Embracing Your Would-Be Convert, Would-Be Sister-in-Law
By Amy Sohn
Dear Bintel Brief:
My boyfriend and his brother come from a family with Jewish values. Their mother has imbued them with the importance of marrying within the faith. My boyfriend’s brother has only been dating a woman for a short period of time, but the woman insists that she is passionate about converting to Judaism. She has a volatile personality. I wonder how committed she actually is, and I worry for him. I don’t know how to tell my boyfriend how I feel, and I would never risk hurting him or his family. What can I do?
Amy Sohn responds:
October 19, 2009, 5:09pm
Be Less Fruitful, and Cut Down Your Carbon Footprint
By Amy Sohn
Dear Bintel Brief:
My husband wants to have a big family, but I think that in today’s world with all of the suffering and the need, no one family should have more than two children. As someone who wrote about the stroller capital of the world, who’s right?
PONDERING PREGNANCY AND POPULATION
Amy Sohn replies:
October 12, 2009, 2:28pm
How Can I Fire My Flower Girl?
By Amy Sohn
Dear Bintel Brief:
My oldest and dearest friend, one of my only friends with children, really wants her daughter to be the flower girl in my forthcoming wedding. Initially, I thought it was a good idea, as neither my husband nor I have young nieces. But now, I’m rethinking the matter: My friend’s daughter is only 2 years old and — perhaps, understandably, given her age — she’s not-at-all well behaved. I might go so far as to call her bratty. I’m pretty certain she’ll cause a fuss during my ceremony. What’s the best way to fire the flower girl?
PERPLEXED BRIDE-TO-BE
Amy Sohn responds
October 5, 2009, 3:03pm
Amy Sohn Has Some Advice for Forward Readers
By Bintel Brief
Writer Amy Sohn will be the Forward’s next guest Bintel Brief advice columnist, answering readers’ questions during the month of October.
Sohn is the author of, most recently, “Prospect Park West” (Simon & Schuster) — a novel about living, loving, hating and procreating in the leafy Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope. She is also the author of the novels “Run Catch Kiss” (Simon & Schuster, 1999) and “My Old Man,” (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and of two bestselling “Sex and the City” tie-in books. In addition, she co-created, wrote and starred in the Oxygen series “Avenue Amy.”
She is a former contributing editor and columnist at New York magazine, and has also been a columnist at the New York Post and England’s Grazia magazine. She got her start writing “Female Trouble,” a racy New York Press dating column that, she said, “elicited loads of invective from readers and shamed her parents at cocktail parties.”
A graduate of Brown University, Sohn lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, email bintelbrief@forward.com. Selected letters will be published anonymously. The first installment of the Bintel Brief featuring Amy Sohn will be published Monday, October 12 at www.forward.com.
September 25, 2009, 4:59pm
Help! I Left My Job; Now I'm Nostalgic for It
By Mayim Bialik
Dear Bintel Brief:
A few months ago, I decided to leave a very demanding job in television production. I had been there for five years and I was, quite simply, burned out. I felt like I needed a change of pace and direction in my life.
Ever since quitting, though, my anxiety about what to do next has been paralyzing. I’ve had some informational interviews, but, during them, I have had a hard time articulating why I want to work at one company or another because I’m not sure that I do. These interviews always leave me feeling nostalgic for my old job; sometimes I wish I was still there. But when I’m honest with myself, I know I need a fresh start — maybe even in a different field. How should I go about finding something that will make me happy, when I feel so directionless?
LOST IN SPACE
Mayim Bialik reponds
September 21, 2009, 10:49am
Help! I Feel Like I'm My Therapist's Therapist
By Mayim Bialik
Dear Bintel Brief:
I’ve been seeing my physical therapist for a while now and we’ve grown pretty close. She recently separated from her husband and now, during my appointment, all she talks about are her marital problems and whom she’s dating. Sometimes she’ll get teary eyed while she’s treating me, which makes me feel uncomfortable. She’s very skilled, but now my physical therapy appointments feel more like counseling sessions for her. Should I tell her and, if so, how? Or would it be best to just find someone new?
IN TREATMENT
Mayim Bialik responds:
September 14, 2009, 12:29pm
A College Grad: Dependent on Dad, Consumed by Guilt
By Mayim Bialik
Dear Bintel Brief:
As a recent college graduate, I feel very lucky — particularly in this economic environment — to have landed a job in a creative and very competitive field. I find my work fulfilling in all respects but one: It simply doesn’t pay enough for me to live even a no-frills existence in New York, where my job is.
