FAST DAYS, FASTER DAYS.

Last Friday was the 10th of Tevet, Asarah Be'tevet, a minor fast day which, along with the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av, commemorates a stage in the destruction of Jerusalem by hostile forces. On Tevet 10, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzer, began the siege of Jerusalem. I've talked about Tisha B'Av before, where the First and Second temples were destroyed, and which also is a day where many other tragedies befell the Jewish people, and this is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar and a major fast from sunset to sunset. Tisha B'Av alone, I believe, cements the truth of the relationship between the Jewish People and Jerusalem; for why else would we be fasting and mourning, sitting on the floor, not wearing leather shoes, not even using a chapstick or any form of 'anointing' the skin, or bathing, or having any form of pleasure, including sexual, in other words, as deep mourning as in sitting Shiva, if not for the fact that Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael are our heritage and birthright as Jews? I believe that this practice alone justifies our presence in Israel and certainly our right to an undivided Jerusalem as our capital.
But there's more: 3 other fasts, minor ones, i.e. sunrise to sunset, with fewer restrictions, all associate with the fall of Jerusalem. Tevet 10, Tammuz 17 and The Fast of Gedaliah.
(To get you up to speed on Jewish fast days, there are 6. A handy mnemonic is:
Man-Woman
Short-Long (or Winter-Summer)
Black-White.
Man = Tzom Gedaliah
Woman= Ta'anis Esther
Short or Winter = 10th Tevet in the northern hemisphere and 17th Tammuz in the southern
Long or Summer= vice versa
Black = Tisha B'Av
White= Yom Kippur.
I hope that clarifies things.)

So we don't just mourn the actual destruction of the Temples and subsequent exiles, we mourn and commemorate the events that led up to the Main Event; the setting of the siege, the breaching of the walls, the assassination of a Jewish governor; the Babylonian attack under Nebuchadnezzer, the Roman under Titus and Vespasian, the Diaspora.

So we had this land; and we were kicked out of it, and stomped on (Babylonian exile); and we came back and rebuilt and then we were kicked out again and stomped on a lot harder (Roman exile and Diaspora); and we were scattered and settled and were kicked out and settled again and were kicked out again etc etc, (England 1290, Spain 1492 yada yada), but note well that during all this time there was a presence of Jews in Israel and Jerusalem, unless it was decreed to cleanse all Jews out of Jerusalem as during the Byzantine period.

And after 2000 years of exile, we are still Jews, and, remarkably, after centuries of separation, Ashkenazim and Sephardim have the same religion, the same Torah, despite differing customs. But you just have to love it when the Arabs and fellow travellers have the gall to criticise us as some sort of multi-ethnic rabble who are neither a nation nor a culture and therefore do not deserve a country or a state of our own. And who then go to great pains destroying and disputing any archeological link between Jews and the Land of Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, and any anthropological link between the Jews of old and those of today. And of course, Hanan Ashrawi, that Oracle of Truth, jumps on this bandwagon repeatedly.

Yet the Palestinian People, who never had a sovereign state, nor a capital, who never had a king or leader before Yasser Arafat (who was himself born in Egypt), who never minted a coin, who never were known of or mentioned as a separate nation until the Jews laid claim to their own heritage, they want East Jerusalem as their capital; 'Arab' East Jerusalem, as if this nomenclature dates back to time immemorial and not just to the British Mandate with their policy of 'divide and rule' which stood them in such good stead during their colonial years. As if the Arabs were anything but tribes and families before the idea of nationalism was given to them by the likes of T E Lawrence, 'Lawrence of Arabia', in the early 20th Century. And it is still about tribes and families, if not religion, with the Arabs and their social strata. But the manufactured Palestinian people have served their purpose well, as a thorn in the side of Al Yahud, the Jew, who dares to claim heritage of Eretz Yisrael, to be a Jewish State amongst the ocean of Islamic states, thwarting the overreaching ideal of the Caliphate which will ultimately rule the world.

They will never tolerate a Jewish state or a Jewish presence, so they make up whatever they want and the West, which is also targeted for conquest,  and in fact is in the process of being conquered demographically in Europe, listens with earnest tolerance to the lies and bullshit; and the anti-Semites, who never need a reason to hate Jews, then slightly shift their stance to include anti-Zionism (which is really just anti-Semitism with a college degree). 

Meanwhile, John Kerry just keeps hammering away with his version of a peace process, clocking up those frequent flier miles to Israel, searching for a 2 state solution; but the Palestinians themselves are already in 2 states and in bitter internal conflict while sucking up billions of dollars of 'refugee aid'. And Abbas has already made it quite clear that, even if they get Yehudah-Shomron, and even though not a single Jew will be tolerated there, the 'Palestinian right of return' will still be enforced and the remaining vestigial Jewish state would be flooded by 'refugees' returning to homes that their great-grandparents left, or actually never lived in in the first place.

So there's no '2 state solution'; there's only the destruction of Israel. And it starts with the division of Jerusalem and withdrawal from Yehudah-Shomron (I refuse to use the term 'West Bank' as it denies the link of the Jewish people to our heartland of Judea.)

We have mourned the loss of Jerusalem quite enough, thank you very much. What we have today isn't a patch on what we had, but Jerusalem is unified and it's a hell of a lot better than when the Jordanians had it from 1948, when they kicked out the Jews who had been there for generations, till 1967, when Israel reclaimed and united Jerusalem after the 6 Day War. Oh yes, not forgetting how the Jordanians trashed the Jewish and Christian holy sites, subsequently opened and restored by Israel. 

I fear that there are too many Jews who, in the ignorance of our own history, are too ready to give up what is ours. 2,000 years of mourning the loss of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael is not a manufactured piece of propaganda; it is deep and true and real. Daily prayers, grace after meals, holy day liturgy, wedding day customs, all reflect the yearning for Jerusalem for hundreds and hundreds of years. All these things, even the breaking of the glass under the chuppah which symbolises the  Churban, the Destruction, are not generally understood by uneducated Jews. Otherwise, how could a Jew countenance the loss of Jerusalem?

No division of Jerusalem; no Jewish withdrawal from Yehudah-Shomron. I don't expect the Arabs that live there to leave, nobody in their right mind seriously wants ethnic cleansing. We just want to live in peace.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Rolling home

And so another sojourn in Israel comes to an end. In 4 weeks I managed to go to 2 weddings, one funeral, 2 shiva visits, one tour of the Old City, one political lecture, one fund raising dinner, the 4th birthday of a grandson, and ...drum roll...the birth of a new granddaughter. Mazel tov, thank you, nachas. Always a lot happening here. 

And of course, Chanukah. And Thanksgivukkah! As I mentioned before, a bi-cultural Fress. 

So tonight, the last night of Chanukah, I ate my last latke followed by the last sufganiyah, thank G-d, because I think if I eat anymore they're going to have to use a shoehorn to get me into my plane seat. 

O, Israel, land of the mehadrin Magnum,  yea though I swim every morning and walk around a lot during the day, the calorie balance shifts ever against me. 

It's time to go home, laden with gifts for the folks back home, as well as with mehadrin gourmet French, Italian and Spanish cheeses (yes, I declare them and no, it's not illegal to bring cheese into Australia provided they are made in France, Spain or Italy.) 

I know it's time to go home because my nails are crying to be manicured and my feet ditto. And my eyebrows have escaped all control. I don't feel comfortable letting anyone but my usual peeps look after my aging bod. 

Now that the winter rains have finally begun, I think I have chickened out of my morning swim, I won't be able to walk around much so I guess it's off to the breakfast buffet for one more G-d Bless Israel breakfast. But definitely NO MORE DONUTS. Maybe a magnum later. We׳ll see. 

A Bi-Cultural Fress

Last night I fulfilled some of my Booba duties by making latkes. A lot of latkes.

Potato, of course, but I was also talked into making some sweet potato ones too. Ok, I can deal with that. Of course there is no comparison to a golden-brown, fragrant, crunchy potato latke, is there? None of this 'bake in the oven' rubbish, it's Chanukah, embrace the oil!

Then the question of accompaniments. Strangely, even though I was raised with savory latkes accompanied by ketchup in the context of a BBQ, I have taken to the sour cream dollop (no BBQ, obviously) but I don't get the applesauce so beloved of the Americans. I don't think it does either the latke or the applesauce any favors. Feel free to disagree. I guess it's what one is used to. 

