Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

The felicity of freedom

Jen

I do not feel connected to Israel’s independence, nor America’s.

My heart does not swell enough on Yom HaAtzmaut, nor does it burst with pride on July 4th.

I am neither a loyal patriot nor a faithful expat.

I

am

clearly

a spoiled brat.

Or a heartless wench.

One or the other.

If I were put on the spot and asked why I am so numb when it comes to celebrating freedom, I’d choose spoiled brat.

Entitlement is what happens when you have always had something come easy and come free.

My freedom has always been free. And you are less likely to celebrate what you have always gotten for free.

If my freedom was a gift only to the 1000th citizen born on every third year — like a raffle or a supermarket prize — maybe I would jump up and down for joy.

If my freedom was a surprise miracle in a barren wasteland — like Sarah conceiving Isaac in her old age or a lone soaptree yucca surviving the desert heat of Death Valley — maybe then I would thank God in silent prayer.

If my freedom was one true thing in a sea of falsities — like my breath, like my love for my children — perhaps then I would weep tears of gratitude.

But my freedom is free.

And my freedom has never come with strings attached.

And my freedom will be here tomorrow, or so my entitled mind tells me.

We only know what we know.

And so therefore, on the 4th of July or any other day I choose, I must stop.

Pause.

Acknowledge.

The good fortune with which I was born.

The grace of good men and good women who do not know the life I know.

The felicity of FREEdom.

Family, Letting Go, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Mindfulness, Parenting, Uncategorized

I wasn’t always like this

Jen

A well-thought out middle name is an underused tool.

My middle name should be “in progress.”

Jen In Progress.

In my case, In Progress would remind me to be compassionate, to others, but mostly to myself.

Mother In Progress

Wife In Progress

Friend In Progress

It would remind me that I will always be a novice no matter how expert I might become at a skill or a task.

Employee In Progress

Coworker In Progress

Marketing Goddess In Progress

It would remind me that self-expression is a gift wrapped in complicated responsibility

Writer In Progress

Coach In Progress

Community leader In Progress

And that how I define myself is as temporary as it is permanent

Jew In Progress

Israeli In Progress

Kibbutznik In Progress

If my middle name was In Progress, every time I made a serious decision, committed myself to a long term action plan, said Yes or said No, I would acknowledge that I am doing so with the purest of intentions as well as the greatest of uncertainties.

That I am always “in progress” means that I may always forgive myself.  I may always start over. I may always assume that tomorrow will be better.

Even when it’s not.

In Progress reminds me to be in motion. To repair that which I may have broken. To rediscover the gratitude I may have misplaced. To reignite the passion I have let wane.

To progress.

To journey.

To grow.

Uncategorized

How do you say Grinch in Hebrew?

Jen

The freak storm has almost passed.

And while I’m still huddling in front of our wood-burning stove like a Depression era bum, the moody hail-filled clouds have moved on to harass someone else.

My house still stands.

The big one at least.

house

Sure, it’s covered in wall-to-wall mud.

Sure our boots and winter jackets line the floor of my hallway.

But it’s here, planted on solid ground. Not upside down; not on top of a smushed witch in Kansas.

And we have power. And internet connection.

All is well.

And I will be a good gracious little girl. I will not begrudge my friends in Jerusalem their snowman-building pleasures.

Or my friends in Neve Daniel their snow day.

Photo by Laura Ben David on @instagram
Photo by Laura Ben David on @instagram

I won’t gripe out loud that it’s not fair that you get to spend your day making snow angels and sipping choco, while I have to spend mine behind the computer working or behind the Israeli version of a mop doing sponga.

mud

Nope, I won’t moan or groan or say how unfair it is. (As if Jerusalem doesn’t already have big malls, natural food stores, a good public transportation, and the blessing of God. Now you get SNOW?)

Nope. I’m happy for you guys.

Really, I am.

I’ll prove it. Post links to your pics below. I want to revel in your snow joy!

Community, Middle East Conflict, Politics, Uncategorized

An understanding heart

Jen

Do you remember where you were during the September 11 attacks in the United States?

Do you remember where you were during the Holocaust?

Think now to how you relate to the victims of the 9/11 attacks compared to how you relate to the victims of the Holocaust.

If you are an American under the age of 60, it’s more likely that you knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone, that was personally impacted by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 than someone who was personally impacted by the Holocaust.

