She said what?!?
There are different kinds of intelligence. Someone can have a firm grasp on history, literature, algebra what have you, but no facility for science or language or geometry.
I try to keep this in mind when overhearing conversations such as the one I caught between an adult son and his parents.
Son: So what did the doctor say?
Dad: She has pre-bronchitis.
Son: Pre-bronchitis? Does that mean that she should anticipate getting bronchitis sometime this week?
Dad: Not if she takes her medicine.
Son (turning to his mother): So are you taking your medicine?
Mom:
I’m taking it. But NOW I feel worse. It makes me sleepy because it has cocaine in it.
Son: Uh…Ma? That’s C-O-D-E-I-N-E.
And that, my friends, is how rumours get started.
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For your reading pleasure, check out what’s going on in the Jewish Blogosphere over at the Ima.
Looking Ahead
A wonderful Shabbat. Watched a lovely young woman take her rightful place as she reached the age of mitzvot and celebrated with her family and friends. Bid goodbye to Shabbat with the under-6 set at Pajama Havdallah…complete with fresh baked cookies to usher in a sweet week. And then bid goodbye to Shabbat (again) with 85 middle school students before turning them loose to jump the night away.
Thank God Shabbat is coming! Just six more days…
True Beauty
Like most children, I loved hearing stories about myself when I was young. Perhaps that is why I have always been drawn to the narratives in the book of Genesis that feature Rebekah. Though I knew that it wasn’t my actual story, I felt a connection to the matriarch with whom I share a name.
We are introduced to our future mother in this week’s portion, Chayyei Sarah. Our text points out that Rebekah is exceedingly beautiful, of marriageable age, and has not yet been intimate with a man. All virtues that were prized during ancient times. Interestingly, however, when instructing his servant as to the location where a suitable wife might be found for his son, Isaac, Abraham neglects to mention the type of person he hopes will be found.
It is the servant, most notably, who articulates the core values of a person. It is neither beauty nor youth that he seeks. Rather, in the prayer he offers to God in Genesis 24:12-14, the servant describes a maiden who deals generously and kindly with a stranger. As if sent from Heaven, Rebekah appears, eager to provide water and lodging for this weary traveler and his camels.
As a young girl, I yearned to be like my Biblical counterpart. Beautiful and graceful. My child-like understanding of the text focused on superficial attributes, completely overlooking those characteristics that truly define a person. There is great wisdom in the lack of description of Rebekah’s beauty. By not providing physical details, the reader is given a definition that beauty is a reflection of what is on the inside rather than external characteristics. Generosity and hospitality are core values that do not fade with the passage of time.
An important message for our daughters and sons. For how we evaluate genuine beauty in a beauty-obsessed culture directly impacts how our children value themselves. Elementary schools report that children as young as Kindergarten are already focused on the latest fashion trends, their weight, and their social status. And if they are concerned with such matters as children, imagine how they will feel about themselves as they make their way through the treacherous teenage years. Providing young people with a definition of beauty based on values and ethics will do much to counteract the negative messages that are bombarding them from a tender age.
Rebekah offers us with a model that ought to be emulated. To care for the stranger without hesitation. To provide shelter and necessities without resentment. To welcome others with outstretched arms. May we follow Rebekah’s example in all our dealings. Then we too shall be exceedingly beautiful.
(cross-posted at the Board of Rabbis of Southern California)
Practical Advise
FS: Hey Poppyseed, you should never order pasta on a first date. It is really messy.
Poppyseed’s eyes grew large.
But that’s my favourite food. What will I eat on the date??
Waiting for the Great Moment
Yesterday, while listening to “Higher & Higher” — the title track on the newest offereing by Neshama Carlebach, Poppyseed remarked
This isn’t what we usually pray for.
Really, Poppyseed. For what do we usually pray?
We usually pray to be better people.
Do you understand what this song is about, Poppyseed? It’s about a time that all people will get along and believe in God. There won’t be any more war or fighting.
Oh, that’s never going to happen.
What makes a six-year-old girl — living in suburban America — believe that there is no hope for lasting peace?
1918. At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. The War to End All Wars came to a conclusion with the Armistice signed by the Allied Forces and Germany.
We know now that the moniker was short-sighted. Not only did the Great War NOT end all wars, it created some new and more complicated problems.
But those soldiers, like the soldiers of every generation, have made unimaginable sacrifices so that we can enjoy freedom. There is no way to adequately thank the scores of men and women who made that possible.
Poppyseed, we cannot persevere without any hope for peace. Even when it seems beyond our grasp, there is always hope.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
When BossGiraffe is away, a number of his duties fall to me. Without a doubt, teaching Confirmation is one of my favourite responsibilities to cover in his absence.
Using the Torah as our text book, the weekly parasha provides a perfect backdrop for all of the topics covered in the 10th grade year.
As the portion of this week is Chayyei Sarah, we parked our selves in the 24th chaper of the book of B’reisheet (that is, the book of Genesis) and carefully made our way through the account of Abraham’s servant and his charge to procure a wife for Isaac. We discovered how Abraham desired a girl from the old neighbourhood for his beloved son. We travelled with the servant, ten camels, and loads of bounty back to Nahor. We listened in on the private supplication of the servant as he prayed for God to guide him in this most daunting task. And so on.
After making our way through the narrative, I asked the students what important characterisitc they thought the text was telling us to seek out in a future partner.
Without skipping a beat, one young lady said, “someone with a lotta camels.”
