Tikkun Olam

I was going to reprise my Thanksgiving post of last year and write about how we were both thinking that without our kids being with us-just the two of us making homemade pizza and sitting at the table staring at each other just didn't cut it somehow - when we got a surprise call from new friends inviting us to their Thanksgiving dinner! It was right up the kazoo, especially because I was feeling rather lonely just then (my grandson just having been born and my seeing him on the webcam only...not in person...and my not seeing my other grandchildren who live out of state, and. . . ) And we had (and I hope our hosts had) a wonderful time, especially since their older daughter was a former student of mine, and it was great seeing her again all grown-up and back for a visit. She also won our Balderdash game. Darn. But what I will do is link my Thanksgiving post, here , so you can read it. Just so you know that this year, we had two Thanksgiving dinners: one on the actual day, and o...

I don't know where to begin first; there are so many ideas that I wanted to write about, starting with Haveil Havalim #192 being UP and also the Kosher Cooking Carnival ( KCC ) at Baila's , and including the importance of naming babies in general and my new grandson's name in particular, the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and as an adjunct, the horribly high price of kosher turkeys (don't know about you, but I sure can't afford $60 for a turkey), President Elect Obama's cabinet-building choices (will Hillary or will she not? Only her hairdresser ex-president-husband knows for sure), Barkat becoming mayor of Jerusalem (a right-winger after my own heart, though not religious), and a myriad of other topics all of which right now escape me. But I just have no time: I am working, albeit it at a temporary job (whose pay doesn't cover my bills), I am teaching Ivrit twice a week and rehearsing four times a week for a performance to be given at a Chabad Women...

At least, I think it's #191. I'm losing track. This edition is called The Mama-Rachel Edition , because of the Yahrtzeit* of our matriarch Rachel (Rachel Imenu*), and also because it's also West Bank Mama's name! I don't have any posts in this one (didn't have time to post, let alone submit), but there are so many other good ones that you should read it anyway. As I always say, read, and enjoy ! *yahrtzeit: annual day of remembering someone who passed away *Rachel Imenu: our mother Rachel

Haven't been posting frequently because of my new grandson(!) and resulting phone calls, emails, Google chats and Instant Messages with son back-and-forth from Israel regarding various things like names, their meanings and Gematria (Kabbalistic numerology value), etc. - so I think I forgot to tell you about the KCC (Kosher Cooking Carnival) #35 which has been up since October 27th. KCC edition #35 is called the Post-Shmittah KCC, and you can find it here . Many good posts there on Kosher Cooking, Halachah (Jewish law), etc. (including yours truly's post on Kugel). Read, and enjoy.

Go here . Read blogs. Have fun. Goodbye. (Whew that tired me out.)

I am a SAVTA again, number four (4)! My son (Nathaniel Blumenstein) and his lovely wife Noodles (sister-in-law to Toodles) gave birth on Shabbat to their first child, a BOY, weighing in at 3 kilo, 180 gram, at Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem (which my Great Grandfather helped build!) Baby, mother & father are exhausted but doing (baruch Hashem) fine. I wish I could be there. . . And thank you to Suzie, their meyaledet* , who Nathaniel said was absolutely fantastic! It's a small world. . . (Suzie, of course I'm gonna blog about it. Hey, I didn't even know you read my blog; thank you for that, too!) *midwife

* This is unbelievable. Or not. Some of the first to 'jump on the bandwagon' of the interest in the new President-Elect are the negative elements of society, in this case, the computer hackers and malicious software creators of the world. In surfing the web (I'm really good with a surfboard. You should see me) I found this on the Scientific American website: One spam message, subject line “Obama Wouldn’t Be First Black President,” directs readers to a link said to show his Tuesday speech. To watch, the user has to download a "new" flash player, adobe_flash9.exe. F-Secure Weblog warns that the “player” is really a virus out to steal confidential information on your computer and upload it to a server in Ukraine. My Tech Support Person (guess who that is) taught me well: an .exe file which arrives in an unsolicited email is usually viral. These hackers are working so fast in exploiting intense public interest in the election that anti-virus software hasn...

This Rahm Emanuel seems to be a very interesting character, who according to Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish doesn't mince words . He has a tough reputation but was also (can you believe it) a dancer. His father is a pediatrician and a former member of the Irgun . He has two brothers, one, Yehezkel (in Hebrew) who is a "noted oncologist" and Bio-ethicist , the other a talent agent in L.A. who apparently inspired the HBO production Entourage . What does RahmE's appointment mean for the United States? What does it mean for Israel? Here is RahmE's website . I await your comments. . .

I love soup. I've always loved soup. It is a staple in the kitchen of my mind's eye. Soup symbolizes for me, love, security, warmth and family. This is probably fairly universal, and soup is fairly old in the history of mankind: Soup dates back to the beginning of cooking, when people noticed fat and other nutrients falling off meat being roasted over an open fire, Segan says. Archaeologists have discovered vessels dating back to prehistoric times, capable of holding water, meat and fibrous root vegetables that would soften during boiling Whenever I'm feeling low, or needy, or missing my kids & lonely, I think of making homemade vegetable soup. Notice I didn't say 'I make homemade vegetable soup,' but I do think about it (remember, my hubby's the Chef). Like today. It's been a rough two weeks. . . which culminated in that election --and I'm feeling particularly miserable (I also am physically under the weather a little and have the chi...

President-elect Barak H. Obama has appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff. From The Jerusalem Post : President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday offered the job of White House chief of staff to Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who reportedly accepted the offer. Emanuel is the Chicago-born son of a former Israeli . Obama, right, smiles as he listens to US Rep. Rahm Emanuel, during an unscheduled stop at the Chicago Sister Cities International Rally in Chicago in June 2008. The 48-year-old Emanuel is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community of Chicago and grew up speaking Hebrew with his father, a pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun , the Jewish resistance group in Palestine, before the War of Independence in 1948. From Haaretz : A day after winning an historic election to become the first black American p...

If Hillary Clinton had been nominated as the Democratic party candidate, it would have made sense: you choose the tried and true, the experienced; if that had been done, I, as a voter, would have had more of a choice. But for some strange reason, Barack Hussein Obama was chosen. Why do I use Hussein (as some commenters have asked me in the past)? Because that is his full name, it indicates the religion to which he was born, that religion being generally intolerant towards any religion or culture other than itself--and he seems to want to hide it. Nothing, but nothing should be hidden about a potential candidate for the highest office of the land. Actually, the reason he was chosen was not 'strange,' as I mentioned above. It is understandable, when one considers a shallow, uninformed, disinterested public raised on television. I guess the average American doesn't care to research his candidate or analyze his findings. Mr. and Mrs. Average American are more interested ...

Peruse some beautiful photos of different sukkot and neighborhoods at Leora's blog, here . Don't forget to look for Toodles' sukkah door painting!