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Kristina
It was a very small place with a few tables upstairs and only two bar tables downstairs by the counter. We liked it there very much. It was one of the first places in
Kristina was one of the regular waiters in the Club, but she was much more than just a waitress. When she was there, she was in charge not only of the kitchen and the tables, but also, it seemed, of the guests.
The restaurant opened at noon. Kristina would come two minutes before noon, change quickly in the small room downstairs into a clingy white T-Shirt, black mini skirt and black shoes. Her hair was light brown with blond highlights, wavy with lots of hairspray in it. She used makeup at all times, but not excessively. She went to the tanning salon every week, and always looked like someone who just returned from an exotic vacation, but it also made people speculate about her being Roma. Her light green eyes and her professional smile were ready for the costumers at about 12.15.
Kristina knew she was very sexy and made great advantage of it. Both men and women tippet her gladly for she made them feel special. Guests who came in the Club just for her, sat at the counter. There were three seats, at other times empty, but when Kristina was there, they were taken, sometimes by the same people, for hours. She liked to entertain them, play music for them, dance to the music when downstairs was not crowded and to flirt.
At busy nights, and weekend afternoons, there were two waiters taking care of costumers. Kristina would take the upstairs tables, so she could get away from the other waiter and the kitchen and talk to her friends. She had many friends she liked to talk to. Time was not of great concern of hers, neither were hungry costumers, who, if they came at the wrong time, waited for their orders forever. The cook, Magdika, would sometimes lose her patience, and come look for Kristina or simply shut the music and scream Kristina’s name as long as it took for her to come down. Even in this case, Kristina made sure her descending the spiral staircase was something that turned all heads. Magdika, a plump woman in her late 50s, was not very fond of Kristina. She did not approve of the loud music, of the dancing, joking and above all, flirting with guests of either gender. Magdika also resented Kristina for her big tips and her refusing to take a burned pizza to a costumer. In the kitchen, Magdika was the boss. Or so she thought.
After moving to
Many months passed until Kristina realized that she will not be able to support her boyfriend, her disabled younger brother in a special ed school and her mother in the countryside. She moved out and Peti miraculously found a job the week after.
But the relationship was over, mostly because Kristina fell in love with a young woman, Viki, who hung out with her friends at the Club. Falling for the charming waitress who looked a little like Madonna, Viki started going to the club on her own. She started sitting at the counter at lunchtime, when the place was empty, so they can talk. On weekends, she came back at midnight to go with Kristina to a gay club. A few weeks passed and Kristina moved in with Viki.
Being a young professional with a 9-5 job, Viki was quite comfortable in her life. She was out to her family, but not her colleagues, partly because she wanted to progress in her carrier. To be with woman in a relationship was new to Kristina. She had a hard time telling her ex-boyfriend, who she was still friends with and her family, but eventually, she did. She and Viki visited Kristina’s brother often, taking him out for dinner and movies, for which Viki paid. The couple seemed happy.
After a year, Kristina started complaining to her friends in the Club, “Viki is like a zombie. She comes home and sits in front of the TV all the time. She doesn’t want to go anywhere.” Viki started complaining to her friends, “Kristina always wants to go to dance or to dinner or to visit her mother, or movies, but has no money to do all these things. She expects me to pay for everything. I am tired of it!”
There were scenes at the Club. Viki was jealous, Kristina was even more flirtatious. They broke up in the afternoon and got back together by closing time. Due to their schedules, they were hardly ever home at the same time, so their love life happened in the Club. Tears, begging, screaming, dramatic leaving of Viki with Kristina running after her, neglecting her costumers; or Viki coming back the next day with a huge bouquet of flowers – this was our favorite soap opera. It went on for weeks, until one day, Viki did not come, did not call and Kristina did not smile. Viki stopped coming altogether and we, the audience, had to go back to our own pity lives. Until, Kristina’s green eyes fell on another costumer….
