Tikkun Olam

I haven't blogged since January 2015, I believe it was. There was a time when I would blog before or during every chag (which means holiday, for my non-Hebrew speaking friends), but a difficult year health and other-wise (more on these, possibly at a later date and blog post) and lack of patience to research subjects which interested me precluded blogging. But it's erev chag sheni (the eve of the last days of Yom Tov, the holy days of Pesach/Passover) and I revisited my Previous Pesach Posts (note the alliteration; she said wryly) to see what I had written over the years, and decided -- the lazy woman's exit strategy -- to repost the links here, so you can peruse them all over again; that is, if you actually even read them to begin with... A few points come to mind: -Pesach cleaning and switching over? Hard?! Understatement of the year. Now, in 2015, with my mobility issues (osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, decrepiting-as-we-speak knee cartilege), nearly impossible without...

Well, Shabbat is over. I made havdalah around 9:00 p.m., not especially in a rush to end a day apart from all others. I made a delicious salad (if I do say so myself) and my friend's daughter brought me back the leftover, after they incorporated it into their second se'udah, as I told them to.  Might have some tonight, even; although it's late (almost 10) and I should get to bed at a decent hour, not having had such a good night last night (leg muscle cramps and aches). That was actually the only thing that marred my day: extremely painful feet in my metatarsal area.  I basically limped (with my cane) to my friend's house Friday night, and was in so much pain that I couldn't walk back, even with a cane, until she offered me her husband's walker.  You can only imagine how I felt: like an invalid.  Overcoming my (false) pride, I leaned on that walker and slowly limped home, accompanied by my friend.  I will ask my physician to refer me to a podiatrist, but I rea...

They have become very professional, in their harmonies and staging. Very different from when they first started as an a cappela group. The lyrics tell the Passover story in a different way. Have a very happy Pesach.  And to my non-Jewish friends, have a very happy holiday as well.

I posted this video before Pesach 2010, and I decided it's so compelling, that I will repost it again. And then, for all those chumra-of-the-week people, here's how to really clean for Pesach:

No time nor energy to research subjects for a new post, nor time for even writing my extemporaneous thoughts, so I am reposting a previous Pesach post here.  'Finding stuff' applies to each year, as well: this year, I found my Rambo's (youngest daughter, former combat engineering commander, now in wheelchair with RSD/CRPS) Tai-Kwon-Do yellow belt certificate.  Can't throw that away...but have to put it away--it had a food stain on it! Funny, though: in two years, while cleaning for Pesach, I haven't yet found my old SanDisk little pink MP3 player; I fear it's gone for good.  So last week, I bought myself a new one: a SanDisk Sansa Clip, 4 GB (the old one was 1 GB only).  But the new one isn't pink.  It's purple... Thursday, March 11, 2010 My Pesach-Cleaning-Findings-of: STUFF I dislike cleaning for Pesach, not only because it's hard on my knees and back, but because I always unearth something of personal value which becomes very em...

Did I ever mention that I HATE converting back to chametz after Pesach? About as much as I hate "making Pesach."  I just LOVE Pesach--that's the problem (!) There's gotta be a better way to do it (...yeah, like a whole separate Pesachdige kitchen in my mansion; but I didn't win Mega Millions this time). We just about finished converting back, and we started at 12:00 noon our time (it's now, as I'm sitting to write this, 5:22 p.m.!). Here's sort of how I feel sometimes (NOT). Pesach is generally not an easy holiday. There are many customs and traditions to browse up on. In the kitchen the scene is generally one of mayhem and effort. Many traditional dishes are prepared and many guests are invited. To many housewives, Passover is a time of spring cleaning, hard work, and toil. There is a famous story about a couple that many years ago decided for social mobility to convert to Christianity. After many years, the husband remarked to the wi...

I can't believe Pesach 5772 has ended.  Didn't it just start? All that intense preparation warrants a longer chag, don't you think (see previous post)? I always have had difficulty in separating from a chag, especially the Shalosh Regalim , Pesach, Sukkot and Shavu'ot.  This year, it was no different; my daughter left on Wednesday, during chol ha-mo'ed, the intermediate days, so we were 'alone' for the rest of the chag.  Don't get me wrong: Thursday night, the 7th night, we went to our friends and neighbors, the F. family-and we split the cooking (some were leftovers).  The next night, Friday night, last night of Pesach and also, auspiciously, Shabbat, they came to us.  More food, more leftovers, but it was delicious.  Then Shabbat lunch, just today, after davening, we and another family came to their house and we all blessed and ate and talked and sang the Birchat Hamazon together. But we were still 'alone.'  No family.  In the late afternoon,...

