Twitter and Hair Covering

Well here we are. Susanne's Blog reboot, Take 9.

This has been a whirlwind year with about a trillion things absorbing my time. I got married, acquired a new roommate (the new husband), became a "professional" shadchan on a not-sure-I-should-blatantly-name-the-site-especially-when-you-can-figure-it-out-on-your-own dating website, got extra responsibilities at work, and if that weren't enough, I've learned to spend around 10 hours of my day on Twitter. Twitter snags all of my deepest thoughts before I have a chance to blog about them. It has literally destroyed my will to blog. I blame Biz Stone on my non-blogging. Biz, you have my dedicated blog readers (okay, reader singular) to deal with.

Here's what I wanted to mention. I was just in the shower after Shabbos. I had in mind that I needed to do my hair for tomorrow since we're attending the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School Semikha Ceremony tomorrow morning. Some of our buddies including Rabbi Ben Greenberg and Rabbi Drew Kaplan (and others) with be graduating and off to save the Jewish community. Anyhoo, back to the hair. There is a mitzvah regarding the covering of a married woman's hair called Kisui Rosh. I practice this mitzvah basically by default. Just about everywhere I go is somewhere I want to cover my hair. Synagogue, work (I work in a religious office), and other Jewy things. Oh and softball. At softball I'm never not wearing a baseball hat but that mainly to block the sun, not for religie reasons. In the shower I tried to remember where my hair dryer is. When so few people get to see my hair it doesn't really inspire me to spend the time blowdrying it. What I've learned from this is that letting my hair dry naturally ends up looking just about as good as if I'd spent hours fussing over it. Had I not gotten married and had I not decided to practice this mitzvah, I'd still be wasting hours with my Conair3000 and there would be even less of a chance I'd have the time to post another blog. So enjoy my mitzvah keeping.

Segulah Kiddush

In my attempt to be the complete antithesis of the Jewish Feminist that I was labled in my previous blog post, I have decided to sponsor the upcoming Mt. Sinai Shabbos Mevarchim Kiddush. Why you may ask? As I entered the world of Orthodoxy I became familiar with the word segulah. Literally a treasure, its interpreted, by me at least, to mean mazel, or good fortune. Everywhere you go you find segulah. At weddings its a segulah for the kallah to pass around her jewelry to single friends at the chuppah. Its a segulah to take a swig of the germy leftover chuppah or sheva brachas wine. And my favorite wedding segulah, segulah challah. I love my carbs. Poppy seeds not as much, but yummy eggy challah is quite tasty.

Those were the first segulot I was introduced to. Then my friends started having babies. So my boss would bring cookies into the office after a bris and say eat this, its a segulah. He's a Rabbi so I believed him and ate it. I am not yet pregnant so so much for that.

I take part in segulah behavior because who knows what might help my situation. I'm a single chick. I'd like to get married so I can move out of God awful New York. If someone tells me eat a cookie, it might help, I say mezonos and eat the cookie. When I was on Birthright the Summer of 2003 I was the oldest person on my bus. I signed up for a "frum" trip because I didn't want my first Israel experience to be defined by how many Tel Aviv discos I visited or how many beer bongs I drank or how many hookahs I smoked. Little did I know that this meant 23-year-old working girl Susanne was going to be surrounded by 18-year-old Lubavitch girls from a seminary in Florida. Their only goal during this trip was to convince our madricha to take us to Amukah, the tomb of Jonathan ben Uzziel (who was said to have written the Kabballah), where unmarried people travel to be granted blessings to find a marriage partner. Well, 3 1/2 years later and I bet half of that bus is married with children. Maybe I didn't daven hard enough. Or, Chabad's acceptance of marriage after 3 shidduch dates has made it easier for those girls to get hitched. Who knows? All I know is when we arrived I got out of the bus, went into the tomb, and said a perek of Tehillim. Why? Because I was there.

Another segulah I recently learned about was that it is customary for a couple to sponsor a kiddush when they have a daughter. When you have a son, you have a bris and a Seudas Mitzvah (festive meal) follows the circumcision. So I guess someone long ago said, we really should encourage people that have daughters to celebrate their good fortune by having a kiddush. Preferably one with chulent. Everyones loves chulent. So now all my friend's that have daughters get together with others in their shuls who have been blessed with a little girl and do a kiddush. Somehow over the years a rumor was inserted into this idea that girls who were never given a kiddush to celebrate their birth would never be married, or something to that effect. Being a baal teshuva, I kind of doubt that my parents sponsored a kiddush in my honor. I don't think they even went to temple back then. I don't even think they knew what a kiddush was back then, other then it being the blessing over the Shabbos wine.

I saw today on one of the many Yahoo groups of which I'm a member, that a shul in Passaic is making a kiddush available for women like myself to finally experience this long overdue kiddush, and hopefully wash away that bad fortune that our parents afflicted on us years ago. So I picked up the phone to call the lady and express my interest when I realized I could donate to my own shul's kiddush that week with the same goal in mind. I realize I can't be the only person in the neighborhood that would be interested in being part of this. Already, I have one friend who is FFB that doesn't think her parents held one for her, and even one guy interested in being part. Again, I'm not saying that sponsoring a segulah kiddush is going to be the answer to my prayers, but who knows? I'm going to be there. I might as well grab a bowl of chulent and hope I meet my bashert.

P.S. If you would like to join be part of this kiddush feel free to email me. Even if you aren't a member of Mt. Sinai, even if you live in Antartica. If you are a women who never had a kiddush, or you have a daughter that you'd like to shower with this extra blessing, please let me know.