If you didn’t know someone affected personally by 9/11 you’re lucky, but perhaps you used to work in the World Trade Center, or you interned one summer at the Pentagon. Maybe you visited New York on a field trip once. Or your boyfriend had a friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald.

Or maybe you’re American and you watched the whole thing go down minute-by-minute on television.

Most likely, the tragedy of 9/11 is a lot more real to you than the Holocaust. And no matter how many times you see Schindler’s List or The Pianist; no matter how many times you try to wrap your mind around the horror of the Holocaust; and no matter how many times you try to imagine “what would I have done if that was me?”; it’s really challenging to personally connect to the tragedy.

Jewish or not.

It’s not a matter of compassion. It’s a matter of reality.

Philosophers, psychologists, scientists, and Zen masters  have spent their entire lives, their entire careers, debating what’s real. Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, the Dalai Lama.

But for those of us on the ground, what’s real is what we know.

The closer we get to knowing something or someone, the more real it becomes.

I became present to this very human phenomenon over the past few days as I processed two horrific tragedies — the terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and the shooting of movie-goers in a theater in Aurora, Colorado.

I wrote soon after the attacks in Bulgaria that for the first time I felt personally frightened by an act of terror on Israelis. Whereas before, as a Jew living in the States (and as a human being), I had always felt sorrow and compassion when Israelis were killed in terror attacks, I never felt it in my gut the way I did on Wednesday.

Fellow olah, Marina Boykis, takes a little heat in the comments section of her post on the Times of Israel for expressing something similar. For her, the reality hit when she found out she knew personally a victim of the Bulgaria terror attack.

She writes:

When you personally know a terror victim, the icky feelings stay long after their story has been told. The thoughts don’t leave you because you quickly understand that it could have been a family member or close friend. That it could have even been you and your boyfriend on the way to a long-awaited vacation.

Rebounding after a tragedy is deeply rooted in our human instinct for survival. But the closer to home a tragedy hits, the harder it is to rebound.

I felt equal amounts of horror in response to the two attacks this week, and yet I was painfully aware — on Facebook and on Twitter — that the majority of the people I know (mostly Americans), expressed greater public empathy for the victims of Aurora.

I understand this.

I understand how it’s easier to feel complete and utter horror when you hear that an innocent American citizen was gunned down simply because she wanted to catch the premiere of a Batman movie.

I understand how disturbing it is to hear about a seemingly random attack on seemingly normal folks in a movie theater in a suburb of Denver, Colorado.

Aurora is a suburb just  like the one you live in. Those people were holding popcorn settling into a movie you saw the same night with your teenage son. The mourners look like you. They’re sobbing over their sister, their boyfriend, their wife: Alex, Matt, John, Jessica.

Not like the mourners in Israel crying over victims with foreign sounding names — Itzhik, Amir, Maor, Elior, Kochava. Names you can’t even pronounce.

Not like the victims of Israel’s tragedy — people who lived in towns a world away from where you live.  Who were visiting a country you’ve never heard of, let alone considered vacationing in.

I understand this.

And, from the bottom of my heart, I don’t judge this.

But as someone who now understands Israeli reality (though not yet as well as I understand American reality), I am that much closer to understanding how the Israeli victims of terror were just like the Aurora victims of terror. They weren’t victims of war. They were innocent victims, plain and simple.

The Israeli victims were also doing something regular people do: They were on their summer vacation. They were giggling with excitement imagining the hot steamy sex they were about to have on their couples only romantic getaway — the first one since the baby was born. They couldn’t stop thanking their lucky stars they snagged such a great package deal complete with fruity drinks on the beach.

That morning, they had checked off all the items from their packing list before they left the house. Did they have their passport, camera, heart medication? They had printed out the “While We’re Away” list for the doting grandparents taking care of the baby. They had turned on their “out of the office” notification in Microsoft Outlook.

They’re as close to being real to me as the folks in Aurora.

I understand how my American friends may more easily relate to shooting victims in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater than to the victims of the terrorist attack on Israelis in Bulgaria

With my heart, I understand. And I pray that neither you nor I ever come close to experiencing the reality that is knowing someone who knows someone who has been the victim of a senseless attack on innocent victims.

With my heart, I pray neither ever becomes truly real.

Culture, Family, Kibbutz, Letting Go, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Parenting, Spirituality, Uncategorized

Unwound

Jen

A friend of mine moved from NJ to Guam with her husband and two boys a few months before we decided to make Aliyah. On Facebook, I followed her move and her family’s transition with interest, particularly once we decided we were moving to Israel.