Since my workweeks regularly exceed 60 hours, and my job requires me to be “on call” most evening and weekends, seeking out a second job to supplement my meager paycheck does not seem like a realistic option.
My parents are currently giving me around $200 a month to help pay my bills and rent. However, the check inevitably comes with both a nudge from my dad about the importance of self-sufficiency and with a whole lot of self-imposed guilt and frustration that I can’t stand on my own two feet.
I’m embarrassed asking for and accepting handouts from my parents, who paid in full for my education with the reasonable expectation that I’d be paying my own bills after graduation. But I don’t see another way to make ends meet if I am going to stay on what I think is a very promising career path.
What should I do?
DEPENDENT ON DAD
Mayim Bialik replies:
September 7, 2009, 3:20pm
How To Answer the Question 'Are You Pregnant Yet?'
By Mayim Bialik
Dear Bintel Brief:
Six months ago, my husband and I began trying to conceive our first child. Since we’re both young and healthy, and had no reason to think we’d encounter any problems getting pregnant, we told close friends and family that we were “trying.”
But making a baby has proved harder than expected, and I’m still not pregnant. Not only am I facing disappointment and frustration month after month, those feelings are compounded by frequent questions from loved ones who want to know if I’m “pregnant yet” — and if not, why not, and if I want to talk about it. When I say that I don’t, the conversation often becomes uncomfortable.
I wish my husband and I had kept quiet about our plans to start a family. But now that the cat is out of the bag: How should I tell inquiring minds to cease and desist, as far as pregnancy questions are concerned, without alienating cherished friends and family members?
TRYING TO CONCEIVE
Mayim Bialik replies:
August 31, 2009, 1:50pm
Mayim Bialik Has Some Advice for Forward Readers
By Bintel Brief
Mayim Hoya Bialik, who is best know for her lead role as Blossom Russo on the early-1990s NBC sitcom “Blossom,” will be answering readers’ questions as the Forward’s guest Bintel Brief advice columnist during the month of September.
After “Blossom,” Bialik went on to study neuroscience and Hebrew and Jewish studies at UCLA, where she ultimately earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience. While at the university, she was an active student leader at the campus Hillel — starting a women’s Rosh Chodesh group and serving as a lay chazzanut.
More recently, she has appeared in the HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and, beginning this fall, she will have a recurring role on the ABC Family drama “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”
Bialik, who was brought up in a Yiddish-speaking home and describes herself as an “avid student of all things Jewish,” is a board member, co-founder and chairwoman of the Jewish Free Loan Association’s Genesis branch. She also studies weekly with a mentor from Partners in Torah.
A married mother of two young sons, she is the celebrity spokeswoman for the Holistic Moms Network. Her Web site is www.mayimbialik.net.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, email bintelbrief@forward.com. Selected letters will be published anonymously. New installments of the Bintel Brief, featuring Mayim Bialik, will be published Mondays in September at www.forward.com.
August 3, 2009, 11:16pm
My Parents Want Me To Be an Actuary; I Want To Run a Casino
By Lenore Skenazy
Dear Bintel Brief:
I’m 18 and reside on Long Island. My parents want me to be an actuary. (I don’t even know what that is; I think it has to do with birds.) But I want to attend Tulane University, enroll in their Casino Management program.
My mother (I love her dearly) hasn’t been to Las Vegas since the 1950s; she still calls Las Vegas “Zind [Sin] City.” I call it “The Entertainment Capital of the World.”
Yes, I know that many casino employees have seen their jobs eliminated in recent months because people are gambling less in this recession, but I’m convinced that the employment market will improve by the time I finish my coursework. Help!
A FRUSTRATED STUDENT
Dear Frustrated Student:
I totally get it. It must be VERY frustrating when your parents don’t take one single second to understand what kind of career might interest you. It’s like they’re PROUD of their ignorance.
Now go look up the word “actuary.”
Oh my! Nothing at all to do with birds, is it?
How dare you suggest that your parents don’t care about your deepest desires when you’ve never even bothered to look up the career they’re suggesting? You haven’t even GOOGLED “actuary.” And according to the second entry there — not too hard to find — an actuary is an expert in:
•Evaluating the likelihood of future events •Designing creative ways to reduce the likelihood of undesirable events •Decreasing the impact of undesirable events that do occur.
