What do blooming garden flowers and the shocker I used for a title have in common?
In S. Y. Agnon’s short story “The Sign” the main character learns that all the Jews in his hometown in Europe have been killed by the Nazis. He learns this at the same time his house in the Land of Israel has been decorated for Shavuot in the traditional way, with flowers and plants:
The sun shone down on the outside of the house; inside, on the walls, we had hung cypress, pine, and laurel branches, and flowers. Each beautiful flower and everything with a sweet smell and been brought in to decorate the house for the holiday of Shavuot. In all the days I had lived in the Land of Israel, our house had never been decorated so nicely as it was that day. All the flaws in the house had vanished, and not a crack was to be seen, either in the ceiling or in the walls. From the places where the cracks in the house used to gape with open mouths and laugh at the builders, there came instead the pleasant smell of branches and shrubs, and especially of the flowers we had brought from our garden. These humble creatures, which because of their great modesty don’t raise themselves high above the ground except to give off their good smell, made the eye rejoice because of the many colors with which the Holy One, blessed be He, has decorated them, to glorify His land, which, in His loving-kindness, He has given to us.
A little later in the story Agnon teaches us a little of the halachot (laws) of Shavuot:
Although on the Sabbath and festivals one says the evening prayers early, on Shavuot we wait to say Maariv until the stars are out.
For if we were to pray early and recieve the holiness of the festival, we would be shortening the days of the Omer, and the Torah said, “There shall be seven full weeks.”
Later, the main character is standing in the synagogue, facing the six memorial candles shining among the roses and the wildflowers and the garden flowers that have been used to decorate the sanctuary. “Is it possible that a city full of Torah and life is suddenly uprooted from the world, and all its people—old and young; men, women and children—are killed, that now the city is silent, with not a soul of Israel left in it?”
Who is S. Y. Agnon? Shmuel Yosef Agnon was born Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes in Buczacz, Galicia. In 1908 he immigrated to Israel and in 1913 he went to Germany, where he married his wife. He returned to Israel in 1924. If you have heard of Saul Bellow or Isaac Bashevis Singer, S. Y. Agnon won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, years before Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer won their Nobel Prizes. Agnon wrote his stories in Hebrew, one of the first modern writers to do so. I hope one day to read his stories in Hebrew, as one loses a lot in translation.
Many thanks to Lorri (Rayna Elianna) for recommending A Book That Was Lost: Thirty Five Stories (Hebrew Classics),a lovely book of short stories. The holiday of Shavuot, which is a major Jewish holiday (as opposed to say, Chanukah, which is only a minor holiday) begins on Thursday night, May 28th. It is traditional to decorate one’s home with flowers, to stay up all night learning Torah, and to eat dairy dishes (we’ll be having ice cream for dessert).
Upcoming in Highland Park: Memorial Day Parade down Raritan Avenue (starts in New Brunswick – Highland Park scouts and teams start at South Adelaide) – See Memorial Day Parade 2008
Elsewhere on the Web
Ilana-Davita is taking the Trep challenge and walking. I’ve been doing gardening as exercise, so Ilana-Davita asks if it hurts my back? Links on digging without backache:
I think the key is I never spend more than ten minutes at a time gardening. I do it in between everything else. Am I holding the spade properly? I have no idea. I just noticed both those links are from the UK; is it because more UK folks are gardeners?
Deep Vein Thrombosis – one of the causes is sitting too long in one spot, like on a plane (I know someone who had similar problems after returning from Israel – get up and walk around on a long plane ride).
Wall of the Old City, Jerusalem, July 2008
Fifty years ago Jews could not walk here, along the walls of the Old City. There was a barbed wire fence preventing entrance. In 1967 all this changed, and thus tonight begins Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day. After June 1967 not only were Jews and others allowed into the Old City and to visit the Kotel, the City was once again in Jewish control, as it had not been for 2000 years. Jerusalem has been a holy city for the Jewish People since the time of King David.
From Wikipedia, here is what Moshe Dayan said on that day:
This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples’ holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.
Posts on Jerusalem Day or about Jerusalem in the news:
Jack hosts this week’s Haveil Havalim, the weekly blog carnival of the Jewish Blogosphere. He compares Haveil Havalim to the famous scene from Night at the Opera, when Harpo, Chico, Groucho and too many others crowd into an ocean liner cabin.
And I updated my Pics of the Month page. The page features some of my favorite paintings, photos or Flash creations. Featured in this post is a watercolor I did in 2007. Any ideas why I chose it for this post?
My son (the middle son, the filmmaker) went on a field trip last week with his class to the Rutgers Agricultural Museum in New Brunswick. Here is an old-fashioned firetruck that he photographed. (I didn’t go on the trip; he took his own camera).
Part of the reason for the trip was the boys have been studying the 39 Melachot, the 39 acts of work that a Jew is not allowed to do on the Sabbath. All of these Melachot are agriculturally-based, so their teacher used the museum as a way to show them threshing, winnowing, grinding sheaves (I have no idea what those are; I took those words off Wikipedia). Each boy had been assigned one Melacha to study in detail.
My son’s Melacha was weaving. He had already presented to the class, and his teacher told me later that he gave my son weaving because it was a more difficult one, but he knew my son could handle it. He did an origami basket project with his class. Yes, I am proud of him!
"#Torah for artists: a screen of turquoise, purple and scarlet wool (what colors!) and twisted linen, work of embroiderer (Exodus 36:37)"
Want to see all the recent #Torah tweets? Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in #Torah. Enjoy! (and it’s even easier to access if you use TweetDeck and dedicate a search column to #Torah).
Want to read more about #Torah? Read Rabbi Shai’s post on the JPS site.
If you want to learn more about Judaism via Twitter, the best Twitterer to follow is JewishTweets. You will not be disappointed! If you look at all the folks following or being followed by JewishTweets, you can find many other Jewish twits I mean Tweeps.
Our family decorates oatmeal containers with colorful pictures and scraps of wrapping paper. We modge podge (a kind of glue) the containers, fill them with treats and give them to our friends. This custom is called Mishloach Manot, and it is part of the celebration for the holiday of Purim. On the container at left you can see King Ahashverosh by his red throne.
For more Ruby Tuesday posts (photos with a bit of red or a lot of red), visit:
I love the idea that trees and flowers are blooming in Israel. Anyone who lives in the north can probably appreciate the envy I feel at this time of year. So I’ll start with Batya’s blooms:
While G6 reminds us Purim is coming, Mottel shows us Chanukah past (and here’s my Purim watercolor, too):
Leah presents three from the Chossid’s blog:
Some lovely, some dusty shots on Israeli blogs (Rahel, Yisrael M., CosmicX):
New York on view (by Wolf, Jacob, JoeFlix and Mendy):
Mottel showed South America (Pisaq, Machu Picchu), Ilana-Davita a Hong Kong shul:
I just tweeted my first #Torah tweet:
