Orange Chicken or Tofu

This is adapted from a recipe in the Diane Mott Davidson culinary mystery, the Grilling Season.  I served this with mashed potatoes.  It's a really good way to serve parve mashed potatoes with a creamy, sweet orangy sauce.

1 orange
1 cup orange juice
vinegar (anything but balsamic)
mustard
olive oil
flour
sugar
cumin
salt & pepper

1 pack tofu or 8 pieces of chicken shnitzel (that's flattened breasts cut in pieces for you overseas folks).

Marinade:

2 tbsp. vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. mustard
grated zest of orange
juice of the orange
pinch of cumin
salt & pepper

Mix the marinade and marinate the chicken or tofu in a flat pan for 30 mins to an hour.

Sauce:

heat 2 tbsp. oil and add 2 tbsp. flour.  mix over a flame.  add 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp. vinegar, 1/2 tsp. mustard and mix well.  Add 1 cup orange juice and 1/2 cup water, salt and pepper.  Whisk until smooth, heat until thickened, turn down heat and put a lid on to keep it warm.

While you are cooking the sauce, fry the chicken or tofu in a large pan, 4 pieces at a time.  Fry chicken well on each side.  You won't need oil because of the marinade, you can put a spoonful of the marinade on top of each chicken piece.

Put the chicken or tofu in the oven for 5-10 more minutes while you get your other stuff finished. 

Apple Orange Muffins

Made these easy muffins today - adapted from a Fannie Farmer basic muffin recipe:

Preheat oven to 375/190

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar

Mix these together.

In another bowl mix:

1 cup orange juice
1 egg
1/4 cup - 50 g melted butter (or oil)
1 teaspoon grated orange peel

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix till just mixed.
Add 1/3 cup ground up cereal flakes - this is optional but good for texture.  I used fitness flakes.
Add 2 small apples or one large apple, diced about .75 cm.

Mix gently and put batter in muffin cups.
Bake 25-30 minutes.

Makes 12.

You know, we don't tell our kids

I have pretty strong defenses for keeping terror at bay.  I try to avoid news.  I try to only open my heart to what actually touches me.  I feel things and I would prefer not to.

Last week's shooting in Tel Aviv felt like too much to take in, please not more, because I'd been at a shiva for a brave woman who decided not to fight her cancer, and I saw the face of her son who supported her decision.  I saw what it cost.  And I was helping a friend whose father had a heart attack on the anniversary of his mother's death.  The father died after the attack in Tel Aviv and before we got the news about Orlando.

And we don't tell our kids.  Sure, they hear about it in school.  If we mention things, we mention them quietly.  We have one word that covers everything man-made - pigua - it means people were hurt.  It means but does not say terror.  It refers to the harm.  So when we are talking to one another about Orlando, we aren't talking to our kids, and when they ask what happened we say it was a pigua, someone shot up a club.  We don't say a gay club.  We don't want them to feel less safe for being part of this family.  We don't watch the news and we don't let them know details.  They know Shira Banki died last summer and how and "why".  They know that homophobia and hate is out there.  We want them to know and we don't want them to know.  We can barely breathe ourselves - should they feel the same way?

I walk one of our dogs and I see the border police have stopped a car and there are six men on the sidewalk, seems to be three police and three Arab men.  The discussion seems calm, the car eventually drives away.  I think one man may have been arrested or detained.  The beginning of a bad day for him at 6 am.  Meanwhile around the corner two men jump a fence and continue walking/running to work avoiding these same border police.  Another Arab man comes to the bus stop.  I live on the line of the West Bank and our town is one big porous illegal border crossing.  If I want to fear, there are ample occasions.  I comfort myself by reminding myself that the attackers can get a much bigger response from attacking a larger venue.  Tzur Hadassah is not Tel Aviv, is not Jerusalem, is not.....  And I walk with my head held high because honestly, in my heart of hearts, I know that most people around me are not killers, and that the men I see every morning are on their way to work to support their families, just like people everywhere.

