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.

Comments

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog