Order, Joy and Trembling in the Court

I am typing this post in the “quiet room” of the city courthouse. I’m here for jury duty and hoping not to be called into a courtroom for possible jury selection. It’s 11:17 a.m. and so far, so good. Only five hours to go but I’m silently praying that they’ll let us out early. Meanwhile, the quiet room is just that - a quiet space to relax, read, reflect, repeat until (when/if) your number is called. The only sounds are the click-click of laptop keyboards and jurors-in-waiting squirming in their seats, trying to find a more comfortable sitting position. Decorum here is the order of the day. 

It is Friday, September 12, the 19^th day of Elul.

Elul. The Jewish month of preparation for Tishrei; for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succos. I think this is the third time I’ve been summoned for jury duty in Elul. And every time, it has been the perfect opportunity to concentrate on everything physical and spiritual that the calendar will demand of me in the weeks ahead. (A few years ago, a popular Jewish magazine published a piece that I wrote about a previous Elul-in-the-Courtroom experience. Message me if you’d like a copy.)

The courthouse is not in a particularly pretty part of town but once inside, the architecture and design are surprisingly stunning. 

Marble stairways, Ionic-style stone pillars, cathedral ceilings...

and a stained-glass domed window featuring a depiction of Moses, I presume, with tablets in hand. The grandeur evokes feelings of delight mixed with reverence.

The Elul connection is obvious. We are about to be judged by the Judge of all judges, in the grandest of all courtrooms. The order of the day is “gilu bir’ada” - Rejoice with Trembling. To take the stand before G-d with a mix of happiness and awe. In a way, that's been the theme of this entire year. Rejoicing over the triumphs; trembling over the tragedies. And nowhere as much as in Israel. Naturally, at this time, we Remember Jerusalem and pray that the new year will bring peace to our Holy City and Land. 

And so, without further ado, my not-necessarily-annual Rosh Hashanah poem, slightly edited for the new year.

Rosh Hashanah 5786

We ponder again the year in review, what was accomplished, what's still left to do. Looking back, we can count all the ways we've been blessed and assess how we've scored on G-d's many tests. So many should’ves and could’ves but didn’t. Surely I would’ve if my heart had been in it. No more excuses! Or at least not as many. Gotta work hard to make hardly any.

What have I learned in the year that has passed? That no two people will take the same path. Be it highway or foot bridge, a road lies ahead. Walk yours with G-d, King Solomon said.

Our heartfelt prayers and beloved traditions see us through challenges and transitions. From day to day, from year to year, our faith and our trust calm every fear.

The years come and go in the circle game. Events ever-changing; the cycle, the same. Like wood being shaped by the artisan's lathe, we marvel at eych ha'galgal mistoveyv.

How do I even begin to say "thank You for all that You’ve sent our way? For the obvious blessings; the hidden ones, too, gently prodding me to reach out to You".

We'll begin a new calendar, start a clean slate, fill it with good deeds and character traits; with memorable moments and meaningful days, months full of emulating G-d’s holy ways.

We'll look for the signs that come from Above, signs of Hashem's unconditional love. Signs of the times, signs of the seasons, time to make changes for all sorts of reasons.

Yomuledet Sameyach! Congratulations, dear Earth, on the 5,786th year since your birth. What shall we wish you on your special day? Global peace. Gentle weather. Prosperity. Each truly awesome piece of our planet is the work of His hands so that we can man it. Inspiring wonder and veneration, gifts to humanity, to every nation.

Soon the air will turn brisk; the foliage, bright. First, the table we'll set and the candles we'll light. The challahs are baked; the honey dish glistens. The shofar will blow; to its call we will listen.

Ripe pomegranates bursting with seeds remind G-d of our merits, not our misdeeds. The angels are ready to plead every case to the Judge of all judges Whose verdict we'll face. He will open His books, review them and rave, about every character, how each behaved. How we all tried our best to stick to the plot, about who we are and who we are not. 

May He grant us good health and joy that is true, contentment and nachas and simchas "by you". Let this be the year that He takes our hands and leads us back Home to our holy Land. 

May we all exercise our right to return, to our Source, to our Land, to the lessons we learn from our Torah, the treasure that keeps us alive as we wait for Mashiach, soon to arrive.

Now we are ready, the holiday's here. May it be the start of a wonderful year. As we don our finest, it is so nice to know that for Rosh HaShanah we're all Good to Go!

********************

It's 2:20 p.m. and they just announced early dismissal from jury duty! 

My prayer was answered!

May they all be. 

With revealed good and sweetness. 

With every blessing for you and yours; for peace in Israel and the world.  

In the new year and beyond. Amen.

Of Empty Nests and Ancient Bridges

It's been an unusual few weeks around here.

