cautionary tale

in "juno" the heroine refers to herself as a cautionary whale. which hit home with me because mine is a cautionary tale and since my name is yonah i always identify with whales.

i am 53 unmarried and live without extravagance. if various causes had not pulled me to zion i would be in new york teaching public school right now.

i am a writer. i have written, but not published. my primary accomplishment is a book called "bar mitzvah prophecy" about a 13 year old kid whose older brother is an off the derech nik, but an off the derech nik with a messiah complex and his arrival complicates his younger brother's bar mitzvah.

during the course of the year, i fast on yom kippur. this is mostly to avoid feeling cut off. i have eaten on some yom kippurs and the post yom kippur depression is worse after having eaten. so to make the day after yom kippur tolerable i don't eat on yom kippur. of course in the last hour of the fast i might try to take advantage of the light headedness that goes with fasting and pray to god or take a walk or listen to music.

i attend a seder. one year i skipped the seder all together and one year i skipped the first night seder and only went to a second night seder, but missing the seder is a major deprivation.

my favorite holiday is sukkot. i don't really like the lulav and esrog, but eating in a sukka the first night of sukkot is something special for me and i try not to miss it.

the first night of rosh hashana when the apple is dipped into the honey is special and missing it is a deprivation.

i really dig purim, because i like getting "intoxicated" and some of the ideas of the purim holiday really inspire me, so i go to the purim seuda as a rule and miss it when i don't.

i have one brother and three sisters, who are all orthodox. my older brother became ultra orthodox though we were raised in a modern orthodox home and all my sisters are modern orthodox. my brother has 11 kids and a gaggle of grandkids, without an evil eye. and my 3 sisters have 12 kids between them. i try to avoid my brother's family for the most part, but hang out a lot with my sisters and their kids. i do not attempt to teach my nephews and nieces that off the derech is the way, although not all my comments are reverential. when i visit them for shabbat i usually avoid going to shul. but at the table i am careful to bensch after we eat. there are many starving people in the world and there were many starving jews not so many years ago, and i therefore think that bensching is a good thing. i do not bensch when i eat alone.