Many topics---one post---let's see if I can pull this off

We are now in the early spring where the weather zigzags from one extreme to another.

Sunday we walked in Central Park with dear friends.

The grass is velvety for the moment and the foliage hasn't filled out the trees. The result exposed views of the park that are visible for only a couple of weeks.

This little wandering bit of water is usually hidden by leafy trees.

In a month or so the wild chartreuse of the willow tree will settle down to a mellower darker green.

The next day we heard the sad, sad news of the death of a beloved cousin.

Appropriately, the day of his funeral was cold and rainy.

My head has been filled with memories of a lifetime, of a life.

Yesterday a friend and I were meeting at the Met to see the exhibit on the Harlem Renaissance. My walk from 96th street to the Museum looked like it could have been painted by Fragonard.

I haven't been so excited by a museum exhibit for a long long time. Check out this review for more images.

I love this frame made out of wine crates

Go see this exhibit. What a delight to see art that is a hundred years old and seems so fresh and so new.

I had wanted to write about a new tallit that I am working on...but instead a moment about this morning's earthquake.

I was in our back bathroom which shares a wall with our washing machine. I felt a rumbling. I did muse that it perhaps might be an earthquake but assumed that it was more likely that I had misloaded my washing machine. Construction has been taking place on the building next to ours. We have been putting up with a whole lot of banging and drilling for the past few weeks. My cousin in Brooklyn asked on Facebook if anyone else had experienced an earthquake. It took about another twenty minutes for the official news to report that it was an actual earthquake but the new fangled version of checking in with your neighbor over the fence seemed to have worked better than the actual news outlets.

I experience my first earthquake in 1985. I wasn't yet married and lived a block away from where I live now. My husband was already living here. I slept through that earthquake. There was another earthquake a couple of years ago. I was in a massage chair while I was getting a pedicure. It did feel like I was getting a bit extra vibration from the massage chair.

I did cook Shabbat dinner. The theme of tonight's dinner is using up Chametz. Sorry, no food photos today.

Hoping that spring brings better news for all of us.

Shabbat Shalom!

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...

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...

sarah in nyc

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