Thursday Challenge theme for this week is “MANY” (Lots of People, Lots of Space, Lots of Things: Buildings/Candy/Toys/Animals, Countless,…).
I took many photos of the books in our living room and dining room before choosing these children’s books that were hanging around on a shelf of a bookshelf that badly needs replacing. See anything familiar?
This is where I was for about two hours this morning, at the Friends of the Highland Park Library Book Sale. I volunteered for a little over an hour taking the money from the sales, and then I came back with my daughter to buy some books. Despite the pouring rain, patrons were coming in and buying books. Those running the sale told me that the sale has been a success (they have made over $3000). In the middle of the photo is Mort, who spent a lot of his time this past week putting together the sale, and on the right is George, another sale organizer.
So, what did we buy? I bought a biography of the Rema, the story of Rabbi Moshe Isserles. It says in the introduction that certain liberties where made with re-creating his life, but I think I will get a feel for what life was like in 16th century Cracow. My daughter selected a Mother Goose book (we already own one, but this one has different illustrations), a Berenstains Bears book, and Meet Samantha, an American Girl book. I also threw in a copy of the Princess and the Goblin, thinking at some point my daughter will enjoy this classic.
I’m currently reading Mary Poppins, the original book by P.L. Travers. It is delightful, and one can see how it inspired the producers of the more famous movie. I hope to post excerpts from the book in the next week. But now I need to get back to my holiday preparations.
A few recommendations for Rosh Hashanah books for young children:
Children’s books are often a great way to learn a new topic. For example, when I was learning needlepoint about twelve years ago (I was pregnant with my second child and wanted to do something creative that required little clean up and one could sit), I found some nice books in the children’s section of the library.
Meanwhile, I am struggling over a carrot. Did you know that carrots’ leaves, the frilly part anyway, are far from the carrot top?
My plan is to do a watercolor of the carrot. I have the paper set up, and the watercolor nearby. But first I need to decide on a composition. I’d like to have some greenery with my carrot, but I can’t decide on where to place it. I don’t want it on top, as in the first photo.
Note to pomegranate lovers: Not yet in season here. So I either have to work from a Google photo or copy this stamp. Not my ideal choice.
In between working on intriguing posts for your enjoyment and taking care of my family, I do website work for a number of Central New Jersey businesses and organizations. Sometimes it takes a while before my work becomes public, but recently I edited a number of web pages that I can share with you:
I will soon be working on a new online course for the Rutgers Bildner Center. The courses are free; so if you have some time to do a course, go to the Jewish Studies Online Studies page to take the Bible & History or the Israeli Political System. Also, I’ve been working a site for a local firm that is not yet public.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in Central New Jersey. It would be nice to visit the Guggenheim, but it’s a bit far. We’ve been to the Metropolitan; that’s also a full day trip. I used to visit the MFA when I was a student. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is my favorite in Boston. I’ve been to the Louvre. Years ago I enjoyed wonderful art at the Tel Aviv Museum. But if you want an art trip that’s five minutes from Highland Park, you go to:
A few weeks ago my daughter, her friend and I went to Family Day at the Zimmerli.
The event was free; balloons floated in front of the stained glass window. There were guards stationed in every room of the museum. All the guards were nice to the children, explaining sweetly that the children should not touch the art (this was not our experience at the Princeton Art Museum, which seems much less interested in having children in their building, or the Newark Museum, in which a guard once told my son he could not sit and draw the paintings. Maybe if I write this on a blog post someone at one of those museums will read it and try to be more kid-friendly?).
Activities included face painting, a scavenger hunt, a dance performance, an art activity, and storytelling.
My daughter and her friend waited in the bus stop sculpture by George Segal to get their faces painted. George Segal, known for his life-size human figures, also did a sculpture called The Holocaust, which is in the Jewish Museum in New York and in a park in San Francisco.
We worked on the Family Day scavenger hunt, searching for details in paintings.
As our grand finale event, we listened to story told by Peninah Schram, who was introduced as a “world-reknowned storyteller.” Peninah enjoyed having her picture taken with the girls (a third friend joined us):
Peninah began her story with: “Shalom Aleichem.” We were then supposed to yell back: “Aleichem Shalom!” The audience was a mix of Orthodox Jews, Asian Americans, Caucasian Americans, and at least one Muslim family (one could tell by the head scarf and pants)–typical Central New Jersey audience.
