Trying to stay apolitical

This Sunday was the annual New York City Five Boro Bike Tour, so about the last thing we wanted to do was drive anywhere in those five boroughs! Barry spent the morning and early afternoon working on upcoming lectures, and when he finished we headed to a small theater in White Plains to see “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer.” 

Norman Oppenheimer, played by Richard Gere, is a New Yorker who dreams up financial schemes and maneuvers himself into the lives of the rich and famous, an example of networking run amok. Along the way, he meets Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi), a charismatic Israeli politician to whom he gives an expensive pair of shoes that ensure Eshel’s lifelong devotion to him. Three years later, Eshel is elected Prime Minister of Israel. Oppenheimer’s attempt to use his friend’s name to enhance his own deals does not go quite as planned, so the intricate web of connections and lies begins to unravel around him.

Definitely worth seeing if you have a chance.

A bit of levity (thanks to my friend Orah for posting this on Facebook) seems appropriate as good has prevailed over evil in France:

After careful planning, a thief in Paris entered the Louvre, got past security, stole some paintings, and made it safely to his van.

However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, 'Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings.'
'I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.'

Do you have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else?
I posted it here because I figured I had nothing Toulouse.

Finally, I try very hard to stay away from politics on this blog, but over the past few days I have been repeatedly reminded of two things our beloved Rabbi Avi Weiss often says:

1.    There are only two categories of people, the sick, and the not yet sick

2.   The best measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members (variations on this have been penned by politicians, clergy, and others)

Love,

Rebecca

Incredibly moving music

It has been a busy week and a half, with routine medical appointments and still trying to catch up from having been sick for a while. But we have managed to squeeze in some fun.

Last Sunday we went to Film Forum to catch “Le Doulos” (The Finger Man), a 1962 film screening as part of a Jean-Pierre Melville retrospective. I am still struggling with reading so keeping up with the subtitles was not easy. In addition, it was often the case that both the screen and the lettering were white, which makes it nearly impossible to see. Hence, to be honest, I barely knew what was going on, so I will share this brief summary I later read about the movie, which makes a lot more sense now that I’ve read this. You can find more detailed descriptions on line if you are interested.

Maurice Faugel has just been released from prison when he kills his friend Gilbert Varnove. Maurice then attempts to commit a robbery. The police appear and he tries to run but the police shoot at him and he is wounded. He loses consciousness and awakes in his friend Jean's apartment. He believes that his friend Silien (played by Jean-Pierre Belmondo, the only actor with whom I was familiar) told the police about his plans because Silien is rumored to be a police informant. Silien is questioned by the police about the murder of Gilbert and the robbery before the police collect Maurice from a bar where he is reading a newspaper report about his girlfriend, Therese's death. Therese has been found in her car at the bottom of a quarry. Silien is released and goes to meet his ex-girlfriend Fabienne. With Fabienne's help, Silien frames someone else for the murder and robbery, leaving Maurice in the clear. Maurice is released from prison and discovers that it was Therese who told the police about the robbery and Silien and Jean who killed her. Maurice reveals that he killed Gilbert because Gilbert killed his girlfriend Arlette four years ago to keep her quiet. Silien returns home but once Silien has left, Maurice remembers that he hired a man to kill Silien because he thought he had betrayed him and chases after him.

So basically, this movie went from one murder to another, with the star, Jean-Pierre Belmondo, dying in the final scene (he had shot his killer, who managed to fire that fatal bullet at him before his final collapse). This really was quite a dark view of the world, probably best not taken too seriously.

A couple of months ago we had tickets for a New York Philharmonic concert in David Geffen (formerly Avery Fisher) Hall at Lincoln Center that we were unable to attend, and were able to exchange them for another concert this week.  There were just two pieces on the program. The first was a piece by Arnold Schoenberg, “A Survivor from Warsaw.” I am including here the program notes as well as the text of the piece. The notes tell of his conversion to Lutheranism in his early 20s and his return to Judaism in his late 50s following the Nazis’ rise to power in 1932. While I have to admit that Schoenberg’s music does not comfortably find a way into my ears, this was a very compelling performance.

