All posts by ester

femininity, First World Problems, size, squee

Why I’m Starving: A PhD Tackles the Question

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FRIEND, PHD:  hunger relates to calories needed vs calories consumed.
ME:  yeah, but calories burned => calories needed. we don’t burn calories sitting at our desks!
FRIEND, PHD:  if you are gestating a baby presumably you do.
ME:  presumaly, cuz otherwise, this [i.e., eating like a Sumo wrestler in training for a marathon] is ridiculous.
FRIEND, PHD:  maybe the baby is more of a manual laborer type, not a diaspora Jew
ME:  hee! or a little sabra in training.
FRIEND, PHD:  exactly. farming the land inside you, building towers and stockades, fighting off the natives, etc. that takes calories.
ME: fleeing cossacks, crossing the seas …
FRIEND, PHD: right, maybe it is fleeing persecution. let’s not assume it has already achieved proud sovereignty in its homeland.
ME:  the story usually begins with trauma and adversity, the overcoming of which brings the emigrant to the holy land
FRIEND, PHD:  that’s the typical teleology!
ME:  and prepares him/her for the toil of settling this new empty* barren country
FRIEND, PHD:  nowhere in this story is there a desk job at a nice American Jewish foundation.
ME:  that’s several generations later. why am i giving birth to the past, anyway?
FRIEND, PHD:  ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
ME:  sesquipedalianism obfuscates pellucidity
FRIEND, PHD: shut up
ME:  my journalism teacher in HS had that on her wall 🙂
FRIEND, PHD:  no, but really! don’t you remember that from high school bio?
ME:  OH PLEASE
FRIEND, PHD:  I think that was actually very clever of me, if I don’t say so myself. the development of the fetus somehow mimics the status of human evolution from fish to human, or amoeba to human. ontogeny = fetal development, phylogeny = development of the species. recapitulates = looks something like.
ME:  uh huh.
FRIEND, PHD: i.e., your fetus first has to flee the Cossacks before it can work at [your small Jewy nonprofit]!

Be that as it may, although there are pregnancy resources up the wazoo, I haven’t found anything to help me deal with the fact that suddenly, under these circumstances, big does not equal bad. Having a belly has been a source of shame since I was little. Once, I remember, I was looking in the mirror in my bedroom and my mom came in. “Look, Mommy, I have a belly!” I said. “I know,” she said. “That’s because you don’t exercise.”

Of course it’s not her fault — the world she lives in, and knew that I’d have to live in too, measures your self-worth by your waistline. You over there! You’re taking up too much space! Only in clothes sizes do we strive to be zeroes, but we strive for that nothingness with energy and resources we dedicate to few other endeavors. For almost two years, I forewent dinner except for vegetables, and in the process I lost two dinner companions, because they ate hamburgers and couldn’t stand sitting across from me evening after evening as I picked morosely through my salad.

Pregnant women laughing with salad!

A fixation on appearance — specifically, wanting to be slim down as far as possible — is a common affliction among women in my cohort. That being the case, why isn’t there more attention drawn to the fact that it’s destabilizing to get pregnant, wake up every morning feeling like a stray dog who hasn’t eaten in weeks, and visibly expand? It’s just so strange. Suddenly, I’m supposed to listen to my body and eat what it wants. (Up to and including two [2] cheeseburgers, my first since I was 13.) When my pants start feeling tight, that’s a good thing. When I look down and see the beginnings of a dome, I’m supposed to rejoice. I keep thinking, “Really?”

I’ve been sucking in my stomach since high school and now I’m supposed to throw my shoulders back and bear my belly proudly. The cognitive dissonance is intense, and it’s taking me time to adjust.

squee

Surprise!

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Transvaginal Ultrasound!

I’ve crossed the Rubicon into the 2nd trimester of pregnancy, and the Hairpin is throwing me a coming out party! Read all about the travails of the 1st trimester, including trans-vaginal ultrasounds, on the Hairpin (but, um, maybe finish eating lunch first):

“The trans-vaginal ultrasound wand really is as big as they say: faced with one, I flashed back to the scene in Marla Singer’s apartment in Fight Club where, sitting on her dresser, there is a dildo of unusual size. Tyler Durden may not have been daunted in the moment, but, eyeing the wand, I was. Before I could say anything, though, the doctor squirted the length of it with unromantic-looking blue lube and thrust it inside me. …”

More here.

And yes, this is why I haven’t been blogging! It’s so exciting to be able to talk about how horrifying and hilarious this process has been. Now that I’m safely in the 2nd trimester, the story-telling can resume.

musing, quotent quotables, the jews

Who Said What to Whom?

