Monsey and Rebellion

It’s a funny thing and I say this a lot to people. I only lived in Monsey for two years but for some reason people still associate me with Monsey. The truth of the matter is that I lived in Miami for fourteen years and I am only really in touch with one of my friends from back then. In contrast to that I still have a very good connection to the people that I became friends with during the two years that I lived in Monsey.
What the hell is Monsey anyway?
Before I get into Monsey I really need to talk about Miami and LA a bit. Truth be told I could sum it all up into one sentence, six words. Miami- bubble, LA- prison, Monsey- rebellion.

Feb/25/1997

So here is where my journal started. My very first entry is about a day in the life. I almost missed the bus for school. This is not surprising at all because I would stay up until two in the morning every night and I would a lot of times go to sleep in my clothing so that I wouldn’t need to get dressed in the morning. This day two of my friends, leby and ari, got busted by the roshyesheva for smoking cigarettes. I smoked my first cigarette since I was in Brooklyn, which I have no note of when that was. But I do have that I smoked this cigarette by stoge rock. That night I spoke to toby on the phone for the first time in about two months and then I spoke to josh about ending it with this girl.
Now there is a lot of explaining and background to go through for anyone to understand what was actually going on here. For example what the hell is stoge rock? Who are these people? Where is this taking place?
Well the backdrop for this story is Monsey NY. We were all just a bunch of Jewish teenagers growing up in an ultraorthodox community that put on us way to many rules. They say that rules are made to be broken but the problem with that is that once you start breaking the rules, you break them one after another. Trampling each one underfoot you run ahead smashing through restriction. Severing all the chains that bound you. Racing into the horizon, to freedom. The problem is that for some of us freedom was a freefall and we didn’t stop until we hit the bottom. We learnt too late that the last cords we cut were our safety line.

Being a teenager

I would guess that we all have similar stories about growing up and being adolescents. The thing is that I wrote a lot down in a journal that I still have today. One of the reasons I would keep it was so that when I got older I wouldn’t forget what it was like and I really hoped that it would help me to better understand my own kids. So here I am I am 29 and I actually have kids of my own. But the oldest one is only five and this old journal that I have is starting to fall apart. So I figure I will start to put down this information from my old journal on to this blog.
A lot of the things that I have written down are really just facts about what happened in my day to day life but there are also some deeper insights into how I thought and felt at the time.

Gray water

OK so i Will give a ten minute blog post for the sole purpose of writing. do you know that with the water the you use to wash dishes, shower, wash your hand and brush your teeth. you could grow enough vegetables for two people. i have a really big garden and i use only gray water from my house to water it. the crazy thing is that i probably only use about half of my gray water.

My Job

Last night I was at a wedding and someone asked me what I am doing now for work. I answered him that I am back working security. Now I live in Israel and me and most of my friends served in the IDF in this one infantry unit. So working security for us is all ways a sure way to make a decent living and pay the bills. The thing that is different about my current security job is that I actually work for a Palestinian contractor who builds Jewish homes in the west bank towns. Now the reason that this is interesting is because it’s a military law that creates the need for my kind of a job. The Law says that any Palestinian working in the west bank towns needs to have an armed escort. The reason for this is that in the past there has been numerous cases where a Palestinian worker, in some cases that had been working for the same Jewish person for ten years and even more, that one day decided to go jihad and kill his boss in the name of Allah. So what I do is I pick these workers up at the entrance to the town. I wand them down and check their bags. Then I sit by the construction site in my little shade hut that I made out of a cardboard box. Some rebar and a old table I found in the trash. It’s a good job. The pay is good and I get to write this blog.

Health and Ecology

I personally see it as a fact that everything that we do that is bad for the environment is also bad for our health as human beings. This should be a convincing factor in showing people that we need to live in harmony with the natural world. Take for example air pollution, bad for the environment and bad for us. The green house gases in our earth’s atmosphere are causing global warming. Did you know that researchers are finding large numbers of polar bears that are drowning to death because of the melting polar icecaps? Did you also know that air pollution has been linked to respiratory problems such as asthma and even lung cancer? So do yourself and the planet a favor be, earth conscious. Whenever you can walk don’t drive. Use reusable bags when you shop, and spread the word.