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Enough to go around

October 11, 2007 by

A long time ago I came across the Warm Fuzzy Tale (highly recommended) and it was the first time that I realized that there really is enough love and kindness and good feelings to go around. In fact, the more that one gives away, the more one has. A couple of years after reading the tale, I became aware of the same thing as a lactating mother: the more milk my baby took from me, the more milk I would produce. In the act of giving, I was actually participating the in process of creating even more.

The other day I was talking to one of my daughters. She said to me that she really doesn’t subscribe to the mystical beliefs that many people in Israel seem to share. In Israel many people, both those who would describe themselves as religious and those who wouldn’t, believe in the power of: blessings from certain rabbis, prayer at the graves of righteous people, water blessed by certain rabbis, saying prayers at a specific location (the Western Wall, Rachel’s tomb), buying new mezuzot and/or tfilin, wearing special amulets or wristbands, etc. She told me, however, that she does think that good things she does, in some way will increase the goodness in her environment.

And I would agree.

When I was in driver’s ed class in high school, they showed us a corny movie about driving courtesy (for the Israelis in the audience — no, that is not an oxymoron). It showed someone driving down the street and seeing someone in another car trying to get into the flow of traffic. The first driver smiled and let the second one in. The second driver,when faced with a similar circumstance also smiled and allowed another driver to maneuver past him. One by one, there was a chain created of people being generous and kind to each other. Back when I was contemplating the meaning of life– something that preoccupied me for a period of time– I came to the conclusion that the real meaning in my life was the increasing of goodness in the world. I wanted through my actions, to set off chains of kindness and caring and generosity. And it seems to be true- that for the most part, the more kindness and caring one can give, the more one will receive.

Of course there are people who are bitter and angry and hurtful and malicious, but if we allow them to change our behavior, then we become a part of a cycle that brings increasing negativity to the world. And after all, there really *is* enough kindness and love and caring and gentleness to go around and the seeds we spread can grow and bloom and produce more seeds and more blossoms for us, and our children and our grandchildren.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Ramblings, Spirituality

Like a daughter

September 28, 2007 by

She was like a daughter. The first day we met I thought, “This is going to be easy; she’s so likable; we get along.” And we did.

And over the years we shared lots of happy times and some sad times. She would call and we would talk for a long time on the phone. She would ask my opinion or advice and frequently she valued it and mostly we agreed. It seemed she was like a daughter.

But then some months ago, I noticed the change that had been taking place for a long while. There were signs that I had chosen to see as eccentricities. There were angry words directed at others. She became demanding and petulant. There were periods of time when the calls stopped.

And then it happened. A complete withdrawal. A change in personality from soft and kind to hard and bitter. I tried to find a way back to her, but she blocked every road.

Our lives will not follow a parallel course. She has chosen to become a stranger. And I feel sad– not for me, but for her.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Ramblings

Observations

September 25, 2007 by

1. Feeling the cool breeze blowing as I look at my sukka, I am struck with what a privilege it is to live in Israel where building a sukka is not only normal; it’s a national pastime!
2. Thinking about my life, I am awed at all of the opportunities I have had and am thankful for every one of them.
3. Having seen 3 of my 5 children today, I feel incredibly blessed.
4. Having seen both Abigail and Kinneret today, I am struck with how incredibly cute little girls can be (especially when they’re my granddaughters).
5. Having seen Abigail’s big sisters and brother today, I can’t help thinking about what terrific kids they are.

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I remember as a little girl watching the movie “White Christmas” and hearing Bing Crosby sing “Count your blessings.” The song made a very strong impression on me. It was almost my theme song, especially the line that said, “I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads; and one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds.” And now when I picture curly heads, there are about two dozen. Every one is precious. I never taken them for granted.

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

A plea for support

September 20, 2007 by

Today I am going to write about problems in my life so that all of my many readers (most of whom want to sell drugs and get me interested in foreign currency trade) will be filled with compassion for poor suffering me.

Well, to start out with, yesterday when I got up, I couldn’t find my glasses anywhere. I mean what could be worse? I did have another pair, but they were not nearly as attractive and didn’t match my outfit nearly as well.