In other words (mine, not Google’s): AN ACTUARY IS SOMEONE WHO GETS PAID TO THINK LIKE A POKER PLAYER!!
Imagine that — your parents have been thinking deeply about your interests and skills and they even came up with a way you could use them to make a pile of money!
Back to Google, buddy. A simple search of “Casino manager, average salary,” finds that folks in the career you want to pursue start out at about $49,000 a year, and end up making an average of $60,000. Actuaries start out at $51,000–$61,000 a year, and end up making an average of $90,000. That’s an extra $30,000 a year you could save for a house or retirement or just go blow on the slots! What?
No one would be stupid enough to spend all their savings on slot machines since everyone knows the house always wins? Well, folks will be doing exactly that if you’re really good at “casino management.” Your job is to encourage them come lose their money.
See, I happen to agree with your mom: Gambling is a zind. That’s why the machers in your chosen field took a couple of consonants out of the industry’s name and started calling it “gaming” instead of “gambling.” They know that “gambling” has a long, sad history of sending optimistic folks home broke. They want us to think of it as something more along the lines of Monopoly: good, clean fun. (Not that I ever found Monopoly much fun at all. But still.)
What does it take to join this illustrious brotherhood? The “Casino Management” program at Tulane seems to consist mostly of hospitality management classes, statistics, economics and accounting. Seeing as how casino managers also find themselves in a field that has traditionally attracted shysters, mobsters, cheaters and hookers, there are also classes in legality. And there’s one class that comes “recommended” — on ethics. See above for why.
So it seems it’s not just your parents who are worried about the bed you want to lie down in. Tulane is, too.
But there is one more big factor we have not discussed yet — the ace of spades, as it were — and that is your age: 18. No matter how much your parents love you and vice versa, you are a young man now, not a child, and what you do with your life is up to you. So it really doesn’t matter if your parents approve of your major or not.
Who will pay for your schooling? Ah, that may depend on the career you decide to pursue. But that’s okay. You’re willing to take a gamble. Right?
July 27, 2009, 8:28pm
Help! I'm Sick of Overparenting My Kids
By Lenore Skenazy
Dear Bintel Brief:
I want to be a Free-Range parent, I really do. I want to let my kids have the same kind of fun I had as a child. But I am so paranoid it is ridiculous.
When I was in third, grade I used to walk a few blocks up the street to a small park where I would play for hours by myself. I now have a son in third grade, and couldn’t even imagine letting him do this by himself. I was always able to go and do almost anything I wanted from a very young age, but I can’t even begin to think about letting my kids do this.
I have three sons ages 8, 3, and 1.5. I am not a paranoid person when it comes to anything that has to do with me. I am very confident in myself. My 8-year-old is very smart and capable, but the thought of him even being outside by himself is enough to reduce me to a nerve-wracked pile of goo. I want to be able to do the things with my kids that I was able to do as a kid. I have no idea where my paranoia came from. It sure wasn’t my parents because they had no problem letting me go and do things by myself. I don’t watch much TV, because I don’t care for it, and what I do watch is just a couple of shows here and there. No news. Where is this fear coming from? How can I fight it?
SICK OF SMOTHERING
Dear Smothering:
I know the feeling, I really do — the nauseous fear when you picture something tragic happening to your kid.
That’s the problem: It is so easy to picture, because as a society, we are talking about it all the time. I know you don’t watch much TV, but everyone else does, and the second you turn on CNN, there’s another abduction story. Some people have started calling it the Child-Napping Network. Switch to “Law & Order” and there’s an adorable kid being snatched from the school yard. Turn on “CSI” and there’s another one being dredged from the swamp. The Mayo Clinic did a cool study comparing two seasons’ worth of CSI crimes to two seasons’ worth of actual crimes and found the biggest discrepancy is that on TV, almost all the crimes are committed by strangers, even though in real life that is not the case. Still, that is why you are a nerve-wracked pile of goo (lovely phrase): Our society is intent on making us feel that strangers are waiting to pounce on our kids 24/7, even though — this is the shocker — our kids are NO LESS SAFE THAN WE WERE! I know, I know — it’s almost impossible to believe. But when I was researching my “Free-Range Kids” book, I dug up the stats and here they are: The crime rate rose through the ’70s and ’80s, a sad, scary fact we all lived through. But then it started going down – way down — in the early ’90s, thanks to more policing, longer jail terms, cell phones (really!) and even the greater availability of psychiatric meds. With the criminally insane feeling less insane, they become less criminal. As a result, crime across the board is back to the level of 1970. So if you were playing outside in the ’70s or ’80s, your boys are actually SAFER than you were!
