Boy number 1 is actually not a boy. He is a 54 year old man and I am a 29 year old divorce’. I have been seeing this guy for about 2 years and we’ve been through a lot together–health, crises, business closing… We have always been the support system for each other, but as he ages, I feel like I am, to put it bluntly, riding on a sinking ship. He is perfect in all other ways—he massages my feet (and likes it), he always brings me flowers, he takes me to the spa for dates, cleans my house, loves my dog, loves my family, is funny, sensitive, fabulous in bed, writes me poetry every day (sometimes twice)….but he has serious old man syndrome and I wanna party with the good years I have left.
Boy number 2: Think John Travolta in Grease with tattoos and hair died in the pattern of a skunk’s tail. This is the only man in this town my ex-husband threatened to kill if he touched me. A true ladies’ man [plural possessive intended]. But, at the same time, a dedicated father, a sweetheart with a devil’s tongue, and the sincerity of Honest Abe.
I know there is no chance of a real relationship with the greaser, but nevertheless, I don’t feel I can devote any more of my life to a kind of crotchety old man.
What should I do?
Caught In a Love Triangle
CILT
Dear CILT,
My guess is that the problem is less this “old man’s” aging, and moreso your own. I have to say it bothers me that you call your man of two years “crotchety” when you and I both know that he isn’t. If he were so ancient, you would not have enjoyed all he could do for you for so long.
What is important here is why you chose a man fifteen years your senior, why suddenly that doesn’t float your boat anymore, and what this new homeboy represents. What I imagine is a big piece of the allure of a much older man from the get-go is how youthful, alive, fresh and gorgeous you feel. As he ages, you get to be the specimen of virility, something and someone that makes him feel ageless which in turn makes you feel ravishing.
But those feelings don’t last. In the end as flawed as we are as human, we are also whole, and my guess is that you desire a more balanced love. It is not so much a matter of his years, as much a matter of the incompatibility. Another thing about an older man is that there is something safe, some Daddy-esque element that keeps you from worrying about being hurt (again). If you found him post-divorce, then he was probably a rebound man to help sew your heart back together.
Now, as you start wanting other men, different men, and yes, younger men, it is your heart’s way of saying it is ready for a deeper love, one that is less about being supported and more about mutually enjoying one-another. I caution you against calling this man names, his age was null and void when he was tending to your needs, so don’t be cruel by suddenly using it as a reason to ditch out.
I say the greaser and your ex are both people you can now live without. They are sirens, directing you forward. One taught you how to be loved, another taught you what kind of passion and youth you desire, and now you can move forward and seek a partner who is really your match, sharing your stage in life so you can pass through the next twenty years in cahoots. ” title=”www.send-email.org”>www.send-email.org to merissag[at]gmail[dot]com.
I decided years ago that I would use local Jewish institutions to stimulate my intellect and LDS temples and chapels to nourish my spirit. When I attend Jewish events in Los Angeles, I am always amazed at the intellect, energy and passion on display in this most dynamic of communities. There is always someone willing to pitch an idea, and I am usually willing to listen. Often my main motivation for attending a given Jewish event is to see which new ideas, proposals, and ventures are being touted by my friends and contacts. I went to the StandWithUs conference at Temple Beth Am last weekend fully expecting to hear a few novel pitches, and I did not leave disappointed.
The most original (and promising) idea addressed a subject that is very close to my heart. At lunch a Jewish liaison to the Evangelical community and I were joined by Moti Gur, an LA-based financial advisor and prominent Israel activist. After lamenting the lack of Jewish education among young and unaffiliated Jews, Moti shared with us his solution: the Moses Project, which envisions the erection of a 40- to 60-story monument of Moses holding the two tablets. The “Moses Monument and World Center for Jewish Leadership” in Israel would also feature a “Museum of the Miraculous” to acknowledge Jewish contributions to the world, beginning with the ethical monotheism of Abraham [Latter-day Saints believe that Adam and Eve were the first ethical monotheists, but I digress]. Moti and his partner Dr. Donald Salem (a Brentwood dentist) have set up a website that accepts contributions and are actively pitching the idea to Jews, Christians, and anyone else who will listen. If I had the money, I’d fund the whole thing.
