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The Teshuva Diet

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Its now been nearly two weeks since I stepped on the large metal scale at my produce market and discovered that I was overweight Until then, I rarely weighed myself.. I didn’t even own a scale because, hey, I wasn’t fat. I wore a small dress size and nothing I owned (except for two skirts that weren’t all that nice anyway) seemed to be too tight. What weight problem? But then came that fateful afternoon when the market was empty and my eight year old son pounced on the scale . Just for fun, I followed him along (not at the same time) discovering, to my horror that I was the fattest I’ve been since puberty.

Yikes. How could that have happened? One of my friends said that the scale was wrong the produce man was a crook. I tried to convince myself of that , but, the produce man . seemed too nice to be doing a Bernie Madoff on his customers, but then again how could I have accumulated so much bulk? Just to be on the safe side, I went to the dietician.and of course she asked me what I had been eating. “Oh nothing too bad,” I mumbled describing the salads, whole wheat toast and fruit and yogurt I had consumed. “Just that” she wondered. I thought for a moment and then I came clean, confessing to her about . those frothy iced coffees at the mall –only on days when I was really wiped out, and the freshly fried chicken cutlets— to get me through Erev Shabbos and those late night cake licking sessions, only the frosting, never the cake. How bad could that be? . None of this could really be called overeating, right?

After that the dietician put me on her scale, an old fashioned doctors office models with the sliding beam and the little metal weights that you adjust by hand. To my horror the beam waved up and down like a lulav when little weight blocks indicated my new high weight. Well, at least I knew that the produce man was honest, but I wasn’t.

Its now almost a week since I’ve stopped fooling myself about food and started in earnest on the new eating plan prescribed by the dietician and it’s tough, not much fun, but all this has got me thinking. Since the body is just the soul’s down wintercoat what about the person who lives inside?. If I’ve been playing games about my eating, what kind of games have I been playing about the rest of my behavior. Quite a few, it seems. Here’s just some of the little lies I’ve been telling myself:

1) the I’m generally just fine. I do such great stuff, visiting the sick, giving people rides, that I’m a shoo in for the Righteous book even if I daydream or sleep my way through the davening.

2) The Loshon Horo Lie . Since I read “Guard Your Tongue” (sometimes) and even own a copy) that exempts me from the sin of evil speech. Yes, I know the rules, but does that mean I don’t break ‘em. Fat chance.

3) The anger lie. Losing it with my kids ( or my spouse) doesn’t really count because everybody does it and beside the bible says its okay. Here’s proof: King Solomon Proverbs Spare the rod and spoil the child and Genesis’s descriptions of the wife: “Helpmate against him”— isn’t that permission to chew out your man every once in a while? Well maybe not, especially if you are out of control..

4) The ingratitude lie- telling myself that teachers and babysitters and cleaning ladies and plumbers and wig stylists don’t need to be thanked for a job well done because they are getting paid for it anyway. Yeah? Is that how you would feel if it were you? And as for volunteers, like family members, they certainly don’t deserve a thank you because they owe it to me considering all the stuff I’d done for them already. Really?

5) Then there is my favorite one– the time wasting lie, — telling myself that tooling around in cyberspace revs up my creative motors. Again…Yeah, really?

And that is only scratching the surface. According to Mrs. Tzipora Heller in Temple times, the Cohanim, the high priests were teshuva therapists– short term only. No long hours on the couch. Just one look and they told where you had messed up and how to fix it. And don’t forget about the leprosy they had back then.. One misstep and KAZAM! a blotch on your wall or flesh. But what are we moderns supposed to do?

I’ve got a solution, not an original idea, and not perfect, but it’s a start. A short cut which I’d like to call the Teshuva Diet. Three short questions to ask myself every day . What did I do right today. When did I do wrong and how am I planning to fix it.

Of course there will be days when I’ll forget but the Teshuva Diet is one small step to a better me the way that each lo cal meal and each iced coffee skipped are small steps to a thinner me.

Since new year is a good time to take on new spiritual practices let this be mine, so that I can fix things as they happen instead of having them blow up on me the way my body just did.

Ketiva VeHatima Tova.

Ayelet Waldman and Me – or – Dear Lord….Do Not Bring me to Challenges and Ordeals.