(I wonder what we did for latkes in Europe before the 16th century, before the potato arrived from the New World? Kasha? I guess we still do eat buckwheat pancakes, why not?  But I digress.)

So tonight I went to a Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, beans, the whole works- but no latkes. So much for Thanksgivukkah! Not that I could have fit any latkes in, and forget about the sufganiyot, I'm over those already. 

And I'm trying to write this while feeling as stuffed as the turkey. My brain is in a food-induced stupor. 

I'm not the first person to notice that Chanukah and Thanksgiving have a bit in common, main point being that they are both about religious freedom. The Pilgrim Fathers were escaping religious persecution by fleeing the Old World for the New. And the Maccabees beat the crap out of the Hellenist Seleucids (Syrian by geography, Greek by culture) because they were denied freedom to practice their religion and because the a Temple was defiled. Then was the miracle of the oil which we remember while eating fried food (OY, do we remember. The heartburn doesn't let us forget). The difference is in the attitude to the food: with Thanksgiving it is a Seudot Hoda'ah, literally a meal of thanks, but with Chanukah it's the classic Jewish theme; 'they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.'

Anyway, I reckon sweet potato latkes are the once in a lifetime Thanksgivukkah treat and I won't be making them again until 2021, I believe. And as for the 'healthy' 'latkes' my daughter was reading about -and suggesting I make!- containing cabbage and kale and carrots and onions, I say, that ain't no latke. That's fritters. 

Potatoes = latkes, The End. 

Happy Chanukah!

Bad news, good news

Once more I am in Jerusalem, city of bells and yells, on a sunny Sunday, hearing the tolling and tinkling of the competing churchbell carillons and preparing to go out to meet friends for lunch. 

The news items which are still fresh, in this place of ever-generating news, include the murder of Eden Atias, 19 year old new IDF recruit, on a bus in Afula. Eden was on his way home for Shabbat and had dozed off in the bus, when he was attacked and stabbed repeatedly by a 16 year old youth from Jenin, Hussein Rawarda. The only motive for this crime was political. Hussein killed Eden, a sleeping stranger, because he was wearing an IDF uniform, and was therefore probably a Jew, and certainly an Israeli. And where does a 16 year old learn to foster such hatred? In school. At home. In the mosque. Wherever there is unfettered incitement. Where the schoolbooks deny the existence of Israel, where the legitimacy of Israel's existence is continually questioned and denied and where the Jew is despised as a descendant of 'apes and pigs'. Just as with the murder of the Fogel family, stabbed to death by two Palestinian teenagers while sleeping, the words of hatred led to actions of hatred, perpetrated in the most heinous way imaginable. How do you stab to death a sleeping youth, sleeping children, a sleeping baby? How can a person hate so much? Well, he can. And it's been taught to him. 

Meanwhile John Kerry continues to thrash around, desperately trying to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, against all logic parroting the bullshit about how this conflict is the major cause of unrest in the Middle East, against all facts in front of his face, resorting to bribing the Fatah leadership with millions of US taxpayers' dollars - talk about throwing good money after bad, considering that the money will probably buy more weapons and hate education, via UNRWA- while having his Neville Chamberlain moment in his handling of Iran. I'd feel sorry for him if I didn't think he was such a malevolent buffoon. And that the future of the world might rest on his skinny shoulders. 

And in the midst of all this shit and horror, the feel-good story of the IDF in the Phillippines, post Typhoon Haiyan. 148 IDF personnel have put up a field hospital in Bogo City, capable of treating 500 patients at a time, with facilities including X-ray, pediatric and maternity services. A baby boy born there yesterday has been named 'Israel' by his grateful mother. 

So besieged little Israel, surrounded by hostile countries, eaten from within by hostile forces, whether from the Palestinian Territories or leftist Israeli journalists - I don't equate them, g-d forbid, but I did read an article in HaAretz yesterday where the terms 'Jewish terrorists' and 'Hamas military activists' were used, so you really gotta wonder- can still provide real humanitarian aid for no reasons except humanitarian ones. Any humanitarian relief from Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any oil-rich nations? I haven't heard, have you? But I do believe there is some financing of school book printing going on. 

Rock on, Mr Kerry, just try to make sure it's not yourself that you're throwing under the bus along with Israel. 

FROM PEW TO PRAGER TO PENN TO PSEUDO-RESEARCH

 So this is how my mind works:

I wanted to write something about the Pew Report called A Portrait of Jewish Americans, which seems to be showing that American Jewry is in a flaming tailspin and that the rate of intermarriage and assimilation is at an all-time high, and that at this rate, the only American Jews who will be identifiably Jewish in a few decades will be the Orthodox. And I have been reading opinions and commentary by people who are by far smarter than I, including the always interesting Dennis Prager, who has written a piece called ‘Why Orthodoxy is Growing’. He says it has to do with ritual observance, with living among other Orthodox Jews, with sending kids to Orthodox schools, with valuing marriage and having more children (not buying into the ‘nihilistic nonsense- and the Jewish dead end- of the zero population growth movement’ that ‘many non-Orthodox have’), of believing that G-d chose the Jews and is the author of the Torah, with the centrality of Israel to most Orthodox, and with non-Orthodox accepting, in fact being ‘steeped in leftism’. And as usual, Dennis does not wave the flag for anyone, he is just stating the truth. Make of it what you wish.

So I started thinking. What other groups can I think of who would fulfill some of these criteria? And how are they doing? And, of course, I immediately thought of the Amish. You can’t get past the beards and the hats!

So I started looking up stuff about the Amish, and it seems that they are doing very well. New Amish communities are being established, in fact, 60% of existing communities have been established since 1990. There are about 500 settlements each of 40-60 families, about 251,000 people.

I don’t know that much about the Amish beyond a few books and the movie Witness, but it seems that they are fairly insular, live largely agrarian and simple lifestyles, have their own schools, speak a German dialect called Pennsylvanian Dutch as a first language and English as a second and keep largely away from technology. As there is only a limited amount of farmland, they also work as artisans, crafting furniture and selling it, and they take jobs in surrounding towns. They travel by horse and buggy but they are allowed to ride in cars and trains, and they play baseball and they like in-line skates. Some communities are more stringent than others about technology. They marry young, after their rumspringa, which means ‘running around’. After 16, the young Amish are allowed to go out into surrounding communities or wherever, and they have some time to decide if they want to return to their own community and be baptized into the faith, after which it’s for keeps. That’s the whole shtick, you see, they believe that baptism should be a decision made as an adult, not something done to a clueless infant, which is why they and the other Anabaptists had a broygess with the mainstream Protestants in der Heim, and ended up in North America.

And the interesting thing is that the vast majority of Amish kids come back from their rumspringa. And marry young, and have 6-7 kids. And there is a bit of a problem with certain genetic conditions as they are pretty inbred; most of today’s Amish descend from 100 original migrants. They do accept converts but they don’t evangelize.

So: Insularity- check. Amish schools- check. Valuing marriage, large families-check.  Quite a few parallels with Orthodox Jews, you might say, and they are doing OK.

But then my research to a left turn, because I saw an article entitled ‘Why don’t the Amish have Autistic Children?’

They don’t? thought I. So I had a look, and the second I opened it I could see that it was an anti-vaccination website and I was going to be treated to all sorts of information which, on further study, would prove to be the usual hodge-podge of facts and diatribes and dodgy ‘research’ with people commenting in the threads, saying things like ‘you have given me some intresting things to think about’ and ‘I knew there was a conspirassy’ etc.

And I was not disappointed. This site really looks persuasive though.

Anyway, according to the learned writer, of course the reason that the Amish don’t have autistic children is that they don’t vaccinate their children.

Not that they live hard-working simple lives eating simple food, not smoking or drinking, and eschewing modern farming practices of using artificial fertilizers etc, or that they don’t spend their lives breathing in car exhaust, or that they marry when they are young and not when they are 30-40, or that the pregnant women don’t drink diet Coke, or that they give birth with traditional practices with little medical intervention. Or that they don’t sit in front of screens all their lives. No, none of those things even figured in this learned analysis. I didn’t even mention that the writer’s information on the scarcity of autistic children was based on a field trip in 2005 among some of the 500 communities. Population unspecified, methods unspecified, diagnostic criteria unspecified. 3 autistic children were found! One adopted from China, who had been vaccinated, a second who had been vaccinated and ‘developed autism soon after’, and the third child- err, umm, vaccine status unknown.