People who want to know why Jews have remained in the Holy Land for millennia should look to Moses, through whom God revealed laws that forged a united, holy people and commanded them to build an ark to house His presence. In the same way that the Statue of Liberty serves as a national symbol of an important American value, a massive Moses in the Land of Israel would silently proclaim to one and all just why there are a Jewish people and an Israel today. What visitor to the country wouldn’t want to be photographed with Moses? If ever there were a project in Israel that could unite Christians and Jews, this is it. I have no doubt that Mormon tourists would visit the statue, which for them would also commemorate the revelation of both orders of God’s priesthood (like many Jews, we believe that the second set of tablets differed from the first) and the modern-day gathering of Israel, which we believe Moses facilitated.
Like any religion-themed project in Israel, there will be many hurdles to overcome – not least, the Orthodox objection to statues that could be perceived as idols. However, it is my fervent hope that somehow this project will get off the ground – at least 40 stories, anyway. Moti and Don have no idea that I’m writing this essay, and I am not affiliated with the Moses Project in any way. That said, my readers will readily understand why I applauded while reading this statement on the project’s website: “It is evident that a need for renewed, informed, educated and motivated Jewish leadership is essential for leading the Jewish people down a path that insures their continuity, and preserves their heritage and culture.” I’m sure that Moses would agree. L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim.
——-
I will be speaking at the Jewish Community Center in Salt Lake City on January 12. I will also be speaking with Rabbi Alan Cohen in Kansas City on January 16.
Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives elected Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) their majority leader in the next Congress.
Cantor won the election uncontested on Wednesday evening, paving the way for him to become one of the highest-ranking Jews in U.S. government history. When the 112th Congress convenes in January, Cantor will be the second-ranked member of the House after the likely speaker, Rep. John Boehner (R-Va.). That would make Cantor the highest-ranking Jew in congressional history.
It is difficult to assess the relative power of senior positions across the three branches of U.S. government—the legislature, the executive branch and the judiciary. There have been numerous Jewish associate justices of the Supreme Court, and a number of Jews have occupied senior Cabinet posts, including secretaries of state, defense and treasury.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the outgoing House speaker, was elected minority leader this week in a 150-43 vote.
As a party leader, Pelosi made Jewish outreach a priority, designating Reva Price, a senior adviser and former executive of a number of Jewish organizations, as her point person.
A Holocaust survivor who teaches children the value of citizenship is among those who will be honored by President Obama with a Medal of Freedom.
Gerda Weissman Klein, who survived the notorious death march at the end of the war designed by Nazis to keep Jews from being rescued, recently founded Citizenship Counts, “an organization that teaches students to cherish the value of their American citizenship,” the White House said in a statement Wednesday. “Klein has spoken to audiences of all ages and faith around the world about the value of freedom and has dedicated her life to promoting tolerance and understanding among all people,” the statement said.
The Medal of Freedom is the highest U.S. civilian honor, “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
Among the other recipients, who will receive the medals in a ceremony early next year, are President George H. W. Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, poet Maya Angelou, artist Jasper Johns, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, baseball giant Stan Musial and optometrist Tom Little, who was murdered by the Taliban while he was on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan.
The case against New Zealand’s ban on kosher animal slaughter will be heard in the High Court in Wellington later this month.
New Zealand Jewish Council President Stephen Goodman said the case on Nov. 29 would be watched closely around the Jewish world.
“We believe that this is, or will be interpreted as, a worldwide test case,” he said. “The animal rights lobby will be applying pressure to governments around the world. We have heard rumors of the issue being raised in France, Ireland and even Australia.
“Denying us a fundamental tenant of our religion is a direct challenge to our existence. It is unintentional anti-Semitism,” Goodman said.
Goodman issued a plea to Jewish communities worldwide to assist financially in arguing for shechitah, or kosher slaughter. The cost of the case is estimated at $123,000, but less than half that has been raised, he said. The community, which numbers less than 7,000 Jews, has set up a Facebook page and a PayPal account to encourage support. “We have a very good case and a high probability of winning,” Goodman said.