My dear mother, may she live and be well, left the nest that she's called home for the past 13 years and moved to an assisted living facility. Her new nest is not empty. But it's not home (yet) either.

At just about the same time, my son flew the nest he's called home for the past 21 years and landed in a place of his own. His bold move made me and my husband official "empty nesters".  

One recent evening, as I sat in a corner of our empty nest, I found myself scrolling through saved photos on my phone, including pics that I took last March on The Great Bridge Route. This newest tour of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation brought us way down under the current Old City of Jerusalem to stand below the remnants of the Great Bridge that led up to the Temple Mount in the Second Temple period. From what was once street level, we could also see new exposures of the some of the largest, oldest stones of the Kotel (Western Wall). Any opportunity to put an ear to these stones and listen to the stories they tell of our illustrious past is an opportunity not to be missed. 

Empty nests. Ancient bridges. 

"There's a blog post in here somewhere", I mused. By where exactly?

King David to the rescue - again - to pull it all together with words that continue to carry us through millennia of wandering, waiting for our nest to be filled once more. "Even the bird finds her home, and the swallow her nest where she laid her young...", he wrote (Psalm 84). "...Oh, to be at Your altars, Hashem...for one day in Your courtyards is better than a thousand elsewhere...". 

It is not hard to Remember Jerusalem during these three weeks of mourning for our two holy Temples. This Sunday, August 3, we will observe the date of those destructions (Tisha b'Av - the 9th day of the month of Av) by fasting, mourning and praying for its rebuilding. We're so close...oh, so close...

While writing this post, I happened upon a poem written on what appeared to be an anonymous blog. After copying the poem and saving it, I couldn't find the blog again. I hope the writer won't mind my including it here without citation - albeit with my appreciation and a few of my own touches to it:

A twig, a string, some mud, some silt - things with which a nest is built.

Add some love and lots of care; the swallow makes a home to share.

Snug and secure in their mother’s nest, little hatchlings warmly rest.

Why, Hashem, were we pushed out 

from Your warmest embrace, to wander about?

Yet like the bird who beats her wings, shielding her young from dangerous things

we know the day will come when You will give us complete protection, too.

Not forever will we be forced to roam. Soon You’ll return us safely Home. 

(If you are the writer or know him/her, please contact me so that I can give proper credit!)

Wishing you a meaningful Tisha b'Av and a manageable fast day - or, better yet, may we celebrate it together as a happy holiday in our third and eternal Bais HaMikdash. 

See you on the bridge to our no-longer-empty nest!

Pre-Pesach Priorities

1. matza and wine purchased ✅
2. meat and chicken ordered ✅
3. fridge cleaned ✅
4. cabinets cleaned - in progress
5. cars cleaned - not my job
6. kitchen koshered - not my job
7. food cooked - waiting for #6
8. blog posted - in progress

I think I've got my priorities in order so I'm taking a break from Priority #4 to present you with Priority #8. Hope you can take a break from whatever you're doing and come tour the National Library of Israel with me...

Our two months in Afula included two side trips to Jerusalem. Or, in the spirit of "priorities in order", our two trips to Jerusalem included two months in Afula ;-). On one of those trips, we toured the recently opened (October 2023) National Library of Israel. The guided tour was technically excellent but with priorities lacking. I would much rather have learned more of what the People of the Book are famous for and less about Franz Kafka. (That seems to depend on the particular tour guide. So when you take your in-person tour, make sure you request a guide who shares your priorities!) That aside, it was a fascinating learning experience in everything from ancient manuscripts to present day architecture. 

The beauty of the building itself is something to behold. It houses 4.5 million books, most of them tucked away in a three-story basement that is inaccessible to humans.

The basement is managed by a team of robots who pick the requested book out of the bin and shoot it out to the waiting librarian. The occasional repairman who needs to enter does so with an oxygen tank because there is no air in the basement as a precaution against fire damage! From behind a glass window, we watched the robots at work:

Although we visited the library in early March, the main exhibit hall was already in Pesach mode, with a focus on stunning, ancient Hagaddos. I took many notes but, unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced them. Suffice it to say that these Hagaddos are very old and from many far corners of the world:

Perhaps most moving of all the exhibits was the one on the main floor of the massive multi-story reading room - a chair for each of the hostages still waiting to be freed. With the input of family members, on many of the chairs is a book that is either a favorite of the hostage or hints at something about him.

The National Library of Israel and the entire Nation of Israel continue to pray for their homecoming. May each be able to sit at his Seder, read his Haggadah and thank G-d for his personal redemption as we celebrate our national one. This is, right now, our National Priority.