Bullshit piled on bullshit. But vaccination causes autism! All the clues are there!!!

Amish also have lower cancer rates, according to a real study. Considering the inbreeding problem, one would have expected higher rates, but the opposite is true. Probably nothing to do with the clean living, probably because they don’t vaccinate, right? Whatever.

So that’s how you go from the Pew report to the Amish to another critique of stupid pseudo-medical opinion (doesn’t deserve the title of ‘research’).

Actually, I can pull it all together! Someone I knew, a secular Jew, once joked that he had had only a little bit of Jewish education, and as with a vaccine, where a tiny bit of the disease prevents getting the serious disease, the tiny bit of Judaism he was exposed to ensured that he would never catch the real thing. He married out. Not such a funny joke, really.

THE WORST NIGHTMARE

A while back I visited some friends who were sitting shiva for their son who  had committed suicide at the age of 28. There is a younger sister. He had been struggling with depression for some years and it got the better of him.

There was no attempt to hide the fact that it was a suicide and there was no sense of ostracism as might have happened in the past. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery and it is understood that he was ill; depression is an illness, not a moral failing or sin.

His parents were devastated but were trying to comfort themselves with the fact that they had had him for 28 years; that he was ‘alternate’ but not alienated from them. Throughout the visit, young people, his friends and cousins, came in and out, everyone with a story of his kindness, his generosity, his humour, his quirkiness. The atmosphere almost became festive at times, kids laughing and reminiscing. Until the parents started weeping again.

There is nothing worse than having to bury your child. No matter what the cause of death; suicide is probably worse than disease or accident. I lost my brother when I was 18 when he was killed in the Yom Kippur War at the age of 22. There is nothing that can be said to comfort bereaved parents but people were trying to say that it was somehow better because he died defending Israel. Well, maybe. But dead is dead, gone is gone. And bereaved parents can find it hard to continue to be parents to surviving children, and that’s a whole other story.

I have just heard of a suicide of another young man in the community. I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to say to any young person, or any person contemplating suicide, that the world is never a better place without them. That it may seem all horrible and insurmountable today but it might get better tomorrow. That we are not meaningless specks in an uncaring cosmos, we are here as the creations of G-d and that fact alone means that we matter, that our existence matters, perhaps in ways that we can’t see or comprehend, but still we matter.

I believe that if this young man, the one I knew, and perhaps any suicide, could have seen the pain that he would be putting his family through, he would never have done it. I believe that in the moments of awareness between the act and the loss of consciousness, the suicide truly regrets the act; but it is too late. The sense of loss is so deep, so tragic, so pathetic, there are no words. He is gone. He is never to be a husband, a father, he will never be an uncle to his sister’s children; the loss to his family and to his community is unfathomable.

I want to say to his parents, the pain will never go but it will lessen over time; that they must not forget that they have a daughter, and that she will need them more than ever now, even though it looks like she is OK, laughing with her friends. She is not OK. I want to say that, although it is dark and cold now, that one day the sun will shine on their faces again, that life goes on, not because the world is callous and uncaring, but because Life is powerful and it will always prevail. But we must choose Life. It is a choice. We must all choose Life.

WHEN CARDIGANS ATTACK

I bought this really nice knitted jacket/cardigan thing when I was in New York earlier this year. When I am in NY, I go to Bloomingdales, and I particularly like this designer, Eileen Fisher, who does a plus size range called Eileen Fisher Woman, and who really seems to understand that being plus size does not automatically mean that you want to look like an upholstered sofa, as so many of these so-called designers seem to think. The clothes are usually simple pieces in flattering shapes, mix and match, and usually of natural fibres. She uses a lot of silk and cotton, as well as linen. And wool, cashmere, mohair, sometimes with a bit of elastane for shape and metal thread for a bit of understated bling. The clothes are practical and comfortable, not cheap, but they last well. I’ve been buying Eileen Fisher for some years and hardly a dud piece.

So I was rather enjoying this cardigan jacket. It’s a great layering piece, not too warm (important for us larger ladies who are also menopausal), in a nice knit of black and white, so you get this uniform grey marle sort of appearance. I wore it to Shul during Yom Tov once, but generally I wear it as work wear or on Shabbos.

So comes the time to clean it, and I checked the laundering instructions label, only to be greeted with this information:

51% Linen

49% Wool.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHATNEZ!

I truly can’t believe this. I thought I always check clothing labels. I warn my sons when they buy suits, about the freaking LAPEL STIFFENER. I once made my daughter take off a skirt she was wearing in a hotel bathroom because I had seen that skirt in a store and I knew it had a leeetle bit of wool along with the linen and cotton blend. And she took it off willingly! And now I HAVE BEEN WEARING A PORK CHOP. TO SHUL, noch.

I have been like Lady Gaga, but the meat dress was actually BACON and SHRIMP.

This is for real, folks. This is just as bad as eating a bacon cheeseburger. After a starter of oysters. And it makes no damn sense AT ALL. Just like Red Heifers and Kids Seethed In Their Mothers’ Milk. This incomprehensible Jewy stuff that I take upon myself as part of my relationship with G-d.

I’m not complaining. I accept this stuff that is above my level of reasoning and pay grade. But DAMN, I liked that cardigan. DAMN.

So, my non-Jewish friends, anybody want a free Eileen Fisher garment, size 1X? Almost new. Very elegant and most comfortable, I can personally vouch for that.

HOOK-UP HORROR

Have a read of this. I bet you won't be able to look away.

http://www.mamamia.com.au/social/feministhookuphangup/

I read this article and felt sick and sad and angry.

I was sickened by the goings-on in this Western excuse for ‘fun’ and ‘entertainment’ called ‘clubbing’. I was saddened by the way in which this feminine/feminist quest for self-empowerment has been conflated with being sexually available (but ‘never aggressive!’). And I am angry that 100 years of feminism has led us to this: under-dressed young girls staggering around in stilettoes, under the influence of drink and drugs, being accosted and handled by random men. These questing women are full of bravado and empty of moral substance.

I put it to you that the reason the writer, an intelligent young woman and self-professed feminist, cannot reconcile the paradox of being strong and independent, yet somehow enslaved to masculine approval, is that there is no reconciliation. As long as feminine empowerment also is seen to encompass  licentiousness, there will be no satisfactory answer to this paradox.

I thought we had put that old canard to rest: the one about how, in order to be a feminist, a woman has to behave like a man. I thought that we had evolved from that. And these women are not even trying to behave like decent men; they are trying to behave like the men that they would actually not want to have anything to do with- and so it turns out. After a night of drinking and dancing, a type of dancing which resembles sexual foreplay and probably is in fact foreplay, they feel, not fulfilled and powerful, but deeply disgusted.

You can try to dress this behaviour up as female self-empowerment, but in the end it is just another free pass for men to behave like animals. And to debase themselves as much as the women they ‘hook up’ with.

I know that not all men are like this and neither are all women seeking this sort of ‘empowerment’. But this is a cultural behaviour which, as with the hippie chicks of the 70’s and the Grrrrls of the 90’s, can only lead to self-loathing nihilism; because if this is what we were placed on this Earth to do, frankly, I see no point to existence either.

A thought keeps creeping into my head: The few female Muslim converts I have spoken to and whose autobiographical accounts I have read, talk of how the hijab- and worse, the niqab- frees them. It frees them from the tyranny of the male gaze. Islam is seen, not as the stifler of  female autonomy, but as the protector of the honour of women. So, all I think about is how a Muslim woman can be beaten for insubordination, and how her children ‘belong’ to her husband, and how she can be divorced unilaterally by her husband’s recitation of a few short sentences, and how he can take other wives, and how girls are killed by their male relatives for behaving in a dishonorable way- say, by having a boyfriend, or by being raped. But the flip side which the ex-Western converts see is this cherishing of female modesty and honour. As long as she does what she is told, I guess. Furthermore, Islam, as well as other religions (including my own), or other strongly cohesive groups which have a common goal and thus give meaning to life, is something to belong to, something which is a much greater that the individual.

So I can’t help seeing that the Western obsession with the individual and her rights and entitlements, coupled with this post-feminist concept of female empowerment (which goes way, way beyond the original feminist ideals of suffrage and equal pay, and takes the ideal of freedom of choice down into the gutter), is a headlong slide into nothingness.