Remember the folks who put the kids’ pictures on the milk cartons (and didn’t bother to tell us the vast majority were runaways or kids taken by non-custodial parents in divorce cases? Drove us crazy with fear?). Anyway, they feel bad about sending out the wrong message about stranger danger now. I spoke to Ernie Allen, the head of that group — the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — and do you know what he said? “Our message to parents is you don’t have to live in fear. You don’t have to feel you have to lock your children in a room.”
To keep kids safe he actually recommends teaching them how to get along in the world — how to cross the street safely, how to ask strangers for help, how to yell back at bullies — and then to let your kids go out! The safest kid is a kid filled with self-confidence. You’ll note that the word is not “parent-assisted” confidence.
How do kids get confident enough to stand up for themselves? By doing things for themselves! Walking the dog, organizing the kickball game, biking down the street to knock on their friend’s door, instead of waiting for us to make the playdate and then drive them a few doors down as if they’re under enemy fire.
You want your kids to have the kind of childhood you did — the kind you thank your lucky stars (and parents!) for. You can. Kids as young as 8 are spending an average of 6 hours a day staring at a screen now. With your encouragement, your 8-year-old can click “Off,” go outside and climb a tree.
He may come back dirty and a little sunburned. He may even have a few scrapes. But he’ll remind you of you, and smell like summer.
Lenore Skenazy, a former columnist for the New York Daily News and the New York Sun, now writes a syndicated newspaper column and hosts a topical humor contest that runs in The Week magazine. She is the author of “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry” (Jossey-Bass), published in April, and “Who’s The Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know – But Can’t Remember Right Now” (Penguin), published in June.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
July 20, 2009, 1:29pm
My Husband's Atheism Is Cramping My Style
By Lenore Skenazy
Dear Bintel Brief,
My husband and I had a Jewish home. We were active members of our synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays. My husband recently declared himself an atheist and gave up on all things religious. I still want to light candles and celebrate Shabbat, have seders, etc., but he refuses to participate. His hostility has put a damper on my ardor. I don’t want to be the only one in my home to keep up Jewish traditions. What should I do?
MARRIED TO AN ATHEIST
Dear Married:
If I were a psychologist — and I’m not, I’m just a gal sitting here trying to solve the world’s problems while eating way too many cheese crackers (delicious!) — I’d say the nugget to examine here is not your husband’s sudden atheism, it’s this: “His hostility has put a damper on my ardor.”
If anyone just happened to read this sentence by itself, they might think it was describing a husband’s hostility to his wife, and the wife’s response — a dampening of ardor.
Which is sort of how this letter is sounding anyway.
For instance, if you suddenly developed a real aversion to your husband’s favorite food — say, herring — would you sit there and make retching sounds every time he fished a piece or two out of the bottle? A bottle you bought together, holding hands at the deli? Or would you try to breathe through your mouth so your husband could continue to enjoy his former favorite part of the day: the herring and beer moment?
If your goal is harmony, you’d shush already about how stinky herring is, because your husband being happy is more important than your (new) opinion of his crazy taste buds.
And that’s just herring.
Moving on: Suddenly, your husband is not just rejecting the Judaism you once both loved, he is rejecting what sounds like the very foundation of the life you’ve built together. The holidays. The temple. The traditions. Worse, he is angry at them all. He refuses to be in the same room with them. He doesn’t care if Judaism is something that fills your life with joy and meaning, he’s making the retching sounds so you can’t enjoy it either.
Growing up, we had a word for this behavior: Moorsah. It was either Turkish or Ladino, but whatever it was, it meant being in a bad mood and trying to get everyone else in a bad mood, too — exactly what your husband seems to be doing. Something is making him very miserable — either a religious crisis or something else that he or the religious crisis is masking — and he wants you to be miserable too.
“Now wait!” some cry: “If he’s no longer a believer, why should he pretend?”
Same reason we cheer our hearts out at the school play, “Max and the Giant Safety Scissors.” Not because the play is any good. It stinks! But sitting through it is a small price to pay for seeing our kid grin when he spots us in the audience. Being family means supporting our loved ones, not sneering at them.
