Kids Say the Darndest Things

“When are the ten plagues going to happen, Mommy?” asked my hilarious four year old nephew after learning the story of Passover in school. But he wasn’t kidding; he genuinely wanted to know. Initially my sister felt terrible that her little son carried the burden of such a thought on his tiny shoulders. But then he said he would love to be there because he loves frogs.

Kids say the awesomest things. Mostly because they have wild, unhindered imagination and no filter. Their thoughts come from place of unadulterated purity and magical quirkiness. Before they are sullied by age.

As adults we are grappling, almost desperately, for a taste of Passover. For that candid, childlike image of what it was like. We eat boxes upon boxes of matzah, dip all sorts of things in saltwater and eat bitter herbs all to commemorate the events that transpired a few thousand years ago. We down four cups of wine, hoping to intoxicate ourselves into the hallucination of experiencing what our ancestors did in Egypt.

But little N. he was already there and he wanted to know when it would be over.

How awesome.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet

To tweet or not to tweet- that is the question.

Hamlet never really got me, or to be more accurate, I never really got Hamlet. But I believe that when Shakespeare wrote it he was unconsciously referring to Twitter.

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”- Charles Darwin.

I’m inclined to disagree. Mostly because I’m inclined to disagree with essentially anything Charlie D. has to say. But moreover, because I believe wasting time is one of the most marvelous gifts a human, who has or hasn’t evolved from an ape, has been given the luxury of doing.

The trick is to find just the right way to achieve this. And we have.

We evolved from email, Hotmail, AOL, Juno and Yahoo!- the works. Which soon gave birth to instant messaging, chat-rooms and abbreviated awesomeness. Attempting to stand erect we moved upward in cyber evolution to bigger and better things, namely, MySpace. Until finally we were literally repulsed and forced to relinquish our pages to people more deserving than we. An assortment of overly pierced musicians and girls named after sweets. Candy. Lollipop. Gumdrop. In efforts to recover from our stint in MySpace and wash away the remaining grime we traded in glitzy pink pages for clean, blue and white Facebook. Ah, Facebook. Initially the site may have been reserved for stalkers and people who got their jollies from stalking but eventually we all admitted we liked stalk and from time to time, we enjoy the occasional position of a stalkee. So we stuck around for countless site makeovers and updated privacy settings (which actually served to make it all that much easier to get stalker-happy) until our ADD flared up again and we downloaded Skype. Still unable to wash down our ADD with a little blue pill, Twitter came along. All green and birdie, and status friendly.

Ergo the timeless question,

“To Tweet or not to Tweet..."

And the answer…

http://twitter.com/mushkagreenberg

:)

Xoxo, Gossip Girl

The New York ambiance moves in a rhythmic patter to the beat of stilettos hitting the pavement. Show me your face; I can't see you in the faint city glow. What's your name? Who are you with? Where are you headed down Fifth, in those snake skin Manolos? And are they Forever 21 knockoffs? If so, I can tell by the crooked stitching on the side. And if not, bravo.

That's all for now, I think I spot Sienna Miller on Park.

You know you love me,

Xoxo,

Gossip Girl

***

You do love her, don’t you? Gossip Girl, I mean. After all she is far better dressed and even more sophisticatedly trained in the art of manipulation than the snake from the Garden of Eden. And nearly all fall prey to her cunning. Drawn in by the sound of her conniving voice and her sparkly bells. But you, you have more class than that. After all, you're clad in snake skin Manolos and sashaying down Fifth. So where have you buried your conscious, my friend? And don't you start to feel dirty after scooping precious hours out of your life to speak, shamelessly, about others?

I've been flirting with gossip on and off ever since I can remember. Mostly on. I could never explain what made it so addictive or how it fell almost involuntarily to my lips. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. It was just too easy. Too natural. I'd go through those rare phases, though, when I'd be abstinent for a while, and the idea of scrutinizing people I called friends, as it should, suddenly became gross to me. But inspiration doesn't stay for too long without an invitation and at some point it tip toed out, without leaving so much as a note.