In May, Agriculture Minister David Carter rejected a recommendation that shechitah be exempt from the new animal welfare code, which mandates that all commercially slaughtered animals must first be stunned, thus rendering kosher slaughtering illegal. The community filed legal action in August after negotiations with Carter broke down.
The case pits the Jewish community against the Conservative government of Prime Minister John Key, whose mother, Ruth Lazar, was a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria on the eve of the Holocaust.
Shechitah has been carried out in New Zealand since 1843.
A group linked to al-Qaida released a threat in Hebrew threatening to avenge Israel’s assassination of two Gaza terrorists.
The 30-second message released Thursday said the “aggressor Jews” will not be safe from attack until they “leave the land of Palestine.” The speaker claims to be a member of Jemaa Ansar al-Sunna, or Community of Sunna Supporters, which has a branch in Gaza.
The use of Hebrew by an al-Qaida affiliate was unprecedented, Matti Steinberg, a former Israeli intelligence official specializing in Islam, told Israeli media. “It seems that the idea behind this is to make Jews feel that the threat is more imminent now, and not a distant warning,” Steinberg said of the use of Hebrew, in an interview on Israel’s Channel 10.
The message appears to be in response to the killings by Israel’s military of Muhammad Namnam on Nov. 3 and Islam Yasin on Wednesday. The two led the al-Qaida-linked Palestinian Islamist group Army of Islam and were planning an attack on Israelis vacationing in the Sinai, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chief, called National Public Radio executives “Nazis” and said “left-wing rabbis” make it difficult to use the term “Holocaust” on air.
Ailes made the comments in an interview with the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz, who was canvassing recent controversies about the right-leaning news channel. Ailes hired Juan Williams, a commentator, full time after NPR fired Williams for saying on a Fox News report that he feared seeing Muslims on airplanes.
Williams and NPR long had feuded over Williams’ work on Fox, where he worked as a commentator and tended to express opinions rather than the analytical voice NPR says it expects from its employees.
“They are, of course, Nazis,” Ailes said of NPR executives. “They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda.”
Ailes also commented on the recent controversy involving Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and liberal billionaire George Soros. Beck, citing Soros’ writings and interviews, said several days earlier that Soros as a teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary had helped send Jews to death camps and had confiscated their properties.
A number of Jewish groups complained in Soros’ defense, saying that Beck was using a survivor’s experience of Nazi oppression to incriminate him in Nazi crimes. But Fox has stood by Beck.
In his writings, Soros has described living as a Christian in order to save his life. In one case, he accompanied his Christian protector to a Jewish-owned property to catalog goods; the owner already had fled. In another, he delivered summonses from the local Jewish council to local Jewish lawyers, but on his father’s advice warned the lawyers to flee as the summonses likely indicated deportation.
Ailes also complained to Kurtz that there are “left-wing rabbis who basically don’t think that anybody can ever use the word ‘Holocaust’ on the air.”
The American Family Association is a Christian advocacy organization. It is very right-wing—I say this as a Christian brother, albeit in no way a fellow traveler—and so maybe it’s fitting that the AFA website hosts a blog titled Rightly Concerned. The blog is labeled “A Project of the American Family Association,” but it also bears this disclaimer at the end of posts:
Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.
But sorry, AFA, I’m not letting you off the hook on the atrocity that is this commentary from Bryan Fischer, the organization’s director of issue analysis. The subject is the Medal of Honor. More specifically, it’s the types of courage in Iraq and Afghanistan for which the medal has been awarded.
We have feminized the Medal of Honor.
According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one.
That’s an odd opinion but it’s an arguable one. But what is so frustrating here is Fischer’s riff on the Macho Jesus. As my friend Brian pointed out, what follows is just miserable biblical interpretation (at best):
So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?
(skip)
Jesus, in words often cited in ceremonies such as the one which will take place this afternoon, said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). So it is entirely right that we honor this kind of bravery and self-sacrifice, which is surely an imitation of the Lord of Lord and King of Kings.