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My Toughest Jewish Moment.

In my other life—when I’m not being Anxious Ima, I’m a freelance journalist and it isn’t an easy road. Good writing gigs are hard to come by so it was with great delight that I snagged one — interviewing Ayelet Waldman for a top national webzine.

I didn’t know much about Waldman, just that she was a home girl, married to Pulitzer prize winner novelist Michael Chabon and that she’d written a new essay collection intrigningly titled called “ Bad Mother, A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. ” Anxious Ima meets Bad Mother. It sounded so perfect that I got goose bumps just thinking about it.

I emailed the publicist for an advance copy—for free, a journalistic perk and embarked on what started out as a fun, easy read.. Waldman has a good message, that mothers should give up on judging themselves, an engaging style and a wicked sense of humor. Several of the chapters are gems . My personal favorite was the one detailing her nearly superhuman efforts to express breast milk for her newborn cleft palate baby.

Another chapter explores Waldman’s own handicap, hereditary bipolar disorder and its role in her wrenching decision to abort a possibly deformed infant. I know that she’s taken a lot of flack for that, but I wasn’t troubled. In my halachic mind, I sensed ample grounds for a heter, though Waldman didn’t seek one out (she probably never even heard of that option) chosing instead , to confess her “sin” publicly before her reform (Jewish) congregation on Yom Kippur. To my orthodox mind, that was somewhat misguided, a bit odd but not enough reason to make me wish the book had never been published.

It was when Waldman veered into the area of sexuality that I started to wish that censorship would come back into style. True, Waldman lives in Berkeley, not Meah Shearim, but am I the only one out there who thinks that placing a bag of colorful birth control devices in a preteen boy’s medicine cabinet is over the top? And when Waldman gushed about how delighted she would be if one or both of her sons turned out to be homosexual I was about ready to empty the contents of my lunch onto the book.

With gay marriages rapidly becoming legal all over the US map is this the new normal,? I certainly hope not and it certainly isn’t for us orthodox Jews who take their cue from Leviticus 18:22.
Now I had a dilemma. How in the world was I supposed to interview someone who wrote stuff that went against my deepest core values?

I could called Waldman on what I saw as her garbage, but the publication was so left-liberal that raising the red flag of protest, would have most likely resulted in a rejection for my piece. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the risk of alienating this publication. They had given me the best gig I’d gotten the whole year, perhaps in my whole writing life. Wasn’t there a way to do this job and be true to myself and G-d.

A local Rov suggested that I focus on Waldman’s good parts and ignore the bad but I heard a reluctance in his tone, that he didn’t feel good about his advice.

I thought about following his advice and somehow finessing the interview but it just seemed like a whitewash, not the kind of journalism I wanted to do. I wanted to be real but how. Waldman’s book had unleashed an existential crisis in me, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since I was a teen. With grey hairs and wrinkles sprouting each day, I stood in the mirror and asked myself who I really was,—a Yiddishe Mama with a sheitel and black hatted sons in yeshiva or a media hipster? Could I be both? For years, for years I told myself that I could. Now, I was no longer sure it was possible.

With the deadline looming near, I consulted another Rav, a son and nephew of gedolim, sages, who has known me and my family well for years.

“This book espouses views that are anti Torah. Why do you want to have anything to do with it,” he asked. His words got to me, I think because he said them so softly, lovingly without even a drop of condemnation.

Yes of course he is right, I thought feeling that brief flush of joy that our wise men say comes with the resolution of doubts. Then, before I could change my mind, I sent out two emails, one to the publication and the other to Ayelet signing off. No explanation. I couldn’t imagine that any explanation I could give would make any sense to them.

And now I see that the book getting good press all over the media. When I read the reviews my heart sinks a little. No one seems to notice what I noticed.

I’m alone here, like Abraham the Patriarch, looking on from the opposite side of the river with a tear in my eye for Waldman, a talented Jewish woman so far away from her essential soul that she can take a public stand against her Creator without even realizing that she’s done something wrong.

I Think I Owe a Big Thank You to Susie Essman

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I owe a big thank you to Susie Essman. Yes, you read right—Susie Essman, the vulgar fouled mouthed comedienne now staring in the forthcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame documentary “Loving Leah.” Its not because she makes me laugh—believe me, she doesn’t, but Essman reminds me of why I am here and why I want to stay with Yiddishkeit.

