devarim

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There will be much cooking tomorrow in anticipation of Rosh Hashana. And what anticipation it is! Since I'm so short on vacation time, we can't travel to NY and spend the holiday with our families. Instead, we will host a bunch of friends for two of the four holiday meals (dinners/lunches for both first and second days) and look forward to being hosting in other people's homes for the other two meals. Tonight we got some fantastic news: one of our best friends (who honored us hree years ago by singing at our wedding ceremony) told us he'll be coming up to spend the holiday here. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Once again, am I torn between being grateful that we are permitted to cook on festival days (as opposed to Shabbat, when cooking is forbidden and reheating is tricky) and being somewhat annoyed at myself for using this halachic tidbit to leave so much work over to do on yom tov instead of having it all done before so I could focus a little more on the religious and social aspects of the day. Alas, as things stand now, I will be staying home from shul tonight to get the roast into the oven, make salad dressings, chop up vegetables and apples, slice gefilte fish, and fuss over table settings. We are out for both meals Tuesday, but Wednesday morning I plan to get out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to get the Monster Brisket (pondage in the double digits) into the oven (I'm making Ruth's Seven-Hour Brisket) and cut up potatoes, parsnip, and mushrooms for the Grand Earthy Side Dish. It's a good thing that we go to the "auxiliary" minyan at our shul, where the service runs faster (plus, no rabbi's speech!) and so we can get home before most of our guests arrive. (You'll note that the brisket recipe calls for some extra attention during the last hour.)

All of that, in addition to the chicken, green beans, kugels, sweet potatoes, cakes, apple crisps, and various other foodstuffs that are already prepared and need only warming and service. At least we'll have enough food for roughly seventeen thousand people, just in case. In case of what, I'm not sure, but so far this year we've had at least one last minute surprise, so there's no telling what else may happen. But the next guest to show up will be eating on paper, because I believe we're out of china.

May you all have a good and sweet me!

There was plenty of good food at our Rosh Hashana table this year - but of course nothing goes off without a hitch. Or several.

We begin our story with a beautiful prime rib roast, placed into a snazzy new oven with Star-K certified "Sabbath mode" allowing us to raise and lower the temperature on a festival, equipped with a spiffy new oven thermometer purchased by my wonderful husband for the purpose of letting us know just how hot the oven is at any given time, since the "Sabbath mode" does not display the temperature on the oven's digital readout. As usual, I set the oven to 425 degrees for the first 20 minutes of cooking, which took us past candle-lighting and into the new year. The plan was to lower the oven temperature to 325 for the remaining hour and a half of cooking. However, our ditzy heroine, who had been using her oven successfully for several weeks already, completely forgot that when one wishes to raise or lower the oven temperature, one must first press BAKE, followed by + or -, then followed by START. No, see, our silly heroine just pressed -. Repeatedly. And swore and gnashed her teeth and tore at her hair pretended that the oven thermometer was broken. And, some time later, served a terribly overdone roast, leathery both in texture and in color. *sob*

On the first night of Rosh Hashana, we also had a chance to show off our inventiveness. When the last of our guests finally arrived, we began to usher everyone (ten adults, one child, one infant) to the table for kiddush. I proudly pulled out one of our last two bottles of 1998 Gan Eden Black Muscat (a not-too-heavy sweet wine, appropriate for ushering in the new year) and directed Julian to open it. We spent the next ten to fifteen minutes tearing apart the kitchen in search of a corkscrew. Eventually, faced with the prospect of grape juice for kiddush and naught but water and soda for the meal, a guest (who may chose to identify hirself here) suggested using a wooden spoon and a meat mallet to hammer the cork down into the bottle. It worked for the kiddush/dessert wine, and by the end of the night we had three bottles with floating corks inside (and only one person got splashed with wine spurted out by a downward-driven cork. Unfortunately, the wine in question was red.)

As I finally made my way to bed that evening, Julian found the owner's manual for our oven, complete with instructions on raising and lowering the temperature in "Sabbath mode." We promptly set it to go down to 275 degrees, and I buried my head in my pillow, once again mouring the destruction of what could have been the perfect roast.

