sarah in nyc

Well, I had thought that this would be a pleasant post talking about how I am slowly regaining my energy and working away on the tallit and how happy I am to spend time with our out of town friends who have come on their annual visit. But our fridge gasped and took its last breath. Yes, it is a fairly new fridge. Yes, it was completely overhauled the day Passover began this past spring. We ordered this fridge from Sears. Our choices are dictated by the space we have and the width of our doors. We made a choice. We ordered on the phone with many assurances that the fridge was to be delivered today. We were to expect a call last night narrowing the delivery window down from twelve hours to two hours. We didn't get the call last night. I called Sears this morning. We didn't receive the call because the fridge isn't scheduled for delivery until Monday. Really???? I didn't know that when Sears accepts my money that also makes me psychic so that I can intuit that the...

Well, this week has been something of what my son's special educators would have cheerfully called a challenge. My cruddy cold has left me feeling like I have been hit by a truck so I have been watching more episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" than I would care to admit. But it's all my teeny pea brain could handle as I lay on the couch and dozed. My camera and my computer have not been on speaking terms which has made creating photos for this blog not possible.  After a bunch of searching on the internet, I coaxed my miffed camera to chat with its fellow electronic devices. Apparently, the Canon photo transfer software isn't very robust and like a touchy teen gets all snitty at very little provocation. ( My kids actually very little of that snitty behavior when they were teens). I discovered this morning that my sensitivity to sesame is a full blown allergy. Techina is no longer part of my life. Why, yes, I am leaving out a whole lot of the story-- but I am ...

The thing that had been hovering in my throat for over a week as almost a cold came out and laid me low all week.  This cold has laid me out flat and has left me tired and with a tiny pea brain.   It's a cold and not the flu.  It won't kill me like the brain tumor that killed my friend Mindy or the terrible sarcoma that killed my dear friend Marcia nearly twenty years ago, but I am still miserable. I am drinking gallons of tea and read Facebook because my brain is too small to read anything that takes a whole lot more focus. I see that my friend Racheli is mourning the death of one of the soldiers killed in Israel this week. He comes from her town is the age of her children. Even is a big city like NewYork when you have multiple kids who go to school, to camp, do afterschool activities, go to shul--all those strands of their lives create a big fat rope and as a parent, you are familiar with all of the fibers that make up that communal rope. So n...

One of the things I learned as a rabbi's child is that people have complicated relationships with the rabbi's family that are related to their own relationships with God, with Judaism and with their parents. Adding to the complicating factor is the people who are part of your community are in many ways your bosses with the power to fire you at will. My parents walked that complicated tightrope by being close and open mostly with one another and with family. They tended to be, as they put it, cordial but careful with congregants. That isn't to say that there weren't people in their congregation that they truly loved. One of the people my mother really loved was Temi. Temi was both incredibly elegant and really down to earth. There was no one smarter about people and what made them tick.  Temi had no problem calling a spade a spade. Often after dinner, Temi and my mother spoke on the phone. Those phone calls were punctuated by roaring laughter. I would hear my mot...

Chanukah is mostly a low key affair gift -wise at our home. We light candles together, we sing and then one or another of us distributes gifts.  I made zucchini and cheese latkes for dinner. A few months back my aunt gave me a photo of my parents at the Trocadero in 1955 with the Eiffel Tower in the background. When we were in Paris my husband asked a Chinese tourist to take our photo.   My husband framed both of the photos and gave them to me tonight. So sweet!

is actually the title of a stunningly terrible Chanukah tape that we unearthed in my in-law's basement. It's so awful that we make sure to play it every year and we did this year. I had a baby naming to attend in the Bronx at noon, so I left my husband with a shopping list. I got home and the latke making began. I ask my friend Mark forgiveness, these latkes were all baked, but with lots of oil.  I am terrible at frying. For Mark frying latkes is crucial, an essential tenet of Judaism. I am sorry to have let Mark down. I made three varieties. My son-in-law is allergic to white potatoes. This was yucca caramelized onion and cheddar cheese. This is a flavor I would do another time. They taste awfully close to traditional potato latkes but with a dryer, starchier texture. We also had sweet potato and apple. Not pictured is greens and cheese. Also, not pictured was the mad dash to make them all in time for dinner.  It was a tag-teamed meal with my younge...