The past and the present

The Rosh haShanah meals are followed by ironing season.

This is just part of what I got through yesterday. I still have a large tablecloth and about a dozen napkins left to iron.

This is what our table looked like on the first night of the holiday.

The inside of our holiday challot looked like this.

To be honest, not every slice looked quite this cute.

Dinner this shabbat is more of what I cooked for the holiday but I will be making some gazpacho we we also ingest some vegetable matter.

Yesterday I brought in some boots to be repaired. This

was on the wall of the shoe repair place which is actually around the corner from the address in the calendar above. I loved the term "Dead Storage for Automobiles". It took me a minute but I figured out that dead storage for cars is the opposite of live parking. I guess in 1940 it was economically viable to own a car and store it in a long term garage and just take it out occasionally.

This is the building that used to house Santini Storage. I hadn't realized until today that it had been a garage.

And adding to things I hadn't noticed until today...

I have passed this building a gajillion times since 1982.

I hadn't noticed the lovely ornaments under the windows before.

There were more but the trees in front of the building are in full leaf. I will have to wait until winter to photograph the rest. Yes, the masonry and the ornaments have unfortunately been painted multiple times over the years.

I first learned the song below on an Israeli tape given to my kids. I just found out via google that the text was originally written in Yiddish by Kadie Molodowska, in 1931 in Poland. She was a poet, novelist and teacher of small children. This poem evokes the imagery of the High Holiday season without being too uncomfortably religious for secular Jews. It was translated into Hebrew in the 1940s. I used to use this song when I ran High Holiday services for teeny kids. It exactly evokes how the past the present and the future get all jumbled together during this season.

The song below was a childhood favorite of mine. I am including it here because it gives me joy.

Shabbat Shalom!

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

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sarah in nyc

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