The Jewish people have suffered a terrible, tragic loss this week. I am too overwhelmed with new work (which I love), first days of school and impending Rosh Hashanah to blog. I am too upset about what has just taken place in Israel to write about anything else.
Please read this post. I am pasting it here, but please visit the original and let her know you have read it. http://www.crossingtheyarden.com/2010/09/lives-not-statistics/
This is from Crossing The Yarden. Yashar Koach Yarden Frankl.
Real people, not statistics
This morning, one of our friends here in Neve Daniel sent me this e-mail:
Hi – I am sitting here crying because one of the women murdered tonight was my son’s gannenet. Yehuda is six and is mentally retarded – his teachers are our world because they bring him such joy when the world is such an overwhelming and confusing place. Cochava was an angel, and we were with her an hour before she died – she was on her way home from the gan welcome back orientation when she was murdered.
Here is how Israeli National News reported the terrorist attack:
Yitzhak and Talya Imes were the parents of six children, the eldest one being 24 years old and the youngest one being a year and a half old. Talya Imes was nine months pregnant when she was killed by the terrorists.
Kochava Even Chaim was a teacher in Efrat. She left behind her husband and an 8 year-old daughter. Her husband,one of the first Zaka first aid volunteers to arrive at the scene, discovered suddenly that his wife was among the victims.
Avishai Shindler had only recently moved to Beit Haggai with his wife.
Meanwhile, the New York Times and most of the Western media reported that four “settlers” had been killed and discussed if this might disrupt the “peace” process.
Just the other day, Palestinian Authority President Mauhoud Abbas said that “Israeli security does not justify continued occupation.” While I may take issue with the term “occupation,” I would say that the life of a kindergarten teacher justifies a hell of a lot.
How ironic that for days leading up to this heinous murder (I should say heinous murders — four people were killed, including a pregnant woman) the media was filled with stories about how wonderful a job the Palestinians were doing in terms of security. Yeah, great job. I feel much safer.
The mosques in Gaza let us know how Palestinian really feel. “Praise be to G-D over this heroic act” was blared out all night over the mosque loudspeakers. “Mosque?” Isn’t that supposed to be a term for a religious establishment?
Here is the Palestinian’s definition of “heroism.” A car with four people was fired upon by a passing vehicle. To make sure that these men and women — returning from school orientation for their children — were dead, the “heroes” stopped their car, aimed their rifles at point blank range and fired repeatedly into the bodies. The “heroes” then fled the scene satisfied that their “heroic” action was a success.
Meanwhile, the PR firm working for the PA gave the following statement to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to read:
The attack, and its timing are meant to harm the PLO’s efforts to garner international support for the success of the peace process and its demands, in order to bring about an end to the occupation.
Sounds like he’s all shook up, right?
You know something Salam? Not really interested that you feel this attack has hurt the PLO’s interests. Because at the end of the day, we are people — not talking points or statistics.
Our lives are not concessions. When you complain that the murder of a kindergarten teacher should be regretted because it hurts your interests, it simply shows how little you understand about the concept of peace. (Ironic considering your name, Salam.)
When you can look at this act with same gut wrenching horror as a six year old who just lost his teacher, you will be ready to make a real peace.
But until then, spare us the rhetoric while we bury our dead.
The e-mail I received concluded like this:
I wish I could scream out to the world how unfair this is, how senseless to waste such a beautiful giving life, but I have no outlet to tell everyone. Then I realized maybe you will be writing about what happened, and so perhaps you can include this part of the story, to put a person behind the story.
So please, if you also feel like screaming any crying, forward this article and tell the world that kindergarten teachers, pregnant women, fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives are real people, not just statistics.
Again, the link to Crossing the Yarden is: http://www.crossingtheyarden.com/
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Whew! If you look at my recent posts, you certainly get a sense of just how all over the place my life has been lately.
