sarah in nyc

 Yesterday, I had an appointment to tune up my hearing aids. The audiologist is on Columbus Avenue. I noticed as I walked south from 96th Street that there was a HUGE police presence.  A neighbor who I met walking uptown (from her own audiologist appointment) mentioned that President Biden was due to travel down Columbus Avenue in just a few minutes. The residents of our Zip code vote about 98% Democratic.  A small but friendly crowd gathered at the police barricades. I didn't get the sense that anyone had particularly gone out of their way  to be present, but if they were there, they may as well see the action and give a friendly wave. I really needed my hearing aids to get tuned up. So I went upstairs to my appointment and when I was done the president still hadn't come by. Sanitation Department trucks filled with sand were stationed to absorb the shock if any explosives or other untoward event took place. I remembered my last near miss encounter with the president...

 My father was dying during the summer of 2008. The parents of the graduating eighth grade class asked if I would be willing to make a mappah, a table cover for the school synagogue.  The school synagogue is both a prayer space and an educational space. Kids learn the mechanics of prayer so that once they reach bar-mitzvah they have the skills to function as both participants and leaders(prayer leaders and Torah readers) in a grown up synagogue.  I was given relatively little guidance by the parent who was in touch with me aside from the fact the there was already an ark curtain in the room that featured a stylized fantasy version of Jerusalem. I wanted this piece to be functional--it covers the table used for both leading services as well as for reading Torah. I also wanted this piece to work as a teaching tool for the students who would be using it. I decided to go with the stylized Jerusalem theme by using the motif  the sort of squat domed structures that are s...

 For the past few days the old fashioned melody of יה ריבון עלם ועלמיא has been my constant companion as an ear-worm. I have been looking for the melody that we sang at our table when i was little on YouTube. I have found  this version which is lovely but not what I have been hearing in my ear. This melody is an old one as well but not the one I was thinking of. Well, I just spent too much time looking for the lovely slow and meditative melody of my childhood. If I keep looking right now then i won't be able to complete this post. If you find a link to it , let me know Moving on to the blog salad portion of this post... I loved how the reflection of the windows across Columbus Avenue made this not very interesting building look much more compelling. The police in the local precinct needed something done on the exterior of their building, so they got the firemen next door to take care of it with their hook and ladder. My fried Sue asked a question on Facebook about the nap...

 Alan goes to my sister's minyan. The first time I actually remember interacting with him was the evening after my mother's funeral. My mother was buried Erev Purim. As soon as it got dark it was Purim. We were in a weird state of mourning and not mourning. We removed our ripped clothing of mourning but we were still sitting Shiva. We were obligated to hear the Megillah. Alan and his wife came over to my mother's apartment in clown costumes and read the Megillah for me and my sister. It was an odd religious moment of grief and silliness. ( The distance of time, and my own state of grief led me to misremember. My sister reminds me that it was Alan's wife Judy who read the Megillah and Alan accompanied Judy in both our performance of the mitzvah and injecting Purim levity to the first night of my mother's Shiva.) Alan called me about the possibility of making him a tallit.  We met on Zoom. We studied texts about the mitzvah of tallit together and then we began trying ...

THIS was the view from my window this morning as opposed to the terrifying orange of two days ago. Air quality isn't perfect yet, so I have spent the day indoors. My tiny adventure out of the house yesterday left me with a terrible headache. It's Friday, so that means a cookign and baking day. It was a challah baking week. Before I shaped the challot I reminded my husband of his religious obligation to bug me and remind me to take challah. The book my husband bought me with ALL of the rules of taking challah spends a great deal of time going through how big a piece of dough must be taken from the main dough to qualify as a כזית, the size of an olive. I just lop off a piece that is the size of a really big olive and don't get into the madness of people who never saw an olive determining that a כזית could possibly be the size of a baseball or a watermelon. I know that common practice is to wrap the dough bit in foil and toss it into the oven while the actual challah bakes. I ...