( Read more... )

Damned Jewish calendar. It would, of course, figure that my mother's Yartzeit would fall on Thanksgiving. I can't believe it's been a year -- an akwardly elongated Jewish year at that -- that my mother has been gone. In many ways, I am what I am (an illustrator, a linguist -- even a self-idenfitied Jew) because of my mother, and it's still so ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago, this article about extreme gender separation becoming more common in Israel caught my eye, and I have to admit, I was extraordinarily disappointed. My Jewish upbringing has always been rather liberal, so seeing the Chabad movement and its separation of genders was baffling to me, and then "what the fuck were you thinking" ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( Read more... )

So Thanksgiving came and went. To say it was noneventful would be fairly accurate -- I talked to a few folks on the phone but beyond that really nothing happened. Carl had bought a turkey breast and I had cooked that up (the thermometer popping out fifteen minutes after being on the counter!), but mostly everything else that had accompanied it, ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

While certain languages tried to mimic English and other western languages in terms of indication of grammar -- see Chinese and the recent need to differentiate between 他們, 她們, and 它們, "they (masculine)," "they (female)," and "they (non-human)", respectively -- other languages which have HEAVY gender marking struggle to go the OTHER way and try to ( Read more... )

I went up to Schaumburg for Yom Kippur this past weekend. I've attended Or Chadash services ever since I moved to Peoria, as I far prefer the atmosphere among Or Chadash than other local temples. Plus, it gives me reason to flee Peoria as Carl threatens to cook a roast while I'm fasting ( Read more... )

( Read more... )