Yes, two short side trips were enough for me to be able to Remember Jerusalem until the next time... Living in Afula is a blessing and a gift but remembering Jerusalem will always be Priority One. 

P.S. In the midst of composing this post, I received an email saying that today, April 1, is Library Giving Day in the U.S. I don't know that this has any practical application for the National Library of Israel but I took it as a wink from Above that my priorities are in order.

Wishing you a happy, healthy, prioritized Pesach. 

Next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem! Amen!

(8. blog posted ✅)

Variation on a Theme

I've never been a big fan of Purim "themes". I think the theme of Purim should be, well, Purim. But I'm stepping off my soapbox this year and joining in the Purim fun by sharing some photos of what's been going here in preparation for the holiday...and then, my own Variation on a Theme (with appreciation to all the great classical composers who did the same). There's really nothing quite like Purim in Israel...

costumes galore

hamantashen in every store

tons of paper goods are sold

smiling faces - young...

...and old.

I could go on (I've got lots more pics!) but I don't think any of us has time for that with Purim being on Friday this year! So I will conclude with this Variation on the Theme of my last blog post.

Above, our Mishloach Manos for some of the wonderful families 

who went above and beyond in welcoming us Home to Afula. 

Package ingredients are highlighted in bold in this accompanying poem:

Many hours of our past two months in Afula

were spent traveling to and shopping at IKEA.

Baruch Hashem, they satisfied most of our apartment needs

and in the process, we learned a lot about the Swedes.

They like to eat herring and munch crisp bread

(but we’re substituting Osem crackers instead).

The wine is Israeli but bought in their shop.

We hope you’ll enjoy it ‘til the very last drop.

Swiss chocolate has no connection to the IKEA name

but at least the first letters of both countries are the same.

Wishing you a Purim Sameyach and a Shabbat Shalom.

And thank you so much for your warm “Welcome Home”! 

When our Purim is done and Shabbat begins here in Afula, I will Remember Jerusalem and smile as they enter Day Two of their rare three-day Purim celebration. And I will be thinking of my dear family and friends outside the Land who are just beginning their Day One. All part of the fun and mystery of the happiest holiday on the Jewish calendar. Themed or not or a variation on one, may the joy of Purim lead us all into the redemption of Pesach, just four short weeks away... ;-)

אשר ישלטו היהודים המה בשנאיהם

Ee-Kay-Ah

With everything going on in this part of the world, this might seem a mundane, ordinary or just plain uninteresting topic but you've gotta believe me when I say that nothing here is mundane, ordinary or uninteresting. And even if it was, sometimes an escape from the intensity isn't a bad thing.

As mentioned in my previous post, we have been tasked (read: blessed) with the guardianship of a small piece of the Land and the apartment that sits upon it. Taking care of an apartment includes furnishing it and, for the past five weeks, we have been actively trying to do just that - which is where Ee-Kay-Ah comes in. You might be more familiar with it as...

There are several in Israel, one about an hour's drive from Afula. In the first three weeks of our stay, we visited there three times until we learned that although you can't order online directly from IKEA in Israel, there is a service which, for a nominal fee, will order for you. That turned out to be a HUGE help with the ten dining room chairs that we would have had to pull off the warehouse shelves and arrange for shipping to our apartment - a multi-step process.

But ordering intricacies aside, IKEA in Israel is unlike anywhere else. The bookcases on display are stocked with volumes of Torah and other sacred texts.

The dining room tables for sale are set with challah and kiddush wine for Shabbat.

And last but not least, where else in the world can a kashrut-observant Jew eat in the IKEA cafeteria? I didn't opt for their famous Swedish meatballs but the salmon, chips, string beans, etc. were tasty, plentiful and reasonably priced.

All walks of Jewish patrons (and some non-Jewish ones as well) were enjoying their choices from the varied menu. Some didn't seem to be IKEA shoppers at all - just there for the food!

The "doggie bags" we took home (or arranged for delivery) included everything from towel bars to barstools; dressers to dining table...

You might think it a stretch to say that IKEA helped us Remember Jerusalem in a meaningful way but as we furnish our home in the Holy Land, we pray that Hashem will soon build and furnish His Home in the Holy City so that we may all live in its extended shadow - even here, way up north.

There will probably be at least one more visit to IKEA before we head back to the States. Yes, it's something of a trek but never mundane or ordinary. In fact, on our most recent drive in that direction, we even got to see the flowering almond trees that I didn't manage to catch on Tu b'Shevat.

Wishing you the opportunity to furnish your very own home in Israel

- and enjoy the meatballs!

"That's how you say 'hearty appetite' in Swedish." (And "b'tay'avon'" in Hebrew.)