So shouldn’t you support your husband’s newfound atheism, too? I do think it deserves some support and no sneering. You can listen to his doubts, and appreciate his struggle. You can let him know that you love HIM, even if you don’t see eye to eye on religion. But then you have to help him understand that lately he’s been throwing your relationship out with the holy water (so to speak).
Tell him if he wants you two to be a team, he should be a mensch and partake of family life, which happens to be Jewish family life. After all: If God doesn’t exist, what does it matter if you light some candles?
But it’s possible all this anger and hostility is actually having the very effect he wants, consciously or not, which is to wear you down and drive the two of you apart. If that’s his goal, the Bintel Brief cannot bring him back. Maybe therapy can. Maybe talking to a friend can. Maybe herring and a beer?
It certainly couldn’t hurt.
Lenore Skenazy, a former columnist for the New York Daily News and the New York Sun, now writes a syndicated newspaper column and hosts a topical humor contest that runs in The Week magazine. She is the author of “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry” (Jossey-Bass), published in April, and “Who’s The Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know – But Can’t Remember Right Now” (Penguin), published in June.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
July 13, 2009, 3:49pm
Help! My Daughter Is Seeking an 'Open' Marriage
By Lenore Skenazy
Dear Bintel Brief:
In 1995 one of my six daughters, married for the first time. We thought at the time that she was truly getting married, and I liked her young man. For maybe a dozen years before her marriage she had been leading an unconventional, “new-age” lifestyle in the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps in rebellion against her conventional, Midwestern upbringing by her mother, my ex-wife.
Some time later, the two of them confided in me and my wife of 50 years that she and M___ were in an “open” marriage — meaning that each of them was free, with the other’s knowledge and consent, to take lovers. My wife and I didn’t say anything at the time, which my daughter and her husband interpreted as acceptance. On more than one occasion, they thanked us for our being so understanding.
In private discussions between us, my wife and I weren’t so understanding, and we agreed that this so-called “open” marriage was nothing more than a holding pattern until one or the other of them found in a lover someone more pleasing than their spouse. And so it has turned out; the husband jumped ship.
Subsequently, my daughter’s life has settled down. Curiously, she continues to socialize and spend holidays with, apparently without rancor, M___ and his new wife.
All of this sets background for the reason for this letter. To wit: In discussing her future with my daughter, I have on more than one occasion gently (I hope) suggested that she seek out a more conventional relationship. The last time I did so, she reacted with some heat, asking me not to raise the subject again. She defended her “open” marriage, declaring that statistics show that an “open” marriage are no more prone to end in divorce than conventional marriages, in which the which the taking of lovers is often carried out in secret and is truly a betrayal.
So here, finally, are my questions for Bintel Brief: 1). Is my daughter’s claim about statistics about “open” indeed true? And 2) If I should ever raise this matter again with my daughter, is there anything else of a non-moralistic nature that I could adduce to the benefit of a conventional marriage?
CONCERNED TATELE
P.S. My mother, of blessed memory, used to quote in Yiddish an example from Bintel Brief. The translation went something like this: “Dear Worthy Editor, I write to you not with ink, but with blood from a mother’s heart.”
Dear Tatele:
Wow, six daughters and one of them is choosing a non-traditional marriage, and you wish she could see the wisdom of the old ways? Mind if I call you Tevye?
Sure, you’ve got one girl more than the milkman, but still: Your beloved daughter is intent on making a match that seems meshuge to you, especially since the first time she tried it, it didn’t even work! The one advantage to open marriage, you’d think, is that at least a couple can stay together forever: Why divorce the cow when you can get the milk from all the other cows, too?
But that’s just the problem, says Hara Marano, author of a book all about young people falling apart, “A Nation of Wimps” (Broadway, 2008). When you keep consorting with everyone else, one of you is liable to fall in love. And even if this doesn’t lead to divorce, it usually leads to jealousy, which is about one millimeter away on the misery continuum. (Right next to incurable itching and a spouse who listens to the TV too loud.) Nearly inevitable jealousy is a straightforward argument against open marriage that you could make.
Except that your daughter seems to have emerged unmiserable and unjealous enough to still like her ex and the replacement wife and want to try it all again. So maybe an open marriage can make sense, at least for her.
Having written that line with zero conviction (if you’re Tevye, I’m Golde), I called Richard Woods, an author who lectures about open marriage — including his own. First off, he said, there are no statistics to give your daughter, because there are no hard numbers to base them on. Open marriage isn’t something you check off on your census.