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Starting pretty early on in my 13 years of Jewish Day School education, I had to take Bible quizzes where I confronted the question, “Mi amar l’mi?” which translates roughly to, “Who said what to whom?”  So, like, if the quote was, “Lech l’cha m’artzecha …” (Or, more recognizably, in English, Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you) the answer would be, “God to Abraham.”

Most characters in the Bible sound alike, the way main characters in Woody Allen movies do*, so the test was more about remembering context than about identifying, say, our matriarch Rebecca by her sophisticated use of metaphor.

I think about this old memory test sometimes when I come across great quotes out in the wide world of the Internets. And so I present to you a pop cultural and political version of the old JDS standby: Who Said What to Whom? Except in this case, I think it’s more fun to answer, Who Said What ABOUT Whom? Bonus points for being able to identify the medium from which the quote comes.

No penalty for guessing; you can’t be more wrong than most of the people either being quoted or being spoken about. But no cheating. God, and my aged 2nd grade Hebrew teacher, is watching.

#1) “He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice.”

#2) “Ryan Gosling didn’t get an Academy nomination? There’s some bullshit right there.”

#3) “His actions have made it look like people in Texas are absolute fools. I always thought he was foolish and then the more he talked, the more doubt he removed.”

#4) “By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.”

#5) “Crying is one of the great pleasures of moviegoing, but tears can be cheap. … And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.”

 

*Which could give you a hint, if you were inclined to take it, about the collator or creator of these stories, but that’s beside the point.

literature, random

Initial Here, Sign There

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People/Things With Whom I Share Initials

from Most Exciting to Most Disturbing

  • Elizabeth Bennett
  • Eric Blair (you might know him better as “George Orwell”)
  • Honorary Jew Elif Batuman
  • The Empire State Building
  • “Extra Special Bitter” Beer
  • Emily Bronte
  • Emily Bazelon
  • The Encyclopedia Britannica
  • My boss
  • Elizabeth Bathory (“Countess ELIZABETH Bathory is perhaps the most prolific serial killer in history and is remembered as the “Blood Countess.” She was born in 1560. Her wealthy family included the King’s of Transylvania and Poland. For political reasons, Elizabeth was married off to Count Ferencz Nadasdy of Hungary. She killed peasant girls, maid servants and women of the lower gentry. Her motives are unclear. Vampire lore claims that she believed their virgin blood would make her young, while most historians believe the murders were due to sadistic pleasure.” Seriously.)
  • Emma Bovary
  • Eva Braun
books, literature

My Year in Books 2011

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At the end of a nicely literary year, I’m currently reading or just finished the following:

Intense, and intensely grim, but beautifully written. The copy I got from the BPL included a great introductory essay by Jonathan Franzen that adds depth to the book (when read afterwards, as proper introductions are).

The kind of noir that shows you how it’s done. Who was it who called it one of the three classic books set in LA?

Only just started it but already I’m swept away. Gornick also wrote one of the most important books I came across this year, The Situation and the Story (see below).

It doesn’t finish with quite the same verve and pop as it begins, but it’s well-written, engaging, and smart all the way through. My favorite First Novel of the Year.

This gets my vote for Most Disappointing First Novel of the Year. It falls into the same traps as Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I also had to put down in frustration for being obnoxiously over-written. The premise is so promising, too! Will someone else please write the book this meant to be?

Again with the grim. The Submission is too much like real life, only rehashed and exaggerated. You’d think that’s what good fiction is supposed to be, and Waldman is a competent writer, but for me it doesn’t quite connect. I need fewer characters, including at least one I can relate to and like, as well as fewer stereotypes and more surprises. Otherwise, it’s just like reading the news.

And here’s the final round-up of WHAT I READ BESIDES “THE NEW YORKER” IN 2011:

  • A Dance With Dragons (Martin) – A-
  • A Moveable Feast (Hemmingway) – B
  • A Red Herring Without Mustard (Bradley) – B+
  • A Walk in the Woods (Bryson) – B+
  • An Unsuitable Attachment (Pym) – B+
  • An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (James) – B+/A-
  • And the Pursuit of Happiness (Kalman) – A-/A
  • Best American Non-Required Reading 2008 – unfinished but good! B/B+ ish
  • Bonk (Roach) – A/A-
  • Bossypants (Fey) — A-
  • Broken Glass Park (Bronsky) – B+
  • Buttered Side Down (Ferber) – B+
  • Canterbury Tales (Chast) – B
  • Claire DeWitt And the City of the Dead (Gran) – B+
  • Disobedience (Hamilton) – B
  • Excellent Women (Pym) – B
  • Game of Thrones, Books 1-4 – B+/A-
  • Homesick (Eshkol) – A-
  • House of Holes (Baker) – B+/A-
  • Human Croquet (Atkinson) – B/B-
  • I Remember Nothing (Ephron) – B
  • Incendiary (Cleve) – B/B-
  • Kafka Was the Rage (Broyard) – Unfinished and uninteresting. C+?
  • Life Among the Savages (Jackson) – B+/A-
  • Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House (Daum) – B
  • Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (Simonson) – B+
  • Mary Ann in Autumn (Maupin) – B-
  • My Mother She Killed Me … (Bernheimer) – B
  • Mysterious Benedict Society (Stewart) – B/B-
  • One Day (Nicholls) – B
  • Orange Jumpsuit (Cobble) – N/A. How can I rate a book written by a close friend in which I play a supporting role?
  • Raising Demons (Jackson) – B+
  • Rich Boy (Pomerantz) – A-
  • Room (Donoghue) – A
  • Sacred Games (Chandra) – unfinished but strong; I want to come back to it
  • Spook (Roach) – B+
  • Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (Biskind) – unfinished & not sure I’ll pick it up again. Turns out dirt on Beatty’s sex life doesn’t really do it for me.
  • Started Early, Took My Dog (Atkinson) – B/B+
  • Starting from Happy (Marx) – C+
  • State By State (Weiland/Wilsey) – B+
  • State of Wonder (Patchett) – A
  • The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (Summerscale) – B-
  • Swamplandia! (Russell) – B
  • The Finkler Question (Jacobson) – B-
  • The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society (Shaffer) – B
  • The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (Bronsky) – A-
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot) – B
  • The Lazarus Project (Hemon) – B
  • The Magician King (Grossman) – B
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Bender) – B-
  • The Sabbath World (Shulevitz) – B+
  • The Situation and the Story (Gornick) – A
  • The Sun Also Rises (Hemmingway) – Unfinished but ugh. C
  • The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (Summerscale) – B-
  • The Tiger’s Wife (Obreht) – B+/A-
  • The Tragedy of Arthur (Phillips) – B-
  • The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson) – unfinished but I definitely want to get it from the library again. Engrossing, wonderfully-written history.
  • The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (Bradley) – B+
  • Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Le Carre) – A-
  • To The End of the Land (Grossman) – A
  • Unbroken (Hillenbrand) – B
  • When Everything Changed (Collins) – A
  • Your Voice in My Head (Forrest) – B+/A-
  • Zone One (Whitehead) – Unfinished and I think I’d like to go back to it, though I felt mixed in the moment. B?

 

2011 Discoveries

Genre novels. I’ve always been one of those people who could appreciate Dorothy Sayers, the occasional quality YA novel, and Harry Potter, while still being a snob about genres in general. In 2011, I got over myself. Perhaps “Buffy,” which I watched way too many hours of over the course of the year (especially on the treadmill–it’s excellent exercise viewing), gets some credit. Regardless, I went in headfirst and got swallowed up by George R. R. Martin, John Le Carre, PD James, the debut novelist Sara Gran, and Walter Mosley. I also bought a copy of The Maltese Falcon, which I haven’t gotten around to yet. Turns out, and gee, who’s surprised, I’m a huge dork for this stuff. Can’t get enough. Feed me, Seymour, feed me!

Alina Bronsky. The best writer you’re not reading, possibly because books in translation don’t get a lot of attention in America. (Unless they’re about bisexual Scandinavian hackers with axes to grind.)

Mary Roach. Roach writes non-fiction for people like me who don’t want to have to work to learn things. Factoids from her masterpiece Bonk continue coming to mind eight months after I read it, and it works as a terrific 2011 book as an intellectual, witty Superego-like counterpoint to the hilariously, gleefully filthy Id of House of Holes.

Shirley Jackson. If you only know her for her chilling short stories, try her memoir — her first-person account of trying to raise a brood of high-spirited children in mid-twentieth-century middle America is almost as scary and twice as funny.

 

2011 Disappointments

Hemingway. Was it watching Midnight in Paris that pushed me into Papa’s arms? His books were good at getting strange young men to approach me on the subway and that’s the best I can say for them. Except I did love the exchange at the end of A Moveable Feast where he tries to convince F. Scott Fitzgerald that he has a perfectly normal-sized penis, no matter what Zelda says. Hemingway here is a very good friend: he not only tells Fitzy he’s being silly, he also drops trou to compare and takes his still sorrowful, unconvinced buddy to a museum for a tour of naked sculptures. Overall, though, Papa’s self-absorption left me cold.

The Finkler Question. This flaccid, unfunny humor novel won the Booker Prize. I’m trying to remember now why I rated it even as highly as I did, considering I enjoyed very little of it. Ambition? A good concept? Maybe I felt sorry for the author. That happens sometimes.

UPDATE: A old friend accuses me of grading on a curve! Do I? Do I now need to rethink everything??

celebration, movies

Ten Alternatives to “Love, Actually”

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My deep antipathy to “Love, Actually” stretches back to the first night I saw it — with friends in college, while I was our school newspaper’s film critic. We borrowed a car to drive to the suburban multiplex and ran out of gas on the way home. We split up so some of us could stay with the vehicle, and others of us could hike to a gas station and back with a bright red plastic jug, and we all swore not to tell the car’s owner what had happened — and that experience was vastly more memorable than the film itself.

That is to say: I didn’t like the movie then, even though I went in with high hopes (Colin Firth! Emma Thompson!). Now, because it has been canonized into something like a Christmas classic and everyone keeps talking about it like it’s some kind of puppy with a bow around its neck, even smart people on sites I adore, I think it should be fucked in the ass with a toilet plunger.

Here are ten far better alternatives to enjoy this holiday season:

Movies

1) WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. The original contemporary romantic comedy where everything pivotal happens over Christmas and New Years. (Just like in real life!) It’s smart and insightful and rueful and funny; Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan have the kind of chemistry together that makes you root for them to join the crew of old marrieds whose interviews pop up over the course of the film.

2) THE APARTMENT. Billy Wilder knows what’s up. His version of a mid-century NYC Christmas is about drinking, manipulation, bad jobs, worse sexual choices, unrequited love, suicidal ideation, and card games played at pivotal moments — just like the rest of the year, in fact, only more so. When the two flawed but precious main characters, played by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacClaine, end up finding love and even redemption, we know that they’ve really earned it.

3) THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Before Tim Burton went all CGI-crazy on us and got so involved in his toys that he forgot how to be creative, he gave the world this all-singing, all-dancing, all-Claymation bonanza. A totally creepy and fabulous holiday classic.

4) DIE HARD. An intelligent action movie with a feminist subplot and a delightfully German villain played by Alan Rickman. This movie puts the “pop” in pop culture AND popcorn movie; it is entertainment the way it should be done.

5) Tie: SCROOGED and BRAZIL.  Both of these movies scared the shit out of me when I first saw them — in the best possible way. Who’s more of a genius at darkness, Bill Murray or Terry Gilliam? Now that’s a question for the ages.

 

TV

6) Tie: THE WEST WING Christmas episodes “Noel” from Season 2 and “Holy Night” from Season 4. Two Jewish guys, Josh and Toby, against the background of a holiday they don’t celebrate, get to show us what they’re made of — courage, intelligence, bitterness, vulnerability — and Aaron Sorkin gives them some of the best writing from the entire show to do it.

7) THE SIMPSONS’ very first Christmas episode, “Simpsons Roasting on a Open Fire,” featuring Santa’s Little Helper and Bart’s inspired tattoo.

8) THE OFFICE’s first Christmas episode pulls on my heartstrings so hard I always fear they’ll snap. Jim quietly tries to express his feelings for Pam via a gift that is misappropriated in a “Yankee Swap.”

9) 30 ROCK “Christmas Special.” Bring Elaine Stritch into anything and it immediately becomes 9o times better than anything Richard Curtis could do. Sorry, Dick. Them’s the breaks.

10) THE OC, “Chrismukkah,” again from Season One. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody, who is no less cute for being like 31) celebrates his family’s made up holiday in one of the most enjoyable eps from a highly enjoyable show’s one and only good season.

 

There. You’re welcome. You have no excuse to open up that cloying box of nonsense that is “Love, Actually” ever again.

life in new york, movies

What Makes You Cry

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Recently, some friends and I faced an important choice, one approached soberly and with purpose by millions of people across this great country of ours: the Descendants or the Muppets? Most people chose the Muppets, a reportedly sweet reviving of the old-school franchise, which is cool, but the new Alexander Payne tragicomedy, wherein a wealthy man must deal with the dissolution of his family, also did respectable business.

