sarah in nyc

In these days of lock-down the days seem to run into one another. My husband was surprised this morning that it was Sunday rather than Monday. There are days when you wish you could just sleep the days away.Yesterday, I mostly slept. Today thought I decided to be productive. I wrote to some friends.  I made seven masks, This brings my total to about 80. All of the hand-washing we have to do means that we are low on hand cream. I made a batch. Due to the yeast shortage my older son and I have been experimenting with various methods of making sour dough. He has been nursing a classic sour dough. I have been doing our usual method of using bits of old bread and old dough  mixed with flour and water and letting the slurry hang out in the fridge. As I formed today's loaf of bread, I pinched off a bit, a K'zayit, about the size of an olive to add to our bread starter in the fridge. The movement of pinching off the bit of dough was so familiar from taking challah when I bake our chal...

We try to create some semblance of normal life amid the abnormal.  I started a chicken soup yesterday. We ate some of it for dinner last night. I made noodles to go into the soup. I had read an article in a food magazine or perhaps a food blog years ago that described the making of a variety of Central European  noodles that are made into a thin dough that is dropped from the tip of a pointed spoon into boiling water forming ribbons of noodle. I don't remember where exactly I saw the article, or who wrote it or exactly which central European country this particular variety of noodle is from. I don't even remember the exact ingredients that went into that variety of noodle. If I were a food historian I would hang my head in shame. I'm not but I am just doing my best to knock out meals that don't have the whiff of desperation to them.  We are living in a certain amount of food anxiety. Figuring out where to get the food we need has gotten extra complicated Costco has no d...

If you read old guide books about New York, or even contemporary ones, our corner will inevitably not be mentioned. Guidebooks will skip from Columbus Circle or Lincoln Center right to Columbia University. Our corner of Broadway is skipped over as if there is nothing of any interest at all here. However, for the past few weeks there have been camera crews parked here night after night at 7:00. Each evening the crowds grow larger. Everyone is there to listen to Brian Stokes Mitchell end the 7:00 pm cheer with his glorious rendition of "The Impossible Dream". Night after night we gather to listen to our neighbor. Night after night the crowd grows. Last night, after listening to the performance as we do every night, I remembered a story my mother used to tell us about our great grandfather Zalman Paysach. He lived in a little village called Frampol that was outside of  Kamanetz-Podols...

The view from my kitchen window this morning. I liked the strong shadows. In the late afternoon  The view from our bedroom window gave me dramatic skies. The only good thing about the ugly new twin buildings across Broadway from one another is the light cast by the windows onto their neighbors. I love the sun glowing on this building.

Tonight is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  I lit this candle as a general Yizkor for all who died. This year I also light for our relatives who fought in the uprising, including my husband's cousin David Rajzman, my Kopman relatives who lived at Mila 18, my Jakubowitz relatives from Konin, the Weisglass family from Czernowitz, the Reichman's from Kamanets-Podolsk and the Freider's from Frampol, (now Kosogirka). We are slowly returning to our chametz lives. While our house was set up for Passover and Corona  hit, the rest of the world has discovered the wonders of bread baking. Apparently, yeast is now in short supply. We still have half a jar left but are expecting a delivery of staples tomorrow including lots of flour and yeast. The crowds waiting to listen to Brian Stokes Mitchell after the 7:00 cheer keep growing. Tonight there was yet another film and sound crew. And in the department of something that looks beautiful but is really gross. A resident from...

Passover ended yesterday. We put away all of the Passover pots and dishes and our kitchen looks pretty much back to normal. When I started our first batch of  Challah I almost felt like reciting a b'racha as I added that first teaspoon of yeast. There isn't a blessing for such an occasion. But since the point of such blessings is to note a special moment, just noting that reintroduction of yeast into our lives may just be enough. I can't really take credit for these beautiful loaves because my son did nearly all of the work. Although Passover is over we are still in a bit of a state of food anxiety. This is the line of people waiting to go into the market diagonally across the street from our apartment. The entry is about midway  under the canopy. The health food store across the street also has a line to enter. Right after the holiday ended our older son got us groceries including the collard greens you see ...

Like many people who do genealogical research, I have been poking away at my family history in dribs and drabs over the years. Little bits of family history have gotten uncovered as more and more information has been digitized. Maybe one of the only nice things about being in the midst of a worldwide pandemic is that one has extra time to do research. The New York Public library has made the library edition of Ancestry.com available to library card holders at home. Before Passover I have been looking up databases that had been unavailable to me before. This being a word-wide pandemic, I am not alone in using this time of social distancing to research my family. Just before Passover I got a message from Natasza. She had found my  blog posts  where I had mentioned my  searches  for my  Weisglass family  Natasza had asked if I had heard of or was related to either Hersch or Siegmunt Weisglass.  The synagogue in Zastavna, where Siegmunt Weisglass...

Well, we made two Sedarim and friends and family joined us virtually for both. I had written last week (either here on my blog or on FB) about how at the end of nightly 7:00 pm cheering for health care workers and to remind ourselves that we are not actually alone, a man from across Broadway with a magnificent voice has been singing The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha. Well, it turns out that this wasn't just a random man singing out his window, it is Brian Stokes Mitchell who is famous for his interpretation of the song. He had been sick with Covid-19 and is singing to the neighborhood because he is grateful to be back in good health. Each night the crowd waiting to hear him sing grows.  This article  appeared in a neighborhood news blog and was picked up by a couple of theater news blogs. A charming magical moment has become a big thing. If you look carefully you can see people standing in the median strip ...