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Spring Break in a Pandemic during Passover
It’s April 1, which carries a less-than-fun memory for me, although as the years pass, the pain of April 1, 2016 has been replaced by more optimism and hope that I might have imagined possible. In those five years, I’ve bought a house, changed jobs, gained a second synagogue community and seem to be doing…
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Found draft from 2017
I’ve been cleaning up my desk, and my desktop computer (after having a bit of grief with needing to update it to get it responsive again – had 3+ weeks of not being able to restart it, but now it’s fully functional again). I checked on what was sitting on my external hard drive, and…
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Through Narrow Straits
With Easter and Passover overlapping this year, the different images of each holiday are in striking contrast in my mind. I enjoyed sharing Easter dinner with my sister’s family, hosted by her mother-in-law, who I hadn’t seen in many years. I picked up my mother to bring her to the dinner party, and on the…
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Next Year in Jerusalem…Last Year in Sierra Leone
We close the Seder with the words “Next year in Jerusalem” (you can read an excellent article about the meaning of these words in the Passover liturgy here). And every year that I recite or sing these words, I think about how cool it would be to spend Passover in Israel, and specifically in Jerusalem. …
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Do these look like keys?
I read this week about the tradition of Schissel Challah, a loaf baked in the shape of a key, or with an actual key baked into it, served on the first Shabbat after Passover. Here’s one link, with explanations. And here’s another link, with better explanations. I’m afraid my keys don’t look much like…
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Shopping kosher
Today is the first shabbat after passover. We’ll enjoy challah again (although with a crazy week at work and at home, I didn’t manage to bake). When we started keeping strictly Kosher in our home, shopping got simplified, because there are whole areas of the store that one avoids (no pork products, no shellfish, and…