"Tell me about your experience/upbringing as a Filipino Jew and the challenges you have confronted as a Jew of Color?" — Akira Ohiso, Zinc Plate Press
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Ima {Taglit-Tagalog for "Mother"} Virginia was the primary nurse for New Square's Rebbitzen during the 1980s. I distinctly recall her endearing smile and waving from her bedside. The curious neighborhood Orthodox Jewish children reminded me of the provincial squalor kids in Quezon City, Philippines. I'm not sure who threw stones at me anymore.
Ima worked the night shift for many years. I think I've inherited her alertness, in that respect. I take intermittent naps, throughout the day. I suppose I can wake up on time for mid-day prayers more often, actually.
Ima was really quite beautiful in her innocence and long, ebony bangs — upon immigrating Stateside. We don't talk much these days. A silent, bitter recognition. And her hair has had the natural appearance of a Sheitel since (she's a cancer survivor).
Each year, she plants Ampalaya in her exotic garden.
Inspired by Kuya Matthue Roth
Then there's David Levi, an old soulful teen crashing in a Monsey basement, below a renovated Yeshiva-residence. One morning, a spattering of shocked students stand at attention, upon my fashionably-late, but desperate disruption, beside the bimah. The Rabbi puts his index finger to the lips, completes a prayer in whispers, while I catch my breath, then escorts me to where David was couch-surfing. From the top of the stairs, pre-pubescent kids peek in on our drowsy conversation, cajoling David to "daven with us." Unwavering, they shut the door, continue to shift their wooden chairs, back and forth, the shadowy ceiling screeching above us. He was cursing up a storm, really sore at the general state of things. We decide to sneak out and go on a simkha ride to Brooklyn, chain-smoking Reds along West Side Highway (eventually ending up at an Egyptian Hookah bar on the Lower East Side)... Finally come home, the following foggy morning, where he proceeds to take the wheel of my ghetto vehicle, embodying Neo-Speedracer: papawheeling over suburban curbs, skidding DNA knots around the pristine block, all the while ignoring my pleas, lingol, and wrecking the breakpad in the process.
David told me he only dons a yarmulke when traveling through Monsey, as a sign of respect, honor; otherwise, he's just like any anonymous rebellious punk — Hasidic Hitchhiker — getting their kicks along this pearl-studded journey of ours known as Mabuhai.
I think that's why Eliyahu Ha'Navi ascended to Shamayim in a fiery chariot so hastily:
He needed a new kippah.
We're still rebuilding Bahay Yosef, where identifying as Filipin@ and Jewish is a work-in-progress, much like an impending marriage: Loneliness — a memory album of loved ones our only companion — until a Bamboo Ketubah exchange at the altar between Yesha-Efrayim.
And I miss giving complimentary Poi shows to off-duty IDF soldiers in Tel Aviv (aka The Little Manila of Israel), very, very much.
Menorah in front of Knesset
Crouching Eli, Engaged Yin & Yang
In the meantime, I cherish the company of Heavenly Birds — from Eagles to Pigeons to Sparrows to Ravens to Duchifat to Doves to Twitter-Anghélim.
Ibónim
Inspired by Ate Aliza Hausman
I worked as a Mental Health Worker in Westchester, New York (home to Professor Xavier's Shul for Gifted Youngsters) — where I'd have a hasty smoke during lunch breaks. Remember the time, when the concentration camps were finally liberated? When the prisoners of hope were given cigarettes by the army companies: and ravaged them, they were so famished? One day, I realized I had no matches left in my book. Since Filipinim are known to scavenge for manna in wilderness shantytowns, I naturally bowed my head, my pearl vision cast to the ground, scanning the periphery about me, dejected. Like Aba. Suddenly, I notice a bird land on the stairs leading up to the entrance of the youth ward. I squint, as it pecked away, knocking on the concrete slab — weeds and tiny sticks and leaves, rustling. Instinctively, the bird soars, when I notice a single, unlit match buried among the thorns...
