Balabusta in Blue Jeans

Teaching--It's Not A 'Privilege'

2012-01-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

A friend draws my attention to this:

When I send my children off to school in the morning I expect a few things to happen:

1) They should have fun at school

2) They should feel inspired and challenged

3) They should be allowed to explore their passions

Is that too much to ask! I don’t want to hear why my second grader needs to take benchmark exams (which are more like midterm exams you take in college), simply because you want your school scores to test high so that you can receive more state funding. This is not why I send them to school and this is not the definition of teaching. If you have teachers who love to teach and do their job well… then get the hell out of their way and let them teach. If you have lousy teachers who do the bare minimum then fire them before they taint the minds of our children. An education is the right of every child, but teaching those children is a privilege.

My Question: If a doctor doesn’t do her job well and harms her patients she loses her license. So, why don’t the teachers who harm the education of our children lose their licenses?

First, this person seems to have her blame leveled at several different people in this short piece. A classroom teacher does not decide if a second grader needs to take benchmark exams, or whether it would be better to have them learn with all their senses by doing a great unit on butterflies. So the 'why does my kids have to take the exam, just so you dumbos can get EVEN MORE state funding for your free public school' whine really has nothing whatsoever to do with the teachers. Or the administrators, in most cases. This is a state- and federal-level fight here.

However, Mrs. High Expectations also seems to have absorbed the popular fantasy that the real problem in schools is bad teachers who somehow cannot be removed from the classroom. Hence the coy little whine about how doctors who are bad doctors lose THEIR jobs. (No, chica, that's not actually true. Even doctors who kill their patients usually settle through their malpractice insurance. You have to screw up more than a second-grade teacher generally does to lose a medical license.)

But never mind. This is someone who wants her kids to have a great school experience, and she wants everyone who's not contributing to to that out of the way, and as someone who hopes for her own future kids to have a good school experience, I can relate, and I'll keep my own thoughts about 'bad teachers', and what that really means for another day.

What I'm looking at is the 'privilege' statement.

Look, as someone who just spent eight years in education, and is now bailing, it's hard in some ways to say that teaching is not a privilege, if by 'privilege' we mean something special and wonderful that not everyone gets a chance to do. By that standard, many professions are privileges, as are many life experiences.

However, it is relatively rare for someone to write a blog post telling their doctor that practicing medicine is a privilege. They may tell their doctors that they are crappy doctors, or that they're getting sued, or that they're miserable excuses for human beings, but even pediatricians don't get the 'but taking care of my children is a privilege' nonsense nearly as much as teachers. (I am reminded of Brendan Behan, commenting on how people always remind you that 'a priest is a worker too'. He points out that people rarely feel the need to remind you that a ditch-digger is a worker too.)

This is because 'privilege' when we talk about teachers usually has other subtexts. It means "You're getting paid too much." It means "I blame you for my child's problems." It means "I blame you for our school district's decisions." It means "You're a Madonna or a dirtbag, depending on how I feel about my child's educational experience this week." It means, "I read online somewhere that teachers are getting paid $50,000.00 to sit in offices in New York because there's something wrong with the union there."

Teaching is not a privilege. It is a job. It is a moderately paid, highly responsible, extremely difficult job. If you do not like the job your child's teacher is doing, do something about it. Do what my friend Drora recently did, and get you kid transferred to someone else's classroom. Talk to the teacher. Engage politically, and find out WHY the second-grade teacher has to teach to the test, and what would happen to her in your district if she declined. But do not stand there and simper about how privileged teachers are, and how grateful they should be for the opportunity to do the job they were trained for.

Batoks and Stuffed Calimari

2012-01-16T15:40:00.000-08:00

I watch a lot of cooking reality shows. Love 'em. "Hell's Kitchen, "Master Chef", "Top Chef", and "America's Worst Cooks" are all regulars on my Hulu list. But I'm often pulled up short by issues that come up on the show with contestants whose religious backgrounds conflict with the foods expected to be eaten on the show.

One of the contestants on a past season of "Master Chef" was Hindu, and had never eaten, much less cooked with, the incessant meats that feature on the show. Sheetal finally had to kill a Dungeness crab on the show, describing her decision to do so (and forgoing Chef Ramsay's offer to do it for her) as 'growing up a little'. Joe Bastianich even reassured her that the crab was happy to give up its life for her dish. I was, to be honest, a little aghast at everyone except Ramsay, who offered what he, at least, thought was a good solution. Killing the Buddha has a good commentary on the episode here, by Jessica Miller.

This season, "Worst Cooks In America" has Joshy, a young Jewish guy who was raised frum, and appears to have gone off the derech. His confusion about different cuts of pork seems to baffle his fellow contestants (how can you not recognize bacon instantly?), and his disgust over trayf seafood is apparent. He eats it, but he grabs a bite and swallows as quickly as possible. On the most recent episode, he has to stuff calimari.

I suppose that everyone who signs up for one of these things knows what they are in for, and the subsequent bafflement about people who don't know from bacon and have qualms about killing animals is par for the course, but it does rather annoy me. "No food is off limits to a CHEF!" Chef Ann announced in a recent episode of "America's Worst Cooks", and in the calimari episode, people were pushed to cook with foods they don't care for, or find challenging. Here's the thing though: the food on these shows never challenges the cultural assumptions of the assumed 'mainstream' participants. I have yet to see a show in which these aspiring chefs are encouraged to create or eat a batok, to do anything with insects, to cook with dog (for which I am, personally, profoundly grateful), or horse (ditto) That would be gross, disturbing, and (since mainstream food taboos are upheld by law as well as custom, making them even more invisible), probably illegal. (Mind you, I'm not complaining about this.) Food like this is saved for others shows, "Man Eats World", or "Fear Factor".