Bitterly Entwined
Germany was the focus of news stories all day long today. And for good reason. Today we mark the 20th anniversary since the Berliner Mauer, the Berlin Wall, came down. The Wall that came to symbolize the Cold War. And it was that event that led to the reunification of Germany just eleven months later.
The twentieth anniversary was marked by a variety of observances including a religious service at the Gethsemane Church in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg and a concert by U2. Probably one of the most significant events was the recreation by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish leader Lech Walesa of the historic walk across the bridge at the site of the Bornholmer Strasse where the world watched the East Germans cross freely into West Germany. A walk made especially poignant as Chancellor Merkel had made that very same journey on this day twenty years ago.
I wanted to be excited today. I remember that historic event as it happened at a pivitol time in my life. That period between youth and adulthood. It was during my first year of college and I was mesmirized by the images on the television. Imagine…a world without a Communist threat. A free Europe. In my lifetime.
But from the recesses of my soul, other, more disturbing images forced their way past the edge of my consciousness. November 9. It marks a very different anniversary for us. It is the night that the world went dark. It is the Night of the Broken Glass. Kristallnacht.
It has been seventy-one years since the crimes of one lone individual brought down communal punishment on the entire German Jewish Community. One seventeen-year-old kid named Herschel Grynszpan, angered over the confiscation of his family’s home and business, walked into the German embassy in Paris, where he had been living, and upon discovering that the Ambassador was not in the building, took out his anger on a lowly Undersecretary named Ernst vom Rath. Ernst vom Rath died a few days later. On November 9, 1938. Giving the Third Reich the excuse they needed to launch a widescale pogrom on the Jewish community. An outbreak of such violence that by the end, over one hundred synagogues and nearly 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Scores of other were physically attacked and beaten. And after all of the violence had ceased, heavy fines were levied against the community. Retribution for the violence they had provoked.
Sometimes, if I am not careful, I hear it. The shattering of the glass. The screams that resounded during that terror-filled night. The shouts of vile hatred. And then…nothing. For the silence that follows such unimaginable reverberations is a heavy, thick, crushing silence.
So forgive me if I cannot completely rejoice today for I am unable –still–to find my way out of that suffocating silence. The memory too new. The wounds too fresh. Can enough time ever pass to heal the gapin holes left by the murder of two-thirds of our people?
Case Closed
Now many of you know that the Frummies have been threatening to put Beit Frummie on the market in order to move closer to shul. At the beginning of the summer, PC and I packed away all of our winter clothes.
[For the record, such an action just about sent an ENGRAVED invitation to the Evil Eye to make certain that we WOULDN’T get the house on the market until well after the summer had passed.]
Anyway, we packed away all of our winter clothes thinking that we would be in new digs by the time the brisker weather arrived.
So now the brisker weather has threatened to arrive and I send PC to the garage to bring out the winter clothes. Only no clothes to be found. Gone. No where to be found.
Now, I couldn’t imagine what would have possessed PC to get rid of my winter stuff. But after several attempts to locate them, efes. Nothing. Zilch.
So here we are…several weeks have passed…and PC located my clothes.
In a box marked…PC’s Clothes.
The Case of the Missing Clothes? Case Closed.
It’s About Time
Sometimes we just need a kick in the pants to do something that we had wanted to do all along but somehow lacked the motivation to get started.
Shabbat. It is the hub around which the rest of my week turns. And it has been that way for my entire life. The hurried bustle of Friday afternoon that must cease even if there are unfinished projects or loose ends. Candles. Blessing of the children. Kiddush. Washing of the hands. Motzi. Dinner. Shul. The start of Shabbat almost always begins the same way. But then…
Shabbos just sort-of skulked away in the dark of the night. No fanfare. No proclaimation. No nothing.
And not because there was no ritual for it. Because there is. It’s called Havdallah.
I don’t know why we didn’t do it every week. Looking back, I’m a little surprised that I never questioned why we performed the entry rituals religiously but the exit rituals with such preciese irregularity.
I would guess that for most liberal Jews, Havdallah is regareded as that warm-fuzzy closing circle on the Saturday night during a Shabbaton or at summer camp. Or perhaps a one-time event at their “Havdallah Bar Mitzvah.”
But that’s not what I want Havdallah to be for our children. I want Shabbat, with its majestic arrival, to depart with equally graceful pagentry. I love the way the ritual symmetry frames these 25 hours, marking a clear dinstiction between the sacred and the ordinary.
So when I challeged the congregation on Yom Kippur to select a “not-yet mitzvah” in this new year of 5770, I had the perfect opportunity to introduce this weekly mitzvah into our family life. So far, we have missed just one week. And though we adults had already agreed not to make ourselves crazy about the inevitable missed opportunities, not doing Havdallah just that one time felt strange.
Perhaps when we finally get around to taking on a commandment for which we had been yearning to perform, we take to it immediately. Internalizing it swiftly. And then missing it dearly when we don’t do it.
Maybe that’s why tonight’s Havdallah was sooooo sweet…
Shavua tov.
Juggling Act
I really wish I could figure out how other moms do it. Working…immaculate house…amazing, healthy meals…well-mannered kids.
Before I was even awake, this one had already baked 6 challahs, 2 babkas, soup, and the cholent was ready to go into the pot. OK — the three hour time difference helps. But even if she was on this Coast, she’d have me beat.
Still hoping to find the secret…
Anyway, Shabbos is almost here…so see ya on the other side.
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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