I hate to say I told you so

I am no expert on world affairs but I recently mentioned in a post on my other blog (www.thevidaloco.blogspot.com) that Canada is starting to feel like Germany in the early 1930s. Not that I know exactly what that felt like, but from what I have read, the descriptions seem eerily familiar. And now I feel totally vindicated because Irwin Cotler, previously the Justice Minister and Attorney General in the Canadian Parliament and a man with more human rights credentials than I have space to list, is saying the same thing. And he actually does know what he is talking about.

So here is the link to a transcript of a speech he recently delivered: /network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/21/irwin-cotler-the-global-reawakening-of-anti-sematism.aspx

Now I don't actually expect anyone to do anything. The people I know who are or were inclined to do something have already done it -- they left Canada. I don't want to sound like someone with great foresight vis-a-vis leaving Canada. As I have said many times in previous posts on my blogs, I came to Israel reluctantly. My husband is the one with all the foresight. Of course, his parents survived the Holocaust and he was hellbent on not ignoring the signs this time around.

I am not suggesting that there is another Hitler on the way. I really don't think there is. But I do believe that there are subtle but growing changes in the Canadian social environment. Irwin Cotler thinks so too.


Oh, here, I stumbled across another interesting piece -- this time from a Canadian Muslim Arab. See, I am trying to be balanced here. Read this: network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/20/tarek-fatah-stop-funding-fundamentalism.aspx

Do you think this is real? I need to know

Someone recently sent me an email with this link. Since I am a curious person I clicked on the link. Then I spent the next two minutes watching various groups of people pop popcorn with their cell phones. It freaked me a bit. But then I got suspicious because there is one video and it seems to show people from different parts of the world all trying the same experiment and getting the same results. How did someone really find people from different parts of the world to participate in his or her video? Seems like a lot of effort (and therefore, it seems to me like unlikely effort). So I am hoping that some of you will watch it and tell me what you think.

/www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/portable/video/x5odhh_pop-corn-telephone-portable-microon_news

Why aren't Israeli kids allergic to peanuts?

When I was a kid I don't remember anyone being allergic to peanut butter. Peanut butter and jam was a staple of my diet. But today, you just try to eat a PBJ sandwich in public in Canada or the U.S. Seriously, just try it (I will be on the sidelines filming what happens next when they drag you off to peanut jail.)

I don't want to dismiss peanut allergies; some of my children's friends have them. For those families, these allergies are very real.

Scientists agree that the number of children with peanut allergies has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. In the last five years alone the numbers have doubled. No one seems to know what that is. Maybe, some of them suggest, pregnant mothers are eating more peanuts and peanut butter than they did in the past. Ah ha! It's the mother's fault. Well, isn't that convenient?

I did some reading and I found out that all food and environmental allergies are on the rise in children. The theory is that since we live in a more hygienic world and we catch less childhood illnesses, our immune systems have time to catch more minutiae in our diets and the environment. Since our bodies no longer have to fight off nasty parasites everyday (because we are so darn clean and our bodies can no longer fight off disease), they have started to fight proteins which in their innate logic are bad.

Okay, so if that is true, why aren’t more Israeli kids allergic to peanut butter? I send my kids to school with peanut butter sandwiches at least once a week and no one has ever noticed.

Apparently the answer may have something to do with early peanut consumption being more common in Israel (the exact opposite of what my pediatrician recommended in Canada years ago). Bomba is the favorite food of toddlers in Israel. It is a puffed peanut butter flavored snack – looks just like a cheesie but it isn't.

Bomba is an institution in Israel; 69% of all Israeli babies are eating it by the age of nine-months. Frankly I don't like it – I think it is an oral abomination, but what do I know? Statistics indicate that I am squarely in the minority on this matter.

In case you are thinking that perhaps you should bring your peanut-allergic child to Israel and that would solve the problem. It won't. Allergies are geographically sensitive so your peanut-allergic child will probably end up allergic to sesame seeds here and you will just have a new set of worries.

Is the loss of one's dog comparable to the loss of a special person?

My feisty friend Emily died two days ago. I was surprised at how sad I was when I read the news from my close friend and old business partner in Toronto. Emily was her dog.

The first time I met Emily it would never have crossed my mind to consider her a friend. She was a very "enthusiastic" doberman who wanted you to know that you were on her turf and you better not forget it. The fact that I worked in "her" house did not simplify things. Well, not at first. I soon found out that she could be placated with tea biscuits and I was willing to oblige her food fetish as long as she let me live.

Over time my scent became familiar to her and she barked less. I didn't say that she stopped barking... that would have been totally out of character for her. But, as I mentioned above, she allowed me to live and she even let me pet her now and then.

I saw her last Spring after a six year absence. I was shocked by how much she had aged. I am no pet lover, but I was upset to see that she was so old and laid back. She just mozied around my friend's house and was all too happy to be petted for an hour. I never once feared for the safety of my hands.

I knew that the inevitable end was near. It was obvious although no one mentioned it. And for my friend's sake, I was dreading it.

Now it the inevitable has happened and there is a lot of sadness. My friend never had children. They weren't her thing. But her dog was her child and her friend. I think she treated Emily better than I treat my kids sometimes. Her loss is palatable.

Having recently experienced the loss of my father, I am struck by how sad my friend sounded in her email. My first thought was that you can't compare losing a parent to losing a dog. But now I am not so sure. Lassie swam across the English Channel or some large body of water like that to get back to her beloved family. With all due respect to my father, I don't think either he or I would have done that. We would have waited for the next available boat. obviously we weren't that committed!!! (OH, I am only joking.)

In twelfth grade one of my high school friends cat died. I had known that cat for years and I thought it was the nastiest cat that ever lived. Neighbourhood dogs partied for days after that cat died. There was a sense in the Hood that the Days of Terror were over. However, my friend was dispondent. I mean truly devastated for weeks and weeks. We, her friends, could not cajole her out of it with any of the usual cajoling fare.

In other words, who am I to judge someone else's relationships?

So, to Emily, I wish you a safe journey to the World To Come For Dogs. I hope that there are many places to run free and mark your place. I thank you again for not tearing me limb from limb even though you had many opportunities.

Why do religious Jewish women wear wigs?

Once again, I have to admit I am at a loss to explain this. As far as I can tell it is very contradictory.

Many married, religious Jewish women cover their heads for modesty. They believe that the only person who should see the married woman's hair is her husband. I know other women who cover their heads because they like the fact that it signifies that they are married and their interaction with men is now noticeably more removed than they might have been when they were single.

Many people believe that Jewish law requires married women to cover their hair but as I mentioned in a previous post, this is Judaism and of course, there is another opinion. The whole basis for the law is a phrase in the Torah that refers to a woman who is being disciplined. She has her hair "shaken loose" -- and from that, some people figure she must have previously had it covered. At best, the Torah hints at the hair covering.

I think you can find meaning in a bowl of alphabet soup if you look long and hard enough.

Okay, so back to the wig. Many religious women choose wigs as their head covering of choice. Frankly, I don't blame them. If I was a head-coverer I would probably do that too. Why? Because every woman that I know who wears a wig looks a zillion times better in her wig that she does in her real hair!!! You should see some of these wigs. They cost a lot of money and their owners spend hours taking care of them. They have them coloured, styled and combed out regularly. If you spent that sort of money on something and then you parked it on top of your head, you would expect to take care of it.

Which brings me back to the point. If these women are covering their heads for modesty's sake, doesn't looking better than nature provided defeat the point?

Do the clothes make the woman?

Today I tried a fashion experiment. I had a meeting in Tel Aviv at a start-up E-Commerce company. If there was a 40-year-old working there, I would be shocked. Even a 35-year-old would be a virtual human artifact in that environment. In fact I think that at least half of the employees there ran away from home and turned their hacking skills into respectable positions.

So, needless to say, I am ancient by the company's employment standards. And as if that isn't enough, I am a Modern Orthodox older woman. I only mention that by way of saying that I normally wear skirts and not pants. In Israel, people can tell if you are religious by the clothes you wear. In other words, I couldn't be less cool in that world if I tried.

That's why I decided to go to today's meeting in blue jeans, high leather boots with pointed toes and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Frankly, I think I was the epitome of 47-year-old cool. My husband (perhaps not the best judge under the circumstances) said that I looked the way he remembered me when we met!!!

I was trying to determine whether people see me differently when I dress differently -- or not.

The guy I was meeting with is a guy I have been doing work with for about three years now. To him, I am old in a generic way (you know, can't work when the kids are on vacation or it's a jewish holiday) and I doubt he noticed one way or the other. But when I met the CEO of the start-up -- I swear he was 30 tops if he was a day -- I am convinced that things played out as well as they did because I just seemed inexplicably regular and normal.

When I returned home my husband asked me how my experiment turned out. I didn't really know what to tell him. He thinks that I created this issue in my head. My same-aged professional, religious, women friends, all disagree with him. We sense that we are considered over-the-hill when we are in a work environment. It may not be something tangible, but it is definitely there. And we aren't stupid; we know that all of those companies can hire sweet young things almost half our age (and for a lot less money). They won't have our smarts or experience, but in this cool new world, no one seems to care.

What happens when you die?

Well, I surely don't know. That is precisely why I started saying The Mourner's Kaddish, a Jewish prayer in honour of the dead when my father recently died. It is frequently assumed that "saying Kaddish" is the bastion of men. Most prayer obligations in Judaism are.

The idea is that each time the mourner says Kaddish, it elevates the deceased person's soul. Now obviously we have no way of knowing if that is in fact the case or not. Committed religious people insist that it is. But, really, how do they know for sure? No one has ever come back to confirm or deny that it works.

It works essentially like this. When your parent dies, the male child or children are supposed to say Kaddish three times a day for 11 months. After a designated period of time, there is no possible room to elevate the soul and the deceased person's slate is clean so that they can now go to The World To Come.

In the event that there is no male child, it seems to me that the standard procedure is either that the husband of the daughter says Kaddish or (and this is looked upon with disdain in many communities), the daughter pays someone to say Kaddish who is going to go to synagogue anyway.

However, as with everything in Judaism, there is more than one opinion. After a bit of looking around, I found out that there are some who believe that it is better for a natural born child of the deceased to say Kaddish -- even if that child is not a male child!!!! Good enough for me.

I knew that my brother would never say Kaddish to the extent that I felt it should be said, so I decided to do it myself. No one in my immediate family cares if I do this or not. When I told my mother that I was saying Kaddish everyday, she said: "Oh that's nice." I didn't even bother to tell my brother or sister. They would just think it was part of my Holy Roller needs.

I am also not trying to make a feminist point or hold myself out as something special. I am just concerned that since I don't know what happens after we die, that I better not leave a stone unturned. I don't want my father's soul sitting at the bottom of the barrel because no one took the time to help move it to the World To Come. And until someone can prove to me that such a place does not exist, why take the chance?