I keep thinking about the saying, "Next Year in Jerusalem," everytime we celebrate a holiday -- even if it isn't quite Passover yet, and even if Ra'anana ain't Jerusalem. As you can see above, we more or less decided to conform. Dani and I went out last one evening week to purchase white shirts. White is not my color, but it is the uniform for Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippor. Margalit and Miriam were delighted to buy new white dresses, and were excited all week leading up to Rosh Hashanah to wear the new dresses. Ronit refused! No way, no how was she going to get a white dress. We obviously did not insist.
The first evening we met Dena's cousin Ofra at the Reform Synagogue. It was a relatively familiar service and the kids enjoyed playing games in the foyer. After shul, we had Dena's relatives over for the evening meal -- Ofra, Oren (and Oren's girl friend), Dafna, Hedva, Ilan, Guy and Mor. Shir and her husband Ram did not make the trip from Be'er Sheva, and Amnon was travelling in the Sinai despite the governmental warnings about terrorist attacks. You couldn't pay me to go to Sinai even though I would love to see it. Many Israeli's apparently cancelled their trips, or turned back -- not Amnon.
Day one we went to the non-elagitarian Conservative synagogue with the new Rabbi from Cincinnatti. They have men's seating, women's seating, and family seating. It reminds of Dairy, Meat and Treif dishes. It was a pretty standard conservative service, Dena chatted with the Rabbi who has a couple of small children, and is very friendly.
The second evening we hosted Paul Mills (and family) and Alan and Lisa (recent Olim from Brooklyn). Dena cooked up a huge amount of delicious food -- Chicken soup, Brisket, and checken. Lisa brought quinoa salad with pomegranate seeds (a reprise from last year), tzimis with butternut squash instead of carrots, and a sunken apple tort. I was all fabulous -- and in case you are wondering, I've never tasted quinoa before and I liked it. It was a very fun evening. Alan played Dani in Chess -- Alan used to play speed chess and is a good match for Dani, though usually in the end he gets the upper hand. I played blockus with Margalit, Paula, and her son Nadav. Somehow Margalit managed to win. How does she always do that? We skipped shul the second night.
Day two we deliberated between the conservative and the reform shul. Finally after lots of discussion Dena and I decided that we would go to the conservative shul. After all, it probably is a better match for us, especially since we think the Rabbi is going to try to push it to be more egalitarian. (His wife is a hazzan.). Then we told the kids, and Dani got his chance to over-rule the parents. He voted for Kehilat Ra'anan -- the reform shul. His reasoning was quite simple -- kehilat Ra'anana has a nice air condition foyer -- a perfect place to sit and read "Eragon".
Savta Nusha is arriving tomorrow with the newly released second book of the series, Eldest, and Dani wanted to have a fresh memory of the first. Alan and Lisa joined us there, so Margalit, Miriam and Ronit had friends to play with.
In the afternoon we had lunch with the family of one of Margalit's friends. Margalit and Maytal are in the same class at Yavneh. It was a little bit of a zoo. Maytal's family has 5 kids, and present were the grandparents, and Maytal's Aunt, Uncle and their 6 kids. As they say here, ברוך השם, bless god, there was another family with just 3 kids. Otherwise, I might have felt like we didn't fit in -- even with my white shirt! If you're not good at counting, I'll do the math, 18 kids and 10 adults. That's too many people to sit around a table even in a small Israeli house, so we all sat in a huge oval on chairs in the livingroom. I felt a like we had just been transported to Meah Shearim in Jerusalem. All in all, it was a very nice afternoon. Maytal's dad, and her uncle and the other visitor all work in the hitech instustries, so they are all good contacts, and Maytal's parents used to work at the Ramah camp in Palmer Mass for many years and were very interested to hear about Dena's curriculae.
On their refrigerator was a magnet with a saying, "Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling tge walk before it stops snowing". I couldn't help but think that my parents taught me to shovel early and shovel often -- or was the advice about voting? BTW, I am about to start the book, "Steal This Vote". I still am smarting over Al Gore being robbed in 2000.