I don't know why they don't do a vegetarian version of one of these shows. In the meantime, at least a little awareness would be charming. Chef Ann comments several times that Joshy is agitated during the calimari episode. Well, honey, it's pretty obvious why. Would it kill you to say, at least, "Joshy is working with food he has strong religious/cultural taboos against, and he's doing pretty good?"

Resoluting

2011-12-31T23:50:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time of year, and I am embarking on a diet.

It has to happen. For a number of reasons it has to happen. But I am not happy about it. Back pain and recurrent tendonitis is going to make it hard to make exercise a part of this. It ain't gonna be fun.

I'll keep you all informed.

In more cheerful resolutions, I plan to make this the year that I learn Hebrew as a speaking language, rather than a reading-Tanach language.

I'll also keep you all informed about that.

And writing. Lots and lots of writing.

Chanukah: Not a Commodity

2011-12-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

My own personal war on Christmas was posted to Facebook by a friend of mine who seems to find it funny. I tried, and failed, and I don't think it's entirely due to my general hostility toward the Daily Kos.

No. It just falls flat. What's more, it feels like appropriation of the most unconscious sort--using Chanukah as some sort of shorthand for "Oh, wow, I know that not everyone is a Christian, I'm kind of amazing. Many Gentiles are not as hip and cool as me. I live on the West Coast."

I wanted to like this, if only for the sake this snippet: But what really concerns me? In a couple of nights, that strange candelabra is going to be completely full. I have no idea what's going to happen the night after that. It's almost like a countdown of sorts. I think the storm is coming. And I'm afraid.

That actually made me laugh out loud. But the jab about 'our special relationship with Israel' spoiled it.

Beannachtaí an tSéasúir

2011-12-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

Blessings of the season to all of my readers!

The Houses of Hogwarts

2011-09-11T01:04:00.000-07:00

This child is being steretyped before school even begins.

A remarkable number of people in the world today can readily tell you what house they would belong to at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. One of the core organizing principles of Harry Potter's alma mater is the 'sorting' of students into four houses, generally distinguished by the characteristics the students in each are supposed to exemplify.*

Identifying oneself as a Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff may be highly amusing for an adult who wishes to knit a Quidditch scarf, but it's one of the worst pedagogical ideas I've ever heard. In the highly unlikely event that I am ever tapped to fill the shoes of such luminaries as Phyllida Spore, Newton Scamander and Albus Dumbledore--should I ever, in short, become Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, I plan to dismantle the entire system.** The Sorting Hat will be going to a museum. Students will be assigned to their house by a random system modified to avoid any child attending the house his parents were in.

First off, there is this business of entrusting the placement of these ickle Firsties to the Sorting Hat. Exactly what the Sorting Hat's degree of sentience is isn't clear. It was supposedly enchanted by Godric Gryffindor, the founder of Gryffindor House, and may be the rough magical equivalent of the sorting quizzes now found online, where a handful of leading questions about your personality and preferences will place you in one group or another. Worse, I suspect from its conversation with Harry that it is essentially placing children where they think they belong, in the house their parents were in, or the one that appeals to them most.

However, even if the hat is gifted with more insight than I give it credit for, as an educator, I find the system problematic the extreme. The houses live together, eat together, play only with one another on sports teams, and attend classes in groups. They are able to speak to people in other houses, and make friends across house lines, but their grouping controls a great deal of who they will spend time with during their formative years at Hogwarts. And they're being put with people who are just like them.

Think about this. There is no roommate from whom a Ravenclaw can learn that a B on a test does not mean the world is ending. There is no one to suggest to a Hufflepuff that a leadership position might suit them after all. There's certainly no one to say 'perhaps you're going to develop into a different sort of person than you thought'. Everyone has been typecast at the door by the Sorting Hat, and they're going to STAY typecast, because at Hogwarts, who you are in the sixth grade is who you're going to be for the rest of your life.

The problem with the house system at Hogwarts becomes clearest, though, looking at the situation in Slytherin. Slytherin's defining characteristic is supposedly ambition ("by that sin fell the angels", ya know), but students from all the houses demonstrate ambition, and aiming high is considered a fairly ordinary thing at a school which educates the elite of the wizarding world. I'd add, as well, that the Slytherins we see generally don't appear to be particularly cunning or 'ambitious'. Mostly, with the exception of the unfortunate Draco Malfoy, who does his best to imitate his father's style, they seem be dimwitted bullies, or sullen spiteful types. They may be suck-ups, but they're not very charming suck-ups.

I don't know how Salazar Slytherin's early plan of teaching only ambitious pure-bloods used to work out, but by the time of the Harry Potter books, the house has become a dumping ground for children already at risk of going rotten. They are evidently mostly students who are from homes where their parents also went through Hogwarts in Slytherin, and they are disproportionately the children of Death Eaters, and those who sympathize with them. They are also likely to be from families preoccupied with the purity of their wizarding blood, and bigoted against mixed-blood and Muggle-born wizards and witches.

