Leather (updated)

So, I haven't written a post about my leather-working exploits since the brief introductory one about two months ago. Since then, I've made a wallet that looks almost exactly like this, a Kindle case that's a little too small for my Kindle, a briefcase/messenger bag, and a tote bag. I'll get some photos of the tote bag and wallet up later this week, but for now, here are some shots of the briefcase:

In general, I think the bag turned out great.
Things I liked: The leather I picked looks awesome, and lining it in the navy blue suede was also a good choice. The shoulder strap also turned out really well. I incorporated some ideas from a couple different places to make my own thing, and it looks good.

Now, to be critical, I wasn't thrilled with the overall shape of the bag. I had to adjust the dimensions to make sure that it could fit our over-sized laptops, and I thought that I generally would want a bigger bag. The end result is that the bag is a bit more square instead of rectangular. Aside from that, though, I think it's awesome. Higher resolution photos are up on the flickr site. Stay tuned for pictures of my other creations...

Proud to be an American

If you are from the U.S. you probably learned in elementary school that there are seven continents in the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and South America. You probably took this information at face value and never questioned it. It turns out that there is no one definition for what a continent is, and people all around the world learn different things in school. As it turns out, people in Latin America generally learn that what we refer to as North and South America - they refer to as one continent, America.

Which brings us to the debate I've had with people from various parts of Latin America for years, which you may have experienced yourself. Why do us citizens from the U.S. call ourselves "Americans?" I become passionately involved in this debate, and I will defend that term until someone changes the subject. Even if it's my Colombian friend's birthday and she insists she was taught that North America was comprised of the U.S. and Canada, Mexico was part of Central America, and then changes everything by saying that America is really one continent.

Really what this comes down to is that the name of our country is the United States of America. Goodness knows why our Founding Fathers (and Mothers? Who am I kidding, they surely didn't have a say in the matter.) chose that name, but así es (that's the way it is). What this really comes down to is a linguistic problem - Mexico is called the United States of Mexico, and its citizens are referred to as Mexicans. Colombia is the Republic of Colombia, and its citizens are Colombians. Of course, someone from Latin America may rebut that we were arrogant in the first place to choose the name of the continent as the name of our country, but what can we do about that now? There was probably a good reason behind it at the time - like, you know, these were the first independent states in America. And then the name stuck.

I am often referred to here as norteamericana - which profoundly bothers me. North America refers to not only the U.S., but several other countries, and I see it as more arrogant to refer to myself as a "North American."

So I will continue to call myself American in English, estadounidense or gringa in Spanish, and any host of other words in other languages.

Have you ever had this debate before? What's your take on it? What is your perception of how other people view this debate around the world?

Who is a desplazado?

I get in a cab in the other night and the driver asks if I know where I'm going. "I just started this job a couple of weeks ago," he says. He looks young, probably my age or even a little younger.

So I ask where he was from and why he moved to Bogotá. He had lived his whole life on a farm with his family in Tolima, the departamento (equivalent of a state) next to Cundinamarca (where Bogotá is). He says that the guerrilla has been there for a while and that there aren't many job opportunities there. Part of his family has already moved to Bogotá, and the other part is still on the farm. He doesn't seem to want to talk much about it, but it gets me thinking.

What does it mean to be displaced in this country, which has the highest number of internally displaced persons in the world? Is this man, or someone like him, counted among the 3.67 or 5.2 million desplazados (depending on who you ask) in Colombia? He was not forced off of his land, some of his family members still live there, but he chose to leave because of the dire economic and social situation. If you choose to leave under these circumstances, how much of a choice do you have?

The irbutz

Jerry and I aren't the traditional married couple. We both changed our names when we got married. Jerry's the more fashionable one, I'm the one who plays on a sports team. We quit stable jobs in a city we loved to move to Colombia.

And ever since we've been married, we have always lived with other people. Our reasoning is this: Jerry and I really love hanging out with each other and can tend to want to stay at home and hang out rather than go out. Living with other people is an automatic social life, it's cheaper, it's a great way to make really good friends and meet new people through your roommates.

We love this lifestyle and have thought about what we will do when we decide we want to have children. And then we realized - why can't we have our cake and eat it, too? On top of that, why can't we create the kind of Jewish community we dream of? Thus, our idea of creating an irbutz was born. Ir in Hebrew means city, and butz is taken from the word kibbutz, a form of communal living in Israel. [Side note: We didn't come up with the name or the concept, apparently there are Jews out there like us who have already done this thing.]

The idea is this: live together in a huge house in a city (Jerry's thought - buy an old embassy in DC) with a few other Jewish families. Have regular Shabbat dinners together, celebrate all of the Jewish holidays together, create a community.