There are no rights without responsibilities. There is no freedom without meaning and purpose. This mindless quest for a ‘good time’ can only, will always, debase the individual, male or female; the lack of self-control, the conquering of the conscience, and the aftermath of mindless coupling will only lead to emotional numbness and self-loathing.

So, young ladies, at risk of sounding old-fashioned (such an insult!) I say that if you want to be self-empowered, you need to choose to behave in a relatively modest and self-disciplined way. Respect yourselves. Because G-d put us all here for a purpose; the challenge of life is to discover this purpose and to honour our own humanity, rather than debase it in the jungle. You don’t have to be a nun, but you have to find out where the line is, and try to stay on the right side. I’m not advocating that everyone should follow my religion and level of observance; but faith in a Divine Plan and purpose and meaning are a lot more powerful than simple youthful optimism, which quickly becomes corroded by the toxic culture of the ‘hook-up’.

IT'S BEEN REAL.

About 20 years ago I wrote an occasional column for the Australian Jewish News. Do you know how long ago that was? It was so long ago, email wasn't invented. I did have a computer though, and a printer, so I would print out the hard copy and take it to the AJN office myself.
It was about the stuff that is now so common place, it's a total yawn, unless it's really, really well done. About life and things that happened and my philosophies and my family and my experiences as a mother and wife- a lot like this blog actually.
After a few years, a new editor came who knew not Joseph, and some of my hand-delivered columns just kind of disappeared. And I got the hint. I also was doing a bit of what I laughingly call 'stand-up'. Yes, it involved being funny in front of an audience with a microphone in my hand; but it was always for some sort of Jewish benefit or charity or something, and of course I never got paid or anything like that. And my children mock me when I say 'When I did stand-up yada yada' so I don't seriously think I really did stand-up comedy. Even though I was. Standing up. In front of an audience. With a mike. Being funny. I have no pretensions.
Anyway, it turned out that all the stuff I was writing to service this non-stand-up I was doing meant that I couldn't really publish any of it because then, everyone would know what I was going to say, and then they would be bored, and maybe heckle, and, I don't know, maybe I would have said something spontaneously angry, who knows, or worse, said something stupid and boring. So I didn't try to publish any of my possibly humorous observations of life.
And then, well, things happened in my life which I won't go into, and it was like suddenly my sense of humour just disappeared. Poof. There was nothing there. So it was a career that spanned but a few years. In the city of Melbourne. For the Jews, mainly. Lucky I was only an amateur, and that my real training is in Medicine, hey?

But right from the beginning, right from the first by-line in the AJN, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake. I had not published anonymously. I had not taken a nom-de-plume.
Because when you put anything out there, and you put your name to it, then everything you say is meticulously examined by everyone who knows you and every member of your extended family, and everyone has something to say about it. This is incredibly inhibiting to the creative spirit. It is like walking around while constantly looking over your shoulder; you can't see the path ahead. You live in a mild state of paranoia. You have to have the skin of a rhinoceros. And on top of everything, Melbourne is a shtetl, so that even people who don't know you know someone who might know you.
Once my name was out there, I represented my family, my kids, my shul, my kids' schools, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox women, etc etc etc and I had to watch every word that I wrote and said for fear of bringing it all into disrepute.
It's not just a matter of being thin-skinned; I'm not THAT delicate. It's like the superheroes' secret identity; the anonymity protects others. Who then have to bear the brunt of someone's reaction to something I said or wrote. And the other thing is that I have to live in this town. And the comments can be wearing.

SO. History is now repeating itself, as it will for those who have not learned the lessons of history. I did not publish this blog anonymously- though I don't know if I could have anyway- and here we go again. People getting upset. People getting offended. People basically projecting their own crap on what I write, and getting offended over that too. People making negative comments to my friends and family. And you know what? Screw it. Maybe Joan Rivers could deal with that, and more, times a million, but I can't, and I'm no Joan Rivers.

This is the 100th published post on my Doctor Booba blog, and right now I think it will be the last one.
So long from the Booba, nice knowing you, my faithful 17 followers. It looks like Melbourne hasn't grown much in the last 20 years.

I might write again if the demon possesses me, but for now, peace, out.

RULES OF THE KOSHER KITCHEN

In case you have been wondering where I've been (as if) over the last few weeks, I've been upsetting people and having to take down posts. I've been feeling a bit beleaguered.

My most recent effort was my comment on My Kosher Kitchen Rules (MKKR), a program based on the TV show My Kitchen Rules (duh), which I have never watched, but I do believe that it is quite popular. I've never watched Masterchef either but I get the gist of it.

(As an aside, we are entirely too interested in food. I mean, I am very interested on a personal level, and I think we need to get back to basics and stop eating crap because we are all too fat and more so are kids. I have never seen so many obese children in my life; just look at a school letting out at hometime. Back in the day, I was The Fat Kid in my class for most of my school life. OK, small school, but still, maybe 2% of the kids were fat. Now 20%-30% are properly fat, not talking about so-called 'puppy fat'. And my mother was fat and my brother was fat, and clearly there was some tendency there. Now I see, not only fat kids with fat parents, but even with slim parents. The culprits are convenience foods and snacks and excessive screen time as well as parental paranoia about letting children walk to school, and it's a toxic mix. And let me tell you, it's all very habit-forming, the non-hungry eating of energy-dense foods, and the unwillingness to get up and move your fat butt. It takes huge effort to change these habits once a child has learned this sort of behaviour. (Believe me, I know from bitter personal experience.) And you have to be very delicate about it because, along with skyrocketing obesity, we see the flip-side; eating disorders, aka anorexia and bulimia and all sorts of shades of disordered eating. Anyway, now pizza has inserted itself into our culture, not as a special treat but as a legitimate meal on a weekday. If you're going to give your kid pizza for dinner, for G-d's sake, at least put out a range of cut-up fresh veggies on a platter, with some hummus or tahini dip or something if you have to, and also learn how to make your own pizza, which is NOT a big deal.
This post is turning into something else entirely. The whole thing is a digression.
What I really wanted to say was that the cultural obsession with food and sport makes me think of the decline of the Roman Empire, bread and circuses and all that.)

OK, back to MKKR. I can't comment on what my post was because people will get upset all over again, and then I'll have to take it down again yada yada. I will say, I think there was an over-reaction to my spoiler, and I won't apologise because nobody actually contacted me to complain, they merely threatened another person who was involved. Guys, if you have something to say to me, please just say it to me, OK? Then we can talk. I will also say the old maxim: ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY. More than one person has told me that they looked at the MKKR website only because of my blog post, by the way. So I hope you all unknotted your knickers. Because now, I will critique.

I have watched the You-Tube programs - intro, Episodes 1,2&3- and I'm happy to say I think that it's very well done. It's lots of fun to watch. The production values are good. The characters are all entertaining. I would like to hear more of David Trakhtman because clearly he really knows what he is talking about (and I am in 100% agreement that bok choy and strawberries do NOT go together!). And YES, back to basics, we need to know how to minimise our use of processed food, how to cook fresh from simple, natural ingredients. For the sake of our health and our families' health.

MKKR is a fun program and it's for a good cause and you should have a look at it.

What, were you expecting some sort of vitriol from Doctor Booba? Sorry to disappoint. That's not the Booba's style. Enjoy! That's the main rule of the kosher kitchen. Which rules. Just enjoy.

BAD GRANNY?

I did a terrible thing last week. I violated the sacred trust of Booba-dom. I said I would come to Grandparents' Day at the kinder to watch my 4 year-old granddaughter do stuff, sitting with her at little tables, jostling the other adults, and fingerpainting and making collage cardboard picture frames (for the photo of the two of us taken by the teacher- I've been to a lot of these.). Last Wednesday, 9.30am till 10.45, as usual. But this time, work got in the way and I just wasn't able to make it. It was also too late to ask anybody else; you see, my husband works and my mother-in-law, who would have filled in, was ill.
I confided in a fellow medico at work; I made a clean breast (sorry) of my sin. And she, mother of 3 young children, said to me:
'Do you know how many times my parents came to these things at my kids' school? ZERO. Not once. They were working. Life is full of many kinds of disappointments and this is just a little one. It will make your granddaughter able to face worse disappointment later in life.'
I said, 'That sounds like the Nietzschian school of child raising: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't know about that, she's only 4.'
'She'll get over it.'
'But will I?'

