The Voting Rights March

I just registered to participate in the Voting Rights March, which will take place on April 16, DC Emancipation Day.

Like many others living in DC (and hopefully around the country), I was shocked and dismayed at the Republican derailment last week of legislation to give DC residents full voting rights in the House. The bill has bipartisan support (one of the bill's co-sponsor is a Republican from Virginia, Thomas M. Davis III) but the White House and Republican leadership believe it to be unconstitutional. Truth is, I just don't think they care much and that they'd rather not hand the Democrats another victory.

I have no problem with people believing that the bill is unconstitutional- there's serious debate as to whether the bill, as it is currently written, can withstand a constitutional test. But, what about alternatives? If the White House truly believes that the only issue with the current bill is that it is unconstitutional, why not work with legislators- Democrat or Republican, I don't care- to write up something that can pass muster? Or, why not just leave it to the courts to decide?

Here, we have a President who travels all over the world talking about rights and democracy, invades a country and sacrifces the lives of thousands of American soldiers, promising to bring them those rights, and yet, he actively denies citizens of his own country the basic right to vote. And don't forget all the parts of the Constitution that he's stomped on and trashed the last six years. And now he pulls out that very same Constitution to deny 500,000 citizens of his own country the right to vote. It's inconceivable to me that such hypocrisy could exist so blatantly!

So, on April 16, I will participate in my first rally. (I've never been to a rally or a protest before, but that's for another day.) Because this isn't about politics or about left and right. It's about right and wrong. It's about a basic right that I lost once they shredded my NY license at the DMV making me a full-fledged DC resident. A right that was given to me and every other citizen of this country over 200 years ago (well, actually, the right was given to me personally in 1919 and to everyone else who's not white in 1870, but you know what I mean). A right that Iraqis now have, but I don't. And I live in supposedly the freest country in the world.

Join me. If you live in DC, you have no excuse not to march, unless you really don't care about not have a true representative in Congress (for that, you should be ashamed!). If you don't live in DC, use it as an excuse to come visit the nation's capital.

I'm awe struck by John and Elizabeth Edwards. Much has been written about this already, but why not add a bit more to it- the decision to continue the campaign despite Elizabeth's illness is their's alone and I personally give them a lot of credit for fighting on. But the bottom line, it's not my place to judge whether it's good or bad, except whether it can negatively impact the country if Edwards is elected. But that decision will be made at the ballot box, not on this blog.

But that's not what makes me admire them. Have you looked at a picture of them lately? Is there anything phony about how they look at each other, their chemistry, and their love for each other? There really are no words to describe it, besides for describing it as the epitomy of what love in a marriage should be like. Considering their age and what they've been through together-- the normal trials and tribulations of marriage, not to mention illness, the tragic death of a child, a political campaign-- you know it's nothing superficial. They didn't just get married to justify the googley-eye-ness of what's going on between them. Have you ever seen this between a presidential candidate and his wife?

How can you not admire that? How can you not look at those pictures and wish that regardless of what God throws your way, in 30 years, you too can be looking at your spouse with the same devotion, commitment, and love the same way the Edwards do today?

Identity

I've been meaning to write about this since January, but kept on getting distracted. A wedding, buying an apartment, selling an apartment, and moving, not to mention working 40+ hours a week can be somewhat distracting.

The week after my wedding, it hit me: due to social norms and my adherence to an Orthodox lifestyle, I was being forced to actively question my identity- public and private. All of a sudden, I was being asked the same two questions by almost everyone I saw that week (and I saw A LOT of people that week):

1. Are you changing your name? How?
2. Are you going to cover your hair? How?

It's not like I only started to think about these questions after my wedding; on the contrary, they'd been on my mind for months before. But I just never quite put the two together to recognize what an impact it would have on my life and how difficult it would be to decide what my answers would be.