Lunch first day we were invited out. Aside from a little baby spit-up, this meal was uneventful. Later in the afternoon, though, we were roused by the phone ringing, and caught the tail end of a recorded message from the electric company as it played on our answering machine: two temporary power outages planned between midnight and 7:00 inthe morning. Did I mention that the snazzy new oven has electronic controls, and if the power is interrupted, the oven will not turn back on automatically when power comes back?

I revised my Monster Brisket plan (which originally consisted of cookiing it overnight that night) and decided to pop it into the oven shortly after candle-lighting and before meeting up with our dinner hosts. As part of my plan revision, I was possessed by an uncontrollable urge (really, don't ask) to poke at the marinating Monster Brisket in the fridge. As I lifted up the carefully crimped foil at one end of the pan, the corkscrew fell out of it and onto the refrigerator shelf, cork (from the bottle of wine used in the marinade) still attached! I literally rolled on the floor laughing, and bounced off to shul (where Julian and our houseguest were just finishing up mincha) to tell them of my discovery. Bounced back home, lit candles at the appropriate time, removed some stuff from the Monster Brisket marinade, added some other stuff to it, popped the Monster Brisket into the oven, (adjusted the temperature properly this time,) and bounced back out to dinner.

Dinner was lovely, even though we had a rather violent discussion about wedding registries.

Got back home, realized I had never added mushrooms to the Monster Brisket pan, decided it didn't matter, uncovered the pan for the last hour of roasting, and washed a whole bunch of stemware. Removed the Monster Brisket, fridged it, went to bed.

Next morning (that's yesterday, right?), woke up to discover that the power did not go out overnight. As we were to discover later, the message pertained to our old building, several blocks away. This was good for us, but monumentally sucked for a bunch of other families living on that street. Anyway, I sliced the Monster Brisket and prepared most of it for rewarming in the oven. I carefully filled the Corningware container for said rewarming with pan juices/gravy. Covered the dish, placed it into the oven, went off to shul.

Came home to overflowing brisket juices and a smoky oven. Ew. Removed the (now hot) brisket dish from the oven, transfered it to the blech, went about warming up other dishes for lunch.

Lunch, for the most part, went smoothly. I apologized for the slight smokiness in the air, but I like to think we made up for it by opening our wine bottles with an actual corkscrew. The Monster Brisket (if I do say so myself) was spectacular. Midway through the meal, I raised the oven temperature for the apple crisp we had planned for dessert. Shortly therafter, I opened the oven to put in the crisp, and - whoa, smoke. We opened the windows as quickly as possible, but it wasn't quick enough. Within moments, the smoke alarm started blaring. Whee! Eventually we managed to fan enough of the smoke outside to get the alarm to shut off, but the apartment remained hot and moderately smoky for the rest of the afternoon. Copious jokes about raves and lightsticks were made. I popped the apple crisp into the oven anyway.

For dessert, among other things, we had smoky-brisket-flavored apple crisp. Mmmmmm.

Apparently, lawyers are taking over the world. The blogging world, at least:

There is no reliable data on how much of the blog universe consists of lawyers, or of any other profession, for that matter. But several influential blogs do seem to be run by lawyers, who constitute considerably less than 1 percent of the population.

Hey, remember how I told you about persephone's IVF a couple of weeks ago? Good news - it looks like she's pregnant!

Tomorrow's New York Times Science section has a column wherein a heart surgeon meditates on his Orthodox Jewish patient's acceptance of a pig heart valve over an artificial valve. This is kind of beating the pikuach nefesh issue (put simply: you can violate any commandment - except murder, idolatry, and adultery - to save a life) over the head, isn't it? And it doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy, since the essay seems to imply that the typical Orthodox standard here would be to go with the inferior artificial valve. Maybe I'm just being overy sensitive...

