\”I have been told not to touch the Torah and to go back to my own religion\” she relayed to me matter-of-factly.
\”Wasn\’t there anyone you could confide in?\” I asked.
\”I could confide in some more than others, but when it came down to it, no one really cared whether I converted or not.\”
Kodlawsky said her goal was to tell Thiranagama\’s story vividly; in a way, it reminded her of those late-night discussions over cigarettes and coffee. Her mother\’s friends often spoke of how Kodlawsky\’s mother risked death to smuggle food to others at Bergen-Belsen.
My girlfriend \”E\” was the first to declare what others had been observing for a while. \”God sure is having a good laugh,\” she said. \”You write a column called \’A Woman\’s Voice.\’ And yet you have no voice\”. The irony had crossed my mind.
I\’m drinking at a bar called the Dirty Horse on Hollywood Boulevard. Well, that\’s not the real name, but I never got a look at the sign and that name seemed right.
If you\’re a single 24-year-old gal looking to meet a preferably Jewish single guy in Los Angeles, you\’d think a good pick-up line might include the words \”I work for The Jewish Journal.\” After all, what better way to convey to the guy-of-interest that you\’re a fellow MOT? But you\’d be wrong.
Relationships in my life never seem to end. Guys are always calling me back, weeks, months, years later. My life is like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: He\’ll be back. After a breakup I try to remember this, that there are never any goodbyes, just au revoirs. Trickle Trickle Drip Drip.
\”My childhood skidded to a stop on a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of my 15th year, with my mother\’s first mammogram results,\” writes Hope Edelman in her moving new book, \”Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become\” (Harper Collins). For Edelman, her mother\’s illness and subsequent death from cancer two years later in 1981 were the beginning of a journey of loss, self-exploration and eventual emotional redemption that has spanned nearly a quarter-century and spawned three well-received books on the subject.
According to some once-doting men, I\’m terrific. I\’m also beautiful, talented, smart, sassy, funny, dynamic, cute and sweet. To make matters worse, I\’d make a fantastic mother. And the final blow? Apparently … I\’m a catch. I listen intently to my lover-gone-evil dumper\’s compliments — and cringe. Somehow my fairy tale has gone awry.
The stereotypical Jewish woman is strong, supportive, receptive and respected. Growing up, she is showered with love, pampered by objects and experiences of beauty and quality. She keeps a welcoming home. She attends to detail, wants what she wants and is unapologetically \”high maintenance.\” She is wise, and capable of keen manipulation. She is emotional — following her heart more than her mind. She is nurturing, loyal, generous and willing to sacrifice. She finds total fulfillment only when she has balanced her work with marriage (preferably to a doctor or lawyer) and children. Most significantly, she loves receiving beautiful clothing, fine perfume and dazzling jewelry.
Let\’s face it. Every marriage between two Jews is an intermarriage. I\’m not talking about the obvious ones, like a marriage between an Orthodox Jew and a Jew-by-birth who is not at all religious. Clearly if one spouse davens three times a day and the other spouse uses Mapquest to find her way to synagogue on Yom Kippur, a silver anniversary is not in their future. I\’m talking about the rest of us.
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