Who Knows Best?

"The Women's Balcony" has been on my to-watch list for quite a while, and then I saw that it was now free on Prime. Chap arein! 

It was a charming movie, but it also made me think. 

The premise (SPOILERS AHEAD, ABANDON SHIP) is about a small, Sephardi (I think) shul in Israel. The film opens with a Shabbos bar mitzvah, and the close community are all trooping to shul, carrying various dishes of food to contribute to the festivities. 

That scene was so lovely. A beautiful, idyllic family of shul members, all uniting in a simcha.

But then the ezras nashim collapses, and the shul has to be closed. As their beloved, elderly rabbi falls into a funk, a young, more chareidi model wiggles in, and the men are initially taken with him. He preaches that the women should be covering their hair. That the women should repent, because after all, it was their section that was destroyed. 

Soon the members are divided. The wives are furious at their husbands. Friends are turning on friends—all in the name of halacha. 

Eventually, the new rabbi oversteps, and he is ousted, and the shul returns to its former tranquility. 

We learned in school, that if you see someone doing wrong you should tell them so—but only if you know they will hear you. Then again, "an imperfect peace is better than a perfect controversy." 

What is supposed to be our focus? To ensure that everyone else is following the law somewhat correctly, or should we hold hands and sing kumbaya?

Ma would oft say, "Your guf, and my neshama," meaning it is not our business where other people stand spiritually. We should only be concerned, at most, for others' physical safety. I'm of the same opinion, that it is not my place to be judge and jury, to decide that others are transgressing and must repent to specifically my ways. 

My vote is with kumbaya.

Information Overload

Trying to stay on top of what's new and happening in the skincare/makeup velt, I'm getting bombarded with social media terminology. 

First: "Slugging." Slugging is when the skin needs some loving downtime, and after applying moisturizer and somesuch, a layer of thick jelly, like Vaseline, is shmeared on top to seal everything in. 

Sounds icky. 

Second: "Skin cycling." This is when instead of applying certain products nightly, there is a rotation instead, to allow for "repair." 

Thirdly: "Gritting." I gotta say, I'm taken with this one, except I don't have the time/energy/patience to properly see it through. It's the idea that oily buildup on the skin will only dissolve with another oil, so if one were to massage the face for 20 minutes with a cleansing oil or regular oil, blackheads and pore-clogging gunk will eventually float up to the surface. 

Sounds like witchcraft. 

I also follow a number of dermatologists, who thankfully clarify what makes sense and what doesn't, as a lot of the people peddling these methods aren't exactly professionals. 

There is a lot of information out there. There are accounts for weight loss advocating no carbs, all carbs, only fruits, all foods but with intuition. There are recipes galore and the developers are constantly "obsessed" with their creations. There are sleep training accounts and anti-sleep training accounts. Then there's the ones with the best way to keep your home clean. The baby-lead weaning ones really freak me out, because I am not making my baby three course meals three times a day. I don't eat that well!

There is a barfing barrage of information spewing out there, and they can't all be right. 

Some of it I read and think, "Sounds ok in theory, but it doesn't work for me." Take the new trend of "gentle parenting." It's all about validating your children's feelings but still guiding them to better behavior. This new way involves so much talking. I kinda prefer Ma's European way of doing things: The Look. Done. 

That's not to say that just because it isn't for me that it's not for anyone else. Meaning: we all have to do what works for us. I am not into charcuterie boards (I can barely pronounce the word correctly) but I am into making my own tomato sauce (from tomato paste, it takes quicker than you think). We each choose our own patchke.

So don't take everyone so seriously. It may work for them, and not for you.

Indian Matchmaking" Reactions IIII

 While doing some googling to see if any of the couples featured in the past season are still together, I came across this TIME article which had some grumblings about the show. 

Let's see . . . does Sima accommodate the men more than women? Oh, yeah, sure, like every other shadchan, nothing new there. She's also more old-world, and she seems to have trouble navigating the new one. She's constantly displayed here as the savior of all, but there's only one couple this season who's met a potential someone because of her. Either it didn't work for everyone else or they met their someone through family, friends, or on their own. 

But the article grumbled how the people coming to her are asking for someone from a similar background, and how bad that is. They make it seem like it's a form of racism. 

Now this is amusing. I'm all for diversity, people, but marriage is a whole other ball game. 

Take me. I had told people that it would be nice if the guy would be heimish (that's HI-mish, not HAY-mish. The latter is a Scottish name). Unless the other person was heimish, they had no idea what I meant. Some thought I meant chassidish, but no, it is not chassidish, and chassidus definitely does not work for me. 

On the show, Viral asked for a man with the same background as her, Gujarati, including fluency in the language. There is something to speaking the same lingo as your life partner. I, for example, am fluent in Yinglish (cough). Along with that are also certain cultural values. 

There are many happy couples in our world who are "intercultural"; Sephardi and Ashkenazi is just one example. I found a divide with boys from American backgrounds. Yes, I am an American born, but I was European raised, and that makes a difference. It just does. 

I was told not to be hung up on it, and I never used it as a reason to decline the date. But when we would meet, conversation would flounder. We weren't able to understand each other's perspective. 

I was one of those people that shared background was important. It's not important to everyone. Some people enjoy such differences, the exoticness of an unfamiliar culture. Cool cool. 

But let's not call such a preference "ethnocentrism."