Mental Illness

I clearly must have some sort of mental illness that affects religious girls of my age. The sickness of my soul is as follows almost every night this week I dreamed about a wedding.

1) I dreamed that it was the day before my wedding and nothing was organised. I didn’t have a dress or a venue or caterers or photographers and nobody was invited yet. Then the groom rocked up with his mother. Only then did I discover that I was marrying a Thailandi migrant worker. His very old and wrinkled mother was very happy that he was marrying a white girl. I however was very confused how any of this came to be.

2) I dreamed that my friend and I had to pretend to be married to allow him to stay in the country. In order to fool the authorities we decided that throwing a sheva brachot party is the way to convince them that we are a real married couple. However the only couple we could find to throw a party for were Druze. This presented its own problems since the Druze women wouldn’t sit at the same table as the men. Just as we were trying to settle this, the authorities came and we had to pretend that the party was going really well while all around us the Druzim were fighting and yelling at eachtoher. Very strange indeed.

3) I dreamed that I was at an Ethiopian wedding and I was trying to get a tremp (lift) back to Jerusalem. But I don’t peak Amharic so it was impossible to communicate with the guests. There were also many many guests and being quite little, I was feeling very crushed by the masses.

4) I dreamed that I was marrying a boy from my home town. There were once again lots of logistical problems with the wedding – the venue didn’t have any tables or chairs and the chupa was too short for us to stand under. So I met up with him to discuss these problems but then Igot really upset that this was going to ruin my bedeken.

What we see from these dreams is that I clearly have anxiety about marriage/weddings since none of these dreams were positive or happy. They were all stressfull and overwhelming. I think this makes sense since many of my friends are married or are getting married and sometimes I suppose I feel super overwhelmed by this, hence the dreams. Thanks Freud. Oh and I have penis envy and mother issues.

In other news the yomim noraim zionim were wonderful – I went to a tekes at kikar rabin – there were like 10,000 people there, it felt like I was there with the entire nation. The next day I went to Har Herzl. The night of yom haatzmaut was spent dancing rikudei am in kikar safra and watching the many concerts around the centre of town. In traditional style the day was spend at a barbeque in gan sacher. It was different however because ours was vegetarian.

All in all it was a beautiful Zionist experience. Golda would have been proud.

So it turns out you can go home...

I visited my home town of Melbourne for the past little bit and it was a delightful trip.

I really enjoyed taking a holiday in the city of my youth b/c I already knew where all the cool places were to hang out and I have a thing for nostalgia. Heck, I was nostalgic for Australia ever before I'd left.

I flew via Amman, Jordan and Doha, Qatar on Qatar Airways. Really good airline and this route was about $1,000 cheaper than El Al. It was concerning however seeing so many women in niqabs and burkas. Like, it's one thing to see pictures, it's another thing to be sitting next to them. Furthermore there were toddlers in hijabs. Like, toddlers, who could not construct sentences or control their bowels were dressed in hijabs. Concerning to say the least. Amusingly, there was one woman in a niqab who had the back of her dress tucked up into her undies by accident so the whole back of her legs were showing - but her face wasn't. Hilarious and strange.

Basically, immediately after I landed we went straight into wedding madness. We had the hens night at my place. In honour of this I baked (with some accomplices) many sex cookies of penises and vaginas and boobs - yay! Funsies! The hens night was fun, we went to a burlesque show and then went skinny dipping. The bride's sister then proceeded to attempt to hail a taxi in nothing but pearls, a fur collar and heels. We eventually persuaded her to put on a mini-skirt and not get arrested for public indecency. All in all, a wonderful night.

We also had an oneg shabbat and the shabbat kallah lunch at my place. It was lovely catching up with all my old friends and the bridesmaids lunch was also fun.

Saturday night I did not do much except help the bride decorate her chuppah. It was actually a really delightful thing to do, a little bit emotional even. Nah, not really.

Sunday was the big day. We had early morning make-up and hair to be done, which was actually super fun in a kinda misogynistic sort of way. It then came to light that I was a massive douchebag/asshole/fuckwit who was wearing a black dress while everybody else was wearing very very blue dresses.

It was NAVY I tell you! NAVY!!!!!

Anyways, so yeah, I ruined the bridal party and ruined the wedding and probably ruined their marriage as well.

What an asshole.

But moving right along, the wedding was at a beautiful homestead past the airport (meaning like an hour away from the ghetto). The weather picked right up and it became a beautiful sunny summer afternoon. The chuppah was very nice and so was the rabbi (I may have a slight crush on him and his liberal orthodox tendencies).

We then had photos and nibbles and a wonderful dance bracket. The band were awesome. They were a gypsy band who also happen to sound a bit klezmer. It was really great fun. Also a point of pride for me is that I danced all through every single dance bracket and did not take off my heels at all. Sorry, feet. I couldn't even tell you what we ate b/c I didn't pay any attention to it but the croque en bouche instead of the wedding cake was a delicious idea.

The wedding started at 3pm and ended at about 10pm, which is a very reasonable time to end on a Sunday night.

A final note on the wedding was that it only had about 140 guests (including children). Very reasonable if you ask me.

Apart from that, the following week was made up of sheva brachot, movie seeings, beach outings, shopping expeditions and lots and lots of coffee catchups. Ahhh, Melbourne coffee, mmmmm.

The following shabbat we had 20 people over for friday night sheva brachot (which was better than the predicted 27 attendees). There was another sheva brachot the following afternoon, which brilliant because all the kids I used to lead were there and made me really miss youth movements. And youth in general.

Saturday night I spent watching srugim with my mum. Nati is such an asshole and yifat is sooooooo nebbish. Google it.

Sunday, I went with to the Camberwell markets with my friend from Baltimore who's in Oz on exchange and then out to coffee with the bride and my best friend (to clarify, that's one person) to our favorite coffee place in St.Kilda. Ironically, it's called "Lost For Words."

Then a hop, skip and a jump onto a plane for 2 days worth of flying to mess up your system so that today, Friday, many days after I landed, I am still jet-lagged. Shlash, recovering from the lack of sleep that I endured in the name of being social in Melbourne.

Last night I bailed on an engagement l'chayim to sleep but it's ok because I have another one on Motzash. Wooooo!

Shabbat is in Netanya.

And so ends the post about my trip back home.

Shabbat Shalom y'all.