Though I have links in my sidebar to most of the blogs that I follow, there are a few others I read that are not included there (for a variety of reasons). One of these is B'sha'ah Tova (lit. "in a good hour" or more poetically "in the proper time" - the traditional Jewish greeting extended to a pregnant woman or her family members upon hearing the news of her pregnancy). It is written by "Anonymommy," an anonymous Modern Orthodox (I think?) woman in the Chicago area; she started it back in December of 2004, sadly experienced a miscarriage shortly thereafter, and began posting again this past spring during her second pregnancy (now in its third trimester).

Anonymommy seems to have hit a few emotional and medical bumps in the road in the past couple of weeks: job stress, higher than recommended weight gain, and some strain in her relationship with AnonAbba. If any of you have any words of advice for her, I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

I thought I'd take a moment to note two interesting conversations I've participated in on other blogs. First, Yaakov of AliyahBlog asks: Why do they even bother coming to shul, if all they're going to do is stand out in the lobby and shmooze? And in a bit of an etymology digression Modern Orthodox Woman talks about the movement to replace ba'al (husband/master) and isha (wife/woman) with ben-zug and bat-zug (partner/spouse) in everyday Hebrew.

Go! Read! Discuss!

It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to call you when you put out a request on the shul's website saying that you don't have a sukkah and would like to be invited out for meals. I felt terrible turning people down once we got "filled up" for in-sukkah yom tov and Shabbat meals, particularly since everyone who called was someone we'd love to spend more time with. I'm not banking on it, but it would be really nifty if those who can't have us over duriing the holiday decided to invite us over some other time. Because, you know, we're not bad people, we like making new friends, and we'd be more than happy to reciprocate. One can hope...

Word on the street is that local ice cream chain J. P. Licks is considering disassociating from the Va'ad (i.e. they would no longer be certified kosher). I don't know the reasoning, but we speculate they they want to expand their offerings of non-ice-cream foodstuffs (pastries, breakfast foods, hot drinks, etc.) and limiting themselves to kosher products and ingredients has been a financial and gustatoy hurdle for them. If you have any interest in having the chain maintain its certification - even if you yourself don't keep kosher, have you ever chosen this as a meeting place with your kosher friends? - please visit your local J. P. Licks in the near future and, as you pay, let them know your opinion. Also, please spread the word.

Cross-posted to KosherBlog.

Tapped by Shifra. I restored the missing categories (based on Mirty's entry) so there are now seven groups of seven, as intended. This is still in progress, but I wanted to get it up here today and my lunch break is over, so...

7 Things I Can Do:

• make vegetarian food good enough to convert even the most die-hard meat-eater (at least, I haven't failed yet)
  
• pair wines with foods and cheeses (you know, so they actually taste good together)
  
• adjust recipes and menus - even ones I haven't made before, even baked goods - on the fly to accommodate tastes, allergies, and supplies-on-hand, and get better-than-decent results almost every time (are you noticing a theme here?)
  
• 
  
• 
  
• procrastinate with the best of them, rush things through at the last minute, and still produce a spectacular work product (I said I can do this, not that I consistently do so!)
  
• stand up for myself against authority figures (harder than it seems, really)

7 Things I Can't Do:

• lein Torah
  
• whistle
  
• make a perfect omelet (imperfect is a possibility)
  
• make rice that would make my Persian grandmother proud, or at least not totally ashamed
  
• not take the bait
  
• sing or play music by sight
  
• tell you about everything I can and can't do

7 Celebrity Crushes:

• Harrison Ford, circa 1987
  
• Sean Connery, circa some time in the 1960s...no, really, probably just about any time, and yes, you can call me Elsa
  
• Fred Savage, when I was about nine (nobody said these had to be current crushes)
  
• screw it, I'm not doing the rest of this list
  

7 Things I Find Attractive (changed from "Attract Me To the Opposite Sex"):

• slightly greenish blue eyes (coincidentally, Julian has these)
  
• a well-shaped butt (again, coincidentally...)
  
• Julian's reaction to my posting the previous item
  
• strong opinions, with the reasoning to back them up
  
• enjoyment of abstract conversations
  
• 
  

7 Things I Hope To Do Before I Die:

• have children
  
• dance at my sister's wedding
  
• live in Manhattan (again)
  
• devote a good chunk of time (at a minimum, three months of 35+ hour weeks) to "learning" (studying Jewish law and philosophy)
  
• become proficient (if not fluent) in conversational Hebrew
  
• 
  

7 Things I Say Often:

• "Point being..."
  
