sarah in nyc

Yom Kippur is in many ways a rehearsal for our own deaths. Like a dying person, we don't eat or drink. At Neila , the closing prayer we stand together and recite the verses one recites before the moment of death. The shofar blows and then there were are still standing, still breathing and still alive. But that isn't always true. A few years ago on Yom Kippur our dear friends' child life was hanging on the scales between life and death in the weeks before Yom Kippur at Mount Sinai Hospital just across Central Park from our synagogue. It was on that Yom Kippur that his family had to make the horrible choice to allow their beloved son to die. My thoughts during services yesterday were on that Yom Kippur, and also on the Yom Kippur of following year when my father in law who was a few months shy of his 98th birthday was actively dying. My brain can no longer pull apart the threads of which year it was I heard the terrible news that my dear friend...

The words in this text photographed from my grandmother's machzor have never resonated as loudly as they do for me today. Not that far from where I grew up, houses were exploding in gas fires last week. The photos taken  here  are a walking distance from the house where I grew up, and that isn't even in the Carolinas, it's far from the center of the storm. So as we prepare for Yom Kippur I wish all of us that

My father, David Jacobs,would often come home from a mundane errand or a swim at the Y with a story of a delightful encounter with a complete stranger.  That brief encounter usually included a tidbit of a fascinating life story. This morning I had a David Jacobs moment. The brains of our desktop computer are on the fritz. We made an appointment to see the Geek Squad folks at 62nd Street.  My husband loaded the computer onto a luggage cart. We decided to take the subway because there are elevators in the subway stations at both ends of our trip. My husband carefully moved the luggage cart loaded with our computer onto the elevator we were soon joined by a man pushing a large stack of stuff loaded onto a dolly with  A steel drum head strapped to the bottom of the stack. I commented something about how great it is that the subway now has elevators. My fellow elevator passenger replied that the subway is why he lives in Manhattan. He told us that he was a street...

Right now the house looks calm and  ready for the holiday. I could pretend that this is what the house was like all day but that would be a lie.  I made cod for tomorrow's lunch.  I baked the cod and it is soaking in a spicy brown sugar and  vinegar marinade. The carrot  flowers are a nod to the carrots that usually garnish gefilte fish  and just make me happy.  Another dessert needed to be made so I faked one.This is a wet apple,ginger  rum cake. It only  broke a  little coming out of the pan. Soon we get dressed to go to services.  If you are in shul with us you will hear me  blow shot at tomorrow and my youngest blowing shofar on the second day of the  holiday . Shanah Tovah! 

It has been hot and muggy out. Yet as I have begun my High Holiday season cooking I am not choosing to cook light hot weather friendly food. I am going with old fashioned Eastern European foods created to warm your bones. Perhaps because we didn't choose to send our kids to day school  (This is actually an oversimplification of the long and complicated educational history of three kids.) It has been really important to me that my children love and anticipate the Jewish holidays in a deep and visceral way. Just as hearing this Kaddish gets one ready for the emotions and hard work of the season, so do the aromas and  flavors of the foods I serve for this season of t'shuvah. So my  youngest and I worked together Wednesday night I decided to cook this vast pot of cabbage on low heat all night. It reminded me about how  in Eastern Europe households would send pots of food to slow bake in the town bakery oven. Last night my son made tsimmis with me. M...

Yesterday I attended  Rabbi Rachel Cowan's funeral. I had become aware of Rachel and her late husband Paul after the publication of Paul's book  An Orphan in History  If you haven't already read the book you ought to. Paul and Rachel were part of the revival of my synagogue, Ansche Chesed in the late 1970's and early 1980's.  The revival of our synagogue may have taken place without Paul and Rachel but Paul's book shone a spotlight on our synagogue and drew people to it. During those years the synagogue was a hotbed of outrageously creative programming, all of it done on a shoestring. Rachel was its first program director. She worked officially part-time but in reality, worked the same long hours that an investment banker might.  When Rachel began rabbinical school that job was passed on to my friend Arleen who worked as program director for not very long. And then I took over the job from Arleen in January of 1986. The jo...

When I start to cook Shabbat dinner I usually discuss the menu with whoever is hanging around the kitchen before I start cooking. Today, it was my husband.  His face got all soft and he talked about how much he loved last week's chicken made to taste like a better version of the rotisserie chicken his mother used to buy. It was hard to refuse so I mixed up the spices, rubbed them on the chicken and let the oven do its thing. We are also eating barley cooked in last week's chicken juice, gazpacho, and a big salad. This is Labor Day weekend. As I walked home from some of my Friday errands I noticed that although it is still warm out, the trees are showing the first colors of autumn. Shabbat Shalom!