites, and that is the space where we live as happy, healthy beings. It is in between the extremes, somewhere between “male” and “female,” healing our experiences of oppression while checking ourselves on the power we have to oppress others, that we walk Hashem’s path.

In one act of this cabaret, I performed as Adam Shapiro, the Jewish guy who co-founded International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and who was with Yasser Arafat the previous Pesach in the Palestinian leader's besieged Ramallah compound, incurring the anger of the Zionist Jewish community. Adam and one of the Hadassah Ladies  serenaded each other with “Wind Beneath My Wings,” in a celebration of the cross-pollinization of queer and anti-occupation Jewish activism. Another moving performance was offered by a woman who had recently returned from doing human rights work in the Occupied Territories and read poetry about her experiences that brought a powerful silence to the otherwise rowdy crowd. In sum, the Suck My Treyf Gender cabaret performances used Purim’s cultural traditions as a way to challenge the same nationalism and extremism that Baruch Goldstein glorified with his brutal killings. At the same time, we amplified the meaningful role of Jewish queers and outsiders. In our Megillah, the two eunuchs who plot to kill the King are among the symbolic heroes.

With the between-the-lines vision of Purim’s transgressive potential, we can ask real and deep questions. Is Esther a brave heroine or a subordinating woman spinning back and forth between the demands of various men in her life, making good for herself by capitalizing on the betrayal of other, stronger women? Is Mordechai a brave Jewish hero, or a patronizing and arrogant man who would gladly do to another people what he wished not done to his own? He won’t bow to a king, but he tells Esther to bow to her husband, the king. Is Haman truly evil, or was his history written by the victors who killed his whole people and needed to vilify him to justify a brutal “regime change”? Is Vashti the goyishe heroine of this Jewish story? Is the King really a fool, or, as many commentators suggest, the worst of all -- a lecherous old man with access to endless virgins, eager to sign off on any genocide that doesn’t affect his property or his status? We have to wonder why those eunuchs were plotting to kill him, and look who starts and ends with the real power!

Modern Purim celebrations use the traditional play as a vehicle for popular education around a broad range of issues by playing with the iconic roles typified by the Megilla’s characters: good girl, bad girl, stupid king, valiant citizen, evil politician. These traditional players can easily and informatively be mixed up with any combination of modern kings, s/heroes, insider/outsider activists, popular resistance movements, and evildoers-ex-machina. Witness this cross-section of creative re-interpretations:

• In 2002, the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, Amnesty International USA, HEEB Magazine, and Great Small Works sponsored a “Giant Puppet Purim Ball Against the Death Penalty.” The celebration included a retelling of the Megillah and music and dance, including reggae with Yiddish lyrics, and the Klezmatics. In 2004, Great Small Works, Arbeiter Ring, and Storahtelling, joined with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice to create a play about immigrant rights directed by Jenny Romaine of Great Small Works and Circus Amok. In 2005, these groups reconvened at The Knitting Factory for a purimspiel that followed Vashti to a detention center and skewered racial “terrorist” profiling and the Patriot Act. These annual celebrations in Manhattan bring together amazing inter-generational crowds ranging from secular-socialist elders to queer red-diaper babies and all kinds in-between.

• Also in 2002, Bonna Devora Haberman who describes the Purim story as “in many ways a story of sex and violence, a tale of how men of power use the currency of the female body to achieve their goals” used the Purim story as an educational activist tool to spread the word about global trafficking of women and girls. Unmasking the Fast of Esther is a 27-page play that Haberman shared with hundreds of congregations across the world, and weaves the Megillah and the Talmud with modern news articles.

• Amy Tobin created the musical Lilithin 1996, and followed up with Esther's Mission - Love, Blood & Wine In Exile in 2002, Estherminator - a Psycho-Pious Purim Rock Opera in 2003, and The Esther Show in a 2005 tour about which Nextbook.org’s Ben Wurgaft writes, "If Purim is the holiday of subversive reversals, then Tobin's version of subversion asks other tough questions ... Tobin also likes to use the clueless and ineffective king to poke fun at political targets—the death penalty, the invasion of Iraq, and this year, the Bush administration. In one refrain she sings of a ‘Story about the stories we tell,’ suggesting that Purim is precisely the time to use a critical lens to scrutinize politics."

• The radical Jewish feminist group Jewish Women Watching (JWW), which borrows tactics from the Guerrilla Girls to challenge sexism in the Jewish world (where Guerilla Girls attack the male-dominated-power of the Art world), has used Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, high-profile gatherings of Jewish communities, and Purim as opportunities to challenge from within (if anonymously) and without. In addition to stickers that could be put on any grogger (noisemaker) reading “Drown Out Sexism,” JWW also protested at the United Jewish Charities (UJC) in New York with masks on and published a postcard, telling us that “Vashti's not the only woman who had to strip to keep her job. Even in the Jewish world three out of four women endure sexual harassment in the workplace." JWW activists observed that at a Megilla reading, we "spin our groggers 50 times to blot out Haman’s name. That’s more than the number of women on the boards of the Anti Defamation League [ADL] and the United Jewish Communities combined,” and ask, “Rabbis agree that without Esther’s intervention Haman would have murdered all the Jews. With almost no women in the top five executive positions at national Jewish organizations, what might befall today’s Jewish community?”