Moreover, he said, the reason it’s not on the census is that open marriage “is the new gay.” Like homosexuality just a generation or two ago, most of the people practicing it don’t talk about it for fear of public censure. In fact, if it weren’t so taboo, Barack Obama might not be president today! Remember that Illinois Sen. Jack Ryan was uncovered as a “swinger” (a particularly unappealing one), leading to his resignation, leading to a young state senator winning his U.S. Senate seat, leading to a run for the White House and … you know how the story ends. A story that in itself began with a coupling many once found taboo: A black man and a white woman.
When you think about open marriage as an option that has been around for a while, quietly working for some people, it stops seeming quite so strange and starts becoming just another point along that long line of previously unthinkable liaisons that gradually became more and more accepted: Choosing Motl the tailor over an arranged marriage. Choosing a Bolshevik. Choosing intermarriage. Choosing someone of a different race. Or the same sex.
And even if it that kind of arrangement doesn’t make sense to you, Tevye, in the end it’s not up to you anyway. It’s up to your daughter. And maybe the sweep of history.
Lenore Skenazy, a former columnist for the New York Daily News and the New York Sun, now writes a syndicated newspaper column and hosts a topical humor contest that runs in The Week magazine. She is the author of “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry” (Jossey-Bass), published in April, and “Who’s The Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know – But Can’t Remember Right Now” (Penguin), published in June.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
'Free Range' Mom Lenore Skenazy To Advise Forward Readers
By Bintel Brief
Columnist and humorist Lenore Skenazy will be answering readers’ questions as the Forward’s next Bintel Brief advice columnist.
Skenazy, a former New York Daily News and New York Sun columnist, now writes a syndicated column that appears in more than 100 newspapers. She also runs The Week magazine’s topical humor contest, “What’s Next?”
She is, perhaps, best known for letting her 9-year-old take the subway by himself, and writing about it last spring. Skenazy then found herself on “The Today Show,” “Dr. Phil” and even the BBC — defending herself as NOT “America’s Worst Mom.” She launched the blog “Free-Range Kids” to explain her parenting philosophy and when this proved popular, she went on to write the book, “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry” (Jossey-Bass).
In June, Penguin published her totally unrelated book, “Who’s The Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know – But Can’t Remember Right Now” — the first trivia quiz book with questions that are all worded the way Skenazy’s parents used to talk. (for example, “Honey, what’s that Catskills dance movie with the guy in the tight pants and the ugly duckling actress before she had the nose job whose real life dad was the Cabaret guy?”)
Skenazy lives in Manhattan with her husband and their two sons.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
June 15, 2009, 5:41pm
When Your Doorman Goes Missing in Action
By Hanna Rosin
Dear Bintel Brief,
I live a doorman apartment building. One of the night doormen, while a nice, friendly person, often seems bored by his job. The other night, I arrived home expecting an important package, but the doorman was nowhere to be found. Several other residents, and a few visitors, were standing in the lobby as well, waiting for him. There was a hastily scrawled note on his desk saying he would be back in five minutes. I waited for what must have been 10 minutes, and he never showed. During this period of time, the doors to the building were wide open, and anyone could have strolled inside.
The next morning, on my way to work, a different doorman told me I had a package. When he asked me why I hadn’t picked up the package the day before, I simply said the night doorman hadn’t been at his desk. The morning doorman immediately exchanged a meaningful look with the building’s superintendent, who happened to be standing nearby. They told me that this wasn’t the first time this night doorman had “disappeared” on the job, and that I should file a formal complaint with the management company.
I decided not to file a complaint, because I didn’t want to get the doorman in trouble. But when I arrived home that evening, the night doorman was back, and he had clearly heard about the exchange that morning. He said to me, in a defensive and less-than-friendly tone, that he’d been using the bathroom the night before. He added that I should have “waited” for him, and when I explained that I had, I didn’t get much of a response. It was clear that he thought I’d ratted him out to his colleague and boss, when in fact I hadn’t done so intentionally.
Did I do the right thing in not reporting him? What should I do moving forward?
DOORMAN DILEMMA
Dear Doorman Dilemma,
I hate these kinds of dilemmas, because they bring up all manner of uncomfortable feelings about class and privilege. They force you to scrutinize your life and ask: Was it really so important for me to get that package that night? Is that legal brief or pair of sandals or book from my mom or whatever in that package so important that it’s worth this guy possibly losing his job?