The thing is, in this age our self-esteems are so shaken, we've become addicted to secretly reveling in the failures of others in order to distract us from the disappointments in ourselves. We've become so obsessed with comparing our victories and letdowns with that of our peers, so accustomed to dragging others with us into our woes, it's become standard. It seems Misery doesn't just want company; it wants a full blown gala!

But the truth we've all be neglecting for so long is that talking about B.'s zit won't make us any prettier, the fact that M. got an F on her paper won't change yours into an "A+" and discussing D.'s debt isn’t going to put a penny in my piggybank. Consider it. Does highlighting the shortcomings in others ever really make you feel any better about yourself?

A wise Rabbi once said, 'If you want to feel taller, don't push your friend down instead put on a pair of killer heels."

Okay, I paraphrased that. But it was something to that effect. What he meant was, stop putting your friends down so you can feel awesome. It's lame.

Indulging in gossip is about as tacky as sporting a rip-off Dolce. It may be tempting, it tends to appear real to the raw eye but in essence it is fake and it falls apart the moment the trained eye exposes its inauthenticity.

But we all know that, somewhere, deep down it rings in our conscious. It's the voice in the back of our minds we chose to ignore. Because too much of the time we're too busy listening to the sound of our own voices to hear anyone else's.

Except that one distinct voice. Hear that? That's the patter of razor thin stilettos strutting down Broadway. Whispering, "You know you love me..."

So what if you do? You don't owe her anything. Bring your manicured fingers to your ears. Turn down 7^th.

Until her voice becomes but a hum in the distance...

"Xoxo…"

A Fashion Affair

In a society where our house of worship has a red carpet, blinding runway lights and Armani clad photographers, you have to wonder, are we a) sitting in our chairs at Temple or b) in our front row seats at New York’s Fashion Week?

…Or c), as the new age and G-d intended… both?

Could we have finally entered an era that can host both fashion and Judaism in one breath?

While fashion and Judaism might have once been considered disharmonious, and we’ve never mixed kippas with couture, I can’t help but see one unmistakable similarity between them.

To the naked eye, the two are, of course, a contradiction. A slightly offensive, incongruent, utter paradox. Judaism is of the mind. Constant, fixed, untouched for millennia. It’s rules remain unaffected by time, its traditions warmly familiar and its Torah hasn’t changed for over five thousand years. Fashion, conversely, is a fixation of the heart. It is unreliable, capricious; a game of musical chairs for our desire.

Yet here we are, imperfect, mouths watering, entirely enamored by the art of French and Italian gods. And as I walked through rows of designer dresses at Barneys, through the romantic lace, flawless silk, through both simple and intricate design, I had to ask, what is it about fashion that makes it so delicious?

And there, staring me in the face, by the display of the new Fall Collection, was my answer: It had come in the form of a beaten leather jacket. The masterpiece hung solo on a rack that had been occupied, just a few short weeks ago, by a champagne chiffon evening gown. That was the thing about fashion. The thing that had me kicking off my heels and chasing the ever-changing designs down the runway. It was the variety. The constant reinvention. Perpetual novelty and endless eye candy.

Even the classic Chanel is revamped every season, as is the outrageous Betsy Johnson, mod Zac Posen, and tres chic Oscar de la Renta. Every season is jam packed with the crème de la crème in unpredictable trends to jolt us from our seats, tickling our wildest fantasies. The catwalks are continuously transforming, designs brimming with unadulterated imagination, each collection more shocking than the next. And most crucial about the fashion world, if anything, is that nothing stays the same.

I must have been all of eight years old when I discovered my love for clothing. It was on one of those trips to the mall with my big sister. She accidentally left me alone in one of the departments in Macys. I didn’t care. I just lost myself in the colors and fabrics, looking and touching and imagining what these beautiful dresses would look like on me. And I didn’t care if it was at Bloomys or Abercrombie and Fitch. I fell in love with it. All of it. And as I grew up I fell even more madly in love with a religion that’s revolving doors changed with my moods.