For both these questions, there are so many options. I can keep my last name, hyphenate both names, make my maiden name part of my middle name, or change my name completely by taking on my husband's last name or creating a new last name based on both. I already knew which options I would not take-keeping my last name was out of the question. Why? It just doesn't fit with my belief of what a marriage is. With all due respect to the women out there who have kept there last name or intend to keep it, having a different last name than my husband and/or kids makes things seem very individualistic- like I'm above, or somehow different than my family. A natural outcome of a marriage is forging one family unit (with or without children). Of course, each person within that unit is an individual and within each individual are seperate identities and shared identities, but the sum of the whole is greater then it's parts. As one unit, there should be one merged family identity.

Hyphenating was also not considered an option from the very beginning, but for more practical reasons. Just think about it: Rothschild-Jakabovics? What would the kids say? How would they fill out their SAT bubble sheets? They'd run out of room really quickly. For the sake of our family sanity, I couldn't do that. Some hyphenated names easily roll of the tongue, others, not so much...

But I still can't quite wrap my head around just dropping "Rothschild" completely. (Merging Jakabovics and Rothschild into one name also didn't quite make the cut.) I've lived 28 years with the name. I identify with it- not because of the history of the name itself (my family has no direct link to the wealthy and famous Baron), but because family means so much to me. If I drop the name, do I lose my intrinsic connection to everything that came before my wedding? What happens to everything I accomplished as "Elanit Rothschild"- the book I edited (royalties, baby!), the scholarships I won, the degrees I earned, the articles I wrote, and everything else out there associated with that name? And more simply, I've always been known by my initials, EZR (take a look at the name of this blog- there's meaning behind the words and phrase). Where does it all go? Does everything have to change?

These aren't easy questions to answer; if they were, my name would have already been officially changed. I continue to think twice when I introduce myself to colleagues and clients, when I am asked to fill out my personal information on forms, and when I sign my name. It's tough and I feel uncomfortable with the fact that it's been over two months and I am still undecided.

On the other hand, it continues to annoys me that people assume I changed my name. Out of blue, I received a statement in the mail from Macys addressed to "Elanit Jakabovics." I certainly didn't request a name change! They just assumed that since I registered with them and the wedding date has passed, that now my name has changed. But how do they know? How do the people in my community know? Or my family? Those who have written my name as "Elanit Jakabovics" haven't asked; they just assumed it was so. That bothers me.

It bothers me because they don't recognize the difficulty in all of this. They take it for granted, or it is just expected, that automatically change their name once they get marrierd. But that's not the case, especially not in the 21st Century.

It's a question of identity. Most men don't have to go through this process, but many women do. And especially Jewish women. At different points in our lives, we are asked to make changes to ourselves that force us to shift our perspective on who we are. It may seem petty or even insignificant to some, but in truth, at least to me, it strikes at the core of who I see myself to be, what image I want to project for myself, and how I relate to myself and others.

So the easy way out of this, it seems, is to shift my maiden name to be my second middle name. And as of now, that's the name I have associated with my email address. But I'm not sure it's going to stick. For one, it's a real mouthful. Will I just get tired of it after a while and decide to just stick with one middle name and one last name and be done with it? Will I go by one name professionally and another name socially? I don't want this to be difficult, annoying, and confusing for people, but it's difficult, annoying, and confusing for myself.

I haven't yet made any official changes- we're flying internationally next week and I didn't have enough time to change my passport before purchasing the tickets; that was a real good excuse to just push this decision further down the line. But I'm afraid that by the time I do decide, it will be too late from a public perspective, since everyone knows I got married in January, so what am I doing only deciding to change my name in May?

The hair covering issue gets to the same points. I don't feel strongly either way, so I'm covering my hair by default when I'm not at work and not at home (broadly defined to include my families' homes as well). Why? I don't know. I learned the sources and reasoning behind the halacha, I can't say I'm terribly convinced, but I'm doing it nonetheless. Some will think it's because of social pressure. But I can truthfully say that it's not. A friend of mine said to me a few days before the wedding that he would afford me tremendous respect if I didn't cover my hair after I got married, because, according to his logic, the reasoning doesn't make sense. I thought about that for a little bit- but I guess if I cared what others thought of me, I would specifically decide to not cover my hair so that this person would respect me more, right?

