TV and Movies

We are spending some time playing catch-up on things missed over the last few weeks of holidays and family. We are watching two episodes of Jeopardy daily to try to work our way to current games by the end of this week. We are scanning through The Late Show and watching Stephen Colbert’s opening monologues and guests of interest.

Movies are more difficult, because many of the types of movies we favor do not play for more than a week or two. Today we saw “Michael Moore in TrumpLand.”  Although the film has not received terrific reviews (only 54% on Rotten Tomatoes), we were curious to see how he would present the controversial presidential candidate. In fact, the movie was as much about Hillary Clinton as Donald Trump, neither of whom, as most of us recognize, are perfect candidates for this very important office at this challenging time.

The movie was filmed in Wilmington, Ohio, over a couple of nights in early October, before the recently revealed tape on which Mr. Trump talked about groping women. Maybe that is for the best, because what Mr. Moore was able to do was focus on important issues like health care. Having said that, it does drive home just how quickly things can move in these elections, with new information coming to the fore nearly every day.

We also finished watching a six-part series called “One Mississippi” about a woman who, having recently been diagnosed with and treated for bilateral breast cancer, returns to her home town in Mississippi after the death of her mother. This “dark comedy” (more dark than comedic in my view) was at least in part inspired by the life of the writer and lead actress, comedian Tig Notaro. It is a moving story that was quite well done, but it is not something to watch if you are simply looking to enjoy or be entertained by television.

Although thunderstorms rolled in by the mid-afternoon, the weather on Sunday started magnificently, allowing us to stroll a bit in Central Park after the movie. This sure does not look like the end of October!

Classes at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale this week. Rabba Anat is starting her classes today. We will be learning (in English) about “Homosexuality in Chazal (traditional Jewish texts).” If my Hebrew language skills were better, I would attend her class (in Hebrew) on “Rav Kook’s Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace.”  Rabbi Weiss will be back to teaching his Tuesday morning class which will focus on “The Story of the Golden Calf.”

Have a good week.

Love,

Rebecca

Catching my breath

The word “whirlwind” comes to mind as I think about these past two weeks. Now sitting in the quiet of our home in Riverdale, with Barry back teaching his class while I putter around the house, I barely know where to begin.

It was just two weeks ago today, during the final hours of Yom Kippur, that Dina and Aaron headed off to the hospital where just two hours after the holiday their fourth child, our sixth grandchild, made his excitedly anticipated appearance. By the next afternoon we were able to take the older children to the hospital to meet their new brother.

We spent those first couple of days arranging the details of the Brit Mila (ritual circumcision), which was held on the morning of the eighth day. It was a bit more hectic than usual because the first days of the Sukkot holiday were during that week, so decisions had to be made quickly to book the caterer and shop for drinks and paper goods. The older children returned to school and Barry and I took care of all that on Friday.

We had an enjoyable Sukkot. We had the evening meals with Dina and family. The first day we had lunch with Simmie and family, and the second day we went to the home of friends who host a large group lunch on the second day of Sukkot every year. Aaron’s parents, brother, and young nieces came up on Wednesday, so we spent the middle days of the holiday with Simmie and family, including going to an art class and a piano lesson with Maya.

The Brit Mila was very nice. The weather fully cooperated: the sky was clear, the sun shining, and it was cool enough to keep the bees away.

It has been fascinating watching Julia’s reaction to all of this. At first, she was very sweet with Noah, looking at him as if he were a gift someone had brought for her. After a couple of days, like all toddlers, she began to get the hang of it and realized that he is definite competition for her parents’ attention. But she has a lot going for her with two older siblings who are quite entertaining, so she is taking it in stride.

I am most anxious to get into the City to buy a new charm for my baby shoe necklace. I am also planning to rearrange the charms. Up until Julia was born I had the charms in the order in which the children were born. But when Julia came along, there was one boy and four girls, so my love of all things symmetric (the title of my PhD dissertation in Statistics was “Components of φ² and Tests of Symmetry”) forced me to place two girl shoes on either side of the one boy shoe. Dina was never crazy about that arrangement, so her having a boy this time allows me to put the charms back in their proper order while maintaining the symmetry! And having this new little man brings our family to an even dozen. It just does not get better than that!

My new laptop just arrived today. Hopefully over the next few days I will be able to get it up and running. Since my old one died, I have been using one of Barry’s old laptops, one that seems awfully large and heavy by today’s standards. I am looking forward to starting with a clean slate, so to speak, and considering setting up to have it automatically backup somewhere in the Cloud. I really did luck out this time because Aaron was able to recover the contents of my hard drive. Next time I might not be so lucky.

Love,

Rebecca

Welcome to the world

We gathered with friends and family early this morning to celebrate the formal entry of our newest grandchild, Noah Jacob, into the world and the Jewish community.

The weather could not have been more perfect for a breakfast in the Sukkah.