I wonder a lot about the lessons I teach as a parent.  Our kids know our politics, but I try hard not to tell them what to think.  I prefer to listen as my daughter starts to develop her own critical thinking skills, and maybe suggest a direction or two, but quietly.  I am not sure how my son is making sense of the world.  I would say I do more interrupting and questioning than pushing ideas.  And in the absence of a frame, in the absence of a pat answer to tell my children, in the absence of any earthly explanation of how a human being can gun down 50 people for being in a gay club, I have nothing to say.  So I don't tell them. 

Where do I belong?

This is the first year in many years when I have not been in some way responsible for organizing programming for others on the national holidays that follow Pesach:  Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut.  And my kids are older.  As an organizer, and as a parent of small children, there was a way in which I stood outside my own experience as I was busy mediating the experience for others.  This year I am much more inside my own experience, and it's harder.

This week felt like a spiritual trough on a number of levels:  Pesach ended, my parents left the country, and everyone went back to work/school.  I completed a project I have been working on for three months, one that engaged me daily with studying Tanach and Mefarshim (Medieval commentators).  And it was Yom HaShoah.  Completing the Tanach project felt like it removed me in some way from a dialogue with God I had been in, or from being a spectator to a dialogue with God.  It was on the book of Job, and as the book unfolded I especially came to love the ending chapters, but also to love the engagement with the questions it raises. 

Yom HaShoah also felt like it removed me from a dialogue with God, a time of being confronted by God not made manifest.  I felt I could not stay home and in the day I went to the Conservative Yeshiva to hear Ruth Vleeschouwer and Rabbi Pesach Schindler, who escaped Germany as children - Ruth to being in hiding in Holland and Reb Pesach against all odds to the United States - tell their stories.  I took great comfort in God made manifest in their tellings - in Ruth's humor and self-awareness, in her return to Judaism and her commitment, and in Reb Pesach's quoting Tanach references throughout his talk, his ever present commitment to teaching and referencing Torah as a guide for life.  Leaving their presence I felt loss, and challenge, and deep questions about how on earth such atrocities could have happened, as well as faith in the triumph of the human spirit.

In the evening I went to the choral group I have joined (composed 100% of native born Israelis) and was reminded how hard it is to find where I belong during this period of the year.  I did not grow up here.  I don't know the songs or the social/cultural cues.  Israel is no longer a nation of immigrants, but a nation of children of immigrants.  The stories told are the stories of the parents and grandparents.  One does not hear much about recent immigrants.  On the one hand, I have come to identify with the country and the national holidays.  On the other hand, when I step outside the community of English speaking immigrants I most often spend time with, I feel a large gap.  I spend a bunch of time with native born Israelis, but I always feel I don't quite fit.  Of course were I to spend this part of year in the United States I would no doubt feel quite ill at ease there. 

As much as I am a Zionist, and I am a Zionist, I am not sure where God is in all this.  I can't accept simple answers or platitudes.  I appreciate that we live here in a sovereign Jewish state but I see all the difficulties and challenges that creates, including our own abuses of power.  And I feel the tenuousness of our presence here, a sense of threat from the turmoil and nations that surround us.  I can only hold on to King David's words in 1 Chronicles 29:15 - "For we are strangers before you and temporary residents like all our ancestors, our days are like a shadow upon the land and there is no hope."  And then he asks God to turn all our hearts toward God.  To prepare our hearts.  May this be a strong Omer period of turning and of preparation.  And if my days are a shadow, let me work to turn it in the right direction.

Not what I signed up for

I don't mean this to be a rant, or a complaint, nor for it to sound depressed or weary but....

I find I am living a life that seems like "not what I signed up for" in a world that is "not what I signed up for."  I guess that's the essence of a midlife crisis.  I put it off when the kids were little, but I feel it very strongly now.

A young woman who used to be a student of mine in Hebrew school when I was a congregational rabbi is now a young mom, and she signed me up for a facebook group called "What's for dinner?"  I can't bear it.  I spend a good deal of time thinking about what to make for dinner these days, more than I used to, but I cannot bear that this is what young women twenty or thirty years my junior are spending their time doing.