In a way, Judaism is likened to fashion. In fashion there are basics. Shirts. Skirts. Pants. Dresses. Sweaters. You get the idea. These are the fundamentals of fashion. And as people, we all wear them. Every day. No matter what. But there are two types of people. There’s Plain Jane who wears a plain navy dress, a simple navy cardigan and sensible navy shoes. She gets dressed in the morning because she has to. She doesn’t put thought into her clothing, and instead of wearing her clothing with confidence she lets her clothing wear her. Jane is like the uninspired Jew. She keeps Shabbat because she’s told to. She doesn’t put thought into it, she doesn’t get crazy with textures and colors. She doesn’t wear her Judaism with pride; she lets her Judaism wear her.

We have the choice to be Plain Jews or fashionable Jews. We could light the Shabbat candles glumly or we could let our fires ignite with the wicks. We could go through the motions of the holidays or we could wait for each holiday, watching it in the display window until the day we’ve saved up enough money to make it ours. We could accessorize with scarves and hats, adorn with diamonds and pearls. Our passion can vary every season. We can get front row seats at Temple, pray with a different voice every day, learn with a new hunger. Each time we shake the lulav and etrog, we can move to a different beat. We can bring home the Torah every year like we’re bringing home a new Vera Wang wedding gown.

Now I don't know if you're aware of this but Nordstrom has an alphabetical list of like a million different designers on its website. And, frankly, if it didn’t, if there weren’t all these different designers, I don’t think I’d care much for fashion at all. I can’t bear to imagine a runway dominated solely by Chanel. Yeah, sure, Chanel is chic, classic, and ridiculously high fashion, but one designer, is a joke. We’d be bored to black Sephora tears.

Given, Coco Chanel may very well be the Moses of fashion, Chanel solo just doesn’t do it for us. Monotheism is not a belief anyone wishes to continue into the fashion world. Vogue monogamy is simply not with what we’ve fallen head over high heels for. It’s our affair with variety that keeps us on our tippy toes.

I view the sects in Judaism the same way. Just Chabad? Yawn. Sure, Chabad is awesome, but as Jews, we’re celebrated for our versatility. Our gaping differences and are ability to unite in spite of them. No, because of them. The truth is we don’t have to be exactly the same, or even see eye to eye to be bonded and made a sublime work of art. That’s what makes us so fabulous.

After the show, peek into our bona fide house of worship. If it’s as it should be, you’ll find Jews, observant and not, American and African, trendy and god-awful, but none the less, all swaying in one synagogue, vibrant and speckled, like the finale of a Marc Jacobs show. Perhaps they won’t be donning talatim tailored by the same designers, but they’ll all be united under a force that transcends customs, attire and religious views; a common past, a common destiny…and a common love for Jerry Seinfeld.

Seduction

It is the stepping stone to internal victory. Or the path to inner failure. Surrendering to its power is to weaken even the strongest. But to overcome it, that is to break all boundaries. It is expensive. And it is free. Frivolous yet incredibly profound. Of it’s virtue, do we exist, but, if misused, it's the reason we’ll be destroyed. It’s the heart of who we are. And the thing that breaks us from who we should be. It is irresistible and yet resistible.

It is temptation.

Enter, Adam. And Eve. The two most pure of all man kind. The very first people to walk this earth. For G-d sake. But we all know, all it took, was one arrogant talking snake on two legs to bring them to their knees, slaves to its every will. And throughout the ages, the faces of desire has been reinvented, revolutionized and gone under the knife but the demon behind has forever remained the same. The world has continued to idolize, worship and roll out the red carpet for…”Desire.”

Can’t you hear it? Creeping up in the flush on your cheeks. It’s the danger crawling through you, warming your veins, tickling every bone in your body until you’re trembling with desire, utterly consumed in want.

Curtsied to Desire myself, I have to wonder: Where we are in all of this? Who are we, thousands of years and millions of degrees later, to overcome that which the first of human kind could not? To flirt with flying snakes. Be tempted with poisonous apples. To not only not be enticed by it’s glittery lights, but furthermore, to take the potentially sinful apple, keep its innocence in tact and then make it glow?

Who could have possibly deemed us strong enough to conquer that which thousands have failed to before us? What is it that we possess that could allow us to climb the, arguably, steepest mountain of all eternity?

The question remains, are we strong enough to dance with seduction?

