This shot was taken from the top of the Washington Monument, looking down on the museum. There is an exhibit in the museum called “The Story of Daniel.” It is billed as being for children; I walked through it before I took my eight-year-old daughter, and I thought, this isn’t that scary. However, when I took my daughter, I felt differently. I could feel her fear and discomfort. She said she liked one of the early parts of the exhibit, a scene that showed a kitchen where Daniel, his sister and his mother baked cookies and a fancy cake, to be her favorite part. Perhaps because life was still normal for Daniel. His sister and mother were later killed at Auschwitz. The exhibit showed how bit by bit he was no longer allowed to swim in the municipal pool or even play in the park because he was a Jew. “Did you ever get blamed for something you didn’t do?” the exhibit asked. “We were.”

The exhibit showed little of the concentration camp; it mostly said it was horrible, horrible. One woman asked her friend how did the men (Daniel and his father survived Auschwitz) survive if the women did not? I offered that perhaps the men were taken to work, whereas the women were taken immediately to the crematorium. It was interesting to engage others that I had just met in a discussion. One mentioned the movie “Life is Beautiful,” and I suggested “Schindler’s List.”

As this wall states, everyone who comes to the museum can be a witness to the atrocity and tragedy of the Holocaust.

I would have liked to have seen this exhibit or presentation: “From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide.” The museum staff, however, said that presentation was not happening the day of our visit. We also saw an exhibit on Nazi propaganda. A woman said to one of the museum staffers: “Don’t you think we live in an age of propaganda?” I am not sure what she meant, but I think we live in an age of information overload. What do you think?

If you are interested in kosher food in Washington, D.C., there are four packaged foods at the Holocaust cafe: tuna on a white roll, sesame noodles, salad, and beans and brown rice in a wrap. I thought the beans/rice in wrap delicious, the sesame noodles tasty, and my middle son was willing to eat the roll of the tuna sandwich (my husband ate the tuna). My eldest son refused all the food. He preferred Eli’s Restaurant.

We did not get a chance to see all the exhibits at the museum; I thought my daughter had had enough, and my eldest son was hungry. So we will have to see more on a future visit. If you have been to the museum, I would love to hear your feedback on what you found effective and well-presented.

I was pleased to read the other comments left on this post. It is a difficult and important topic, and I’m glad at least a few people feel comfortable discussing it.

If you have any comments or suggestions on this topic, please leave a comment, either on the Rebbetzin’s husband’s post or on this blog (or both). Thanks.

1. Read the magazines and newspapers left out on the table for jurors to read.
2. Make conversation by the coffee machine. “Is the coffee any good?” I asked someone. I had already read everything I had brought, and I was just trying to strike up conversation.
3. Read books that you brought. Of course, you came prepared with plenty of reading material, right?
4. Daydream.
5. Plan your next vacation. If you don’t have money or time to take a real vacation, plan what you will cook for dinner.
6. People watch: lots of different kinds of people show up at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
7. Think about what you might photograph if you were in a place that was worth photographing (unless you were doing a piece on urban depressing sights, I don’t think this room would be appropriate. And I doubt taking pictures of jurors is legal, anyway).
8. Stretch. Do some neck rolls. Move your legs around. Walk around the room.
9. Draw.
10. Write a blog post on ten things to do while waiting at jury duty.

Here’s what I didn’t see on my day yesterday – a view of New Brunswick from the Highland Park side, Raritan River all sparkly, photographed in Fall 2008:

What bothered me in particular about this was that my paternal grandfather sold eggs in the Depression! That was how he supported his family of seven (five children). He would venture out to the egg farms in New Jersey and bring them back to Brooklyn to sell. My father said at some point he helped with the accounting; at the end of each month, my grandfather would have no money left and need to start a new. There was never any savings, but at least they had food to eat.

What was your family doing in the 1930′s?

Update: See Risa’s post about her grandfather who had a store in Brooklyn.

