For as long as we keep marking and noting the passing of years, we will continue to count on hope that the numerical change of the counter will bring other changes for the better.
Because the alternative (nothing new under the sun) sucks the wind out of our sails.
So, on that sentiment, here's to renewed hope. The messiah is never here, but the messiah is always, and still, coming 🙏
Thanksgiving week is upon us.
Grateful for my brilliant children, and for good kids
everywhere.
Grateful for my patient husband, and good husbands of
others.
Grateful for our beautiful feline housemates, and for good
pets all over the globe.
Gratitude to my critique group and beta readers, and all who
read unpublished works and help to make them publish-worthy.
Grateful for all the things that work so well so we give
them no mind.
My wish is to remain grateful, especially when it’s
challenging.
Thank you for reading this and have a gratitude-filled Thanksgiving
week.
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
ITS LEAVES FALLING
ON THE PATH
TO A MORE PEACEFUL
MERCIFUL
FUTURE
…Or
is it Hanuka, Hanukka, or Hannukkah?
And how about Chanukah?
Actually,
it’s pronounced KHAH-NOO-KAH.
No
matter^, the holiday of lights in the dark is coming this Gregorian calendar year-- starting December 7th.
Lighting
the darkness is not a simple thing. To me, darkness isn’t just the places where
justice is scarce. It’s the very notion that we don’t know. It’s the future,
the purpose of all, the ways of the creator.
It’s
harder to be prideful and a know-it-all in the face of darkness.
And
so, I light. One little candle, and counting, at a time.
At
least for me, it’s more a hopeful gesture to understanding than a grand
celebration.
It’s
been some years since we observed a variation of Sukkot, the holiday where Jews
are advised to dwell in huts as our ancestors did while on the way to the
promised land.
Contemplating
this year’s upcoming Sukkot and whether I have the energy to make a Sukkah
again, I happened to come upon an old photo. It reminded me of a feline family
friend who has left this earth long ago. Clyde was not our cat. He lived next
door. When his family moved a mile away up the hill, he kept returning. Not to
his old home, but to ours.
We
even found him sleeping in our makeshift Sukkah. We always returned him to his
new home, and he continued to make his way back to ours.
One
of these trips may have cost him his life. He was found dead, possibly injured.
I tried to answer one of my kids as to whether cats have souls and go to heaven
by writing about him:
CLYDE HILL
©By Mirka M. G. Breen
Clyde
is climbing a great green hill.
The
grass under his paws is as soft as fur. It’s tingly wet, and smells of catnip.
The
light is soft blue, no sun yet.
Clyde passes
every mouse he ever ate. The mice wave at him.
Birds he had watched,
fly over and wink.
Squirrels he had
chased puff their tails
No time to think.
Up Clyde must go.
Yes, this is so.
Clyde still
climbs the green hill.
The grass is
deeper, the hill steeper. But the higher he climbs, the lighter his steps.
He’s not hot;
he’s not cold. Light’s turning gold.
A purple
butterfly flutters before him. Clyde’s trotting, then pouncing.
One butterfly
soars, and then a hundred more-
In every color,
with spots and dots
In a ribbon-dance
the butterflies flow.
Yes, this is so.
Clyde is bounding
up the glistening green.
When the moss
grows dark, a cloud heavy with steel gray covers the light.
Clyde slows. What
to do? He squints, then pulls through.
A line of pure
silver is guiding him on. The cloud turns to vapor.
The blue of the
air, gentle light everywhere-
Give power from
nose to tail.
Clyde faces
toward the glow.
Yes, this is so.
Clyde climbs some
more, the hill, green as hope.
The air caressing
his ears with gentle fluffing strokes. Cat music is sounding.
His mother and
father are mewing above
Clyde turns his
head back one last time.
The people he loves look at him with wet eyes:
they are wise.
Balls of yarn
left below, adventures above.
Clyde has to go
We think this is
so.
Sukkot
this year falls on September 29-October 6
GO STRAIGHT to the
CHOCOLATE
Put another way, as Passover begins tomorrow evening, it’s
time for another of Passover’s glories, the kind shared with all the world’s people.
No, it’s not the notions of becoming a free people, though
that’s a grand thing.
No, it isn’t even the act of gathering for a great long meal,
though no one should sniff at that.
No, it isn’t the celebration of Spring, which deserves a
whole other blog post.
What is this universal glory that had attached itself to Passover?
It’s baking without flour. Cakes that don’t cheat (by using matzo meal) and
make no pretense to have your ground wheat and be kosher for Passover too, are the
crown jewels of Passover cuisine.
Let’s go straight to the chocolate, then.
Ingredients
Cake
Glaze
1.
Preheat the oven
to 375°F. Lightly grease a metal 8" round cake pan; cut a piece of
parchment to fit, grease it, and lay it in the bottom of the pan.
2.
To make the cake: Put
the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl, and heat until the butter is
melted and the chips are soft. Stir until the chips melt, reheating briefly if
necessary. You can also do this over a burner set at very low heat. Transfer
the melted chocolate/butter to a mixing bowl.
3.
Stir in the sugar,
salt, espresso powder, and vanilla. Espresso enhances chocolate's flavor much
as vanilla does; using 1 teaspoon will simply enhance the flavor, while 2
teaspoons will lend a hint of mocha to the cake.
4.
Add the eggs, beating
briefly until smooth. Add the cocoa powder, and mix just to combine.
5.
Spoon the batter into
the prepared pan.
6.
