The ad caught our eye: an all-expense paid Shabbat weekend at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute for couples married withinthe past 18 months. I had been to Brandeis before, so I knew that, if nothing else, my husband, Neal, and I would experience a tranquil Shabbat in a beautiful setting.
The City of Hope, the esteemed charity, cancer hospital and research center, is under attack. But supporters of the charity, whose roots run deep into the Jewish community, are coming to its defense.
Frankly, I\’m all for it.\n\nBut what about sports? Girls? Humvees and washboard abs? This column\’s supposed to parse the experience of a Jewish Guy in the world. But some guys have called, confused. What\’s all this about singing baby boys to sleep? About tender talks and the salve of toddler hugs? It\’s all very sweet, but, guy, hey guy, they ask, where\’s the testosterone?\n\nFunny. My wife\’s been bugging me about the samething.
It\’s finally happened. Marketing gurus have gottentheir hands on Shabbat, taking it off dining-room tables and throwingit up onto billboards across the nation — in the hopes of bringingit back down to more tables.
The evening following the final session of theSecond International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy, I attendeda small family dinner and celebrated the wedding of a SatmarChassidic couple. Among the guests were men with long curledpayot (it\’spronounced \”payyes\” there), and some wearing shtreimels (the fur hat worn bysome Chassidic men). All of the women\’s heads were covered with wigs,and some even wore a small pillbox hat atop it, according to thedecree of their respective rabbis. The women were elegantly (butmodestly) attired in unrevealing clothing and were segregated fromtheir men by tall walls. While the men sang joyously, the womengossiped. When the men rose to dance, most of the women werevicariously reveled by staring at them through the cracks in thewall. (Of course, it is forbidden for the men to watch the womendance, and not one single male deigned to take even a quick\”peek.\”)
An estimated 400 people packed the auditorium atthe Westside Jewish Community Center Tuesday night, prepared to chidethe leaders of the Jewish Community Centers of Los Angeles forseriously considering an Orthodox Jewish high school\’s offer to buythe center.
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