I grew up in the women's movement.  I worked in the battered women's movement, fighting for justice.  All kinds of questions I thought were asked and answered seem to come around on a daily basis.  I frequently wonder, "what were we doing?  did nothing take from all those hours and years of hard work? was there no real change?"

It doesn't help that I live in a country heavily influenced by Orthodox Judaism and hang out on facebook and in person with lots of Orthodox women.  They (mostly) didn't have the upbringing I did or the same expectations. 

I don't know what I was thinking when I moved to Israel, but then as now my life is significantly affected by being shomeret Shabbat, in whatever fashion I am.  I don't naturally move in secular circles and haven't since around 1990.  Certain freedoms aren't available and I am naturally thrown into a culture that isn't naturally mine.  Though I work hard to be involved with Israelis and participate in Israeli culture (study every week in Hebrew with Hebrew speakers, joined a Hebrew speaking choir), I don't mix naturally there either. 

Last year I hit menopause with a bang and with it kind of ricocheted off the career advancement ladder and out of management.  I found I can earn almost as much money working from home 25-30 hours a week doing intellectually challenging work as I earned working 40-45 hours at my management job.  I traded my career identity for the opportunity to be home more for my kids and family.

So I spend more time making dinner, washing dishes, doing laundry and grocery shopping.  And trying every day to value these tasks and believe in them.  Here I am in a tough place.  Gittinomics is the book that made the most sense of this for me - he explains that you will either do these tasks or pay someone to do them for you.  I already pay car mechanics, electricians, plumbers and handymen (note: all male) and now an accountant, but I have never felt that I could comfortably pay someone to clean my house.   And if you can't do that you probably can't work full time, raise kids, etc.  You can't be the middle class executive type I was trying to be for so many years. 

And yet I feel like I am constantly fighting the expectations of Bryn Mawr/my family/my ambitions when I try to get comfortable in my new life.  It's like I am wearing a suit that doesn't fit.  And I didn't slow down and get off the stress track because I "wanted" to.  I had to land in hospital to figure out that what I was doing wasn't working for me or anyone around me.  For the last 4-5 years I was in my job, I went to work every morning feeling like I was underwater and below sea level with all the tasks that were on top of me, never getting to level and certainly not "on top of things".  And no David Allen books or Asana software could fix that. 

I'm not unhappy with my de-stressed life, but I'm not comfortable either.  I have a million questions about gender, and the purpose of life, and what I am doing and not doing.  I don't feel I was "sold a bill of goods" by the women's movement or falsely told that I could "have it all."  I still hold by two sayings - my brother says, "you can have everything you want, but you can't have it all at the same time."  And I heard somewhere, "you can do anything you want in life if you are willing to pay the price."  I decided to pay the price of my career identity and importance in the world in trade for a quieter, happier family, a saner life and better physical and mental health.  But it still doesn't feel like "what I signed up for."

What Happened - About Lucas, parental fear, and Tzuk Eitan

הייתי השבוע בדיון על צוק איתן ועל פחד הורים וישבתי שם ופשוט רעדתי.  הצלחתי להגיד כמה מילים והרגשתי איזה הקלה קלה אבל הרעד המשיך ובסוף רציתי רק להכנס למיטה ולבכות.  בדרך הביתה חשבתי על התמונה הזאת של ילדה מתכרבלת במיטה וגיליתי שזה משהו שאני זוכרת מחברה שלי, ג'יל, שאחרי הלוויה של אביה היתה במיטתה, בוכה.  הייתי בת 10 בערך.  הפגישה הראשונה שלי עם מוות. 

משום מה, הבת שלי גבי משורשת בעולם הזה ואני לא דואגת לה.  פעם, כשהיא היתה בת שנתיים היא רצה אל הכביש.  אני עדיין מקבלת צמרמורת כשאני חושבת על זה.  אבל כעיקרון היא נזהרת, שומרת על עצמה, מתקשרת.
 