Purim’s tale is a warning with another warning wrapped inside, a liberation that isn’t liberating, and it begs us to create space for solutions that don’t entail easy answers. Wrestling with Esther offers her a chance for meaningful heroism without a brutal legacy, and the insights of these strategic theatrical misunderstandings offer us a path towards transformation

For those of us who don’t fit the mainstream Jewish community norms, Purim has become an opportunity to come out of the corners and challenge our own community by manifesting our fabulous otherness, our queerness. On all other nights, the institutional Jewish community displays a false homogenous front on the issue of supporting Zionism. And on all other nights, homophobia and transphobia are still prevalent in our community. On Purim those of us who, like Pesach’s wicked child, don’t tow those party lines, exhibit our politics and our true queer lives without fear of rejection and repression. (Or so we hope.)

The stage directions for the 2004 Immigrant Justice Purim Spiel offer some modern midrash that may allow us to harness the power of Purim to challenge fundamentalism in years to come:

Hadassah stresses that on Purim, if you are confused, you are doing the right thing. [She] knows there are many paths towards holy disorder, many routes to the mystical place of misunderstanding... The more we don’t understand, the more dyslexic we feel, the more we are entering into the practice of Purim, the more we will be supercharged, renewed, transformed.

11:17 am - vilnius is wack

just saw this article from the Forward: http://www.forward.com/articles/12634/

here's some of it:

During Carnival — or Uzgavenes, as it is known in Lithuania — Catholics from around the world congregate for a feast of foods prohibited during Lent. The festival usually involves a parade or circus, with attendees in masks and costumes. But in Vilnius — commonly known to Jews as Vilna — participants traditionally dress and act “as Jews,” a feat that generally calls for masks with grotesque features, beards and visible ear locks and that is often accompanied by peddling and by stereotypically Jewish speech.

Last Saturday, hundreds gathered in front of city hall in the capital to celebrate. The Web site of the Vilnius City Municipality promised that during Uzgavenes, which is an official holiday in Lithuania, “creatures wearing different masks — devils, witches, deaths, goats, Gypsies, and other joyful and scaring characters — hang around.” Claiming to be dressed as a Jew, one woman tried to convince spectators to buy dirty handkerchiefs.

Although typical costumes include farm animals and monsters, masquerading is sometimes broadly referred to as “eiti zydukais,” or “going as Jews,” regardless of how one dresses.

07:24 pm - seeking suggestions for surviving 2008

me and captain_maybe are going to be doing toasts on the topic of surviving 2008 at the fast-approaching (in 2 days) great small works spaghetti dinner (you should go!).

I have thoughts on this topic, but I'm also curious what you would say, thoughtful readers, if you were giving such a toast.

I was writing a list of things I'll actually do to survive 2008 in my real journal and I got annoyed that I was turning into SARK.

Thoughts?

02:53 pm - good adventures, shoes

this weekend I had two excellent adventures!

on saturday, 5(!) pals from philly came up and we went on a winter beach visit to coney island and then had 100,000 pierogies at a little russian restaurant off brighton beach ave, including cherry pierogies. they were not something you would want a whole plate of, but very good for a couple. a real cherry in each one. also we had blintzes and borscht to share. it was a feast! then we went to M&I international grocery store which rubychard recommended and that was excellent. I got two things: sour cherry tea, and chocolate with cherries in it that was grossly cough syrup tasting. also we saw these leather boots that have a horse design or a peacock design and now maybe Elan will come visit because I think she needs to have them.

then yesterday I went with Lailah B to this exhibit about Jewish folk art including carousel horses - the exhibit of my dreams, and it really was dreamy. I highly recommend it. Then we watched people ice skate and then we ate indian food and then I fell down the stairs for the second time in a month, so I am just not allowed to wear my big roomie shoes that slip off because they are becoming a major health hazard. I desperately need to find my dream shoes which are maroon wingtips in my tiny size because my only other shoes (besides trashpicked high heels) do not really fit me. also, my knees really hurt from all this falling down stairs. the first time I was carrying my bike so it was much worse.

Also, I re-watched John Waters' Pecker and I'm really loving the line where pecker thanks little chrissie for "teaching me that life is nothing if you're not obsessed." In related news, Lailah and I are planning to start a weekly crafting date so we can commit serous time to obsessive tinkering. L can only do it during the day, but I'm tempted to have an evening one as well, because I need to do some serious winter crafting.

also, traveling-Blake, I'm thinking of you lots.