Despite what I assume must be vast differences in culture and landscape between Guam and Israel, I often find myself nodding in agreement and understanding when I read Shelley’s posts. (This could also have much to do with our common interests in holistic parenting and healthy eating, as well.)

There is, I’ve realized, companionship in leaving the busy American suburbs, the busy American life, for the “outskirts.”

Today Shelley wrote, “There are times when I miss living in the States with all of its modern conveniences, but then there are days like yesterday when I never want to leave our little bubble in Guam.”

I know exactly what she means.

Except our bubble is not Israel, per say, as Israel is no island paradise: She possesses as much hassle, aggravation, and overstimulation as any developed country.

My bubble is Kibbutz Hannaton, the small 120-or-so family Lower Galilee community in which we live. And a sub-bubble of Hannaton is my little red house with green shutters.  And yet another sub-bubble is my little work enclave of former Americans whom allow me eight hours a day to pretend I still live and work in the U.S.

But the true sub-bubble is the one I created for myself with intention last December when I  chose not just to live somewhere different, but to live differently.

I often tell people (in fact, I did so just yesterday during lunch) that our successful “absorption” here is due in large part to the community in which we chose to live: one made up of young, growing families like our own. One where friendships are only now being formed…because the community is still new and finding itself. So, despite being different, we still somehow fit in.

But I also credit our successful transition to the conscious lifestyle changes we, as a family unit, decided to make in conjunction with our move.

In addition to many of the comforts we gave up — the modern conveniences Shelley mentions in her post — we also gave up our attachments to what we knew up until then as the “right way to live” in the hopes that we might find happiness living another way.

One modern convenience I gave up was information overload.

I was (and still am in many ways) an information addict. My understanding up until recently was that with more information comes more control…over my own life…over what happens to me and to my kids. My understanding was that information made me safer; made my life easier. This is why I easily fell in love with the Internet, email, blogs, Facebook. And, to some extent all those modern conveniences have improved my life. But what I’ve discovered, retroactively, was how much they also controlled my life.

I had a really good excuse for feeding my addiction; addicts always do. I was a business owner. A writer. A blogger. My success depended on my communication with the outside world. I needed to check check check…all the time. Who knew when the next big opportunity, client or connection would land in my inbox? At the height of my addiction, I had six different email addresses, four blogs, two Facebook profiles, three Fan Pages, a LinkedIn and two Twitter accounts to manage. Not to mention those I managed for my clients. 

I also had kids with asthma and allergies. I had unexplained chronic illness of my own. I had an acute awareness that with more information about the world around me, the greater chance I had of healing myself and healing them. Information provided answers. Tools. Connections to the right people. How could I give up information? 

I also consciously understood that my information interface, so to speak, was possibly unhealthy.  Which made for a bit of a contradiction.

Despite my awareness that my commitment to my online personas (and to my business and clients) was likely impacting my real-life relationships with my husband and my kids, I persisted.  Despite the fact that my comments on your “feed” may have been keeping me from experiencing real, waking, daily pleasures, I couldn’t shut down. I couldn’t give it up. I couldn’t walk away from it.

Until I started walking away from it. Taking baby steps. That started once my feet touched ground in Israel.

As I said, my information withdrawal began first with an intention. But I followed through with an action: I purposefully did not register my Blackberry here in Israel. I got myself a regular old cellphone with a regular old phone call plan. No emails, no SMS packages. My husband did not register his IPhone either which was a HUGE shocker for me because my husband loves his IPhone more than I love information. Or, at least, equally as much.

Just this simple choice, along with the decision not to purchase Cable TV made a great impact on the quality of our lives in the first few months we lived here.  We quickly adjusted to checking emails only on our computer (remember when you used to do that?) and our kids spent more time outside and not in front of the TV than they had ever in their lives.

And that was nice for a while. I’d like to say that we remained unplugged, but we didn’t. A few months in, we used Hebrew immersion as an excuse to sign up for basic cable. The kids still only watch a portion of what they used to. (I haven’t watched an episode of the evening news or any sitcom, save for Israel’s Ramzor.)

