Kislev is Here
PSALM FIFTY-NINE
Rosh Chodesh Kislev
by Debbie Perlman, z”l
Courtesty Fotolia
Slowly, You ease the chill upon us,
Sending midday sun to warm us;
Through the shattered glass of yesterday’s pain,
You move us ahead into winter’s dark.
Balance the dark with Your light, O Eternal;
Balance the cold with the warmth of Your care.
You train us to look at both sides;
You give us a month of duality to contemplate:
Two wives, twin sons, a man with two names, A nation not knowing its own identity.
Balance our questions with Your clues, O Eternal;
Balance our fears with Your comforting hand.
And in the grip of Kislev‘s deepest cold,
Light so brief we could swallow it in one gulp,
Balance the darkness with shining eyes,
Smoothed windows cleared
To broadcast the growing light,
Pinpoints of Your living flame,
Answers to our winter yearning.
I Don’t Get It
[This was published on motzei Shabbat]
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It isn’t just Jewish holidays that seem to come early some years. We can add Black Friday to that group. Though it has become de rigueur for retailers to open at six, five, or gulp four in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving, some stores open at midnight…or, even, on Thanksgiving Day itself.
It seems that the desire to get the best deals overrides anything resembling rational behaviour.
Take, for example, the woman who was so driven to get an XBox that she felt it necessary to pepper spray nearby patrons. And as crazy as that incident sounds, it was not the only violent act that occurred in the chaos of this annual shopping frenzy. Several other incidents were reported in a number of other communities.
I cannot imagine what goes through a person’s head in these situations. Anyone have an answer??
Final Verdict
The Menu:
Roast Turkey with Gravy (substituted pan drippings for the chicken stock)
Mashed Potatoes (using a modified version of this recipe)
Dressing (straight out of the box with NO additions)
Cranberry Sauce (jellied from the can and sliced, just the way PC likes it!)
Green Beans with Madeira Mushrooms (sans cheese)
Sweet Potato Casserole
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Cookies with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts
The Verdict:
Everything tasted savory and flavourful. Already thinking ahead to next year, I’ll be subsitituting the Green Bean dish with this one in order to better balance the flavours.
As I mentioned to PC last night, I am not one to brag about my accomplishments. However, I was really, really thrilled with how everything turned out. I am still so very new to the domestic activities that came with the house. Not only was the food delicious, but I even managed to schedule the entire enterprise so that all the dishes would be ready at the same time.
It was an incredible amount of work and, truth be told, I was ready for bed before we even sat down to eat. But it was worth every moment just to hear my kids complain that they “didn’t really care for XYZ.” my husband pronounce the feast as the best he’s ever tasted.
What was on your Thanksgiving table??
Thanksgiving Memory
It was the strangest Thanksgiving we had every had. Though the cast of characters hadn’t changed, we weren’t at my grandparents’ nor was there a home-cooked feast on the table.
Long tables in a sterile room.
Trays with compartments for each food item.Ice cream bar out of a deep freezer.
The Twilight Zone marathon on KTLA.
And nuns. Lots and lots of nuns.
PapaBear was convalescing after a coronary bypass. Like the mountain that was unable to go to Muhammad, we brought Thanksgiving to St. Mary’s Hospital.
The staff was wonderful. Patients are only in the hospital over a holiday if they are in critical condition. After all, no one would elect to have surgery when he could be ingesting abnormally amounts of rich, savory food at some odd hour in the mid-afternoon. With great compassion, the soft-spoken sisters created a festive atmosphere in the Doctors’ Lounge for our extended family.
Many memorable Thanksgivings have occurred since. That one, thirty some-odd years ago, remains one of the most potent experiences of my youth. The kindness of strangers and their desire to create sacred space for us was a welcomed respite from the stress of having a loved one in surgery. I think of them each Thanksgiving with gratitude.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
where we now reside, the local radio station has been playing Christmas music since the first of November. Which means a LOT of Carpenters and old 80’s sensations like Debbie Gibson and Wham!