XOXO Kills

04:59 pm - coney island

Did you know they had some of the first incubators at Dreamland in 1905? This Doctor Martin Couney set up the "Incubator Babies" exhibit with real preemies and people came to see. There's more info about them here it turns out.

here's my favorite quotes from my library research today:

• "As a neighborhood of immigrants, Brighton has long been animated by the creative tension between memory and fact, ghosts and bricks. For as long as there have been Jews in Brighton, there has been a fractious and contested Jewish community life: radical and old fashioned, devoutly religious and slathered, half-naked with suntan oil, and always ready for a good argument."
• On how Russian emigres are like WW2 survivors: "We are not starving physically but we starving for Jewishness. You can't shove food down a starving man's throat. It is the same with these Jews. They must be fed Yiddishkait with a teaspoon." I think this is one of the key reasons that local Jews couldn't handle me and E on our E. Europe trip, because we're used to this banquet of (relatively) liberated Jewish and queer cultures. I like this image of feeding yiddishkeit with a teaspoon.
  
• "You can always tell how a neighborhood is changing. The names of the outgoing ethnic group is on the funeral homes and the incoming groups names are on the grocery stores."

01:38 pm - jack terricloth is my hero

last night me and  rubychard (and rozele) went to the hallowmass world inferno friendship society show and it rocked so hard!!!!!!! the crowd was a constant ocean of stage divers in all kinds of costumes. I got all bruised up the other day falling on the stairs while carrying my bike so I wasn't up for my usual DYKES IN THE PIT!!! styles but I watched the show truly transfixed by the gender and stage presence of mr. jack terricloth. I saw this band a couple times years ago and I remember having the same kind of rapt obsessive recognition of a such a strange and bewitching fellow. he's kind of john waters-esque, and further cemented my desire to find another pair of wingtips in size 6 because they are the most (only?) appropriate shoes for my gender.

on the topic of gender, hey I got the job of grassroots fundraising coordinator at SRLP!!!!!!!!!!

also, yesterday I went to church aka therapy aka coney island and it was truly transformative to my hurting bruises and heart. and it only takes a half hour to get there from the metro stop by my house. hah!

03:24 pm - things to do

I'm waiting for a guy to come fix things in the apartment and I'm finding lots of ways to procrastinate when I could be writing about the self-education foundation and home owning/selling for this anthology about wealth redistribution, or researching apocalypse mythology (I really want to read the Dictionary of Apocalypticism, a reference series of 3 thick tomes in the library near my house) and the history of the temporary Jewish Autonomous Oblast which is a very interesting chapter in the alternate-realities book of Yid-history.  I'm also not-reading an interesting book that I ran into in the stacks called Coney Island which is by Amram Ducovny (turns out, x-files David's dad!), and so far really up my alley having to do with Jews and freakshows at the same time.

So now I will write about this other thing I'm thinking about.

I went to this excellent event about the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the statue of liberty to call attention to puerto rican political prisoners. a very playful man read an amazing poem/rant called "get the fuck out of vieques" which was written by a friend who is dead, and the reader was joking with the ghost before delivering a performance that had everyone in the crowd rolling in the aisles. it made me love poetry in a way I haven't in a long time. then I read this old lez-feminist journal conditions 8 and the poetry in it hit me deeply, too. wannabe-bohemian poetry readings were the venue that let me learn about a bigger world of my-kind-of-freaks when I was in high school, but I got burnt out on the huge amount of bad poetry I heard (and wrote). sometimes it's so incredibly good, though, it wins my heart again. This playful sparkly-eyed old man reading poetry at the anniversary event reminded me of Count Spider aka Dr. Julio Building, the alternate identities of my biggest poetry teacher in my teenage years (all my years), whose ghost is one of my best friends since he died a few years ago. When people remind me of him, it usually means pay attention. and did you know that Count Spider's the reason I wear pants with bright colors? It's like a message: I'm trying to pay attention. One time a psychic told me that he (count spider) was hanging around me but he was bored, playing solitaire, threw the 9 of hearts at me (wish fulfillment card) and wanted me to get a life and engage him in it. I'm trying, friend. It's kind of a secret but also fun to tell it to the world, how many of the choices I make are related to this ghost-friend. I'm surprised that he would choose me for this lasting friendship, but I'm thankful for it. So, Dear Dr. Building, mr. fixit is here. thanks for helping me pass the time with thoughts of your playfulness. 

xoxoxo

11:02 pm - rainbow high

This weekend I'm gonna miss the big anti-war demonstrations because I have a long-ago-planned date with my mom to go see Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin in concert!!! the first musical I fell in love with (maybe I was 8?) was Evita, which they were the stars of in the broadway cast recording. I would choreograph songs for myself and sing it to myself on the soccer field while the ball went right by me... leading me to be a stereotypically weirdo homeschooler in a public forum. and that is the truth, musical theater ruined my gay life (as socket's musical was titled at idapalooza). I recently became re-obsessed with patti lupone so this is a very special treat. I really hope she sings the song Rainbow High from Evita. I know the politics of that musical are deeply questionable, but damn it has such a good soundtrack. but I can't handle madonna's version AT ALL because she plays the character with stupid coy innocence and misses all the opportunities to work the villain energy of the role. what a shame!

ok this has been my important commentary on the theater.