A few months after that, my husband bought a new IPhone, much to my dismay, and I often find him face down fingering the thing with pleasure. That said, it only takes one semi- dirty look from me for him to put the thing down when the kids are asking him a question (repeatedly) and his finger keeps methodically sliding across the little touchpad as if it’s in a trance. He also gave up TV and for the first time in many years I can now find him in bed in the evenings reading e-books on the Nook. 

Once I got a full-time job, they handed me a Smartphone with my work email configured, but amazingly, without the unspoken expectation that I be attached to it 24-7. And I like that. I like that a lot.

Despite the reintroduction of information overload devices, my information withdrawal continues. I didn’t configure my personal email into to my new phone. I never check my work email after I leave the office or on the weekend. And I have found as the months pass, I check my personal email less and less often: Sometimes going as much as 2-3 days without checking. People who were used to hearing from me immediately would write back after only hours asking me, “Where are you? Did you get my email?”

Sure, I am still on Facebook. It’s my lifeline to friends and family who didn’t follow me to Israel. But I’m hardly on Twitter; have no interest in this new thing called Google Plus. Sometimes, I even find it difficult to motivate myself to blog. I find that at the end of the day, after working and spending time with my family, I prefer to walk and then to read. And then to sleep.

Yesterday, I discovered my main personal email account was down. I had forgotten to pay the web host for a month or two and they shut my account down temporarily. People reached out to me via Facebook or SMS asking me what happened to my email. Why were mails being bounced back?

At first I panicked that my email was down, “What if someone is trying to reach me??” But my panic lasted only a minute. Soon after, the feeling transformed into freedom.

I realized I had passed over the hurdle of my information addiction. I was now able to say no. To be without. To let go. In particular, I wasn’t worried about what I had missed or would miss over the day or so the email account would be down. I wasn’t worried about what people might think when they received their emails returned, unread.  In fact, I decided right then and there to pare down all my email accounts, returning only to one. One that I may or may not check during the day.

This is not to say I’m unplugging completely. Or that I will ever really be able to fully walk away from easy access information. There is no guarantee that this represents a permanent recovery from information addiction. But it certainly indicates a big step in the right direction.

I think I’ve developed a taste for something new.

Being here. Being present. Absorbing today. Still with an eye on tomorrow, but with a good solid foot planted in today.

Culture, Food, Uncategorized

Will Israel Wake Up to Food Allergies?

Jen

((Originally posted on The Jerusalem Post blogs on July 22, 2011. I ask you to please pass on to your Israeli friends.))

Yesterday, while swimming at the pool with my kids, my friend Daniella called me over to ask me if I heard about the girl who died from an allergic reaction in Tel Aviv.
 
Immediately my heart leapt into my throat.
 
No, I said. What happened?
 
Daniella told me what she understood from the story and the blanks were filled in later when I got home and googled “Girl dies from nut allergy in Israel.”
 
In my mind, the girl was young, like my son, but in reality she was a young adult; independent and out for a night with her young friends. Presumably, she did everything right. She asked the waiter if there were nuts in the Belgian waffle dessert she ordered, including Nutella, a popular hazelnut-based chocolate spread. According to testimonies from her friends, the waiter told her there was not.
 
And so she ate it.
 
It’s a choice each food allergic individual and the individuals who parent kids with food allergies have to make each and every day.
 
Do we live in a bubble or do we venture out into a dangerous world and do our best to keep ourselves safe?
 
I don’t know if the woman had an epi-pen on her or if it was used. The details are missing from the story. I do know that we insist that my 8 ½ year old son carried a green canvas Steve’s backpack with him wherever he goes: to school, to camp, to a friend’s house, to the migrash, to restaurants, to sleepovers at his Saba and Savta’s. Some people have indicated they think it’s excessive. I worry it might someday be a lifesaver for him.

Inside the small pack is his “epi pen pack” a plastic bag with two pens of epinephrine, Benadryl and an instructions note that indicates his allergens (peanuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and hazelnuts) and potential reactions to recognize.
 
Despite this visible reminder and verbal requests to keep him safe by keeping him away from nuts, I’m amazed at how often people forget. Or perhaps they don’t forget, but they don’t think that his allergy (or any food allergies) are truly life threatening.
 
I don’t know why, exactly, but Israelis, on the whole, do not take his food allergies seriously. This is in stark contrast to the States, where more and more parents are toting epi-pens as accessories.
 