Much of the reasoning behind this is our desire to raise our children within a Jewish community. In modern-day American Jewry, the center of Jewish life outside of the family is the synagogue - and while we believe that synagogues are important, we also believe that there should be Jewish communities available to Jews from all different backgrounds. Our irbutz would provide a Jewish home to the broader Jewish community of all ages - Shabbat dinners, Jewish discussions, movie nights, and holiday celebrations would all take place there.

This idea was also inspired by Moishe House, an organization that sets up group houses for 20-something Jews in cities all over the world. Their rent is subsidized in exchange for running events for young Jews in that city. The concept was that Jews in their 20s were falling out of touch with the Jewish community - beyond college, but not ready to join a synagogue. Moishe House is working to fill that gap. We see our irbutz as a natural extension of this concept, a community center that is open to people of all ages. We have also thought about pitching this idea to existing Jewish organizations (like Moishe House) to seek out funding.

There are lots of questions to answer, here are only a few:

1. Who would we live with? How many families would live there? What are the guidelines for selecting who lives in the house?
2. Where would we do this?
3. What are the rules of the irbutz? What is shared? How would food work? How would money work for communal expenses? How do you resolve disputes? What are legal ramifications? How do we divide up chores?
4. What exactly does it mean to make this home Jewish? This is obviously a question that comes up even if you aren't living in an irbutz. What do you do on a daily basis to make your home Jewish, to incorporate Judaism into your family life? Why is this important?

If you have any thoughts on more questions that need to be asked or general feedback on the concept, leave them in the comments. Also, if you know anyone who currently lives or has previously lived on an irbutz or someone who you think would be interested, please let us know!

Jew Camp

I was a summer camp girl, my mother was a summer camp girl, my grandmother was a summer camp girl, and as it turns out, my mother-in-law went to the same summer camp that I went to. There's something special and sacred about sleepaway camp that is indescribable to those who have never experienced it (cough cough my husband... though I must give him props, he went to the first half of Jew Camp). I always wanted to be a summer camp counselor - but then college arrived, and there were always other, more enticing opportunities for my summers. I had accepted the fact that never having been a camp counselor would be one of my biggest regrets in life.

And then, I find myself in Bogotá, Colombia, somehow involved in the Jewish community. They desperately needed a coordinator for their 6-day camp, and I was a great fit - young, enthusiastic, with Jewish leadership experience. Despite its bumps, it was a great experience and I was able to shed my regret of never having been a camp counselor.

In many ways, Majané Hatikva (the name of the camp) was just like my camp experiences: teaching the kids how to play with their cups during meals, banging on the tables during Birkat Hamazon (prayer for after meals), sunburns, mosquito bites, shaving cream, walking around barefoot, bunkbeds, gossip, staying up late talking about life. In other ways it was completely different - after all, it's only 6 days, so the groups don't have the same amount of time to form their own identities. There was no singing in the dining hall, no lightning bugs, no huge open fields. But it was still camp.

Here are some highlights:

Singing the younger girls to sleep: When I was a kid, my mom used to sing me a song:

Robin's boat's a silvery moon

Sailing cross the sky

Sailing towards a sea of dreams

As the clouds roll by

Sail Robin, sail

Out across the sea

Only don't forget to sail

Back again to me

All of the girls were homesick (a case of mamitis), so I went into their room to sing to each of them. They loved it and would refuse to go to sleep every night afterwards until I'd sing to them. I started singing other songs, including my feminist version of Hinei Mah Tov:

Hinei mah tov u'manaim

Shevet achot gam yachad

Behold how good and how pleasing

Seven sisters all together. [usually it says brothers]

I had the girls sing it to Claudio, the rabbi. He laughed at my brainwashing.

My conversation with the teenage girls: One night I stayed up talking with the teenage girls about all sorts of things - boys, Judaism, life. I told them about my Bat Mitzvah, and about how there was a woman rabbi at my synagogue growing up, and how an Argentine woman rabbi was at our wedding. They all expressed that they would love to read Torah, but it's just not the norm here. When I asked if it was important to change the norm, none of them said that it was.

Our paseo to the river: We decided to take the kids on a caminata (hike/walk) down to a nearby river. Most of these kids come from wealthy Bogotá families and have probably never been hiking before. They complained a bit on the way down, but in the end everyone loved it.

Me singing Lion King songs on the walkie-talkie and schlepping water in my backpack

Karaoke Night: The rabbi was inspired by "Like A Virgin." I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.

Converting lots of kids to Ultimate players: Yes, this sport is so awesome it's actually written with a capital letter. Of course my real goal for the week was to introduce all of these innocent children to the wonderful world of Ultimate. Several of the kids got really into it, and during any free time they would ask me if we could play.