Seder Night (and Day)

Don't panic! Pesach is still two months away - but there's another Seder going on in many homes and communities today. It's the Tu b'Shevat Seder and I participated in a communal one for women here in the Lower Galil (Galilee) city of Afula last night - complete with four questions, four cups of wine, a fourteen page "hagaddah" and some very holy ladies.

Yes, I'm Home for the holiday, thank G-d. Being in Israel during the month of Shevat has always been special for me in many ways as it is my birthday month as well as my husband's, and our anniversary month, too. But in between all those personal celebrations comes this one that is national - and spiritual. This holy day is referred to in the mishnah (the basic text of the Oral Law of our Torah) as one of the four "Rosh Hashanahs" of the year. Tu b'Shevat is a very "technical" day with many details regarding the halachic status of fruit grown in the holy soil of Eretz Yisrael. But in kabbalistic terms, it represents concepts such as spiritual renewal and connection to the Land - and I am "all in". 

The spirit of Tu b'Shevat includes my delight in the every-shade-of-green

that I see as I drive around locally and longer-distance and an appreciation for the blessed rains that poured down as Tu b'Shevat began last night. Today, shemesh paz zorachat - a golden sun is shining out from the behind clouds of whites and greys. 

One can usually rely on the almond trees in Israel to blossom 

on schedule though the ones I saw weren't quite as flowery as I had anticipated. But that's ok because the lemon tree in our yard totally makes up for it. Lemon tree in our yard? Did I just say that? I did. And it is. Our lemon tree in our yard.

Well, G-d's of course - but He recently entrusted us to be the caretakers of a small piece of His Land and the apartment that sits upon it. After two years in the works and decades in my dreams, we moved in one month ago for a two-month stay. I am overwhelmed by this gift, humbled by the responsibility and filled with gratitude for Hashem's guidance every step of the way. Enough on that (for now) lest I short-circuit my keyboard with yet another round of joyful tears.

Depending on how old you are and in what circles you've traveled, you may recall this refrain to a popular song. "Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat."

Our little lemon tree is very pretty, indeed. I don't know if I had ever seen a lemon flower until this week but now I know that it truly is a sweet sight to behold. 

At our private Tu b'Shevat lunch today, we will sample a selection of most of the Seven Species for which the Land of Israel is praised (bug-free figs are hard to come by!) and thank G-d "who has given us life and sustained us and brought us to this day" - in more ways than one. Then, when the tithes have been properly separated - and with no apologies to Peter, Paul or Mary - I will bite in (literally and spiritually) to the most delicious lemon I have ever eaten.

In conclusion, we will Remember Jerusalem in the after-blessing which states: "Hashem, have mercy on Israel, your Nation...rebuild Jerusalem, the city of holiness, speedily in our days. Bring us up into it and gladden us in its rebuilding and let us eat from her fruit and be satisfied with her goodness and bless You upon it in holiness and purity. For you, Hashem, are good and do good to all and we thank You for the Land and for her grain and her fruit and her fruit of the vine..." Amen.

Last Night's Seder Table

Wishing you everything Tu b'Shevat has to offer. From the edible to the intangible and beyond!

"Al" Hanissim - For The Miracles

Al Hanissim ("For the Miracles") is, of course, the special addition to our prayers on Chanukah and Purim. "Al" is the transliteration of a Hebrew word not to be confused with the English abbreviation "AI" which, depending on the font you use, looks exactly the same.

Unless you've been living under a rock (which apparently I had been for some time), you know that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence and that Chat GPT is "a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI". I can't explain it any better than that but some people I know quite well have been using this (miraculous?) little tool for some very interesting and worthwhile purposes. 

So I figured it's time to check it out with some artificially intelligent illustration and the addition of a few new paragraphs to my ancient Chanukah POem. (For the original, click here.) So let's see what it can do - with a bit of editing by yours truly...

In Israel today, miracles abound;
from the Sea to the River, they can be found.

With helping hands 

amid the madness,

hope and faith 

replace the sadness.

Chayalim (soldiers) 

home and hugged tight;
aglow all this week 

with bright candlelight.

Yet still we wait 

and count the days
until our hostages return,

for us to sing praise.

As I Remember Jerusalem on this Chanukah's last day, 

I wonder just what her menorahs would say

about miracles now, and those long ago
and more miracles waiting for G-d to bestow...

*****************************************************

Thank you, AI - you're impressive and "smart"

but you can't hold a (Chanukah) candle to words from the heart.

Your images generated just don't compare

to the art we produce with our humanly flair.

So I'll use my own thoughts to compose what I can,

the original way that these blog posts began.

I'll share my own photos, the best that I've got.

(But I'm glad to be out now from under that rock.)

May all your Chanukah dreams and wishes come true 

with revealed good and sweetness, too.