However, Jesus’ act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless – yes, meaningless – if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life.
Of course, the goal of war is to win. And leaving aside the righteousness of any specific war, they often are righteous reasons to fight—even when such an action would be imprudent. Ousting Saddam comes to mind.
But don’t turn the Bible on its head to give supplemental support to waging war.
Our former Web Editor Jay Firestone was coming over last Sunday to shoot a Foodaism “How to Make Latkes Video.” Neither one of us was overly excited about the prospect. There are a lot of latke how to videos on the Web by now, and I’d already written and posted my magnum latke opus, years ago. What, beyond my unruly Sunday morning hair, did we have to bring to the party?
Jay told me that lying in bed that morning he had an inspiration: a spoof on the nefarious KFC Double Down Chicken Sandwich commercial. The Double Down was introduced a few months ago, but it’s already fast food legend: bacon and cheese sandwiched between two fried chicken breasts. The meat is the bread—get it? I guess it means you double down on fat, sodium and the chance you’ll end up dying at 40 and being buried in a shipping container.
And yes, I know you can get the breasts grilled rather than fried, like that’s the healthy alternative.
Jay stopped at a KFC on the way over to buy the authentic set design elements, and as you’ll see he even Photoshopped my head into the logo.
Story and complete recipe continue after the jump.
When he told me the idea, I figured a Double Down Latke sandwich should have lox, chives and crème fraiche instead of bacon and cheese. But I had to substitute chopped lettuce and onion for the chives. When I went out to the garden, I discovered the goats had mowed my chives down to the nubs. Next week: kosher birria…..
The recipe is below. I’ve begun to make latkes by grating the potatoes directly into water, then wringing them out well in a kitchen towel. It keeps them pearly white and crisp. You can add the chopped or grated onion and garlic right to the water, or after, along with the eggs.
Once the latkes are fried, you slather on crème fraiche or sour cream, lay down your lox, the onion, another shmear of crème fraiche, and that’s your sandwich. It really is delicious—it brought me back to dinners at the old Hamburger Hamlet with my folks, when I’d always order “Those Potatoes,” a huge skillet of hash browns layered with sour cream and, I think, green onions. I’d devour those, looking at the posters on the walls for old productions of Hamlet, thinking—What does Hamlet have to do with this place?
It took me all of 20 minutes to make the Double Down Latke Sandwich. Grate, wring, fry, slather. I could have done it faster, but you’ll notice I spent so much time in hair, makeup and wardrobe.
The quickness makes its own point. I’m a big fan of the Slow Food movement. But don’t let the catchy name fool you. The key distinction isn’t fast food versus slow food, but good food over crap food. You can put together good, healthy, real food in the same amount of time it takes to make or order bad fast food. Sometimes real food does just take longer, but in our daily lives the key is to fill whatever time we have, or make, with the best food we can.
By the way, this Double Down Latke Sandwich is just delicious. I mean, wow. Happy Chanukah.
Peel potatoes and coarsely grate, directly into a large bowl of cold water.
Soak potatoes 1 to 2 minutes after last batch is added to water, then drain well in a colander.
Spread grated potatoes, garlic and onion on a kitchen towel, roll up and wring out as much liquid as possible.
Transfer potato mixture to a bowl and stir in egg and salt. If it’s too runny add a little flour or matzo meal. Too dry add a little bit more egg.
Heat a large skillet. Add enough oil to cover the bottom plus a bit more. Get the oil hot but not smoking. Use a spoon to potato mixture into skillet, spreading with the back of the spoon into 3 or 4-inch rounds.
Reduce heat to moderate and cook until undersides are very well browned, about 5 minutes. Turn latkes over and cook until undersides are very well browned, about 5 minutes more. You want walnut brown, not beige.
Transfer to paper towels to drain and season with salt. Add more oil to skillet as needed.
Keep latkes warm on a wire rack set in a shallow baking pan in oven.
To make the Double Down, spread crème fraiche on one side of a latke, pile on lox and onions, spread some crème fraiche on another latke, then make into a sandwich.
