Chanukah!

Happy Last Day of Chanukah to everyone! Hope you all had joyous Chanukah’s. For the first time I actually made latkes and it was lots of fun and they all got eaten up. I still haven’t figured out why Chanukah doughnuts have to have Jelly in them in order to be counted as sufganeyot.

Here’s a picture of a Menorah I made in 9th grade art. The background isn’t too great, but for the Menorah I copied my fathers. The second one I also made in 9th grade art, (it’s using x’s on graph paper).

Here’s a picture of a cute menorah for all the woman shoe shoppers out there.

We were privileged to have 3 chanukah parties on Sunday in our house. The first party was for my Lakewood cousins. They brought a long a paper of picture hints for 22 different Chassidish groups. I hadn’t known there were so many. Have fun trying to figure out the answers, lots of them have Yiddish in them so it can get confusing. I’ll put the answers in invisible ink so that you have to select the space near the number in order to see it.

1. Cherynoble	2. Beltz	3. Stichin	4. Skulya
5. Gebrow	6. Skullen	7.Klausenberg	8. Kasho
9. Karleen	10. Faultshen	11. Spinka	12. Lubavich
13. Boston	14. Rotferd	14 b. Siget	15. Satmar
16. Boyan	17.MunKatch	18. Ger	19. Square
20. Shoprun	21. Nirbarter	22. Bobov

At the second party we had my cousins from Queens and their kids. One cousin has Knayna Hora 5 kids under the age of 4! Her youngest are a set of twins. She is truly a super hero mother. Her kids are adorable. I enjoyed playing with them, and they are lucky to have a super Dad too! The other family of cousins have 3 kids also little kids, they were cute too! It’s been so long since we had babies running around in our house that it was nice and noisy when they came. Then my mother’s twin brother’s family came, and they actually just had a baby too. So there were 4 babies, and 5 other little kids there, plus the bigger kids. We don’t get to see them too often and it’s been ages since they came to our house so it was a really nice treat.

Party number three was for the Boro park relatives. Those were all adults, except my aunt brought one of her grandchildren so that was nice. My aunt mentioned that she was very good at SET, so I brought my game down and played with her and I was so surprised how this 6 year old was so good at it, right away she was able to get them. Here everyone told a little d’var Torah for my little sister’s bas mitzvah. So my little brother gave a little speech on Parshas Mikeitz since it’s going to be his Bar Mitzvah Parsha next year. So then I decided to give a little d’var Torah too, so I said over my Parshas Mikeitz post.

Here’s a Chanukah Video I made. I am very honored that G6 had posted my video on her blog without even knowing that I made it!

New Square Wedding

Sunday night I went to a Square wedding, it was a really interesting experience. To start off with, the wedding was of relatives of mine, where the chosson and Kallah were both related to us and each other. So the whole wedding was one big family wedding.

Here’s a little diagram to understand how everyone was related.

When we got there for the wedding it was late already, past 10:00. We missed the Chupah but they had just finished eating the main course. So when we got there relatives came over to say hello and surprisingly they did all speak English. Then one of my father’s cousins prepared me and my mother a seat and a main dish, and she told us to sit and eat. At this time they started dancing.

By them they do things very different. They don’t have 2 dances, but rather they eat first and then have one long dance for the rest of the night. So as we were sitting eating it was right next to them dancing so it was some cool entertainment, to sit facing them dancing.

The next different thing is that the hall is very different, it has 3 floors. The men get the first floor and they have a huge room. Then the woman are on the third floor and they have a medium sized room. I found this very strange, I have never seen a wedding before where the men’s section and woman section are on completely separate floors. It made it feel less like a wedding and more like a woman’s party.

Although, on the second floor, when you go to hang up your coat, that room is filled with windows and if you look down then you can see the men dancing, but there’s such a height difference between the two, that you can barely see faces.

Another thing I noticed was the clothing, besides for the obvious chassidish garb, I noticed that the girls all looked like they were wearing uniforms. The teenage girls I mean, they had white blouses, with jumpers. Not fancy jumpers that can look nice, but uniform looking jumpers. All the girls looked like they were wearing the same clothes, making it look more like a uniform.

The little girls had gowns and their hair was done fancy, but yet they didn’t seem to be dancing much, they were laying down on the stage part where the Kallah’s table was. I figured it’s probably because they go to a wedding every night, that this just isn’t new to them anymore. I mean this was the only dance, so it’s not liked they got danced out before. But then when the ices came they all ran over to get some.

Overall, it was a really cool wedding, I’ve been to a Square wedding once before when I was younger, but there he married a Sephardi girl, so that was different in a different way.

We were talking to some relatives that we never met before and it was actually funny how these chassidish woman who have 12 kids on average think it’s amazing how my mother was able to raise a bunch of twins. Not to take away from my mother’s greatness or anything.

Yiddish and High School Drop Outs

I had always thought that Yiddish was a “Jewish” language. I had never realized that it was just the language that was spoken in Europe, and was the cultural language. In elementary school we would learn Yiddish when we translated text in the chumash. All that I remember from it is the beginning words “Vayomer – in er hut ge zukt”. Some of my classmates were from boro park so they heard Yiddish more often and it was easier for them to catch on.

My friend was able to make a deal with the teacher in 5th grade, that she didn’t have to know the Yiddish translation. After hearing this, I decided I’ll give it a shot too and see if I can get away with it. So I went over to my teacher, and I told her I had a hard time with all the Yiddish. So she made a deal with me, it wasn’t as generous a deal that she made with my friend. She told me I would only be responsible to know the Yiddish translation for the first posuk we do a day. That definitely was a huge cut back from the regular amount of posukim we did a day, so I was grateful.

After Elementary school, I never encountered Yiddish again. I would go to my grandparents, and my grandmother would speak to me in Yiddish and I had no clue what she was saying, and would look at her with a questioning face. Then she would remember that I didn’t know Yiddish and would tell me I have to start learning it so that I can understand people.

Then the other day I found an article that sheds light to this Yiddish situation, and to the High School drop out rate. It goes like this, all old European Jews were fluent in their native language, whether it be Hungarian or French. So then why is that here in America there are people who think they don’t have to know English? That they just talk Yiddish and then therefore they can’t get a job and support their family. Or even if they do have their own business, they can’t interact with other people, and it severely limits them. Even Rambam and Rashi were fluent and wrote in their native languages. Part of the Gemara was even written in Aramaic and not in Hebrew.

Studies have showed surprising results. That the families who shelter their kids, don’t have a lower amount of at risk teens, but rather a higher one than those that don’t shelter their kids. The uneducated children grow up with poverty, are unhappy and therefore more open to negative influences. So once we start educating our children the right way then it can help solve 2 issues at once. By learning English they will become more successful, as language is a vital tool to communication. Second there will be less at risk teens. They will be happier and content, and won’t feel the need to “figure things out” for themselves.