Then, I had to drive in terrible traffic. There were hundreds of police on the streets of Jerusalem making sure that Condoleeza Rice would have a safe and expedient journey, but none to clear the streets for me. Imagine that!

Worse yet, when I got home, I needed to heat dinner. I understand that the leftover chicken, roast, and kugel were tasty, but they didn’t volunteer to leave the fridge for the stove on their own…

Life is very difficult and I sincerely need support.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Ramblings

Thoughts on cooking…

September 11, 2007 by

As I was contemplating my potato kugels (making them, not eating them), I realized that by now I have made that recipe so many times that I don’t need to open the cookbook. Now this is no major accomplishment as far as I can tell since there are not a lot of ingredients and it’s not a complicated recipe, but for me, it is unusual. You see, over the years I have cluttered my brain with lots of facts that I simply have no practical use for. What good does it do me to remember that our phone number in 1970 was 531 0485 (in Pittsburgh)?? Why do I need to know the name of the staff chaplain at Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1967 (Bermel)?? Why am I remembering useless information???

Well, knowing that I have been craming my poor little brain with useless information, I chose not to learn any of my recipes, satisfied that the cookbook would remember and all I had to do was remember which cookbook had which recipe. And that worked. Over the years, one could trace which were my favorite recipes by seeing which pages the books opened to and how dirty they were. The dirtier, the more loved the recipe. None of that plexiglass cookbook holder stuff for me. I’m hardcore. If its going to get dirty, well, then, so be it. I am expressing my love for the recipe in this way.

And I started to think… we have all sorts of measures of personality from the 16 PF to the Myers-Briggs to the MMPI. All of them have their uses. But I was thinking that maybe we could learn a lot about a woman (yes, I do think that men and women are different, but that’s another entry) by looking at her cookbooks. Maybe even we could ferret out the nurturer in her by seeing what she chooses to make. We certainly could see if she is daring or conservative. We can see if she’s a “health food” person or an “eat, drink and be merry” person. We can, of course tell her age by the yellowing of the pages. Of course, in my case, you would have to take into account that some of my cookbooks were my mother’s and in that case, some of the paperbacks have begun disintegrating.

Well, I began my foray into this type of personality testing by looking at my own books and by and large, we’re talking comfort foods- carbs of all sorts. After all, meat and fish kind of speak for themselves. Most of the time, in my experience, anything you do to meat detracts from its taste. Fish can be sweetened, but then is it really fish? (Of course I exclude gefilte because after all, that is a very special hybrid kind of fish that grows complete with bread crumbs, egg, onion, salt, and sugar already in it.) Same thing with vegetables. To me, they are all pretty delicious with very little intervention. Desserts? Yes, well, desserts. In the days when I weighed in at a hefty 125 when I was 5ft 6inches, my favorite recipe was for chocolate cheesecake. At this point, typing the words just added 3 pounds to my weight. Need I say more? Lemon meringue pie? I did that a few times when we lived in Oklahoma. It was so much fun and very delicious, but on went 2 more pounds just typing about it. I don’t know if I can continue …

And I began to think about my mother. There were a lot of things about my mother that were hard for me. But when I think about her recipes, it makes me appreciate that fact that she did care. She did want to give us good things to eat. She did want to nurture us that way. Her cabbage borsht was not just delicious; it was love. Her spaghetti sauce was caring. Her Passover apple kugel provided sweetness that lives on after her.

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

Preparing for Rosh HaShana

September 10, 2007 by

It doesn’t happen often, but this year, we in Israel get to experience what we used to have in the US- a “three day yom tov.” One of the many benefits of living in Israel is that we have them only rarely because except for Rosh HaShana, all of the two day holidays outside of Israel are one day holidays in Israel.

How well I remember being on Army bases in the US with four and then five children, the only religiously observant family, celebrating two days of holiday plus shabbat. Oh my. Aside from the occasional Army couple or lonely single soldiers, we had few guests since everyone else was working and the children’s friends were at school. It was a long three days.

