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Author Archives: admin
April 30, 2020 by admin
What Carrying the Torah Taught Me About Faith
My daughter’s bat mitzvah took place on Purim, March 10, right as the country was introduced to social distancing and mere days before we were encouraged to stay home. The weekend before, my family went to shul together for Shabbat services. My son has been volunteering as a bimah boy since his bar mitzvah last year, so he’s there regularly with my husband, but my daughter and I often stay home.
Being in shul fills me with conflicting emotions. I love the community, the warmth, and the sense of connection amongst a group of people that large. But I have issues with some of the actual tenets of the religion itself, and a very uncertain relationship with G-d. It’s my love for the clergy and fellow congregants that keep me coming back. I spend my time there in reflection upon myself, my actions, and how I can be better in the future. I rarely follow along in the Siddur, feeling those words so separate from my own.
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April 29, 2020 by admin
When Home is Not a Shelter
Looking at me, you wouldn’t have guessed. I was a smart, outgoing, well-nourished, girl from a secular Jewish home, a top student at the school where I never missed a day.
I was also a battered child.
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April 20, 2020 by admin
Dayenu: Dispatches From the Covid Sick Ward
The Week Before
Washington, DC is beginning to shut down and our two adult daughters want to come home—one from Iowa and one from Boston. First Daughter owns a car [Dayenu], and can drive from Iowa City, where she’s in graduate school, but she has obligations in Iowa, along with legitimate concerns that there may be nowhere that she can stay along the way. Second Daughter is already working remotely [Dayenu, she has a job] because Massachusetts is under an emergency decree.
By the end of the week, they are here; First Daughter has driven, and Second Daughter has flown in.
Day 1
Second Daughter wakes up, does not feel well. Has shortness of breath and tightness in her chest. She’s 25 and is otherwise—[Dayenu]—in good health.
We call our doctor, who says to isolate her immediately, “Lock her up, do the deepest clean possible, and leave food outside her door as needed.”
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April 14, 2020 by admin
All-of-a-Kind Seder in the Time of Covid-19
In the unfolding of COVID-19, while some friends were frantically dashing back to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven or Ling Ma’s Severence, I reached for All-of-a-kind Family, by Sydney Taylor. It’s an old children’s book, doubly old—published in 1951 and set in 1912—about the five all-of-a-kind sisters, dressed alike and running around in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, surrounded by their fellow Jews. It was the confluence of two events that brought it to mind—quarantine and Passover.
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April 6, 2020 by admin
Passover Treats from a Chef and Fridge Forager
Passover is the ultimate food holiday, from the essential symbolism of foods on the Seder plate to what we eat and don’t eat for these exceptional eight days of the year. And then there’s the fact that this is not a go-to-synagogue holiday, but observance takes place at a meal, imbuing our tables themselves with holiness.
During these last few days before the first Seder, Jews – mostly Jewish women, if we’re honest – from all levels of religious observance are usually making final tweaks to menus for the Seders and the rest of the week. The cooking is gaining speed and intensity, too, in preparation for the typically large gatherings of relatives, friends and even strangers who will come together to re-tell and celebrate the story of the liberation journey of the ancient Israelites.
But this year, as we are all too aware, is quite different. (more…)
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April 6, 2020 by admin
Turning Days of Distancing into Days of Reflection
Progress is an American value. We are acculturated to propel—socially, professionally, economically—which makes sheltering in place excruciating. For me, not moving forward is as good as moving backwards.
So, how can we navigate this temporary suspension of life as we know it? Some folks are turning this time into an opportunity to begin exercising, bond with family and pets, clean closets, or garden. Others are re-hanging holiday lights. I am reliving the Days of Awe.
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April 4, 2020 by admin
ZoomWear: A Virtual Fashion Guide
Zoom meetings, Zoom teaching, Zoom Seders, Zoom Zumba; your Pandemic calendar is full but what do you wear? Lighthearted tips to help the modern social isolate shine on screen!
Make-up:
Your face is key! Zoom Professional allows meetings of unlimited length; you are going to get bored and sleepy but no-one has to know. Pencil those brows into arches of amazement. (Fireplace ash works in a pinch.) Lighten the skin around your eyes with bleach wipes for an alert demeanor. Blusher masks indoor pallor. When you run out of blush, cut a beet in half and apply to cheeks. When you run out of fresh produce, smear maraschino cherries in a “C” curve starting 9mm from the bottom of your eye socket to the hollow beneath your cheeks. When you run out of red food, slap yourself in the face.
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March 31, 2020 by admin
I Attended a Jews for Jesus Seder in France: Here’s How It Went
Before embarking on my French sojourn I hadn’t contemplated what Jewish life abroad might look like or the compromises I might make. Living in France throughout my 20’s, was more accidental than planned – I was never a refugee fleeing persecution, but a student, an aspiring artist who fell in love with a landscape; the light, the sounds and smells of Aix-en-Provence. Eventually, an intended summer stay stretched into a decade.
The landscape was that of Cezanne and Van Gogh, the scent, wafts of lavender and thyme, mingling with the aroma of freshly baked bread that permeated the 18th century town.
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March 29, 2020 by admin
Bubbah’s Bat Mitzvah
We call her by many things: Bubbah, Mom, Meryl. Earlier this year, at 71 years old, she gained a new identity: Bat Mitzvah girl. Recently called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah in front of her husband, her kids, her grandkids, and friends, she took this meaningful step after two years of study, and an entire lifetime of deep religious observance. My mother has, for most of my life, been our family’s religious beacon. Growing up, most Jewish kids I knew held on to their Jewish traditions through their grandparents. For our family, my mother, upon the death of her own beloved grandmother when I was five years old, dove more deeply into her faith and became more religious than anyone else I knew, including her own parents. Her energy and enthusiasm for Jewish life, history, culture, food, art, and music never waned. And she always embraced feminist and progressive values through a Jewish lens.
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March 27, 2020 by admin
Between Purim and Passover, a Plague
Where anxiety and fear keep us unsettled, it is important to try to keep our emotional and spiritual equanimity.
It has not escaped my attention that the pandemic is happening between Purim and Passover. Purim, like Yom Kippur, is when we read a story about chance. The tables get turned for the better —that the Jews are saved not destroyed
We acknowledge that fate can change at any given moment and we pray for it turns in our favor…
We are also headed into Passover where it took ten plagues to get us out of Egypt. Yes, people died with each plague and we learn that we don’t sing Hallel because the Egyptians drowned in the Red sea and their lives also belong to the Holy One. Yet that story of liberation has fueled many a tradition and given many hope.
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