Don't know how this will look on the Web, Cause I'm typing this from my smartphone (and  I'm not exactly sure how smart it really is), besides which it is taking me forever to type this out on the tiny keypad. But I rarely post these days because of my job, and now Pesach is upon us, and my grandson and his aunt-my middle daughter, Toodles, are here for the Chag, so I have no time anyway-but I decided, at midnight, that I'd write something, just to confirm that I'm still around. I sorely miss blogging. Suffice it to say for now, that I am having a wonderful chag so far (ptu, ptu, ptu), not having seen my daughter since Rosh Hashanah  and my grandson since last July. This post is experimental, though, so I'll stop here because of the lateness of the hour. Hopefully will post before Pesach ends and I return to my daily grind of exhaustion, running after two year olds. Hope your chag (or holiday) is going well , too.

I was totally dismayed when I read on the first day of chol ha-mo’ed Pesach, an article entitled Offensive Liturgy in the Passover Seder: Take It Out , by Joshua Stanton. In the article he described his personal seder and highlighted a passage in the Haggadah which he termed “offensive,” and at which (he wrote) the Jewish guests winced. He made a point to say that the non-Jewish guests were not the ones who were offended, but that the Jewish participants cringed at reading those words. And then, he proposed removing this “offensive” passage from the Haggadah entirely. What is this special paragraph, and why was it considered so offensive? This behooves a little historical background : the Haggadah* which has the order of the Seder* and is read on Seder night, was codified into booklet form around the thirteenth century. Before then, it had been appended to the Hebrew prayer book, the siddur. It itself dates back to the period of the Tannaim, who compiled the Mishna part of the Talm...

With the stress of eight people living here for Pesach, the normal whirlwind of the holiday and my being sick with severe bronchitis for the entire chag, I didn't get to  post the notice of Haveil Havalim, the Jewish Blog Carnival, let alone post since the beginning of the chag. So here it is, folks, the latest Haveil Havalim #263 at Super Raizy's --better late than never--and better read it fast, too, 'cause the next one will be out this Sunday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Pesach!

Our Pesach sedarim used to last a minimum of six (6) hours. It was not unusual to end around 3:00 a.m. if we started at 9:00 p.m. the night before. Now that we're older, we have not been able to stay awake so late. . . D. H. was usually nodding off by the time we were in the middle of Hallel, while I still managed to more or less stay awake through the songs at the end (somebody had to!)--but this year we'll do our best to stay awake for the whole nine yards, because our kids will be here. However, for those of you who are really wimpy and can't handle a long seder, here's one that should be just your speed: The Sixty Second Seder!

I thought this would be interesting for you, my readers, especially those of you who are not familiar with the process of baking shmurah matzahs by hand. What are shmurah matzahs? They are matzahs which comply more stringently with halacha , or Jewish law, by being "watched" or "guarded"(-the meaning of ' shmurah ') from the time of harvest so that the wheat will not come in contact with water or anything that would enable it to ferment and 'rise.' The matzah flour has to be prepared and baked within eighteen (18) minutes in order to prevent fermentation and rising ("chametz"). Here is a video depicting the preparation and baking of shmurah matzah, in Bnei Brak, Israel:

I dislike cleaning for Pesach, not only because it's hard on my knees and back, but because I always unearth something of personal value which becomes very emotional for me. I sometimes find myself sitting there by the just-unpacked-or-organized box, turning pages, or sifting through pictures, or looking through kids' toys/backpacks/schoolbags from Israel/drawings, tears coursing down my face. Pesach cleaning, for me, is an emotional roller coaster. Today I was in our laundry/utility room, where we had boxes upon boxes of STUFF, belonging to the kids and us from way back, not unpacked since we sold our house and moved into our current rental town home six years ago. Now, don't tell me that halachically I don't have to unpack those or look through them if I know we hadn't put chametz in them nor eaten near them--I know that! We needed to get rid of some boxes to make room there for other STUFF which we had piled up in other areas of the house which we needed to k...

So it's been suggested by a fellow blogger (hat tip, Norma ) that I write about what I find while cleaning for Pesach (anyway, that's my interpretation!) Pesach cleaning often becomes a very emotional event for me--I'm not referring to the kitchen cabinets and dishes--they're just fine. I'm referring to the bedroom closets (top, back shelves), the innards of my desk drawers, my metal free-standing, two-tiered desk inbox/outbox (which was piled high with... stuff ), and various and sundry boxes which we haven't unpacked in six years, because I always want to look through everything and think about it . So I never get to it. And if I ever do get to some of it, I can never seem to get rid of anything: I always find a reason to save IT (whatever "IT" may be, at the time). I'm a packrat. Interestingly enough, D. H. is just the opposite; at this stage in his life, he wants to downsize and throw everything out the window, except what will fit in his b...