My friend, poetess, and fellow blogger, Havaya, quotes the Talmud in Bava Kama 92a on this week’s parsha (Ki Tavo) to make a fascinating point:
The Kohanim, she explains, would return the gold and silver trays of the wealthy bringing their first fruits to the Holy Temple, but would keep the woven baskets of the poor. This seems so counterintuitive!
Her explanation for the discrepancy is beautiful. I hope that you read it.
This reminds me of the time in our lives when my husband and I had to work hard to save money. It might have been romantic and cute to be broke had we been young 20-somethings in love. We weren’t. The causes were not our own, and were sad and frustrating. We researched, turned it into a mission, and with the help of Hashem and our family we did what we needed to do to get to a better financial place.
Having said that, the thing that made me feel poor was not what we were living without. I had what I needed. I always have what Hashem knows I need, even if it isn’t always apparent to me.
I felt poor when I couldn’t give tzedakah. When I had to say no. I had to keep everything within a budget, we lived in a community where lots of people asked for charity, and a lot of the time we just couldn’t give.
Growing up, my father tried to say yes to every Jewish charity that asked him. ( This, of course, has a Tribble-like effect on the number of Jewish charities that will ask.) He couldn’t give a lot to most, and he had to give less to each as a result, but he successfully instilled in his children the power of tzedakah.* As my husband and I struggled at the time, it was very hard for me to say no.
Capt. Kirk with tribbles on Star Trek
I cannot begin to understand how the people of Israel blessed to live in the time of the Holy Temple felt about their first fruit offerings. But I would like to think that one of the reasons that the woven baskets were kept is so the poor people who had fewer opportunities to fulfill the mitzvah of giving could feel the value of their contribution.
Yashar Koach to Chaya for a beautiful piece and pause for thought about something more important than smartphones.
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Really Sarah Syndication wrote a great blog post about an Israeli app called tawkon, that monitors the radiation outputs from your phone. This prompted me to ask her for an opinion about which smartphone I should buy. Not only did she give me a thoughtful and informative reply, but she did so as a blog post. I feel honored!
I am making the switch from my no-frills simple phone (that doesn’t have texting at all) to a smart phone, because I have taken on more work/clients, and will need them to be able to reach me more easily. This was a reward I had promised myself when I earned it as a business owner, so it means a lot to me. But which to buy? I asked on Linkedin, thinking that a professional setting was the right place to go. I received no answer. I asked friends who all said “it is a matter of personal choice.”
I received two pieces of helpful advice, both suggesting to me the same thing. One was Sarah’s posting, and the other was the random customer service guy at Verizon. He obviously didn’t want me to go the Iphone route, but that notwithstanding he gave me good advice.
G-d willing, I will soon be the new owner of a Blackberry.
That advice basically has been that if you want something very functional for work purposes, the Blackberry is your best bet. If you want cool apps and toys and a lot of fun with the smartphone you are getting anyway, then go with the Iphone. As for the Droid? Well, Sarah explains it best, but not happening just yet for me or most of the market, apparently. The last thing I need is more distraction from work, so any cool and fun apps is not a good selling point for me. And as for syncing issues, I haven’t been an apple person since I graduated college, and don’t forsee going back no matter what my Mac friends tell me. (Which they do, often.)
This past year I wrote about my challenges to work as a work-at-home-mom with my little one with me. This year he will be in school, and I will be working full-time for the first time in over a decade. It is a frightening prospect, as I become one of those cliche women trying to “balance it all” like in the magazines. I am excited about the work, though, and am grateful to be doing almost all of it from my home office.
I truly hope the Blackberry becomes a helpful tool in my juggling act, and not another gadget that distracts me from that which is important.
Thanks, Really Sarah Syndication!
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Everything that I write on this blog is public. That was the understanding with which I undertook this endeavor.
Many of my blogger friends out there have encountered blog-related nastiness. As with any other decision to put one’s self out there, this is a symptom of success…. you only get complaints if someone is watching/listening/reading. Well, this week, I got my first whiff. It was a minor whiff, but a whiff nonetheless.