But there is really only one correct response. Forget the class and privilege. Set it aside. If you respond with that load of guilt on your head, you’ll never get it right. You’ll sound patronizing, or angry, or entitled. The only thing to do is to treat the doorman like any other colleague who is shirking his duties. Don’t talk to management first, talk to the doorman. Tell him the building residents depend on him, and he has to be back when he says he will. Think of some joke that will put him at ease. Help him understand why it matters if he disappears all the time.
If that doesn’t work, then by all means talk to his boss, just as you would with any colleague you depend on who is not making the grade. Give a fair and accurate report of what happened, and why you’re concerned. This is a fair and respectful way to treat anyone who works for you, whether he’s your lawyer or your secretary or your doorman.
Hanna Rosin is a writer for the Atlantic and Double X, and the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). The Israeli-born, Queens-reared Rosin lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their three children.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
Paying Cash, Helping a Tax-Cheat?
By Hanna Rosin
Dear Bintel Brief,
If a cleaning lady, repairman, tradesman or even a doctor quotes a price to do a service, but then immediately offers to reduce the price if you pay cash, and you suspect the lower price is offered because the provider will not report the income and pay taxes, are you participating in an unethical transaction? Or are you merely participating in one that might lead to something illegal on the part of the recipient of the payment? What is the appropriate way to respond to such an offer?
TAXED ABOUT TAXES
Dear Taxed About Taxes,
Wow. Is this what America has come to? We now have doctors who take payment in cash? Twelve years of training, a fancy degree on the wall and they behave just like a card shark. What next? I’ll be paying my private school teacher with a suitcase stuffed with bills. Seriously, though. I do not consider this a black and white zone but a grey one. When you say “suspect,” what do you mean by that? Merely the fact that someone prefers to be paid in cash is not suspicious. My own father is a New York City taxi driver. Those new credit card machines they’ve installed make his life very difficult, not because he has to pay taxes on the money but because he has to pay a percentage on them and monitor and upkeep the machines and pay to have them installed. So yes, he prefers cash. There might be perfectly innocuous reasons why a tradesman or yes, even doctor, saves money when you pay cash.
That said, if you have a strong reason to suspect someone is ducking out of taxes, that’s a different story. When I was younger, cable installation people were running a city-wide scam. They’d install cable and ask you to pay in cash. It was understood that they would pocket the money and not tell the company. When the cable guy asks for cash, that’s pretty suspicious. But a plumber who works for himself, or the tile guy, or the electrician might have perfectly good reasons for doing so. I’d say don’t assume they’re guilty.
Hanna Rosin is a writer for the Atlantic and Double X, and the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). The Israeli-born, Queens-reared Rosin lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their three children.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
May 26, 2009, 3:19pm
Bridal Shower TMI?
By Hanna Rosin
Dear Bintel Brief,
Nobody knows that I was once in a same-sex relationship. My former lover, now just a friend, has been invited to my bridal shower. I know that the hostesses are going to ask all the guests to introduce themselves and say how they know me. I am mortified. What if the truth comes out?
RED-FACED BRIDE
Dear Red-Faced Bride,
If not for reality television, I might not have the requisite imagination to spin out the disaster scenario for My Bridesmaid Was Once My Lover: Gail sits in the corner of the living room, alone, giving off a sulky, awkward vibe. The other guests at the bridal shower are drinking martinis and comparing notes about senior year, but Gail does not participate in the merriment. Soon the hostess gathers all the guests in a circle, and asks them to say how they know the bride. When they get to Gail there is a loaded pause. Gail tries to catch the future bride’s eye but she looks away. Then Gail starts to talk, and talk, and pretty soon the bride is hiding in the bathroom and he mother has fainted dead.
Wait. The scenario doesn’t ring true. Only the most vengeful or socially obtuse person would bring up the relationship at a bridal shower, especially if she knows the relationship was a secret. If you suspect that your friend fits either of these categories, then I would act now, quickly. I would take her out for a coffee and a chat. If you get a sense that she has any stake in the old relationship or that she’d feel offended at the idea of remaining discreet, then I would voice your fears. You don’t have to convey shame and regret about the old flame. Don’t get defensive either. Just say that a bridal shower is a stuffy old affair. Tell her that your aunt Mitzie will be there, and she would die if she knew. So could she please keep it a secret?
