While going through old photos last week, I discovered this photograph I had taken in the 1980’s on my parents’ porch. I didn’t really get into art photos until the digital camera age, but one could say this was the beginning of my discovering that photography doesn’t just have to be portraiture. The pottery was made by me; what luscious glazes this pot had!
For more photos with a bit or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
I was going through photos of family for our upcoming celebration of my son’s bar-mitzvah, and I found this one of the road on the way to the Kinneret in Northern Israel. So in honor of my cousin who lives near here and said he is sorry but “he won’t be in the neighborhood” for the bar-mitzvah, here’s the photo.
Reluctant Veggie educates about nightshades and remarks “it makes perfect sense that the food we put into our body has a direct impact on how our body performs. or, rather, how it doesn’t perform. and yet, most doctors have no clue. or would rather treat the symptom versus finding the root cause.”
Ilana-Davita had blogger’s block, but yet she managed to write an elucidating post about Bereshit.
Mimi posted a scrumptious photo of her Moroccan fish.
Is this azalea confused? Doesn’t it know it’s fall, not spring?
Just in time for cold autumn weather, we have one vibrant nasturtium flower. Our groundhogs ate our nasturtium in July, so we did not have the pleasure of nasturtium in salad this past summer. But we caught two ground hogs mid-summer and set in them loose in Johnson Park; we also installed two molar pest repellers, which seem to have discouraged more nasturtium-eaters from our garden. So by late August the flowers grew back, but not in time for a bountiful summer crop.
Happy are the sedum in my garden!
Here is information from Michelle, our Nature Notes host, about fall foliage:
The major factor influencing autumn leaf color change is the lack of water. Not a lack of water to the entire tree, but a purposeful weaning of water from each leaf. Lack of water to each leaf causes a very important chemical reaction to stop.
Photosynthesis, or the food-producing combination of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, is eliminated. Chlorophyll must be renewed (by photosynthesis) or be taken in by the tree along with photosynthetic sugar. Thus chlorophyll disappears from the leaves.
The variation in foliage — the shades of red, purple, bronze, yellow and orange — is all about pigment and what type each tree carries.
Carotene (the pigment found in carrots and corn) causes maples, birches, and poplars to turn yellow.
The brilliant reds and oranges in this fall landscape are due to anthocyanins.
Tannins give the oak a distinctively brown color.
The best colors show up when we have cool nights, bright sunny days and low humidity.
My neighbor’s burning bush: I get such a kick out of the name of this plant.
For more nature notes, visit:
in pain you shall bear children (Bereishit 3:16)
So, 13 years ago my little guy came out like a cannon ball. No time for the doctor to show up, no time for the epidural. The nurses were in a panic; they thought they would have to deliver the baby (a resident at the hospital did). There’s a technical name for women who deliver babies very quickly. I can’t remember it – I just call it “cannon ball pain.”
And then the parsha (portion of the Torah reading) tells me that I’m going to deliver in pain. No kidding.
At least it wasn’t emotional pain, like that of losing my mother. Her yahrzeit (anniversary of her death) is tonight.
I bought some orange chrysanthemums at the local Farmer’s Market on Friday. As they are in a pot, I can place them wherever I want in the garden before taking a photo. I may decide to plant them directly in the ground in November. The marigolds in my garden are holding up nicely in the fall, with red in the center of their orange petals.
For more photos with a bit of red or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
We are in the middle of celebrating the holiday of Sukkot, in which observant Jews around the world eat (some sleep) outside in little booths called Sukkot (singular = sukkah). With my son’s guidance, this post will teach how to create a sukkah decoration (recipes vary wildly from family to family – there are no set traditions for decorations).
Ingredients:
First my son drew the initial sketch with pencil. Then he painstakingly colored in the drawing:
The spaceships have no religious significance. The Hebrew says “Brukhim Ha’Baim” – Welcome to All Those Who Come, which is a common greeting to put at an entrance to a sukkah. You can see those words on the front of our sukkah at the bottom of this post.
When the drawing is complete, one cuts some clear contact paper slightly bigger on all sides than the drawing. Then one cuts one more piece of contact paper the same size as the first. Carefully peel off the backing and place the contact paper on both sides of the drawing.
