sarah in nyc

a meaningful Yom Kippur.  

 We ate the last of the challot I had made before Rosh haShanah last night during our break-fast. The filled challot were a hit. Tonight is Shabbat and yet more challot needed to be baked. I decided to make more of the filled challot. The filling is a mix of apple butter, date spread, and pomegranate molasses. The flavor is both dark and bright. I think I had seen this method of creating a filled braided-looking loaf on one of those junky food YouTube channels. I rolled dough into a rough rectangle Then I added a line of filling with a spoon. Then I made cuts around the dough. You fold the top flap down over the filling and then alternate pulling the strips over the dough first from the right side and then from the left until y.ou run out of strips.. You can see that I turned up the bottom flap before I finished braiding. This is the loaf before baking. I got a little fancy with this loaf and twisted the dough before placing it over the filling. Here it is baked with a sprinkle of...

Getting ready for a day where we abstain from food requires a whole lot of food prep. Yesterday I got ready to make Cholesterol Death Kugel. (If you need to make it right now you can find the recipe if you click on the word Kugel on the tags on the right) The kugel is made with dairy. If you can’t eat dairy take your lactaid pills before you eat it. There are no substitutions in this case. I decided to make the noodles from scratch. here is my dough resting under glass. Will any of our guests actually notice that they are eating noodles that worked my upper body to it’s limit? Probably not. They may notice that the kugel tastes like love, and that may in fact be enough. I have used the kugel pan to weigh down the gravlax which is brining away on the bottom of the fridge. Before Neila I will slice the fish into paper thin slices. I assume that I will be slicing the fish with a very tiny brain so I have already sliced up most of the other vegetables. I don’t want to slice up my...

  Several years ago Rabbi Tzvi Blanchard  taught something that has always stuck with me.   He taught that the verses that we recite at the end of Yom Kippur are the very same one that we recite as we prepare to die. That we recite all of the prayers of Yom Kippur knowing that our lives are in the balance. Men in many communities wear a kittle a white robe, which is also used as a shroud, on Yom Kippur. So at N’eila we stand as a community in our shrouds and recite the words we say before we die…. And then, instead of departing this world.   We hear the sound of the Shofar… and realize that we are still very much alive. With hopes that the gates of heaven open to hear us all this year.

There are moments that can occur during the observance of a holiday that change how you experience that holiday each subsequent year. Those of us who attend Yom Kippur services each year read over and over again  our desire to be inscribed in the book of life. As we say the confessionals each year we hopefully think about our own lives in the balance. The Yom Kippur of 2009 that message was made all too real.  Rafi Lehmann, the son of our dear friends, was across town at Mount Sinai in the ICU.  he had been there for the previous three weeks. On that Yom Kippur Rafi’s family had to make the terrible decision to remove hi from life support. “Who shall live and who shall die”, indeed. Last year, during Yom Kippur we knew that my father in law’s death was an any minute sort of a thing. Rafi’s death was  by any reckoning a tragedy. My father in law was 97 and had lived a rich and full life. This year, the life of no one I knew was in the balance. Yet my experie...

  The text of this piyyut/liturgical poem has been running through my head for the past couple of days Open the gates of heaven to our prayers the gates of mercy the gates of prayer the gates of supplication the gates of the desired time the gates of the time of asking the gates of full healing the gates of holiness the gates of holiness the gates of Torah…… And for your listening pleasure,

This lovely passage, the confessional of Rabbi Nissim of Blessed Memory is in the introductory pages of my grandmother’s Yom Kippur prayer book. In it, Rabbi Nissim asks for mercy, not because he is so particularly worthy, but because the divine is merciful. I don’t think that my grandmother ever read this passage.  This prayer book was probably a replacement from one that had fallen apart from years of use.I assume that my grandfather bought it for her. I assume this because it is Nusach S’fard, the text that is used by Chassidim. My grandmother was, let me put it diplomatically, skeptical, at best, of Chassidic practice. Every year I call my mother to wish her a good Yom Kippur. Each year, she tells me how every year her father would ask my mother for Mechila, forgiveness. my mother would say that every year it made her weep that her sweet father would ask for forgiveness. My mother would cry and her father would ask in Yiddish, “ So, do you forgive me?”. This year my ...