So it turns out that she was the ONLY ONE who had nobody there with her. Her cousin had 4 grandparents. FOUR. Doesn't anybody work? I work part-time and I've been able to attend - until now-unless I've been overseas (VISITING OTHER GRANDCHILDREN I might add). My husband works long hours but has in some cases been able to attend. Of course, when things are on public holidays, there is a far better chance that the dads and granddads can attend; but this was mid-week on a normal work day. So the assumption is that the Grandmas are all unemployed, and clearly the assumption is correct.

Well, it's been like ripples in a pond. It's the butterfly wing flap that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. After the first text message, I apologized and thought that that was the end of it. But it seems that someone at the kinder made a rather snide remark concerning my daughter-in-law's priorities and that she didn't care enough about her child to remember to tell me. Apart from the fact that this is absolutely untrue in all respects, and very mean and rude, and very unprofessional of the person to say this to someone I know (surely everyone knows each other in that group, so it is only to be expected that whatever anyone says will get back to me), I mean, GIVE ME A BREAK. This is yet another chapter of the Mommy Wars, isn't it? This need to feel that one's own parenting is so much better than another's, as if there is a brass ring that the mommies are trying to grab. As if there is some mythic scale of perfection that only the select few can achieve, and anything less than this makes you beneath contempt as a parent.
I also detect a little schadenfreud there too, where the perceived failure of a mommy makes the other mommies feel better about their own lack of perfection.

Well, ladies, I've got news. Perfection and control are illusions. There is no such thing in child-rearing. And if there was, I mean if there really was a perfect mother out there, who never got angry or never got hassled or never forgot to get the kids' clothes ready the night before, or was feeling sick, or gave her kids mac and cheese for dinner 3 nights in a row, or whatever- then what sort of namby-pamby kids would that mother have? Or kids eaten by anxiety anytime something doesn't go to plan. Or kids who fly into a rage when they don't get what they think is their perfect right.

There's no such thing as a perfect mother. Or a perfect grandmother. There is the 'Good enough' mother and grandmother, and human. There's only life and the challenges it throws at us. Sometimes we catch the ball and sometimes we drop the ball. And maybe my doctor friend hit the nail on the head with her slightly harsh take on life and its disappointments.

So the kid has forgotten about it and moved on, but the mommies are still sniping and seething; if not about this, then something else.

What will it take for mommies to quit this behaviour? A little understanding. The expression is Melamed Zchus, see the good side first, show some compassion. After all, sooner or later YOU will be needing someone else's understanding and compassion.

Chodesh Ellul. Not that I particularly want to be preachy about it all, but Jeez, lay off of each other! And me. Seriously.

Ksiva ve chasima tova.

Defending Marriage

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Israel, the news came that the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) had been defeated in the US and thus it has become legal for same-sex marriage to take place in NY state, among other places. It was deemed unconstitutional to describe marriage as possible only between a man and a woman. Many people rejoiced at this verdict, and I read of couples rushing to have their union legalised, and some who raced to have their marriage solemnised under the chuppah, including a Jewish lesbian couple who had been together for decades. They were, as one would imagine, elated.

It was the chuppah thing that brought me up short. And next, the lovely Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, has stated that he would be open to officiating at same-sex weddings.
OK. Well, considering that many of his congregants are of Persian origin, and pretty reactionary in their politics and religious observance, I thought that was possibly a brave or even foolish stance to take. But that's not my problem.

In Australia, our recently deposed Prime Minister is unmarried, living in a de facto relationship with her male partner of many years. In the cabinet is a lesbian Finance minister who is married to her female partner with whom she has a child. So this sort of stuff has been fairly high profile over the past few years. In my own practice in Breastfeeding Medicine, I have assisted several lesbian couples to breastfeed successfully. I also, when taking a medical history, no longer use the word 'husband' when I ask about the health of the patient's spouse; rather, I ask about the partner. Because some women are married and some are not, and some are single mothers, and you know, I don't get shocked and I didn't come down with the last rain shower. I mean, if the patient is a Haredi woman with a hat on top of a sheytel on her head, I will say 'husband'- tradition. But generally in Australia,  everyone calls everyone 'mate' - G'day, mate! How ya doing, mate! Watch out, mate!- everyone is your mate, except for the person you mate with- that's your partner.
And de facto couples, or common law families, or whatever you like to call them, are fully entitled to the same legal rights as a married couple; property rights, inheritance, insurance, child custody, the whole deck of cards. Because it's about the Law, not about religion.

So I think that people in a same sex relationship of several years, or whatever the legal equivalent of a de facto relationship demands, should also be entitled to these same legal rights. I think that individuals, no matter what their sexual orientation, are entitled to the protection of the Law.

So, if same sex-marriage means that you go off to the registry office or you sit in front of a lawyer or a legal celebrant, and you sign marriage documents, and you exchange rings or gifts or what-have-you, and then you have a party with your friends afterwards- well, why not. Be happy.

Yet, this isn't enough, it seems. No. Many same-sex couple want their union not only recognised and supported by law and by secular society; they want religious recognition also. The minister, the priest, the rabbi, the chuppah, the whole nine yards. And here's where I say no.

Because, Rabbi Wolpe notwithstanding, the chuppah is a sacred place and it is not about a political statement or a personal desire. The chuppah, and I guess I am also talking about the holy sacrament of marriage, which takes in other religions, is indeed about the union in the eyes of G-d of a man and a woman. Because the Torah makes it quite clear about male homosexuality being unacceptable in G-d's eyes, and nobody has a right to try to turn these words and twist them into another meaning. Granted, lesbianism isn't as harshly dealt with as male homosexuality as there is no wastage of semen (which is why masturbation is also a sin) but it is referred to in the Talmud as 'Ta-avat Mitzrayim', the lust of Egypt, and is not condoned. (The chuppah is also, by the way, not a place for mixed marriages either; take note, Chelsea Clinton and numerous others, and whatever 'Rabbi' married you. But I wish you happiness.)

The dream of every Jewish parent who knows anything about being Jewish, is to take your child under the chuppah to be wed to a Jewish member of the opposite sex. Having stood under the chuppah with six of my children, I can attest to the power of the ceremony and how meaningful it is. To see that same-sex couples wish to appropriate it is deeply offensive to me. It is taking a thousand and more years of tradition and custom and Jewish continuity and struggle, and suborning it to a personal desire or a political statement, and I have every right to be offended at this, without some troll labelling me a homophobe. As for the ministers of religion who are happy to jump aboard, well, I'm sure you can guess what I think about that, gentle readers.

It's all early days yet, but where there is marriage, there is also divorce. The statistics at the moment show that same-sex marriages are less likely to break up than traditional marriages, but these statistics are not that meaningful as there hasn't even been a '7-year-itch' scenario yet. So the people who use these bogus figures to say how this shows that same-sex couples love each other more, are idiots. People are people and there will be good relationships and toxic ones, good spouses and abusive ones, and let's not play games here. I also wonder about legalities like consummation or non-consummation of marriage, and what constitutes adultery, or other grounds for divorce etc, but I'm sure the clever lawyers will work something out.

Now, you may have noticed that I have written a whole piece on same-sex marriage without using the word 'gay'. This is deliberate, as the word 'gay' nowadays seems to not include female couples, so I think it is discriminatory! But deep down, I am also upset at the appropriation of a wonderful word which was so useful in describing a certain kind of happiness and joy, so that kids now would snigger at the words to the old song about 'kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be.'

The other word I don't like being swiped by the same-sex male relationship, is 'husband'. The word means 'manager' (eg to husband one's resources, or animal husbandry) and when a homosexual man refers to his 'husband', I think that he is just showing off. As I said earlier, here in Australia, we use 'partner' anyway, so what's wrong with that? Or 'spouse', a perfectly gender-neutral word describing a partner in marriage. Lesbians' use of 'wife' is less annoying, as the word 'wife' just means 'woman' (eg 'midwife', meaning one who is with a woman in childbirth, or fishwife or housewife.) But 'spouse' would still work here too, even if 'gay' doesn't anymore. (I know these are picayune details, but it's my blog and I can talk about what annoys me, no matter how small.)

So, please, same-sex couples, legalise your union if you wish, live in safety and freedom, be in love and happy, and may your lives together be wonderful. But don't expect religious people, myself included, to be happy at the travesty you wish to make of our religious customs and traditions.

