The Last Exile

This is one of those posts which really is a marker for myself rather than of important for the wider world.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is the spiritual adviser of the Israeli political party representing Sephardi Judaism in the Knesset. Eli Yishai may be the public leader of Shas in the Knesset but he gets his direction and policies and talking points from the Rabbi. Last week Rabbi Yosef issued a religious decision surprising for a semi-secular like myself for its progressive compassion. Ynet News:

In an unprecedented halachic ruling, Shas’ spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has allowed a woman pregnant by artificial insemination to marry a man who is not the father of the developing child. M., a 44-year old religious woman, decided to get pregnant through a sperm bank because she feared she would not be able to conceive if she waited any longer.

However immediately after her insemination she met a 50-year old widower and the two quickly decided to wed, after the latter accepted responsibility for the child. The couple immediately ran into trouble: According to the Jewish halacha, a pregnant woman is not allowed to marry any man who is not the father for 24 months after the birth. The ruling preserves the unborn child’s rights. Rabbis explain that if the woman becomes pregnant again within the two years that follow the birth, the mother may stop producing milk for the baby.

The couple appealed to the local rabbinate, but was forbidden to marry. They then turned to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that the mother may use milk substitutes to feed her child if she conceives again in the coming years. Attorney Zuriel Bublil, who helped the couple with their appeal, was pleased with the result. “This is an unprecedented ruling that will help women coming to the end of their fertility,” he said.

I won’t get into all the details but for a single Jewish religious woman to go to a sperm bank to be inseminated is remarkable in of itself but to have Rabbi Yosef rule such as; is positively earth shattering. Some days, I really think I lost out on the tradition lottery.

I am not a hardcore biker and just bought a bicycle last summer after an over 30+ year hiatus from biking. While the weather has somewhat warmed up it is still not warm enough for me to get the bike out of my bedroom and hit the city roads again. Over the fall and winter I have been watching the Toronto bike-car wars and I have to say its quite discouraging that drivers in general refuse not only to share the roads safely but refuse to follow the rules of the road. Even more discouraging is the fact the Toronto Police refuse to enforce the traffic laws. Case in point – this Toronto Star article on the innate problems with the bike lane on Simcoe Street”

On Wednesday, a uniformed police officer ushered taxis into the centre’s parking lot. He didn’t chastise them for clogging the bike lane, or for idling, which carries a fine of up to $5,000. When the Star asked him to clear the bike lane, he said he’d “call someone.”

Why a Toronto Police officer couldn’t do it himself is beyond me. Who knew traffic law enforcement remains the exclusive purview of only some cops? The Toronto Star article goes on:

Minutes ticked by. A cyclist stopped to make the same request. “I’m pissed off and frustrated,” said the cyclist, Daniel Hall. On his way south to the ferry docks, Hall was attempting to use the lane for the first time. Instead, he found cars backed up all the way from Bremner Blvd. to Front St.

The officer finally said he’d notified parking enforcement. While waiting for them to show up, the Star chatted with a few drivers. When told it was illegal to stand in a bike lane, some said, “No it’s not,” and others, “It’s only for today.” Beck and Royal taxi dispatchers said they’d get their cars to leave the lane, but no one did.

Twenty minutes after the officer called for parking enforcement, no one had shown up. So, the Star called and was told a car would be sent out. Thirty-five minutes later, the lane was still full of idling cars.

Believe it or not there is a $60 fine for parking in a bike lane and if your car is idling the fine can go up to $5,000. The first time I rode south on Sherbourne from Bloor Street East in the designated bike lane I had to merge into fast moving traffic or hit a delivery van in front of the Sherbourne Medical Centre. Not only was the van in the bike lane he was strategically parked on the clearly marked “No Parking or Stopping Anytime’ sign. A pedestrian waiting at the bus stop just passed the parked van kept screaming at me “Lady don’t do it – just use the sidewalk for G-d’s sake. It wasn’t a one-off experience and the driver was parked there just after 4pm everyday I rode home. This year I am ready for him.