The Price For Meaning

“Are we rich, Ta?” I remember asking my father as a little girl. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, a great big smile leaking across his lips. “Sure,” he said. My eyes grew wide.

“…in nachas".

My face fell.

If he would tell me that now, my eyes would light up like a million candles on Xmas eve. But it wasn't now; it was then. And then, “nachas” had the appeal equivalent to a mushy banana.

The truth was we weren’t rich. Not in any sense of the word. But mistake me not, I was spoiled. In every sense of that word.

I grew up with a privilege. One most children aren’t lucky enough to have. Born to parents, most children aren’t lucky enough to be born to. There wasn’t a question they couldn’t answer. Not a thing they wouldn’t do. They were the heroes of my community. They changed people’s lives. Did I notice it then? Barely. Sure, I opened the door to hundreds of desperate faces, hungry souls, and when we escorted them out, they left different people.

But did I realize who’d changed them? Never.

I always wondered, though. Wondered about these people. Why they came. What did we have that they didn’t? What possessed these doctors, these lawyers, and business executives to come sit in a tent on our porch in the dead of October?

They’d gather around our table with talk of “meaning” on their lips. And go on about the lengths they’d gone to find it. I’d shiver in my skin and wonder what could possibly be so thrilling about a journey that landed them on our claustrophobic deck in below freezing weather. But they’d continue to speak, as if wind or snow couldn't stop them. They spoke with such excitement. Such enthusiasm. Electricity.

“Meaning,” I’d muse; the amateur cynic. “Is it a person?… A drug?… A place?”

“Meaning”, they told me, was not a person, or a drug. But a place.

“Show me.” I challenged.

But they couldn’t. So they didn’t. All they did was point to the left side of their chests and say, “‘Meaning’ is not a tangible place. Not a place you go to, rather a place you find.”

I laughed.

A mistake, perhaps, since I could already begin to see sparks of, oh I don’t know, envy combined with horror, crawling in their eyes. They were stunned. Astonished by my wild disregard. Here they were, killing themselves, turning over their very lives just to obtain something I already had and was throwing away. Why, they couldn’t at all understand, did I not appreciate the things they fought so hard to find?

Spoiled.

Several few weeks ago I found myself in the Old City of Jerusalem, absolutely awestruck by the holiness, when a bunch of children ran past me. “Can you imagine growing up here?” I marveled, jealous almost. “These kids don’t even realize how lucky they are…”

As soon as those words left my lips, I regretted them.

I am them. The kid who grew up in the Old City. Skinned her knees on cobblestones and never noticed the magnitude of it. The girl who was born on a mountain, oblivious to the climb one must endure to get there. So, here, now, I'd been given a chance to see a glimpse through the eyes I watched for so many years. The eyes I saw get wider and wider and with time more astonished and bewildered. The questions that filled those eyes, without them even uttering a word. How can you not appreciate blatant holiness? How can you not see G-d when He’s staring you in the face? This time I saw it, if only for a moment. This time I got to discover what I once considered trite and feigned. But this time it was different. Because this time it was “meaning”. Just like it was for them.

I realize now, it wasn’t that I resented “truth” or “meaning“ or whatever it was that made these people so crazy; it was that I never got the opportunity to know it. To appreciate it by my own will. It wasn’t that I mocked their journey; it was that I envied it. All I ever really wanted was the chance to make my way of life something I chose rather than going along for the ride of something that had chosen me.

And all through my quest I found something: You won’t meet “truth” at a social, you can’t buy it off a thug on the street and no matter which train you take you’ll never just arrive at destination “meaning”. And truth be told, Truth could be raining all around you, in your bedroom, in your coffee, in your hair, but if you don’t reach out, pick it up and internalize it, it means little, if anything at all.

You have to search for it. Under your bed, in your heart and in your soul. You have to want to find it. No matter the cost. You have to earn it. And then earn it again. And again.

If Today Was Your Last Day

“Live each day like it would be your last.” Nickelback had it right. They all did. And if someone would’ve told me today was my last, I might have done things a tad differently.

First off, I’d probably have gone to Mrs. K’s class, I’d probably have finished the ice cream in my freezer, made my bed, and told my family and friends I loved them.

