sarah HANNAH gómez

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Shabbat we had the option to do absolutely nothing, or we could participate in a variety of workshops, lectures, talks, activities, etc. In the morning I went to the “morning musical service,” which was just a regular reform service that included lots of Shabbat songs, many of which I did not remember/know at all, and even more that I learned with completely different tunes. That would be weird, except that I’m pretty sure that everybody else Jewish in the world knows the tune that I don’t. I’m thinking the guy who was our songleader when I was little just liked coming up with new stuff.

For the next block, I went to “Whole Torah in Just One Hour,” with one of NYU’s rabbis. He seems pretty chill, and he greeted everyone by going, “Shabbes,” the way the stoner turtle in “Finding Nemo” might say it. In 75 minutes, this guy managed to do all of the following: quote the Iliad in Greek; reference King’s “I have a dream” speech; talk about 100 Years of Solitude ; give an anthropological history of the ancient Sumerians; describe the epic of Gilgamesh; and actually talk about the Torah. The whole trick was, of course, that you can’t do the whole Torah in an hour, but we did get to chapter 13 of Genesis, which he said was further than they got last year. So that was fun.

In the afternoon, I went to “Let’s Talk About Sex,” because, frankly, what else sounds interesting when that’s on the bill? And it really was, because we talked about myths about Jews and sex, like how no, nobody has sex through a sheet, and actually, it’s commanded that you be completely naked (no socks) when you have sex. We also looked at Genesis, cartoons, short stories, halacha, and quotes from Maimonides to discuss men and women’s roles in relationships and where sex fits in. I wish it had gone on longer, because that could be a really interesting class. It was a little bit too large of a group for a really good discussion.

I’d say more, but it’s already been so long and I’m on to new and different things. I finished three more books before school started on Monday, and I’m still plodding through that García Márquez (on a side note, why does everybody in the English-speaking world refuse to see how easy it is to pronounce his name correctly rather than emphasizing the “quez” part?). Those books were:

1. The Journals of Sylvia Plath by, of course, Sylvia Plath. This is another exhausting book that takes quite a long time to read, but being in the company of genius is always awesome, like in the real sense of that word, so it was wonderful to read. The most frustrating thing, aside from knowing I will never be that amazing, was knowing that Ted Hughes destroyed her final journals. I so wanted to read them. I wonder if he did.

2. Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink. I don’t want to say much, because I read this to review for teenreads.com, and the review of that is going to be up soonish. But it was in the vain of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, and while it wasn’t perfectly written, it was a pretty awesome plot, and it was definitely a fun read.

3. The Worst Years of Your Life , edited by Mark Jude Poirier. I was happy to see this collection, because I love teen angst, I try to love YA, at least when it’s good, and it was so neat that this was an accepted collection of “literary” stories that still dealt with that stuff that usually gets labeled “crap” or “Gossip Girl” (which, incidentally, was not crap when it began–only when it continued). Unfortunately, a lot of the stories just seemed so “literary” and weird that I couldn’t really get into them, but the ones that were good were really evocative and interesting. I also appreciated that they mixed contemporary and new authors with older ones.

So that makes 19 books this summer. That’s not what I hoped. And it seemed like so many. It takes longer to read books now than when I was younger. Part of that is that I read harder, better books. I hope. But is it also my short attention span since the Internet came to be? Still, I’ll plod along and keep reading. All I’ll be doing for school this semester is reading anyway.

Stuff about school and life later. Off to do endless homework and work.

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I spent this past week in Clayton, Georgia, doing training for my Hillel internship this year, and just being more Jewish than I have been for quite awhile. I still can’t really say I’ve ever been to the South, because soul food and kosher food are not really the same thing, and Jew camp in a mountain isn’t really Atlanta. But, regardless of my geographic location, I had a great time.

I grew up Jewish, but the religion wasn’t really the main part of it, and I decided on my own to quit being religious when I was about 13. Since then, I’ve found I really want to go back to it, but it’s been hard, because you feel very uncomfortable when you’re a college student but you were never bat mitzvah’ed and you don’t read any Hebrew. Hillel’s siddurim do not have romanized transliteration of Hebrew, so I am completely lost when I go to services, and that is why I bought a teach-yourself-Hebrew book. I have yet to open it, but it’s a start.

Since we were really there for training, we spent a lot of time clustered up with another campus, Rutgers in my case (and our cluster was cluster F, so we had a lot of fun with that), and did bonding things and leadership things and peer networking things, since that’s the basis of our internship. However, we also did a fair amount of Jewish learning, and since I was there over the weekend, we had Shabbat stuff to do that was wonderful.