Socially speaking, taking all of these children and concentrating them in a single house together is a recipe for disaster. Students at Hogwarts are encouraged to take their identity from their house, and show loyalty to it. This is problematic in the other houses, for all the reasons identified above, but in Slytherin it it is simply tragic. Rather than seeing that there is a broader world, in which blood is unimportant, and Voldemort, far from being a hero, is a murderer of other people's parents, in which people cooperate as well as compete, the Slytherins are put in a setting where everything they have been taught at home is reinforced.

It's not surprising that 'there isn't a witch or wizard that went bad that wasn't in Slytherin', and a fair amount of the blame for that needs to go to Hogwarts' ridiculous system of sorting into houses. Given how long this has been going on for, the reign of the Sorting Hat could, in fact, be considered a significant factor in the rise of Voldemort and the continued loyalty of the Death Eaters over a generation.

It is an AWFUL idea, and in the final pages of the series, you see the process beginning all over again. Oh, sure, Harry assures his son that Slytherin isn't so bad as all that, invoking poor old Snape's name (Snape, another victim of Slytherin BTW), but you know the damn sorting hat is going to read little Albie's deepest wishes and yell "GRYFFINDOR", while little Scorpius goes to Slytherin, and it will all start all over again.

NOTES:

*For those of you who live under rocks, I shall quickly sum up: Gryffindor, associated with courage and 'best foot forward' heroics, house attended by Harry and his closest friends; Ravenclaw, associated with brainyness and intellectual focus; Slytherin, officially associated with 'cunning' and 'ambition', and unofficially with magical facism; and Hufflepuff...God knows. OK, Hufflepuffs are supposed to be diligent, fair and loyal, but despite her best efforts, Rowling manages to make this sound like something of a curse. The Hufflepuffs are described in one poem about the houses as 'all the rest', which pretty much says it all.

**Those of you who are appalled by this should not worry too much. I've applied for the Defense Against The Dark Arts position for three years running and have never gotten so much as a 'we will keep your resume for future reference' e-mail back.***

***Since Defense Against The Dark Arts appears to be offered in every year, why is there only one teacher covering it in any given year at Hogwarts? Prepping seven classes is cruel and inhuman. I'm not sure they'd keep anyone longer than a year even if circumstances didn't keep intervening.

Romeo AND Juliet

2011-09-06T19:56:00.001-07:00

When I was teaching Shakespeare to ninth graders I always wanted to show them this song.

The problem is that if they'd seen this, they might have wanted to see the REST of "Reefer Madness: The Musical". Which would not have been good for parent-teacher relations.

Welcome to the Food Desert--Do You Know Where You Are?

2011-08-21T22:22:00.001-07:00

OK, so, you say, "Balabusta, you're being ridiculous. El Cerrito is not a food desert."

This is true. We are not, by any stretch, 'a poor urban area where residents cannot access nourishing food', or whatever the formal definition is. We're not even a mile from the nearest giant supermarket. I know all of this. But I'm still in kind of a bind, because the Safeway closed.

The Safeway was two blocks from our house, and it was extremely convenient, and then they closed it. Our current sources of food are:

1. The new Safeway, which is gigantic and beautiful, and only three-quarters of a mile north of us.

2. The Lucky's and Trader Joe's at the Plaza, once again, a little less than a mile to the south of us.

3. Giovanni's, the adorable little family-owned place, about half a mile from the house.

No problem, except that we still have no working vehicle. So, taking the bus to the store, or walking, taking the bus back, or lugging, or going to Giovanni's which has cheap, gorgeous local produce, but prices everything else through the roof. Perfection.

We're going to order delivery from Safeway, and just do the best we can...but this is reminding me once again that I'm going on a decade of being determined to get a car and learn to drive, or maybe vice versa.

I feel a fool for not having done this, but there were...er...other things going on, and also financial problems all along. But something's got to give. I cannot live carless in the burbs, and I can't afford to move back into San Francisco. So there it is.

Getting ready for Monday

2011-08-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

On Monday, my new pair of classes start. I'm taking Psychopathology and Counseling Children. I'm hoping for an interesting session.

I'm still waiting on a financial aid check, eight months after enrolling in this program. I think we're almost there, which is good, because, ladies and gentlemen, I am beyond flat broke. I though, I swear, that it was a good idea to enroll in school when I escaped from the soul-killing job from hell because I figured a little financial aid would see us through.

That was eight months ago, so far not a penny.

Perfect.

I like being in school, but I still need a job, and I'm having trouble finding one. I've passed up a couple of possibilities--not job offers, but things I could have pursued further--simply because I could tell that it was not going to be a good situation. I am still emotionally raw and bleeding from the fall, and I am NOT going to put myself back in a situation like that again.

I'm trying to take this slow.

Retrieving the Madonna

2011-08-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

I got Basya to go and get the statue of the Virgin back out of my old classroom for me. Yes, this was nutty as hell, but it had to happen.

Brief explanation: last year, a friend was kind enough to make me a long-term loan of a statue of Mary from his late mother's collection of such things, to put into my classroom. I installed her lovingly, imagining all kinds of things that did not happen, because as you may recall, this past fall was a nightmare from hell.

When I bailed, I left her there, mostly because it felt weird to take her out of the classroom in the middle of the year. But as this summer wore to an end, I knew I had to get the statue back.

Why? Well, I've been freaking out again about that last job, and how it ended. I am dreaming about it, and thinking about it, and generally not in such a good place, emotionally. I felt that I'd already given that school plenty, and this particular beautiful thing wasn't going to be a part of it.

Problem was, in my present mental state, I didn't dare set foot inside the damn building. So I called on Basya, my bridesmaid and general mainstay of existence, and because she is awesome, she came over and collected Mary from the office at St. Attracta's.

Basya ended up spending the night, due to the 580 being closed, and today we went to Target to get her some camping gear. We're walking along, me and Basya and the Husband, and lo and behold, who do I see coming but the Mom From Hell, my worst parent from this fall, and her darling boy.

There was a long sort of pass by when I couldn't figure out if they were going to recognize me at all, and then we spotted each other, and I smiled, and was gracious. She smiled, but when I said, "Well, fancy meeting you here?" she kept going, and then said, "What?"

And then I had to steer the whole party around to avoid running into them again, in school supplies.

I want St. Attracta's out of my life and out of my system, and it's not easy. I feel wrong in my skin these days, too apologetic, and too tentative for a woman in her late thirties. I feel as though I've failed, and should apologize for everything, all the time, at least until I have a job where I'm succeeding at such a high level that even I can't find fault with myself--a situation which is probably impossible, so maybe I should find an alternate route right now.

This last fall messed me up. This coming fall had better be better.

Harriet Sherwood and the Russians

2011-08-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

Remember Harriet Sherwood? The one with the felafel issues? She's back, and over at CIF, they're commenting on a piece she wrote for the Guardian about how the Russians are ruining Israel.

CIF points out, correctly, that Sherwood and her readers would probably be infuriated (and rightly so, in my eyes) at a journalist who broadly slurred a group of immigrants to Britain as damaging the country. Indeed, I've spent some time online myself, since the London riots, dealing with people who blame the whole thing on the West Indians, or the Muslims, or...well, mostly one of those two.

Yet, Harriet Sherwood – the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, who, no doubt, fancies herself a multiculturalist who is free of such narrow-minded anti-immigrant bias – saw fit in her most recent post, “Israel’s former Soviet immigrants transform adopted country“, Aug. 17, to blame Israeli immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) for moving the country in a dangerous direction.

Sherwood’s piece blames “The million-plus citizens of the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel in the past 20 years” for causing a housing crisis, being resistant to integrating into Israeli society, and bringing with them Russian political values inconsistent with democracy, tolerance and compromise.

Now, just imagine if something similar was written about the injurious effects of immigration to the UK on traditional British culture, and substitute the word “Muslims” for “Russians” to get a sense of the supreme moral hypocrisy at play here.

Luckily, we get a rejoinder, from Anastasia Couzminski, one of those unintegrated Russians, who has this to say:

Hello CiF watch,

As a regular reader of your blog and one of those annoying Russians that “integrated little” in Israel, I couldn’t let this article pass. This is personal.

I am beyond furious at [Harriet Sherwood's] article!

[What she says about Russians] couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

As an immigrant who’s been living here most of my life, I consider myself to be 110% ISRAELI and not Russian or Kazakh (I was born in the republic of Kazakhstan).

My mother is Jewish but I have many friends whose mother are in fact non-Jewish but are similarly supremely dedicated to this country.

It is absolute rubbish that immigrants integrated little and live mostly in “Russian enclaves”.

Many such “unintegrated Russians” are married to “Sabras” (Israelis who were born in Israel), give their kids Israeli names and many even refuse to speak Russian anymore.

This LIE [regarding the] lack of integration is evident everywhere.

I, as with most of the “unintegrated Russians”, have served in the army and, in fact, many of these “unintegrated Russian” young men go to become fighters and officers in the army and fight and DIE side by side with Israel-born soldiers!

We study all together in schools and universities and despite there being “Russian” hang-out places, it is SIMPLY NOT TRUE that [non-Russian] Israelis are NOT wanted there. The FIB that Russians created a housing problem is [also simply not true]. Russians did not come to parasite on this country. They finished “Ulpan” (Hebrew classes for immigrants) and right away began searching for jobs. They can now be found in every single workplace including hospitals, courts, and the media (NOT ONLY Russian media).

The fact that Harriet Sherwood makes a point of singling out Russians is a total double standard. And the following quote by the Russian-hating Israeli journalist, whom [Sherwood] must have had to dig out from some very dark place, which claims “…alienation between Russian immigrants and native-born Israelis [exist because] there is not much social interaction” is also simply not true.

Most of my friends are Israelis, many of my friends are married to Israelis, we party, travel and do everything together! And the older generation is the same.

In short, [Sherwood] evidently didn’t have anything to report about and found, in the much maligned Russian community, a convenient target and scapegoat.

Sincerely,

Anastasia

Watching anti-Israel writers deal with the phenomenon of immigration to Israel from the FSU has been rather interesting. They see them as a single group, of course, and the information that not all of the Russians are Ashkenazi, or from Russia, often appears to baffle them. (Jews from Kazhakstan? Huh?) Mostly, though, they appreciate the Russians, even as they bash them, because the Russian olim reinforce what the anti-Israel crowd wants to see, in their own minds, that is. They see the Russians as 'white', and 'intolerant' because of their Soviet background. (Odd, from people who insisted, while it was still standing, that the USSR was a bastion of tolerance.) This saves them, once again, from having to examine the multicultural nature of Israeli society, or from examining other groups in the country too closely. The Mizrahim and Sephardim from Arab countries are a particular problem for the anti-Israel pundit, one they generally solve by being terribly concerned about racism within Israeli society, but not actually giving a damn about the opinions or political leanings of these poor, poor props of theirs.

