Av’s kindergarten orientation was Tuesday. This made us feel the following emotions (not necessarily in this order):

anxious, controlling, ecstatic, excited, happy, impatient, nervous, proud, sad, satisfied, serendipitous, surprised, unprepared, welcomed

I mean — this is our kid! This is a milestone for us! True, he’s been at a full-day program since several months after he was born. He grew up with his current pre-school friends while they were all babies, then toddlers, and now kids who can read a bit, do math, and assimilate vocabulary. (Tonight before bedtime he asked us, out of the blue, what a “trial basis” was. Weird…) But this is a different situation: new school, new kids, new environment.

I can imagine this will be a bit nerve-racking for him. None of his pre-school friends will be attending his new school. He knows one kid who will be in his class — a kid whose mom and I were housemates at college for a year. But aside from that? he doesn’t know anyone. (Neither do we — aside from the ones we’ve met through the school).

His current pre-school meets in a church nearby. Av is the only Jewish kid in the school (as far as we know) — and his customs can be a bit different: instead of calling me Dad, I’m Aba (Hebrew for Dad). He also doesn’t celebrate Christmas but explained the customs of Hanukah. During Passover there were quite a few dietary restrictions which we had to explain to the teachers (many of whom, being traditional Muslims, already understand dietary restrictions as they’re used to Halal food). It’s been a wonderful experience for him in a diverse environment, And I’m sure that the friendships we and he have made thus far will continue for quite a while.

His new school is a Jewish private school. It was an important and sometimes tricky decision to make, sending him to a school which is (a) considerably further away from our home than his pre-school and the local public school; (b) considerably more expensive than his pre-school and, of course, the local public school. We decided to go this route, however, based on classroom size (11-12 kids in each class instead of 25) and the curriculum (which includes general and Judaic studies — and contains a language immersion program in Hebrew starting at the kindergarten level) among other factors. It means we’re cutting back on a whole lot of things in order to afford this, but hey — this has been a top priority right from the start. We don’t have a plasma TV, an Acura in the garage (or a garage at all!), an XBOX or a Wii. We have tuition.

I’ve always been intrigued by names — especially the names children are given by their parents. There’s a fascinating chapter about children’s names in Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, correlating certain naming trends to race, parental levels of education, and more. We happened to give our son a unique name (at least in this country, but apparently not in this blogosphere) which stems from his Hebrew name. We weren’t surprised that he was the only Avi in his preschool — a place which had its share of kids named Walker, Paige, David, Abdullah, Margaret, Nayeh, Sophie and Christiana. But what about in a Jewish school? Are the other parents as freaky as we are when it comes to names?

I present you with the names of the kids for the upcoming kindergarten class:

1. Abbie
2. Alex
3. Avi
4. Benjamin (x2)
5. Daniel
6. Gabriel
7. Jacob
8. Jacqueline
9. Liora
10. Maya
11. Madelyn
12. Miriam
13. Nathan
14. Noa
15. Rachel
16. Rome
17. Sebastian
18. Solomon
19. Tobbi

So — no other Avis in the class. There are four kids (including Av) whose names are anglicized versions of Hebrew names. Which means we’re not necessarily the only weird ones.

Nine of the kids — just about half of them — have overtly Biblical names. Some people mistake Avi’s name for being a shortened version of “Abraham.” Nope — Just Avi. I guess it shows a sense of tradition…

Then there’s Jacqueline. I’ve always found that name to be mysterious and sexy — simply because of the “qu” factor. I feel the same way about Monique. And Raquel. And Quincy.

As for Rome? Sebastian? Those sound like prep school names. But who knows? Certainly not I — I don’t know who these kids are or will be. They could end up being Av’s best friends. Or not. Only time will tell.

All I know is that I think we made the right decision for our family. The place felt like home to Avi. And that’s far more important than any name.

We’re drawing to the end of the Passover holiday which, according to many, ends this evening. (That in itself is a long story: the holiday is prescribed Biblically for seven days, and many traditional Jews not currently residing in Israel keep it for one extra day “just to be sure.” (That’s over-simplifying it, I know.) In Israel, Passover has already been over and done for about thirty hours.)  I’m looking forward to eating more diversified food than what I’ve been having for the past week — the food certainly isn’t on my happy list.  But there are quite a few things which make it one of my favorite holidays.

And I’ll lump them all together in one broad category: dynamic traditional evolution.

True — there will always be certain Jews (or insert any other group with historically-based traditions) who will remain adamant that this is the only way to engage in [worship / living a moral life / achieving holiness / associating with others.] I believe, however, that the overwhelming majority of humanity is less rigid and, while sometime looking to conserve the traditions of the past, is successful in tweaking these traditions for the future.

It has been said that the Passover Seder was created to mimic the Greek symposium which was popular at the time. And it was created to become (as I’ve mentioned here before) a multimedia experience — not only is there a specific story which is told through narrative and song, but there’s also food which tells part of the story (such as salt water to represent tears, bitter herbs to represent a bitter time, charoset to represent the mortar of the pyramids, etc.), and actions which wouldn’t make sense on all other nights (such as reclining at the dinner table, opening the door for a non-existent guest, and, in some traditions, whipping each other with scallions).  The main purpose is from a Torah-based mandate — Vehigadta l’vincha — “And you shall teach this to your children,” meaning the entire Passover / Exodus story.

The thing is — the story and the storytelling have both evolved. The underlying theme of making the journey from slavery to freedom has evolved when we see real-world struggles of different peoples and apply their experiences to our story. The methods of teaching our children have also changed, as have certain symbols of the holiday.