A vast majority of you who read don’t write anything. That means I don’t have any idea who is reading. That’s okay, it comes with blogging, despite what analytics will tell you. Many years ago my husband had a nightly radio show in Israel. (Does anyone remember RadioWest?) He sometimes would wonder if anyone was out there listening at all. He encouraged callers, and yet sometimes he got very few. It was only when he was out socially that he would hear a comment about a broadcast that week, or occasionally get a reaction when he said his name.
… And so it goes. I find myself pleasantly surprised to hear that people are reading in the funniest ways. I don’t write this blog in order to cultivate a mass readership or fame. I am quite sure this is clear from the caliber of my posts! It is nice, though, to know that people stop by, occasionally think about what I have said, or even have something resonate with them (you).
If I have to find out that people are reading through an occasional obnoxious comment, so be it. So far, so good. The tremendous support and encouragement definitely outweighs the unpleasantness. If you feel the need to say something to me rather than just click on to somewhere else, so be it. Bring it on; I can take it.
How do you deal with blog nastiness?
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Teshuva is hard.
I could say that teshuva is hard for me, but from what I have learned teshuva is supposed to be hard. Recognizing your flaws and dedicating time and energy to personal change is just hard.
During the month of Elul we are supposed to be reflexive, taking a full accounting of our behavior for the year. We know Hashem is going to be “checking the books” soon, so if we are going to ask him to forgive the screw-ups we really ought to know what they are first. Or at least try to know what they are.
The Rabbi of Twin Rivers, where I live, is a big proponent of an Elul Cheshbon Hanefesh, or spiritual accounting, to properly prepare for Rosh Hashana. A book by this name was written by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Satanov in 1812, with a prescription on how best to do such an accounting. The problem is a true Cheshbon Hanefesh is really difficult! To sit down and take a real honest look at one’s behavior towards G-d and our fellow human beings is time consuming and uncomfortable. Of course perhaps my readers are much better humans than I am and your Cheshbon Hanefesh is a walk in the park because you get to remind yourself of how many wonderful things you did…. but that isn’t the case for me.
I have made a number of people decidedly unhappy, uncomfortable and even hurt throughout this past year. It makes me quite unhappy, uncomfortable and hurt to know that I have done this. If you are reading this and you are one of those people, I hope you will accept my heartfelt forgiveness. If I come to realize what it is I did and when, I will do my best to contact you directly and try to make amends before my time runs out. If you want to tell me in case I don’t get there on my own I won’t enjoy the experience at the time but I will be truly grateful.
Saddest of all, I know that try as I may to be a better person, which I will, I am most likely going to be able to say the same statement next year at this time. Some of what I have done seems to be misunderstandings. Or justifiable. Or a difference of opinion. But I would be kidding myself if I said it ended there. I still have a lot of work to do in this lifetime in order to be at my best. It definitely does not feel like fun to have to beat myself up so as a part of religion. A lot less fun than Homeshuling’s Top Ten. (Oh, just go read it after you finish this.)
Judaism isn’t always about fun. It is about pleasure. Pleasure in this world and pleasure in the world to come*. The Sages say that pleasure and fun are NOT the same thing. They also teach (I am told) that pleasure will come from the mastery of my own shortcomings. From my personal growth and slaying of my dragons. That this is the true pleasure in both worlds.
It is a lot more fun – or at least pleasurable – to live with myself when I “clean out my soul’s closet” as it is described in our latest PJ library book, “New Year at the Pier” … I just wish I hadn’t let it get so messy and cluttered up this year.
*If you want to watch a very short and fabulous video on “the world to come”, check out jewinthecity.com
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I had a shocking experience today. I have a cordial and somewhat of a “working” relationship with the local public library. Now.
I remember the librarians’ trepidation when as new residents I would stroll in with six children in tow, confident in my ability to maintain “order”.
