A Jewish Member of Iranian Parliament?

Hold on one minute. I was surfing cnn.com today and saw an article about the National Post, a conservative Canadian paper. The paper was retracting a claim that the Iranian Parliament has been discussing making Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians wear colored strips of cloth on their clothing identifying their religious group. I didn't see the actual paper (we'd likely be Globe and Mail people if we got the national paper at all...), but was surprised that cnn.com stated "Iranian lawmakers, including the country's sole Jewish parliamentarian, have flatly denied the National Post story..."

Stop the presses. A Jewish member of Iranian Parliament? Yep. His name is Maurice Motamed. I did some further poking around and found this article in the opinion section of the National Review (also one of the top ten magazines I'm not likely to get caught reading, but that's beside the point): "The Mysterious Reappearance of Mr. M".

Now, I have never heard of Pooya Dayanim (author of the article), but since he got published in the National Review, which, in spite of its conservative viewpoint, I would generally assume to print articles which at least have a basis in truth, I'll give a bit of credence to what he has to say. Among others, he claims: "Every year he (Motamed) donates one month of his salary as a member of parliament to the Palestinian struggle to liberate Jerusalem from the hands of the Zionist Infidels." Donates his salary? To the Palestinians? I'm inclined to assume one of three things:

1) Mr. Motamed has been completely brainwashed by his lifetime in Iran and has swallowed the party-line whole.

2) The Iranian government holds some sway over his family - maybe they are keeping his great-aunt locked up and they threaten to kill/torture her unless Motamed agrees to help fuel the Iranian propaganda machine.

3) The situation in Iran is dire - for some reason, the 25,000 Jews who live there aren't leaving. Perhaps they don't think they would be able to gain entry to the US and for some reason they don't want to go to Israel (the Iranian goverment's repeated assurances that they would love to blow Israel out of the water, perhaps?). Mr. Motamed is doing his best to protect them from further persecution by reassuring the high-ups in the Islamic Regime that the Jews are loyal.

In any case, I have a hard time disabusing myself of the notion that time is running out for the Jews of Iran. Why don't they leave? It's a mentality I just don't understand. I can't imagine a Jewish mother anywhere in the world who hasn't plotted at one time or another for her children's safety. Shortly after Soulmate and I got engaged, I came to the realization that our children (b'ezras H-shem) will have dual citizenship - American and Canadian. They will be able to travel on either passport and be protected by the governments of two countries. G-d forbid, but if we should need to, Canada is a vast country with at least some opportunities to escape into the wilderness. I can't even fathom bringing a Jewish child into the world in Iran. It would be like giving birth in a den of hyenas.

For whatever the reason, Maurice Motamed has decided to serve the anti-semitic Islamic government in Iran. I'm not sure we'll ever know the real story.

The Best Reasons to Live Here

The opportunities. A few weekends ago on Mothers' Day, we took Soulmate's parents up to Ladysmith, BC for a picnic and Paddlefest. Soulmate and I aren't die-hard paddlers - I have just a little experience river kayaking in Ireland, Soulmate actually owns his own kayak - but we aspire to sticking our oars in the water whenever the spirit moves us. So, there we were at Paddlefest. It was a gorgeous sunny day - about 75 degrees (I still haven't managed to convert to Celsius). For a measly CAN$10, we could try out as many boats as we liked. There was just a ripple of wind on the inlet and we paddled for about an hour. So, while the floors need redoing and we seriously need a new oven, we've made buying a kayak for me a priority. The best part of all of this? There are literally hundreds of places to put in a kayak within thirty minutes of us - rugged, rocky coastline and sandy beaches.



The weather. My poor grandmother called me up one day to ask me how I manage living in such a rainy climate. She keeps track of the weather here inVictoria and they nearly always predict rain. The problem is, it's almost never true. It rained a little yesterday and quite a lot the day before that, but that is definitely not the norm. Since we arrived on March 16, I can count on one hand the number of rainy days we have had. In fact, the Smoky the Bear Fire Danger sign in a neighboring community read "High" the other day. Today, it is partly cloudy and shows every sign of warming up.

