Post on craigslist

I like Seattle. In fact, I am quite mad about Seattle. To be perfectly honest, I am in love with this place. At least during the summer time; there is a chance I might feel differently once the rain season kicks in. All my love for Seattle aside, I am working hard on trying to make new friends. Not sure why but I thought the process would be easier here than any other places I have had to build social circles for myself in the past. Surprisingly, my predictions turned out to be wrong. I am learning all about Seattle’s “N”ice people.

I decided to give craigslist a chance; posted an ad, did get a single reply, exchanged e-mails for a while (e-mail strings showed 37 messages), and that was it. Hmm.. . I thought my post was hot and kicking! Or perhaps it was the depth and breadth of the post that simply overwhelmed the reader to inability to reply, but remained awed?

On “From Gaza, with Love” blog

I came across a post by Mona El-Farra tittled “my oped in the Austin statement paper -USA “Palestinians Must Have Hope to Move Forward”” posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 http://www.fromgaza.blogspot.com/. I placed a comment, but decided to make a copy of it on my own blog for two reasons. First reason, another bloggers indicated in comments that Mona removed previous comments that she didn’t agree with, and second reason was that Mona reserved the right to approve comments before allowing them to be published. Simply said, I didn’t think I had a high chance of my comment published; what I had to say was important enough to me to make sure it doesn’t disappear in big black hole of the world wide web!

My Jewish Orthodox Self

I am a convert out of a doubt; both my grandmothers were non-Jews who most likely didn’t have proper gerus. Being raised a traditional Jew, I went through Orthodox conversion. At the time I made the choice, I sincerely believed that Judaism as a structure is successful and has very low margin of errors compared to others. Boy, was I disappointed to realize that it faulted as much as other structures, and on a top of everything else, a large segment of Jewish circles (orthodox mostly) refuses to acknowledge basic realities about the world.

I often feel cheated and resentful as I think I am paying high price for being part of the group that I often don’t even respect. I changed my dreams, gave up my preferences, fought with my parents, and at the end a lot of the frum things are holding less and less of meaning to me. While I fully realize that Judaism as a structure does work, I often feel terribly alone…