Topic: A long weekend
My weekend began Fri. night, when I had dinner w/ two of my campers from my old summer camp. One goes to Hofstra on Long Island, the other just got back from Israel and Eng., and will be starting school at Brandeis next semester. The dinner consisted of way too much food, chicken, roast beef, split pea soup, fresh mashed potatoes, on and on. I had one of the most memorable summer of my life in ’03, another counselor and myself in charge of 27 kids, “our children” we liked to say. They definately bring out the 15 yr. old in me.
Sat. I took a drive with my parents out to Suffok County in eastern Long Island. We went out to buy some fresh veggies from one of the many stands located in that region. I swear, I’ve never seen vegetables like I did on Sat. Califlower the size of watermellons, brussel sprouts still on the stalk, radishes, turnips, fresh peppers. We loaded everything up, and when we got home, made some delicious vegie omelettes. Divine.
We also got the first taste of bad news Sat. afternoon. My grandmother’s vitals were starting to drop. Almost all of my immediate family went to the hospital in Brooklyn on Sat. and were told my grandmother might not make it through the weekend. My mom and I ended up staying at the hosptial overnight, getting an hour of sleep here and there. Around 8am we were to be relieved by my mom’s brother and his daughter who had just been flown in from Israel where she was in her first year of college. She was the last granddaughter to see my grandmother, and as she arrived, and as we were waiting in the hallway, a doctor came out of the room and told us the bad news. My grandmother had passed away.
It was a bit of a shock, although by then we had had a week of getting used to it. By that point, it was almost a relief, because there was no hope for her waking up, and we didn’t want this to drag on indefinately. Immediately, my brother called his rabbi, which began the process of preparing my grandmother for a traditional Jewish funeral.
From ritual cleansing, to placing a ritual white sheet over the deceased, there is rabinic law for virtually every aspect of death. Mon. morning we went to the funeral home, where it really hit me how much my grandmother meant to so many people. Her friends, family, fellow teachers, and neighbors. Her one remaining sibling, my Great Uncle, got up and gaving a moving eulogy, sharing stories of the old days in Williamsburg, their mother driving them down to Coney Island and Brighton beach, the days when you could buy 3 rolls for 5 cents. I fulluer picture of my grandmother began to develop, as a sister, a mother, and a friend to many people. As part of the service, a rabbi called up those immediately related to my grandmother, her husband, brother, and 5 children, took a blade, and cut their jackets and shirts, a symbol for their loss.
We then drove out to the cemetary in eastern Long Island, where I acted as a pallbearer, helping to move my grandmothers coffin, and finally lower it into the ground. After the rabbi said a few prayers, we began to shovel the dirt. The sound of the dirt hitting the wooden coffin sent chills in me, and when my aunt nudged me to shovel, I didn’t move, but eventually everyone started to take part.
It was a long and surreal day, almost like watching a movie at times, like this was someone else’s family, someone else’s grandmother.
After the funeral, we proceeded to my uncle’s house, where my family it sitting Shiv’ah, the Jewish custom for mourning. Among the traidtions for sitting Shiv’ah, involves covering all the mirrors in the house so those mourning are not concerned with their appearnaces. Before entering the house, we all washed out hands, a ritual cleansing after the funeral. Those who had their clothes cut at the service, have special chairs that are lowest to the ground (not sure the symbolism of that…will find out).
Besides the religious traditions, are the cultural ones. Food. Lots and lots of food. For the entire week that family sits Shiv’ah, it is customary for others to bring food, and to prvoide company so those sitting are never alone. This means platters of bagels, lox, whitefish, sable (a lox type fish), tuna, egg salad, chicken, barley and mushrooms, cookies, cakes, fresh fruit. If there’s one thing Jewish culture has going for it, it’s food, and if there’s one thing that my grandmother would want us to be doing, it’s eating. That’s one thing I will miss, always having her come up to me at Thanksgiving, after eating 3 full plates of food, “You have enough to eat yet?”
I was also engaged in hours of conversation with family yesturday, including some cousins who I really haven’t spoken to very much. I am greatful for what I have.
So…it’s now Tues., Nov. 22nd. It looks like it might be raining all day. My office is quiet, and I’m glad it is. That way I can think and get this post written.
I’ve been reading the New York Times like a madman the past month. This morning on the train, the expression “political literacy,” popped into my head. It’s beginning to dawn on me that a problem many people suffer growing up, is learning how to read, but the idea of literacy ends there. All throughout college, I remember feeling illiterate when trying to read the $85 books my professors had me buy. I knew how to read, but I was unable to read things that I couldn’t understand.
My cousin’s kind of helped me to understand this idea. Despite studying religion at Yeshivas their whole lives, they’re still prone to the same style of learning as most people. Rote memorization, and the developing attitude that school is boring, and geography and politics and history aren’t important, or, a feeling that “I’m not good at those subjects.” I always imagined that those who studied religion would also be well versed in the history and current politics of the region, but, I now realize that in general, kids today are kids today, and those things are largely perceived as irrelevant to their lives.
My cousin, in describing her frustration / indifference to the geography and politics of the region, noted that there was a speaker at her school who was talking about the situation. My cousin remarked, “he was saying something about the right moving more to the center, and the left trying to move the centrists to the left” 
What it comes down to is political literacy. I actually realized it’s not easy to describe what is meant by left and right, except to describe particular policy viewpoints. Left being more peace / dovish, right being more aggresive / hawks. Left being more liberal with using gov’t to solve social problems, and raising taxes to do so, right being more conservative and opposed to gov’t solving social problems, and viewing taxes as a drag on the economy.
The problem is the use of technical language. The solution, is taking technical language and translating it so that it makes sense to anyone.
When you making parallels in learning so that seemingly irrelvant, complex, boring issues suddenly appear to tie in with a person’s personal understanding of the world, learning becomes interesting. For example, I was able to convince my cousin’s the soccer was interesting simply by explaining how the worst teams in the Premiership (the equivalant of Major League Baseball) and the best two teams in the First Division (the equivalant of AAA baseball, or the minor leagues) swithc places at the end of the season. Suddenly, this boring, obscure, irrelevant foreign sport of soccer is seen in exciting, relevant, easy to relate to terms.
So much more I want to write about, about taxes, and gov’t, about terrorism, about the blend of idealism, cynicism, and pragmatism. About life and death and memory. About culture, and religion, and family. About jobs and school, work and play. About the local community, the national community, and the global community. About finance, and money, and homes, and retirement, and parenting. About art, and museums, and movies, and music. About rational passion, and green business, and bourgeois capitalists, about suits with blue collars, about oxy morons.