If you’d like to listen to some “seasonal” music that’s specific to our holiday, why not head over to Amazon for a free download of Craig Taubman‘s latest project, Lights: A Hanukkah Music Sampler – vol. 2. A mixture of new compositions and standards, this collection includes offerings from RebbeSoul, Mare Winningham, Josh Nelson, the Klezmatics, and more. Take a listen…and let me know what you think.
Inconsistent Consistency
Given my learning curve with all things domestic, it will be of little surprise to learn that I have been perusing recipes, “how-to” articles, etc. for the past several weeks in preparation for my first Thanksgiving feast.
Trying to create a menu that will satisfy the limited palates — without violating any of our dietary restrictions (pork, shellfish, dairy/meat together) — is a bit challenging.
In my food blog travels this month, I see that Green Bean Casserole is a popular side dish at the modern-day Thanksgiving Feast. And green beans happen to be one of the few veggies on which all Frummies can agree. However, the Green Bean Casserole is a milchig dish. Cream of Mushroom being, apparently, the proverbial glue upon which this entire recipe hangs. So no Green Bean Casserole for us.
Ha-HA! It just so happens that I found a recipe for a pareve Green Bean Casserole. Perfect!
Except…
Except…except it still looks milchig and, I expect, still tastes milchig.
I can already hear DadGiraffe countering with, “don’t you use pareve margarine at fleishig meals?” [Which, by the way, is not so easy to find. While nearly all stores carry Fleischmann’s Original, it is only their Unsalted that is pareve.] And, yes, yes I do use pareve margarine. No one who has ever eaten it or looked at it could actually confuse it with butter. While eating something cooked with margarine, one does not get the sense that it is a dairy dish. But this recipe is meant to replicate the taste and consistency of a dairy dish.
Inconsistent? Perhaps. But with a reason that makes sense to me.
In what ways do you create boundaries that might seem inconsistent to others??
Reserved
See that spot? ======>
Is my name on it?
I don’t see it. So it would not occur to me to park in that spot.
I had a meeting at Beernut’s school [his first middle-school parent-teacher conference!] so they were expecting me.
But that doesn’t mean that the “reserved” spot was for me.
For five years, I had my own parking spot. It was a reserved spot. And it was reserved for me.
Nary a week passed without someone having the chutzpah to park in one of the staff spots.
I often wondered what was going through someone’s head as he or she was pulling into one of these spots.
I’ve never been here in my ENTIRE life, but I’m certain that the reserved spot is for me.
Or…
I’m just running in for a quick second. What’s the big deal?
Or…
It’s the rabbis’ day off so they aren’t even using their spots.
Or even…
Reserved sign? I didn’t see any sign.
Whatever the driver might or might not be thinking, the message that he or she is giving is this:
Rules are for other people. For freiers.
Wonder how shocked they’ll be when they realize that their kids don’t follow the rules either. Will they make the connection?
Dorsi-what?
It was a deafening crash. If I had discovered that something had fallen through the floor that separates the second storey from the first, I would have not been surprised in the slightest. It was that loud.
To my horror, it was PC who I found splayed out at the bottom of the stairs. How he came to be there remains a mystery. Other than to say that stockinged feet and hard-wood floors were involved.
After 600 mgs of ibuprofin and 35 minutes of ice (“ice is nice“), PC — of his own volition — decided a trip to the ER was necessary.
Attending Doc: So can you tell me what your biggest area of concern is?
PC: Here…on my foot.
Attending Doc: Can you move your foot?
PC: Not well. It’s really painful when I do this (moving foot).
FrumeSarah: He has the most pain and difficulty with the dorsiflexion.
The attending stopped what he was doing, looked up at me, and said:
What are you??
FrumeSarah: Um…I’m a rabbi. Spend a lot of time in hospitals.
Attending Doc: You must pay a lot of attention. I’ll bet 2/3 of my residents wouldn’t know ‘dorsiflexion.’
Which made me feel rather proud of myself…if not just the slightest bit nervous when one of the residents came over to check on us.
Why I Let My Kids Skip Religious School
[This was published on motzei Shabbat]
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Or…Why I Would Have Let My Kids Skip Religious School Had It Not Already Been Cancelled. [Why it was cancelled is another post altogether.]
