From last Rosh Hashanah until this one

When I was a kid, Rosh Hashanah was all about looking forward to the new year. Maybe it is just that I am older, but between the timelessness created by the pandemic and the fact that I have lost so many friends this year my head is definitely in the past as I prepare for the holiday.

When I used to go through my parents' wedding album with my father when I was little my father inevitably used to point at people in the photos and say "Dead, dead, dead." I have been going through my address books sending high holiday greetings to friends and I was struck by how many of my friends have died this year. There was the terrible three week period early in the winter when five friends died, but the most of the deaths were spread out between last Rosh Hashanah and this one.

I prepared the tzimmes and the stuffed cabbage that was my parents' love note to their first pulpit in Halifax and the people who helped my very young parents to become adults.

I have also made the meringues that although they didn't enter my life until I was a teenager or perhaps in college are much beloved by our kids. As I made today's batch I thought about how for years and years I never had to wash the bowl or beaters because my kids used to lick them clean before they washed them for me. We probably have an extra meringue or two out of the batch that wasn't licked out of the bowl by one or another of my kids. One of our guests will be taking home the left over meringues to dip in his coffee for breakfast tomorrow.

I flavored this batch with Mexican vanilla and with some Krupnik honey Liqueur. My husband's family name was Krupnik when they lived in Tulchyn. This is a nice way to include my husband's family during the meal.

One of guest couldn't go home to Halifax because of the Hurricane Fiona. Although she won't be at home she will eat the tastes of home at my table.

The table will be set with a mix of linens that will remind me of various women who are no longer alive. I hadn't quite figured out the precise combination to tablecloths and napkins.

Every year my husband and I put together a Shanah Tovah card. We will often use a photo that one of us had taken that year paired with some lines from the machzor, the high holiday prayer book. This year I poked through my grandmother's machzor. It part of a set that she was given in the 1930s that covered all of the holidays. For a reason I completely don't understand, the first volume of the set isn't Nusach Ashkenaz but Nusach S'phard. The Rosh Hashanah volume is the texts recited by Chassidim. My grandmother detested all things Chassidish. I love the variations in the text from my usual machzor.

As I leafed through looking for a text this line jumped out at me

The text that I loved was seven lines up.

The image I chose to go with it is a photo I took during the first terrible summer of the pandemic. Our youngest was still living at home. He hadn't left the house in several months because he was terrified that he would bring Covid home and kill us.

We had rented a car and insisted that he go out with us. It was late in the day. I don't remember whose idea it was to go to the beach but we drove to Brighton Beach. We parked the car,and walked a couple of blocks to the beach and our son just stood in the water and looked out. The sky looked like the dome of a painted Italian rococo church. We just stood our feet in the sand outside and we all, especially our son felt better.

I look at the photo and see a moment of hopefulness amid the darkness. If you can't read the English translation very well click on the picture and it should open in a new window.

I sent this greeting to friends both hale and ill. The wonder of the internet is that geography no longer matters and I can feel almost physically close to the people I love who are far away. As I start the holiday I feel that I am joined with those near and far, alive and dead. i am filled by my own memories and those of people no longer alive.

Sending all of you blessings from God's excellent storehouse as one of the season's prayers state. If you listen to the videos on this post in order you will get the feeling of being at services for the hoiday.

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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