According to the newly-posted Top Ten lists of the Most Important Davids In the Universe, Denby and Edelstein, we made the right decision. Indeed, I was entertained by the film, though I agreed with the Slate Culture Gabfest that it had its perplexing points and that George Clooney’s role was both miscast and underwritten. I enjoyed watching Clooney because, you know, I have eyes, but I didn’t believe the set up (that guy is a cuckolded workaholic lawyer? Come on) and then I most certainly didn’t buy the halfhearted resolution of the land deal.

But what really struck me is that I didn’t cry. Not even a little.

Shortly thereafter, though, I was at the gym re-watching, for the nth time and on my iPhone’s little screen, “Once More With Feeling,” and I was crying so hard I had to keep wiping my face with the locker room towel. Are you bemused by that? I am. My life feels so topsy-turvy these days that a mom dying in a hospital leaves me tepid, while I am reduced to bawling on a treadmill by the 10-year-old emotional turmoil of a scrappy teenage girl. And not just any girl: a BLONDE. (As another brunette once asked Liz Lemon, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”)

Mr. Ben and I are moving slowly, steadily toward buying — and then moving into — our first apartment. It’s not much, but it’s ours, or, well, hopefully it will be. Meanwhile, everyone in my office is tense and working overtime. I am about to deliver my first draft of my manuscript to my literary agent. (One of the essays I wrote in Virginia has already been published in Bluestem; another is due out in Phoebe in January.) Big things are happening to my friends. I’ve barely had time to blog. Hopefully, in the new year, everything will be a little calmer, a little simpler, but no less fun. Here’s hoping.

happiness, houzin, memoir, purchasing peace of mind, writing

gratitude: it’s not just an ani difranco song

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At the approach of Thanksgiving, it is customary to stop and consider what we are grateful for. When my head stops whirling and allows me a moment to think straight, I am grateful for many things:

  • Mr. Ben and I are progressing — slowly, and with many setbacks, but progressing — toward buying our very first apartment. We have signed the contract. We have interviewed with the co-op board. We have given over so much money already that I have to conceive of it as merely pretty-colored paper. If all goes well, we will give over even more money, walloping amounts of it, really, money we’ve been hoarding so closely it has never seen the light of day; and in exchange we will get 850 square feet of our own (2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1 washer-dryer) in a small, well-run Prospect Heights co-op that has already paid off the mortgage on the building. Good? Good enough? The consensus seems to be yes but adult decisions like this make me squirrelly.
  • The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts just hosted me for two weeks, providing me with a bedroom and a studio and three meals a day, as well as the company to eat them with and scenery to admire while I chewed. I hiked with poets, played Scrabble with musicians and ping pong with Germans (and Future Famous Writers of America), gave a reading with a novelist, and spent most of my recreational time running back and forth to Sweet Briar College, building fires, and thrift-store shopping with flash-fiction writer / VCCA MVP Katie Schultz. No one got to know me except as the all-smiling, creatively-fulfilled version of myself.
A room of one's own
The view from my studio

More pictures here, for anyone curious about what a writer’s retreat looks like.

  • My job, for letting me off the leash to frolic in the rural Virginia wilderness.
  • My Brooklyn community, with whom I am celebrating Friendsgiving tonight. My contribution: A huge bowl of massaged kale salad, or dressed-up raw roughage a la New York Times. They’re all going to poop like champions later.
  • My family, for having something to celebrate and for knowing how it should be done. My mother, being the overachieving domestic war goddess that she is, put on three events this past weekend back-to-back-to-back, but the high point came on Saturday night when my brother Adam and his bride-to-be Jenn addressed the crowd. “We’re going to start a family,” announced Adam. The whole room inhaled in a whoosh; Jenn turned brick red. “Not right now!” she says. “I don’t get it,” said Adam over and over again, afterwards. “We’re getting married — isn’t that what starting a family means?”
brokers can bite me, funny, houzin, life in new york

Out of House and Home

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Together, Mr. Ben and I have been preparing to embark on the incredible journey of Home Ownership. It is a quintessentially American journey, more American than Route 66 or McDonald’s or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps — at which, by the way, apparently our people take a back seat to the Danes, Swedes, Canadians, and lots of other pinko-commies who have supposedly grown fat and lazy sucking on the government’s teat.