I was not in class the day after I became Bat Mitzvah. While that might seem counterintuitive in a a household that viewed Bar/Bat Mitzvah as the age of reaching ritual responsibility rather than a very pricey Hebrew School gradutation, that absence was a privilege granted us on that one day, and one day only, during our education. Never were we allowed to miss Religious School for any reason other than illness. And not the “I’m not feeling so well” type. As was the benchmark for secular school, absence was permitted only if the patient could produce a fever or vomit. Stayed up too late at a sleepover? Too bad. Relatives in from out-of-town? They can wait til school’s out. These wouldn’t be reasons to miss secular school so they wouldn’t be acceptable excuses to skip Religious School.
I bring this up because I am letting the kids skip school tomorrow.
That’s right. I am keeping my kids out of class. Up to late tonight? Yes, but that is not why they are skipping class. Relatives in from out-of-town? Yes, as it so happens, but that is not the reason either.
Halley’s Comet is the reason the kids are not going to school tomorrow.
The Comet is not expected to make a return visit until 2061 so this has nothing to do with the kids seeing the comet.
One night, in 1986, my mother decided to pack up the family and head up to Griffith Observatory to see the Comet. It was a wildly-crazy spontaneous decision; one that met with not a small amount of disapproval from the other custodial parent. Into the station wagon did we pile. We made the drive only to discover that the cloud cover in the Los Angeles Basin made any sighting of the comet impossible.
Rather than cut our losses and head home, back into the station wagon did we pile. And headed east. One hundred forty miles east. To Joshua Tree National Park, though we knew it as Joshua Tree National Monument in those days. By the time we schlepped out to the desert, witnessed the historical event, and schlepped back home, we were zonked. The other custodial parent, predictably, saw no reason why we should not continue on to school. Fortunately, my mother prevailed.
The takeaway? There are, sometimes, major events that trump school. Do I recall seeing the comet? Fuzzily. More importantly, I was left knowing that sometimes a life experience can shape us in important ways. Even at the expense of a day in the classroom.
Instead of sitting in the classroom tomorrow, we will be heading out to hear author, Amy Meltzer, lead a program on her latest work, The Shabbat Princess. To meet an author whose writings portray a recognizable Judaism is, I believe, one of those experiences.
I. Can. Hardly. Wait.
Cultural Perspective
Did you happen to catch David Bianculli’s review of the upcoming PBS Masters documentary on Woody Allen?
It was an impressive review.
By that, I do not mean that it was a positive review, although it was. Impressive in that Bianculli convinced me, in a mere seven minutes, five seconds, that my life will, in fact, be enhanced by spending four hours with Woody Allen this Sunday and Monday nights (check your local PBS stations for times).
There was, however, one part of the review that jumped out at me. In introducing a 1986 clip of Woody Allen interviewing his mother, Nettie Konigsberg, Bianculli describes the encounter as “almost uncomfortably revealing.” She tells Allen that he was very bright as a child, but that he was a very active child. More active than she was prepared to handle which, in turn, caused her to be incredibly strict with him, which she later regretted.
“Because if I hadn’t been that strict, you might have been a more, a not so impatient … you might have been a — what should I say? Not ‘better.’ You’re a good person. But maybe softer, maybe warmer,” she says.
“Yikes,” remarks Bianculli.
It must be a cultural thing. Because I didn’t find the conversation uncomfortable whatsoever. In fact, his mother sounded a whole lot like my TanteZ and the rest of the Brooklyn crew from that era. Both the accent and speech pattern were familiar. And what she actually said would not be considered anything other than a reflective observation. Which was familiar as well.
As we learned with the release of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother — a book that I enjoyed, by the way — there are significant cultural differences in the ways different ethnic groups child-rear, communicate within a familial structure, and perceive success. What sounds harsh or, as in this case, uncomfortable to one person might not be heard the same way by someone else coming from another ethnic group.
The part that I found more shocking was that Allen’s Jewish mother took partial responsibility for the way in which she reared him.
After she blamed him, of course.
Frume Sarah is Shabbos-observant -- in a Reform way, that is. Please note that from Friday afternoons until one hour after sundown on Saturday evenings, Frume Sarah will be unavailable, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
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Thank you for your understanding...and gut Shabbos!!! 
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