Hours of Entertainment

2011-08-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

The husband and I are petsitting for some friends (yes, this is the pair with the whippets that almost derailed our wedding four years ago. Since then they have acquired a cat as well.)

On the way back from lunch today, we stopped at a supermarket on the way to get cold drinks. Said supermarket turned out to be a delightful mix of Asian and Latino goods, to suit the neighborhood, which allowed us to wander through examining the wonderful things with wonderful packaging that you find on the shelves of a big Asian grocery store.

The coconut cubes, we learned, were 'fibrous', and promised 'hours of entertainment' as you ate them. There were TWO flavors of Hello Kitty soda. I bought some chestnuts that were 'roast with sugar and skin peeling off', and we bought some Sriracha sauce cheap.

The holy candles section, however, was a bit unnerving--there were some few standards, like San Jose and San Martin...also a giant selection dedicated to Santisima Muerte, and a section devoted to Jesus Malverde. And a lot of 'Law Stay Away', and 'Control' candles. Not my idea of a nice neighborhood's candle selection.

The food choices, though...awesome. Plus, they had the McCormick White Chicken Chili spice mix, which I have been trying to find for ages. Bought five packs.

The Right To Make And Eat Felafel

2011-07-16T12:55:00.001-07:00

Over at Anne's Opinions, she's tearing up Guardian Israel correspondent Harriet Sherwood. Most of the piece is about coverage of the new anti-BDS legislation, but she added something else that caught my Jewish foodie eye. Anne writes:

In a similar, and totally related, development, Harriet Sherwood reports on McDonald’s withdrawing its McFalafel from Israeli restaurants due to its unpopularity.

So far so tasty.

Then she scrambles her omelette by adding in this nasty little aside right at the end:

"Falafel is thought to have originated in Egypt, although Israel now claims it as a national dish."

Oh! Those thieving Israelis! Not only content to steal other people’s land, now they go and steal other people’s foods! They can claim it as their national dish but we liberal-minded people know better.

Once again Sherwood betrays her bias by inserting an unrelated dig at Israel.

May she stew in her own falafel oil.

This sort of tripe is not uncommon with anti-Zionist types. Assuming as they do that Israelis plopped into the Middle East like Martians from outer space, they are constantly on the lookout for examples of appropriated Middle Eastern foods and such, in order to better define Israelis as fundamentally inauthentic and nonindigenous. I thought I should add a note at Anne's blog, reproduced below:

Lemme ‘splain, Harriet. In 1948, Egypt had 75,000 Jews. Currently, it has less than a hundred. Most of those people headed to Israel, after state persecution and confiscation of their property. In 1956, the Minister of Religious affairs announced that ‘all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state’, and promised to expel them. Almost no one managed to stay after the 1967 war.

In Israel, these fine people continued to make felafel, and along with other Jews from the region popularized it with the multicultural population of the new nation.

Now, of course, not only is their right of return to Egypt not a potent talking point with left-wing pundits, but even their right to make and eat felafel is apparently up for grabs.

Eejit.

Where We Stop, Nobody Knows

2011-07-16T02:13:00.000-07:00

This morning I interviewed over the phone for a job--teaching English in Oakland. I answered questions, and asked questions, and then I asked "What is your hiring plan?"

"We do this interview," the lady explained, "and then I'll observe some teaching, either in the classroom or on videotape. Then we'll be ready to hire."

"OK," I said. "I hope to hear from you..."

"No, you don't understand," she said. "I would like to see you teach."

I told her I'd get back to her.

I am not sure I can teach this fall. I'm not sure I can NOT teach this fall. I'm trying to stay calm about this. But given that I have now completed SEVEN MONTHS without getting any financial aid, or having a job beside this summer-school teaching gig that nearly sent me tumbling back into depression, making a living is getting scarier and scarier.

This is complicated.

Hard subjects

2011-07-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

The Jewish blogosphere has been dealing in a variety of ways with the news of the murder of 8-year-old Leibby Kletsky, who was killed in Boro Park after asking a man from the neighborhood for directions.

This article by Shmuley Boteach has been reprinted in a variety of sources, from the Jerusalem Post to The Algemeiner. And it is bothering me.

I don't want to be critical, even of Shmuley Boteach, at a time like this, but between utter disavowals of the alleged killer's humanity (which, frankly, I'm OK with), he seems to be saying that Hasidim choose to live in Hasidic neighborhoods in part to keep their children safe from the corruption of the world, and it is beyond him how this could have happened, in a neighborhood meant to protect children.

I don't know either, but I do know that no one raises their child in a neighborhood that they pick to expose their children to corruption. No one decides to move to a neighborhood they think might contain an average number of insane criminals. Everyone, to the best of their ability, tries to keep their children safe. And I know that I've read many accounts of similar crimes where people expressed shock that a child would be harmed or murdered in a community where people knew one another, and looked out for each other's kids.

He writes: I said the third reason why religious Jews live together is to protect their children from corrosive influences, to filter out elements of the popular culture and the media which are unhealthy for a child’s development. My God, given that’s the case, how do we make sense of a child being killed in a neighborhood set up to protect children?

There's an odd sense for me that he simply can't make the necessary distinction here. "Corrosive influences" have nothing to do with psychotic murder. Neither do popular culture, or unhealthy media. Somehow he can't seem to understand that we're dealing with two entirely different things here. On the one hand, aspects of society that one can choose to allow or exclude in your child's life; on the other, pure evil that strikes like lightning.