If someone told me, today was my last day, I’d do it all. I’d go skydiving. Write my last poem. And dance in the street. I’d try on every dress in my closet. Wear the most outrageous, over-the-top hat. And paint a rainbow on my face.

I’d say I was sorry for all the things I’ve done and forgive all the people who wronged me. I’d trip an Arab. And ninja kick Obama. I’d eat a five star dinner and order everything on the menu. I’d drive a motorcycle, ride a rollercoaster and swim with Dolphins. I’d do everything I’ve always wanted to do and all the things I was too scared to want…And I’d probably whisper a prayer or two.

I guess that’s the difference between what I think I would do and what I should do.

Would I like to skydive? Sure. But when it comes down to it, when I truly think about the last breaths I want to take, am I jumping from a plane, in 27 dresses and a big furry hat? Will it really matter what my last poem was about, or that I got to confront my emotional fears? Are there fashion police in Heaven? Will I be met by poetry critics and psychologists? Will anyone care that I dared to drive a motorcycle or that I could dance in public? Will I remember the thrill of riding The Superman? Will the taste of chocolate soufflé linger on my tongue? Will any of it matter in the world to come?

What does it really mean to live like you’re dying?

It means, differentiating between the temporary and the eternal. The fleeting and the everlasting. It means, holding on to the things that matter and letting go of the things that don’t have enough substance to carry on into the next world. To really live life like it’s your last day, means giving up the transience of the material world, to revel in the G-dliness found only in the physical world we call, “home”.

A Little Thing Called Divine Providence

It's nearly two years since Elana's accident...and she's still in a coma. Not a day goes by that her name doesn't go through my mind, or rush down my spine. I miss you, Elana.

http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/38625

Fearing Fear

This is going to confuse you. I'm roughly certain that it will since, it confuses me. Fear confuses me in general. I hate fear. I fear fear. Throughout my life I’ve found fear to be the most powerful, motivating emotion to ever kiss me.

At one time, I feared the worst, because the worst kept proving its existence. Now, oddly, I fear that it will never go back to the way it was.

The way it was, wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to get hit by a car or fall into two year long coma. I wasn’t supposed to tweak things in my life that didn’t want tweaking or become the teenage equivalent of Manis Freedman (forgive me if I am totally flattering myself).

But she did. And I did.

Now its been two years. And its gone. The inspiration. The horrible metaphors. The ridiculously clichéd manner in which my thoughts involuntarily formed into the words I swore to God I’d never say.

And now I am actually jealous of myself. Jealous of the way I once let myself think. Of the things I once let myself do. I now covet the days when I actually believed hard enough to let sound like that. And the times that I didn’t care how trite or preachy I came off.

I once feared the days that fear found me. Now I fear, I’ll never find those days again.

This is what I wrote almost two years back.



Ps. Israel is awesome. I just can't sleep. Therefore I started thinking about weird things like fear.

Are You There Internet...It's Me, Mushka

An article i wrote for a teen mag a while back.

I can’t help but laugh when I reminisce of the days when internet was a sacred luxury. When those fifteen minutes on CompuServe were simply the greatest fifteen moments of my life. Correction- greatest ten and a half moments. Since I had to deduct the four and a half minutes it took for the computer to suffer a seizure, while emitting nightmarish sounds I could only assume to be aliens invading cyberspace.

It’s safe to say we’ve evolved a great deal since then. Our computers have been cured of the convulsions, we’re getting our full fifteen minutes of Tetris and we’re Skyping with people across the country. We can fold the entire world wide freaking web into the back pocket of our jeans. For God's sake.

But we’re not impressed. We’re not wowed or enchanted. This is life as we know it. We can’t imagine the world any other way. No, we won't imagine the world any other way. We’ve been shocked into a syndrome where if it’s not nano, it’s colossal, and if it’s not high speed, it’s painstakingly slow. Email is the new letter, text is the new phone call and writing on the wall is the new Hallmark card.

