Down the rabbit hole

This past Shabbat I received a giant box from my aunt. In the box, there was a studio photograph taken of my father in the late 1950's, there was also
this certificate.

In addition, my aunt included the talk she gave at the bar-mitzvah.

I was, as you might imagine, completely tickled by this gift.

I decided to do a Google search on the rabbi who signed the certificate. That led me down a terrific internet rabbit hole. I found the entire run of The Jewish Floridian which was a weekly newspaper that was published between 1928 and 1990.

The paper seemed to have covered news of interest to Jews in most of the state. There is a mix of international news ( including news of worsening conditions for Jews in Europe, as well as the moves towards establishing a Jewish state)national and local news and social news as well.

I started my search in The Jewish Floridian in June of 1940 hoping to find an announcement for my father's bar-mitzvah.

Here is the clipping of interest

I assume that my aunt's giving an address was something negotiated between my grandparents and the synagogue.

My aunt told me she had no idea that this appeared in The Jewish Floridian.

I have spent entirely too much time reading various issues of the paper. My sister found an announcement of my father leading High Holiday services for kids at his synagogue. I found a wedding announcement for my parents.

I have not spent every bit of my waking time reading old issues of The Jewish Floridian.

Last night we were invited to a Sheva B'rachot on the roof of the Heschel School just south of Lincoln Center.

The weather was a bit iffy. Just before the celebrations began it began to rain. We went inside and soon we were rewarded with a rainbow.

We went back upstairs and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

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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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