That's Life 1-16-09
Our young daughters are two very different people.
When six-year-old Talia spied a newspaper photo of Israeli troops in action in Gaza she needed reassurance that there would be no fighting in the places we hope to visit this summer, and even suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t go at all.
Four-year-old Ita is a different kind of a character, however.
“Those are Jewish soldiers fighting?” she asked. Yes, she was told.
“Well, we’re Jewish,” she said. “Can we go fight, too?”
Lisa and Avi Hirsch
Woodmere
Dear That’s Life,
When I walk into a place that is out of my normal everyday experience, and where I know I may be for a while, there are two things I instinctively do — and you may do the same, even if you won’t admit it.
First, I scour the room or the place I am in to see if there is anyone I know or if there are any other distinctively Jewish people present. (The gentleman with a long white beard, long black coat and enormous kippah sitting behind me in the jury waiting room clearly qualifies as a distinctively ‘Jewish’ looking person; he nods back at me as, I guess, I seem to stand out the same way.)
The other thing I do is stake out (no pun intended) the food situation. I like to know what, if any, my options are and where I am going to be getting my food from if I end up being here, wherever ‘here’ is, for a while. Driving to Central Islip on a daily basis to serve as a juror in Federal Court, the kosher food options were scarce.
Because deliberations began Monday, we were entitled to lunch on the tab of the judicial system and received menus from a deli located behind the court building. Knowing I wouldn’t be ordering, I brought my own salad. As we were hearing a case in which the plaintiff had claimed his civil rights were violated by the police, someone suggested that my civil rights were being violated since no one from the court offered to buy me lunch from an establishment under the Vaad, nor did anyone ask me to submit my receipt for lunch so that I could be reimbursed by the court since I would not be taking advantage of the full lunch menu that had been provided. I had not really thought about whether this person had a point nor did I care that much but I ended up looking over the menu anyway.