We’re all so wrapped up in cyberspace that we’ve actually built ourselves a home inside it. I live at 212 Exeter Rd but you’ll reach me far sooner if you go to my address in Cyberspace; My Name @ Facebook.com. Leave me a message in my inbox, send me a virtual holiday card, graffiti my wall. You’re invited to my home any old time you’d like sans the polite knock. Flip through my photo albums for your entertainment and should you still feel bored, my journal is available for midday reading. It’s labeled “Notes” if you’d like to leave your comments on the intimate details of my life.

Pull down the Info. tab and you’ll learn that my hobbies are shopping, dancing, and riding rollercoasters. I have green eyes and black hair.

That’s me.

But the more I think about it, the more I have to wonder, is that really me? Is that all? One picture frozen in time, that stares at my 312 friends and begs them to confirm my existence? Are we all so truly single faceted that we can condense all eighteen or so years of our lives into two paragraphs titled, “About Me”?

Has life really become a competition to see who has more Facebook friends or whose life out-parties the rest? Have we all become Snow White’s evil stepmother, peering into our computer screen demanding, “Is my profile the fairest of them all?” Has it come to the point where we actually need the confirmation of our peers to tell us we’re good enough?

Living in an alternate universe where our birthday gifts can be copied and pasted, an irritating friend can be deleted with just a swift click of the mouse, and our knowledge of current events comes from a place called “News Feed”, begs the question:

Are we, in the innocent name of socializing, ultimately losing touch with what really makes us click?

It’s almost as if we’ve built the past few years of our lives on something that we can fit into our purse. We’ve stored away feelings in folders, friends in web pages, and memories in boxes. We’ve forgotten that our identities are not marked by the way others see us but by the way we see ourselves. We’ve forgotten that the person who looks back at us from the bright LCD monitor is not the real us but a pretense that parades around with our face. And we’ve forgotten that Cyberspace is a galaxy far from Reality.

Oh sure we’ve been warned about sites like Facebook. Of the stalkers and predators and gross old creeps. Yes, the dangers of Facebook have been relayed to tops of heads and eyes rolled so far backward, they’re counting the cells in their brains. These alarms have been playing in our heads for so long that we’ve never contemplated the possibility of a more profound variety of danger. A type of danger that threatens that part of us that no Norton or firewall can protect. And if we’d take the time to consider the parts of ourselves we’ve sacrificed in the name of “socializing”, we’d come to appreciate the real danger in association with cyberspace’s parallel universe; the predators that steal our souls without us so much as noticing.

So notice this: When stalking your colleagues, chatting with friends, and posting your Israel pics, bear in mind: Comments are just comments. Pictures don’t have mouths. And you don’t get to keep the virtual gifts you get for your birthday. Facebook is not real life. And really any place where you can throw a sheep at someone ought not to be taken too seriously.

Log out, click back to reality.

***

Sin & Prejudice

We look at people, at their smile, the crease of their forehead, the look in their eyes, and decide we know them. We arrange strangers by class, hanging labels over the people we meet just moments after meeting them. We converse with them momentarily, watching their lips move, measuring up their fashion sense and sizing up their intelligence all in the same time that we sort them into categories and damn them there forever. Or at least until they prove us wrong. We separate people into leagues, by size, ego and beauty.

And then we wonder why people do it to us.

The greatest injustice, by far, is the unfairness of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit. The prejudiced scorns cut the deepest. Searing like a knife to a chest that bears a heart that was misunderstood.

In simple, it sucks, a whole lot, to be misunderstood. Taken for a person you never were and never plan to be. It sucks when people have drawn boundaries for you, whispering out loud the things you’d do and the things they suppose you’ve done, who you are and who you ought to be. Determining, by the bat of an eye lash, or the raise of a brow, what you’re like, and what you certainly aren’t.

It’s so easy, but so foolish to guess who people are based on the superficial facades they cast.

We are too complicated to be read only by our faces. Far too intricate to be sorted by the first thing that escapes our lips. Nervous giggles don’t tell you what makes a person laugh and tearless eyes can’t say what makes them cry. Pictures aren’t worth a thousand words and words aren’t worth a thing. The only way to know a person is to get to know them. To touch them. To speak to their heart, like it isn’t the most cliché thing to say or do. To look into their eyes, and not see a shape or a color, just a person who is greater than their outer walls project.