passover approacheth

I stopped at the kosher market on the way in to work this morning, to grab something for breakfast/lunch, and I shouldn't've been surprised at how most of the store is filled with passover foods, already. There were a few segregated shelves of the other stuff, but mostly, it was passover passover passover. I surveyed the aisles, even bought a couple of things (some jam that was just fruit and sugar, tuna on sale). There are so many things I will never buy for passover, cake mixes (Really, I can live an entire week, more, even, without cake. Hard to believe, but true.), breakfast cereals, other imitation-starchy foods, overpriced desserts, etc. Which is not to say I won't be back, buying some stuff in a week or 2, but my passover eating is more focused on celebrating fruits, veggies, cheese, poultry, etc, rather than on imitating the things that are not kosher for passover.

Still, it's time to start amassing passover foods. I usually try to get things wherever they're cheapest, when I see them, rather than having a day from hell doing passover shopping. Since I have no problem buying veggies during the intermediate days (I have friends who don't do this. Yes, I know some nuts..), the major items are matzah, cheese (some kinds sell out) and the prepared foods I indulge in (eggplant spreads, mostly). Also some quinoa.

At home I am already absurdly pleased when finishing a container of [fill in any food name here]. Last night I found myself making up a batch of cran-ginger chutney, partly because it would finish so many things I had around the place, bags of cranberries, brown sugar, crystallized ginger (yes, the ginger-obsession continues), some fresh ginger, walnuts, etc. It's a bit too early for my fridge to be this empty... (though I still have some almond paste left, so there will probably be some truffles soon)

Plans for the holiday itself are still undecided. Do I make a seder? Depends on who's available. If I don't, do I stay at home, or go to friends in Chicago? (I'm definitely not going to the friends in Sharon, though they invite me every year.)

And of course, I should be planning when I'm going to get the Cleaning of the Kitchen done, not to mention the Kashering of the Oven and Sink, as well as the Covering of All Horizontal Surfaces (anyone who comes over during passover gets to see my draped kitchen.). Luckily, I do not have toddlers who may deposit Cheerios in all sorts of unexpected places... nor do I feel cleaning for passover is a good time to do spring cleaning (I do not eat on my drapes, so there is no need to clean them for passover).

OK. enough rant (why does passover tend to bring out the soap box in me?). Time to attempt to be productive.

boggle

I saw a word during the last round with Queue today, but hadn't quite managed to start the first letter when time ran out. In the end, we tied, so had I managed to write it, I would've been able to say I won by "labias." (I would've written the plural first, though I suppose it would be more fun to say I won by a labia.... :-)

sighting

3 men in tricornes and the rest of the patriotic gear that goes with it, crossing the street this afternoon heading for the library. guess it's good to know about the issues before fighting about them...

Shabbat thoughts

(sparked by entries in Cthulhia's and Tigerbright's journals. recreated after an email from Idjit Boss crashed my machine (Yes, I should've saved the text before trying to open an email. Who knew she'd manage to fit a bomb into a short congratulatory note?).)

I still find not writing on shabbat is the hardest thing. It's the perfect time, with few distractions, the leisure to think about things, pay attention to details, figure out patterns, process the week, in short. And I can definitely see how things like talking to long-distance friends, or enjoying an art show, or driving to hang out with local friends, or playing games involving writing, could be in the spirit of shabbat, though outside the halachic (Jewish legal) framework.

So I think about changing what I do. And yet again I find myself up against some walls.

Some are not related to how I think I should live my life directly at all: if I change what I do, will I still be accepted in the Jewish community I'm currently in? I've changed a lot of my friend groups in the last year or 2 and am not as socially tied to the minyan, but I still want to be a part of it, even if less of my time is spent there (Why I still want to be there is another question, one I'm not sure I can answer with anything better than "because."). Unlike many of the friends I've found since then, the Jewish groups I'm in tend to be rather judgemental.
(It was such a relief finding people who weren't like that, with all the little yardsticks of "frum enough" or "not good enough," ranging from what acceptable hechsherim (kosher marks) are to whether you'll shake hands with a member of the opposite sex to whether you rip toilet paper on shabbat (yes, I'm not kidding.). Actually, somehow all the groups I know that have as part of their self-definition that the members are Jewish seem to have their yardsticks.)
So I want to be a person/run a house (kitchen) that is acceptable to the group. This includes not only the food preparation, but my sabbath observance as well.

Another piece of it is feeling like I'm changing my story. First I wanted to do this, and now, not. I seem to have inherited from my dad a rather stupid tendency to absolutely stick to choices, even if circumstances have changed, or I've changed, or whatever. I see it in him, and hate it. And yet, I seem to do it myself. So I've told myself, and others around me, that I keep shabbat. So darn it, that's what I do. And in some ways it's a lot easier to stick with the status quo: there aren't those awkward moments of someone saying "You can do THAT on shabbat?" And me answering "Well, I'm sort of re-evaluating what I do...." Which is yet again an external sort of disincentive.

If I buy into halacha, feeling that this is how I should lead my life, then I should do it properly (if I can. And I've been managing to do shabbat for years, so I don't have any really good excuses for no longer being able to.) as much as possible. Yes, there are a variety of opinions on some issues. And yes, the Jewish community has tended to swing rather towards more and more conservative (lower case "c") interpretations in the last decade or so. This still leaves me some room for change (I did start wearing jeans again....). But for shabbat, I don't see how I can, say, start writing, and say that I buy into the rest of the system, except this. Which leaves me with ditching the system altogether, which I don't want to do. (There's that absolutism again.)

Sometimes practice feels hollow, and how I feel about (for instance) davening (praying), and what I feel while davening, is changing, but it still has some meaning, even if just tying me to a group I belong to. And on good days it feels like more than that. On good days, kavannah days (Kavannah means intent, but also focus. It's one of those words that emphasizes to me that language can shape how people think, because there's no really good translation. Perhaps being in the "zone" comes close, too.), things are great. And even though those seem to fewer and farther between now, I remember them, and wish they came more frequently.

I've been thinking about halachic change a lot over the last months. Some things I've changed a bit (the jeans, again, and what I'll eat out), while others seem to be set in stone, rather. A friend asked if all the changes would be in dress and food, and I realized that most of the practical upshots of any change in how I choose to interpret halacha are likely to be in those areas, but it's still the underlying change that's important.