sarah in nyc

 Our son Sam's apartment in Ashkelon faced west. Our apartment on 98th Street also faces west. I can't help  but compare those two views. My head and my heart are in both places at the same time. On the mundane side of things, I had left most of my luggage in Ashkelon including the sort of useful wear everywhere dresses that are useful to take on vacation or just wear every day. The other day I made a replacement dress. It is a simple t-shaped dress, a variant on the sorts of dresses that I wore in the 1980s. I made this dress out of a remnant of fabric that had already become another garment. I don't know when I will see my suitcase that is in the spare room in Ashkelon again or what shape the contents will be in, but until then, I have stuff to wear. We are eating meatballs tonight made with lots of fresh thyme. I have been taking photos of fall foliage for my friend Racheley who misses fall foliage from her Boston years.  I don't have any power to protect her sons wh...

 I have taken a bit of a break from posting. Some of it was to acclimate myself to being back home and safe. For several nights when I would wake up in the middle of the night I would think that I was still in Dubai. Those of you with a more psychological bent will figure out that Dubai was a less terrifying choice than being in the safe rooms in Ashkelon. This morning I didn't wake up worried about getting plane tickets to safety. We are both still jetlagged. Both of us are deeply grateful for all of the good wishes and prayers for our safety and hopefully we can all redirect those wishes and hopes to those who live in Israel. I also wanted to create something of a space between our experiences in Israel and re-entering life back home. Bonnie's tallit is due soon so I knew I had to get back to work on it. It has been a while so  I will remind you about this particular tallit. Bonnie grew up in southern Massachusetts and she wanted the stripes to look like the water off that c...

An ad for a Dubai real estate app  that we saw projected everywhere. The Hebrew and Arabic words for home are cognates   This Shoshana Demari song about coming home to Israel  We and our Sam, landed at Kennedy airport last night. We were met after we exited US Customs by our son and daughter. Yes, there were both hugs and tears. Our daughter had made, and carried nearly the entire length of the A subway line a batch of Temi Saivetz's Cholesterol death kugel. We have used that kugel as an expression of love and caring in our family  for decades. We weren't hungry enough to eat that kugel in the taxi but we did eat some once we got home. If you have broken the fast of Yom Kippur at my house you have eaten some of this kugel. My cousin Bonnie made me this kugel right after I gave birth to my oldest because my mother was still in Boston and Bonnie thought that I would need to have my mother's presence in the hospital just post partum. My kids have requested this kugel af...

 When my husband and I travel we are drawn less and less to the sorts of places where a selfie with a particular view seems to be mandatory. We get cranky at places that seem to be manufactured for Instagram.We are far more likely to be drawn to places like the Ashkelon Central bus station with the crumbling stucco and the ticket agent offering b'rachot for the holiday and blessings for a good life filled with Mazal Tov to the old bent Ethiopian man ahead of us in line.  Dubai seems to be invented for selfies. The Ferris Wheel is lit up but doesn't move.  The job of the Ferris Wheel is to appear in photos. There is another structure also designed for the same purpose. We are near the beach. There are shops on the street level where there are restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory and Chili's along with Indian and Georgian restaurants.. There are kiosks that sell ice cream and beach  chazzerei next to kiosks that sell apartments in newly built apartment buildings....

  A Sychelles Air cargo jet was chartered to bring us to Dubai.. Just the 50 or so of us were on the plane. We were served omelettes for dinner. After we were served the lovely staff asked if we wanted a second dinner.  The charming cabin staff dressed. in their adorable turquoise uniforms of chicly shrunken jackets and bright floral shirts invited passengers to go lie down in the unused seats. This was by far the most pleasant flight I have taken in decades.   We had eaten so little while we were in the bunker room, Shabbat I grabbed the bag of pitot that I had baked Friday and brought it into the bunker room and we had bottles of water. That's what we ate our first day in the Shelter room. None of us was particularly hungry .  Sunday there was a period of a lull in the fighting. We all showered and we all grabbed some stuff to eat from Sam's fridge. Later in the day I wanted to make some dinner and discovered that the gas had been turned off, probably because...

the shutters that blew out of the utility room windows and nearly hit Sam. The rest are in the utility room.   It's 7:40 on Monday morning We have officially been up since 5. The reality is none of the three of us got much sleep last night. The bombing was heavy last night. We are also anxious because we are being evacuated today. At first we thought that we would have to leave the building and run to a central location. I was worried (terrified) about having to be outside unprotected running with our luggage. We also found out that the amount of luggage we can take is very limited.I left a large suitcase filled with stuff behind. It's just stuff. Because of the fire on Saturday morning on the first floor from rocket fire we won't be using the elevator. We will run down the five flights of stairs as soon as our transportation is nearby.  Our transportation arrives at 9. Meanwhile we sit in the safe room and wait. There are different sounds that we have been hearing. The r...