When I first started thinking about writing this column, I felt flooded with self pity about how painful my teshuva journey has been. All kinds of unpleasant memories came back— my son being rejected from a yeshiva, my daughter being insulted by the Bais Yaacov principal, my other son getting potsched by his rebbe . No, the frum world hasn’t turned out to be heilige Disneyland I was, in my foolish naiveté searching for not now, but then I watched the YouTube clip of Susie Essman’s interview on the View.

In case you’ve been living Meah Shearim ( probably not a bad choice but then you wouldn’t be online would you) or in a cave, Essman is the star of the television drama “Loving Leah,” the latest media attempt to portray our people are bizarre primitives. “Loving Leah” is actually the story of —get this—a “modern thinking” Hassidic woman, a Lubavitcher ( no, not of the Rivkah Holzberg O”H ilk) who by a strange quirk of circumstance engages in a Levirate Marriage (yibum) with her late husbands secular brother.

And of course, , rather than the brother in law turned husband discovering the delights of the religious life, (that would have been the Artscroll plot) the opposite takes place, with lovely Leah letting her hair down and learning just how lovely it is to be secular, well maybe not quite secular but certainly a little less far frumped than she had been because being too frum is just, well, uncool, almost un-American.

Does everybody read the subplot? We , the uncompromising orthodox, the bnai aliya those of us who see our lives as a pursuit of holiness are a subversive group. Our culture is antithetical to the American way of life (the pursuit of happiness through whichever means suits you) and we need to be put in our place ie: made to seem ridiculous. That is what ‘Loving Leah” is all about..
Read more I Think I Owe a Big Thank You to Susie Essman ›

A Modest Proposal for Ending the Shidduch Crisis (with apologies to Jonathan Swift)

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Over the past few months I’ve started going to a shidduch club. Eshewing the traditional matchmaker model, our club essentially conducts a good natured swap meet for humans, each of us describing one or several singles we know, in the hope that someone listening will come forward with their beshert.

Aside from our fastitidous attention to the laws of proper speech—all singles are described anonymously with a contact person’s phone number to locate them, what I like best about our club is its openness. We handle anyone—and I really mean anyone. Ashkenazi, Sefardi. Litvish, Chassidic, national religious, young, old, short , tall, healthy people and people challenged by physical or mental handicap, even fat people (whom have the hardest time of all) . We like to think that everyone deserves to find his or her beshert and no one is ever turned away.

It is a heady undertaking. When the meeting ends—it takes about two hours in total, I’ve got a notebook full of descriptions of eligibles and strains of Oh Yishama running through my brain.

But then I phone up the Mom’s of singles that I know to “redt” someone I heard about at the meeting and the music in my head abruptly switches off. No one seems to buy what I am trying The answers go something like this:
“No, he’s hassidish (or sefardi or litvish or too young or too old) … Or he/she is too short, small or (worst of all) too heavy. As I put the phone back into the cradle I feel like yelling.. What is going on here??. I feel like yelling. Doesn’t my friend realize that her daughter is thirty five years old.What is she expecting will happen??

Look I’m not naïve. I know that today the Jewish people is a tapestry of diverse groups each with its own subculture, but c’mon….

It isn’t forbidden for an ashkenzi to marry a sefardi or a litvak a hassid or a tall girl to marry a short boy or anyone to marry anyone fat—and unlike ethnicity, weight can be changed.

I”d venture to say that a change in our shidduch mentality would probably promote better health overall. If we readjusted our concept of beauty to include the fuller figure, eating disorders would quickly disappear just as if more ethnic intermarriage would minimize the incidences of Tay Sachs, Guachers and other Ashkenazi genetic scourges.

People who don’t share a common ethnicity( or body type or body size) aren’t necessarily high risk for divorce. Of course, couples need to be attracted and to communicate but people have many different points of contact. A couple may share a love of music or hiking and we all share a common legacy the Torah which provides more than enough to talk about.

This kind is the fuel thinking (he’s too litvish, she’s too fat) is the fuel behind the current much touted shidduch crisis. I know several no longer young women who have been waiting for Mr. ethnically and religiously “right” for so long that they have probably lost their chance to become mothers.

