Too Few & Far Between

Deirdre McCalla herself sent me the lyrics and said she'll post the song next month on www.deirdremccalla.com. Believe it or not, I had them mostly memorized, but I had forgotten the second verse.

TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
(Deidre McCalla)

AFTER IT'S ALL SAID AND DONE WE REMEMBER
TIME WILL MOVE ON BUT THE MEMORIES REPEAT
ME IN MY SCARS MEETING YOU WITH YOUR HUNGER
TO CRY IN THE NIGHT ON A ST. THOMAS BEACH
THERE'S NO REWRITING HISTORY
BE DAMNED YOUR LUCK AT ALL
TO BE BORN INTO AN AGE WHERE
GENTLE MEN STILL FALL
TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND IT DOESN'T MAKE A LIFETIME

PIECES OF DREAMS IN A CARELESS WIND SCATTERED
TOSSED BY THE TIDES AND THE VAGARIES OF FATE
HEARTS ONCE UNITED AND TESTED BY FIRE
STRETCH TO THEIR LIMIT AND FINALLY BREAK
INSIDE A CONSTANT STRANGER
MAKES HER PEACE WITH EACH NEW SUN
DESIRE'S ONLY PASSING
AND TRUE LOVE OFTEN COMES
TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND IT DOESN'T MAKE A LIFETIME

THE SACRIFICE OFFERED BY EACH GENERATION
ARE THOSE WHO WILL RISE UP AND ANSWER THE CALL
CHANGE HAPPENS SLOWLY AND OUR REVOLUTION
STILL QUESTIONS THE PRICE OF EACH WARRIOR WHO FALLS
THE CHOICES ARE REFLECTED
IN THOUGHT AND WORD AND DEED
FOR CAUSES WE WOULD DIE FOR
AND REASONS TO BELIEVE
ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND THEY OFTEN TAKE A LIFETIME

WHEN THE TIME COMES TO COUNT UP ALL OUR BLESSINGS
IT MAY SEEM HARD TO KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN
ONE IS THE PURE CELEBRATION OF LIVING
TWO IS THE LIGHT IN THE EYE OF A FRIEND
TREASURE EVERY MOMENT
WHERE THE LAUGHTER FALLS LIKE RAIN
THERE WILL BE DAYS OF SORROW
AND THE ECHOES THAT REMAIN
ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
BUT THEY OFTEN MAKE A LIFETIME

I always thought that I'd see you again

I wanted to share some songs and poems I've been thinking of in the days since I found out my beloved friend Alan Kaufmann took his own life last week.

Alan and I met in the summer of 1981 when I was 19. I don't know if we saw each other since that time. Today I went looking for the box he gave me with a scroll in it saying that I would always have a place in his heart. We were connected to each other until the day he died, and had planned to see each other February 1. Since he died I understand everything about why we will not be seeing each other, but I still grieve.

While looking for the box he gave me I came across this poem:

Should you go first and I remain
To walk to road alone
I'll live in memory's garden dear
With happy days we've known
In spring I'll watch for roses red
When fades the lilac blue
In early fall when brown leaves call
I'll catch a glimpse of you

....Should you go first and I remain
To finish with the scroll
No length'ning shadows shall creep in
To make this life seem droll
We've known so much happiness
We've had our cup of joy
And memory is one gift of G-d
That death cannot destroy

In the box where I found Alan Kaufmann's photos I also found lots of love letters from my Alen that made me smile.

I've been thinking of the Deirdre McCalla song too few and far between, but I can't find the lyrics online. Her music really speaks to me right now. Since I can't find that, I'll post this beautiful version of her song Blessings.

I owe her my life - Ellen Pence z"l

My heart is breaking because the woman I owe my life to has left this world.

There must be thousands of women who owe Ellen their lives, because she devoted her life to fighting against violence against women, and to training women who worked with battered women. You can see a video of her talking about it here

But you have to take 20 plus years off her to see Ellen as I saw her, yet lose none of the sureness and none of the humor.

Ellen was an amazing teacher, and she taught us how to teach. She talked about Paulo Friere, and about what it meant to empower women in the way we taught. Listen to the video - she is teaching about teaching by listening. Every day I get up to teach, Ellen is with me.

But the reason I owe her my life is that she was the person who told me to come out. I was working with women all the time but living a straight life, and Ellen, in a warm, joking, absolutely certain way, told me I needed to stop. She told me, with a smile, that if I got married to a man, I'd eventually be divorced, because I would meet a woman and fall in love. I said, "will she have glasses?"

That was in the fall of 1987.

The rest is history.

Ellen, you are not gone. Your inspiration lives on in me every day, as I know it does in your son, in your partner, and in all the people whose lives you touched.

