My Kids’ Family

When I last discussed this monumental process, the three moms had just decided on menus. One might think that this is easy, and in some years it is not that hard. You have two Seders. You make a lot of food and eat it both nights. In many ways we are doing that, with minor changes. However, this year a wrench is thrown into the gears because Passover begins Saturday night right after Shabbat. This means that we cannot do any preparation at all the entire day before, but our houses have to be “kosher for Passover” before Shabbat. So the 2 Seder menus just went up to three menus, including Friday night Shabbat dinner.

The three families will each dinner on Friday at one house, lunch Saturday afternoon at another and then all descend upon our house for the first Seder on Saturday night. One final wrench is that you really cannot start the Seder until after sundown on Saturday night with is around 8:15. Way too late for dinner with kids. So we are introducing an innovation, and eating the meal before the Seder and at the “meal” during the Seder we will have dessert. Here is a PDF of our basic menu.

passover-2008-menus

Yesterday Marsha and the moms met again to discuss shopping and what we will need.  As we are all hosting these Seders together we are sharing the costs.  For example, we know that we need a minimum of 15 dozen eggs.  Eggs are a major staple of passover cooking and thank God the holiday is only one week long.  We will be making 200 Matza balls.  That equals 5 1/2 dozen eggs right there.  You get the idea.  By the end of this week much of the shopping will be done.

To bring us to today, on Sunday mkm and I defrosted and cleaned the large freezer in the basement and we are now emptying out our main freezer in the kitchen and relocating the food downstairs.  Half of the large freezer will be dedicated to passover foods while the rest holds are every day stuff.  We also cleaned out mkm’s grandmothers fridge which is also downstairs to hold the every day fridge stuff that needs relocating.  Tonight we will remove everything from the kitchen fridge and freezer, the pantry and the counters so the woman who cleans our house every other week will do a more thorough cleaning in the kitchen on Wednesday.  Thursday night, the dads will convene at our house to bring upstairs all the Passover supplies (pots, pans, dishes etc.) and put away all the every day stuff.

This then brings us to this coming Shabbat.  Cooking is going to occur Saturday night and Sunday, and I will post part three of Passover prep on Monday.

Early in the morning on Friday, my father’s Aunt Rose passed away. Due to the timing or her death, and Jewish tradition (I can explain in private email if someone wants to hear the reason), there was no real eulogy at her funeral, so I want to share some thoughts here.

She was 95 years old, and expect for the last 6 years or so when she was in a nursing home, she lived in Brooklyn, much of those years in the same apartment in Borough Park. Of all of this generation, I remember my Aunt Rose the most. She was one of three sisters. Her older sister Florance was my grandmother and she died when I was very young. Her younger sister Minna died a few years later, and though I have some fond memories of Aunt Minnie, none of them can compare to Rose.

I think she was at our house or we at her home at least twice a month. She was with us for every holiday, every celebration and every time sadness came as well. She was married to Michael, uncle mike for many years and not for lack of trying, they had no children. I think that me and my siblings were like her surrogate children. My uncle Mike worked as a letter carrier for the post office for most of his adult life and thought they never had much, they gave everything they had to me and my brothers and sister, my cousins and the one nephew that uncle mike had on his side.

When I was in college, more than once I found myself at their apartment. One time I when to Brooklyn with my roommate and his mother to do some errands in Borough Park. Even though my friend and his mother had never met my Aunt Rose, I called a few hour before, and she graciously invited me and my friends into her home. I will never forget that moment, and I know that she never did as well.

After her husband did, she lived in her apartment for a number of years, some with full time care. As this became difficult, my father and his sister Naomi moved Rose to a nursing home in Central New Jersey so she would be nearer to us all. We visited her there a number of times, but I never really saw the Aunt Rose I remembered from the past and she became very distant to us all. The Rabbi at the home told us that she did speak to him about her memories, and I have to take some comfort that in her last years, she did find someone to talk to enjoy her memories with.

What does this have to do with the song of the day? Well, at many Jewish funerals someone will read a passage from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. The beginning of this chapter became very well knows to music lovers when the Byrds recored a song written by Pete Seeger which was basically the first 8 verses of this chapter. The song became know as Turn! Turn! Turn! and below is a video of a reunion concert of three of the original members of the Byrds.

Enjoy!

When I think about favorite songs for my daily song of the day, different things come into my mind, and often it is either the lyrics in general or perhaps just one lyric. I began thinking about some of my favorite lyrics in songs. Sometimes songs I like have lyrics that are ok but nothing special, and sometimes I can find a great lyric in a song that I may not like as much.

I decided that I would make my song of the day on Fridays into Favorite Lyric Friday, and I will start off with what (in my mind) may be the greatest lyric of all time. I have mentioned Les Miserables here before and the very last line of the story itself is perhaps the most moving and wonderful lyric that anyone could have written.