The second piece was Beethoven’s Symphony #9 in D minor. Most of us who grew up in the United States in the 1960s are familiar with the second movement of this piece, which was the “theme” for the NBC Nightly News with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. And then there is the very famous 4^th movement, commonly known as “Ode to Joy.” I have attached recorded versions of both here, as well as the text of the 2^nd and 4^th movements.

There was a huge orchestra and chorus on the stage, and all in all it was quite an experience to see this performance. This composition was quite an accomplishment, especially when you remind yourself that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote it! If you ever happen to have a chance to see it performed, I would highly encourage you to do so.

We are expecting a lot of rain here in New York over the next few days. We have some friends coming to join us for lunch tomorrow who fortunately live near by.

Be well, all.

Love,

Rebecca

Slow return to regular life

This has been a stubborn upper respiratory tract infection. I took ten days of antibiotics but my strong suspicion is that it was viral, so I am still just waiting for it to pass. The main consequence was a very quiet Passover holiday at home for Barry and me.

But little by little I am trying to get out. This past weekend we finally went back to Sharon. We had dinner Friday evening with Dina and family and lunch on Sabbath day with Simmie. Maya had her closest friend over for lunch and it was fun watching the girls giggling all afternoon.

We had bought tickets for “Sesame Street Live” on Sunday afternoon at a lovely classic theater, the Providence Performing Arts Center (https://www.ppacri.org).

PPAC is a 3100-seat, world class venue located in the heart of Providence’s arts and entertainment district; it is the second largest theatre of its kind in the country.  PPAC is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it has also been ranked by Pollstar as one of the Top Venues in the world. The theatre became known as the “Jewel of Weybosset Street” after its doors opened as Loew’s State Movie Palace in 1928.

The beauty of the Theatre combined with the excellence of the productions makes every event at the Providence Performing Arts Center a work of art!

The lighting was dim so pictures were difficult but here are a couple we managed to take. Julia was totally engrossed in the show! Ella had gone to a friend’s birthday party but Eliana was thrilled when we asked her to join us, and she was a big help with Julia.

When we returned to Sharon, with our two little ladies soundly asleep in the back seat, we took off with Ella, Joshua, and Aaron to buy Ella a new bicycle. She is tall enough now to justify buying her a somewhat better bicycle which should last a few years. We headed over to Landry’s Bicycles, a wonderful shop near Sharon, where we are rather certain that we had bought Simmie and Dina their first “real” bicycles back in the late 1980s. The current location is quite a bit larger than it was back then, and they still have a great selection of bicycles and helpful staff. After trying a number of bicycles Ella settled on this one:

http://www.landrys.com/product/trek-skye-womens-277537-1.htm

The Sunday during Passover was a beautiful day and we headed for a while to the Botanical Gardens, where a new exhibit of works by artist Dale Chihuly was about to open. There are programs planned around the exhibit throughout the coming months and we hope to return to it when our grandchildren visit this summer. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the artwork on display.

We had bought tickets for the Mets’ opening day game on April 3^rd but I was not up to going. Fortunately, we were able to sell them quite quickly. Unfortunately, after a very good start to the season, the Mets have not been doing very well. But we are still hopeful, and the weather is supposed to be good on Thursday so we now have tickets for the afternoon game they are playing at Citi Field. Let’s hope the weather holds out.

As I end these words, I heard an interesting piece on NPR’s “Fresh Air” about a new book by Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. One of the topics Terry Gross discussed with the author was the appropriateness of ending a sentence with a preposition. Apparently, the thinking on this topic has changed, so I guess it is no longer something of which I need to be afraid. But clearly, I still am.

Have a good week!

Love,

Rebecca

A very quiet holiday

This Passover was already going to mark a major difference for us: for the first time since they were married in 2000, Dina and Aaron planned to spend the first part of the week-long holiday in Baltimore. But we were happy to be planning to spend the first days in Sharon with Simmie and Ronen and the girls.

The first days of this holiday are the major part, the time when families gather for the at-home service known as a Seder (say-dare). It is full of song and ritual foods and can be quite an enjoyable evening if you are not under the weather or not too exhausted from the extensive preparations.