• "Do you have any food allergies or strong aversions we should know about?"
  
• "I hate the Green Line."
  
• "Julian, I can't find my keys/wallet/phone/hat/shoes/bag/brain!"
  
• "Can I offer you some Scotch or a girlie drink?"
  
• ""
  
• ""

7 Bloggers I Would Like To Infect With This Meme:

• GoldaLeah
  
• persephone
  
• Ari B.
  
• naomi chana
  
• Amanda
  
• elf
  
• UberImma (and I hope she will infect a whole bunch of people I'm thinking of, since I ran out of room on this list)

What day of the week is it? Am I supposed to go to work tomorrow? Fast? Do laundry? Not do laundry? Cook for forty people? Build a seven-story condo complex? Any insight would be highly valued!

The B.U. extension of the greater Boston eruv is now up. Be sure to read all the notes - it sounds tricky!

The good news: it seems I have resolved my crisis of faith. Well, mostly. And probably not in the direction that Stella would have preferred. But there was a revelation, an awakening, an awareness, or at list a glimmer of enlightenment - something that made me realize that it is possible that I maybe do believe in God after all.

Of course, that's just putting a positive spin on a terrible experience.

Monday evening through Wednesday night marked Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, the final wrap-up of the Crazy Jewish Autumn Holiday Season. Simchat Torah has long been my favorite holiday, perhaps a little because it is the light at the end of a very long tunnel of holy days, but mostly because it is meant to be a day of pure joy. On this holiday, we complete the yearly cycle of public Torah readings and immediately begin again with the first story of Creation (chapter one of Bereshit/Genesis). In celebration of restarting the cycle, and of the general goodness that is the Torah*, during both the evening and the morning services, all the sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) in the synagogue are removed from the aron (ark/closet where they are usually kept) and carried around the bima (table from which the Torah is usually read) seven times. Usually, each circuit around the bima - called a hakafa, pl. hakafot - is followed by much singing and dancing. Each sefer Torah is passed from person to person, and the celebration is often focused on these objects - vessels of our religious teachings and representations of our faith. In a larger crowd, not everyone is given the opportunity to hold a sefer Torah, but the potential remains. An argument could be made that such extreme focus on an object borders on idolatry, but I think there is a stronger case for saying that, like kissing tzitzit during the Shema**, it is merely a highly effective tangible reminder of our true focus on the intanglible concept of God.

For the past fifteen years, in every congregation where I have celebrated Simchat Torah, the women have at least one sefer Torah to dance with and embrace. Granted, I may be working with a slightly skewed sample set (in one of these congregations, Ramath Orah, women hold sifrei Torah for the start of each hakafa, and call out the associated verses along with the men), but I think a survey of the Modern/centrist Orthodox scene would show that passing a sefer Torah to the women's section is an accepted practice in a considerable number of communities. Where it is not, the most common reason against reflects a fear of feminism or suspicions about the women's "insincere motivations." I can't speak for anyone else, but as far as I'm concerned the only reason I want to carry and dance with a sefer Torah on Simchat Torah is to demonstrate my profound love and respect for the Torah - the physical embodiment of that which has united and sustained Jewish communities for thousands of years.***

Julian has lived in Brookline since August of 1997, and I have lived here in May of 2003. In all those years, we had never spent Simchat Torah night at the Young Israel of Brookline, where we are members. We'd heard that the ruach (spiritedness) was almost nonexistent, and I must have been told that the women do not receive a sefer Torah for their celebrations. In most years past, we spent the holiday in Manhattan with friends, dancing into the wee hours and then getting up the next morning to do it some more. Last year, when my work schedule did not allow for out-of-town travel, we went to a house minyan for the evening service and celebration, where the single sefer Torah was shared between the women and the men.