A Confluence of Sorrow

Tonight is Tisha B'Av and I was in shul tonight sitting on the floor listening to the horrors described in Eicha, Lamentations. As I said last year, fasting and praying in commemoration of the Destruction of the Temples and the loss of Jerusalem really brings home the historic link that we Jews have with Israel and Jerusalem. It is a tragedy that many Jews just don't know what Tisha B'Av is and, by corollary, do not understand this link. The fact is that the Jewish People are the Children of Israel in every sense of the phrase, and we are the indigenous people of the land. You do not mourn the loss of something for 2,000 years as a form of, what, propaganda or marketing. It is deep and true and real, and if all Jews in the diaspora AND in Israel knew this, well, Moshiach would have come by now. 

Anyway. After the reading, there were two speakers, both Holocaust survivors, both in their 80's. One was my father-in-law Nathan Werdiger. 

The first speaker, originally from Romania, told his story of being rounded up and sent to forced labour camps, escape, recapture, Auschwitz and survival. He recounted how his sister refused to flee until the Vishnitzer Rebbe told them to; and then the Rebbe himself fled with a 'select group of Hasidim' and tens of thousands of his followers were abandoned, most perishing at the hands of the Nazi murderers. 

After the war, he fled Judaism and lived in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining town, for 30 years. He pledged never to marry and have children as he could not countenance the thought of bringing children into such a world. On a recent visit to Melbourne he saw a Shul and entered it for whatever reason, was warmly welcomed by the Chabad rabbi and now has returned to Judaism. 

My father-in-law told his story; forced labour in Auschwitz, working as a slave for IG Farben, witnessing hangings of fellow Jewish slaves for trivial offences, starvation, disease; participating in a Kol Nidrei service after dark in the bunkroom, weeping for the beauty of remembered Yom Kippur services, fasting -fasting! In Auschwitz!- for what turned into 2 days due to collective punishment by the Nazi kommandant ; Death march to Buchenwald; being liberated close to death, pulled off a pile of corpses by his one surviving brother hours before the Americans arrived,  being nursed back to health, learning how to walk again, 4 years in a Davos sanatorium; failing the medical to go to the US to be with his brother but being sponsored by a cousin to come to Australia. It is impossible, he said, to convey the absolute hell of the camps; and he is right. There are no words in any language to convey the depths and extremes of these experiences, not to a listener who hasn't been there himself. 

But my father-in-law took a different turn from the other speaker. Despite all that he experienced, he held on to his Judaism. He married and created a family which now numbers over 100 souls. He dragged himself out of the ashes of the Holocaust and he chose Life. 

I never ever presume to judge a survivor; nobody can. I don't know how anyone could ever function in any way after such experiences. But I know that I am grateful that Nathan Werdiger chose to live. 

It's Tisha B'Av. We Jews have experienced unspeakable tragedies throughout history, many linked with this day and many only because of our Judaism. We are still here. We are the descendants of the survivors who chose Life. 

Moshiach hasn't come yet and I don't know what it will take; but we wait to be redeemed and returned to our home in Eretz Yisrael. We will be redeemed. We will return. 

Am Yisrael Chai. 

LIKE TALKING TO A WALL

So by now you may have heard about the unseemly behaviors which took place at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Av. The Women of the Wall, in their tens, wanted to have their Rosh Chodesh services in their tallitot and kippot, in some cases, Tefillin, and the Women FOR the Wall, Orthodox women, got there first, in their many hundreds, and packed the women's section where they prayed quietly and traditionally. Except for one woman with a whistle, who was trying to disrupt the WOW - I can only guess that she blew the whistle to drown out the voices of women singing, this saving the men the trouble. The WOW group were blocked from reaching the Kotel itself by the numbers of orthodox sem girls and women. One WOW participant, a rabbi, wrote how she was jeered when she pleaded with some girls to put a kvittel in the Wall to pray for the health of a friend recently diagnosed with breast cancer; she was very upset. 

And it is indeed, all very upsetting. During the 3 weeks, beginning of the 9 days of mourning which commemorate the destruction of the Temple, at the same very site, Jews fighting Jews. 2,000 years ago, they all would have been dead as each other, slaughtered and enslaved by Romans. Or 60 years ago, by the Nazis. You can say that about any Jew-on-Jew fight. And of course, irony of ironies, the Temples were destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, or baseless hatred. 

I am in two minds about WOW. Part of me feels that, since the Kotel is for all Jews, the WOW should just be left alone to wear their cute little tallitot etc and just do their own thing; but a large part of me feels that  they are a bunch of attention seekers. WOW- even the acronym is an attention grabber. (WOTW would be more accurate but it lacks the -excuse me- wow factor.)

Because I truly feel that this brand of Judaism is inauthentic. That's how I feel about Reform Judaism. I'm sorry if I offend fellow Jews, and I know that I do, but you can't begin to imagine how offensive are some of the 'reforms' of Reform Judaism to me and other Orthodox Jews. Declaring in 1984, for example, that patrilineage is an acceptable decider of Jewish identity rather than the thousands of years of matrilineage. Not to mention conversions, divorce, observance (or not) of basic Jewish mitzvot such as Shabbat, Kashrut, Mikveh. The result is muddying of the water of Jewish identity and, as we see in the US, astronomical rates of intermarriage and assimilation. So excuse my not believing in pluralism too much. 

So the various media picked up on the battle of the Wall and it all looked awful, a Shunda, ugly haredi women blowing whistles and picking on the WOW ladies in their fetching garb etc. Of course it was a total beat up, and if you want to know what really happened, go the The Real Jerusalem Streets, Sharon Altshul's terrific photoblog, and see.  http://rjstreets.com/2013/07/09/rosh-chodesh-av-at-the-western-wall/

The other thing about WOW is that they want it all. They won't stop. They want to have reading from the Torah at the Kotel, they want to sing and dance and pray and wear Tefillin, and they want everybody to smile and clap and chant with them, and support everything they say and do. It doesn't bother them that the vast majority of Jewish women, observant or not, have no desire at all to do this. We observant women feel that we have enough 'feminine' mitzvot to do, and we feel that these are important enough, considering that they underpin the observance of Judaism, that we need not demean them by declaring that the only way to go is like the men. Public prayer, tefillin, kippah, tallit, reading from the Torah, etc. This reminds me of 70's feminism where you could only be a true feminist by behaving like men and rejecting any traditional feminine role. 'Essentialism', the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, was mocked. And that all worked out well, hey? 

If a group decided that they would express their Judaism by, say, jumping on pogo sticks, (and stranger things than this have occurred in the history of religious observance) and then took their pogo sticks to the Kotel to jump in pure religious zeal and ecstasy, there would be two lots of upset people: those who were bumped and those who were outraged and affronted, feeling that they and their hundreds of years of Mesorah, tradition, were being mocked. And then, what if the pogo jumpers went to the Law and insisted that they have their own little spot, right there, right at the wall. And the Law agreed! So as to protect both the jumpers and the non-jumpers. How sweet! How infuriating for the rest. 

At the Kotel, nobody minds when non-Jews come and pray or stick bits of paper containing prayers into the wall, or if women wear clothing that is not what a religious person would wear, as long as the boundaries aren't pushed too far. In the plaza, groups of people sing and dance- non Jews, secular Jews, mixed groups of men and women dancing the hora, religious groups, whatever. Nobody cares. No Haredim are punching people up or insisting that everyone behaves in a Haredi way, merely in a respectful way. 

The WOW are kidding themselves if they think that they are all so kumbaya and represent all that is good in Judaism, and everyone who is not with them must be against them and a meanie.  Most people don't care or are amused or bemused. But many worshippers are offended, and I believe, with good reason. Mind you, this doesn't give them the right to a slap-down. 

During this last week before the fast day of Tisha B'Av, let's try to tolerate each other, even if we can't love each other. But let's also try not to get up each others' noses. And may the righteous Moshiach redeem us and end our exile. Amen. 

PS If you want to pray for the recovery of a sick friend, by the way, sticking a kvittel in the Kotel is a pretty infantile way of doing it, in my opinion. Say Tehillim, give Tzedakah, do a mitzvah. You don't need the kvittel or the Kotel for that, Rabbi. 

Snake oil, anyone?

