The Aufruf- a great day

In German "aufruf" means to call or an invocation. But in Ashkenazi Jewish practice, the Shabbat before the wedding the groom is called up to the Torah and blessing are offered in his honor and in honor of the upcoming marriage. blessings are offered in words and in candy tossed at the groom.

In an egalitarian synagogue like ours, both the bride and groom are called to the Torah. So this Shabbat our bride and groom were called up to the Torah. Our groom read Torah for the first time. There are lots of people who have been Jewish since birth who have never read from the Torah scroll. Our groom has been Jewish for about a month and took on this not easy task.

Our bride in addition to reading Torah also read the longest haftarah of the year - all while looking entirely glam while wearing a fascinator she had made herself and a pair of delightfully outrageous shoes.

I was deeply moved by our groom's commitment to doing the right thing and doing the hard things. I was so touched that so many friends made sure to be there. One of my sisters braved the insane winter storm and took the last train from Boston (that got waylaid and delayed and then gave up the ghost in New Rochelle) to be with us. My other sister really wanted to be here but the birth of her first granddaughter kept her away.

One of the customs of my synagogue is that we often cook for one another. We cook shiva meals for one another. We often have synagogue wide potluck meals. We also bake for one another for joyous events.

We had arranged for a caterer to provide for most of the kiddish meal. I asked my friends to bake desserts. I stopped by where lunch would be served to drop off the brownies and lemon squares my sister had baked. I saw an insane number of desserts, cookies, blondies brownies and several gorgeous cakes. I was deeply moved by the bounty.

After services and may hugs and kisses we went downstairs for the kiddush lunch. I noticed that the dessert table was adorned with two large sprays of cherry blossoms. They were beautiful. I knew I hadn't ordered flowers ( I probably should have). As friends greeted me I kept asking who had brought the flowers.

It was my friend Celia who not only brought the blossoms and set them into Japanese vases, she also decorated the table with brocade table runners and mosaic lamps. She had rustled up some gold foil covered cardboard tiered cake displays and turned something wonderful, a beautiful bountiful display of sweets and love into something spectacular. Had my mother been alive, she would have arranged the dessert table for me.

I wrote to a friend earlier today that I felt like every nice thing I have done since I moved to New York has been repaid with compound interest. Our kids were raised with lots of family that they were born into. They have also been born into a community of people who have helped to raise and support all of us. These are the people who gave me the advice to support me through pregnancy, who helped me through those hard months of being a new mother, who took my kids when I was exhausted, who gave my kids candy in shul, who supported us while our parents were ailing and dying. I am so glad that we could celebrate this great event with our community.

So the little pre-wedding lunch for 250 or so is over and now we are heading into the home stretch of the wedding prep.

There are no photos but you will have to see this all in your mind's eye.

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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