In the weeks leading up to our aliyah, I anxiously researched schools and communities, but not so much to learn about education or teaching styles, rentals or housing markets. No, the most important information I needed to find had to do with food. And I was dismayed to find out that food allergy awareness, while growing, is still something that is not only severely lacking in Israel, but blatantly off the radar of important government officials and in schools.
 
I was shocked to find there was no school nurse on site to administer an epi-pen should my son need it. (We had to train him how to administer it himself.) I was shocked to find out that unlike in the States where there is some regulation on labeling, in Israel there was none; instead manufacturers slap everything with a “May contain traces of nuts, sesame, or gluten” label in order to avoid liability issues, leaving our food allergic children with no true concept of what they can and cannot eat from the packaged food selection.

Worse yet for us, my two kids with allergies react to nuts and sesame, I daresay two of Israel’s “national” foods.
 
I was not surprised to find out that parents here still served peanut butter-smothered Bamba at every childhood function, from birthdays to Yom Hatzmaut. But I was devastated to learn that most bread products in Israel, including pita, pizza and challah, are covered in sesame; and most ice cream and candy are swimming in nuts, from pesek-zman to kit kats.
 
Nothing terrifies me in this country more than the risk my children face when they eat outside their home.
 
Not terrorism, not kassam rockets, not enemy infiltrations into my small Northern community.
 
No, nuts and sesame scare me a whole lot more.
 
We’re doing what we can to try to eliminate our fear and to continue to empower our children to speak out about their food allergies. To make sure they ask adults to help them when we’re not around. To engage their friends in protecting them by keeping away from them their food allergens. Some of it’s working. I saw it yesterday at the pool when my son’s 5-year-old friend told him to stay away from his sesame covered sandwich.
 
But what can we do when we continue to find ourselves in situations where Israelis pooh-pooh food allergies; even when our child speaks up and requests assistance? Our son has been told by teachers and camp counselors that a food product does not contain nuts without reading the label. When he insists they read the label, they insist back that it’s “fine for him.” This is unconscionable.
 
This is contrary to what we have spent 6 years teaching our son and, while these laid back adults don’t mean my son harm, they do likely think, “Ze lo big deal.” But, I assure you, it is a big deal.
 
I’m sorry to say it, but somewhere in that café in Tel Aviv, someone thought “ze lo big deal” and a woman died. Or someone wasn’t thinking at all.
 
If we, as a country, can take so seriously the issues of kashrut labeling on our foods, we can and should take life threatening allergies just as seriously, if not more.
 
I’m seeing more awareness of Celiac disease in Israel and noticing more gluten free foods popping up even in the mainstream markets. This is great. But it’s just a baby step. In North America, there are eight common food allergens: fish, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, wheat, eggs, soy, with sesame and corn following close behind. And while there are studies that Israeli children seem to be less susceptible to peanut allergies than their Jewish American counterparts, considering the influx of their Jewish American counterparts as new olim to Israel, I suggest that Israel wakes up and starts treating this as a serious issue.
 
What do I mean by that?

1. Start by regulating labeling in the food industry. Require strict guidelines on food labeling and differentiate between CONTAINS and is PREPARED ON EQUIPMENT WITH. The government should monitor this labeling.

2. Hold restaurants accountable for what they serve their customers. Educate restaurant owners about the life threatening nature of food allergies. Some restaurant chains in the US have started preparing and offering food allergy versions of their menus so that guests can know which foods contain what.

3. Be closely in touch with FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network), a US non-profit that has already made great strides in both creating awareness and supporting parents of food allergic children by creating local and regional support groups.

4. Educate ganim and school staff on the seriousness of food allergies. Suggest they incorporate food allergy awareness into their “diversity” and “good citizenship” programs. Bullying and teasing of food allergic kids is on the rise. 
Right now, there is no magical cure for food allergies. And even worse, the numbers of food allergic children are on the rise. (That’s a blog post in and of itself; if you want to get started, check out AllergyKids.com or read my friend Robyn O’Brien’s book The Unhealthy Truth.)
 
As Naama Katzir from the food allergy advice and counseling association says in the YNet story on the tragic death this week, “The Health Ministry has sadly been dragging its feet for over three years and is tarrying over launching regulations for the marking of food products. Over the last few years there have been a vast number of harsh allergic reactions, mainly with children. Sadly both cases ended like this tragic case – in death.”
 
Does Israel need another tragic death to wake up to a growing public health concern?
 
This very frightened mother of two Israeli food allergic children hopes and prays the answer is no.