Flashback….

Post by Melissa (Photo Copyright Real Photography)

Today is my birthday, which also means its the 3rd anniversary of D and I getting engaged – so I thought I’d take a break from the real meat of the blog and recap a personal moment without which I would not be a Rebbetzin-of-the-future

Here is the text of the email I sent to my family and friends the next day:

Yesterday Dustin took me on a birthday outing to Garden of the Gods (www.gardenofgods.com). On our way I took a bunch of pictures of the scenic mountains which flanked our trip and we had a good conversation.
We got over to where the park is and started looking for a place to park so we could work around a bit. Eventually we found a nice little spot and headed in to get a closer view of their majesty. He kept trying to get us closer, and we wound up getting right up to the base of one of my favorite rocks. We laughed and were silly a bit, then while I was sitting down just looking at the rocks, he told me he had something to ask me, and said some nice things – then asked me to marry him! As I’m sure I will never hear the end of, I jokingly said no – and we both laughed and hugged and stuff. Then he asked again, b/c I had said no – and I of course said “yes, of course” and we had a moment at the base of this majestic, gorgeous, almost surreal rock in this quiet garden park…. I don’t think I will ever forget that.
While in the moment, my phone rang and it was one of my good friends calling to wish me a happy birthday – clearly he knew the right moment to interrupt, though I let it go to voicemail.
Dustin and I decided to keep it to ourselves for awhile (or so I thought), and enjoyed the park some more and then he drove around Colorado Springs – showing me some of his old stomping grounds. We reached the point where we really had to head back up b/c he had some studying to do – or so he said!
When we got home, there was a trail of rose petals leading from the elevator to our door, with two candles outside the door. (Though there was also two of our teenager friends/the Rabbi’s kids  looking suspicous trying to get into the building when we arrived.)
We were greeted by friends in our kitchen preparing a gourmet meal (since we don’t eat at non-kosher restaurants – it was hard to have the romantic dinner he wanted – so our wonderful friends stepped in to provide it!), which was then served to us by some of our favorite teens and pre-teens. After a nice, romantic, candlelight dinner – the friends (and more!) showed up again for an impromptu party which even Dustin was not aware of!
We both had the excitement factor increase as our friends sang Od Y’shama (a traditonal Jewish wedding song) and we realized it was for us!

We are both very excited to take this next step and to begin planning our wedding! We are planning on getting married in our wonderful synagogue next summer…

Its hard to believe how long ago it was, other than how little our teen/pre-teen friends are in the photos, it feels like it was yesterday.  I hope our memories only grow stronger as our relationship grows each and every day.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

(The photo is one of our professional engagement pictures, which was taken in front of the rock he proposed at.)

the day was big, the changes it brought were bigger

Post by Melissa (see note at bottom about photo)

I have, like so many other Americans, been thinking a lot about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 this week.  However, I keep coming to a different space than what seems to be common.  Rather than thinking about that day and where I was in the morning and how the whole day played out (which I do remember totally clearly) , I keep thinking about what it set in motion.

I posted this on my facebook status last night, and the two comments solidified that I needed to write from this view:

MSG: I feel like I should write a 9/11 remembrance blog post, but am so uninspired. I just don’t have any great insights to add and reflect upon. (Having a brother in the Army I think is part of it. The day impacted my life in a very very different way that isn’t as tied to a calendar date as it is to vast expanses of life.)

ArmyWife: enough said…

ArmyMom: Yes, I get that, Melissa. Well said.

On 9/11 my brother was preparing for recruiting school.  He had been in the US Army for 5 years at that point.  He had no idea how this would shape his Army career.  He wound up having an extra long stint as a recruiter, where he helped send others to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There was one recruit with a story quite similar to his who died in battle.  The Army didn’t want to take the time to train new recruiters, so active recruiters kept having their placements (for lack of better word) extended, despite what a few of these men and women were asking for – which was to be deployed.  In an all volunteer Army, you’d think they’d listen to those who were asking to go, but that didn’t happen.  When he eventually got out of recruiting (by taking a bad evaluation which has prevented him from being promoted since) he was sent to Korea, where he spent a year patrolling the DMZ line.  Still not where he felt he needed to be.  There was an active war and he was at the site of one from decades past.  In the early years of the deployments, my brother was one of the brave soldiers wanted to be there fighting for our freedoms.