-Have seen this before, but since I just saw it again on Reb Mordechai's blog I decided it was worth cross-posting here. I wish a Pesach kasher ve-sameach to all my wonderful friends and readers!

The last day of Chanukah was this past Shabbat. I have a lot of trouble transitioning from a chag * to a regular week; I never want to let go of the holiday: it is my connection with ha-olam ha-ruchani *, and I keep wanting to hang on. . .so it was just today that I uploaded my Chanukah pictures and am posting some of them here (and will share them on Me-ander , too). This year, unlike last year, I took plenty of pics, as we had a full chag (Baruch Hashem), including a friend's annual open-house, a Chabad family dinner and a party of our own on the 6th night, complete with home-made latkes, or levivot* in Hebrew (a joint venture) and home-made sufganiyot * (the Head Chef did it all by himself). It all culminated with a shared family-and-friends-Shabbat-dinner on the last night of Chanukah, at our home. Here are some of the highlights: The two photos above are of our card table which annually morphs into a chanukiya table. Our dining room table transformed into a Chanukah Party ...

I am careening into the last days of Yom Tov by posting this only a few minutes before hadlakat nerot* , but it pertains to the chag and I want (nay, need ) to write about this. For our first seder we were honored to have among our guests a descendent of The Chida, בכבודו ובעצמו . For those unenlightened of you--I myself knew a little about The Chida, but after discovering our illustrious guest, scrambled to learn more-- the name "Chida" being the acronym of his name, Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai (which in Hebrew coincidentally also means "the riddle") was one of the great sages of Jewish history, a noted rabbinic scholar and bibliophile. He was born in Jerusalem and lived from 1724-1806, during which time he wrote halachic works such as Shaar Yosef , Birkei Yosef , and Makhzik Beracha . He was also a child prodigy who began studying in the Beit Midrash at age six. Because of his great scholarship he was chosen to be a shaliach of the communities of Eretz Yis...

(-And I don't only mean that the latest edition of the famous Jewish Blog Carnival, HH #212 is up and running, here . Read. While munching shmurah matzah.) There is no explaining away an event that was witnessed by thousands and later recorded in the Torah, which as Old Testament is accepted by at least two major world religions. The Passover story was a major world event, no two ways about it. I found, on the very wonderful aggregate site Jewish World Review ( a synopsis of which I receive daily in my inbox), a series of video shiurim (lessons) on the Exodus from Egypt: The Hidden Agenda, by Rabbi David Fohrman of The Hoffberger Institute . Watch, and learn. May you continue to have a deep, meaningful Pesach. And don't forget to count the Omer (kids, I'm talking to you )!

The kitchen is a mess as another marathon three-day - Yom-Tov-sheni-shel-galuyot* bites the dust. I should be washing the fleishig* dishes and cleaning the kitchen. Instead, I'm blogging (smart choice). But the older I get, the less I can handle the three days (but I still love that matzah shmurah* ). . . It's amazing-when I was a child, I just loved it. It was a glimpse into another universe for me: three days of Avodat Hashem* , with davening* (which I've always loved), singing zmirot* of all kinds, a Seder which transported me into a spiritual realm. I waited for Eliyahu* to come in through our open door with baited breath. These days, it's all that, but all the while I am collapsed with aching legs and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. Can't do the physical side of this so easily any more. Started feeling a bit better on Shabbat (today), with 7 or so hours of sleep Friday night, to make up for four hours of sleep after the 2nd seder, and three hours ...

I am up close to 2:00 a.m. why? Mah nishtanah ha-lailah ha-zeh mikol ha-lelot? Because it is the eleventh hour, erev chag: the biggest, most awesome holiday in the universe: Pesach! I have been checking and washing romaine lettuce for karpas (tons of it), boiling potatoes, checking the chicken soup, putting the tzimmes in the fridge...but of course I will give credit to hubby, without whom none of these delicious delicacies would be possible: he cooked 'em all (ok, I peeled, cored and cut the apples for the tzimmes. Really). He also cooked the brisket yesterday, four huge trays of 'em; he made a cranberry-orange side dish; carrot, potatoe and apple tzimmes with pineapple, the aforementioned chicken soup in a huge stock pot (we're having lotsa guests the first night), and genuine shmurah matzah balls (doesn't baseball season start now?) that are our specialty for Pesach (yes, we eat gebrocht ). So I am not complaining about being up so late, although I have a dr.'s a...