The mountains. As you have seen in some of the photos I have posted, we have a spectacular view of the Olympic Mountains in Washington. The higher you go on the island, the bigger the mountains actually look. Yesterday, there was light fog hanging low over Port Angeles, Washington, separating out the foothills from the higher peaks and offering us a new spectacular view.

Overwhelmed

I finally lost it yesterday. After trudging around the house all afternoon, trying to convince myself that I enjoy ironing and mowing the lawn, I went to pick up Soulmate from work. Now, my darling Soulmate is having his own daily battles with an a** of a project manager, so I have been reluctant to lay this on him. Moreover, I haven't really been aware of what the problem was until very recently.

I couldn't help myself. Soulmate got in the car and kissed me hello. My eyes welled up and tears spilled down my cheeks. Poor Soulmate. He thought something awful had happened, chas v'shalom. I mean, being unhappy is awful, but not as awful as tragedy. Anyway, I realized yesterday afternoon that for my own sanity, I need to do something out of the house that uses my brain. I've been trying to play the dutiful housewife and I've been failing miserably. Some days I don't want to make dinner. I just want to eat cereal. Or toast. Or open a can of soup. But, I can't inflict that lassitude on my loving and wonderful husband.

I have no idea how the women of yesteryear dealt with this. How do you spend a lifetime making beds and patching clothing? Maybe it's different when you have kids. Maybe my worldview is skewed because I grew up in the 80s when it was widely professed that women could do it all. Maybe it's just that I've been used to teaching every day and knowing that my existence made a difference in the world even if I had a bad day at work. Maybe I'm just lazy and don't like housework.

So, I'm switching it up. I'm going to write full-time, something I had always planned to do out here. I packed up the laptop this morning and went in search of a coffee shop with free wifi. I've spent the morning researching for a new young adult novel I plan to write. With any luck and a lot of work, perhaps I'll manage to publish it and Soulmate and I can retire to an old farmhouse in the country.

Meat?

I've blogged before about how hard it is to get meat here on Vancouver Island. We've been essentially meatless for several weeks now (though we've had plenty of chicken) and have been contemplating making a 100 lb. order of cholent meat, roast, and steaks from the kosher grocer in Vancouver. This past Shabbos we were at shul for a kiddush and had a beautiful cholent with huge chunks of melt-in-your-mouth fleish that had both Soulmate and myself in ecstasy.

Then I got the message below from the "rural frum" Yahoo group we recently joined. I have emailed a shaila to our rav and would now like to garner the collective Expertise from you, our loyal Monkey Tree Readers.

Here it is. These are the words of Yhoshua Trachtenburgh:

From: Yhoshua Trachtenburgh
Date: Wed May 17, 2006 6:30 am
Subject: Re: [rural-frum] Re: Jewsih Week article on the recent USDA report on the Postville Slaughterhouse

B"h

      I am a shokhet (not a profesional, I simply have a shtar saying I know how
and may shekht.) Puling out the trachea and food pipe is necessary, but it isn't
part of the slaughter.

  The slaughter can only be done by sawing most of the way through the
animals
windpipe and foodpipe without applying more pressure than gravity's natural
pressure on the knife, and without stopping the sawing motion. Contrary to
popular belief, the animal does not have to be shekhted with one stroke of the
knife, and this would actually render a large animal unkosher.

  The animal is halakhicly dead the moment the majority of its windpipe and food
pipe are cut. The only way it can be made ritually unfit after that is if one
decapitates the animal or strikes a bone.

  According to Rashi the isssur of decapitation is D'raisa, and a few
commentators say it applies infinately long after death. (e.g. If a housewife
buys veal neck and saws through the kneck at the same place the cut from
shechitah is, she has pussled the shekhitah of the animal retroactively. THis is
really makhmir, and you'll not find people who hold this way outside of the old
YIshuv and Yerushalmis)

    Striking the bone
only pussles the shekhitah if you chipped the knife, and
it does so because of a suffik draisa - you can't be sure you actually got the
simmonim before the knife chipped.

     Now, while puling out the trachea isn't part of shekhitah, it's a
neccessary  part of "bodek," checking the animal. THe shokhet has to confirm
that the majority of the simonim (food and windpipe) were cut, and the only way
to do that is by looking at it, and sometimes folding it in half next to a
bright light. The lungs are also pulled out.