הבן שלי הוא משהו אחר.  מתקופת ההריון לא הייתי בטוחה בקיומו.  הייתי בשמירת הריון ומישהי אמרה לי לנצל את הזמן להתחבר עם התינוק שלי והרגשתי "איך?"  עד הרגע שהוא יצא לא האמנתי.  ואז הכל התחיל – האי נוחות שלו בעולם, האסטמה ודלקת הריאות בשנה ראשונה ובהמשך.  מתוך 5 שנים הראשונות 4 פעמים דלקת ריאות.  הלילות עם אסטמה ובמקביל הסיפורים של גיסי וגיסתי על לוקס והאסטמה שלו.  הם היו באותו גיל.  היו לנו משפחות מקבילות, לכל אחת בת ובן, באותם גילאים.

ואז הנורא מכל – הטלפון ב11:30 בלילה.  כשבשרו לנו את הבשורה על לוקס, שמת בתאונת דרכים בגיל 4 וחצי, כל החדר התמלא באור.  לא אשכח – אולי גם זאת סיבה שרציתי לחזור לחדר שלי השבוע.  אני יודעת שיש מעבר מן החדר שלי לטרינידד – שם אנחנו נמצאים עם קרובינו.  ללוויה של לוקס אלן נסעה לבד וגם למות של אביה לא נסעתי – אני נשארתי במיטתי מחוברת איכשהו דרך המעבר הזה.

לוקס היה ילד עטוף בצמר גפן – לא יצא מהבית בלי ליווי מבוגר.  המטפלת שלו חיכתה לו מחוץ לגן כל השעות המעטות שהוא בילה שם.  אמר לאבא שלו זמן קצר לפני מותו שהוא לא צריך ללמוד לקרוא כי הוא לא עולה לבית הספר.

לעומתו סשה היה ילד של סכנות – טיפס על חומות, חיפש גירוי סנסורי בכל מקום.  קבל תלת אופן והתאמן במרפסת על נפילות ממנו – איזה עשרים פעמים נפל, בכה ב"כאלו", הקים את עצמו לעשות שוב.  

אחרי מותו של לוקס שאלתי את עצמי איך?  איך אני אגדל אותו?  אם לוקס ששמרו עליו כל כך מת, איך אשמור על סשה?  אין לי סיכוי להצליח.

כשלוקס נהרג סשה בא מגן ואמר – מצאנו את הנשמה של לוקס בחצר.  זה היה אדום.  נחפור ונוציא אותו ונחזיר לו.  

זה פחד הורים.  חשבתי שהאמנתי בה' אבל גיליתי שהאמנתי בסנטה קלאוס.  חשבתי שיש עסקה ביננו לבין היקום – שמים תמיד את הילד בכסא בטיחות ושום דבר לא יקרה לו.  ה' הפר את עסקתנו.  

מאז מותו קשה לי בכל ברית מילה – כשאומרים "קיים את הילד הזה לאביו ולאמו" אני צועקת בפנים.  מה?  גיסי וגיסתי לא היו ראויים לזה?  באיזה תמימות עומדים ההורים בטקס.  כששרים "המלאך הגואל אותי" אני מתמלא בדמעות.  איפה היה המלאך?

צוק איתן – בזמן שהתחילה נפילת הטילים, חמי נכנס לבית חולים וגילו ולא גילו את המחלה שהרג אותו בעוד 4 חודשים.  בזמן שהתחילה המבצע אלן העבירה בקושי קייטנה ממקום פתוח לבית ספר סגור ואז יצאה לחופשה מתוכננת לארה"ב עם הילדים והשאירה אותי כאן, לעבוד.  חלמתי על הזמן הזה וציפיתי להרגשה של חופש.  קבלתי פחד, בדידות, ודאגות.  לנסוע דרך חוסן או לנסוע דרך ההרים ב"שטח פתוח" שם לא יורטים בטילים אם שוגרים.  והיו לנו 150 סטודנטים שבאו מחו"ל, לא בטלו, ואני נותנת תדרוכים איך להגיע למרחב מוגן .  מלמדת תהילים ואומרת שאני מחפשת אמונה שימושית – אמונה שתחזיק ותחזק אותי בימים אלה.  