 

01:53 pm - more on yiddish

I'm skimming "Yiddish for Dummies" and discovered that I.B. Singer gave this amazing speech when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Here's some juicy quotes:

The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.

I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives - philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social. In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man. While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet - whom Plato banned from his Republic - may rise up to save us all.

The high honor bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language - a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics; a language that was despised by both gentiles and emancipated Jews. The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. ... To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those who spoke it are identical. One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.

There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value. It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists - rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity.

04:03 pm

I'm moving to Brooklyn to live with rubychard and Batya on October 15th! The past couple of weeks have been consumed with having a major immune system crash and then just being out of it from meds and then going to Allentown to see my family (hello family, if you still read this). Next up, it looks like I will have a jet-set Idapalooza weekend get-away from Thursday to Sunday (!), then I'll be in NYC for the SukkasMob(!) till early October, then I'll come back to Philly to be nurse-y with a friend having surgery and then I will be in Brooklyn! I desperately can't wait to have a total room of my own again and set up all my tschotke-shrines, although I've been very blessed with Philly housing in this limbo-moment. Also, friends I totally need to get a job so let me know if there are exciting possibilities for a gay genius jack-of-all-nonprofit-trades like myself.

April R thinks I should get a job doing cartoon voice-overs like Famous' daughter does. I think this is truly brilliant, though definitely a departure from my usual career-track. Don't you think I should be a cartoon character? I think I am a cartoon character already in this picture of me with the stuffed animal mascot that Elan got and named Shnoibele on our last day of traveling.


So, here's the link to my pictures of Eastern Europe - lots of stencil art. I'm still feeling all kinds of anger and grief about this summer trip... I'm kind of tired of talking about it, though. I'm happy that it's becoming a new year. My dad is the rabbi for a cruise ship during the high holidays so he gets to go on a free cruise, and he'll be playing an mp3 of Johnny Mathis singing Kol Nidre for the congregants.

That's my update, pals!

07:15 am - saturn return

Hey I'm back in Philly! I'm so happy to be back that I'm having temporary suspension of disbelief and totally loving the benefits of capitalism like all the vegetables and soy products in the giant supermarkets. also, mos def played a free show at 50th and Baltimore (!) and it was the sweetest thing ever. people passing on the street smile and say hello! punks make cool art in their houses! basically, I'm a total positive cheezeball.

Yesterday a bunch of people talked to me about saturn return astrology which I haven't talked about in a little while and now I just found out that according to this website (http://saturnreturn.net/where_is.html) my saturn return is due to end on Sept 3rd. Like, in a few days. Could this possibly be true? 

My Saturn is in Leo though most people my age are in Virgo, so mine started 2 years ago. I liked the description of Leo-process, so maybe the Virgo one will be helpful to other folks? 

XOXOX EBN

07:47 am - Golem Mud

First of all, Dad - there's a MATCHBOX CARS store on Dlouha street in Prague. I decided not to get one for you because they are expensive and Grandpa Jerry probably already would have it but it did cause me to realize that my obsession with miniatures is partly inspired by these tiny cars! Also, they have cool old fancy cars that are used for tours of the city and I took a couple pictures for you.

Other than that I just want to report that I am so goddamn happy and feel truly revived. Last night I had a super romantic night walking around in the rain alone on the castle-side of the river and then going back to the island for the tail end of a concert and screening of Coffee and Cigarettes in the rain and mud. This is famous mud that the Golem is made from, so it was extra exciting to sink an inch into it. There was a group of musicians playing together under the bridge, too, and bums sleeping under the bridge were cheering them. Lots of wolf-dogs and violins and so much mud.

Earlier I went to the Prague Biennial which had more good art in one place than I've ever seen, and it was in a  blown-out looking abandoned factory. 

Elan and Shipwreck and I are having lots of good conversations about what was wrong with the Yiddish program - not the technical problems of disorganization and one bad teacher... but the Museum of Dead Jewish Culture thing. I don't know if there's a better way to sum up the upsetting problem of the program than that phrase. One of S's teachers told her that Yiddish would have died even without the Shoah... and we talked about how this is related to seeing Americanisms in Yiddish as external to the language that is studied academically... a refusal to allow that Yiddish kept evolving in the US pre-WW2 and can/will keep evolving still. 