     Halakhicly there is no problem puling out the windpipe (or lungs) of a
still moving, moooing, walking around animal, as long as he has had the majority
of his simmonim cut. Not for a Jew anyway. A goy is forbidden from eating the
windpipe if it is pullled out before the animal has stopped moving. If after the
majority of the simmonim were cut a person started ripping the animal apart as
it mood, it would still
not be a problem for Jews to eat the meat, nor a problem
of tzar baalei chaim. Dead animals can't be mistreated, and the Torah says he's
dead after slaughter whether he wants to admit it or not.

    Halakhicly Agroprocessors is fine in pulling out the trachea as far as yorah
deah is concerned. From Choshen Mishpat they may have a problem if the US
government says not to, because the law of the host country is the law.

     Also, if they had to not pull out the simmonim, the price of meat would go
up even more because one might have to wait threee or four minutes for the cow
to stop moving. Some cows, after proper shechita, can walk around for nearly 20
minutes.

  Its also not impossable for the knife to make such a perfect incision that
when the animal is released from restraint, mucous and blood seal off the
incision and the animal walks around weasing for hours. Its possible in such a
situation for the simmon to start
to heal and the animal to go about its life.
I've heard stories like that from experienced shokhtim.

___________________End of Article______________________________________

I Hate Cats

I hate cats. Sure, they can be cute and cuddly, but most of the time they are aloof and stinky. Now, I have another reason for hating them. Our neighbor's cats have decided to use our yard as their toilet. It's a little disconcerting to be pulling weeds and find cat-poo right there next to the lettuce. I'd like to get a pellet gun, but we could probably be prosecuted for that. Someone suggested getting $100 motion sensor sprinklers as a way of keeping the critters away. The question is, how much do I hate cats? How much do I love my lettuce?

An article I read online suggested sticking a bunch of plastic forks tines-up all over the garden to prevent the digging. I like to think that the first cat who tries to squat in our garden will get fork tines up the you-know-where.

Strangely enough, these paricular cats belong to the very same neighbor who sent us a nastygram last week about how our yard just wasn't up to par. We could write "messages" using the forks (said neighbor is up the hill from us and looks down on our garden)... Suggestions? "Fork you" and "Keep your forking cats out of our garden" spring immediately to mind.

Oh, and if you're planning to post a comment in defense of cats or attacking dogs (who, I admit are probably smellier), don't bother. If you are my friend and you are a cat owner, I love you, but I still hate cats.

Yardwork and more yardwork

I spent all day in the yard. I've been averaging a few hours every few days in the yard, but this morning we had a nasty gram from one of our neighbors proclaiming that our yard, which is in a perpetual state of construction, is an eyesore. It seems that we are, in fact, the frum Jews on the block and are holding down the title quite well.

So, I planted, weeded, mowed, moved stones, cleared brush, fought off spiders, got attacked by an overgrown rose bush and now I'm exhausted. The neighbor under suspicion had the chutzpah to take a break from listening to his Def Leppard "Hysteria" album and come out and wave at me. Now, I know I should've waved back, but all I could manage was a cold glare. Maybe next year I'll become a bigger person. Over our ice cream dinner tonight, Soulmate and I were plotting how many magazine subscriptions the guy deserves. And you all thought we were nice...

I'm exhausted. Soulmate is at a shiur for the next hour. I can't find kosher sliced bread here. It makes me sad. I did find some of the "Ezekiel" brand bread - foul sprouted grain stuff that faills to do justice to a peanut butter sandwich. I called BCK, the kashrus organization out of Vancouver, and the rabbi told me to start calling bread companies on a regular basis and encourage them to turn kosher. A one-woman crusade to bring squishy white bread to the citizens of Victoria.

As the weather has gotten nicer, I've found that covering my hair in the heat isn't going to be that much fun. I have scarves. I have cute little cotton hats. I miss the wind in my hair. I went out in a ballcap the other day with my hair in a bun sticking out the back. I was self-concious the whole time. Soulmate and I admitted to each other that, even though we don't like it, it bothered both of us to have so much of my hair showing. I guess we've gone frum...