That being said, Rosh Hashana starts tomorrow night, so I just want to wish everyone Shana Tova 5767!
I made a chocolate chip honey cake from Faye Levy's 1000 Jewish Recipes - came out a little inflated on top with a dip in the center, but I still think it will taste good - can't wait for lunch on Saturday to try it.
Tomorrow evening for the first night of Rosh Hashana, my synagogue is having a "family service" which means a lot of kids running around and a story time during the service. This is aside from the fact that this "evening" service will take place at 6:30, in broad daylight so that people won't get too hungry, heaven forfend they should be inconvenienced. Maybe I'm being selfish, and not just old-fashioned, but at such an important time of the year spiritually, I want to daven (pray) according to tradition and be put in the proper frame of mind for serious reflection, not chase after my kids and watch the rabbi tell cute stories. That's what I pay a ridiculous amount of money for my children's Jewish Day School teachers to do and what I, and everybody else, should be doing at home. I'm probably not going to give the usual donation at Yom Kippur appeal - I've got to try another synagogue - I even had a nightmare about it the other night, I swear. I'm just going to sit in the back with my orthodox-style prayer book and hopefully I'll be left alone. I'd feel more guilty if I didn't go to services at all.
I'm really depressed about the whole thing. I'm starting to realize that between the too orthodox and the too liberal, there really may not be any place of worship that everyone in my family will be truly comfortable in, yet I really believe that the only way to truly be happy as a Jew is to be able to join in with the community and participate. Sigh.
Sometime during the last year or so, I discovered this page in a remembrance book for the Jewish people of Grajewo in Poland which was wiped out in the Holocaust. I have finally confirmed last night via the Yad Vashem database that the woman in the picture is my mother's aunt and the children are her cousins. They were taken to the camps and killed two years before my mother was born in the U.S., so needless to say she never knew them. May G-d grant her and everyone else who I may never know everlasting peace. The memorial page regarding her death was left at Yad Vashem by a cousin in Israel in May 2001. Pages were also submitted for her husband and the little girl who was actually 14 when she was murdered. The webpage for the town of Grajewo is here. I wonder if I'll ever have the desire to go there.
Tomorrow evening for the first night of Rosh Hashana, my synagogue is having a "family service" which means a lot of kids running around and a story time during the service. This is aside from the fact that this "evening" service will take place at 6:30, in broad daylight so that people won't get too hungry, heaven forfend they should be inconvenienced. Maybe I'm being selfish, and not just old-fashioned, but at such an important time of the year spiritually, I want to daven (pray) according to tradition and be put in the proper frame of mind for serious reflection, not chase after my kids and watch the rabbi tell cute stories. That's what I pay a ridiculous amount of money for my children's Jewish Day School teachers to do and what I, and everybody else, should be doing at home. I'm probably not going to give the usual donation at Yom Kippur appeal - I've got to try another synagogue - I even had a nightmare about it the other night, I swear. I'm just going to sit in the back with my orthodox-style prayer book and hopefully I'll be left alone. I'd feel more guilty if I didn't go to services at all.
I'm really depressed about the whole thing. I'm starting to realize that between the too orthodox and the too liberal, there really may not be any place of worship that everyone in my family will be truly comfortable in, yet I really believe that the only way to truly be happy as a Jew is to be able to join in with the community and participate. Sigh.
Sometime during the last year or so, I discovered this page in a remembrance book for the Jewish people of Grajewo in Poland which was wiped out in the Holocaust. I have finally confirmed last night via the Yad Vashem database that the woman in the picture is my mother's aunt and the children are her cousins. They were taken to the camps and killed two years before my mother was born in the U.S., so needless to say she never knew them. May G-d grant her and everyone else who I may never know everlasting peace. The memorial page regarding her death was left at Yad Vashem by a cousin in Israel in May 2001. Pages were also submitted for her husband and the little girl who was actually 14 when she was murdered. The webpage for the town of Grajewo is here. I wonder if I'll ever have the desire to go there.
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