But now everything is different because those three days will zip by with family and friends joining us and with us joining them for meals and conversation and walks in the park. Holidays are such happy, joyful times here. But the three-day yom tov does bring its own sources of anxiety:

1. Where am I going to put all of the food I need to store to serve for the next three days???
2. Will there really be enough fresh vegetables to make a good salad for shabbat?
3. Will 4 potato kugels be enough?
4. Is it possible to stay on anything like a decent diet in the midst of this food orgy?

Tune in for the answers to these and other questions in our next exciting episode:
“Why can’t Yom Kippur be three days long?”

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings

I Remember Grandma

September 6, 2007 by

Yesterday we were in Ashdod. We had been invited to a wedding and decided that rather than drive back home in the middle of the night, we would stay over at a hotel in Ashdod. We drove there early in the day so that we would have a chance to enjoy the beach. We found the beach almost empty of people and exceedingly clean. We left our belongings and went into the water. The water was cool at first, but after a while, it seemed almost too warm, but we enjoyed riding the waves and bouncing and getting jostled and tasting the sea water as it dripped into our mouths…

But just as memories are jogged by a song that one associates with a person or event or a scent, like the perfume someone used to wear, so were my memories activated by the undulating waves and the sound of their peaking and breaking. And suddenly, there was my grandmother.

She appeared in my memory as she had been that summer when I was turning 7. My parents had rented a huge house in Atlantic City along with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. We all were in Atlantic City for the summer. The men (my father, grandfather, and uncle) remained in Philadelphia working, visiting us on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and driving back in the mornings and spending from Saturday night to Monday mornings with us. The three women (my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt) had two workers who kept the house clean and helped watch the three children (me, my 2 year old sister and my 2 year old cousin). Their lives were pretty much perfect.

They would be free to do whatever they wanted and we, the children, would appear only upon request. So each afternoon, we were taken to the beach to romp and play and when we got tired or the women got tired of us, we were taken back to the house, fed a snack, bathed, and dressed for dinner. In those days, Atlantic City was quite an elegant place and people literally had dresses made to wear on the boardwalk in the evening. I remember two dresses that had been made for me. One was a lavendar organdy dress trimmed with lace and it had hand-embroidered flowers on it. The other was a blue organdy dress that had a blue plaid overskirt, also of organdy. The dresses had matching taffeta slips and had to be starched and ironed for each wearing.

That summer, I was unlucky enough to develop a fungus on my feet. I remember my mother taking me to a foot doctor (then they were chiropodists) who would have me hold my feet in a whirlpool for 15 minutes or so and then coat my feet with a thick yellow creamy substance. Then he would wind gauze around my feet and tell me to be sure not to get them wet. This went on for a number of weeks.

Well, my grandmother couldn’t stand the fact that I would not be able to go into the ocean for several weeks, so she would be sure each day to pick me up in her arms and stand in the water with me suspended between her arms with my feet out of the water. She would jump with waves and I would get wet everywhere except on my feet. She would stay there with me for a long time and finally she would carry me back to the shore.

Ever since, jumping the waves has always reminded me of my grandmother and of how much she loved me.

And it set me to thinking…

A week ago I returned from 9 days in Beijing with my oldest granddaughter. We had a wonderful time. She laughed and smiled and enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful structures and gardens and she enjoyed walking through the colorful markets and bargaining and buying wonderful things and interacting with the Chinese people. I wonder, though, what it may be that someday will trigger her memory of me and will she realize how much I love her?

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

Wonders

August 31, 2007 by

As a rabbi, my husband often would teach children basic theology. He would talk to them about the things that we see that are beautiful and wonderful and talk about the feeling we get when we experience them. He would talk about the trees and flowers and mountains and waterfalls and how they are really special creations. He would talk about the stars and the planets and the wonder of their creation. He would talk about the miracle of the birth of a baby. Through the years, I think I appreciate all of these creations more and more. As we travel through the world and see magnificent sights and experience the wonders of the world- both natural and manmade, I am awed at the beauty of the world.

But in the last several days, I felt a wonder that I never knew before. Our group that traveled to China was made up of 19 people. Think of a descriptive term for a person (e.g., age, gender, religious affiliation, country of birth) and there was an enormous diversity in every description, yet these people became the most caring, kind, loving family group that one can imagine. Older and younger, they became each others’ family members. From caring for each other (holding me up when I almost fainted at the Great Wall) to bargaining together (a bargain basement price for massages) to buying dozens of items for the “best price,” to making sure that we had a proper birthday celebration for one of the group, to singing together as we rode in rickshaws through the hutong — they were the most amazing example of what goodness exists in the world- of how people can come together and care for each other and have a really good time together.

