A) List 10 honest things about yourself—and make them interesting, even if you have to dig deep!
B) Pass the award on to 7 bloggers whom you feel embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap and whose blogs you find brilliant in design or content.
Here goes. Let's do "A" first, because it is easier to remember it in order.
1. My favorite author is Haim Sabato. IMHO no one in our generation makes a story into pure poetry like he does. (Read The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale, as an example.) It's so good, I want to give it to my rabbi as a present.
2. My greatest mundane angst is the space between now and when I can read The Dawning of the Day in the original Hebrew. It's called Ke'afapey Shachar (Like Eyelids of Dawn). See what I mean about the poetry?
3. My greatest authentic angst is that we don't love each other enough to put aside our pettiness and bring the Moshiach. I don't care if there's a million bucks involved. If it is causing anger between Jews, and delaying the coming of Moshiach, it's petty. Remember Rosh Hashana? No one can take your "fair share" away from you. Hashem decrees on Rosh Hashana exactly how much you will make in the coming year. You can afford to be generous!
4. I love the color turquoise. I would have loved it anyway; but it became a symbol for my creative writer son and me for the forgotten space between white and blak. (This is not a typo.) Turquoise signifies the most appropriate form of joyful compromise between absolutes.
5. I hate that Arabs have made it hard for me to love them. They are the children of Avraham. They have a fascinating and colorful history, music, and culture. They also have a really big chip on their collective shoulder, Biblical in origin. I cannot wave to the workmen crawling all over my yishuv and wish them a good day, because some of them want me and my children dead -- and the silence of the majority makes it so I cannot know who they are, and who are the simple souls grateful for a chance to make a living.
6. Sometimes I am afraid of my love for the gift of my family. Love makes us vulnerable. May Hashem protect each of them, and carry them in the palm of His hand. Bli ayin hara, puh-puh-puh.
7. I used to like to make Peggy Lolas' curls "boing" when we stood in line. It made second grade very trying, for both of us. But it helped me to understand my boys, and to be a better mother to them.
8. I want to be a much better Jew. The only things standing in my way are extreme laziness, a desire for the entertainment of an old time radio story over a Torah lecture, and the fact that I like listening to Gaelic Storm more than nice, healthy Jewish music. Okay -- except for Udi Davidi and Yosef Karduner. Those guys rock the house.
9. I will happily teach Hebrew for free to anyone who hungers for the language as I do... as soon as Hashem gives it to me. I want to communicate with my dear Israeli neighbors with the same ease as I communicate with my English-speaking neighbors. I hope I am not too old or too lazy to fix this.
10. Renting seems very healthy to me. A sense of impermanence gives me more security, strangely, than a false sense of permanence. It reminds me that Hashem runs the world. If He says it's time for us to move (to somewhere else in Israel), then there must be something for us to do somewhere else. This feels safer to me than a false belief that my home can never be taken from me for totally stupid reasons.
Part "B" is harder, because it means that very nice people I like and respect must be imposed upon. Sorry, guys. If you ignore this great "honor," I'll still love your blog.
FYI Honest Tea is a Maryland invention. Just thought I'd give the Alte Heimland a moment of glory. Tasty stuff!
I pass the award on to:
1. Treppenwitz -- both David and Zahava. Honest? Sometimes I want to tell them: "TMI! TMI!" And yet, who can not feel a part of their family, and a part of their experience in Israel, after faithfully reading them since the great "crazy Marine analogy" of 2006? (Is that all the longer it's been, Bogner? We thought we've known you since high school or something.)
2. al tishali oti -- Here is a young woman whom I would love to have as a daughter-in-law. She is spunky, full of joie de vivre, and a great love for Jews and Yiddishkeit. If you want to hear the young, hip religious Jewish voice, check out this blog.
3. I'll Call Baila -- I get a lot of chizuk from Baila, because she is also a new olah, with a good attitude, and teenagers. And she has girls; so from her I get the Venus version.
4. Bat Aliyah -- Full disclosure: This lady happens to be a long-time best friend. (We are pretty certain that if we had gone to elementary school together, the teacher would have been careful to separate us.) A very funny, optomistic person in life, her blog explores her longing for aliyah and the Geula, and her angst that both are taking too damn long.
5. Seraphic Secret -- I am a closet old Hollywood movie junkie. And great writing is my favorite hangout. Besides, he loves his bride absolutely (and I'm a sucker for extreme shalom bayit); and the doorways and shoes are "to die for."
6. Through Josh-Colored Glasses -- My son's blog. Duh! (Besides the obvious, he is a very good writer.) Great stuff about being in the IDF and being a newly-married oleh chadash. Could the average American teenager change his life just a little more drastically???
7. Israel Easy -- If I want to find something to make life in Israel easier or more interesting, this blog allows me the pleasure of learning about goods and services through the wonderful protexia of networking. Suggestion: if you have had a good experience with a service provider in Israel, please post it on this blog. Make life easier for your fellow Jew. It's a mitzvah...
Haveil Havalim #212: The How Many Days till We Can Eat Bread edition, is available for your perusal.
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