Back to the post holiday universe

After a month of three days in a row of Yom Tov I feel like I have awakened from, not exactly a slumber. After all you can't bake four batches of challah, make tzimmis and stuffed cabbage, chickens and lamb along with all of the other parts that make up a meal while sleeping. But I do feel like I woke up and hadn't quite realized that a month had passed.

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The holidays were lovely and meaningful this year but the season that begins after the High Holidays is ironing season.

There are more table cloths to be pressed. But the job feels less onerous at the moment.

Our napkin drawer had become uncharacteristically empty.

It is once again filled.

The linen napkins await the iron.

I was also able to tend to tasks that had been put off because of the holidays. I mailed a birthday package to my sister.

The post office is around the corner from an old Horn and Hardart building. It took me years to notice the beautiful art-deco decoration on the building.

You have to look up to notice. I lived on this block in the early 1980's. While much of the neighborhood, if not fully gentrified in those years was mostly pretty safe. This was not true of this block. This block was a hang out for various unsavory types.

There was a numbers joint masquerading as a stereo repair shop a few doors in. I lived a few doors past the numbers joint. Actually, I don't know exactly what not quite legal business was in there. A room mate of mine once naively brought in his stereo to be repaired there and he was chased out at gunpoint.

I was once grabbed by a man on this corner. Luckily I was in a foul mood and I yelled at him to let go of me. He continued to hold onto me while apologizing. Eventually he let me go.

It is nice to feel safe enough to look up and admire the architectural details.

The other night the sky just past sunset was spectacular.

It's nice to be back in the real world.

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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...

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sarah in nyc

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