Rosh Chodesh Kislev

If you've spent any time around religious Jews, you know that there's a whole ton of holidays around September/October and then nothing until December. It's the longest stretch in the Jewish year, and it's especially visible in Israel, where the entire country goes from Rosh-Hashanah-Yom-Kippur-Sukkot-Simchat-Torah insanity to two months without a single break. It's so bad that, here at Hebrew University, the Jeff Seidel Student Center had their "Hanukkah" event 25 days early, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

I put Hanukkah in quotation marks up there because while the event was advertised as a Hanukkah event, we never really got to the Hanukkah part. Instead, Rebbitzen Tsipora Dahan cooked up a storm and had the best meal ever at her house. I'm not kidding: homemade bread (including rolls with an onion filling!), soup, kugels, eggplant parmesan, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, sufganiyot, peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, lots of other small chocolate things - all made by Tsipora, except the soup. It was amazing, seriously the best food I've had in a really long time. I asked Tsipora afterwards if she was going to become a chef when her kids grew up, and she just laughed and said that it's a hobby.

We were supposed to do Hanukkah crafts after dinner, but we didn't finish eating until 10pm--after starting around 8:15. During dinner, however, we had the obligatory Jeff Seidel Orthodox idealism. Stacy and Tsipora brought in a musician, 12th grader Hadassah Haller from Ramat Beit Shemesh, who sang what must be the Jewish version of Christian music - not religious songs, per say, in that they weren't prayers, but songs that are focused on Hashem and religious life. One that really struck me was Chanale's "My Business":

Is the way to happiness the path to success?
Can I be satisfied if I'm something less
Than the doctor, the lawyer, they hoped I would be
So what if I'm happy, just to be me?

Each day, every hour, on me they depend
To be mother, a sister, plus a wife and a friend
I have a profession, though no PHD
Yet today I am happy just to be me!

Chorus: I don't need a license, don't need a degree
For I'm in the business, of a woman, you see
My life's full of meaning and my home's full of light
I don't need all that money to be doing all right

I don't need a mansion with riches inside
My children are diamonds, and my family's my pride
Why should I travel, I'm where I want to be
Can you find me a woman who's got more than me?

There's not much vacation, get no time to rest
My house is my office, and my kitchen's my desk
I work for Hashem, yes, the Torah's my trade
Maybe I'm overworked but I'm not underpaid

Chorus

I really don't know what to think about it. On one hand I'm all for going after what you want and not what people expect from you and I completely agree with not needing to be rich to be happy, but I have a problem with the rest of it. "I don't need a degree... I'm in the business of a woman, you see"--are you saying women don't need an education? Are you saying that the purpose of a woman's life is to take care of the house and the children? If that's what you want to do, fine, but... the business of being a woman, really? I feel like the song "Just A Housewife" from Working conveys the same thing but in a much better way. Otherwise it just feels like they're shoving the wonders of Orthodox living down your throat--which, I guess in a way, is the purpose of Jeff Seidel.

Overall, though, I had a really good time at the Rosh Chodesh event. Hadassah's voice and music was really beautiful, even if I had to take the songs themselves with a grain of salt, and I still can't get over Tsipora's cooking. You know, I could really get to like Rosh Chodesh this way.