And while we are on
the topic of food….next week is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, or Weeks, seven to be precise, since Pesach (Passover). This practice is known as Counting the Omer. Traditional Jews actually count
the days, one by one, according to a specific formula: today is the 45th
day, and we count by saying a blessing followed by
Today is 45 days, which
is 6 weeks and 3 days of the Omer
Barry and I have long
had a tradition that we count together each evening. In order to remember, we
hang what is known as an Omer
Calendar on the door to our bedroom so that we remember each night to stop and
do the count. I am forever cognizant of the fact that two years ago this lovely
tradition was completely obliterated, so something that we always found a sweet
custom has become all that much sweeter now.
There is a strong
tradition to eat dairy foods on Shavuot.
I wrote about this in a post on May 9th of last year, but will
briefly repeat here. One of the reasons given for this custom is that when the
Jewish people received all the instructions at Mount Sinai, they were only first
learning about the laws for properly slaughtering cows and preparing meat. They
needed some time to get their act together, so meanwhile they ate dairy. So Shavuot is a vegetarian’s delight! Often
when people eat Shabbat and holiday
meals at our home, they are disappointed not to have the meat or chicken they
are accustomed to eating. But on Shavuot,
everyone expects cheese blintzes, vegetarian lasagna, and cheesecake. If I say
so myself, I do make a mean cheesecake: not heart healthy but really good!
This year our Shavuot will be further enhanced by a friend
of our daughters who has been baking and selling challot (the braided bread we eat on Shabbat and holidays) under the name Mandylicious. For Shavuot she
is offering three special options:
We are not big
artichoke fans but we did order the first two. I suspect we will use these more
for dessert than for the meals. But we also have my cheesecake, which will be
tough competition.
Before I leave the
subject of cheese, here is a commercial for the American Dairy Board that ran
frequently in the 1980s. It is great fun just to watch!
Because we will be
going to Sharon early next week for Shavuot,
we are spending this Shabbat in New
York. Shabbat starts this evening at 8:01 pm. It is permitted to begin an hour
early and that is our usual custom during the summer. But tonight we will not
start until 7:30 so that we can watch Julia Collins play (and hopefully win)
her 20th Jeopardy game, which will put her in 2nd place for total
number of games won after Ken Jennings, who won 74 games (and $2,520,700) back in 2004. You can see here that
the statisticians are having a field day with this (note that this plot is cut
off after 20 games).
To see the full piece on this, here is the link.
Sunday is predicted
to be a beautiful spring day and the Yankees are playing a day game. Barry
tells me he has never seen a Yankees game, and like Citi Field (formerly Shea
Stadium), Yankee Stadium has also been replaced with a newer model. We do live
in the Bronx, after all, and our rabbi and his wife are huge Yankees fans, so Barry
bought tickets for Sunday. Barry actually has two box seat tickets for a game
to which he plans to take Joshua later this summer; these came from a friend
who cannot use them. He told me that he wants to learn about the stadium before
taking Joshua there in August, but I think the young boy who was an avid
baseball fan has come out of hiding!
Have a wonderful
weekend!
Love,
Rebecca
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