The idea is that as children we are often told to be humble (or some of us were), but as adults we need to learn the balance between tooting our own horns and being too loud about ourselves and thus arrogant. By describing your own positive attributes, you will then present your best face to the world. Or you can help someone else by describing what you see as some of their positive characteristics.

When my children were babies, I remember learning that it was important that they learn to self-comfort. If every time a child cries, a parent or guardian rushes to the child’s side, how will the child learn to cope on his or her own? My boys, I remember, each had a blanket that was precious in the going to sleep process.

One of my friends, when times are hard, reads from the Book of Psalms (Tehilim) when she is in distress. I feel she is fortunate that she can find comfort in that manner.

Today is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day when the Beit HaMikdash, the holy temple that was in Jerusalem, was destroyed. Other tragic events happened on this date as well. In two days we read the haftorah from the Book of Isaiah, in which he proclaims (Isaiah 40:1-2) -

Comfort, comfort my people, so says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.

“Double from sins”? – Is this referring to then or now? It seems the pain continues to this day; the warfare does not seem at an end.

And later Isaiah says (Isaiah 40:7-8) -

Indeed man is but grass: Grass withers, flowers fade – but the Word of our God is always fulfilled!

We can read all of Isaiah (especially the part from Chapter 40 and on), and some of us may find some comfort in the words. For many of us, struggling to understand the words of the ancient prophet is as far as we can get. Perhaps we are meant to know that even if we don’t understand the Big Picture, God does.

So getting back to comfort, here’s a short list from me, perhaps I can get your creative juices running, too:

• Write a blog post.
• Talk to a friend.
• Paint. Draw. Putter in the garden. Find a creative outlet.

More on comfort and Isaiah:
Comfort, Comfort (2005) by Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, chair of the department that I do work for at Rutgers, the Jewish Studies Department

More on Tisha B’Av:
Baila explains how it is hard to be a Jew, even if she is finally living in a Jewish homeland.

On the upcoming parsha (Torah portion of the week):
Ilana-Davita looks for a response to current troubles by studying Parshat Va-Etchanan.

Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They don’t judge the orphan, neither does the cause of the widow come to them.

SuperRaizy wrote a post called Too Nauseated to Blog on Friday (lots of bad news in the Jewish community). I didn’t really know what to say to Raizy or about Raizy’s post, but Isaiah, the prophet of over 2000 years ago, says it well. I’m hoping to write a post called “Seeking Comfort” later this week. More words of wisdom from Isaiah.

On a related or not so related note, Jientje alerted me to a Positive Day in the Blogosphere. Did the creator of this have any idea that this is the day after Tisha B’Av, the most mourning-full day of the Jewish calendar and right before Shabbat Nahamu, the Sabbath of Comfort? Just a coincidence, I am sure.

Sometimes I think it must be easier to be non-Jewish (Jientje is not, and she is always so upbeat). But maybe we just have to be “Happy with our lot.”

Anyway, to Raizy, you wrote well in your post. May with the wisdom of Isaiah we find a way to move forward.

Update: if you are interested in discussing the details of the current New Jersey/New York scandal and Dwek, Rafi has a post: Dweck Entrapped Them? (Note: it seems that his name is spelled “Dwek,” and Rafi misspelled it in his post).

Remembering a father when a grandchild is born

G6 writes eloquently about how she felt when she lost her father:

I remember vividly walking home from the hospital in utter desolation after his petirah, feeling like my world was so very dark, that I would never learn another thing ever again — how would I smile and laugh again?
How I wish somebody could have come up to me at that very moment and taken me by my shoulders, looked in to my eyes and said….. “SEVEN YEARS FROM THIS VERY DAY you will be sitting at your Shabbos table, surrounded by your entire family, which will include a new son in law, a new daughter in law and you will be cradling your brand new granddaughter in your arms on her very first Shabbos, as everyone at the table sings zemiros and learns in your father’s memory. Your granddaughter will be given her Jewish name on this very day seven years from now.

Please leave comments for her on her post. So beautiful how she savors her father’s memory and connects it to her current family joy.

