Someone asked what it is like for my children to be featured in my blog. Well, my eldest son actually asked that I post the above photo. So you are welcome to add a caption for it in the comments.
I can’t resist. I want to add my own caption, which is, “Is this how some bloggers will attend the NBN blogger conference?” There is going to be a conference of bloggers this Wednesday in Jerusalem, and the dilemma for the anonymous bloggers is: aren’t we supposed to be anonymous?
I’m going to start linking to interesting posts related to this conference, as some American bloggers have already “set sail”:
Oh, peach, how I love thy juiciness.
I will miss thee come fall.
You provide nourishment for my eldest son
And decorate my window sills with your yellows and reds.
As the peaches in New Jersey are luscious and seem to be almost red in late August, I present this peach as my Ruby Tuesday post.
“See that woman walking down the street
Don’t you know she brought me my beets
She brought me beets,
She brought me beets,
Yeah, we got some beets.”
When my daughter was six months old, we had a family crisis. I won’t go into the details, in order to protect family members who aren’t anxious to tell the whole wide world all about our lives. However, there were many friends, acquaintances, and community members who helped us, as well as two superb New Jersey surgeons who performed two separate operations on two different patients.
I would like to highlight one person in particular. At the beginning of the crisis, she discovered through a friend that I liked beets. So every week before Shabbat she brought us a different dish containing beets; some had pickles, some had onions, some lemon, some potatoes. But it really wasn’t the beet dishes themselves that struck the chord for me; it was her understanding that our crisis did not end in a few weeks. Indeed, it was difficult for almost six months. But she brought us beets for at least four months, and then she said: it’s time for me to help another family. That was more than fine with me; I was happy to let our mitzvah lady help another family. I want to stress how thankful I was that she got the lengthiness of the situation and how it went on beyond the first few weeks of help. Getting that extra piece, that meant a lot to me.
She now lives somewhere in Jerusalem; on our last visit, we saw her daughter, and through her daughter I thanked her once again. But for someone who understood difficulty and pain, it’s always good to thank her again.
This post was inspired by Juggling Frog’s new Carnival of Overdue Thanks.
Song of Songs, 2:1 —
אֲנִי חֲבַצֶּלֶת הַשָּׁרוֹן, שׁוֹשַׁנַּת הָעֲמָקִים
“I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.”
Even though this is almost definitely NOT the flower referred to by Song of Songs, it is a beautiful flower to have growing in one’s backyard. Mine grew “by accident”, a cast-off from one of my neighbors’ plants. It grows like a weed. I just have to trim what’s growing around the little flowering tree.
This is my first submission to Today’s Flowers, which appear every Monday.
Spencer Rockman, a friend and a wonderful local soccer coach who also runs clinics in Israel, was recently on PBS (public television). He starts:
I am a soccer coach. I am also an observant Jew. It was God’s plan for me to be a soccer coach.
In the video, he shows how he leads diverse groups of children here in New Jersey, teaching them not just soccer but values. Two of my friend’s sons are shown (quickly, the scenes change often in the video). He makes us proud!
Watch the whole video.
Featured is also his wife, who talks about the foster children they have had in their home.
Here’s a photo I took of him at a recent shul picnic:
The Rebbetzin’s Husband presents HH #178
Blogging is to oneself
Conversation in our house yesterday:
Friend of Hubby: How do you say ‘to blog’ in Hebrew? Is it “l’blohg” or “l’baleyg”?
Hubby: L’hitbaleyg.
(Explanation: L’hitbaleyg is a verb construction in Hebrew called hitpael. Hitpael is a verb in which one does something to oneself, such as l’hitlabesh is to get oneself dressed. So since blogging is often about oneself, it fits).
Why humor suffers in translation
Marx Brothers line:
Soup and rice. Soup and rice. Soup-rice, soup-rice, surprise.
Translation into Hebrew:
Marak v’orez. Marak v’orez. Marak-orez, marak-orez, Hafta’ah!
Really funny: Benji tries to woo Israeli women