50th birthday musings

I had a great 50th birthday last week. The highlight was a book Alen put together of writings and pictures from friends and family who have known me in all parts of my life. I guess 50 years is a long time - I was surprised by the range of people who responded and my heart was warmed by the beautiful things people said and sent, including photos of me I don't ever remember seeing.

I have so much gratitude on this birthday. I often say I was 40 years old and did not know if I would have children. In the past decade we've had the kids, bought a home, made so many friends. We've had very sad losses, and I believe that through it all, I have grown.

On Saturday night we had a party at the Kehillah (congregation) that we are part of. Over 100 people came, including a lot of children. I had made a program of songs (which I will send to you on request). Some students from HUC who are connected with our congregation came and played guitar and Mira from the congregation played flute. I had chosen a mixture of Hebrew and English songs that mean something to me. It was a lot of fun singing. I should also mention that people brought wonderful food. It was impressive to me that after almost 11 years here we could pull together such a big group - including some people I've known for 20 or 30 years - from before we moved here. My cousins (distant cousins who live here and in Jerusalem) were there which was great, and many people from work and from all facets of our life here. Sagit from the congregation gave a beautiful blessing, talking about Avigail from the Bible.

I spoke at the party about third places and the importance for me of having a community, the congregation, as a third place in addition to family and work, a place where I and my family can be known by another group. The congregation is really important to me, and at the same time, it has been a humbling experience to work on trying to build it and keep it strong. The challenges of lay leadership are larger than I would have ever thought possible and I am in awe of the people who give their heart and soul to congregations all over the world to build meaningful communities.

If you are reading this and would like to celebrate my birthday with a donation to Kehillat Tzur Hadassah, it will mean a great deal to me and to my family. Thank you to everyone who made this birthday celebration so special - it was a wonderful feeling that I hope will stay with me for the next decade!

My Pinkwashed Life

The title of this post is a tip of the nib to Ma Vie En Rose, a great film!

So I heard about Pinkwashing last spring, but it's gotten a lot of press recently with Sarah Shulman's Op Ed in the New York Times.

The basic accusation of pinkwashing is that Israel, seeking to win support of both gay and left-leaning people around the world, touts its record on gay rights to obscure the serious violations of the rights of Palestinians. For a well done example of this kind of PR, see Bret Stephens' video, Will Israel Survive?.

I have two responses to Sarah Shulman and those who accuse Israel of pinkwashing. The first was summed up on my friend Rich's facebook post with the link to her article: No matter what we do, they hate us. I would say it differently like this: When Israel is wrong we're wrong and when we're right we're wrong.

My second response is that of course I agree. Of course gay rights are an incomplete indicator of human rights. I've had ample time to think over the past 11 years about whether it is right that my partner and I took advantage of the benefits allowed us under the law of return and moved here while millions of Palestinians do not have the right of return to this area and while my neighbors across the green line in Wadi Fukin and Husan do not have the right to vote and have limited freedom of movement.

But for me it's not about pinkwashing, it's about reality. It's about my life. And my reality is that my family can't live in the US because my partner and I are a bi-national same sex couple. So gay rights in Israel isn't theory for me, it's fact. It's not something to like or not like, it's something that makes my family life possible. And no David, this is not about my pain. This is about my reality.

The reality is the every country that surrounds Israel has human rights issues. Nothing is black and white, and every country lives with a messy reality. Because Israel is subject to an organized media campaign of de-legitimization, and because Israel cares about its image in the eyes of the western world, for self-serving reasons no doubt, we have people out there making the case for what's good about the reality here. Whether you like that or not, it doesn't make a difference to me. I can't live in the US as a lesbian and I'm here because of the reality of gay rights in Israel.

It's not lost on me that Sarah Shulman is in all likelihood, like myself, a descendant of Sarah Imenu. And perhaps that's a good thing. We are a people with a conscience and our arguments and differences are leshem shamayim. For better or worse, the Jewish people still want Israel to be a light unto the nations and for many people it is love of justice and of the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition that motivates their criticisms of Israel. I would not for one minute want my brothers and sisters to stay silent about what they believe is right. I just ask that they remember that there are people, including gay Palestinians, for whom these issues are not words on a page, are not a matter of spin or of "washing" one way or another. There are many people whose lives are directly impacted by the reality of gay rights here - for the good.

None of us knows where this is all leading - if the decline of women's rights in Israel is any indication, nothing is working out the way we planned. I'm grateful that the anti-gay policies of the US government compelled my family to move to the place where the Jewish tradition and politics are intertwined, where the messy imperfection of reality is the challenge that faces me every day.