*petirah = death

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An interview of a son with his father

Rick Black interviewed his father over the past two years. An excerpt from those interviews is on the Jewish Writing Project blog, spoken in his father’s voice:

I was bar mitzvahed in a very small shul – the one on Lake Street. We didn’t make much of it. It was just a small bar mitzvah for our family. I davaned Saturday morning for the service, Shacharis and Musaf, and when they took the Torah out of the ark, I had to sing the “Shema” and my voice broke, and a kid from Hebrew school said, “You alright?”

Another piece of the interview, where Rick’s father befriends Max the Russian:

So, this fella’s name was Max Bregoff and I met him. He was a tough Russian. I introduced him to a lot of my friends who were members of the club and we made him a member of the club, too. We called him the mad Russian. He used to get very angry. He’d spit at them. He was a tough hombre but he found the American way and he was able to live a good life and enjoy himself. He spent a lot of time at the Jewish Center. Yes, he did find the American way and he became a friend.

Read Growing Up Jewish, an interview of David Black by his son Rick Black.

Rick, may you be comforted among the mourners of Israel; may we all know simchas (happy occasions) like the one G6 describes, of a happy, healthy family singing and enjoying together.

Additional Note: I spoke to a friend (not Jewish) here in Highland Park who asked questions about making a shiva call. Topic for another time, explaining a shiva call – do’s and don’ts, the halachot (laws) and the customs. If anyone has suggestions for explaining a shiva call, please feel free to comment. I told my friend that the mourner is supposed to do the talking; the mourner should take the lead in the topic of conversation.

Someone is coming to visit me today. Someone I once interviewed for this blog. The name is in my Twitter stream.

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In other news, the jury duty I mentioned in my Twitter stream got called off. I called last night, and my number was higher than the ones that had to show up. I felt like I had won the lottery. I could write a whole post on jury duty, but I don’t think I want to commit some of ideas to writing. I feel un-American if I say I don’t like the idea of a jury. Really, it’s that I don’t like the idea of my having to serve on a jury and listen. Besides, I have too many other responsibilities to be a good jurist. I think next time I get called for a jury, I will work on the elderly father excuse. My father (finally) got a new computer; I set it up for him on Sunday, and every time he touches it he has another tech support question.

And my brand-new 75-300mm Canon Lens had to get returned to Adorama yesterday, because I was getting an “err_99.” Taking a pencil eraser and rubbing the gold points on the lens did not do the trick. This was the lens that allowed me to captured the robin and swallow in my Nature Notes this week. I hope a new lens comes, without any error messages appearing soon after I get excited about how wonderful the lens is.

•   •   •

And in yet even more news, #themethursday this week is Typography. You don’t have to have a Twitter account to benefit. Go to http://search.twitter.com and put #themethursday as your search term. Enjoy the typography links! Love well-done typography. Something I’ve always wanted to learn in greater detail.

Bittersweet: Today is Mother’s Day, and my mother is not around for me to wish her happy mother’s day. You can read the posts I wrote in the past about my mom, Elaine, z”l. My kids, however, have various plans for me, like my youngest wants to make a mom cake, and the middle one wants to bike with my husband to the kosher Chinese food restaurant in Manville, New Jersey called Lin’s. From there, they will call us so we can drive over for dinner. My eldest said, huh, wuh, Mother’s Day? And we joked how in high school they don’t have him make the little cards for mom anymore?

Therapydoc wrote a great post called You Only Have One Mother. Whenever there is a holiday, there are some people who struggle with the day, for whatever of their own personal reasons. I was always close to my mother, but the relationship did not always go smoothly. Others I know had incredibly difficult times with their moms. For them, Mother’s Day is distressing, a reminder of what they don’t have, even if they physically do have a mother.

Painful: a young man died last week. It turns out he was from my cousins’ yishuv in Israel. The yishuv (means “settlement” in Hebrew; it’s a group of families that settled in a beautiful area in the Lower Galil) has more young men buried in their tiny cemetery than people who led full lives. My sincere condolences go out to the family. Noam Adin Rechter Levy was twenty years old.