There is one librarian in particular is, well, just the cranky type. Over the years, I have listened to my fair share of curt reprobations and reminders, and I have tried to respond to with consistent smiles, patience and cheeriness. Over the years she has come to understand that my children actually won’t trash her library. She has come to appreciate my desire to not only respect her, but the library itself. My volunteering to teaching music programs there hasn’t hurt. I only learned this year that the library is her baby. She is responsible for its existence, and has been there tending to it since it was a storefront with some boxes of donated books. So, she is naturaly protective. I have come to understand and have tremendous admiration for her efforts and concern for the library. I recognize her worries as those of a mother cub, the library being her baby.
I gave a performance at the library yesterday, a celebration of Jewish music for children and their families. I went back to the library today for some follow up, and she was very kind and appreciative.
And that is when she said it: ”You know, I have to say, you are just, well, more put together than a lot of those Orthodox women. You should talk to them. You know it really is such a shame.”
She truly meant it as a compliment. What I think is lost on her is that when I go into the library the VAST majority of the people coming in are in T-shirts, tank tops, jeans, shorts, flip flops, etc. It is totally, utterly normal in our small, rural town to be very casually dressed. From where I am standing, “dressed” is a very kind adjective some of the time. Yet it’s those “Orthodox women” that are slobs. Isn’t it always?
I think it goes without saying that the only reason she noticed so starkly and felt she could say something to me is because she is a non-Orthodox Jew. You know the lack of funkiness on the part of us religious ladies is really giving the rest of the Jews such a bad name… and clearly it isn’t appreciated.
I don’t resent her feeling the way she does, or even her telling me. In fact, I am glad she feels she can speak plainly to me with candor.
Having lived in the US as a non-Orthodox Jew, Israel as an Orthodox Jew, and then back in the US as an Orthodox Jew, I really, really do understand exactly how she feels.
Lenny Solomon of Shlock Rock* produced an album of original songs called No Limits. On that album he has a song called “Representing”. “Every day we’re representing…” he sings. And we are. We are Hashem’s agents. Ambassadors. Everything we say and do is watched, noticed and judged. By EVERYONE who isn’t a religious Jew, especially other Jews. It is true all of the time.
This morning I put on a little makeup and jewelry to go to the library and grocery store. I am known in both. (Did I mention this is a small, rural town?) No one who spends what I do in the grocery store on a weekly basis goes unnoticed. Consistently needing two shopping carts doesn’t help either. Today they remarked on the miracle of my having no kids in tow. Really.
Part of me feels really silly getting done up for the library and grocery store. Why take the time? Who cares what other people think? It is a trip to the grocery store, after all.
The other part of me knows that every three to four weeks a complete stranger will stop me while I shop and tell me about their intermarried daughter, their trip to Israel 15 years ago, or even that they have a “baal te-something” child that won’t eat much in their home. Do I mind if they follow me and watch what I buy?
There was a day I was wearing particularly shlumpy clothes into the local CVS. Who would notice? Who would even know I was a frum Jew? In a denim skirt, sweatshirt and baseball hat I could be anybody…. only I forgot that my son with his tzitzit and kippah was with me. A Jewish couple that had just moved into town stopped me outside and introduced themselves as I went back to my car. I have (embarrassing) reminders like this happen to me all of the time.
It is Elul, and we are supposed to remember now more than ever that Hashem is always watching us. That he sees what we do, how we behave, and that he deeply, deeply cares. It can be a positive motivator to remember that people are watching too. Whenever you think “it’s just me” and they aren’t watching you, they are. It isn’t just a question of whether we bothered with makeup or some jewelry, or clothes that have even some modicum of fashion.
We frum Jews sort of think that the world is holding us to a higher standard when it comes to how we speak, how much we smile at others, our patience when waiting in line, etc. But “we” is awfully communal and vague. Each and every individual one of us really is. The way I see it, it is an obligation and a burden, but also a privilege .
It is a burden of privilege the same way that living in Israel is: it is a burden of relevance.