During the 19th century there was a growth industry of so called 'patent medicines', that is, substances produced in various forms- pills, powders, liquids- pre-mixed and sold direct to the public as cures for many and multiple diseases. Many of these products were originally under 'Royal patent', hence the name. Stuff like this has been around forever, but the birth of the advertising industry really created awareness, and the newspapers of the times earned a lot of revenue by running these ads for Doctor So-and-so's miracle cure for everything from pimples to TB and cancer. The good doctor was usually fictitious, but a well-moustached face usually illustrated the label, looking most distinguished. Or the remedy was attributed to some Indian tribe or some exotic ingredient from faraway lands. Some of these medicines did in fact contain bio active ingredients such as opium or mercury or cocaine (hello, Coca-cola!) and good old ethanol, and many patients poisoned themselves. But many felt better; most of their ailments were self-diagnosed in the first place, so it was a neat fit, the 'cure' for the 'illness'. 

The traveling medicine shows of the US marketed to small towns across America into the 20th century, and people bought all manner of medicines hawked by dubious 'Doctors' with many a fake testimonial from a shill planted in the audience. They were such simple, uneducated, unsophisticated folk, weren't they? Not like us today, right?

What's amazing is how little has changed. Except now, instead of a horse and cart and hoopla of a traveling show, or unsubstantiated ads in newspapers, we have the power of the Internet. Yet people don't change. 

Not long ago a friend forwarded me a video on Facebook claiming that a product called MMS has cured Malaria. 157 out of 157 patients in a Ugandan trial, under the auspices of the Ugandan Red Cross, were cured of malaria. Wow! I thought. Bring out the Nobel Prizes! Ring the bells! Hallelujah! The scourge of malaria, which kills more people annually worldwide than just about every other disease combined, is defeated! Except I didn't, because MMS is a bullshit substance and the 'study' was a bullshit study. The only thing that amazed me was that the Red Cross allowed its name to be used at all in conjunction with this bullshit clinical trial. 

Why was this trial absurd? Here's what was done. 

All the villagers in a rural area of Uganda were rounded up.  They were tested with a malaria field testing kit where a drop of blood is put on the little stick which records the presence of malarial  antigen in the blood. One stripe appears if the patient is clear; that's a control strip. If 2 or 3 stripes appear, then the person has been infected with one or other strain of malaria. 157 villagers tested positive. These were then given the Marvellous Mineral Solution MMS, which is sodium chlorite- ie bleach- several drops in water which is then 'activated' with citric acid- releasing chlorine gas- and the patients drank the solution. The next day they fronted up for a repeat test with the test kit and all but 2 showed negative! The rogue 2 had apparently spat it out- couldn't blame them, really- but they were re-dosed and the next day, they were also cured! Wow! And many villagers jumped with joy and praised The Lord. 

So let us analyze this 'trial'. 

Firstly the test kits do not show who is sick with malaria but who had had malaria exposure several weeks or longer, before. It is notorious for showing false positives. The only way to really diagnose active malaria is to do a blood film exam under microscope, looking for the parasite in the blood. 

Secondly, the video seemed to infer that a cure was shown by no lines appearing in the kit; but this really means an invalid test. 

Thirdly, even when a person has recovered from malaria, the antigen is not cleared from the blood for weeks, so no way is it possible for the field test kit to become negative overnight. 

But the main thing is that this is not how a scientific test is conducted. The only way to evaluate any treatment is by a randomized  clinical trial. A double blinded placebo controlled trial, with enough participants to make the study valid. This means that 2 or more groups are randomly allotted to be treated with either the drug being tested or with an inactive substance; the patient doesn't know which he is getting; the health worker doesn't know which he is giving. This is vital because of the power of the placebo effect, which is always present to some degree in every kind of medical treatment.

In the case of malaria, a real trial would need blood films, not field test kits, to see who had active malaria and who merely had antibodies from previous infection.  

These simple folk were lining up to take big medicine to heal them and all of them, 'sick' with malaria, according to the field test kits, them 'cured' according the the kits, were riding the wings of the placebo effect. The rest is flimflam and incompetence. 

But it's a nice video with a pleasant voice over and earnest good people wearing tshirts emblazoned with the Ugandan Red Cross insignia (!) documenting everything, and if you didn't have a clue about how proper trials were conducted, you would be taken in, as was my friend, who is not a stupid person. 

So here I am, droning on about science, but I bet you know someone who took some modern version of a patent medicine and they were cured. And if you look up MMS you will see a cult-like following of people who swear that it has cured their cancer, their depression, their Crohns disease, their halitosis and their HIV and cleared their skin up too. And it's all bullshit. 

It's not a conspiracy by Big Pharma and all the doctors who would be put out of a job by a cure like this. It's lies and anecdotes and placebo effect, and it's meaningless because if the FDA or the CDC does a RCT and it comes up with zilch then them's the facts, and no amount of snake oil can massage away the facts. 

Here's another one: ZYTO, a system of diagnosis and treatment where GSR (galvanic skin response) is analyzed by a computer, the patient's health state is mapped and a treatment system involving supplements bought from the company, is prescribed by the computer, resulting in not only cures of physical maladies but also emotional and spiritual.

WOW. I mean, wow, computer age stuff.  

I found out about this from a very good friend who lives in the US , who has developed some health problems related to life long obesity, and who consulted a chiropractor (don't get me started) who in turn applied the ZYTO system. She emailed me a copy of the charts the computer created and the suggested remedies (basically a mish mash of homeopathy, naturopathy and traditional Chinese Medicine). After I looked this all over and them went to the websites and looked at all the testimonials, I delivered my studied opinion; bullshit. Every testimonial was from a person with no real diagnosed medical issues except for the fact that most of them were fat Americans, some with conditions like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, or just plain old didn't feel well. All praised Dr Chiropractor, who healed them with his hands, or marveled at ZYTO, which knew them better than they knew themselves. 

I mean, how different is this from the old Faradisation machines and Orgone boxes of the late 19th century? Or Mesmerism. Or colectomies or dental clearances done to remove the suspected disease focus in the body. Or Radon treatments, which were thought to be healing until it turned out that radon exposure caused cancer. Or a hundred other treatments which were miraculous until they were eventually ditched because they were either dangerous or ineffective. 

I'm not saying that doctors don't also use unproven treatments.  How many courses of antibiotics have been prescribed for viral infections which would have responded just as well to Panadol and hot drinks and rest and time? But they really help, doctor! I'll tell you what's helping: time plus placebo effect plus the healing presence of a trusted health practitioner. 

I'm not discounting the therapeutic effects of herbs or supplements or whatnot, but if it can't pass muster under a RCT, then you're on very shaky ground. And definitely I do not scoff at the mind-body continuum; I would be a fool if I did. 

But people are on the whole, simple folk, even if they are smart and educated, and the mind and the body are amazing and powerful, and people will believe what they want. 

Yet we see enormous controversy over one of the most powerful, well tested, safe and effective products in human history: vaccines. The same people who swear by MMS and happily ingest dilute bleach 'activated' into chlorine gas, are likely to refuse to vaccinate their children because vaccines are 'too dangerous'. Go figure. 

To be continued. 

'Too posh to push?' Really?

So my daughter was at a Pilates class the other day and overheard a conversation between several young  pregnant women. It covered a lot of ground involving designer baby clothes and baby carriages du jour, there was some talk about epidurals and lots of shuddering about childbirth and various negatives about breastfeeding. 

My daughter reported to me that she felt like going up to them and saying 'Get over yourselves! Just push it out and put it on the boob!' 

And I was proud. 

Welcome to the third compartment of my brain! Work/women's stuff. (Home/ family, and World events/Jewish stuff being the other two.)

My question is this: What has gone wrong when we have Caesarian rates of 33% overall in Victoria? By overall, I mean that private hospitals are nudging 50% rates. That's one in two to three births being surgical deliveries. That's not counting other interventions such as epidurals and episiotomies and suction and forceps. 

Now, I am a doctor and I trained in the 70s and we were told then that '80% of women could deliver in a paddock', in the charming words of Sir Lance Townsend, famous OBGYN and Dean of O&G Melbourne Uni. That left 20% who needed some sort of intervention. That included episiotomies and forceps. So about 10-15% would need a C-section. This figure tallies pretty closely with the current WHO predictions of 15%. So what has changed?

Well, older mums. Ok. So the 'elderly primigravida' ie 37 years plus, having a first child, could be expected to have more difficulty. Although 37 is a bit of a spring chicken in some circles! And IVF and other sorts of reproductive technologies mean that women in their 40s+ can give birth, pretty much out of the old range. And we can see the shift in general to older first timers. 