During the time my brother was deployed for his first tour to Iraq, many of the big events occurred.  He was there for the “surge” which caused his one year deployment to be extended to 15 months.  He was there for the “awakening” – when the local tribes decided to help the US forces to drive out AQI (Al Quida Iraq), and really work to end the war as we knew it.  For the extended tour they gaurunteed the troops one year at home before they would be deployed again.  Yet my brother was selected to be a part of a special training group and was sent back for a few months.  Had his commanding officer not set his foot down, my brother would have spent nearly half of his year at home, back in Iraq.  It was ~11 months after arriving back in the US that he got the papers for the next year deployment, though they had known unofficially for quite awhile at that time.  The Army didn’t waste any time.  So off he went, 366 days after he returned from his 15month deployment, to serve his country.  To fight in a combat unit in Baghdad when the American public was being told all combat units were out of the cities. (Even now, the unit he had been with is there as we are told that all combat units are out of Iraq.)

My brother’s time in the Army was not decided because of 9/11 – but it did shape how his Army experience panned out. He was in a few bad “accidents,” saw many friends and comrades die, and attained a purple heart for his physical combat wounds.  (The emotional and mental wounds are a totally separate story though.) While we are so very blessed to have him still with us, it has affected our entire family a great deal.  He was deployed more than home for the first six years of his daughters life.  I got married without my big brother present. Our parents are very nervous about my future learning in Israel, as we are just now having the opportunity for family to be together for special events.  It put large riffs of time and space in all of our relationships, which can only begin to work on  healing now.

Ironically, this Shabbat was the 20th anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah and one of the drashot I heard was about the laws regarding how we have to take care of our siblings and their possessions, and how their needs come first in our daily lives.  I think in combination with all the memories and the start of Elul – it is a great time to remind you all to be grateful for the people in your lives you get to see and speak with on a regular basis, and to all the men, women, and children who are missing their relatives who are serving our country – either in life or in death.

The photo is one my mom took of my brother’s mantle. It is his Jewish War Veterans hat, his purple heart and the patches he was wearing when he earned it, and a Killed in Action memorial bracelet for his driver. I couldn’t write about this topic without including that. 

Edit: My brother reached out shortly after I posted this to let me know that some of the details are inaccurate.  I have asked him for clarification, but am not sure of how I will proceed.  This is how I remember it all, and right or wrong, its my reflection on the experience and what has shaped the past ten years of my life with a brother in the US Army. **Some of the updates things which just didn’t get conveyed well second and third hand, others were details I had never heard before – so I changed them in order to best reflect the reality of my brother’s Army experience over the past ten years.**

Ten Years

WTC memorial lights - post by Jessica

I’ve been thinking about this all day, so I thought it was time to write about it.Everyone has a story about where they were on September 11th.

It was my senior year in high school, and I was driving to school, listening to some terrible morning talk radio show. As I turned off the car, I heard him say that someone had flown into the World Trade Center. It was radio and I was in a hurry, so I didn’t understand that he meant a commercial jet – it seemed so much more likely that some poor pilot had gone down in lower Manhattan.

I learned the truth about two hours later. In the days before everyone had internet on their phones (heck, we barely had text messaging!) halfway across the country, it took a while for the news to filter in. My second period class was bowling,  real bowling alley (we had 80 minute classes) and they had the TV on. With the towers falling down. I have the memory of looking up at the screens while trying to bowl burned into my eyelids when I think about that day. It’s a tribute to not understanding yet what was happening that we were expected to bowl at all.

By the time we got back to school, everyone knew what was going on, and every TV that had some kind of connection to the outside world was on and we were glued to it for days.

I think it took until my junior year in college when I met someone who had been there to really process what had happened in a personal, connected way. Not just a tragedy that made me cry. I say this because I think I feel a little guilty by how normal our lives were by comparison. It was a tragedy, but it was also homecoming week. Although we knew logically that this was way bigger than us and way more serious, on an emotional level it seemed totally unfair that it would forever mar our experience during our senior year. It produced what I’ll describe as hysteria, in which because we felt we were being asked by the adults in the community to give up our homecoming, we were more spirited and raucous than usual. Even as we were all a little uncomfortable underneath, even as the world had fallen apart just a few days before.

