9/11 In the season of Introspection

This morning was a bright dry cloudless Tuesday. Just like the one eleven years ago. Like the Tuesday of 11 years ago it is just before Rosh Ha Shanah. Before Passover we obsessively clean our homes. Duriong the time before the High Holidays be are supposed to be doing Cheshbon nefesh soul math or an accounting of our souls, and actions.

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Starting the month before Rosh ha Shanah we blow shofar at the end of morning services. I was asked to blow shofar at my synagogue this year. So usually mid morning I take out my shofar and run through the tones in order.

I empty my lungs into that shofar. Sometimes the tone I produce is high , clear and bright. Other times the sound i produce is lower is tone. Occasionally, and unfortunately I produce a spitty muffled sound. I love how my heart feels after i blow shofar. I'm not even talking about a spiritual feeling but the pure physical sensation of blowing shofar just feels good.

During this season we say slichot penitential prayers. Those services usually take place the half hour before morning services. if you want to experience slichot virtually, you can play this video, actually it's really only an audio. Benzion Shenker who is leading services for the Bobov Chassidic community in Brooklyn is simply wonderful. If you want to hear authentic Easten European style services done at a truly fine level, listen. I was listenign earlier and singing along with full voice. I don't know if my son appreciated it. But it really felt like I was at slichot services.

If you don't have the 35 minutes to listen to the entire video, you can listen to the following piyut, liturgical poem.Adon Ha slichot. I'm also getting ready for the new year in more prosaic ways. My cabbage is cooling so I can peel leaves to make stuffed cabbage.

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Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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