Witches, it was believed, went unbelted.

[kleenexwoman]

Lookin' up Russian folklore and fairy tales, particularly death folklore. I love Baba Yaga stories, but I realized I haven't read that many, and I conflate Baba Yaga with the fairytale function of witches in general, which naturally has been highly informed by Grimm's fairytales. Russian folklore is amazing. I wish I still had Gail around so I could ask her stuff.

This is proving to be very useful.

Comments

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I have the Hebrew alphabet burned into my brain, but I learned it early on...I think the window for learning new alphabets easily has passed. If you'd learned Russian as a little kid, you'd still be able to remember the alphabet.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

To some degree, yes. But I think I'm a bit worse than most. I assume you got your Hebrew indoctrination started about the same age I did (seven or eight). Even then I couldn't manage it. I can pick out a few letters if I really wrack my brain, but it takes me a long time. I tried learning it again a few years ago, and it was a no-go.

Yiddish, of course, I dip into as much as does every other semi-Semite in America. For effect, anyway, or when I want to sound especially Jewy. (I've noticed that when I'm around Jews, I try to sound goyish, and when I'm around goyim, I want to sound Jewy. Strange.)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

(I've noticed that when I'm around Jews, I try to sound goyish, and when I'm around goyim, I want to sound Jewy. Strange.)
Same here. I dropped out of B'Nai Brith because I felt half-goy and half-pagan and totally out of place among the Zionist, kosher-eating bottle blondes with blue contacts and nose jobs (lol irony, says the girl with the big nose and untameable fro), but now that I'm up in Mt. Pleasant, I'm everyone's token Jew.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I never did BB, but my sister did, and she fucking hated it. She doesn't look Jewish at all, and the fact that she was only a halfie and from Southfield turned everyone against her. I always felt totally out of place in Hebrew school. It was so obvious the teachers couldn't stand me because I refused to deny that my Jewishness was just an ethnic thing, and a half ethnic thing at that.

When I was up in Ann Arbor this weekend with my friends David and Josh we spent three or four hours just bitching about how screwed up most of the Jews in metro Detroit are. David went to high school with me, but Josh's parents moved up to West Bloomfield before he started middle school, and he says it was the worst place on the face of the earth. Everyone up there is a fucking fraud.

I got the token Jew vibe in college, too. We had slightly under two thousand students and of those maybe 25 were Jewish (or at least that's the number of Jewish-ish names I counted in the directory). The faculty had a bit more. But it was quite a culture shock. "Everyone here is white! And from farm country! What the fuck?"

Oh, your nose isn't big. You have kind of off-kilter geeky good looks. (Here's something interesting you could try this summer, though, just for fun: get your hair straightened and see just how long it would be. I'm guessing it'd be down to your waist.)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Man, the B'Nai Brith girls I was in the group with looked goyish, acted goyish, had way more money than we did, and just happened to be on the Conservative side of the Reform line. They tried to straighten my hair (which I've cut recently anyway) and asked me when I was getting a rhinoplasty. I'm damn proud of my 'fro and my nose (wish it was bigger), not to mention the Philip Roth-esque lower-middle-class vibe of my upper-middle-class family, and took major offense. I think the last straw was when we went to a Denny's during the big BBYO convention and I got cheesy hashbrowns and a big side of bacon and a six-girl lecture about eating treyfe. It's a family tradition to buck tradition, dammit, and I'm not breaking that tradition just so I can fit in with a bunch of holier-than-thou nouveau riche teenyboppers.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Pffft. Yeah, like the way they live their lives is in any way in line with authentic Jewish tradition (biblical or cultural). Gimme Oak Park Jews any day of the week. Well, not the Hasidim, but the good solid almost working-class salt of the earth types.

I wish my hair were a bit more like yours. I know it's probably a bitch to deal with in the morning, but at least it's all-out curly, and therefore somewhat manageable because it's compact and fairly uniform. Mine is somewhat frizzy but it puffs up in ungodly ways, and I have never been able to get it cut in a way that makes it work. It should either be frizzier or else already starting to thin, and it ain't gonna do either anytime soon.

I've probably told you this before, but my grandparents were nominally Orthodox, went to shul regularly and all that, but they lived in Georgia, and there was no way on earth they were gonna keep kosher. I recall holiday meals where the main courses were matzoh-ball soup, brisket, and a big platter of ham.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

I always admired my great-grandfather Waldman (the first Joe Waldman). From what I'm told he could speak five or six languages fluently (the result, no doubt, of growing up in Vienna). English, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and maybe some other local Slavic tongue.

What was your high-school language? I took Latin and while it's come in useful when picking apart the English language, I really wish I'd taken Spanish. It probably should be a requirement now, same as math and science. Every kid should take a few years of it.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Spanish; I took four years of it and promptly forgot everything. Took it instead of French because I wanted to live in California when I grew up. drworm took Latin too, and I really, really wish I had.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Well, to live in America in our lifespans, it's practically essential. Even if you never master it, it's good to be able to fake it.

French is worthless as far as I can see unless your main goal is to take the class trip to France to get drunk and laid. (I went to Italy with Latin club one summer and most of the kids on the trip went for those two purposes, and stupid nerdy me, all I did was take photos and actually pay attention to the tour guides. Never so much as had a glass of wine because I was so paranoid and asocial.)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I never got to go on a class trip to anywhere except for Canada. Which was nice, but no Sistine Chapel.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Hee hee hee. I almost got kicked out of the Sistine Chapel. They told us "no flash photography", so naturally I ignored them and started popping away, and this huge security goon came up to me and started shoving me toward the door, growling something menacing in Italian. I panicked, but then did something brilliant: I played both stupid and American. "What? No flash? I didn't know. Honestly I didn't. Sorry. Hey, nice tie." And for some reason he let me go.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

I probably wouldn't have gone except that it was ungodly cheap. My Latin teacher had been doing these trips every four years since she'd started teaching there in 1968, and had an excellent fundraising program in place. Since this was her final trip before she retired, she got the school to chip in more than usual, so it was even cheaper, probably only about $900 for the tour (which included hotels) and then whatever it cost for airfare and spending money (which I fucked up on when we took a boat from Italy to Greece -- I changed all my money from lire to whatever the Greek currency was [this was pre-euro], not knowing that the ship was Italian, so I couldn't get anything to eat). Next time we meet up I'll show you the photos. Me looking like a long-haired teenage goon in all the great churches and classical sites of Italy.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Anyway, the Sistine Chapel is overrated. Whenever I look at it the only thing I can think of is the pool scene from Rocky Horror.