Be Good To Your Mother

What a good son won’t do for his mother.

Those of you who have been following my musings know that Halloween poses a dilemma for this Gen X Yiddishe Mamme. I have already told you that my mixed feelings about letting our kids celebrate the holiday have been mitigated somewhat by my middle son’s decision to go trick or treating dressed as SuperJew.

Well, now my youngest, a LEGO building fanatic, has unwittingly further assuaged my guilt by choosing to go around the neighborhood this evening, plastic pumpkin candy bucket in hand, as a LEGO brick. Of course, he hasn’t read my blog (BORING!, he’d say), but somehow he might have just picked up on a vibe telling him that this kind of guise would be a good choice. Here are a couple of pictures of him modeling his creative, mom-approved, homemade costume:

But then again, he did go to his school Halloween party dressed as a vampire, black bat-like cape on his back and bloody fangs painted on his face. Now, would that count as pagan and ghoulish, or just scary and gross?

© 2009 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Bear Gives Thanks

We're talking here about a different understanding of "dogs on platters."

Bear the Mitzvah Dog is heading to shul this morning to daven and say birkat hagomel. Although he is going to thank God for delivering him from a danger not explicitly mentioned in the laws governing this blessing (like an earthquake, imprisonment or a long and perilous journey), he thinks it wouldn’t hurt to say the bracha given what he read this morning in an article by Jonathan Safran Foer in the Wall Street Journal. Our beloved teacher of mitzvot and Yiddish can’t bear to look again at the piece, titled “Let Them Eat Dog,” but if you want to read it, you can go to:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499880131341174.html?mod=article-outset-box

To Bear’s horror, Foer (what is it with this guy and meat?) makes a case for our eating dog meat and dares to call it “a modest proposal for tossing Fido in the oven” in the article’s subtitle. Modest?! Cruel and disgusting, Bear says. Ok, to be totally fair, Foer makes a well articulated case for eating our canine companions, and then for not. In the end, he says, “The instinct [that we have in our culture not to eat dog] comes before our reason, and is more important.”

Nonetheless, what came to Bear’s mind after recovering from his shock and revulsion was, “There but for the grace of God go I.” He’s going to services today to acknowledge his extremely good fortune at having been rescued not only by an American family, but by one that refrains from eating any animal that doesn’t both have  a split hoof and chew its cud.

© 2009 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Hulu – 30 Rock: Stone Mountain – Watch the full episode now.

The following episode of the NBC television show 30 Rock relates to the previous post. See the final paragraph of But Is It Good For The Jews?

more about “Hulu – 30 Rock: Stone Mountain – Watc…“, posted with vodpod