I know it's different when it happens to people you identify with it. Hell, this one is different for me. Something like this happening in Boro Park is horrifying. My heart bleeds, and I cannot imagine how this must hurt not only family and friends, but the whole community. It hurts me. But something in this column, disjointed as it is, bugs me. A lot. It feels different when a child from a familiar, frum, community is murdered. I understand that. I'm not sure that Rabbi Boteach understands that it is not different, not if you're a grieving community of any religion, urban, suburban or rural, anywhere. Psychopaths come from all walks of life.

One question Boteach raises, I think there may be an answer to--he's baffled that rather than being abducted, the child seems to have walked up to the killer, who took advantage of the spur-of-the-moment opportunity. Failed Messiah says that the Shomrim had some information that the accused was stalking another boy in the community. I suspect that he'd been building himself up to something like this, and either frustrated by failure or overwhelmed by a sudden opening, he took the chance.

I suspect I'm so annoyed with Shmuley because I'm so stunned and saddened by this horror, and Shmuley pushes my buttons almost without fail. May this child's family, and all who mourn for him be comforted. I'm going to shut up now.

Voting in the Declaration

2011-07-04T19:20:00.001-07:00

From Alice Walker, On Her Latest Star Turn

2011-07-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

A portion of Alice Walker's latest arrogant and ahistorical screed, blogged from Greece: Emphasis is mine.

I have never believed in the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. Whenever I saw the men gathering to talk about peace I was reminded of what the Indians said to the white colonizers of America who came to talk peace with them: ” Where are your women?”

This would make slightly more sense if the Palestinians, whom Alice clearly casts in the role of the Indians, had a tradition of including women in political negotiations. As it is, we have here two traditionally patriarchal groups, and while including the ladies might be an excellent idea, one feels that here the example is used simply to get those Indians in there somehow.

An occasional woman has appeared to take part in the talks, but overwhelmingly the process has been male driven. I like to think if women, in equal numbers to men, had been at the table things might not have turned out so badly. But perhaps, recalling the disrespectful young Israeli women at the check-points, this is naive.

Israeli women aren't the right kind of women, anyway.

In any case, it is when one sees the Israeli settlements, after hearing about them for decades, that the final “Aha” moment arrives. They are colossal, and, like the wall, they are everywhere. It is obvious, looking at them, gigantic, solid, white and towering, that they have been constructed to completely devour the rest of Palestine, and that the peace talks have been a ruse to continue their growth so that Jewish Israelis can claim the land by possession alone. Possession is nine-tenths of the law is one of the dictums I learned from my Jewish lawyer former husband. This belief might even be enshrined in the Torah. In any case it is a very old idea, and Israelis have made good use of it.

So, we a. don't need to worry about the peace talks, because the Israelis don't want peace anyway, and b. her Jewish lawyer former husband, apparently the origin of her nasty streak of anti-Semitism, pops up again. Brief note: "Possession is nine-tenths of the law" is not 'enshrined in the Torah", as Alice could very easily have found out by Googling it, or asking someone with even a slight knowledge of the text. The ugliness of that slap is matched only by the ignorance.

Dispossessed of land and houses, poverty stricken, refugees in their own country since the catastrophe of 1948, when Zionist terrorists drove them from their villages, towns and cities, Palestinian laborers have been forced to build these settlements for the Israeli settlers and, having built them, are rarely permitted inside them, except to service them. This is similar to our own history, in America: the genocide and enslavement of Native people, and the forced black and Indian labor that built so much of America, including The White House. Sometimes one wonders if this greed that devours the very substance of other human beings is part of human DNA. I don’t think it is; and, in any case, I hope not!

And, as usual, one doesn't even know where to begin with this tumble of lies, half-truths, and determined editing of history. Really, it's a mistake to even start trying to undo Alice's tangle of deceit. Elsewhere in the piece, she's still going on about "Jewish-only roads".

Bleah. This nonsense could scramble your brains.

Our Queer Family In Palestine

2011-06-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a follow-up to 'Our Mutual Friend', written by some edgy experimental heir to Charles Dickens. It's a phrase taken from a flyer distributed by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (yes, that's really their name), at a demonstration in front of the Castro Theater on Friday.

Why was QUIT protesting at the Castro Theater? I'll let them try to explain that themselves:

In case you cannot read it, the cute little pink umbrella says "Israeli pinkwashing does not make me wet!". 'Pinkwashing', a term shamelessly stolen from breast cancer activists, is the new hip term in the BDS movement, for 'mentioning that Israel has a sterling human rights record on LGBT issues'. This is so true that they can't stand it, and must create little derogatory terms suggesting that allowing same-sex partners adoption rights, sending transgendered Israelis to represent the country at major music festivals, and acknowledging same-sex marriage from out of the country are all things Israelis have done simply to change the subject, and try to cover up their unspeakable evil.

Hey, we're not here to ruin anyone's good time, the flyer continues. We just want the same freedom to go out and have fun for all queers. But our queer family in Palestine doesn't have it. Many of them live under military occupation, and all of them live under a rigid system of discrimination and segregation very similar to apartheid South Africa.

This is the passage that makes me consider this otherwise fairly innocuous flyer perhaps the most chutzpahdik piece of writing that I've ever seen in a world full of terrible lies about Israel. Even coming from QUIT, this is a remarkable piece of chicanery. The deception comes in two layers. First is the expected one, which involves throwing out words like 'military occupation', 'segregation' and 'apartheid', mischaracterizing and spinning the situation of Palestinians living under their own governments in disputed territories.