What Dad Wrote Me in 1983

Here's some excerpts from two letters I treasure that Dad wrote me in 1983, when I was in Israel for the year. The letters are on two airletters, so there aren't really paragraphs:

My grandfather Burstyn was, I suppose, nominally Orthodox (he was once a mashgiach (is that the word? Kashrut supervisor) on Hamburg-America line ships to the U.S. But I don't recall that they even kept a kosher home when I knew them or went to services. My father essentially gave up Jewish ritual after his bar mitzvah, moving instead into the kinds of Jewish socialism that led to the State of Israel (Mapai) as well as to Bolshevism. He was, I believe, a member of the Arbeiter Ring in his youth in the US. I never heard him utter a word of Hebrew (except maybe the Shma), and I doubt that he would have even joined a synagogue had my mother not come from a religious family. So the religious behavior of my family was conditioned by my mother - - I expect this is true for most families. We did not belong to a synagogue until after my grandfather died in 1940. Before then holidays revolved around the Pezrow...house.

Remember that Aunt Vera lived downstairs with her husband Henry Goldsmith and their son Clifford, in what had been a one-family house, and that Aunt Lil, unmarried, lived at home, as I guess did Uncle Ken until he was married in 1939. My grandfather was a pillar of one of those small, Orthodox synagogues that had never built more than the basement, as short a walk in one direction from his house as his grocery store was in the other. I'll show you the neighborhood sometime if you like. The synagogue had no rabbi in my time, because, my grandfather told me, any of the men could conduct the service and the rabbi was needed only to teach the children, who were then (ca. 1938) all grown up. They did have a cantor, who probably had another occupation. Though I have only the vaguest recollections of going to that synagogue (one of Sukkot where I and some other little boys, also grandchildren, went into the succah with my grandfather who draped his huge tallit over all of us while he read something from a scroll or prayerbook), I obviously imbibed a lot of ritual behavior at that impressionable age...


...I can't remember where I left off. I guess I wanted to say that the rigid, unyielding, narrow orthodoxy of my grandfather could not survive the decline of persecution. And considering that he lost his eldest son (cut off for marrying a shikse [yiddish word for non-Jewish woman- ed.], a story so painful that my mother never told me about it-- [your mother] found out from my aunt before she died), it's not clear to me that his religion did anything for Jewish survival, thus rendering practically as well as morally dubious what I take to be the principal argument for Orthodoxy....

There's more which I'll put in another post. If you are reading this, please pray for more to be revealed about my great-Uncle Jack - the oldest son mentioned above. We've learned so much about him this year and understand more that this was a complicated story. I truly believe that my great grandfather Mendel Pezrow of blessed memory would have done it all differently if he had it all to do over again, and I pray that the coming year will reveal more - G-d willing leading us to know when Uncle Jack died and where he is buried. His birth date was August 1, 1898, and he is remembered in the names of my son Alexander Yakov and his second cousin Jacob. Thanks to the kindness of cousins and strangers, we know the name of the woman Uncle Jack married, Edith, that she had a son, and I've made contact with that son's son. May my great grandfather and Uncle Jack's memories be for a blessing.

Parve Lime Bars

I made this parve lime dessert Key Lime Bars with a Gingersnap Crust from a recipe I got on a blog called Couldn't be Parve. http://www.couldntbeparve.com/ You could cut the sugar. I doubled the recipe and used petit beurre parve cookies for the crust. The recipe is a surprise because the crust rises to the top - I did not know that would happen! I used greaseproof paper instead of foil. Come over soon if you want some - they'll be gone quickly!

Makes 12-16 bars depending on the size
For crust
1 cup gingersnap or graham cracker crumbs (gluten-free gingersnap crumbs worked well to make a gluten-free bar)
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) margarine.
For filling
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup key lime juice (fresh or from frozen concentrate, bottled is not as tasty in this recipe)
Zest of 2 limes
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. Line an 8X8 inch baking pan with foil so that the foil hangs over the sides of the pan, and spray the foil with nonstick baking spray.
If starting with whole gingersnaps process them in the food processor until finely ground. Place the margarine in a medium bowl and microwave until melted. Add sugar and crumbs and stir until well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly into the bottom of pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden. Let the crust cool while making the filling.
Place the eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk the eggs on medium-high speed until they thicken, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar while continuing to whip on medium-high, until the mixture is very thick and pale colored, about 5 minutes.
Combine the cornstarch and baking powder and stir together to blend well. Add to the egg mixture and blend together on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Add the lime juice and zest and mix well. Pour the filling over the the crust and bake for 30-35 minutes, until the top is set and light golden and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean or slightly damp. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Lift the cooled bars from the pan using the foil and place on a cutting board. Peel the foil away from the sides and cut into 2-inch squares. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve.