When I was little

I was a quirky kind of kid when I was little. And also, I was, well, I was pathological. In lying, that is. Although I didn’t think of it so much as “lying” as much as I considered it, “making the truth more interesting.”

In my efforts to make the world a more fascinating place, one fib at a time, I told the new kids who had just moved to Buffalo that the Olsen twins lived down the block from me. I don't know why. But I figured it was a good lie to tell.

I also tried to convince my little sister that there was a family living in the waterhole in our backyard. There was. A family of eight. Field mice. But it was a lot more interesting if they were human. So I led her to believe that they were. We’d knock and knock on the waterhole and when no one answered, I’d shrug and say “Oh I guess they’re out of town.” When the underground family never answered their door Ita grew suspicious. I sensed it. And it didn’t sit well with me. “Do you believe me?” I’d demand, hands on my hips. Silence. “Do you?” She shook her head. Now don’t get me wrong, I was a nice girl if you did things my way. But suggesting that I was a liar did not bode well for little Ita. So after a while of subtle manipulation and bullying, I finally got her to say she believed me. Which was all I really needed out of her.

I had an imaginary husband too. His name was Moshe. His last name was Kooboo, on account of I had to think super fast when my big sisters asked me what his last name was. Kooboo was all on could come up with on such short notice. And the sad thing is, I truly thought they believed me. So I continued to tell them about the beautiful wedding ceremony we had on Hunters Lane at 6 am. Hunters Lane was the street right next to ours, on which I had attended a block party just a week prior to my marriage. Yes, we had a block party wedding. It was invisible, chic and fabulous.

Arielle, my classmate brought a brand new Cinderella watch to school one day. A fantastic, blue watch with a picture of Cinderalla on it. I didn’t know why I wanted it so badly or how I would get it but I knew I needed that watch. And I needed it immediately. So I tapped her on the shoulder and asked in my sweetest, most polite voice, if I could perhaps borrow the beautiful thing. Unfortunately for me, she said no. Fortunately for me, I was not about to let a little “no” get in my way of attaining what I wanted. So I tapped her again and said, “Hey, guess what? Did you hear of a little thing called, if you give me the watch now, I’ll give it back to you before dinner?”

“How?” she asked, curious as to how I would get to her house which was across town, before dinner time. So I did what I had to and told her I could drop the watch in a slot in the phone and send it to her via phone technology. Her eyes widened in amazement. Apparently she had never heard of this kind of technology before. She obliged. Happily, I watched her slip off her watch and hand it to me, not before she reminded me to send it back to her through the phone. I promised. Later that night I got a phone call from Arielle, who had looked and looked in that slot for a certain Cinderella watch that had not yet come. Oops! I had not been prepared for her to actually go through with it.

So I went with the mature approach: complete and utter denial.

a tale of a Dior Leotard

As I pour myself a glass of Pellegrino too many, and stare at the blank Word page in front of me, I wonder, dimly, if tonight I could possibly write a piece that doesn’t reek of self-righteousness like the last twenty I wrote. Truth is, I understand now, a month bitten into America, I probably ought to have left my spiritually trippiness in a place that actually appreciates it- a candlelit hippie fest in Gan Soccer.

New York doesn’t tolerate floaty behavior. Or dreadlocks. Or dancing to Nachman trance mid-road at midnight, for that matter. New York is like a tall glass of jagged edged cynicism; a harsh florescent glare of scrutiny. Like manners and passivity, floaty-ness is unwelcome here and the last of my spiritual residue is beginning to feel like a fuchsia leotard in a room full of black and white Dior.

Still, lately, I find myself rummaging in my things for that uplifted person I once knew, that girl who sat at late night farbrangens and sang her heart out and made long chasidically laced l’chaims and knew what she was here for.

Now, when I am some thousand miles and a barrage of materialism away, I have to wonder, where did she even come from?

Jerusalem, no doubt.

I had been warned, for years before I went, Israel was the kind of place that made people so crazy, they wanted to change- to be better- and I ate it up. The moment I kissed the ground I knew I had found the mother lode. And throughout the five months I spent there, I drove myself so far over my head in infatuation, up to the point where I’d stop in random places, pinch myself and whisper, “I’m standing in the same spot as Avraham did.”

See, I had waited for so long to be hit by inspiration I let it hit me like a ton of cobblestones. I knew I had to feel different. I knew I had to alter at least some element of my life. Otherwise, what the hell was I doing here, pinching myself numb at the idea that I was standing in a field in Nowhereville, Israel?

So somewhere in between Yaffo and Rachov Chabad, I traded my heels in for flats and altered my LBD- ‘’ ‘little black dress’ into a LBD- ‘longer black dress’ and I slept soundly knowing I was changed.

Thing is, when you’re in a city so unashamedly, unequivocally holy, a land so rich with spirituality; it’s almost palpable, something like covering my knees- no matter how unflattering I believed it was- felt, I don’t know, right. But a country where G-d isn’t apparent or celebrated, is a cruel anticlimax after spending half a year in a place that has streets named for characters from the Bible. Finding that balance between normalcy and what I can only call a spiritual coma, is more challenging than I ever imagined.

I fumble in my knapsack for a while. Desperate for something reminiscent of the feeling I had grown accustomed to. Something that had once felt so natural to me.

I remember this one time I had to give an impromptu introduction at a Shabbat dinner in Nachlaot. I began it with a gush about how blatantly there G-d was in Israel and ended my little speech with “I love…” and I just left that sentence hanging stupidly, like what I loved was self-understood. I miss that kind of thinking so much, it hurts. That kind of thinking led me to believe that because we were all in this incredible place they must know what I was thinking before I said it.

I continue to grope, for something, anything. I want to conclude with a message from the Tanya. But I haven’t learned Tanya since I’ve been back. Perhaps an anecdote from the Parsha. But I haven’t learned that either. So at my last attempt at tying in the mundane things, like doubts and insecurities, with holier things, I try to come up with a nice, homemade metaphorical lesson for life. But no matter how I deep I rummage in my bag, I can’t seem to find one.

Maybe this time doubts will just be doubts and nothing else. There’s something kind of liberating about the time before it all, when you just have questions and the innocent childlike belief that there are a thousand answers.

Jetlag Gnomes

I miss my jetlag. There I said it. I loved it and I want it back. Waking up at the crack of dawn with the energy of a two year old is one of the most incredible unparalleled feelings I have ever experienced. The fact that this awesome schedule also meant social hibernation/suicide- since I passed out on the couch at 10 every night and breakfast at Bunchos is a lame excuse for a social life- was just a casualty I had to endure for something so awesome. And nightlife for jetlag was something I was very willing to sacrifice. Only too bad for me, because no one asked me and now my jetlag is gone and I am no longer friends with the friendly crack of dawn jetlag gnomes. :(

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

:)

Cheating On Israel

I feel like I’m cheating on Israel.

On my domed Old City apartment, my whispering cobblestones, walls that beat with the heart of man.

On my Aldo gelato. Late night karaoke. Upstairs at Sideways. The romantic Xmas lights at Mamilla. The dangerous beauty and mystical mountains.

With a country that has scarlet creeping up her cheeks, fifty blue freckles scattered over her pasty white skin.

So basically, I’m cheating on Israel with a much dumber, less hot country.

If you’re going to cheat, I figure, now that I’m some thousand miles and one ocean away, it should be with a much cooler, hotter country. Like Greece or Africa.

I’m not really very experienced in the art of two timing. I tried it once before with two cell phone carriers. I ended up paying two very large bills. And come to think of it, having two phones never did make me feel like “The Man”.

It occurs to me as we cross over Reykjavik that there really is no turning back- unless, of course, I pull out my tefillin and get all Britney in the aisle. But I don’t want to make a scene.

I can’t help but wonder though, what possessed me to leave the greatest place I’ve found so far in the world, aside from Six Flags?

It comes down to two things. Or twenty little things, to be precise. My phalanges. Yes, my phalanges. They’ve have been starved of attention for nearly five months and if you must know, they craved the TLC of a delicate Asian.

So now I’m cheating. And I can’t tell if it’s worth it. Is it? Is it ever? The question has to be, why cheat when you have everything back home?

...Aldo gelato. New Deli subs. Late night karaoke. The Kotel. Upstairs at Sideways. Romantic xmas lights at Mamilla. Chevron. The paradox of safety and danger both racing down my spine…

Home.

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.