Oh – and as the Jewish community has evolved, so has the language of the Seder. Our family’s tradition has been to sing the final two wacky songs in Ladino — a hybrid language consisting of Hebrew, Spanish, French and a few Northern African words here and there.

The symbols have changed as well: on Jester‘s radio show I mentioned the newfound tradition of the orange on the seder plate. The story I gave was apocryphal in nature — that its existence came from an overly traditional Jewish guy who stated in public that a woman in a Jewish leadership position is as ridiculous as an orange on a seder plate. And the next year — people responded by putting oranges on their plates.  It’s a fun story, but not quite true in origin.  The actual story, per scholar Susannah Heschel, has the emergence of the orange symbolizing the fruitfulness of a complete community which doesn’t exclude people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  There is a corollary which has the orange seeds separated from the orange, demonstrating the expunging of homophobia from the community ideally.

And sometime the traditions are just way out there.  At my brother’s first seder he put a banana on the seder plate. He traced this back to a tradition a few decades back from the town of (I think?) Elizabeth, NJ.  The ultra-traditional rabbi at the time was appalled with the lack of knowledge of the Jewish community at the time. Get this — they had been assuming that one would say the generic blessing over fruit before eating a banana rather than an alternate blessing for vegetables! (Yeah, I don’t get it either.) He decreed that for the following year, everyone needed to put a banana on the seder plate in the place of the green vegetable to serve as a reminder that it should be blessed as a vegetable.  Oh — and dipped into salt water. Weird…

The point of this all — is the notion of passing on these teachings with enough leeway to make the traditions one’s own. It’s something that I enjoyed as a kid, and it’s something I’m enjoying passing down to my kid.  And it seems as if he’s embracing these customs and traditions as well. Maybe he’ll be posting the same blog entry thirty years from now when he has his own seders.

One last thing we’re doing — there’s a tradition to count forty-nine days between the second day of Passover until the holiday of Shavuot (loosely translated — Pentecost) as stated in Leviticus 23.  I’ve never been a huge follower of this tradition, but my son, at age five, is the mack-daddy of counting things. Hence, there’s a chart up outside his bedroom for which we “X” off each of the days leading up to number 49.  Last night was number 7. He gets so excited about this — which is a very liberal interpretation of what was originally done (counting sheaves of barley. Have you seen barley prices lately?).   It’s just nice to share in these things with him.

Passover. Almost over. Pizza tonight. Woo!

“What’s the deal with knishes?”

“Do your people really revere Barbra Streisand in a god-like fashion?”

“Can you get me a good deal on these shoes from your Uncle Murray in Teaneck who buys them wholesale?”

“What are matzah balls — and do you get them from self-abuse involving unleavened bread?”

All of these are questions you could ask (gosh, I hope not!) on the Jestertunes Radio Show tonight at 10:00pm EDT / 7:00pm PDT.  I will be Jester‘s special guest and answering lots of questions about two specific subjects:

1. Judaism

2. Everything else.

You can call into his show, chat in the chatroom, call his comment line — lots of ways to interact.

Have a wonderful fifth night of Passover and a meaningful fourth day of the counting of the Omer!

As I had mentioned in the comments to my previous entry, Brotherly SPAM, I decided to email my brother, a congregational rabbi, in the format of a Nigerian 419 scam email to humbly invite myself and my family to his place for the Passover holiday. Lucky for me, he found it while checking his SPAM folder and responded that we could come.

And then this afternoon he sent me an email saying “You inspired me.” And attached an email forward which was sent to the congregational email list this morning:

continue reading "Brotherly SPAM Part II: The Purim Edition…"

Okay, all. I’m sleepy and exhausted and will be getting to bed really soon. I’ll post more tomorrow. Promise.

But before I do: Tonight began the Jewish holiday of Purim, a day which chronicles the events as written in the Biblical Book (Scroll) of Esther The synopsis: About 2500 years ago the Persian King Achashverosh, overcome with impulse, drunkenness and horniness, banished his queen (Vashti) for not participating in Half-Nekkid Thursday in front of his friends. He produces a reality show to find the most beautiful woman in the land to be his new queen — and it turns out to be a Jewish chick named Esther. Her uncle, a bloke called Mordechai, tells her to keep the Jewish thing a secret.

Meanwhile, The King’s #2 guy is a pompous ass called “Haman.” He has a run-in with Mordechai one day and, because Mordechai refuses to bow down to him, he sets a decree to kill all the Jews on, drawn by lottery, the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (today). There’s more of a story to it, but the climax is that Esther reveals her true identity to the king and pleads to spare the life of the Jews, and Haman and his family were hung on a tree instead.

So — as you can surmise it’s a great holiday for the kiddies. It’s as close as one can get to a Jewish Halloween: kids (and adults) dress up in costumes. I’ll post pictures of myself and the kid in our homemade costumes. His was far better than mine: he was Buzz Lightyear in a costume designed and sewn by the lovely socKs. I was the “Can you hear me now? Good!”guy from the Verizon wireless commercials.

It’s also a holiday where it’s traditional to get extremely drunk — prescribed to the extent that one not be able to distinguish good from evil (more literally, distinguish between the evil Haman and the hero, Mordechai). I’m zonked after … oh, zero to drink this evening. I’m getting old…

Two videos if you’re interested — both are raps. The first one was animated by Ben Baruch, who created the Shabot6000 online cartoon. Great stuff. the second one is new this year and… just make sure to watch the first one, k?