For me, aside from this unspeakable tragedy, it also meant a cancelled NFTY youth group event in St. Louis. It was the fall Leadership Training Institute. I lived and breathed for those events, where I would see most of my friends in person. I understand better now than I did then why it was cancelled: no one really wanted to let anyone out of their sight at that point. For us a high schoolers, it was depriving us of a chance of seeing some of our closest friends and processing our fear and grief together. It was, of course, the right decision, but it felt so bad at the time. I spent the weekend looking through pictures from our summer to trip to NYC and putting the several photos of the WTC from June 16, 2011 into a photo frame. They had been worth the real-film photos because I had found the buildings to be very beautiful. I also went to the Homecoming dance, even though I hadn’t planned to since I was supposed to be at the event. Before I went though, my parents hosted a 9/11 prayer service in our living room. I attended in my homecoming dress.

Ten years – more important than 9 or 11? Not really, but it’s tradition. It’s also probably more poignant here than it is halfway across the country – we had a ceremony on campus for the first year anniversary, but I don’t think there’s been one again until this year. Here, it’s more visceral, knowing that the NYU campus is not far away from Ground Zero, or as Mayor Bloomberg prefers – One World Trade Center. R and I are planning on going to the memorial, as soon as we can figure out our new schedules enough to get tickets.

There’s another strange thing – because I was 17 when it happened, I am among the youngest who remember the events as something close to an adult. Freshmen on campus this year were 8 when it happened. It’s like that with every big event, but it seems weirder, since they don’t seem that much younger than me anymore.

I don’t have a profound truth. Just some memories and some tears. I hope we are all comforted with our remembrance and can work for a better, brighter future for all of us, together, whoever we are. I encourage you to share your memories here, or at any of the many websites that are encouraging submissions.

Shabbat Shalom – peace for all the world.

The Joy of Cookbooks

Post by Melissa

In the age of the internet, it is so easy to just search for a recipe and leave the cookbooks on their shelf.  So much so, that its what I’ve been doing for far too long.

I recently received my copy of Jamie Geller’s Quick and Kosher: Meals in Minutes and looking through it took me to a happy place.

On Thursday I sat on my couch, surrounded by my favorite cookbooks and poured through them for Shabbat ideas, as well as recipes to use up some blueberries and zucchini that needed to be baked. (Well, I’m sure I could have found another use for it, but I’m a baker – so baked goods are what I think of when things need to be consumed.)

There was something uniquely satisfying about looking through the books and putting little pieces of paper in the pages to mark what I wanted to come back to.  Something about putting my cookbook in the stand amidst the flying flour that made my heart happy.  Something more mouthwatering about photos on a page than on the internet.

I took a photo of the stack I was working from, but want to know what your go-to cookbooks are too!

 

Sorry for the brevity of this post, but I’m in a baking spree today! Sweet zucchini bread (from a friend),  Harvest Bread (KBD: lighten’s up), and Black & Blue Muffins (The Kosher Baker).

Kippah Conundrum

Post by Melissa

If we lived in Israel, my husband would be a  ”kippah sruga” (knit kippah) — he exclusively wears knit kippot on the top of his head (and combined with his trimmed beard, really looks the part).

The thing is, he doesn’t wear just any knit kippah – he wears color coordinated ones.

He doesn’t have many clothes or pairs of shoes, but kippot – that he has quite a collection of.  It is definitely his vice and the key to his wardrobe.  He keeps them stored in two piles, one of the ones he likes and wears regularly and another of the ones he no longer likes.  When we travel, they go in their own small bag so they stay flat and don’t get creases.   He definitely keeps track of them – so over Shabbat when he couldn’t find his “brown kippah” it was quite a conundrum.  I told him to wear a different one which was met with resistance, just as I would have felt if I was looking for a specific hat or scarf and couldn’t find it.

As a woman, I have many ways of expressing myself through my clothes and accessories, but the same options just aren’t true for men.  Kippot and ties work, but what else?  Why was it weird to me that he was super insistent on this one kippah, when I can’t count the number of times I’ve searched for a specific hat, scarf, necklace or pair of shoes?  Honestly, I just think its because he’s a pretty chill and casual guy so it seems funny for him to be so fixated on an article of clothing — but why should that be my initial reaction?

How do you accessorize to show off who you really are? How does the man in your life show his personality through his wardrobe?

My First Kallah!

Post (and photo) by Melissa

This weekend, I had the distinctive honor of seeing the first kallah (bride) I taught and mentored marry her best friend.

Serving as her kallah teacher sort of fell into being, and was a natural interaction for us both.

