Actually better because of Covid 19

It is pretty safe to say that Covid-19 has made pretty much everything in our lives worse. However, tonight Covid-19 made one thing better.

Tonight is my mother's sixth yahrzeit. Normally, my two sisters in Boston attend evening services together and I mark my mother yahrzeit here at my home shul.

Tonight we agreed that the three of us would say Kaddish together at Zoom services at KI Kehillath Israel) in Brookline. It would be nice for all three of us to be together.

As the screen filled up with faces we soon realized that another Quincy family had joined together to say Kaddish as well.

Marcia Cohen, a longtime Quincy friend had died several weeks ago. Her family, her widowed husband, and four daughters gather at the KI Zoom service every day. The service ended and we all just hung out for another hour and more, talking and laughing and remembering the two women who were so fond of one another and catching up on all of our lives.

Just before we said goodbye, three of the four Cohen daughters showed us an object they had received from my mother either before or after her death, a ceramic hamentasch that is also a grogger, a strip of pretty Turkish tile, a Hebron glass vase.

I took this photo of the Hebron glass vase around the time of my mother's death. During that time taking photos of my mother's things felt like a way to hold on to who she was.

I was just so touched that my mother's things-- and the memories they spark live on in their homes.

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

And You are faithful. Blessed are You, God, Resurrector of the dead.

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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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