*Shlock Rock is coming to the US later this year and I am booking engagements for them, so if you are interested, write to: mooreconnected@gmail.com
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My daughter is at sleepaway camp 133 miles away. She has been sending letters daily explaining that she cannot wait until visiting day – since she will be coming home with me then. That Visiting Day was this past Sunday.
A week earlier, she had called from the office begging me to pick her up. My answer was “we are not even going to talk about it until visiting day.” Clearly in her mind this meant that she had every right to come home on visiting day.
So, with a sense of dread (which I have already blogged about), I packed up eight people into a seven seater van (don’t report me, some of them were really small) for a 2.5 hour drive up into the mountains.
I gave all passengers a sturdy pep talk on the way up. Everyone in that car was to encourage daughter/sister to STAY at camp. The only talk of home was to be of how boring it is. I went armed with GPS, food for the day, food for daughter, gifts, extra blanket, new books…you get the point.
Ten miles before we arrive at camp… the car dies. Rather the transmission dies, but I was not aware at the time that this was the case. Daughter is at camp no doubt crying that everyone else’s parents are there, and we have abandoned her. Our passengers below the age of fourteen, which comprise the majority, climb out of the car and begin to whine.
DH flagged down the first frummy*-filled car he spied, and of course they were on their way to the same visiting day. Miraculously, they had room for (and were willing to take) four of us. Only four to go.
At least an hour, and many failed phone calls later, (we were in the mountains) the next four arrived. I was now talking dear daughter out of coming home, managing six children and a mother’s helper with only the help of the mother’s helper, trying to calmly figure out a way to get everyone home, and avoid collective heat stroke — all at the same time.
My brother arrived from Hoboken, NJ, which is almost as far. He had arranged for a car, but he had to get it back by a certain time. He got to give his dear niece a hug.. and then run out to try and help DH (darling husband) with the car.
Brother and DH had their own bout with frustration as I wandered about camp, hugging daughter and calling around for solutions on my dying cell phone, all at the same time. Overpriced snowcones seem to mollify the children. While daughter wept quietly about being forced to remain suffering in the clutches of a place that structures her time for her, (imagine!)many other of my offspring went on at great length about how unfair it is that she got to stay there and they did not.
By the time Brother and DH finally made it back to the camp, it was just about time for my brother to turn around and leave. I think he got maybe an hour with his niece, and he spent the whole day in the car (which did not make it back by the arranged time, resulting in a fee.)
At almost the same moment I miraculously found an angel of a man/principal/Rabbi who lived very far from us, but happened to be driving 20 minutes south of our house … and leaving momentarily. So DH dropped everything and gave one of what must have been two hugs to his dear daughter, and hastily arranged our two youngest in the back of Angel Man’s car.
We have friends who spend the summer as a family at another camp in the same mountains. They have two cars at camp, and incredibly were willing to allow us to drive one of them home. I have known for a long time that they are tzadikim, (righteous people), but I am perpetually humbled by the amount that they do for us personally. They drove the car to us, so that the other five of us could get home.
So, we went to back to the bunk to pack up the things I had to take home. This, of course, was the point at which reality finally hit my daughter, who returned to crying and pleading.
We eventually got her to say goodbye to us. I actually bribed my daughter to stay at the camp that cost a fortune to send her to. She did agree to it though. I am such a sucker.
We eventually got our things packed up in the car, and our friends back to their camp, ready to hit the road and finally head home. On route 17 on visiting day.
Ask any parent who has ever sent their child to a frum sleepaway camp in New York about route 17 on visiting day. All of the Orthodox Jewish camps are apparently on this one piece of this one road. And they all have visiting day on the same day. It is truly historic. The people who live in bungalow colonies there know that one simply does not go out in the car on visiting day.
I don’t think I have ever been around that many Jews in one place at one time, except at the kotel on a yom tov.