This one little guy is sure keeping a whole household full of people mighty busy. Hopefully by next week I will have time to write more thoughtfully.

Love,

Rebecca

Baby Boy Saks!

Born Wednesday 12 October 2016 at 7:57 p.m.

9 pounds 3 ounces, 21” long

Details to follow.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy year!

Love,

Rebecca

Backing up

I was reminded the other day of an old episode of the television show “Sex and the City” that aired back in 2008. In the episode, the lead character, Carrie Bradshaw, experienced an enormous headache when her laptop died. She had not been performing periodic backups, which seems a bit odd for a writer, and lost everything.

I am certainly no Carrie Bradshaw but I should know better. I have no excuse for having been fairly lax about periodically backing up my hard drive. So when I had a similar fate a few days ago I was beside myself. The good news is that we have a wonderful son-in-law who is very good at this stuff: if it can be fixed, he will fix it. Well, Aaron could not fix the drive but what he was able to do was to pull everything off of it, put it on another drive and install it in an old laptop Barry has, and now I have that until we buy a new computer for me.

How appropriate that this should happen between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, that time of year when we are taking stock of ourselves and hoping that there will be some understanding of and patience with our shortcomings! I hope I have learned some lessons about periodic back-ups, and, more importantly, about appreciating all the people around me who keep my life in balance.

If you are observing the holiday tomorrow, may you have an easy and meaningful fast. And for all of us, may this coming year be one of peace, good health, and happiness.

Love,

Rebecca

A different approach

We had a relatively quiet Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year). We had decided to stay in New York because Barry wanted to be able to teach his class the day after the holiday and because we will soon be heading up to Sharon to celebrate the remainder of the fall holidays and, more importantly, to await the arrival of the 12^th member of our Rosenstein family. It was nice to see old friends and especially nice to be at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale where the prayer services are always quite moving, particularly on these fall holidays.

Rabbi Avi Weiss gave a particularly heartwarming talk on Shabbat morning. For those who are not familiar with the Jewish calendar, the fall begins with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, on the 1^st day of the month of Tishrei. This holiday sets off a ten day period of taking stock of ourselves that leads to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on the 10^th of Tishrei. There is a very extensive prayer liturgy for Yom Kippur, with much of the day spent reviewing the things we have done over the past year. There is a specific formula for reciting the list of activities for which we are asking forgiveness. It is relatively easy to sit in synagogue all day, even without food or drink, and seek forgiveness from an abstract being. What is a bit trickier is actually seeking forgiveness from other human beings we may have wronged. Just taking the first step of admitting the failings to ourselves is sometimes a show stopper. Throughout the day, we repeat a standard formula of confessions. Even though not every one of us will have failed in every area, all the confessions are said in plural (“we have sinned”) to remind us that we always have some room for improvement.

But what if, just for a moment, we turned it around, and started to think about some of the good things we have done this year? We are often reminded that the best way to teach good behavior to children is by example. Can we adults also be helped by example? With that in mind, Rabbi Weiss teamed with the Rabbinic staff at our synagogue and came up with a list of positive confessions for which we can also strive. Rather than beating ourselves up for all the things we have done wrong, perhaps it is useful to take a moment to remind ourselves of all the things we have done or could be doing right.

Here are the two lists, side by side. In Hebrew the lists are alphabetized.

Traditional Confession (Vidduy)	Future Goals
We have become guilty	We have loved
We have betrayed	We have blessed
We have robbed	We have grown
We have spoken slander	We have spoken positively
We have caused perversion	We have raised up
We have caused wickedness	We have shown compassion
We have sinned willfully	We have acted enthusiastically
We have extorted	We have been empathetic
We have accused falsely	We have cultivated truth
We have given evil counsel	We have given good advice
We have been deceitful	We have respected
We have scorned	We have learned
We have rebelled	We have forgiven
We have provoked	We have been creative
We have turned away	We have stirred
We have been perverse	We have been spiritual activists
We have acted wantonly	We have been just
We have persecuted	We have longed for Israel
We have been obstinate	We have been merciful
We have been wicked	We have given full effort
We have corrupted	We have supported
We have been abominable	We have contributed
We have strayed	We have repaired

There is little risk that anyone observing this solemn day will get carried away with putting tick marks on the list on the right side and convincing themselves they need no longer worry about the list on the left. Instead, I believe that the right side provides a plan for addressing the failings on the left. And surely a little more of those positive attributes could do a world of good during these very trying times.

We did squeeze in a quick movie, “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years,” a new documentary about the Beatles made by Ron Howard. One of the other guests at a friend’s house for lunch yesterday asked if we had learned anything about the Beatles we did not already know. To be honest, I cannot say that we did. But there was certainly footage we had never seen, or never remember having seen, and all in all it was nearly 2½ hours of great fun, tracking the band from when they first came together through when they stopped touring in August 1966. If you were a fan, or even if the music just brings a smile to your face, you should see this one!

Love,

Rebecca