She had attended the wedding of her now brother and sister-in-law about six months before her wedding, and after seeing the joy and value add that kallah classes had in her SIL’s life, decided it was something she wanted for herself as well.  So she asked me how she could find someone to learn with, who wouldn’t pressure her into being someone she isn’t.  We had a moment and decided it would be a great fit for me to serve as her teacher.  I know and love her, and am of the “whatever you do that is more than you were doing is fabulous” mentality.

We spent many afternoons eating frozen yogurt, wandering around bookstores, and shopping for wedding weekend clothing – all while talking about mikvah, taharat hamishpaca, and Jewish weddings.  For the kallah it was critical that she understand the meaning behind all of the rituals she would be doing throughout the weekend, which gave me a great opportunity to have conversations about things I hadn’t really thought about in two years.

The kallah told me on Shabbat that she cried when she went to mikvah, and that made me cry.  To be a part of such an intimate moment in another woman’s life is powerful beyond words.  I know now that every time I immerse, she will be with me as I pray for my sisters worldwide.  I was her guide on a journey to a spiritual space that she never imagined knowing, and will be forever marked by.

Throughout the weekend, I was being introduced as S’s kallah teacher, and each time I got a big smile on my face.  As much as some family members were surprised or confused, I was honored.  It was a great joy to be able to share in very broad terms the content of our classes and to have others see the very special bond it created between us.  Though we had been friends going into this experience, we are bonded on a deeper level now for life.

We plan to continue learning and talking about how to make a Jewish home, and what rituals and observances are important.  She and her husband are not very religious people, but they have very strong Jewish identities and are wanting to explore how that pans out for their future together.  I look forward to this adventure, and am honored to have such a wonderful friend as my companion on it.

I hope to be able to write a more complete reflection soon, but just needed to share the excitement and energy while it was still fresh.

Happy Hair-aversary!

First Hair Covering - Post by Melissa

Yesterday* was my second wedding anniversary (hooray!) – so that makes today my two year anniversary of head covering! Clearly an occasion worth noting and celebrating in a blog post!

The first day I covered my hair (as seen to the right), I took a long rectangle scarf and tied a simple bun. That didn’t last very long, so the bun got unwrapped and just hung down my back. Both of these methods required constant adjusting – and I know now I made some key rookie mistakes!

a) nothing holding the scarf on my head: I now know that almost everyone needs something to help hold a scarf in place. My preferred option are some wide bobby pins from Goody with slip resistance on them.  Oh, and behind the ears is better than above them.  Other options include headbands, wig caps, hijab clips, and regular bobby pins.

b) the weight makes it slide – fold it up: Having really long tails at the nape of your neck or dangling down your back can add a lot of weight in the back which only furthers the sliding factor. Folding or twisting the tails over your head helps to disperse the weight – plus it adds depth to the scarf so it looks cooler.

c) layering is your friend: Using multiple scarves is a great way to add color, dimension, and style to a head-covering. Also, putting a thin cotton scarf as a base layer helps to fake or bulk up a bun!

d) you have to be conscious of the thickness of tichels: Thicker scarves are not only heavier, they are often harder to wrap as well. There is definitely a learning curve, and newbies should start out with thin cotton scarves.

e) positioning on the forehead: There is a key spot (which I think is probably different for everyone) of where you need to position your scarf along your hairline to minimize slipping or looking funny. I have to start the tie with it about an inch onto my forehead so that by the time I’m done its just in front of my hairline and then as I move about it comes just a touch behind there

f) not tying too tight: when tying tightly it pulls the fabric and then is more apt to pull and slide. This one I don’t really understand but its the truth – trust me.

I consider myself a bit of a pro scarf tier now, but I still struggle with some things.

a) what length to keep my hair ofr optimal diversity and efficiency in hair covering.

b) the endless battle between head coverings and glasses, with the added trick of all the holes in my ears.

c) color coordination of multiple scarves. to match, compliment or contrast – that is the question.

d) how to replicate other people’s styles with my funny shaped head.

e) if i should invest in a sewing machine and start making my own scarves.

Perhaps next year I’ll have answers to all these too! In the interim, feel free to share your own lessons and questions, respond to my struggles, and check out the wide variety of posts on hair covering from both Jessica and me.

*Ok, so really my anniversary was two days ago and my hair-aversary was a day ago now. But I wrote most of the post on my hair-aversary, so I’m not changing it for factual accuracy

I am a Daddy’s Girl

My dad & I, several years ago - Post by Jessica

Today when I talked to my dad on the phone, I was reminded again why I am a daddy’s girl. Not that I aimed to be one, but just that I am one. Some of it is looks – my grandmother had a strong chin, and most of my cousins of my dad’s side and I share it. Ditto for my dad’s dad’s ears. I happen to be shorter than the rest of my cousins by a good six inches, but that’s what happens when you have the shortest brother marry the shortest wife! I’ve always liked the family resemblance.