The 2.5 hour drive took 5.5 hours. That is only because I got off of route 17 for a while and snuck through the local roads. Everyone in the car was hot, tired, and hungry. Then the car’s air conditioning stopped working. Of course I was only grateful; the car was a gift, a/c or not.
We did get home. Finally. My van is still in the mountains, and I expect to be without a car for at least ten days. It will cost us thousands to fix, right as our next tuition bill comes in,( now for six children) to be in yeshiva.
I am really not making this more dramatic than it was. I got home and tried to decompress for a few minutes before crashing into bed… on my computer.
It died too. The laptop’s fan has stopped working so it overheats frequently and easily and the computer just shuts itself off. At least I won’t have to retrieve it from the mountains before it can be repaired.
One of my sons, the same tzaddik who wrote me the scholastic book letter, turned to me during the parking-lot-like part of the trip and said “at least we are having some quality time together, Ima.”
I would like to think that there is some great cosmic reason behind the sudden and intense heaping of rotten luck and frustration. I know that Hashem knows what he is doing. He certainly could have found some easier ways for us to spend “quality time” together. I spent a lot of time in the car asking Hashem to let this be kapara (atonement) for the month of Elul (which just started) and make my teshuva for Rosh Hashana easier.
I spent the next day exhausted, cranky, sluggish, with mounds and mounds of work to get done. In addition, of course, to tending to the broken car in the mountains and its retrieval, plus the scheduling of repair for the broken computer.
However, I am much luckier than I was one year ago. Now, as I sit during horrible, terrible agonizing days like this year’s Visiting Day, at least I continually think; ”Now this is going to make for a great blog post.”
*frummy=Orthodox/religious. Meant affectionately; some of my best friends are frummies.
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This seems to be the theme of my week. I am really not enjoying it very much. And so I blog….
As I wrote in my last post, I have a child that wants me to rescue her from (very expensive) sleepaway camp. I expect the pleas to intensify during visiting day, although I hope to be pleasantly surprised. For now, I am leaning towards making her stick it out until the end. Tough love. Very grown up. Not a lot of fun.
The teenager did a teenager thing. He broke a rule, he has to pay the price. He hates the price, and he isn’t very happy about it. It is a steep price……. it was a big rule. He would like the conversation to be about the rule itself. Of course it isn’t. It’s about the breaking of a rule, any rule, and just getting caught the 400th or bizzillionth time. Add in the trying-to-play-off-of-the-divorced-parents-that-can’t-get-along tactics that are so normal hasn’t made the situation more fun.
We have to remain consistent – and calm. We have to follow through, because, well, because we have to. We have to deflect the arguments from the other parent to reneg on the consequence and not be consistent. We may have to endure the withholding of the teenager’s time and affection as our punishment for punishing.
It was much easier when I was the teen in this spelled out scenario, and someone else had to be the grown up. Nobody told me then, in my indignation and rage, that this end of it is actually harder. The only thing worse than having to be the “bad cop” parent is being the non-custodial “bad cop” parent. At least as the stepmom I can take a lot less of the heat than DH.
Giving our children what they need instead of what they want is so hard. The challenge is daily, yet I often feel we cave less than some. We are the strict meanie parents who don’t give our kids candy, after all.
There isn’t any solution; we just have to take our medicine and do what is right, precisely as we are demonstrating to our children that they must do. So I gripe (blog), because I would much rather give in, feed them junk, let them stay up late and send them home full and happy to someone else who has to worry about their character development.
Oh wait… I get to do that (G-d willing) with their kids, right? No wonder they* say that grandparenting is the best part!
*”they” = my parents.
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I sent my eldest daughter off to sleepaway camp this past week for the first time. I was determined to NOT write a trite and soppy blog post about what this has felt like for me, or for her. The mixed emotions are the same as lots of other parents. I went to sleepaway camp – Camp Ramah of New England – for three years, and I remember the excitement, the homesickness, the lack of letter writing, the first week of hating it, and then the not wanting to go home.
