sarah in nyc

 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...

  We did go to the beautiful Brit Milah on Sunday. It was a short visit filled with many big emotions. The drive home was made an extra two hours long because of terrible traffic. However, I got to see lots of good foliage on the way home. Yesterday I got several hours of good work done on Sarah's light tallit. One stripe is still left to sew on I still have a fair amount of work left to do but getting the job completed on time is seeming like much more of a possibility. Today though--- the news from Israel is making me feel as skittish as the pigeons that have been flitting in a flock from one side of  Broadway to the other. I had to pick up a few things to make one of the desserts for Rosh HaShanah. Most of you have heard of Abraham Joshua Heschel talking about his participating in the march on Selma as "praying with his feet". Today, as I  sliced four pounds of plums to make my version of the traditional German Rosh HaShanah tart I thought about asking my no longer liv...

 These days I am doing everything as fast as I can.  Rosh Ha Shanah starts this weekend I have been cooking, and cooking.  This graniteware turkey roaster normally spends the entire year on a high shelf in my kitchen doing nothing more than holding up two silver plate roast platters until Thanksgiving. This week the turkey roaster was used to make stuffed cabbage (not pictured but bagged and in my freezer), two gant chickens stuffed with limoo (dried limes) and last night I cooked out tzimmis overnight in the oven on low.  If you want my mother's recipe, these are the notes that I took on how to make Tzimmis during a phone call with my mother in maybe 1990. As you look at the list of ingredients...assume more for all of them except for the brown sugar. I cooked the whole thing in the oven overnight at 250.  The pan is now washed and ready to rest until Thanksgiving. I have been working away on Sarah's tallit. Over the last couple of days I have been working on t...