The book Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo is mostly a political commentary on his time. The Broadway musical is mostly about fate and faith in God. Without giving away the story (if there is anyone out there who has not seen it), the basic story has concluded and we get an epilogue. The main characters come center stage and sing the final words of the story (there is a final song after that), “to love another person is to see the face of God.” Even as I type this now, I admit that I am moved by these words.

I don’t hide the fact that I believe in God. I feel God in things I do and see. I have felt God on the streets of New York City at 5 am on a totally deserted Madison Avenue, and at camp, looking over a still lake before everyone wakes up. Abraham Joshua Heschel called this radical amazement. He said that each person will have a moment in their lives where the amazement of what they see and hear and feel allows them to feel Gods presence.

But to truly see God, I do believe that you need to love. I see God in my wife. I see God in my children and I see God in my closest friends. Perhaps this is radical amazement taken to its extreme, but when you love you bring God closer to your life.

Here is a clip of the epilogue from the 10th anniversary concert of Les Miserables.

Enjoy!

Everything you always wanted to know about Passover prep but were afraid to ask.

Now that would make a great title for a book. Maybe I’ll write it someday. As I’ve said, Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday (and not even because my Hebrew name is Pesah!) despite the fact that it is a lot of work getting ready. It may not take a village, but it does take the equivalent of a recking crew to get everything done. Especially this year.

Lets start at the beginning. Passover food entered the stores starting the first week in March. The first thing we do is try very had to ignore this fact when we walk into the local supermarket. Of course, they make that hard, because at the local Stop & Shop, the food is right by the entrance. So while we are still buying flour and fillings for Hamentashen, the store is trying to get us to think about Passover. They don’t scare us!

About a week after Purim, when we have either consumed or gotten rid of all the junk food that comes in the purim baskets, mkm starts to make lists. Every year at the end of Passover, we make a list of all the non-perishable food items we have left for the next year. Each year right after Purim, mkm spends days trying to find said list.

After a few days of searching, she gives up and goes into the basement and recreates the list. Then she can start shopping. Thankfully we choose to pass over the Passover pizza and Passover pancake mixes and just by the necessities (Matza, Matza Meal, Matza Cake Meal, Matza crackers, Matza, Matza, Matza and Matza). In the New York area, the supermarkets use the Matza as a loss leader, and if you spend $50 on a shopping order, you get a free five pound package. So far we are up to two of them.

That gets us to where we are today. As I said, this year is a bit different as we are doing our seders with mostly friends rather than mostly family. Two other families in our town will be joining us for seders this year (plus some parents, sisters, uncles, aunts and other assorted people). There will be at a minimum 21 people at each seder. That number will likely increase a bit for each night.

Last Thursday, mkm had a lunch meeting (read power meeting!) with the two other moms at the local Panera. As far as I can tell they spent about 2 1/2 hours planning out the whole pre-passover process, and in upcoming postings, I will share our plans.

In the meantime, here is a funny youtube video. This is the British version of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader.”

Enjoy!

A few weeks back mkm and I went to the Bat Mitzvah party of a friend’s daughter. It was a nice time and similar to other Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties we have been to. They had a DJ playing music and games for the kids and they brought a couple of dancers to help get the kids dancing. The music was a mix of the all the stuff the kids listen to today. I really cannot comment on it all (although my kids are starting to listen to the Disney stuff like Hannah Montana (warning, PG-13 at least), so perhaps I will have to learn some of it soon).

Anyway, after listening to this music (and of course the all important hora mix) suddenly, we hear music like Mony Mony, Dancing with Myself (warning again), Footloose, etc. Well, we, and all of our friends, got up to dance. It was an amazing 10 minutes. The DJ did not play complete songs, but had a medley of these late 70’s early 80’s tunes. Of course the kids were still dancing too. So for 10 minutes of this party All the kids AND THEIR PARENTS were on the dance floor bopping around to some of the best music ever.

I wonder what the kids were thinking about us. What would I have thought had my parents been on the dance floor with us when we were kids (although they music my parents listen to would never have been played at our parties). Perhaps kids today think it is kind of cool that they share a similar taste in music with their parents. I hope so.

For that wonderful 10 minutes I can truly say that I felt like I was back in High School at a USY dance. And it all came rushing back. In my married life I have never been much of a dancer at these parties. This night, I think I freaked out my wife. When “Footloose” came on I was dancing like I was in that movie! And when today’s song of the day came up, I was bopping around like I was in High School.

Here’s to getting a chance (albeit short) to relive some of high school.

Oh, yeah, the song is “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones.

Enjoy!

No time to really write today. The megillah reading last night was a lot of fun. Probably close to 75 kids (plus adults)! Very noisy but a great time. Today I am cooking for guests coming for lunch tomorrow, so I will just post photos of the kids in their costumes. Sorry no song of the day. Maybe I will make it up somehow next week.