Being around Jews: Even though I have my differences with the Jewish community here, it still felt great to be part of it.

I came home exhausted and mostly glad it was over. The following morning when I woke up, I felt like I should be surrounded by lots of small children. I missed that separate world, that escape from reality, just like camp was meant to be.

Subcampeones

Bamboo team huddle

It turns out that Colombia has one of the most well-developed ultimate frisbee communities in Latin America. Shortly after Jerry and I moved to Bogotá, the Colombian Women's Juniors team won Worlds. Eight women's teams participated in Bogotá's Regional tournament several weeks ago. The majority of these teams have paid coaches, train regularly, and participate in tournaments throughout Colombia.

My team, Bamboo, won Regionals a few weeks ago. It was not easy, and it felt pretty damn good.

That put us in second place going into Nationals this past weekend. We rocked out in our four games on Saturday and Sunday, placing us in the Semis against Wayra (the team we beat in the Finals of Regionals) on Monday morning. We won in universal game point - talk about nerve-wracking.

Which put us in the Finals against Revolution, the several-year-defending-champion. This team is young (as in, two of their star players are 11 year-old twins), fast, and doesn't make mistakes. They went up at the beginning and we never caught up. By no means was it a blowout, but it was never really close. I think, more than anything, we had an insurmountable mental block.

Playing on a women's sports team in Colombia has been one of my most enlightening experiences here. Even on the best team in Bogotá, many people don't come to practice regularly. Leadership roles and team structures aren't well-defined. The concept of there is no "I" in team doesn't exist here. People don't recognize that in order to function as a unit, it doesn't matter so much what you do, so long as you do it together. That being said, I love my team, I love being part of a team, and I love playing ultimate.

One weird thing about playing ultimate in Colombia (and Colombia in general, for that matter): there are no seasons. I think we'll take off a few weeks from practice, but then everything's back to normal. Since the weather is more or less than same all-year-round, why stop playing ultimate? As a result, there's no such thing as "summer league" where you get to play and interact with people from other teams. There's no chance to grow and learn in that way - or just have some fun.

Post on Jew Camp coming soon...

Women are Jews, too.

I recently found out that the Conservative synagogue in Bogotá doesn't allow women to read from Torah or wear tallit. Oh, did I mention that I'm the coordinator for a 5-day Jewish summer camp for the synagogue starting next week?

Brief explanation: For you non-Jews out there, I should give a brief background on what this means. First, some vocabulary. Torah = the five books of Moses, that scroll thingy that you saw your friends read from for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Tallit = Prayer shawl that is worn during morning prayer services, at weddings, and a few other times. In the vast history of the Jewish people, women were not allowed to read from the Torah or wear tallitot (actually, according to Wikipedia, originally women were allowed to wear tallitot until the Medieval period? I should probably do some more research on this), but that changed for the Reform and Conservative movements at some point in recent history. OK now back to your regularly-scheduled blog post...

Me being my naive self, seeing that men and women sit together at services, seeing that women serve on the synagogue board, etc etc - well, I just assumed that women could read from Torah and wear tallitot. Turns out I was wrong. So, me (again) being me, kind of freaked out. I've been struggling with the question of whether or not you can belong to a community that doesn't accept you for who you are - and more specifically, whether you can be part of a Jewish community that doesn't recognize the way that you practice Judaism. You probably know that I'm into egalitarianism in general, and in my Jewish life, grew up in a congregation that had a female rabbi and that didn't differentiate between men and women in any way (other than the brit milah). Not to mention, Conservative synagogues in the US allow women to perform these mitzvot, so why not here?

Turns out I'm living in Latin America. See previous post about sexism.

There are a few people at the synagogue who are working on this, but it takes time. And so many people, including women, are stuck on "tradition" - the same people who openly express wanting to allow pork in the synagogue, the same people who didn't raise their children as Jews. **Addendum: I don't care if you eat pork or don't raise your kids as Jews. But then don't go telling me which traditions I should think are important and which traditions should change.** Why is it that the sexist traditions are always the last to change?

I don't want to impose my beliefs on others - if a woman doesn't want to wear a tallit, my goodness, she should not have to wear a tallit. But if a woman wants to wear one, well, she should have that right. Especially in a synagogue where women count as part of a minyan, where women serve on the board, where women are an integral part of the religious aspects of the community.

I just remembered from my childhood the pictures of all of Temple Emanu-El's past presidents on the wall. I remember a sea of male faces, with one female face, how that always stuck with me. I was always proud of her.

**Addendum, June 10** Just saw this cartoon and think it applies.