The year was 1978. It had sat on the counter for three months and two days, shortly after my sister left for college. The object was a microwave oven and while the technology had been around for a while, this was the beginning of home use. My father, the scientist, had used microwaves at the university and purchased it as a gift for Mom, who had meal responsibilities for dinner. He thought it would speed things up for her.
For long years, my favorite season was the fall. Maybe it’s because I was an autumn baby. Or perhaps it’s related to my love of sweaters and hats and the coziness that the cooling days offer us. It might also have something to do with growing up in the Northeast, where the forests are predominantly deciduous and where the frost burnishes eighty percent of the autumnal landscape to a scarlet and ochre frenzy.
This past Wednesday, Israel360 partnered with our local Hillel to bring Ashager Araro to our community for an engaging and powerful presentation. Ashager is a second-generation Ethiopian-Israeli. Her talk covered many topics. A number of things stood out to me. One was her community’s deep-seated desire to return to Israel from Ethiopia, a country the Beta Yisrael (the name by which Ethiopian Jews self-identify) had lived in for 1500 years.
There’s a classic joke about a rabbi on vacation in France. Far away from congregants, the rabbi orders a roast suckling pig with all the garnishes—potatoes, vegetables, the apple in the mouth, all on a bed of kale—the full works. Just as the loaded-down platter arrives, the president of the synagogue appears as though from nowhere and is completely shocked. “Rabbi, what are you doing!?” Thinking quickly, the rabbi exclaims, “Oy, what a crazy country, I ordered a baked apple, and this is how they serve it!”
In the continuing saga of emptying my mother’s house, two large cardboard boxes arrived at my house. Each carton was approximately three feet by three feet. Inside were thousands of 35-millimeter slides that my father shot over the years. As part of my siblings’ divide and conquer approach to the old family homestead, it fell upon me to get all of these slides digitized, and thankfully, Portland still has a couple of places for this sort of work.
Sight. Whether we are talking literally or metaphorically, sight is precious. None of us want to be blindsided, even as we all wear blinders. We seek insight to our problems and greater clarity to how we see the world and others. Heck, in the most mundane example, many of us who wear glasses have tried to keep our lenses clear of mist while wearing masks. Good vision is precious.
It is late September. While Simchat Torah is upon us, the larger thrust of the Jewish High Holiday cycle is behind us, and with it there is a risk that all the energy and spiritual insights we gained can be forgotten. Nonetheless, we all feel how essential it is to recharge, refocus, and recommit--and not just during the High Holidays. If not, we may find ourselves spinning in place and rehashing what was.