So to the group, I say “kol haKavod” (way to go!) and to the rest of you: here’s an example you should follow.

Filed Under: China, Ramblings, Relationships

While my husband was away

August 16, 2007 by

What I tried to do:
Have the computer shelf we had bought at IKEA in March mounted on the dining room wall.
What happened:
SUCCESS!
What I tried to do:
Have a handyman fix bumps and crevices and chips and gouges in the walls and around outside corners of the room.
What happened:
A family matter has kept him at home for the last 9 days.
What I tried to do:
Have the upholsterer finally reupholster our very dingy looking recliner.
What happened:
Friendly Mr. N will call me sometime when he gets to Modi’in.
What I tried to do:
Have the garden planted and fertilized before the beginning of shmittah
What happened:
The gardener showed up one day too late to do any planting, chopped down by mistake a lemon tree, and caused the grapevine to lie in its death throes on the ground. Oh yes, he forgot to fertilize around the trees.
What I tried to do:
Just live a happy calm life
What happened:
While I was sitting in the living room one afternoon, the entire house lost electricity when the ground fault breaker got thrown. After carefully turning off all of the other breakers, It appeared that for some unknown reason the overhead light in my bedroom or the bathroom light, both of which were off, threw the entire house into a tizzy. After calls to two electricians, one arrived at 6:30 a.m. the next day and when flipping the suspect switch, found nothing amiss. Only later did he divine that the lights in the garden where the culprits (they were also off when the house shorted out!) So now we need to figure out how to remedy that… not easy because the cables are buried under both concrete and earth.
What I tried to do:
Keep things simple
What happened: I ended up going to the airport twice (to drop off and then pick up my daughter and granddaughter), to a Modi’in baseball game with the new olim (that was stopped halfway through the last inning because of darkness), and driving out to the local shopping center to pick up the said new olim that is about 15 minutes away and getting caught in the typical nightly traffic jam back for about 45 minutes.
What I tried to do:
Clean our glass roof, wash the car, do the laundry, touch up the walls.
What happened:
SUCCESS!

So, it wasn’t a disaster, but it certainly wasn’t the restful time I expected it to be.

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

Trivia

August 10, 2007 by

Question: How many of my children have I spoken with today?
Answer: Two daughters, two sons-in-law, one son.
Question: Where did they call from?
Answer: Trieste, Modi’in, Modi’in, Modi’n, Stockholm

Non-sequitur to follow (my husband likes to be warned and so maybe you prefer that too)

So in an attempt to fix up some of the less attractive aspects of my house while my husband is away in Beijing, I have been scouting out those pieces of molding that go around corners to mask the dents and gashes in a few corners in the house. So I walked into a hardware store down the block from me. There were two men behind the counter and they both appeared to be busy dealing with the one customer they had at the time. I continued into the store and looked around to see if I could find what I needed. When I realized I couldn’t find it, I went back to the counter where the two men were still busy with the first and only customer. I waited patiently. After a while, in walked a man. One of the people behind the counter asked him what he wanted. He said that he wanted some keys made and he handed the keys to one of the men behind the desk who began making them. I stood there- dumbfounded. What? Am I invisible?

So I turned to the man who had just walked in and I asked him if he could see me. He said “yes,” but he looked perplexed. Then I asked him if he was sure he could see me. All this time I was moving in front of him and to the side to see if the people behind the desk noticed that I was there. They didn’t. He said, yes, he was sure he could see me. I told him I wasn’t sure I was visible because the people behind the counter couldn’t see me. I knew that because they didn’t acknowledge me. He said, “They will.” I said, “Oh, no, they won’t” and left.

I don’t know why, but that felt good. I am, by no means a feminist, but I am a person who thinks that all people regardless of gender or color or perceived social value deserve some respect.

At least I left with a smile on my face.

Filed Under: Ramblings
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