Second, however, is an almost breathtaking lie of omission. Apparently, you see, the reason our 'queer family in Palestine' is not getting to go out and have a fun day at the Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival*, is because of the Israelis.

Not because sex between men is a criminal act in Gaza. Not because there is no legislation either by the PA or Hamas to protect gay and lesbian Palestinians. Not because government-sanctioned and enacted violence against LGBT Palestinians is common in both the West Bank and Gaza. Not because gay Palestinians are routinely accused of being collaborators with Israel, a charge that carries the death penalty. Not because gay Palestinians have been pressured into becoming suicide bombers to expiate their shame. Not because in order to live as an out gay man and survive, many young men have made their way illegally into Israel, the luckier ones finding support and shelter within the gay community there.

No, it's not because of this nightmare of socially sanctioned hate and violence against queers of all stripes that 'our queer family in Palestine' isn't having a lovely time marching in the Ramallah Pride Parade*. It's because of Israel.

QUIT's website and print propaganda contains no mention whatsoever of any sort of oppression of LGBT Palestinians by anyone except the ever-convenient Israelis.

They clearly believe that mention the LGBT Palestinians dead at the hand of the PA police, murdered by their own families, or living on the street in Tel Aviv, trying to stay alive and find a place to belong, would be too morally complex and inconvenient to their narrative.

They are betraying those they pretend to claim as family.

*The Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Ramallah Pride Parade do not exist, except in the blogger's overactive imagination. May they someday exist, in a region filled with peace.

A Guten Shabbos

2011-06-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

A very very young Ofra Haza sings "Shabat ha-Malka".

Video from Israel In The Gardens

2011-06-09T10:40:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of the Younger of Zion. Be sure to watch or forward to the very end--that's when the littlest 100% Palestinian bear got picked up and carried off to bed.

Israel in the Gardens, 2011--Release Your Inner Camel

2011-06-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

The inflatable camel was with Hillel, and I took a picture of it because it said 'Release your inner camel' on the side of it, and I had never considered having an 'inner camel' before. Also, the camel is a Bactrian. Middle Eastern camels are dromedaries. I discussed this with the Hillel guy, who explained that this was the only inflatable camel on the market. We agreed that it was a Bactrian that had made aliyah.

Welcome to Israel in the Gardens, 2011, a cultural fair featuring Israeli rock, face painting, kids making spice blends, folks selling earrings, and approximately a bazillion people in line for The Flying Felafel. Targeted for hate and protest by Bay Area Women In Black and their peace-loving friends. Let the good times roll!

We, the Mighty Morphin' Zionist Defenders were ready to go. We had t-shirts. We had flags. We had Caterpillar hats. We had khaffiyot yisraelit. We were ready to go. All we lacked was a dance partner.

Here is a lady being wanded, prior to entering the event. I've been to a lot of cultural fairs in my day. Let's just say that at the Scottish Games in Santa Rosa they don't wand you and search your bag when you come in. Same way they don't have security guards outside First Methodist on Christmas Day, but they do for Rosh Hashanah services. But I am grateful for our excellent security teams, because while needing them sucks, needing and not having would suck much more.

Anyway, our dance partners began to arrive...

BAWIB is always punctual, dreary, and carrying signs that are correctly spelled, although not always fact-checked.

They had great shopping malls in the Warsaw Ghetto, I remember reading about that. Or perhaps what we have here is sheer denial of reality, combined with the pathetic belief that invoking the Holocaust will make the actual situation on the ground irrelevant.

Meanwhile, things were going nicely on the other side of the barricades:

Happy Zionists with a banner

Our waltz with BAWIB was coming to a close. As I've mentioned, BAWIB is quite punctual. If they say noon to one, they show up at noon and leave on the stroke of one. We were not going to be left without dance partners, however. The replacement shift was already getting ready across the plaza, and they were working on...something.


			What it was wasn't entirely clear. At this stage it consisted mostly of red and black balloons. They began to add green ones, but were having trouble controlling them. An occasional balloon drifted up to the sky.

As BAWIB marched off into the distance, the first members of the replacement shift arrived. Younger. More excitable. Bearing flags and signs printed by International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Perhaps it's just as well they had the signs printed by A.N.S.W.E.R., since it turns out that they can't spell very well. One would almost think these people were members of the Tea Party.

I couldn't get a clear shot of this man's sign, but it reads "Israel: 63 Yrs. of Ethnic Cleansing & APATHEID". The all-caps was important, but apparently the evil West Bank settlers stole the R.

"Paletinian Ethnic Cleansing". What, is spellcheck a Zionist conspiracy? Don't they PROOFREAD these things? (BAWIB may be hateful, but their signs are always spelled correctly.)

Sadly, the third example of spelling issues that I wanted to post did not come out legibly in the photos. The young man below and one of his friends were both wearing jackets with photographs printed on the back, and a heading accusing "Isreal" of horrible crimes.

By this time there were quite a lot of people in their little area in the street, yelling and screaming. What were they yelling a screaming? I'm glad you asked. They were yelling and screaming "Intifada, intifada, we support the intifada." They were shouting "Falastin Arabiye!" (Palestine is Arab). They were shrieking "From the river to the sea! From the river to the sea!" And they were screeching "Ba ruh, ba dam, nafdeek ya Falastin." (With spirit and blood we will cleans you, Palestine.) And the old crowd favorite "Khaybar, khaybar ya yahud, jaysh Muhammad saya'ud." (Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return.) You know. Peaceful slogans like that.