Over the years, we have pinched our pennies until the outline of Lincoln’s hat remained etched on our thumbs, and stretched a dollar til it was so thin you could read through it. Despite bouts of unemployment, Mr. Ben’s law school debt, and the fact that we got engaged and then married, we now have enough money for a down payment. What’s the secret, you ask? Well, for one thing, you let your parents pay for the wedding, even if it means they do everything their way and you get about as much say as the flower girl. For another, you re-use everything. Those sweatpants your mom bought you from the Limited when you were ten? Why *not* wear those to gym? So what if you look like Liz Lemon on an off day?

SIDE NOTE: I love it when people compliment Liz Lemon.

“You’re Liz Lemon, damn it. In certain lights, you’re an 8! Using East Coast, over-35 standards, excluding Miami.” –Jack

“There’s something about you lately. Make me want to put my feet in your mouth.” –Tracy

Um, I’m getting off track. The point is, I’ve been looking at apartments since late summer and discovered, as many good people have before me, that in New York, the definition of “amenities” has been broadened to include many things that residents of other places take for granted, such as “light,” “floorboards,” “non-lead paint,” etc. In order to get a whopping three (3) rooms, plus a kitchen and a bathroom, in a Stuff White People Like neighborhood, you need to produce a huge amount of money, the kind of dough that bought a prize racehorse in the Godfather. 

Poor Khartoum came to a sticky end, as perhaps you recall.

Anyway, we have an accepted offer on our apartment of choice, and it’s all terribly exciting. In honor of this development (and in honor of Filmspotting, which I’ve been listening to regularly now for almost a year), I thought I’d do a Top 5 list of movies about houses, and I’m soliciting suggestions. What are your favorites?

In any such endeavor, rules are crucial:

1) The house must be a character of sorts in the film and not just a backdrop (so, like, the Austen novel Mansfield Park would count, but the Austen novel Emma would not).

2) The hotel in The Shining does not count as a house. Neither does the prison in The Shawshank Redemption. We’re being strict here, people.

3) The action must take place largely in or around the house; the house must be central to the plot and even the identity of the film.

So! Recommendations? Suggestions? Let’s hear ’em.

lefties, life in new york, the jews

Occupy Kol Nidre

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This Friday at 7:00 PM, for the first time, I will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters. In prayer.

Yup! Those over-educated anarchist 99%ers are going to observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. They have an objective, which is simple, straightforward, and clear: Put on a Kol Nidre service. Will it be audible? Will it even make sense? I have no idea. Will it be memorable? How could it not be? And that’s what I care about.

A co-worker is considering coming too. I stressed the memorable argument — after all, how many Kol Nidre services will you think back on in your life as distinct, individual events, as opposed to a blurred succession of evenings in shul? But she countered with a question: “Will it be spiritual?”

This is a fair point and it wasn’t anywhere on my list of concerns. I’m not even sure what spiritual means. 13 years of religious school, summers of religious summer camp, thousands of Shabbes dinners, holidays, & bar and bat mitzvahs, a semester of living in Israel, being called “Super Jew” my first year in college until I better learned how to present myself, officially joining a synagogue at 29 with my Jewish husband who I married under a chuppah and everything, and now 2+ years working at a Jewish non-profit — and I still know bupkis about spirituality.

Frankly, I’m okay with that.

My boss bemoaned the fact that her teenage son wasn’t into religion. “Think of it this way,” I told her. “There are only two possibilities for a 16 year old boy: He could either be totally secular, or he could be blowing himself up. So, secular is better.” It made her laugh, and that was part of my intention, but I also kind of meant it. A personal relationship with an entity you conceive of as almighty and infallible and in charge of the universe can be super, in theory. In practice, it tends to make people act in unfortunate ways, like, you know, bringing down the World Trade Center or launching the Crusades.

One of the things I really like about the high holiday liturgy is the emphasis on the community. You didn’t sin this year; we did. So we gather together to ask for forgiveness as a body. After all, maybe you yourself gave blood every month and honored your father and your mother and skipped bacon at brunch. It doesn’t matter much if the guy next to you works as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs. We’re all in it together, communists and capitalists — frankly, Jews have always excelled at being both — and we’re all culpable.

It hasn’t been said much, except probably by people like David Duke: A lot of those people on Wall Street are members of the tribe. There are many more of us, of course, who are merely suffering through the repercussions. Regardless of whether you work for a bank or are still paying off your college loans to one, this is the time to atone, and we should do it publicly. This isn’t about self-hate, or shame; this is merely the time of the year to say “I’m sorry for what we’ve done” and Z Square is the best place to do it.

Good on Occupy Wall Street for setting this up. This is an agenda I can support.