This very well may be one of those theories which no one can definitively prove beyond a doubt but I am utterly entranced with the idea it was religion which spawned not only civilization but art. Newsweek:

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches.

Maybe there is more to this ‘god’ gene business than I originally gave any credit to. But a standing stone temple being built 7,000 years before the pyramids – it boggles the mind…with endless possibilities and even more questions. I swear having only one life to live is just too damn short for the endless possibilities which the pursuit of knowledge offers.

In my other blog incarnation, I refused to weigh into the abortion debate. It always seems like such a lose-lose scenario, and rather pointless to wade in the fray – since there are no possible words to change any one’s point of view. This is one of the few issues which can only be definitively decided on an individual basis and meditated by one’s life experience.

I was pro-choice long before there was any choice, but what a great many on the ‘pro-life’ side forget to address is this; there more than one alleged right to life they should be busy defending. Get as fetists as you want in the posters, get graphic, hand out bloody dolls, coins, or whatever – but understand this – all you have accomplished is to turn any sane or reasonably minded individual against your point of view. Beating up clerks or doctors just paints you as thugs…and bombing clinics and murdering doctors is an unforgivable act of urban terrorism and put you squarely on the same side as the Taliban.

On the other hand, it was not until I had carried a fetus to full-term and given birth that I was able to succinctly answer the question; when does life begin? Now I know but even being able to answer it seems like a useless kind of thing to know. While I may appreciate the fact that life begins at conception; whose right’s trumps whose body? Here is the thing – while I can appreciate the miracle of being – I would not willingly force or compel any female to carry a fetus to term against her will since the physical well-being of that fetus is entirely dependent on the level of physical care exercised by the host-female. A woman is more than a womb.

Years ago, a Toronto Star columnist, (I believe it was Rosie Di-Manno) wrote a column lamenting the fact a woman had 17 abortions and counting. Di-Manno is probably as pro-choice as one could get, but even for her, this woman’s actions were well over the bounds of civilized behaviour. I always thought she had it wrong. The more willingly a woman is to use abortion as a form of birth control shows absolutely her general unfitness for even being a surrogate motherhood to a child who would, in the best case scenario, be destined to be discarded at birth.

And in the pro-life camp, I would like to ask; how far are you willing to go to restrain me from having an abortion if I deemed it is necessary? Will you bind my hands and feet to keep me from reaching for a coat hanger or a knitting needle? Does that sound too extreme? I would remind you of the time when the law of the land criminalized abortion and literally thousands of women preferred to risk jail and gamble on death rather than give birth.

Ask yourself – how far will are you really prepared to go? Will you be satisfied if you jail and make me a criminal because I refuse to become a host for another human? This is the path of the Handmaiden’s Tale and I will not let you lead me, my daughter, or even her daughter, there without a fight. Know this, I am not shy to shed much blood protecting my right to my own person or my liberty. Instead, I suggest you content yourself with imagining me and my sisterhood’s eternal damnation in the world to come.

When I first heard the Order of Canada was to be bestowed upon Dr. Henry Morgentaler, I was shocked, and thought – egad an abortionist has been awarded the Order of Canada. Why would the committee award the honour to someone who divides us??? Since then, I have a chance to read the papers and both pro & choice blogs, but mostly, it has caused me to reflect what life was like before Dr. Morgentaler fought the government and won. Well, he might divide us, but no woman in this country is driven in despair to reach for a coat-hanger or knitting needle and risk death or jail, and in my mind, for that fact alone, he deserves it, and my freedom demands it.

And for those of you who think a woman cannot be trusted to make the right decision, a decision which is in her own best interests, I ask you this; why does the expression and fulfillment of your value system demand a ‘woman’ give way to the despair of the coat hanger?

I cannot be the keeper of anyone’s conscience, and instead, I will trust women to be their own keepers.

I am growing older. I don’t even need to look into a mirror for the obvious confirmation signs to be reflected back at me. When it takes nine plus days and I still haven’t bounced back from vacation mode – well, it’s simply telling – isn’t it?

