Shabbat Dinner

There was a meeting tonight for all the families of kids who are going to become Bar or Bat Mitzvah in 2006 to introduce them and us to their Torah portions. They sat everyone according to parshas, so we were with people we had never met before -- one from the Thursday Hebrew class at the suburban center where our son goes to school, the other from the downtown Hebrew school at the Temple (and both way wealthier than us -- one mother out of town skiing in Switzerland, one with daughters in very expensive, exclusive preppy schools and hair the size of Switzerland). It's hard to give kids a crash course in the Torah while everyone is fighting over greasy chicken and not enough grape juice and no dessert. If our younger one had not brought his GameBoy, thus distracting both himself and his best friend, whose sister is the same age as our older one, there might have been chaos.

But three of the four rabbis were there and my son was the only kid in the place who could name all twelve of Jacob's sons, albeit with some help from his mother who was singing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat under her breath ("Reuben was the eldest of the children of Israel/With Simeon and Levi the next in line/Naphtali and Issachar and Asher and Dan/Zebulon and Gad took the total to nine...") I feel really sorry for the kids with portions from Numbers...what on earth do you say if you're reading about the Biblical treatment of a leper (i.e., shout unclean and run away?)

And in one of those ironies of life...you know that meme everyone is doing where you look up what was going on in your LiveJournal one year ago today? Here's mine: "Though all after-school activities were cancelled in public schools today, the Hebrew school ceremony in which my son was participating took place anyway, in the lovely new sanctuary with a wall of glass behind the ark, so we got to watch the kids singing Ha Tikvah with a backdrop of falling snow. It was spectacularly beautiful."

Anyway, there was an evening service starting at 8 p.m. that I sort of wanted to stay for because they were going to talk about Jewish responses to The Passion of the Christ ( amused me greatly by pointing out that abbreviating it PotC was going to be problematic unless we wish to draw parallels between Jack Sparrow and Jesus Christ; the temptation to write "The Fall of the Sparrow" is quite grand). But my little one had to practice his violin and has Hebrew school early tomorrow, then basketball, then my in-laws are coming, so we came home so he could have a little down time.

And speaking of PotC (heh), spotted via , write your own Mel Gibson movie!

Gacked from :


You are the Empress card. The Empress is the
archetype of the Mother. She creates and
nurtures life. She represents the abundance of
Mother Earth. The Empress is capable of using
nature in a productive way. She espouses art
for art's sake. Her planet is Venus, and she
embodies love of beauty and a strong value
system. Here is also found initial sensation.
This is the first really physical experience of
the world that The Fool has entered. The
Empress has a rich understanding of the world
based on her five senses. In a reading, The
Empress represents pregnancy, actual or
metaphorical. She indicates an act of creation
and a sensual experience of beauty. The Empress
is a nurturing force that wishes to see the
product of her experiences reach the next stage
of development. Image from A Photographic Tarot Deck
Which Tarot Card Are You?
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And gacked from :


You are a faerie of the flame. You tend to lose
your temper at the littlest thing, hot-headed.
You're a loyal friend to those who can
understand your raging moods. You're social
though claim not to be. You are no one else but
yourself and sometimes you try to hard to be
just that. You're a passionate friend, and
would do almost anything for those you care for.
What's your inner Faerie?
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