When I came to The Journal as a copy editor and had the opportunity to write and edit stories and interview celebrities (both real and pseudo), I couldn\’t have imagined a better job. Then came the curveball: In addition to writing and editing, I was asked to coordinate the obituaries. Ouch.
Recently, I found myself spellbound while watching \”Girl With a Pearl Earring.\” This film, based on the excellent Tracy Chevalier novel, is a fictional account of the history behind Vermeer\’s famous painting of the same name. The novel revolves around a servant girl, Grete, who became a secret assistant to the painter in his studio. In one scene, Vermeer accidentally glimpses Grete with her hair uncovered. The moment is electric. Grete, like all women of her social station, covered her hair at all times. It was as if Vermeer had caught her unclothed.
I\’m no longer a virgin. To Israel, that is. This single babe just returned from her maiden voyage to the land of milk and honey. And all I can say is — there were a lot of honeys. Jewish men everywhere.
In the restaurants, on the streets, in the shops — I didn\’t know where to flirt first. Forget a kid in a candy store, I was like a Jew in a bagel store. I\’ll take a dozen — hot ones if you have them. Israel is a single Jewish girl\’s fantasy.
There is something otherworldly about the experience of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. It is perhaps the preeminent spiritual-cultural paradox in all of Jewish life. When girls and boys focus so intensely on this personal lifecycle event, each possesses a transcendent, timeless and eternal quality.
I can\’t remember a word spoken by Ira Goldstein, the Plainview (NY) High School valedictorian, Class of 1965, but I\’m sure his graduation address was brilliant. Ira, who apparently was in the Philosophy Club with me for three now-forgotten years, was the most brilliant boy in a class of brilliant boys. Girls were \”smart\” or \”sweet\” in those days; boys were \”brilliant.\”
\”The difficult he does quickly; the impossible takes a little
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