My daughter isn’t me, and Camp Sternberg, and Orthodox girls-only camp is definitely not co-ed, Hebrew speaking, Conservative Camp Ramah.
Even though I was all happy for her until precisely the moment I had to walk back to my car alone and then started to cry, feeling old and proud at the same time, this blog post is NOT going to be about that.
….You see, my daughter isn’t happy at camp. She wasn’t so happy after two days, and borrowed a phone from a junior counselor to call and tell me. She couldn’t find some of her stuff, she was homesick – and you know? I was okay with it. That is normal for the first two days at sleepaway. Trite. Not worth writing about.
Then the program director called me. “Your daughter is very homesick. She would like to speak with you. She has been crying. She is asking to go home.”
The director and I are on the same page that it is still early, and that my daughter has to get used to being away. That adjustments and challenges aren’t always fun, but are worth it, and that this is a good life lesson for her at this stage of life. The director encouraged me to speak to my daughter just to reinforce that she has to try her best to make the best of it until visiting day.
WHICH IS ONLY ONE WEEK AWAY.
So what is this about?
The gaping chasm between my mind knowing that challenges and sometimes even pain can be good for my children over the long term, and what my heart is telling me it wants to do.
I give my children vaccinations, and watch them cry. I watch them struggle with school studies, and I push them to work at it, rather than fix their problems. I know that they need to build all kinds of physical and spiritual muscles that sometimes only have “gain” with “pain”.
I know this to be true.
The feelings I have about my baby feeling sad and doing nothing to fix it, well, that is quite a different story.
This strong part of me feels compelled to kiss the boo-boo – to prevent or instantly fix the “skinned knee“….
I cannot help wonder to myself if mother and daughter are both struggling with very similar and equally painful tugs: She wants to stay and for it to be fun. She wants for this to work. She also feels sad and misses my arms, her bed, my food.
I want this to work for her. I want her wings to get strong on their own. I want to watch her master a challenge, overcome a struggle, breathe through the pain and emerge victorious. But I also want to run up there and hold her every day for just a little while, like emotional training wheels, until she is all right for a whole day, two days, a week – instead of sitting here on my hands.
The midwife that delivered this very same daughter told me then that she doesn’t allow mothers of the laboring woman to be present for her home-birth deliveries. She explained that the woman in labor can cope much easier with her own pain than her mother can cope watching her daughter go through it while doing nothing to help.
I guess that means I better adjust, because it looks like this is only the beginning…. for both of us.
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I have been on hiatus for too long, especially since my last post was the Jewish blog carnival. I apologize. My eldest daughter is leaving for Camp Sternberg in the morning, (with me driving the three hours,)and it has had me quite hyperfocused for a while.
Amy Meltzer has tagged me in a fun meme for Tu B’av on her wonderful Homeshuling blog.
She gives a great explanation of the Jewish “love holiday” Tu B’av: “…a traditional festival dating back to the time of the mishnah, when young women dressed in white would sing and dance in the vineyards, while the single men would look on, hoping to find their basherte.”
Amy asks what is our favorite Jewish love song. The variety of songs that fall into such a broad category must be huge.
For me, I think it has to be “Dodi Li” (My beloved is mine), to the tune taught to me, and often performed by Cantor Debbie Katchko Gray. My oldest, deepest and most genuine connection to G-d is through music. This was fostered and developed by “Cantor Debbie” for many years, for which I am very, very grateful. Now I sing this song with my husband.
This is a nice version of the tune I like that I could find on line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB_bj4dan-w&feature=related.
I hope Cantor Debbie will read this and send me a link to her singing it. Turns out, Ima on (and off) the Bima picked this one as well. What can I say? Great minds….?
… Now that no one is most likely reading this anymore, I found a file of me singing this song for a friend so she could learn it. Dodi Li.
What about you? I tag Immahlady and In The Pink, but I would love to hear from the rest of you too!
What’s your favorite Jewish love song?
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