Safra-Knit

This past Shabbat I smelled gas before candlelighting.  I turned off our gas heater (Yunkers–only for heating and it is already in tye 70s here) and flipped the switch of out gas stove.  In the evening I still smelled gas, but all the windows were open, so I wasn’t worried.

After Shabbat I called our neighbor who is doing renovations and asked if he had been working with the gas on Friday.  He said yes, came right over and turned off the gas.  The smell cleared up immediately, and he said the gas company would be back to fix it on Monday.

This would all be not so interesting in and of itself if it wasn’t for today’s

news story.  This gas canister explosion was 5 doors down from where we live!  We didn’t actually hear the explosion because our building is set in from the street, but we did see and hear the ambulances at 5AM.  My heart goes out to the families of the two people killed, and prayers to the people who were injured.

 

 

I’ve been tagged by A Mother in Israel with the meme about "Tzniut."

 Here are her questions, and my answers

1. For married women, do you dress by the same standards as you did when you got married?
• Not in the least bit…although we were Orthodox, I wore pants and didn’t cover my hair.  The pants went away after a year studying at Pardes. (Pardes is responsible, but in a very non-coercive way). Note: If doing an activity that would be best done in pants, I will–although other than cleaning around the house, I haven’t.
2. Also for married women, do you and your husband conflict about this issue?
• When I wasn’t covering my hair, I knew that he would prefer that I did, but he never pushed the issue–and now that I do but cut it short, sometimes I think he would rather it be long and uncovered
3. Have your standards changed from when you were growing up, and why?
• I wasn’t part of the Orthodox community, so it really isn’t relevant.
4. Do you often feel uncomfortable when you are in the company of a group keeping higher or lower standards than you?
• I think I’m finally comfortable with what and who I am.  I don’t know if it is really the haircovering itself, or the fact that now people can’t make assumptions about me based on my head.  I had some very bad situations before I covered my hair from people who said that why should I feel strongly about religious issue "X" if I don’t even cover my hair.  That type of comment sent me in the other direction for a very long time.
5. If you have ever suddenly changed your standard of dress, did people treat you differently or make approving/disapproving remarks?
• A few "kiruv queens" made comments about how nice my hair looks, and I had one person say "so, you are covering your hair now" (in a not-so-nice tone), but generally people have just left me alone.
6. How accepting is your community of women who "deviate" from the generally accepted mode of dress?
• The range in my community is very broad, and I don’t see any criticism of people for it
7. If you have a daughter, has tzniut become an issue yet?
• Since I started covering my hair, my 6 year old has started commenting that people who don’t cover their hair aren’t religious.  I’ve had to run through the list of our religious friends who don’t cover their hair about a zillion times.  She also seems to forget that it has been less than a year that I have been covering my hair.

 

Anyone that thinks that telling someone they are doing something halichicly wrong will "bring them around" I can say from experience it doesn’t work.  If someone is going to change what they do, it needs to be on their own time frame. 

The name for kindergarten is "Gan Chova" meaning Required Kindergarten.  The year before that is called "Trom Chova."  I always thought it came from the word "LTrom" which means To donate because parents are required to pay for it, while you don’t need to pay for Gan Chova.

 Thanks to  the fact that I do have a few Israeli (ie Native Hebrew Speaking) friends, I found out it comes from the word "Terem" which means Pre (as in Pre-Kindergarten). 

 You learn something new everyday.

 And, while I was checking to see if Terem and Trom are spelled the same way (they aren’t–one has a Tet and the other a Taf), I discovered that on the Jerusalem municipality web page they use Chova (required) and Kedem Chova (pre-required) instead of Chova and Trom Chova.

The best part of this whole discovery, was finding out that my husband had the exact same understanding of it as I did. 

Here is an actual client exchange, and Israeli history lesson for you.

Client: Do you have any films on "Oto Valley"

Me: Ummm…what?

Client: Oto Valish

Me: Could you give me more information…what is that.

Client: It is a person

Me: Do you have any more information?

Client: No, I don’t know who it is.

Me: Nope nothing…sorry.

Postscript: Of course being who I am, I surfed the web (in Hebrew) untill I found "Ota Valish" who designed the Israeli

Declaration of Independance, and designed Israeli stamps. (Nope we still don’t have any films about him.)

 

 

I was saddened to read that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday in New York at age 84. He was one of my favorite writers from a (somewhat) young age. I remember the Librarian (I’m almost positive his name was Tim Holmes, but I can’t find him…) in the small town I where grew up recommending one of his books, but the first time I really became interested in his work was when I bought a used copy of “Cat’s Cradle“. The book had chapters which were very short (one or two pages) and I couldn’t stop reading…I kept saying, just one more chapter.

On the Wikipedia page, Vonnegut himself rates Cat’s Cradle as A plus, and I definitely agree.