On the phone, we were discussing the progress they’ve made on the house that they’re hoping to purchase in Florida for retirement. It’s a dream that they’ve had for a while, and with the real estate market down in most of the country, it seemed like the time to try to buy a place. It’s a funny thing to realize that my parents are getting to the stage where retirement is a real consideration, but at the same time, I realize how much life we have experienced together as family and as our relationship has developed.

In South Africa, he would pick me up from school and drive me back to my parent’s office for lunch. On the ride, he’d play tapes – the best were Orinoco Flow by Enya and I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston. Once we moved to Canada, we’d spend the lunch hour together the majority of the time. The school didn’t have a lunch room, so everyone went home for lunch. Since the farthest house was about a half an hour by bus from the school, we had an hour and a half break. We lived nearby the school, so we would eat lunch and watch televsion together – at first, novel shows like Barney & Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, but later on we moved to the CBC midday news. On occasion, we would spend lunch in the hospital cafeteria, which had a great selection of terrible lunch food and fantastic baked foods. In the summer, we’d spend the after work hours on my dad’s sailboat – his love for sailing is a big motivation for the move to Florida, where they hope to have water access and a small boat. We’d have dinner on the boat, and stay out until it was dark, which was late that far north! There was also one particularly memorable and terrifying time my dad and I got lost on the boat – we finally found a harbor hours after we were supposed to, after being blown off course. It took me a winter of forgetting before I could ride in a boat calmly after that!

Middle school and high school can be tough on a relationship, especially with some of the harder times we dealt with. When my mom was in hospital for her bone marrow transplant, he and I lived in a hotel nearby the hospital. We had small adventures together – since it was August, we went school shopping together and played in the pool to take a break from the hospital environment. We spent most of the day in the hospital, but even then, it was mostly together – my mom was pretty sedated most of the time. A few years later, when I went to college, my relationship went through another transition. Both parents sent me cards on various holidays (especially Valentine’s Day for some reason), and I loved going home to visit and see both of them.

When R became a part of the family officially, it wasn’t that long before he became part of the family in reality – subjected to the same mischevious humor that characterizes his relationships with those he is closest with. At the wedding itself, there are a myriad of lovely moments together, several of which are captured on film. As the years pass we have developed more family traditions – each year, when we go on vacation as a family, my dad and I each eat a pie each of key lime pie together. Although he’s not much for sweets most of the year, we indulge together and it’s great.

I’m so lucky to have my dad in my life – so glad that we’re close, so glad that both he and I are still healthy, and so glad that we’re able to share vacations and good times together.

Eating Disorders and Jews: A personal and communal reaction

There has been a lot of press in the past few months about Eating Disorders and the Orthodox Jewish  community, culminating with an article in the New York Times yesterday which was shared with me by numerous friends: In Orthodox Jewish Enclaves, an Alarm Sounds Over Eating Disorders.

I realized after reading that article, I could not put off this post (which I started in January, edited in March and am now finally finishing) any further.

Before I really say what I need to, I need to make a very important point which the NYT article touched on but many of its predeccsors (including in the Forward and Washington Post) did not: anorexia is the most lethal mental illness.  It has the highest death rate (at least as of the last time I looked at the data) because the disease itself can kill you.  We cannot treat it lightly and discuss it as though it is not a serious problem, not only for the communities which can be affected – but for every individual suffering through this horrible disease.  It is not only prevalent in Orthodox circles and we need to look at how Jewish traditions across the board affect someone who is struggling with anorexia, bulimia, compulsive over eating, disordered eating and/or body image issues.

• Many Jewish celebrations, including Shabbat, holidays, and life cycle rituals are surrounded by food. We get together as community either eating large meals or fasting (and eating large meals before and after).
• Jewish outreach events for teens and young adults are always centered around food. “Pizza in the Hut” at Sukkot is common on college campuses across the USA.  What youth group convention would be complete without a late night dessert party, or a young adult event with cocktails?
• We eat apples and honey at Rosh Hashana, latkes and jelly doughnuts on Chanukah, four types of fruits on Tu B’Shvat, hamentaschen on Purim, and matzah for the entire week on Passover.
• Not to mention kashrut. An entire set of complex laws about what we, as Jews, can and cannot eat.
• And of course there are Jewish mothers and grandmothers who usher us to the table telling us to eat while kvelling over how thin we are.

Lets focus on kashrut for a moment because many of the articles published in mainstream media have chosen to. While they have addressed that the rigors of kashrut can be a launching point for some, I am here to tell you that it can also provide a structured way of eating which can actually be a benefit to those with disordered eating.  It can provide a healthy way to control one’s food intake, rather than unhealthy version.  I know this personally, as I am a recovered Anorexic (though I hate that phrase) and kashrut helped to save my life.

I was diagnosed with anorexia in the spring of my senior year of college, though I started my restrictive eating behaviors before I was the age of bat mitzvah. When I began my graduate social work education, I was on the way to recovery and a more observant lifestyle, so as I embraced kashrut it felt good.  I finally had a way to control my eating in a constructive way.  Rather than eating only a powerbar and a bottle of water with lemon all day, I could eat small but balanced meals according to halacha (Jewish law).  While recovery was still a huge battle and one I continue to fight every day of my life (including through the medical issues so many years of malnourishment left me with), having a strong community and a set of laws about food was instrumental in my success.

I think that while it is good to understand some of the nuances in our community which factor into the difficulties women may face, the better portion of our energy on this needs to be on removing the stigma and empowering women to get help to live a healthy life, to see our bodies as the sacred spaces they are, and to have a healthy relationship with food and our bodies. We need more resources and more people willing to open up and step up. I hope this is just the beginning of the conversation, because there is still so much to be said and so much to learn as we struggle to shift our communal response.

Have you struggled with an eating disorder or disordered eating? How can we help you, your loved ones, and/or your community? (Feel free to post anonymously or to email me directly if you aren’t yet ready to speak out publicly but are open to some support.)

Falling in love….

Post by Melissa

This past week, I had the opportunity to house-sit for a close friend who lives in a different neighborhood than D and me.  Within just a few miles of her house are synagogues of every denomination, as well as the Federation, JCC, kosher restaurants, mikvah, and nice parks.  Basically, everything I could want out of life.  Over the course of this week, and especially Shabbat I found myself falling in love time and again.

The first time was early in the week when I learned just how lovely it is to walk to work every day.  I was living about a mile and a half from my office, and even on the bitter cold mornings it was a lively walk and it really jump-started my day. I fell in love with walking to work.

A few days later there was a panel discussion I was interested in hearing.  It featured 6 local Rabbi’s speaking about a semi-controversial topic of inclusion (which I do not want to get into in this post) which was really interesting to me.  Being in this other neighborhood in the evening, I would normally not have been able to attend, however since I was house-sitting I could.  It was so wonderful to meet a friend and walk to and from the event together.  The same day I learned that a rabbi I admire would be speaking about his work at Seudah Shlishit that Shabbat. Luckily, I was already up on the right side of town so I was able to go! It was way too short of notice for me to have made plans to be here, but since I already was – I was good to go.  I fell in love with being able to go to (read: walk to) dynamic events.

On Shabbat we had the opportunity to daven (pray) with two different Orthodox minyanim (prayer groups). Friday night services were dynamic.  They were led by a friend of ours* who has a beautiful voice and there was such kavanah (spirit) throughout the entire room.  From my side of the mechitza, I felt enveloped in the energy of the moment.  This was only more intense with the fuller room on Shabbat morning as I could hear the men’s voices drift over the partition.  I fell in love with the mechitza.  Though what I really fell in love with at that minyan was how strictly everyone takes the no talking policy and how focused they are on their own davening. The kids step outside to talk and women will simply exchange a quiet hello as they come in and go to the back of the room to begin their own davening.

We also had the opportunity to have wonderful meals and walks and talks with wonderful people.  While walking between our various friends places, we also got to say Shabbat Shalom to people we didn’t know who were also out and about, walking through the neighborhood.  There is just such a dynamic Shabbat observant community there, it was phenomenal.  Everyone is out and about, walking to and fro, and enjoying the holy day of rest with whomever they may encounter. I fell in love with the community.

I know this whole post sounds so idyllic, but coming from a great but small community which is very insular, it was a wonderful change. I left the house yesterday, and while it was nice to get home and sleep in my own bed without a wandering dog – I already miss it and am looking forward to the next time I get to spend time in the community.

*A Yid of No Despair in the World (so good to see you A!)