Marcia Bodenstein, a 56 year-old entrepreneur from
Bodenstein, who grew up in an orthodox Jewish household, in which on Saturdays lights were not switched on and the kitchen was kosher, was used to synagogues where women and men were separated, and people were obliged to buy tickets for High Holy Days, feared God and were isolated. She was 15 when she discovered ham sandwiches and pizza. As an adult, she never went to her old synagogue, except with her widowed father, but kept searching for a more progressive congregation. After finding one that she liked in
At this Kol Nidre service, Bodenstein was surprised to see a woman standing on the podium as a rabbi. Moreover, the cantor was a woman too and the rabbi spoke English. The church was filled with people of all colors and socio-economic backgrounds. There were families with children, singles, straight and gay couples, lesbians, gay men, young and old. As a widow, Bodenstein felt at ease.
About 700 people came for the service that day with Bodenstein, organized by the progressive Jewish congregation in the upscale Park Slope neighborhood in
Lippmann, who was then the East Coast director of the organization MAZON – A Jewish Response to Hunger, invited ten friends for dinner to talk about a possible congregation in early 1993. The discussion continued over the following weeks and by the summer months, a once a month Sabbath dinner and a Saturday morning Torah study group were established. The congregation hired a teacher for the children the same year and for High Holy Days, Kolot welcomed 75 people.
The group started out on folding chairs in Kensington,
“I don’t believe in tickets for High Holy Days,” Rabbi Lippmann said. “When the issue comes up, and it does come up regularly as a way to raise money, I always say, ‘You can have tickets, but then you have to look for another rabbi.’ We do ask for contributions, though,” she added.
The other principle on which Kolot Chayeinu was built, is that the group eats first, and then prays. Rabbi Lippmann came up with this idea when she was, as a MAZON director, traveling and giving speeches in synagogues around the
“I joined with four other gay men and lesbians who’d been active in AIDS organizing in
For Wolfe, it was more important to be in a synagogue which welcomes all people than to be in a gay synagogue. “As a Jew, it was great to see a 70 year old woman from
Wolfe’s bar mitzvah ceremony was the first occasion when his parents met the parents of his lover of nine years, and his grandmother came to visit the home he shares with his lover.
Lisa Zbar, the 51 year old former Kolot Chayeinu President, a documentary film maker and a mother of two, grew up going to a reform synagogue, still felt left out of Judaism. She knew that she wanted a place where her husband, who is from the
When in 1995 a friend suggested Kolot, Zbar went to talk to the rabbi and immediately liked what she stood for. “I liked the idea that my children would know all kinds of adults – from single straight people to lesbian couples” she said. Even though Judaism had always spoken to her, Zbar never imagined that going to shul would mean so much to her. She wanted to be on the inside of “this Jewish thing,” she said, and wanted her children to be part of it too. Now she attends Shabbat services with her family. As the media is projecting fear and the country leans towards separatism, Zbar feels that Kolot and her home in which religious practices become cultural ones, are the right antidotes.
Kolot Chayeinu, which now has 230 due-paying members, is a progressive congregation not only because it welcomes all kinds of people, doesn’t charge for High Holy Day tickets and eats before prayer, but also because of what is stated in the group’s mission statement: doubt can be an act of faith.
“Kolot’s members have a wide range of opinions about
“A congregation like this lets people live their social agenda through their religion,” Professor Ari Goldman of Columbia School of Journalism and a former New York Times reporter covering religion, said. “It has been a Jewish tradition ever since the Enlightment to reject the constraints of the old and reinterpret them – being Jewish on ones own terms,” he added. This is especially true for those who came from a family where they were exposed to an orthodox variation of Judaism, Goldman said.
It is indeed true for Marcia Bodenstein, who, after the initial first service came back the next day to a service honoring the dead. “We all stood up and said the names of our dead. I said the name of my husband,” Bodenstein said. “Later, a man read the names of all countries that were at war. I felt that my heart was there too, not just my body. I did not look at my watch once. I felt that this is where I belong,” she added.