Not only am I growing older but I am starting to feel ‘older’ which is worse. My relationship towards my possessions is now getting disturbing in that peculiar senior way. For example, I find the loss or aging of things most disturbing. Rather than greet it with a ‘hooray’ and see it as an opportunity to go out and buy new fun stuff; I mourn their loss/passing.

Case in point – my Roots Venetian Village flat bag is on its last legs. The inside lining is completely shot. I can no longer clean the stains off the outside the bag and the China Red dye is either bleeding off in patches or completely worn away at the corners. All of this wouldn’t necessarily put me in shelving mode but the shoulder strap is holding on with only a prayer and a miracle. Four years of toting this handbag every day through rain, sleet, snow and sunshine without a single thought to the rough treatment metered out…and now it’s finally succumbing.

I have travelled everywhere possible with this bag and everything fits in it – including a book and often lunch – plus a bottle of cognac. Okay, maybe a small bottle. I am trying to console myself with thinking thoughts about replacing it in dark chocolate brown or black but it’s not all that inspiring – especially when my mind drifts to the price of a new one. And if that wasn’t bad enough – apparently Roots has sold out of the bags…..

I was born travelling and some of my earliest memories are in riding a car literally all over the eastern seaboard of North America. Travelling was second nature to me. I remember my first day of holidays in July 1990 when I woke up and decided I needed to be anywhere but where I was. I packed a light travel carry-on bag and caught a cab out to Pearson International Airport. The first flight leaving after my arrival was to Vancouver so I paid cash for a ticket 20 minutes before departure and took my seat on the plane. I spent two weeks living in a small bed and breakfast in downtown Vancouver. It wasn’t the first time I did that but it was the last. One cannot do that anymore – or at least you cannot do it without a great deal of hassle with presumed flags raised against your name…well, unless you are wealthy Nigerian and get on a plane in Laos with changeover in Amsterdam

In the past year, I spent more time commuting between the eastern and western Canada and was forced to acknowledge some aspects of my personality had changed and not necessarily for a more pleasant me. My preferred method of transportation is anything over flying and I am no longer a good traveller. The constant hurry up and endless waiting of air travel; the rules, the restrictions drive my tolerance level for bullshit to ‘E’ for empty. I am no one’s favoured customer. If I had my way, the 9/11 Hijackers would not have died in their attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre but instead would be left in my care so I could torture them at will for all the horrendous changes for the worse their hijacking of those planes created.

The main lesson I took from the 9/11 Commission Report was the conclusion that it was primarily a failure of imagination on the part of those entrusted with security. The lesson I take from the North Western Air plane by a disenfranchised radicalized Nigerian is simply this; it was a human failure to implant and follow up established procedures.

So today, due to a new whole host of restrictive security regulations being implemented to flying into the United States to compensate for human failure; I simply choose never to fly into the US or have a changeover occur on US soil. I’ll gladly pay more not to be needless harassed in an experience that is already overtly invasive and restrictive. I chose not to sit for an hour held hostage with my hands clearly visible in my lap without benefit of book, blanket, pillow or iPod. I have broken no laws and do not wish anyone harm but those already long dead. If the freedom of our society is worth preserving the way to do so is not with endless restriction and regulation against the law-abiding nature of many against the risk of a few. Life is fraught with risk; some known but mostly not. I’d rather live a life unknown freely than a live a life regulated and govern by endless governmental restrictions and regulations.

Recently, I have taken to playing a game which my co-workers refer to as ’survivor’. What this means it I am leaving work every day in the midst of the downtown rush hour and riding my bike home. I suspect these people are actually taking bets on whether I come in or not in the morning ‘unscathed’ by my experiences. I am quickly coming to the opinion that either cars will have to be banned from roads on the downtown core or real bike lanes (raised roads and clearly marked) rather than the painted lines which a great many car drivers seem to have this strange affinity to driving or parking in.

Last night after trying to manoeuvre around a van whose driver thought nothing of parking in the bike lane which was clearly marked by a sign reading ‘NO PARKING” and nearly getting killed for my effort to merge into traffic to go around said van. In fact, a pedestrian was shouting at me “Lady don’t do it. For the love of G-d, don’t do it – take the sidewalk.”