And then the piece de resistance showed up. You will recall the mysterious balloon item mentioned earlier? Well, this is what it looked like fully assembled.

In case you can't tell, I am pretty sure it was supposed to be a Palestinian flag. It didn't turn out perfectly, but heck, who am I to judge? My side didn't have any balloons at all. We were struck into silence by the sheer threatening force of all those balloons. For a couple of seconds. Then the Israeli guys behind me started screaming, "Balloons! Balloons! Ooooh, can I have a balloon? I want a balloon!"

More yelling. Several people gave us the finger. And then, as the SFPD became politely insistent, the group took their balloons and their signs and their whistle and bullhorns and moved across the street, ultimately leaving behind two young men who wanted to act out. They acted out. They chanted. One of them pulled up his sleeves to show us that he had the words "100% Palestinian" tattooed on his forearms.

It was as this point that the most wonderful thing I had seen all day, inflatable camels included, happened. A young woman detatched from the crew across the street, came back, and grabbed one of the young men (the one shown above), and pushed him in the right direction. The other guy wasn't moving, so she wrapped her ams under his, and hoisted him off his feet.

The cheering from our side (also the hooting) was deafening, and for a moment I thought the young woman was going to put him down and come back to the barricades to yell at us, but she gritted her teeth and carted him off, over the center divider, and across the street.

My inner camel felt good about the whole thing.

Great Hatred, Little Room

2011-06-06T00:06:00.000-07:00

Spent today at San Francisco's Israel in the Gardens Independence Day celebration. A lot happened, and I will be blogging about it, and posting pictures (I hope).

While we were there, my father had a conversation with an Irish woman, there to protest Israel's independence. She said the situation in the Middle East was just like the Troubles, and Mr. Bluejeans Sr. told her that Hamas was the Real IRA, the Provos, the UVF and Ian Paisley rolled into one. She said, "I don't support Hamas", while standing next to people who unabashedly do.

Anyway, summoned by my own random associations, the poem started up in my head, and would not leave, because Yeats could put his finger on it sometimes. Something for me to think about as I sort through the day. This is by William Butler Yeats, who could be a bit of a pretentious eejit, really, but the gift was from God. I had always thought this piece was called "Fanatic Heart", like the Black 47 piece that's based on it in part, but it's actually

Remorse For Intemperate Speech

I ranted to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart,
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

I suppose this may sound a bit mournful; it's Yeats, after all. I'm actually in a very good mood tonight. But it fit, so there it is.

Mafroum follow-up

2011-06-04T22:27:00.000-07:00

The mafroum turned out decently--at least I think so. One difficulty with this dish for me is that I've never eaten one before, so I'm guessing about what it's supposed to taste like.

Notes for future ones:

1. Beef is probably better, but the turkey turned out OK. The spice mix in the turkey tastes a little overdone to me. I don't know if this because the mix is geared to a more flavored meat, or because I threw in too much pepper 'to taste', or because my taste buds aren't geared for authenticity. It's not bad, just a bit hot and sweet for my overall taste.

2. The potatoes and the vegetables come out amazingly flavorful and lovely.

3. A liter of stock is simply too much, and didn't reduce nearly as much as I'd imagined. Perhaps half or two-thirds of that amount next time. Once the mafroum are eaten, I'm going to have the makings for soup.

4. The baharat is delicious. I've never cooked with it before. NICE.

5. I can hear generations of little old Tunisian ladies gasping in unison, but I'm not sure that stuffing the damn potatoes is necessary. Meatballs and quartered potatoes, slow-cooked the same way would work fine for my lazy modern behind.

I'm Guest Posting!

2011-06-04T21:54:00.001-07:00

Hey! Check it out! Over at Anarchzionist's place, the Balabusta rants about circumcision bans and cartooning bigots.

Mafroum, Mark One

2011-06-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today, the Balabusta is trying her hand at mafroum.

Mafroum is a Jewish dish from North Africa, featuring ground seasoned meat stuffed into potatoes and then simmered to tenderness in a tomatoey sauce. It's one of those dishes that are descended from the grand Persian court cooking of the high Middle Ages, and that gradually evolved into a way for a woman to spend hours of her life stuffing things into vegetables and chopping other things into sauces. I discovered the recipe I'm using at Mimi's Israeli Kitchen, and I just had to try.

So far, so good. I am using ground turkey for the first attempt, mostly because it's cheaper. The meat blend is easy to put together, except for having to grate a potato.

Frying the potato is the more complicated part. You peel potatoes, cut them almost all the way through--well, in my case, all the way through most of the time, and then stuff them with the meat. Then you're meant to roll them in seasoned flour, then in beaten egg, and then fry them golden.

This is easier said than done. Let's just say that my potatoes got sort of fried, but beautiful like someone's grandma's from Tunisia they were not. Then you create the sauce, pour in some chicken broth, put the potatoes in, and let the whole thing simmer for a couple of hours.

The original recipe calls for cabbage, which I am leaving out because the Balabos hates cabbage. I am thinking that carrots or leeks might work for a future occasion.

Anway, the simmer is underway, and everything looks basically like the pictures, so we'll see how it goes. My kitchen smells nicely of baharat and onions.