Sharing the Light

emember the biblical story of the 12 spies who were sent by Moses to check out the Land of Israel in advance of the Israelites? The spies returned and reported that the land, "devoured its inhabitants," had huge walled-off cities, and was inhabited by giants who made normal people seem as grasshoppers.

As a result of their report, the spies and their offspring were punished. They and their offspring were banned from entering the Holy Land.The spies had been sent to see the land and return with an honest report. That is just what they did. So on what basis did they merit such harsh punishment? If they had lied, would they have been feted, congratulated, and otherwise patted on the backs for telling falsehoods?

It's a strange story on the face of things, but only if you don't stretch your brain enough to grok the bigger picture. A thinking person, for instance, would scratch his/her head and think: "Well, okay. So what COULD the spies have said instead that would not have earned them such a severe reprisal for themselves and their offspring?"

Step back for a moment and think about it: you and your family have been wandering in the desert for a very LONG time and you are finally almost at your destination ("Are we there yet, MO-OM?") but someone goes ahead of your party to see what's what and comes back with a pretty dire report. (The water in the hotel bathroom is tepid and brown, the food is greasy, there's nothing to do, the natives are hostile, and the linens don't seem very clean.) You would look at your kids and your spouse, take a swallow, and feel a sense of deep and utter despair. You would lose your will to continue, to soldier on toward your goal. And yet, did the Israelites have some sort of choice? Could they return to Egypt and slavery? Did they have an alternative destination?

Since they did not and we know they did not have an alternative destination, why would Moses send the spies in the first place? What was the purpose of that little "check it out ahead of time" trip to Israel by the spies? Were the spies damned if they did and damned if they didn't?

Did you figure it out? Of course you did. You're a smart person and I pinch your cheek with affection. MWAH! 

The purpose of the spies was to provide a sort of travelogue for the Israelites. Like those magazines that tempt readers with descriptions of faraway exotic places. Those magazines beckon to you when you pass a newsstand on your way to the office, make you daydream about your next vacation, and squirrel away your dollars toward realizing those dreams. The magazines keep you going as you sit in your cubicle doing scut work, giving you something to hope for: something beyond the cube.

You trust those travel magazines with the glossy pictures of white sand beaches and vistas of blue water that stretch across an endless distance. You trust them because you know that the financial well-being of the magazine depends upon the dependability of the travel information it disseminates. The magazine would not steer you wrong.




The spies could have spoken of the amazing varieties of fruit they found in Israel which were larger and more succulent than any other fruits they had ever seen. They could have spoken about the way the inhabitants feared and honored the spies in equal measure. There were so many wondrous things they could have said about the Holy Land.


But no. They said sucky nasty stuff that scared the Israelites and made them terrified to come into the land.

THAT is why the spies were punished. Not because they told the truth. But because there were good, true, HOLY things to say about Israel, but they chose to say negative things that would have a negative impact on the people they were meant to cheer and encourage.The spies' evil report did harm to their souls and those of the people who heard what they said.


Why am I telling you all this today--especially since the Torah portion recounting the story of the spies will not be read until June 16th of this year (2012)? I'll tell you why. You knew I would, didn't you?

Don't expect me to give you a balanced picture of life in Israel. I won't do it just to be intellectually honest. I won't say things that cast the land I love in a negative light. I won't talk about domestic issues if they will tend to make Israel not look so terrific. I won't do it because I love Israel with all my heart and there are too many good things, wondrous things to say than to hurt my soul by pointing out any supposed negatives. I won't give fuel to the naysayers. I won't align myself with them.


I could spend all day and night praising Israel and not run out of things to say. And that is my preference. Israel is meant to be a light unto the nations. To me, that means sharing the light and not the dark side of Israel. It means stressing the beauty and holiness of the land instead of reporting on grimy events or infighting and criminal acts by its inhabitants.

That is NOT to say that I won't speak out against evil. But it does mean that I will anguish over a way to express myself without tarnishing the reputation of the love of my life, Israel, even a single iota.

Does it still seem that I am speaking in tongues? So be it. Some would like me to disavow certain activities of certain people in my country. They say that by my silence I am complicit. But those people would do well to read Iggeres HaGra, a letter the Gaon (genius) of Vilna, Rabbi Eliyahu Kremer, (zatzal)* wrote to encourage and instruct his family in 1778 during his aborted journey to the Holy Land.

"...the main way to merit the World to Come is by guarding one's tongue. That is worth more than all the Torah and good deeds. This is the meaning of (Isaiah 32:9) "tranquil women" (Berachos 17a), because the mouth is the holiest of the holy."



*Zatzal is an acronym for "Zecher Tzaddik l'Vracha" which means that "The Righteous One Should be Remembered as a Blessing"

Career Moves IV

oday's blog is a continuation on the subject of social media and career promotion.

We're up to Twitter. So for me, Twitter just feels, um, limited. I love, adore, delight in words, words, and more words. I don't find it a challenging game to force myself into a minimum of letters--it doesn't make me feel successfully competitive when I am successful at staying within the lines. Instead, it feels like a crime.

Makes me kind of sad, really. People forcing their most important moments into 140 characters and spaces. You can call it art. You can say it is beautifully spare and minimal. Contemporary. All chrome, glass, and neutrals. But I call it "limiting."


I had the same problem with the word limit at the much more generous Facebook. And that was the main thing Google+ had going over Facebook. Yeah, you could write a note on Facebook. But notes were weird. They were like getting up on a stage.

On Google+ you could keep on going way after you could on Facebook, realize it, and tie it up, Folks. But you could have those few extra dots, squiggles, and lines of meaning.

Did you think that was enough to sway me to Google+? Nope. I just can't like it there. Is it some loyalty I feel I owe to Mark Zuckerberg who never misses an opportunity to hurt his own people? Can't be, right? I mean this is the gal who organized a one-day boycott of Facebook if the social media space refused to take down the violent Intifada pages. I have proven my commitment to activism.

(Note: There was a deadline and Facebook met the deadline, so I canceled the event. Which was really, really dumb. I should have changed the date to "anytime" or something. What I did was make the whole thing disappear. Facebook didn't archive the page which means that we the public do not have access to all the viral activity there. I can't show it to the world or even to potential employers. I can't say: I did this. *dumbkopf* *smacking myself upside the haid*

Worse yet, within hours, the pages were back. *sigh*)


But back to MZ. I don't feel loyal to him. I just don't feel a need to switch. I'm comfortable on Facebook. Any place else seems foreign in comparison. No matter how bright and colorful and unlimited. Dumb, right? Well, there it is. Could there also be a bit of the anti-Google in me? I do sometimes worry at Google's supremacy in the world. It feels almost like a mitzvah to knock it down a notch or two.

That leads me to here. My blog. I talked about blog narcissism back in 2009 So, you know my tentative feelings about sharing feelings. But something I read the other day in an excellent blog by Carol Tice on 113 Things You Can Do to Grow Your Freelance Writing Income — Now may be changing the way I think about blogging.


Number 111 on Tice's list of tips is: "Remember your blog is a writing sample. Have a clean design, show you understand social media, and write every post like it’s a $1-a-word magazine assignment."

Now that was a tip I could implement with ease. I can write in my blog. In a sense, unemployment is freeing: I finally have the time to exercise my writing muscle.

Of course, poverty means taking the time to do things the old-fashioned way, like grating cheese to save the shekels it costs to buy the already-grated stuff. On the other hand, there is nothing like hand-grated cheese and the satisfaction of having been the one to produce the same. There is joy and immediate gratification in "just being a housewife."

The kids come home to a gourmet lunch and say, "I love you, Eema," whereas when I'm working, it doesn't make sense to cook complicated items. Why should I when I can cook something fast and easy they all enjoy? And I am amply suited to do just that. Thank God. Though I confess my sewing borders on sadomasochism--a topic to save for another blog, maybe, if I dare.

Meantime, I am here a lot, at Judean Rose, experimenting on what works to generate a comment and a following and what does not. I get the luxury of indulging my creative writing bent just for me. And it's good for my career, too.



A person needs calm and space in which to write. That makes writing a luxury for me. Calm and space are items that sometimes seem well out of reach to me.


Sometimes I dream about it: having time and space to write. As much as I want. Well, short of a sugar daddy (ha!) or a grant from some discerning org, time and space to write remains the provenance of the wealthy. And anyway, who'd want to read the thoughts of a poor person?

But please spare me the comments about poor being relative and how rich I really am and so forth. You know what I mean. Don't force me to pretend for your sake. Your silence on this issue feels supportive in this case.

Please DO leave comments about the use of social media and weighing friendships versus business moves.

Career Moves III

esterday's blog was a continuation on the subject of social media and the use of friends as vehicles for career promotion. Today's blog is a continuation of this topic.

I spoke about Facebook, Quora, Pinterest, and putting the word out to friends about my job search. But employers are also asking me about other social media.

3) Are you on LinkedIn? Twitter? Google+?

I have put some work into LinkedIn but just can't get excited about going there. I also end up in sticky water when people I REALLY DON'T LIKE send connection requests. You can say it's only about business, but that's just the point: if I don't like the person, why on earth would I want to help them professionally? Okay, so yes, I have a nasty spot in me.

On the other hand, I sent out LinkedIn contact requests to everyone I could find through my own contacts, who was even remotely connected to any profession that interested me. I clicked the space next to "friend" which was the only way to send a request to someone you don't know for free, but explained what I was doing in the copied and pasted message I sent with the requests. I was honest about my motives.That actually got a hugely positive response. All the writers and so forth, to whom I'd sent requests thought it a mutually beneficial idea to become LinkedIn contacts and gladly accepted.

But then I had a painful experience regarding the woman with whom I'd apprenticed under for one month. I learned so much from her. She promised me the earth, hinting more than once that I would soon be offered "a more global position." She said that salary reviews would be undertaken after the High Holidays and that's when it would happen.

Then two days before Rosh HaShana, she called to tell me a different office had nixed the idea and had already hired someone else in New York. I felt my heart dip and fall into a place of pain, way down deep. I hovered on the brink of depression.I had just written my mother about the upcoming promotion. My family had rejoiced at that news. It was a triumph. 

A month later I sent the woman who spoke of a more global position a LinkedIn request for a recommendation and she never responded. We'd been in constant contact for a month as she taught me the ropes and made me dream. Shee-oot. Reminds me of a mantra I used to have and have tried to since disown: "Life sucks and then you die." I can't tell you how many times I got chastised for that one until fed up, I changed it to: ""No matter how short your wife is, lean down and take her advice."
(Bava Metzia 59a)

Everyone loves this one. Especially men with short wives.

So that would be all I have to say about LinkedIn. See tomorrow for more about social media and career promotion.

Career Moves Part II

esterday's blog was about the pros and cons of using Facebook to promote a career. Today's blog continues the subject of social media and friends as vehicles for career promotion.


                                       Putting the Word Out There

I put the word out to friends that I need help with my job search. Some friends have done their best to help me by forwarding me job opps. I have been very touched by their kindness and this has really been, in general, quite helpful.

But in one case, someone actually spoke to a friend about me to try to help get me back on my feet. My friend's friend had politics at odds with my own. My friend was upfront about that fact. And the bottom line is Dov and I agreed it would be wrong for me to take any work that came through that venue.



It looks ungrateful, or maybe stupid. But in fact, it was only a moral decision about being true to our (mine and my husband's) own beliefs, politically and otherwise.

In another case, a friend gave me a hot lead, including an email address, but the contact never responded. I went back to my friend who said, "Write in the subject line: 'SO-AND-SO SENT ME,'" (substituting her name of course and not so-and-so) which still elicited no response from the contact. *shrug*

Well, onward and upward: in the first installment of this series, I wrote about the number one question from employers, "How many friends on Facebook?"

But employers are also asking about other social media sites.

2) "What about Quora and Pinterest?"

I had no ideas what these spaces were, but I figured it out and wangled invites for both sites. I need to say this: I HATE that by-invitation-only stuff. I think they do it to make people feel elite. Which is really obnoxious and insults our intelligence.

But once on Pinterest, I enjoyed myself. I made a nudnik of myself by posting luscious food pix one after the other on Facebook. People said, "What? Are you trying to KILL me??" LOL.


Quora was less successful. But only because I found myself "into it" right away and then had a negative interaction with someone within hours that is still having ramifications until now. I answered a question and got pressed for more proof. My proof was not this person's proof and I had none other to offer. But the other person insisted that meant I was wrong. Argh.

What do you think of the invitation only social media sites?

To be continued.

Career Moves

 have been thinking about a lot of ideas this week in a kind of ephemeral haze. I am stalled in my career. My attempts to find employment are still met with resistance.

What is, is written in the cosmos for reasons unknown to me. As a result, I came to decide that my best career move at the moment is to focus on this one space: my blog.

Here's the premise:

This is a space where potential employers can test my mettle as a writer: Am I good enough?

And this is a space where I can build a following.

Still, it is clear that to be anyone today, you have to be here, there, and everywhere. A blog isn't enough. eMail isn't enough. One blog and eMail is equivalent to having no presence on the World Wide Web. You'll have barely left a footprint. How do I know this? Potential employers have been asking me about my social media qualifications:

1) How many friends on Facebook?

This question forced me to assess my Facebook habits. I have tried to keep Facebook honest. I didn't want to make friends for business' sake. I have LinkedIn for that.

But today's employer expects you to exploit all social media for his/her benefit. That means that numbers count.

It also forces you to decide on your perspective--what do you deem a prudent career move and what borders on performing immoral acts? Do I agree to exploiting the numbers in this equation? Do I rack up friends to drive the numbers up without giving a damn about them? Do I friend famous or successful people, hoping that our friendship somehow leverages me to a different stratum of the social sphere?

If you were to do your own assessment of your Facebook friends, you may find that you have many friends you know are not interested in you in the least. Some of them never wrote a word on your wall or pitched in on a thread. Some never said a word but saw you in the supermarket and told you that they read everything you write and share--it's just that s/he's a lurker. Now that's a horse of a different color: an honest statement like that must be savored and appreciated.

But if they see you and still say nothing. Or they live far away but you see they wish everyone else in your old crowd Happy Birthday except for you.

Maybe you had a warm, even BEAUTIFUL reunion, seasoned with the wisdom that comes with age. But one party sensed the other's antipathy over the decision to divorce a spouse, or asked for financial help after having no connection for 3 decades. Or perhaps you posted too many youtube clips. Or perhaps it's really your constant politicizing but the other must find a noncontroversial excuse to unfriend you that doesn't seem anti-Semitic so the person says that you post too many youtube clips.

And what of lurkers who comment on every single posting and make everything all about them? Personally, I would love to do an honest clean-up of my facebook list. Keeping friends who do not like you feels like RAPE and it's not much better when it's you who doesn't like THEM.

But the numbers. I'd go down to so few real friends. Okay, not by that many, I'm exaggerating. But I'm thinking one-third would stay by my side, given a choice. Can I afford to be honest at the expense of doing what needs to be done to help me pay my bills?

Here is what I have considered then: Perhaps I will tell people that I will unfriend anyone who doesn't wish me happy birthday on the date Facebook tells them is my birthday (As an aside: I celebrate my birthday according to the changeable lunar calendar, for religious reasons. My lunar birthday is ט"ו סיון or the 15th of Sivan.)

At that point, if you wish to continue to be my friend, so this line of thought goes, you will have to send me a new friend request. If you have unsubscribed from my feed, then you likely will not receive notice that this blog entry has been posted. I post my blog entries from here, Twitter, linkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.

When I write something new, it is out here in the blogosphere. So, shall I adopt this policy? If you don't wish me happy birthday, you're gone and the numbers be damned? I feel I need to have some scruples, you see.

So maybe I shouldn't do that. What do you think? Should I keep the numbers and let two-thirds of my friends just be numbers? Is my career more important than calling nonfriends, "friends?"


To be continued.

Gleaming Flaxen Waxen

 lot of my readers asked about the wicks I described in Apple of Sodom. What happened? Did they work?

The short answer is they were fabulous! Never did we have such a clean-burning Menorah and the wicks seemed to stay lit forever. We lit at around 5 PM and at 1 AM, those wicks were still going strong.

We told Yitzchak to go ahead and make some more wicks for the second night. Which he did. Same results. Worked a treat!

But today he balked. *sigh* He said the stuff made his nose itch. I think it was more about it no longer being a novelty. I let him go ahead and make the wicks from regular cotton wool, as we have done every other year.

However, it bothered me. I liked that the wicks from the Tapuach Sdom had so much meaning and because they burned so well, too. It added something. Since I had ample material left in that seedpod Yitzchak brought home, I really didn't want it to go to waste.

So I asked Asher to give it a go. Not a good idea. He began to kvetch almost immediately.

I was super busy with baking and other tasks today but it occurred to me that maybe I should take a look and see if there was some way to make the process of rolling the wicks more pleasant. I sat down next to Asher, pulled some of the fluff from the seedpod and began to roll it between my palms. It hit me right away: it was just like spinning flax!