See youse soon  - I come home Monday night!

XXOXO EBN

12:51 am - bohemian!

We made it to Prague this morning on bus ride that went through Kovno and other lithuanian, polish, and czech small towns via back roads. we went by a bunch of xtian cemetaries all lit up with candles at the graves that were breathtaking.

Being back here already relieves the distress of the past few weeks. It's gorgeous and alive and... gorgeous. I walked all over by myself today and ate lunch at (vegan) Country Life which means I actually got some protein besides cheese which has been seriously hard to come by in this region. Tonight we went to a free outdoor screening of Ocean's 13 which I saw in June with CB and freaked out because I love heist movies. The screening was on a island not far from the Charles bridge (the next bridge over). Tomorrow night they are showing another movie and apparently there's also a big circus festival happening... and there's an arts biennial that I'll check out tomorrow morning. Basically, leaving Vilnius early was absolutely the right thing to do. I did learn some Yiddish from the good teacher... enough to have a head-start for future self-education and classes at the Arbeiter Ring (!).  And having Shipwreck along for this trip is really excellent... she rules and we get to show her where the golem is buried and the astronomical clock, etc. We have to figure out a way to get her to the US but in the meantime she's teaching me how to speak like an australian which only means I know how to pronounce "bloody beautiful mate" and "melbourne, australia" semi-correctly at this point.

So, now I think I can come home and not be a freaked-out cranky bitch, which is relieving!

XOXOX EBN

10:08 am - an authentic experience

I didn't think I was gonna post again before leaving town but yesterday was really a day worth telling about.  first, as we walked to the university we found a giant swastika with WHITE POWER written around in, followed shortly by a second giant swastika. Up close it turned out that someone with an orange marker had scribbled over the swastika and written the word BLACK on top of the word WHITE.  What was especially interesting about this is that actually, Lithuania (like the other places in E. Europe we've been) is already 99.99999% percent white from what I've seen. I've probably seen 12 Black people in the last two months (of which 6 looked to be tourists), no Latino/as, and maybe 2 Asians and the 5 Indian guys who were staying at our hostel in Warsaw.  There are a few thousand Jews in Lithunania, many of whom are very elderly. A very Jewish-looking girl in the program, Rokhl, said that people regularly stare at her as if they are seeing her horns, and one frum boy in our class who wears tzit-tzit and a yarmulke had someone yell Death to Jews at him in German.  I feel it's safe to say that white supremacy has already won out in Lithuania, so to be honest I'm not sure what the goal of the graffiti is. Also, based on how few Black people there seem to be in Lithuania, I'm guessing a white person wrote BLACK over the WHITE graffiti. 

Ok, but the real highlight of the day for me was that after class I heard there was a special meeting and went to it. There we were told about a movie, Defiance,  that will soon be filmed in the Vilnius area and we are invited to be in the crowd scenes if we want to stay or come back to town at the end of September. The plot is "Three Jewish brothers escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and others in danger."  We are told, "These will be good scenes with a lot of emotion. You can be in a crowd pushed into a boxcar! Or chased through the real swamps and forests where the original story took place! We need some good faces!"  Everyone is the crowd had a look of horror ... we were actually being invited to be part of a historical re-enactment of the Holocaust in Lithuania! Because we're actors? No! Because we're in a Yiddish program so most us look like Real Jews! On her way out the door, Rokhl said it perfectly: "This experience hasn't been authentic enough... I won't be satisfied with my trip to Lithuania until I get herded into a boxcar!"  Another girl was saying how she doesn't really look Jewish, but I said they could fix that through CGI - just give her a bigger nose. "And horns!" she reminded me.

Meanwhile, Elan was at the post office where an insane Italian actor fell in love with her at first sight and proceeded to tell her every anti-semitic trope in the book from the angle of philo-semitism  and then he showed her that he's down with Jews because he knows Dovid Katz (famous Yiddish guy) by pulling DK's business card out of his wallet, and then he paid for her to mail her package. Later we ran into him on the street and he really was as crazy and intriguing as Elan had described and went on a rant about how people of pure racial makeup are all stupid and only bastards are intelligent and he's a bastard 7 times, but Ashkenazim are the only pure race who are also intellent. 

Meanwhile, back at the dorms we found three people in their underwear doing a photoshoot in a tub of buttered popcorn. I think we've had our authentic Vilnius experience now, just in time to get out of town! 