This year, we originally planned on walking into Cambridge to the Tremont Street shul, or maybe the B.U. Hillel. A combination of factors convinced us to go to YIB. It was raining, windy, and raw - not condition conducive to a long walk. But, more importantly, we recently purchased a decent-sized home in Brookline, and we have been laying down roots in our shul. We have a certian level of investment in this community, and hope one day to raise children here. If we are going to become a part of the community, then we want to make the effort to truly become a part of it - and nothing ever changes (either in our own atittudes or in those of the community at large) without some effort. This year, YIB - recognizing the general lack of spirit in its past Simchat Torah celebrations - decided to bring in half a dozen "motivators" through Yeshiva University's Torah Tours program. I figured the least we could do was meet them halfway by showing up and trying to make the best of things.

What I saw there Tuesday night was dismal at best. During the first two hakafot, we stay in the sanctuary, men in the men's section with sifrei Torah going around the bima, and women in the women's section, with only a small area at the back available for dancing. Most of the women were either staring over the mechitza, or talking, or both. More than a few commented on the lack of sefer Torah (and potentially corresponding lack of ruach) on the women's side. After a few minutes of discussion and internal debate, I decided (perhaps against my better judgment) to bring up the issue with with rabbi.

So, I asked. I caught him toward the end of the second hakafa, when he was on his way back into the sanctuary after checking that the social hall was set up properly for us to all move into there. I tried to ask as deferentially as possible. I expected a "no" followed by a suggestion that we talk later, but somewhere deep inside I nutured a tiny spark of hope that he might say "yes." What I did not expect, and what I did receive, was a harsh, "No, never, it has never happened here and it will never happen here," seemingly cutting off all possibility of future discussion.

I could not let it go. I needed him to understand that this wasn't some political matter, this wasn't a bid for superficial equality. I wasn't even doing it for the women - I was doing it for me. I was undergoing so much inner turmoil, my relationship with God was in the gutter, my love for Judaism was diminishing rapidly, and I was becoming disillusioned with the entire concept of religious observance. I had come to the time of year where I reach out to hug God and give God a chance to hug me back, and the idea that someone was taking away even the potential for me to have that chance made me sick to my stomach.

I told him it was the first time in fifteen years I would not be holding a sefer Torah on Simchat Torah. He offered a halachic reason that made no sense to me.**** I countered with the issue of kavod habriot (respect for personal dignity), I mentioned all the places where this occurs. He told me I was wrong, they were wrong. Children came up and he handed them candies, and we continued to talk. People walked past, and we continued to talk. People (I am told) watched our conversation, knowing what I was doing and knowing it was fruitless, but perhaps cheering me on nonetheless...and we continued to talk. Half a dozen men carrying the sifrei Torah out of the sanctuary and into the social hall walked by us, and I stoped talking (possibly even mid-sentence, I don't remember) and kissed each sefer Torah as it passed.

The rabbi turned to follow them, I walked a few steps, and then found a (relatively) quiet corner of the lobby and began to cry.

I did not dance at all that night. Any sense of simcha I may have had was completely gone. Julian stood at my side throughout the evening. A visiting friend (a rabbi) spoke to the shul's rabbi on my behalf, though I still am unsure whether he was arguing the halachic issue of giving the women a sefer Torah or the issue of bringing a congregant to tears on a festive day. The shul president, among other people, came to talk to us. A few times, I tried to psych myself into joining the small group of dancing women (most were just standing around talking, and given the height of the makeshift mechitza, that may have been the more appropriate move). I couldn't do it. For me, it would have been pointless, joyless. All I wanted was to hold a sefer Torah for thirty seconds, to embrace and be embraced, to be rejuvenated and to restore my sense of joy. The hakafot ended, most people went back into the sanctuary to conclude the evening service, and I remained behind to cry some more.

As the last people filtered out of the sanctuary and into the lobby, we started to gather ourselves up to go. I realized that I'd left my sweater on my usual seat in the downstairs women's section, and so slipped back in to retrieve it. It lay in a heap at my usual seat - front and center of the back-of-the-shul women's section, the closest I can come to my desired place at the front of the shul and one of the few downstairs women's seats offering a mostly-unobstructed view of the bima and aron. I picked up my sweater and looked at the aron, where the sifrei Torah had been put away for the evening (the better to rest up for more celebrations the next morning, or so I like to think). I considered for a moment waiting there until the last person had left, sneaking into the men's section and up to the aron, and taking a sefer Torah into my arms for just a moment, letting the disappointment and longing all pour out and drinking back joy and comfort from the vessel of our faith.