(If I wasn't writing this on my iPhone but on a real computer I would do some quick research and give you exact figures, but I don't think it's really necessary for this blog post. Another time maybe.)

Another shift since the innocent 70s has been the growing litigiousness of the community. Anything wrong with the baby is the OB's fault. Even though it has been shown that most cases of , gor example, Cerebral Palsy, are not birth-related but originate in utero, enough high profile cases make everybody scared, so the C-Section is the cure-all. So higher risk births, eg breech, twin, are generally operative deliveries. Short stature, older mum, narrow pelvis, high head at term, unstable lie. Posterior position! I don't know when that happened, but suddenly that too has become dangerous and needs CS. 

(I'm sorry if I'm using terms you may not be familiar with, but if you're reading this far already, I think you know what I am talking about. )

Back in the day, you could go 2-3 weeks overdue also, but there are statistical risks with this. So even though nowadays we can easily assess placental function and fetal well-being, many doctors either get a bit antsy, or, in many cases, mums have had enough, and hello, induction. 

And the trouble with inducing labour is that once you intervene in this process, you often set up a chain of events. Prostin gel, break waters, synocinon (pitocin) drip, slow progress, pump up the volume, maternal distress, epidural, failure to progress, fetal distress, failed suction, failed forceps, emergency Caesarian. 

We saved your baby! We saved your life! Thank you doctor! Thank you so much!

I'm not saying that there should NEVER be an induction or epidural or whatever. But NOTHING should be routinely done. Because when interventions are done routinely, all you are left with is the side-effect risk. 

So when pregnant women are shopping for the perfect pram or the loveliest blanket, well, that's ok. A consumer-driven decision. But it's not ok to let the consumer drive the kind of delivery. 

If you ask an OB with a high CS rate why he does this, he might say that he has a lot of high-risk deliveries. But he will also say, if that's what the mum wants then fine, that's what I will do. 

Because it's a consumer society. A highly litigious consumer society. And he is a bit scared, a bit undermined and he pays enormous medical indemnity. And many OBs have lost the attitude of 'masterly inactivity' or 'watchful waiting' because they need to make a lot of money to pay their huge insurance fees, and time is money. And mama is in a hurry too. So chop-chop! Let's get this over with. 

So have the rates of maternal deaths home down? Not really, they've been pretty steady at 3-4 a year for the last 30 years or so, in Victoria. How about perinatal death and illness? Well, not so straightforward because with better fetal diagnosis, many pregnancies are terminated for chromosomal or genetic conditions, so they don't make the count. Prematurity is still a major cause of perinatal illness and death. 

In general, when the rate of CS went from 20% to 33%, it is not at all clear that mothers or babies did better. In fact, having a CS, which is major surgery, comes with its own passel of problems, not only for that delivery, but for subsequent deliveries. 

In 1970, in Victoria, the rate of initiation of breastfeeding was around 20%. You read that right. One in five babies was even offered the breast. This came about mainly because of the attitude of the day among doctors and nurses that formula was just so much better and more modern and civilized, cleaner and more convenient, than the breast. There was not much research in the field, therefore not much evidence, and shameless marketing from formula companies.  Most young mums, migrants or children of migrants, less educated than the clever doctors and nurses, nodded and bought the bottle. It took a grassroots movement of housewives, the Nursing Mothers Association of Australia (you couldn't say 'breast' in 1964, now it's the Australian Breastfeeding Association) who forced change through activism, education and support of mothers, to turn that ship around. Breastfeeding rates still aren't what they could be, but around 90% of mothers at least give it a shot. That's for another post. 

What I'm saying is, if we wait for OBs to suddenly say, 'Hey! I'm doing too many C-Sections! What's with that? What, have women's bodies become unsuitable for vaginal birth, after millions of years of evolution??', well, don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. (Although some have suddenly woken up to the fact that they don't even know what natural birth looks like any more, and most have lost the skills needed to apply forceps properly, and there is some minimal change afoot. Because if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.)

Change must come from the grassroots. If the mums ask for a chance to give birth naturally; if they know about the positives of natural childbirth rather than scare themselves with negatives; if they put some trust in their own bodies, in Nature or in G-d or whatever; if they seek education through LaMaze or whatever; in short, if they CARE; then there will be change. There has to be. 

Jihadis and other curses

I've been avoiding posting about world events (one of my 3 brain compartments) because what is there to say? Syria. Boston marathon. Stephen Hawking. London jihadists. It's sickening and it's terrifying. And what can I say that hasn't been said by people who are smarter and better connected than I? 

But after this last atrocity where David Cameron and Boris Johnson are simpering about Islam, the religion of peace, and as usual, no Muslim leader that I have heard about has stood up to sincerely denounce the shocking slaughter in London of an off-duty soldier, well, I don't know. And now apparently some 'extreme Right' types- ie Neo Nazis- have been gathering to 'take back the streets' or whatever the euphemism is for anti-Muslim race riots, well that's not good either, is it. I mean, nobody to barrack for there. 

Embedding Stephen Hawking among all these horrors might be considered overkill, but in our celebrity-obsessed culture, and even NOT in our culture, the word of a famous scientist has some Influence. So he has lined up with BDS and their lies and refused to go to president Peres' 90th because Israel is an Apartheid state. You would think that a smart guy like that would do some research and find the truth. I'm wondering if the Saudis  have dangled an endowment for a Stephen Hawking chair in Physics at Cambridge or something so he's smart enough to know which side his bread is buttered on. Just wondering. 

And have they figured out what to do with Tamerlane Tsernaev's body yet? I sure hope they didn't send it back to Jihadi Mama. I can tell them what to do with it: wrap it in a pigskin and bury it in Potters' Field, unmarked. Or cremate it and dump it in the sea to keep Bin Laden company. 

And Lord Ahmed, the 'first Muslim peer'! I must say, I had never heard of this guy and I don't know how he became ennobled by Her Majesty, but Mr Interfaith Dialogue sure knew who to blame for his prison sentence after he killed a pedestrian while texting as he was driving! The Jews of course! The Jew judges and lawyers, according to his interview in Pakistan, in Urdu of course. In English, the good lord is less than forthcoming. Maybe he did say that, maybe he didn't, he can't quite put his finger on it. 

Now we have the London Declaration on Combating Anti-Semitism, which sounds great! At last! Except that's not going to touch the phenomenon of Anti-Zionism, which is basically anti-Semitism with a college degree. So there, Lord Ahmed. Rap on knuckles for you! But not for Prof Hawking. Or BDS. Or all the slanderers of Israel. 

So it's over and out for now, I'll leave further  commentary  for the real pros. Professional journalists, that is. 

MY BRAIN HURTS

Now that I am ensconced in solitary (almost- spouse is here with me) glory in Shoreham, the family weekender, I actually have a few minutes to think and write. It's been nuts with work, looking after grandchildren, and still no washing machine. 2 weeks now. Been taking it to my sister inlaw's place. 

As an aside, may I give you a word of advice? If you are looking for appliance repair, and you google, and you find a nice, easy to use website with email contact, BUT the only phone number is a cell phone - don't go there. This guy is probably a one man operator who calls in his mates as needed and has no inventory of parts and thus any part will take forever. So Mr Washing Machine, you stooged me. You sound nice on the phone but you really got me good. I paid $138 ( Cash! Because you are having some temporary banking issues and so cannot take a credit card; more bullshit!) for your 'technicians' - 2 Lebanese wogboys, all struts and attitude,  to walk in the door the day after my SOS and look at the machine for 20 seconds; your assurance that I won't have to pay for the visit when they return to affix the part, trapped me. I even offered to courier or FedEx the part from wherever, but no.  So it will be another week. 3 weeks or more! Without a washing machine and 3 little kids in the house. Folks, here's an anti-endorsement: do NOT use Mr Washing Machine. So there. 

I just did 2 loads of laundry here in Shoreham and I actually enjoyed it. 

Enough about domestic shit. 

My brain is split into 3 compartments. One has got all the house stuff stuffed into it, family and all that too. One thinks about Israel, Jewish stuff, world politics, anti Semitism, the Jihadist threat to the world and stuff like that. And the other is relevant to my work: Breastfeeding, birth, mothers and babies. There's been so damn much going on in all three compartments that I haven't had a chance to think, but now... Oh crap, it's nearly Shabbos. 

To be continued.