But regardless of how I practice, I still struggle with the meaning of it all. Why is it that women are forced to confront these issues head-on more often then men? I was pretty comfortable with myself before all this. I'm mostly pretty comfortable with myself now, but still feel unsettled about all of it. Am I blowing it all out of proportion?

Real Estate Blues, an update

So although we finally moved into the new apartment, there's still the matter of Andrew's apartment still up in the air. About a week after the apartment went back on the market, we got a few offers and accepted one of them. We went thru the inspection and appraisal processes again and eagerly awaited March 15th, the date the financing contingency was to be lifted. Unfortunately, the buyer never made it to March 15th.

On Wednesday, March 14, the day we moved into the new apartment, we found out that the buyer's financing fell thru. Nothing as exotic as a diplomat not being able to get the right person to waive her immunity; our lives are busy enough as it is at the moment, we could use less drama. No, this time it was simply the fact that the bank didn't believe the buyer would be able to afford two mortgage payments on his salary (he already own one apartment and was planning on using the rent from the first apartment to pay for this one). It was as simple as that. Nothing we could fight against. We felt so helpless; the news totally ruined our first night in our new home.

But, as they say, the sun will come out tomorrow. Our realtors put the apartment back on the market and called a few people who had expressed interest in the apartment last month but missed out. We are expecting a bid to come in today. Third time's a charm?

Moving Day

The movers arrive this morning between 9-930am.

We will start at our storage unit in Alexandria and then pack up all the boxes and furniture left in the apartment. Then we head over to the new place for delivery.

Packing sucks.
Moving sucks.
But knowing that tonight we'll be sleeping in our new home...can't get any sweeter than that.

Disgusted

As I was riding the metro this morning, I pulled out the first section of the Washington Post and started reading this article on the front page. About halfway thru the article, and already on page A-9, my eyes stop dead in their tracks when I see the name of a kid I knew in college named as a co-owner of this message board that's turned into a cesspool of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism. I continued to read on, but my stomach turned. I've read many news stories that have disgusted me, but these felt different, if only because I actually knew one of the people involved- no, not just involved in the story, but the actual instigator of it all!

Read the story. At first, it sounds like regular freedom of speech vs. privacy argument. And there are many debates nowadays about holding bloggers and other internet posters accountable for their words. But reading on, you see how this is different.

Women are threatened with violence. Identities are being stolen.

And then you read this classic line:

The two men said that some of the women who complain of being ridiculed on AutoAdmit invite attention by, for example, posting their photographs on other social networking sites, such as Facebook or MySpace.

Invite attention? So because many women post their photographs on other sites, they deserve to be ridiculed, made fun of, insulted, harrassed, and threatened on AutoAdmit? Um, doesn't this ring a bell?!?!

But the next paragraph is the clincher. Given how the article started-- students losing out on prospective jobs because employers Googled them and found negative things written about them online-- one wonders why the writer buried it all the way at the end of the article:

Cohen said he no longer keeps identifying information on users because he does not want to encourage lawsuits and drive traffic away. Asked why posters could not use their real names, he said, "People would not have as much fun, frankly, if they had to worry about employers pulling up information on them."

So, let me get this straight: the posters are supposed to post their messages anonymously so that they don't have to worry about employers pulling up this info on them, but they are allowed to write disparagingly about others and use their victims' real names, thus basically ensuring public hell and embarassment to those they are writing about?

And the cherry on top: People would not have AS MUCH FUN. So it's a game now? It's not really about freedom of speech and providing an online forum for the "marketplace of ideas," and the "exchange of ideas." This message board is for people to have fun. I see now.

It sickens me that a law student such as Ciolli can't distinguish between moderation and censorship, and can't stand up for the integrity of his own website and services. The "freedom of speech" be-all and end-all is not the holy grail. There's a responsibility that comes with the freedoms and protections in our Bill of Rights, and for a lawyer-in-training to just shrug his shoulders at these abuses of that right, actively allowing it to go on, is appalling. But then again, I guess I already knew that, since he pulled the same crap at Queens College 4 years ago.