The story was about three brothers and a magic pomegranate. Peninah encouraged audience participation; when she talked about a shuk, the children were asked, “And what do you think was being sold in the market?” When she asked how many seeds does a pomegranate have, I whispered to the girls: “613”, so they happily yelled out “613!”, and Peninah explained how a pomegranate is reported to have 613 seeds, like the number of mitzvot in the Torah. (Aside: years ago, my brother and I counted the seeds in a pomegranate, and we found way more than 613 seeds. When I told my teacher, he responded: “but was it a pomegranate grown in Israel?”)
We bought a copy of the book, The Magic Pomegranate. I see we got a good price; we only paid $15 for the book at the museum.
On the way out, the girls got prizes for their participation in the scavenger hunt. One prize was a kite, so we ended the afternoon with a bit of kite flying.
My husband told me there is a custom of fasting after Pesach (and after Sukkot as well) that is called BaHaB. The “B” is for Beis (Monday), the “H” for Hei(Thursday) and the final “B” again is for Monday. Those were the days on which people fasted after Pesach. As it is not considered acceptable to fast in Nissan, which is a happy month, one starts the BaHaB after Rosh Chodesh Iyar. Here is one article on BaHaB.
As I ate too much over the holiday, I really liked the idea that some pious people used to restrain themselves for a few days after the holiday. I actually thought of the idea for this post on Monday, but in order to write the post, I would have to think about food. Again.
Let’s start post-Sedarim. On Wednesday, I baked a delicious banana cake that required seven separated eggs (recipe is in Jeff Nathan’s Adventures in Jewish Cooking) that my family devoured by Thursday. On Thursday night I made blintzes with potato starch, which by the way, is easier than making them with flour. On Thursday morning I baked my sponge cake. Friday was a major cooking day: chicken with lemons and parsley, tongue, potato kugel, meatballs, chicken soup, steamed cauliflower, ratatouille, red cabbage with apples (again, see Jeff Nathan’s Adventures in Jewish Cooking). I also again made my Slavery and Freedom salad, only this time with parsley, because I didn’t have any mint. At least that food had a spiritual value because of its name! My Eldest Son made Pesach brownies, which I didn’t really eat, but I did nibble. On Friday night I was invited to the home of my neighbor the fabulous cook, where I had the great pleasure of meeting blogger Larry Lennhoff and his wife Malka Esther, who promised me at some point she would read and comment on my blog. My neighbor the fabulous cook served: curried carrots, eggplant salad with tomatoes and garlic that my Middle Son actually liked, cucumber salad, a garden salad, soup with matza balls, chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes, jello and fruit salad with nuts. There were also these chocolate candies on the table, which of course I had to sample. By Sunday lunch I had no need for dessert, but somehow the last of the sponge cake got placed in front of me at dessert time, and somehow I ate one, then two, then three, then four slices. They were little slices. On Sunday afternoon I was offered some brownies at a friend’s house and was pleased with myself that I had the courage to say “no, thank you.” And the conversation about ice cream on Sunday afternoon made me feel like enough is enough.
So maybe I won’t fast next week, but a severely-reduced diet sounds like a welcoming notion.
I like to read. But I don’t care for much of the fiction written these days. So I am looking for recommendations; please leave some in the comments. Or else I will read yet another health book.
Some blogger recommendations that sound good:
A book that sounds somewhat interesting:
(I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon and liked it, though I can’t say I loved it. I found the end a bit disappointing).
Update: I was at the library this morning for a meeting (because of budget cuts in Highland Park, the library is now having a part-time consultant–me–update their website instead of a full-time employee). The Highland Park Public Library owns the top three recommended books on this post, as well as three copies of The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. It turns out The Lost is a biography, and I was looking for it in fiction! I took out Dara Horn’s book and Nancy Geary’s book. Noah Gordon’s books will have to wait; they were the fattest.
If I am brave, I will consider a longer post about this book.
I was telling Jill this past week if you find yourself drawn to reading about the Holocaust and want to read something perhaps a bit more uplifting or at least great literature, read anything by Aharon Appelfeld.