XOXOX EBN

09:36 am

Another person in my yiddish program wrote an interesting post about it on Jewschool, which is a website I like to read occasionally. He wrote: There are some things I think this place is missing. There is no component of the program that deals with the meaning of Yiddish in a communal setting. There is little public talk about people’s motivations for studying it, about the relationship between east European gentiles in the program and the Jews in the program. There is little talk of art and Yiddish. There are almost no opportunities to learn about the spiritual lives of East European Jews in Yiddish. There is no emphasis on popular culture. I get the sense that Yiddish is just a language. It isn't.

It's validating that most of the other attendees of this program were similarly frustrated, even those with more yiddish-skills to start out and two classes with good teachers. on the other hand, I'm sorry for the missed opportunity of all this time spent with interesting yiddish-obsessed people and so few opportunities to connect and share stories...  in the first couple days of the program, Elan and I brainstormed workshops we could set up to get people talking and wrestling together with questions of why we are all here to learn this historically-loaded language, but the administrators at first seemed so hostile that we didn't want to recommend anything. later, it turns out the administrators are open to these conversations, just won't do anything in response. Usually I would just sit down with people who seem interesting and ask them about their life... but in this program we rarely see people who aren't in our classes (or in the dorms, mostly the student crowd) and there's an added complication that people who speak yiddish don't want to speak english here... which makes sense except it means I miss 98% of the conversations. 

I did make two friends in the older crowd, though - Sara the juicy Miami songstress who skips the bad teacher class and goes shopping every day and is a drama queen who talks of  "the heat we've had to endure!"and Hyman, my Allentoner Landsman whose son was the highschool boyfriend of my mom's highschool best friend.  He is amazing. At one boring lecture he slept, snoring, through most of the presentation and then woke up and said (not quite quietly)  "This man's voice is incredibly grating." Then he yawned loudly and said to Elan, "If anyone else asks a question I'm gonna kill 'em" and when the speaker finished answering that question Hy started clapping to signal that the event was over. He's old enough to be socially cranky and get away with it. 

So tomorrow we leave a bisl early will go hang out with the astronomical clock again and then on Monday we'll be back in the US.  I think I'll keep using this livejournal to write more about the pieces of the trip I haven't descrbed yet, as I'm thinking through things with a little perspective. I'm not sure what's on that list besides visiting Auschwitz and finding that it is more like the Disneyworld version of an Auschwitz-exhibit than I was prepared for. A shonde! 

Zay gezunt  - 

EBN 

PS I just finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time and it was so enchanting! Do you love this book?

04:40 pm - I love you like a chicken soup, like a kugel!

Today we figured out an exit strategy: We'll leave next Tuesday (only missing 2 days of class and the graduation day) and go back to magical Prague and then get back to Warsaw by the following Monday for our flight home. It's out of the way by a longshot, but it's so worth it to get another moment with such a magical place, and we can return home with spirits recharged. Also, the Australian, who I renamed Shipwreck today (from Shifra), is coming with us and she's gonna teach us the conversational Yiddish we didn't get from the program - and some of the juicy stuff we were looking for. Here's an example: at the program when someone asks "Vos Machstu?" (How you doing?) people answer "Zeyer gut" (very good) or "Zeyer Fayn" (very fine) or "Baruch Hashem" (Blessed God). Today Shipwreck explained the other options that are more like complaining while saying you're ok - "Nisht Shlect" (not too bad), etc. This is this the yiddishkeit I love, where every positive statement is couched in kvetching. It's a goddamn art! Anyway, we're all going to Prague to soak up the beautiful weirdness of that place.

So, back to kvetching. The dorms are so goddamn creepy. There's a huge flock of terrifying deathbirds (scary raven/crow/vulture-looking creatures) that hangout on the military grounds. The soldiers are constantly marching and shouting and practicing with their rifles, and none of them make eye contact  so it's this experience of being surrounded by all these aryan young men in fatigues who aren't allowed to engage in the recognition of mutual-humanity that takes the edge off of threatening social interactions. Also, the student community there is mostly early-20's and college kids so it feels very college dorm and really I feel like I'm on the Real World (tm) Vilnius. Basically, none of the boys do their dishes and I want to kill everyone. Also, there are really annoying summer-romance couples happening and one of them was making out at the Kaunas killing field memorial! A couple nights ago we got in a big fight with the boy in this couple when he started yelling at/lecturing us about how we're ruining the program by complaining about the class that everyone hates and half the program has dropped out of.  Oy! He's this Irish guy who isn't Jewish and has no other connection to hearing Yiddish spoken out loud, so he can't handle anyone criticizing someone who looks like a Yiddishe Bubbe.  Hey, my personal commitment to Jewish culture includes being an engaged, critical learner and refusing to just sit in class and space out when I actually care about learning something.  Thus spake Reb Killer Sideburns, s/he who is most righteous. Plus, me and Elan pretty much shredded him brutally in this fight. Also, he made out at the killing fields so STFU about respect. 

