Bronx Family Court (For Real This Time)

Got up at 7 (sooo tired) and showered, shaved and suited up for court. Got on the train by 8:10 and made it to Bronx Family Court on time. First one there from the Court Advocacy Program in fact. Quite impressive I thought. I'm always late after all. It was a slow day in the courthouse so it took a few hours for me to get a case. But when I did it was a doozy. Makes me really wonder about humanity to see this stuff. This poor woman I was helping was 23. Just a year older than me. But she had two sons, one 6 and one 4 (can we say statutory rape?) and her kids' father (not her husband mind you) was in prison in Florida for illegal firearm and drug posession. Good thing too. He beat her for the last several years on a weekly basis, sometimes using pieces of broken furniture, metal weight lifting bars, shoes, etc. He even stabbed her once with a knife, chipping some bone as well as leaving a nasty scar and sending her to the hospital. The creep had violated previous protective orders and threatened to kill her and throw her kids off a roof. Lovely character. And the bad news was that rumor on the street had it he was getting out of prison and coming back to visit his kids. Yeah. Not good. So she needed a protective order. But it's hard to get one without a recent incident to base it on. Anyway, we played up the violent history and took the matter before a judge (it took until 4:30 to actually get into the court room, but I got a lunch break to eat at a sketchy diner across the street; had a burger and strawberry milkshake). So back to the courtroom. Got admitted and we sat down in front of the judge. That was the first mistake. We were informed we had to stand until the judge told us to sit. Whoops. The judge asked my Petitioner a few questions and then I got to speak up and address the court to try to get a later adjourn date. My first time speaking in court! Woohoo! I got a fairly late date, though not the months I asked for :-P (turns out you regularly get 3-4 weeks and we got 2 months, so pretty good). She got a good order of protection too saying the guy can't come near her, her kids, their school, her work, her house, no calls, no contact, etc. Solid. Good day's work. Took a cab back to Columbia, put on a kipah and went to services at Columbia Koach. It was nice to be back. I think of it as my regular community now for Fridays in spite of all my roaming. Shmoozed a bit after kiddush and then met some law student friends outside the business school to try to get in to a Business School shabbat dinner that none of us RSVPed for. We got turned away. Punks. Went to a middle eastern restaurant on the border of harlem instead. Had falafel. Pretty good. Then went to Hillel to see Jews from Uganda sing and tell the story of how their ancestors converted to Judaism in the early 1900's. They were very cool, though not quite as amazing as the Ethiopians. Their plug:

The Abayudaya are a group of 700 black Jews in Uganda who converted to Judaism in the early 1900s. They have maintained Jewish traditions in the face of religious persecution, disease, poverty, and they live in the third-world without running water or electricity.

Their musical group was Grammy nominated. Pretty neat. Had dessert and shmoozed after the performance. Perhaps I'll visit Jews in Africa some day. For now it's back to job search and moot court.  ¶ 8:46 PM