Before this summer, it had probably been about seven years since I had attended a Friday night service. While I was in Uruguay, we went to services, but as I wrote, I didn’t always enjoy them, though just the feeling of being around people chanting in Hebrew was very comforting. This Friday, though, was the best feeling I had felt in a long time. It made this summer finally feel like summer (magical), and it made me feel as if going to services more often (and taking a b’nai mitzvah class if I can find any free time and more participants) would really help me keep my sanity. I loved it.

Though this is a very ancient tradition, the custom of wearing white on Shabbat has kind of died, I think. But it is apparently a camp-y thing to do, so almost everyone was wearing all or mostly white as we had three processionals to the outside arena where we met, sang, danced horas, and learned other nigunim (songs without words, but sung with many voices including things like “lai lai lai” or “bim bim bom”). Then there were many options for services, and while I could have gone to a traditional one, I chose to stay for the one that other students had put together, which was not very religious, but included singing, active resting by learning about yoga, discussion, reading, etc. I forgot how wonderful it is to go to a service, and I re-familiarized myself with songs, terms such as “d’var torah” (a chosen reading from the Torah that is used to start a discussion about a value, current event, book, or whatever), and just the customs that I grew up participating in (though in a very lax, reform way). I felt really uncomfortable a lot of the time, like on Saturday morning, because I had never been to a morning Shabbat service, and I still don’t know all of the mourner’s kaddish or every song to sing, but even in my moments of discomfort, I’ve scarcely felt so peaceful in recent memory.

I love being Jewish. I can’t wait to become more so this year.

Next time, a blog about other ways to be Jewish, and other things I learned.

I’m nearly done with Plath’s journals, but I needed a break and decided to read some YA I had missed out on. Somehow, when I read nearly all other Judy Blume books, I never read Forever… , the sex book. Then I read Rachel Cohn’s latest, which came out a while ago but I never read, You Know Where to Find Me .

Rachel Cohn’s books have always consistently made me want to write. Like, while I’m reading, I feel desperate to work on whatever it is I’m working on. Gingerbread is a favorite, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is awesome as well. When I was reading this book, I didn’t actually like it as much as her others, but I still felt this need to write, and I was trying to figure out why. I was also trying to figure out why Judy Blume is so awesome, even if now her books read very seventies and seem a little silly (I was very confused when reading Just As Long As We’re Together , because I didn’t understand the whole pad with a belt thing).

My conclusion is this: Rachel Cohn’s voice in her novels is always fabulously teenager-y. Smart teenager-y. I’m thinking that if you’re not very smart, you will probably find her books boring or hard to follow. And this latest book was a bit more boring, just because I don’t particularly love books about people dealing with death. I also love that she writes about big issues (Cyd Charisse in Gingerbread has an abortion, Miles’ cousin in You Know Where to Find Me has just committed suicide, and Miles loves taking Percoset and other pills) but also keeps in mind that a lot of the time, those big issues aren’t even the biggest, and other things, like body image, friendships, crushes, etc, are still profoundly important when you’re 17. I also appreciate that her books aren’t PSAs about any of these things. Yes, people make mistakes and learn from them, because that’s been a pretty foolproof formula for novels for years. BUT not everything ends up perfectly. She’s not Sarah Dessen, which I really appreciate. At the end of this latest book, Miles is still overweight, still not sure if she’s going to quit smoking, and still has an unrequited crush on her best friend. She has learned and resolved other issues, but not everything is coming up roses. AND as if that weren’t awesome enough, Rachel Cohn’s characters are “multicultural” without really trying (take notes, all authors everywhere) and she manages to stick in politics without being annoying. Though that could just be because I agree with her politics. ;-)

And now onto Judy Blume. She’s kind of like the original Rachel Cohn, except her books are really more like children’s books, except for younger teens and about younger and older ones. Definitely her formula is more like a children’s book. But she does some awesome things, like have incredible audacity (or something) to talk about periods, masturbating, and sex. In Forever… , she describes the character’s boyfriend’s penis (nicknamed Ralph) and giving him a hand job. Even I was almost embarrassed to be reading this book. I also like that Blume can insert a certain amount of “multiculturalism” in her books. Maybe because they were written in the seventies, characters aren’t really that diverse ethnically, but she does describe characters and give interesting family histories that can teach you about American history, like how in this book she describes how a character’s last name came to be when it was mispronounced at Ellis Island. Little things like that in books I appreciate.

the belzhar

february reading in review

what else i’m up to, and where

the walls around us

i accidentally secretly watched the entire twilight saga

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