I have done a lot of odd things through the years to bring in money here and there for our large family. One of the things I did was spin linen thread to be used for weaving priestly garments for a museum exhibit. These garments were identical to those worn by the High Priest during the performance of his priestly duties at the Temple.

As a novice spinner, I started with wool.This was easy stuff to work with, due to the natural lanolin contained in the wool. It just slipped through your hands. But flax was a whole different ballgame.


Flax was dry. The only way to keep the spinning wheel going instead of catching and stuttering was to wet the fibers from a bowl of water kept nearby. I'd dip my fingers into the bowl whenever the works started to run dry.

After awhile, I developed a nice rhythm. My thread was very fine and I was proud to give some to my mother, who is a weaver. I was very proud, too, that my thread was used to make this important exhibit that is still on view today.


That was over 2 decades ago. But when I sat down to see what was up with making the wicks from the Tapuach Sdom, it hit me that the stuff was dry like flax, which is also of plant origin. I brought a little bowl of water, dipped my fingers in and got to work. Viva la difference!

I showed Asher and he saw I was right. The job went very fast after that, and we used up the rest of the fibers in the seedpod. We got a generous yield of wicks out of that one seedpod.

We may not ever have another Tapuach Sdom for Chanuka menorah wicks, but I'm glad we had this special material for at least this one year. It really added a lot of meaning to our holiday.

Shaken not Stirred

he kids have school off for Chanuka which turned out to be useful for me. I am under doctor's orders not to pick anything up above a certain weight and I wanted to buy a sack of potatoes. Chanuka means potato latkes (pancakes).

I brought Asher along to the store to pick up the sack of potatoes, put it in my shopping cart, lift it onto the cashier's conveyer belt, put it back in the cart, and then transfer it to the little cart I use to shlep the groceries home. Kids are useful that way...Besides, I knew he was dying to spend some alone time with me. He is of an age where we need to find excuses to spend time together.

It was nice having him along. He asked me to buy him stuff at the store, but that's par for the course. I had allowed for that in my budget.

The only catch was that the store was out of microwave popcorn. I'd wanted to stock up because the kids are home for the week and they enjoy making popcorn and watching movies. Asher and I looked up and down all the aisles twice and didn't find any. I said, "Well, maybe I'll just have to make popcorn from scratch."

Asher turned a quizzical face to me and said, "How do you MAKE popcorn?"

"OMG," thought I. "What had I wrought? Did I actually have a child who didn't know how popcorn was made??"

That settled the matter right there and then: I was going to buy and make popcorn. This was quite clearly a necessary aspect of my son's education.

You see, in the days before microwaves, I was actually the popcorn queen. I used to make a kilo of the stuff every single Friday. This was the family treat for Shabbes. It was filling, crunchy, satisfying, and most of all: inexpensive.

We had a lot of kids and deemed Shabbes treats an important part of their Jewish education. We wanted our kids to love Shabbes. Popcorn served us very well as a way to make our kids feel the joy of the day without us having to spend a fortune.

Making popcorn had been a part of my week for so many years that I was shocked to discover that Asher didn't have any recollection of homemade popcorn in his memory bank. But you see, it's like I raised more than one generation of children. My eldest turns 31 tonight. Asher is 11. My daughter's memories of childhood are by nature, going to be vastly different than those of Asher.

Still, I was appalled that he really didn't know how real popcorn was made. It was like growing up in the city and thinking that milk came from the supermarket rather than from cows. It was akin to forgetting how to play with Lego because of spending too much time on the computer. It seemed my duty as a parent to show Asher that popcorn can be made with love by a mom.

So even though it was the last thing I needed to add to my to-do list for today, I bought a bag of popcorn. We brought it home and I showed Asher how to check the kernels for signs of infestation as per Jewish law. Then I got out my big heavy pot and showed him how I do the popcorn thing. It involves a lot of heavy-duty shaking. The heavy pot and the shaking: those are the two big secrets to popcorn making.

I made so much popcorn that it filled a large plastic dish basin. The kids were amazed at how much better it tasted than the microwave stuff they're used to eating. And I cooked it up in no time flat.

On Chanuka, the custom is to eat foods fried in oil, to commemorate the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting 8 days; the length of time it took to get more pure olive oil to light the Temple Menorah. It seemed fitting that in addition to potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts, the Epsteins also had low-tech popcorn, cooked in a pot with canola oil. Much more fitting than a cellophane wrapped bag you zap with microwaves.

Chappy Chanuka!