sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Mammoth Update

As you know, my head has been full of a lot of other stuff. Not all of it is that interesting. Oh well.

So... between calls, here's a what-I-did-recently type thing.

Spent Yom Tov (simchat torah) in my spiritual homeland, Cheadle. Wonderful to see family/nephews/niece etc, and there is just something very special about being back in the place you grew up.

Simchat Torah is a kid's festival, basically. It's a celebration of the ending and restarting of the Torah reading cycle, but it's basically a big party, and the kids wave flags and get sweets and generally have a good time.

I remember as a kid, the flags had wooden flagpoles (must be another word, sorry), and paper flags. Of course loads of kids used to try and poke each other's eyes out, so a custom emerged of putting an apple on the end of the flag. But then people just hit each other with it. My dad insisted that we put cotton wool balls on the end of ours. Let's just say other kids took the piss...

I asked my four year old niece, on the way to shul, what Simchat Torah was celebrating. "Flags," she replied. Seems like a good answer.

I discovered, entirely by accident, a women's group in at Yeshurun. I just saw it on the timetable. On Simchat Torah (in orthodox shuls) all the men get called up (get the honour of being called to read from the Torah) and the women are mostly sitting around, sipping peach schnapps, talking about house prices/fashion/when the lunch will be. I mean, not all shuls, obviously. But it is a bit of a spectator sport, if you're an orthodox woman.

And then there's the whole Englisher thing. Lots of people feel like it was fun when you were a kid, but not so fun as an adult. They're cynical. And English; a little nervous of letting their hair down, don't want to dance. Find it all a little bit too PDA.

So this women's group was great - about fifty or sixty women upstairs in the beis hamidrash, and about five women gave short talks about identity, where they and their families came from. It was amazing. It was really, really amazing. People I've known my whole life telling me things like they grew up an anarchist and didn't know they were Jewish till they were twenty-two. Someone read poetry. It was quite emotional, but in a good way. At the end, I felt compelled to tell them that I was a child of Cheadle, and that was the place that felt like home to me. It felt slightly self-indulgent to point them to my blog and tell them that's what I've been writing for the last x months.

There's always a lunch on Simchat Torah, and I've not really been there since I've been an adult. As a teenager I always felt like I wasn't a kid and I wasn't a grownup - I didn't know who to sit with and I didn't get the jokes. But now I know I'm really grown up - I loved hearing all the speeches and knowing who's on which committee and who's doing what for the community. It actually felt like the community is in better shape than I had previously thought it was. I've been worried that it's my Dad and all his buddies running the show, and that there's a "lost generation" of honorary officers, but it looks like people are stepping up. That said, a friend of my Dad's is still the president, and boy, does he give good president. He gave a really great speech thanking - what felt to me - like all the right people in the right way.

It was also emotional because Betty, who's worked in the shul for over 40 years, was retiring. I remember her from being a kid; Bernard read out a great letter where someone talked about her magic biscuit tin, and that's why we all went to cheder. Which was kinda true. She looked the same as she did when I was a kid, although she must be... well, of retirement age, I'm guessing. Never say a lady's age, right?

Other news: my brother is growing his hair. He already has something of a Jonathan Ross look, and when it goes floppy, he really will have. Having said that, he's got a lot of hair, and I suspect it'll turn Jewfro before it goes floppy. Where he's at now, is the longest I've seen it since his barmitzvah photo - the rest is uncharted territory.

I went there and back on the train, and it took two hours there (great, efficient, excellent) and three hours back. On Friday afternoon I got the first cheap train, and it was really full. And they were making these annoucements: first class is empty, it's £150 to upgrade. Like, yeah, you'd really do that. On the way back, I upgraded to weekend first (fifteen pounds), well, I tried to. I sat in first, but they never collected either the tickets or the upgrade fare. And then you wonder why they don't make any money.

So I'm back in the, er, smoke. I've had a nice week so far. Long may it continue. Still some stuff to sort out, but isn't there always?