As they say, people plan and Gd laughs….and, unfortunately, I have had a rather stubborn respiratory infection that forced us to rethink those plans and opt for a very quiet holiday here in New York. We had prepared our house because we had planned all along to come back here for the second half of the holiday. But it was a bit lower key than we would have liked. Simmie and Ronen had, fortunately, invited other company so they were still able to have a more joyous couple of days.

Of course, even this disappointment is much better than the level of “excitement” we had five years ago or forty years ago. But it was the right decision to make, because I am still not completely back up to speed.

Hopefully things will look brighter a week from now. We do plan to be in Sharon because we have tickets to take Julia and Ella to “Sesame Street Live” up in Providence on the 23^rd.  

Enjoy the warm weather!

Love,

Rebecca

Forty blessed years

April the 4^th of 1977 was a Monday, the second day of Passover. I was 28 weeks into what had been a mostly uneventful pregnancy. About two weeks earlier I felt what I’ve always called, using parlance stolen from a popular movie released later that year, a “tremor in the Force.” I called my obstetrician who suggested I come in, and by then my blood pressure, which had been normal, was quite elevated. Within one week I was admitted to the hospital with epigastric pain, a rather dire symptom of severe pre-eclampsia. In these cases, the outlook is not great for either the baby or the mother, but after a few days with increasingly severe symptoms a decision was made to deliver the baby. This little girl came into the world weighing just 1090 grams, 2 lbs. 7 oz.

We were fortunate to be at an excellent medical facility, The University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital. Those early weeks were quite a roller coaster ride but little Simmie was a fighter. And here we are, a mere forty years later, still celebrating our little miracle.

In Simmie’s honor, we sponsored a surprise Kiddush (refreshments after Shabbat services) and I am proud of the girls for keeping the secret. Here is a picture of the sheet cake we served.

And here is a picture of a tee shirt I could not resist buying for our birthday girl. Leave it to Simmie to point out that, technically, she was “made” in 1976, not 1977! I just love that wry sense of humor.

In the Jewish tradition, Moses was said to have died at the ripe old age of 120, at which “his eye had not dimmed, and his vigor had not diminished.” For this reason, Jews commonly wish one another that they should live until 120. Simmie, you’re 1/3 of the way there!

Love,

Mom/Rebecca

Too much diffusion?

The pulmonary condition with which I was diagnosed following an open lung biopsy back in 2000 is known by the acronym DIPNECH: Diffuse Idiopathic Pulmonary NeuroEndocrine Cell Hyperplasia, thought to be a precursor to what are known as carcinoid tumors of the lung. The cancer with which I was diagnosed five years ago is Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma. It was only this week for the first time that I realized a rather odd connection between these two completely unrelated conditions. Although both cancers and carcinoids can occur as solid lesions that can be surgically excised, in my case both presented in spread out, scattered, dispersed forms not treatable by excision.

This sudden insight came to me as I was chatting with Dr. Michelle Kim, the new physician who has taken over from the long-time carcinoid guru at Mount Sinai, Dr. Richard Warner, who retired last year in his late 80s. As far as Dr. Kim and I could tell, there is absolutely no medical significance to this observation, but as I have continued to think about it I cannot help but wonder whether therein lies some sort of cosmic or spiritual significance. Perhaps my life has not been sufficiently focused to achieve the things of which I might have been capable with more directed effort. Maybe I just needed to be a lot less scatter-brained, so to speak.

I may not have accomplished all I might have been able to do, but I can still enjoy the things I am able to do. And one of those that was quite a lovely surprise was the newly released movie version of “Beauty and the Beast.” Let me first say that despite large numbers of charming little girls in princess dresses at the late Sunday morning matinee, this is absolutely not, in my mind, a movie for young children. Although we all know it has a happy ending, there is a lot of violence along the way. The movie has a PG rating, but I think most parents just ignore that “P” and assume that since it is animated it must be just fine for young children. Our granddaughter Ella (10), saw it Saturday night with her Mom and a friend, and we took Eliana (11) to the early Sunday matinee. Maya, who is 8, did not want to go, and in retrospect we are glad she made that choice.

