à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Judaism
Of this Daughter and “Son of Saul”
I am beginning to conclude that the past is always present. On January 11th I received a Facebook message from the mother of the Hungarian family that hosted me as a college student. “If possible,” she wrote in Hungarian, “go see ‘Son of Saul’. It just won a Golden Globe.” I Googled it. Learning that the film takes place at Auschwitz, … Continue reading
Do Cars Have Souls? Cars and Karma, Revisited
My family of origin has a habit of driving cars until the final death rattle, even patched together with duct tape. When, a few years ago, a brother asked me if I was still driving the same car, I found the question odd. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to get a different vehicle simply because I … Continue reading
CHECK ENGINE: Of Cars, Karma, Gurus and Rabbis
[Dear Readers: This is a long essay. The narrative is not linear, it contains at least one four letter word, references to sexual scandal (not mine), and cars! It’s not the usual fare. Happy New Year!]. When I lived in Colorado, my Subaru Forrester’s check engine light went on intermittently, for days or weeks, before switching … Continue reading
Prelude to My Essay on Hevria
Mine is a complicated if not convoluted soul. Sometimes it reveals a side of itself that has been hidden so long I’ve forgotten about it, or assumed it no longer existed. In recent years, I’ve experimented with further loosening my already weak and ambivalent ties to Judaism, my birth religion, whose wisdom teachings and sacred chanting … Continue reading
What’s Crazy? Who’s Crazy? On Feldenkrais, Israel, Self-Image
How would you protect yourself if a crazy person attacked you with a knife? It’s a question many of us have never needed to consider. But it was a question Moshe Feldenkrais had to answer when, as an early settler in what was then Palestine, Arabs frequently attacked Jews, who were forbidden by the British Mandate from carrying weapons. … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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