It is especially infuriating to watching my BT friends following their FFB mentors in adapting this narrow minded and self destructive mindset, even more so when one considers that our secular brethren hook up with people from any ethnic or religious background.( although they too are prejudiced against the scale challenged) .

If we want to insure our survival and by that I mean, giving the maximum number of our people a chance to procreate we are going to have to rethink our shidduch choices. Who knows what that may create. Ashkesfards, chassido-litvaks, a new appreciation for the Rubens figure and other interesting developments .Vive la revolution.

Anxious Ima has started a blog at A Thin Thread of Faith.

A Lesson From my Sister

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   She let me know during our Friday afternoon Gut shabbos phone call, the call that I had made to show what a nice sister I was and to ask about the plans were coming along for our Dad’s yahrzeit commemoration.

   â€œ Yitz and I are coming round to the opinion that women shouldn’t be at the grave” .

   What?????? Her tone was so casual, I wondered if she even realized that she’d thrown a bomb of verbal dynamite in my direction.

   Her words threw me off balance, causing my whole body to tense up; every muscle morphed into petrified wood.

   She went on, talking apparently oblivious to my reaction.

   â€Yitz says that the seforim say that when women come to the grave the soton dances on the kever and Mom said that in Europe women never went to the grave..”

   I tried to take it all in—all that I’d just heard —that it was wrong for me to go to my Dad’s grave…. And that by going I’d be inflicting damage onto his soul and and violating family custom—a family custom I’d never even knew our family had.

   â€Gut Shabbos,” I murmured in a shaky voice, putting the receiver quickly before I’d have a chance to say something I’d later regret. My body was thawing out and the shock was turning to anger.

   â€œWhere did she get her nerve ,” I asked myself. “ We aren’t hassidim. We never held this….Why is she putting this on me, this humra, I never heard of before.” .

   In the rational spots in my brain, I knew that my sister wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was a ba’alas teshuva, a newbie in the strictly orthodox world as were my brother in law and myself. Most likely she’d read something or heard something in a lecture or a conversation that had put this idea into her head, and now she couldn’t get it out. Caballistic customs especially as they relate to death are scary, even spooky.

   In her reckoning, the vision of a dancing Soton weighed more heavily than feelings at Yahrzeit time. But the question was, what about me? Did I have to go along with it too?

   With just minutes left to candle lighting, I phoned my Rov. Thank G-d for my Rov, a Talmid Chochum, an FFB, with uninterrupted generations of frumkeit flowing in his veins, wise, kind, and accessible. The Ribono Shel Olom must have been rooting for me because he picked up right away.

   â€œYes,” he said, “There is such a custom… the Vilna Gaon did hold that way but that isn’t the majority opinion especially not in the US.” And then he added. “My sisters visit my father’s grave. It’s fine for you to go.”

   â€œIt’s not a simple thing, taking on a new custom,” my Rov added. “It really requires a lot of thought.”

   Hearing my Rov made me feel strong, as if the ground had been restored beneath my feet. I would go to the Yahrzeit proudly, without ambivalent, vaguely guilty feelings, do what I needed to do and let my sister and brother in law do their own thing.

   In many ways we are similar, my sister and I, both BTs, both determined to get everything right in our Yiddishkeit, but sometimes, we can get carried away in our zeal to apply things we’ve learned.

   I once heard Rav Reisman talk about how he as a bochur had taken on his Rebbe Rav Pam z’l’s humra of not using hot water for dish washing on Yom Tov. Then when he married, he asked his Rebbe whether to continue. “Ask your wife, “ he was told . Predictably, the new Rebetzin was unenthusiastic about facing Yom Tov with a freezing sink and so the humra went by the wayside in favor of the larger goal of Shalom Bayis.

   That anecdote carries a big lesson, of putting people before pieties. Hazal tell us that circumstances don’t just come into our life randomly; they are set up by G-d as spurs to our growth. So rather than using this particular incident to nurse a grudge—which is of course contrary to halacha, I will try to grow from it, to remind myself that in my zeal to climb the ladder to heaven, I must be sensitive and take care not to trample the guy (or gal) on the rung below.

Postscript: I went to the cemetery on the Yahrzeit and my sister wasn’t there, but it was fine.