Having said that, it was really a very good film. I do not believe you have to have children to go and see this – it is even playing on the Luxe Level where patrons must be at least eighteen years old! The movie was done as a live action/digital hybrid, meaning that the human characters are all played by actual actors, while the various inanimate objects that “come to life” as part of the story were obviously done using digital animation. Emma Watson is absolutely charming as Belle, and her father Maurice is warmly played by Kevin Kline. There are quite a few other well-known actors, including Emma Thompson, Audra McDonald, and Stanley Tucci, as well as many unfamiliar names all of whom were superb. Eliana would have been quite happy to sit through a second screening if we could have done so.

But Barry and I had three tickets for the Celtics vs. The Miami Heat: a Chanukah present we had gotten for Joshua. What a game that was! The Celtics had a rather weak first quarter, but sometime during the second quarter they woke up and it was truly neck and neck until the second half of the fourth quarter, when they finally managed to pull ahead by enough points to win the game. I am not much of a sports enthusiast but I have to say that was an exciting match.

We returned to New York on Monday morning, back to the regular grind of doctor appointments and such. We completed most of the Passover preparation in our Sharon apartment and now we are working on getting the house here ready, since we will be spending time in both places again this year.

Right now I will just be happy if the weather improves a bit. I am really tired of the cold!

Love,

Rebecca

New musical horizons

Whenever I meet a fellow respiratory patient the topic of oxygen providers inevitably comes up, and I have yet to find anyone who is completely happy with the service they have. I started with a company called American Oxygen and they were so unreliable that after a couple of years I decided to take my chances with another company. Lincare has provided my oxygen needs for the past five years or so, and I have a great relationship with Reuben, the fellow who is assigned to this area. However, the Lincare office is not very well organized, so they can only give me a fairly wide window for arrival, which means I am often stuck at home all day on Thursdays, the day they make deliveries in this area. Aggravating as this is for me, it is a source of great frustration to Reuben, who bears the brunt of clients who take out their annoyance with the office management on him. Lincare used to have a location not far from here where we could just drive and pick up oxygen ourselves, but they closed that office, leaving the nearest one in New Jersey. Unless we want to spend anywhere from 1-3 hours driving there,  I am completely at the mercy of their schedule.

For that reason, although there are two very interesting classes at Hebrew Institute on Thursday mornings, I only attend them sporadically. I had gotten oxygen last week so was free yesterday and went to both. The classes are generally attended by senior citizens, some well into their 80s, most of them women. They are an impressively knowledgeable and engaged group.

The first Thursday morning class is a text-based course taught by Senior Rabbi Steven Exler on The Book of Kings. Rav Steven is an enthusiastic teacher and has attracted quite a devoted group of regular attendees to his classes.

The second course, taught by Rabbi Ari Hart, is called “The Torah of Music: Exploring Jewish Musical Traditions, From the Tanach* to Today.” I have only learned with Rav Ari a couple of times but today was really special. I don’t know what he has covered over the past months since the course began, but this morning he covered two songs composed and recorded by contemporary Israeli artists.

The first is called “Tefillah HaChiloni,” “Prayer of the Secular,” written and performed by Kobi Oz, a man who has clearly struggled with his relationship to Jewish tradition. Mr. Oz is an equal opportunity critic, finding fault with both secular and all shades of religious (Haredi (Ultra Orthodox), modern (“National”) Orthodox, and Reform) Jews and offering hope that we can come together and focus on praying for peace. Some in the class found his words offensive, but I think that if we are honest with ourselves we must all own some of his criticism.

The second song, written and performed by Eviatar Banai, is called “Aba,” “Father.” This piece is as much a prayer as it is a song. “Father, I want to be sure with all my heart that this journey I’m taking has a happy end.” What more beautiful prayer can there possibly be?

Father, I want to stand here before you

And believe you’re a good Father

Father, I need to know that you love me

Just like this (for no reason), my good Father

Father, I want to be sure with all my heart

That this journey I am taking has a happy end

That whatever I encounter in the way

Will turn weakness into great strength

Father, I want to return to me

And find you here with me

In my origin I am purely good

And there, only there, I believe in myself

My dove in the clefts of the rock

Let me hear your voice

Sing me a song, a new song

That will light up my heart and my cords.

Have a safe and peaceful weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

*Torah (five books of Moses), Navi (prophets), and Chetuvim (writings)