Hanna Rosin is a writer for the Atlantic and Double X, and the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). The Israeli-born, Queens-reared Rosin lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their three children.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
May 18, 2009, 10:44am
Help! I'm Superstitious About My Jewish Friend's Baby Shower
By Hanna Rosin
Dear Bintel Brief,
My friend, who is Jewish, is pregnant — and has decided to have a baby shower. She is not superstitious about such events, and is fine with receiving gifts more than a month before her due date. I, however, believe strongly in the Jewish tradition of withholding gifts until the baby arrives. Should I attend the shower? And, if so, is it okay to arrive sans gift?
SUPERSTITIOUS ABOUT BABY SHOWERS
Dear Superstitious,
Let’s consider what’s really at stake here. Withholding gifts until the baby arrives is, as you say, just a superstition. It has no more meaning in Jewish law than holding your breath when you pass a cemetery, or throwing salt over your shoulder after you sneeze (my grandmother’s favorite).
On the other hand, that baby does not really need more of those “gifts.” Life will proceed on track for little Eli or Sadie without that extra Lamaze octopus, or the Baby Einstein bouncer. Baby showers are propelled by the same impulse that founded Mother’s Day and made diamond rings mandatory for engagements. Once, I imagine, friends showed up with diapers and a basic layette. Now, they collect down payments on an Italian crib or a $900 Bugaboo stroller. The last baby shower I was invited to was a cocktail party. A cocktail party? Can you imagine? The commercial culture of baby rearing … well, I digress.
What’s important here is not so much your clinging to the tradition or your friend needing that extra gift, but your relationship with this friend. People can be awfully tender about their first child, and do weird things out of prenatal craziness, or blind, irrational baby love. (I speak from experience; my husband and I made a 24-by-24 blow-up photo of our first baby and gave it to all of the relatives).
Your friend might read your declining to show up or give a gift as sign that you’re not really on board with her new adventure. Unless you are truly offended by the sight of new gifts for a baby, here is what I would do: I would go to the shower but save the gift. Then, with good, self-deprecating humor — that part is important — I would tell her that you’re superstitious and you just can’t help it and you’ll bring the gift later. (“I know; I throw salt over my shoulder, too,” you can say). The trick is to make her believe that you love this baby too much to hand over the gift now. But that’s it’s on your kitchen table, wrapped and ready.
Hanna Rosin is a writer for the Atlantic and Double X, and the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). The Israeli-born, Queens-reared Rosin lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their three children.
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
May 13, 2009, 12:01pm
Hanna Rosin Has Some Advice for Forward Readers
By Bintel Brief
Hanna Rosin, a writer for the Atlantic and Double X — the Slate Group’s new online magazine for women — will be answering readers’ questions as the Forward’s next guest Bintel Brief advice columnist. Rosin was nominated this year for a National Magazine Award for her Atlantic piece on transgendered children. She is the author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). The Israeli-born, Queens-reared Rosin lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Slate editor David Plotz, and their three children.
The first installment of the Bintel Brief featuring Rosin will be posted at www.forward.com on Monday, May 18. If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, e-mail bintelbrief@forward.com. Questions selected for publication are printed anonymously.
May 3, 2009, 5:33pm
How Should We Honor the Deceased at a Simcha?
By Ed Koch
Dear Bintel Brief:
My son’s bar mitzvah is later this month, and I am so proud of him. At the event, he has expressed a desire to honor his mother, my wife, who died last year after a long illness. But he has also expressed concern that he would be injecting a dose of sadness into what should be a happy event.
Can you offer any suggestions on how we can acknowledge his mother’s absence, all the while keeping the occasion celebratory rather than solemn? And should a tribute to her take place during the service or at the party afterwards?
Thank you.
PROUD DAD
Ed Koch Replies:
Dear Proud Dad:
It is normal and expected that a young man — now 13 — would include his recently deceased mother in his bar mitzvah remarks. All bar mitzvah boys, myself included, refer to our parents in our remarks at the religious ceremony. So encourage him to do so.
Americans, for the most part, fail to understand that death is part of life. Further, we should not constantly be sad when thinking of our deceased loved ones, particularly parents, but rather, think of them, if that was the case, as our protectors when we needed their close supervision and love. Rejoice in their accomplishments when they were here. Remark on what they meant to you in growing up and how they helped form your character.
Whenever the speech of the bar mitzvah boy is regularly scheduled to be held, either at the service or at the following party, is the appropriate place. For me, the choice would be at the service.
All the best.
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