ויוצאת לחופשה, וחוזרת, ואלן בטרינדד עם אביה, והיא חוזרת, החגים, אני פתאום חולה, אז עוד טיסה בבהלה ואלן יושבת ליד אביה ביום האחרון שלו.  ואני מקבלת בשורות במיטה ומתקשרת דרך המעבר הרוחני הזה להיות לצידו ולהיות עדה למעברו.  ומחליטה לשנות את חיי. 

What Happened? Part Three

I've been thinking about Part Three of this story for weeks.  Finding so much I want to say and then wondering if everything I plan to write is lies, or at least a skewed way of thinking about things.  And I've been stymied about how to write this part of the story in a way that honors and respects my parents.  What is written below doesn't really convey the angst of this change in my life.  I still have days where I just don't know what happened.

My grandmother, my father's mother, left school at 12 years old, I've been told, to care for her new baby brother.  That's how old Gabi is now.  Then she went back and did a secretarial or business course, and worked until she married.  She told me, I am pretty sure, that she and Grandpa were very pleased she did not have to work after they got married, that this was very important to them, a point of pride, that he supported her.  Of course, she worked like crazy at home - her home was spotless and she was a consummate homemaker.  Every morning, she fresh squeezed Grandpa orange juice. 

My mother, her daughter-in-law, was the first woman in her family to go to college.  Her own mother wanted her to go to secretarial school.  She got a Ph.D.

I grew up between these two formidable women.  Grandma has been gone 20 years but her presence is very real in my life.  She was my only grandparent for 22 years after my grandfather, her husband died.  (My mother's parents had died relatively young - my grandmother before I was born and my grandfather when I was 4.)

My parents were super happy to be parents and often talked about how important it was to them to have children.  But at the same time, I felt that their work was more important to them than anything else, or maybe more that work was what defined a person's identity.

I noticed how deep my feelings about this run when I was on my first maternity leave.  Since I gave birth late, I had been out of college and working full time or in graduate school for like 20 years.  On maternity leave, my identity was "mom", but sometimes it felt more like "milk cow" and I noticed how hard it was to feel good about myself in that circumstance.

So when I figured out last year, in the wake of my illness and Vlad's death, that I really wanted to "make the main thing the main thing" and to be home more, to focus on my kids and to have the flexibility to travel more and see my parents more, to be available to my partner and to maintaining our home, it was very confusing to me, because it has meant giving up a professional identity that has been really important to me for 30 years and a career I have had for 20 years.  This is the first time in well over 30 years that I am not either a) working for a non-profit organization or b) a full time student or c) both.

What I miss most about my former job is my colleagues and the professional identity.  I can't believe I chose this kind of disconnected freedom.  My feelings are not so closely connected with earning money or working, because I've been working pretty much every day since I left my job.  I have work.  What I don't have is a job.  I opened a business so I can get paid, and I am trying to earn a certain amount and to be fully employed by the work I am doing, but I don't see myself as "building a business", I just see myself as working for myself and for clients who choose me to work for them.  It's much looser, less connected, and less demanding than what I have done before.  It feels oddly relaxed.

Then there are the dishes.  And cooking.  And homework, 4th grade homework.  The grocery shopping, the orthodontist appointments, the prescriptions, the taxes, and the house.  I wish I liked housework.  I don't like it any better than I did before I quit my job.  I will never be my grandmother.  But I do a bit more of it.  And I cook dinner every night, and do the dishes, and walk the dog, and don't feel exhausted.  I have time to notice my children and feel good about them - to listen to what they have to say and to try to respond to what they need.  I am way more relaxed at home.  I can say yes more often. 

I saw a woman with a beautiful dog a few weeks ago, and she was saying how they might give the dog up because they didn't have time to walk it as much as it needed.  I figured if my lifestyle didn't work for my dog, it was time to change my lifestyle.  Thanks Popeye.