Rabbi Bassous related the following story on Shabbat:
About thirty years ago when the Soviet Union first opened its doors, an elderly woman arrived in Israel who was visited by many rabbis. She was not religious, but she was the granddaughter of someone famous: the Chofetz Chaim. They wanted to hear about her conversations with and stories about her famous grandfather. There was one story in particular that was related. The granddaughter, against her parents’ and grandfather’s wishes, had attended university. After much education, she came back to her grandfather and said to him, when are you going to give up your old-fashioned ways? The world is moving forward with science and technology; all sorts of exciting new discoveries are happening. The Chofetz Chaim replied, with all these great discoveries, they will build bombs. One day there will be a bomb to destroy the world. While they are building bombs, I am building people.
Rabbi Bassous then went on to relate this to the parsha, where the people build a tower toward the skies.
More on Congregation Etz Ahaim in this post.
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The Kosher Cooking Carnival, post-holiday edition, is on Batya’s blog. Thank you, Batya.
The painting is Tower of Babel by Brueghel.
This photo of the Washington Monument was taken in late August by this watery World War II memorial.
These photos were taken directly under the monument:
For more photos with sky, visit Sky Watch Friday.
I photographed this cardinal in my backyard in early September. Today I saw a robin in my backyard. I usually see the cardinals in pairs or groups – the bright red birds are a delight.
Here’s the September cardinal again, profile view.
I looked around in my backyard for what to photograph for Nature Notes, and the rose hips caught my eye. “Rose hips are red, my kale is green, one evergreen died, my harvests are lean.” I’m growing kale in my front and back yards instead of grass. The ones in the front are doing quite well; the ones in the back look like someone nibbled on them. One of my little evergreen bushes died this summer — it could have used extra watering in our drought-like August. Oh, well.
There is a rowing of burning bush plants near our supermarket. They are starting to turn red, though I noticed one was brown. Perhaps those also could have used more water this summer. Will fall foliage be less brilliant than last year’s due to the summer drought?
For more Nature Notes:
How pretty when the buds of my chrysanthemum start to show red. Last week, those buds were closed and green.
This sole red petunia graces the front of my front yard. My other petunias are mostly fuchsia.
This is what the men in my family (my husband and two sons) were doing while I photographed fall flowers – they were taking down our sukkah, the temporary dwelling that we eat in for one week each fall. At this point, all the decorations were already down. The panels are sort of red – a brown that is a cousin of red, perhaps.
I made this cake last week, and oo la la, was it yummy. Here’s the recipe: take my orange cake recipe and throw in a pint of blueberries.
And perhaps this week I will make mabul cake. A friend just told me how to marbleize cake: pour in the white batter. Pour the chocolate batter in stripes over the white batter. Move a knife back and forth in the opposite direction of the chocolate stripes. Will it work? Advice welcome.