Cyclists and drivers have been very much in the local news lately and I got a real moment of envy from this tidbit from an interview with a Toronto Police Constable who helped found the Toronto police bike unit.

You must get respect as a cyclist in police uniform, but what about in your own recreational cycling?

If you’re in a uniform, yeah, you get respect. But sometimes you get too much respect.

Let’s say I want to make a left turn … I stick that left arm out. Well, here’s a police officer in uniform sticking his arm out going southbound on Yonge St., and I’ve got two lanes of traffic come to a screeching halt because they think I’m directing traffic. Or they don’t want to hit a police officer.

This is the kind of respect as a middle-aged cyclist I can only dream of having. The really sad part is how gob-smacking fearful so many of my younger co-workers are at even the idea of riding a bike on the downtown streets. Its not other cyclists who scare them but the complete disregard so many, many car drivers have for the rules of the road.

I learned to roller blade when I was 35 and it was great fun as far as it goes, but at the time, the children were really too young to keep up with me on skates, and by the time they could, no one had a interest to do so. My roller blades wore out and I never got new ones.

When I was five my father took me out to Canadian Tire to get a new bicycle for my birthday. It would be a real grown up CCM bike. In fact, the bike was so grown up he bought a 18” frame with 26” sized wheels figuring this way he would never have to buy me another bike. I crashed head-first into the ditch the first time I took the bike out. The crash mangled me up pretty much as well as the bike. My father blamed me for the incident and refused to ever get me another a bicycle owing to my ‘carelessness’. It was my grandfather who saved the day and took me back to Canadian Tire to buy a more appropriate sized bicycle

I got my last bike when I was 13. My mother bought it for my birthday. I wanted one of the new ‘3′ speed bikes which had just come on the market. Instead, my mother bought me a high end English Lady’s riding bike because she didn’t want me to go any ‘faster’ on the road. I was deeply disappointed and I never rode that bike after the first time wobbling around the apartment building complex parking lot. You see, at just barely 5′1” my feet couldn’t even touch the ground with my legs stretched straight out and my toes pointed. My mother never learned how to ride a bike so the nuance of having a bicycle sized appropriately was lost on her, besides, she figured I would one day grow into the bike and refused to take it back to get me one more my size. I never rode a bike again till Isaiah Sender brought home the 22′ speed racing bike his grandmother bought him for his 12th birthday. She paid more for that bike than I ever would have and it cost almost as much as my rent on my 3 bedroom flat in downtown Toronto. Needlessly to say, it suited him perfectly. Yes, at 12 he was already towering over me and he still has room to grow with the bike. I took his bike out for a turn which necessitated the tribe coming and watching as they had several large and persistent doubts I could actually ride a bike. The Last Amazon brought the first aid kit thinking it would probably come in handy. While Isaiah Sender’s bike was really too big for me I discovered it is true – one never forgets how to ride a bike and I remembered how much fun it was to ride.

So for the next three years I kept threatening to buy myself a bike and just never got around to it; till this, my 47th birthday. I went off to Canadian Tire and bought myself the cheapest 18th speed bike I could get sized appropriately for me. Apparently, I most suited for a ‘youth’ bike. Isaiah Sender came with me and insisted on following beside me on the way home. I tried to give him my transit pass so he could take the subway home but he insisted on running beside me to ensure I didn’t get into any harm in the traffic. I learned a multitude of lessons. Isaiah Sender is in remarkable shape and a five km bike drive was pushing it for a 47th year old woman who hasn’t done any serious biking riding in the last 30 plus years. I will obviously have to work up to the up hill 2 km ride before I take the bike to work. I also learned Toronto’s roads are in appalling shape and I need to change the seat on my bike to something a with a more padding that would be kinder to my privates. And having ‘handy’ sons is wonderful for getting one’s ride ‘pimped’ out with fenders, bottle holder and the requisite old lady basket…or I suspect needing the seat changed.