My last note is that last night Victor/Victoria was on TV and it wasn't overdubbed - it was so amazing. I've seen it before but in the context of this barren wasteland of gender diversity it was a total thrill to be among the queens and queers for a couple hours. 

Ok, back to yiddishland. See yas soonish. 

XOXOXXOXO EBN

01:57 pm - Ruthless Cosmopolitans

Hey, good news - I got the Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant, which will help pay for this trip. I'm excited to get arts funding after almost a decade of being a performer  and event-coordinator in Philly - it's very validating! Also, it means a lot to me that they funded an explicitly Ashenazi-Jewish arts project because they have a big focus on racial justice and I was afraid that they wouldn't see the connection. I know the staff people and I was confident they would understand it, but the grantmaking decisions are made by community artists and it all depends on who is on the jury. Anyway, how relieving! This reminds me of a goofy story where someone from Chicago described me to Max and Courtney as "Philly's premiere party promoter" which was pretty ridiculous and Max and Courtney knew it and teased me, but I've enjoyed occasionally applying the title to myself since then. It's good to remember that I do creative work because I feel so emotionally and creatively numbed out at this moment. I hope things thaw once I get back to mid-atlantic region of dos fareynikte shtatn.  

On the subject of titles, my new drag queen name invention is "Sharon Withtheclass" which is applied to anyone taking up too much time in class or someone giving too much information about how they really feel. 

Also, in response to the historical anti-semitic description of Jews as "rootless cosmopolitans" I have invented the drag queen name "Ruth Lescosmopolitan" and Elan and I are debating what a Rootless Cosmopolitan would consist of as a drink. Your opinions? I think it might have beet juice, but that could taste really disgusting. 

XOXOX EBN 

02:37 pm - ikh hob lieb di dybbukele

Well, I'm glad to report that I'm no longer in the lowgrade (to high-grade!) panic attack I was in all last week... I'm not sure what helped. Maybe just eating some protein? Maybe another level of giving up on my fantasy about this program, and figuring out how to deal with what it is? I won't bore y'all with the details of how classes have been going except to say that I've had a couple moments of noticing that I'm actually getting better at Yiddish and that is really exciting- and probably why I'm feeling less freaked out. Also, I talked to the director and she was surprisingly responsive. 

Yesterday I went back to Uzupis by way of a long walk along the river Vilne and met up with a classmate accidentally. She's my age,  from Australia and grew up speaking Yiddish in her home (which is rare!), so she's very fluent and later translated a lecture for me about the Yiddish school in Kaunas before WW2. 

Here's a good joke I learned in class:
3 guys are sitting in a cafe.
"Oy!" says the first
"Oy Vey!" says the second. 
The third says: "Look, if you guys are gonna talk politics all day, I'm going home!" 

Also, a while ago, Cole wrote a comment asking what is a dybbuk and I finally am at a cheap enough internet place to give an answer.... (PS, Cole I'm really glad you're reading this journal!). I think this wikipedia page is great, but in short a dybbuk is a ghost that is in some way distressed and takes over the body of a living being. Jewish folklore is full of dybbuk stories, most famous of which is S. Ansky's "The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds." Once my yYiddish improves I really want to track down and re-watch the 1937 film of this story (made in Warsaw).  In Someone described the Ansky story as "a combination of The Exorcist and Romeo and Juliet." Here's another cool explanation. One of the books I was readng before leaving for this trip had lots of amazing stories of actual dybbuk possessions that people wrote about at the time (mostly in diaries, etc), and the processes of banishing the spirits. In one, they had to invite the spirit to re-possess the girl (with her consent) to ask it questions about things that were happening in the town. 

That's all for today. Zay gezunt! 

EBN

PS rubychard I had a really good beet and white bean salad that I think you would be excited about. Also it had dill and scallions and oil/vinegar. I got it at a place on Zydu Gatve (Jew Street).

PSS Oh yeah, I forgot to tell the most interesting moment of today: there was a whole conversation  in class about whether a "yiddish book" is a Jewish book or a Yiddish book. Nobody would discuss that Yiddish actually (always) means Jewish. Even if it refers to the name of a language, the name of the language means "Jewish!"  It was like everyone was agreeing not to acknowledge that in order to not make the non-Jewish yiddishists feel conspicuous. Very bizarre. Elan and I just kept looking at eachother like "is anyone going to talk about this?" and then Elan asked "Doesn't Yiddish mean Jewish?" and the teacher said "It means Jewish or the language Yiddish." 
 

