Candles and Kippot

I may have mentioned we're all Jews here. Ari and B and I. Here is what I know about my Jewish identity:

• Everything causes cancer, but cigarettes are most effective.
• They give you two extra Hanukkah candles in the box in case you lose some, but you always lose one, leaving stragglers collecting in the junk drawer which do not match and will be a full set in 45 years. (Of course, by then they will be broken.)
• Don't throw that away! It's still good. (See above.)

The candles can be useful, though, because recently our lighter ran out of gas, and the matches got used up. We light bug-away candles for porch sits in the summer. I got the genius notion of using rogue birthday and Hanukkah candles as lighters. Because, you know, the lighters are an add-on at Amazon, and I can't manage to get my sorry ass to an actual store that sells lighters. I take the broken Hanukkah candle from the junk drawer, and I use the oven (gas) to light it. As usual, the burner takes 16 minutes to light, and spews Noxious Chemical Toxic Poison Fumes into my face the entire time. Hours later, I (somehow unharmed) take the candle, which is happily long and dripless as well as wind resistant, to the porch and light my bug-away candles. Then I sit on the porch and blog.

From my deceased father, Seymour--Brooklynite/Floridian, bellower like Fred Flintstone, liar (in a good way--he told the kids on his block who used to beat him up for being Jewish that he was Italian. They never believed him, but he kept to his story, even when his nose was broken and his parents hit him, too, for denying who he was. He said it was stupid. I thought it was cool), money-maker, NASA engineer, print shop owner/seller, beach lover, sandal-without-sock-wearer, gambler, pasta chef, college drop-out, and the least sentimental person I've met--from him I learned this:

• Every food that is small is a cookie. Baby carrot = cookie. Mini hamburger = cookie. Biscuit or roll = cookie. Slice of banana = cookie. Rugelach = cookie. Cookie = cookie.
• The kosher laws saved lives. And we were never kosher, but those who are hold honor. Because they honor the lives saved by laws made by a people who had no science, but knew something about cross-contamination on instinct. They got it 3/4 right, which is pretty damn good, given what they had to work with.
• Always flirt with the waitress.
• The Torah is a metaphor.
• God is a metaphor.
• Everything's a metaphor, but knowing why we say what we believe in metaphors is the real question. And the answer is because it's prettier that way. It's more enigmatic and flexible and fun. You've gotta love humanity when we work so hard just to keep ideas from being dull.
• If your daughter wants to run topless through the sun shower Every Single Day all summer long for the first 18 years of her life, let her.
• Lie. 
• But not excessively, just like, to get jobs and stuff.
• Don't feel guilty. The Jewish race has got this. You, one individual Jew, can relax.
• Live hard. Die fast.
• The world has it backwards, pretty much constantly: Always let them see you sweat. The best lies are the ones you tell for selfish reasons. More is more. Less is half-assed. There will be many things you cannot do, no matter how hard you try. The early bird is always alone, so if you wanna be alone, get up early. Younger = wiser. Etc.
• Oh, and (he didn't teach me this, but he would have, if he'd been alive when Harry Potter came out) this whole not saying His name thing: It works to give him power. Whoever he is. 
• The Jew God could beat the crap outta the Christian God. 
• Jews endure. This has meaning. We don't know what the meaning is, but that's ok. Maybe it's because in Russia, the winters were brutal. Like--evolutionary toughness or something. (Of course this only works for Russian Jews, but that's what I am, so. . .)
• If you insist on believing in God, please, at least, be Jewish.

So. Ari is in a Jewish school. A private school. For kindergarten. He has to wear a kippah, and we can't pack non-kosher things in his lunch. On Fridays/shabbat, they wear blue and white to aggrandize Israel. (I'm more of a Palestine supporter, myself, but whatever--fashion choices really don't impact the situation at all.)

Cat kippah. He chose it himself.

The story is long and involved, but basically, B and I fell in love at the interview. The thing about Judaism is that no matter if you are an atheist or what, you have to agree it's pretty cool. A bad-ass God. You can't type his name. Here we still are. (Post-Holocaust) Marital duty = be good in bed. Be fruitful and multiply. (Kidding on that last one, though this is a good time to say that everybody in Ari's class has like three siblings, so we are doing alright on that, except for the queer Jews. But whaddaya say we give the queers a handicap? That's fair, no? We don't have a sperm factory, after all. And the dudes don't have a uterus.) But honestly, the administrators literally did not blink that Ari has two mommies. I know people say that all the time. They throw the phrase around--"didn't blink," but this was like, the non-blinkiest thing I've seen. I want to reassess all the experiences I saw as non-blinking, now that this happened. Then they gave us a lot of cash. Towards tuition, of course. It was not, like, drug money. (I wish.)

I think about my father, and I am almost shamefully glad. Glad that Ari will know as much Hebrew as his grandfathers (B's, too) did. Glad that he will, at least (since he already insists that God is real), be Jewish. Or at least--know Judaism. Glad, mostly (even though I am an atheist in the Great Jewish Secular Tradition of Secular Secularism) that we Jews are still here.

My father gave me the ocean, the Florida sun-storms, and a lot of cookies. I give him this: his grandson raised Jewish--God or not--it's more than that.

The end.