Here is the drawing hanging in our sukkah. There are also a lot of red apples in the sukkah; my son made a game for our guests of “count the apples” – he claimed we had 50 apples pictured in the decorations.
Here is a photo of the sukkah from further back. Unfortunately, this may be the last year of this sukkah. My husband says it takes too long to put up (he created it himself), and it is also not big enough for hosting guests. So we may get a new one, probably a pre-fab that is easier to put up.
Do you have any decorating traditions?
Many of the piyutim (liturgical songs) that we sing at Congregation Etz Ahaim on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are beautiful, memorable melodies, but one that stands out in particular is Et Sha’arei Ratzon (see the piyut on Sefaria). The poem was written by R. Yehuda ben Shmuel Ibn Abbas in the 12th century; it is a haunting retelling of the Akeida, the story in which Avraham brings his son Isaac as a sacrifice and then he is stopped by an angel. The repeated verse that most remember is “Oked veHanekad VeHamizbeach” – “the binder, the bound, and the altar.” Here is Avraham the binder bringing his son the bound on the altar – a scary, hard to explain, difficult to comprehend episode in the Torah. It seems like we too on Rosh Hashana are coming before God; like for Avraham, it is the “Et Sha’arei Ratzon” – the time of the gates of grace or desire. The Akeida is part of the Torah reading for Rosh Hashana.
My husband explained some of the midrashim of this song. The first is a lie that Avraham tells Sarah, that he is taking Yitzhak (Isaac), her beloved only son, to study Torah. In the next, Avraham, Yitzhak (Isaac) and his servants are approaching the mountain, but at some point the servants are told to stay behind because, according the English translation in the Sephardi siddur, they are not “spiritually worthy.” The Hebrew, however, calls them Hamor (may possibly be translated as donkey). When Isaac is taken to be sacrificed, he worries about his mother Sarah, how she will weep for him. The angels ask that Isaac be spared, that there shouldn’t be a world without a moon (i.e., without Isaac, who is compared to the moon).
The poet, who starts the poem with gates of “ratzon” (desire?) ends with gates of “rahamim” (pity, mercy) and a call for salvation.
Et Sha’arei Ratzon (Oked Vehanekad), sung at Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park, New Jersey, on Rosh Hashana, is a poem written by R. Yehuda ben Shmuel Ibn Abbas in the 12th century; it is a retelling of the sacrifice of Isaac.
After that bad news of antisemitism* in Edison, New Jersey, I had to post some good news of the Temple in Highland Park re-opening its sanctuary three years after a terrible fire. I haven’t been inside the new sanctuary, but at some point I’ll go over there with my camera and take photos.
Someone remarked that the shortest Yom Kippur service in Highland Park is at the Temple. The longest is where we attend, Congregation Etz Ahaim – not even a break this year. One of the reasons is the beautiful piyutim (liturgical poetic songs) sung by our visiting chazzan, Refael Ishran. I started listening to the CD of the chazzan in the hopes of preparing a post about the piyutim. Stay tuned.
*If you want to know why I spelled antisemitism without a hyphen, you will have to take Prof. Roni Stauber course on the History of Zionism, coming to you online for free sometime later this fall. Stay tuned for more on that, too.
I took this photo of flowers at Howell Living History Farm in western New Jersey in the middle of the summer. This shot was taken with the sepia setting on my camera.
This photo was taken a few minutes later, in full color.
Mary is celebrating the 50th round of Sepia Scenes. Glad I was able to share in this one. And WordPress tells me this is my 900th post.
Batya has done three blog carnivals this month, and her final one is the 46th edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival. Some of the highlights include Zwetschgenkuchen, the relationship between solet and semolina, and whether it is better to have insects and or insecticides (I’ll take the bugs, thank you very much – no insecticide for me – soap sometimes can drown aphids, that’s as far as I get). We mostly get bees in our sukkah; I think the nastier bugs have gone South by the time Sukkot comes.
As this coming week is Sukkot, I suspect many of you celebrating this upcoming holiday are (again) meal planning and cooking? What’s on the menu? I’m hoping to make an apple pie, and I also plan to make strawberry cashew pudding (another recipe from Klara). The pudding, if all goes well, will become a post, too.