This week’s parsha, Parshat Beshalach, is full of women heroes. We’ve got Miriam singing in the Torah portion. Then in the haftorah, Devorah leads the people, Yael tricks and kills Sisera, and Sisera’s mother cries:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why don’t I hear the clatter of his chariots?”
She is just darn convinced her son is going to show up again. But he doesn’t. He’s dead.
Turns out, that we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana 100 times because according to tradition, she cried 100 times. How interesting, that this woman about whom we know so little, other than she was the mother of the story’s “bad guy”, can have such an influence. Maybe it speaks to the power of a woman’s emotional world? And how if it’s a mother, even our rabbis can relate to her pain? Somehow, the crying at the loss of a son (or the not knowing where a son is?) is related to our crying unto God?
Yael Unterman wrote an essay on the topic of “The Voice in the Shofar: A Defense of Deborah” published in Torah of Our Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts. Yael Unterman proposes that the only reason why we even know about em Sisera, the mother of Sisera, is because of Deborah’s song. Furthermore, Deborah knew that Sisera was dead, long before Sisera’s mother knew. Deborah is called “em beYisrael”, in parallel to em Sisera. Literally, em beYisrael means mother in Israel, but Radak suggests here it means mother to Israel. Deborah, too, is a mother…mother to all of Israel.
So why, according to Yael Unterman, is em Sisera chosen to take central role in associations surrounding the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana, equal or maybe even superseding Sarah?
Sarah is crying for what has already happened… if she did believe her son Isaac is dead, she crying in grief; if she is aware he is alive, she is crying in shock. About em Sisera, Yael Unterman writes:
As we watch her, we know her son is already dead; and on one level, em Sisera knows this too and her signs and groans are, like Sarah’s, that of a mother who has actually lost her son. Yet on another level, she is still at a point in time where she may reassure herself, imaginging her son is still alive and is victoriously bringing home the booty.
(snip)
…em Sisera’s condition of dialectical emotions and time-frames is a model for us as we hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah: it evokes grief and loss, but also hope. The groan of the shofar arouses deep feelings of alienation and lack of sense of self: on the Day of Judgement we are stripped of our standing and of the delusions we hold dear the rest of the year…
There is much more to Yael Unterman’s essay, but perhaps I got you interested enough to read it yourself. I took a peek at Yael’s website and discovered she is working on a biography of Nehama Leibowitz.
To finish up this post, I would like to remind (or inform, as the case may be) you of the ritual of dipping one’s finger in the wine cup on Pesach to take out a bit of wine. Even the though the Egyptians drowned in the sea, they are still human beings, and we cannot be completely happy at the death of our enemies.
“Shemot is the best parsha in the universe!” declares my daughter. And no wonder…it’s action-packed, with women heroes, defiance of a totalitarian dictator, and the Children of Israel enslaved, but not for long. For her, the best part is how little Moshe is taken from the water by the daughter of Pharaoh. Miriam is standing nearby, and the daughter of Pharaoh’s servants are close by as well. Miriam will soon get her mother, Yocheved, to come nurse her own baby. See my daughter’s rendition of this event by clicking on the thumbnail.
When Moshe is born, Yocheved sees that he is “good”, ‘ki tov’. Aren’t all little babies good? Rashi explains that when he was born, the whole house filled with light. Rashi is referring to a midrash that it was supernatural sign, and therefore she hid him. He is alluding to the light from Breishit, where it also says ‘ki tov’, and it was good.
In his book Exploring Exodus Nahum Sarna points out the language here is not only an echo of Breishit, but later, when Yocheved places Moshe in a basket, it is called a ‘tevah’, echoing the language of parshat Noah.
These two literary allusions tie the book of Shemot (Exodus) back to the book of Breishit (Genesis). Just as God created the World, so He is the one who saves Moshe and will take the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
Sarna writes further about the word ‘suf’:
The container that held the infant Moses was placed among the “reeds”, in Hebrew suf, a term borrowed from the Egyptian for “papyrus/reed thicket.” The idea of the mother was to make sure that the infant would not be carried downstream. It may well be that the rare word suf has been selected in the present text because it is allusive, prefiguring Israel’s deliverance at Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds).
And for your listening pleasure, be sure to check out Ka Ribon by Pharaoh’s Daughter.