08:15 pm - the snake bit the tortoise because the sun was too hot

More bizarro translation excersizes in this weekend's homework (heym-arbeit). I'm alternating the final Harry Potter book with my yiddish learning, and keep getting confused about what direction to turn pages. I went to Hebrew School, but they only taught us to sound out words, not translate (it was interesting, learning more about Reform movement history, to find out that this was a conscious choice that leaders made... to not teach translation). And in Hebrew School they never introduced the handwriting version of the letters. Learning Yiddish is so complicated! I like it as a total chaos experience - you're looking at printed letters, writing with different characters, and lots of the words aren't pronounced the way they're spelled or they're abbreviations, or the teacher has a different dialect and pronounces differently. I kind of think this school should pick a model of spelling/pronunciation and stick to it, but I guess Yiddish doesn't work that way.

Today we went to the cool bizarro-section of Vilnius called Uzupis which is responsible for the Frank Zappa statue. They have a tounge-in-cheek separate republic. Let me tell you, it is gorgeous in this part of the city. I think if I spend more time there I will be less miserable. Father-mine, this is a city after your own heart. One of their constitution rules is "Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation." We finally went there for the first time and ran into another student, Sarah, a middle-aged yiddish singer from Miami who is really fun. She took us on a tour of the parks and shopping she is fond of in Vilnius. We had lunch and planned how to tell the program coordinators that they have to take action about this really bad teacher, because everyone has complained and nothing is changing. Sarah was here last year so she feels confident to pull the director aside and be insistent. Then there was a yiddish concert that was a lot more fun than the other events have been. Things are looking up a bit... this morning I was like "I have to get out of here I can't stand it one more day" but I think it's not actually that dramatic.

one funny thing is that there's an 18 yr old in the program who is a Jewish high-school dropout (totally homeschooled!) that was in the sikh community for the last year or so and left it in a crisis of faith 5 days before the yiddish program. he eats bacon multiple times a day and needs a LOT of attention. I want to kill him, but also I'm entertained by the bacon thing. I think he's going to have a heart attack any minute.  That's what he gets for cooking all this bacon and not cleaning his dishes!!!

ok that's my update. thanks for your comments, pals and meyn familye. I miss you!!!!! 

XOXOXO EBN

04:49 pm - part 2

Ok, now that I'm not feeling as sorry for myself I must admit that there are actually two yiddish teachers for my level (beginners) and one is a really good teacher and also a gorgeous sassy yiddish meydele with a really glamourous accent when she speaks english.

everyone I've talked to is pissed about the other class, and many have complained... it's getting a little better, but I think I just have to use it as a time to look things up in the dictionary.

last nite elan and i made fancy-colored paper flashcards and I marked the yiddish alef-beys with tabs in my dictionary so I can look through it without having to repeat the order over and over. then we made a list of all the people we know who are inspiring queer superheros, and that made us both feel better. we agreed that if we are still miserable after two weeks, we can decide to leave a week early because just cause you paid for something doesn't mean you have to stick around and be miserable. It's unusual for me to imagine not getting my money's worth.... but it finally hit me that the money is spent either way and I have choices about how I spend my time. but we'll wait till 2 weeks have gone by... and we'll probably end up sticking it out but had to kind of decide to be heartbroken and then re-assess how to use time creatively. it really is a heartbreak thing... feeling alienated from lots of elements in Jewish culture and then figuring out that yiddish connects the dots between all these exciting pieces... secular, radical left, feminist, queer histories, diasporism... we both had very romantic desires for a chance to immerse in those Jewish communities. instead we're hangin with the military, being lectured by the program director on how we need to treat the dorms like a hotel (don't move the furniture), "act civilized", and "police ourselves". the cultural program is weak and mostly only in yiddish. there's so many little details of how this program is messed up, but I think rozele has a good point... I'm realizing that I ignorantly came to study yiddish in a scene historically known for being academic and having dry food (litvak, vs galitzianer)! actually, it turns that that this program recently had a palace coup where they kicked out their flamboyant and eccentric (but not in a good way, apparently) director and many of the teachers, etc. left with him. so maybe that's why so dry. this is definitely all giving me lots of food for thought, and I do have some faith that elan and I will both get enough yiddish skills to dive into future self-educating in more vivacious settings.

also, thanks so much to everyone who has responded to my various cries for help! it REALLY helps to remember that there's other contexts out there, that I fit into in cozy and exciting ways. I feel super lucky to have such good homes to come home to.

another thing is that even though a lot of my entries here have been like "I'm in love with this city," the truth is that I really loved these places on a visually aesthetic level but this has also been a total Jewish Tragedy Tour, combined with "The Commodification of Jewish History/Tragedy tour." I've been really disturbed and uncomfortable on a lot of levels during this month of traveling. And even though I'm here to think and talk about the Jewish history, the reality of these cities is that many people have never met a Jew before and are dealing in much more present and overwhelming ways with being recently post-communist... so the Jewish thing is kind of old news that they mostly just see as tourism now, from what I can tell. I need to learn a lot more about the history of this region after 1945, I think.

ok this was a long entry and I have a lot more to say... but another time!

XOXOX EBN