That's where Julian found me, leaning against the mechitza, gazing toward the front of our shul, eyes and heart directed toward Torah and Jerusalem. I broke down again, crumpled into a pile on the floor for I don't know how long, until Julian gently escorted me out to the lobby and bundled me into my coat to go home.

I'm not sure exactly when, but some time between my collapse on the floor and the start of dinner, I began to giggle. I'm not an eternal optimist, but I do manage to find glimmers of hope in some dismal situations. And so, Tuesday night, I remembered my lack of faith and spirituality on Yom Kippur, and my muttered threat to God: "I don't care whether you're there or not, and that's a problem. If you want to hang onto me, you'd better give me a reason to hang onto you." I remembered, and I realized that if I didn't care, I wouldn't cry.

* No, really, I'm not even talking about that now. Just work with me here on the assumption that Torah = Goodness.

*** I have kind of a strange of obsession with sifrei Torah, especially considering that I'm not entirely sure I don't agree with the Documentary Hypothesis. During services, I almost always choose a seat as close to the aron as possible. Last year I was delighted to see a change in the path of the sefer Torah as it is carried back to the aron> on Shabbat morning - and I am, as Julian likes to tell people, a dedicated Torah-kisser.

**** Since I can't relate the conversation word-for-word, I am not going to attempt to represent both sides of it here.

Related: (1) (2)

I was, one day, planning to write a post about why women may make Kiddush for men, but LabRab, in a comment at Drew Kaplan's Blog, seems to have beaten me to it (seventh comment down):

Both men and women are obligated in Kiddush on Shabbat. Women might have been exempt, since it's a mitzvat aseh shehazeman grama, except the analogy of shamor to zachor renders them obligated. So in theory women could exempt men. Indeed, most authorities rule this way in Shulchan Aruch, including Taz 271:2 and Mishna Berura 271:4. However, there are three camps of minority opinions who disagree/limit: (1) Bach compares to Megillah reading, in which women don't read for men, and concludes that women never fulfill the obligation for men. Taz, however, shows that the comparison is faulty. (2) There may be an embarrassment or tznius issue. Eliyahu Rabbah cited in Mishna Berurah says that women should say kiddush only for their family members. (3) Some believe that a woman who has davened maariv or otherwise verbalized her acceptance of shabbos cannot fulfill the obligation of a man, based on the conjunction of two minority opinions. First, Mogen Avraham and many others believe that one fulfills the Torah requirement of kiddush through any verbal acknowledgment that the day is Shabbos. And second, Rosh (Brachot 3:13) seems to indicate that women aren't included in the principle of ar'vut, which enables a person to fulfill another person's obligation even after he/she has already fulfilled his/her personal obligation. However, both assumptions, and especially the second, are questionable. R. Akiva Eger (cited in Shaar Hatziyun 271:9) argues at length that women are included in arevut, especially in Mitzvot that they are obligated in De'oraita.

For the record, Julian and I roughly alternate who makes Kiddush at Shabbat dinners and lunches, with some consideration given to the comfort of our guests, if any. The other of us will make hamotzi at that meal. Generally, he says Kiddush on holiday evenings, because I will have already said shehechiyanu at candle-lighting and so cannot repeat it after Kiddush. The only exception has been the last days of Pesach, when there is no shehechiyanu blessing. There's also daytime Kiddush on the holidays to consider...at least we have nearly half a year until the next festival to worry about these things!

Anyway, two new blogs to keep an eye on, as if I needed more distractions...

For those of you who have been following persephone's saga, but not so obsessively as to have read her announcement this morning...she had an ultrasound this morning, and they found two heartbeats! B'sha'ah tova, my dear, and may you welcome these new lives in the fullness of (early) summer with much joy.