Bake the cake for 25
minutes; the top will have formed a thin crust, and it should register at least
200°F on an instant-read thermometer inserted into its center.
7.
Remove it from the
oven, and cool it in the pan for 5 minutes.
8.
Loosen the edges of
the pan with a table knife or nylon spreader, and turn it out onto a serving
plate. The top will now be on the bottom; that's fine. Also, the edges will
crumble a bit, which is also fine. Allow the cake to cool completely before
glazing.
9.
To make the glaze: Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream
until it's not quite at a simmer, but showing fine bubbles around the edge.
Pour the cream over the chocolate, stir very briefly to combine, and let rest
for 5 minutes. Stir again — at first slowly, then more vigorously — until the
chocolate is completely melted and the glaze is smooth. If any bits of
chocolate remain, reheat briefly in the microwave or over a burner, then stir
until smooth.
10. Spoon the glaze over the cake, spreading it to drip over
the sides a bit. Allow the glaze to set for several hours before serving the
cake.
Joyous Passover
Purim is celebrated today all over the Jewish world. This
holiday of dressing in costumes, reading the scroll of Esther, and drinking to
oblivion (by religious commandment to drink to a state where one can’t tell the
difference between a Haman, the arch villain, and a Mordechai, the righteous hero)
is a hoot.
I only celebrated it as a child, and drinking was not part
of our allotment, thank you very much. But costumes certainly were.
I had the great fortune to have a best friend whose mother
was a genius seamstress. Thus, in grades 2-4 I got to pair with my friend as
her mother made us into Mini and Mickey (the Disney mice) and into a she and he
sailors. In fifth grade I wore a costume my mother had bought for me while we
were briefly in the Netherlands. I was a Dutch girl, and I only remember how
uncomfortable the wooden shoes were. I didn’t dance that Purim.
In sixth grade, I was on my own. My mother said I was old
enough to make my own costume, and for some reason, I agreed. I had to think fast,
because the party and the yearly competition for best costume were only a day
away, and my original idea for dressing as my favorite magazine failed
miserably in my attempted execution.
I had never won first prize, and I wasn’t thinking of any
prize. I just didn’t want to be that kid, the one who showed up wearing
plastic glasses and calling it “a costume.”
We had a song we sang back then. To the American melody of She’ll
be Coming ’round the Mountain we sang the Hebrew words, “Madman in Pajamas.”
Trust me, it works. That ditty never made any sense. But less than a day before
the Great Purim Costume Party & Competition, it suddenly made sense to me.
And so, I was. I was a Madman (mad person?) in Pajamas. I
danced and sang the song and waved an old flashlight my mother had inherited,
and wada-ye-know, I won first prize.
Which goes to show that life can be senseless. It also shows
that spontaneity and desperation are underrated, and should be given more respect.
The Sukkot holiday, now upon us, was meant to remind the
Jewish people of our time as a homeless nation, living in tents, on the way to
the promised land.
I have lived through many Sukkots, and it doesn’t seem to do
any such thing.
During the Great Depression, large shantytowns popped up all
over the land. They were nicknamed
“Hoovervilles,” in reverse honor of the then president, Herbert Hoover (1929-1932)
whose misfortune was to usher in the economic downturn. Today, our cities have homeless encampments
that don’t even get to be categorized as huts. They are tents stretching for
miles.
As such, the
commandment to dwell in tents that have porous roof covers (“Sukkot” in Hebrew)
could be a reminder of those who do not have solid roofs over their heads. But
as I have witnessed all my life, these happy super decorated lovely sukkots
are a place to party, leisurely sipping outsized drinks and hors d'oeuvres. They are
nothing if not lovely excuses for garden parties.
It’s nice, but no longer serves as it was intended.
I’m honoring Sukkot by being grateful for the roof over my
head. I’m skipping the party.
Yes, Virginia, I’ve seen it with my
own eyes
When DS was in
preschool, one of my mothers’-support group friends related a scandal in her
daughter’s pre-school. Like us, my friend’s family is Jewish. Unlike us, who
sent our kids to a Jewish pre-school, Christian families were the majority in her
daughter’s school.
Shortly after
Christmas one of the kids asked her daughter what Santa had given her. The
three-year-old gave an answer, which set the stage to a scandalous reaction.
“We’re Jewish,”
she said. “We get presents from real people.”
Other parents
wanted my friend to teach her daughter that it was not okay to infer that Santa
isn’t a real person, and do it ASAP.
The thing is—
Santa is real if you dig deeper.
Santa Claus, the
giver of presents to bring joy to children on the darkest days of the year, is
an idea. As such, it is real. But abstractions are beyond children’s literal
thinking and so various individuals dressed in red, and donning floppy red hats
with white pompoms, have taken to manifest the spirit of gift-giving on this
one particular day.
Some years later,
our next-door neighbors, a Norwegian family, asked if their friend could come
over to our house on Christmas Eve and dress up in the Santa outfit so he can
make the appearance for their twin daughters, then barely a year old. As he’d
be coming straight from work, they needed a place for him to get into the
outfit. Of course, we said yes. They left his outfit and a sack full of
presents for their twins at our house. Our kids, by then teens, found the whole
thing rather funny. It hadn’t been part of their childhood.
When the friend showed
up, he was so drunk I had to help him wiggle into the outfit and catch him so
he wouldn’t fall down while doing so. He needed help at every step. I lit his
way to the neighbors’ door, holding my breath so he not collapse on the sidewalk.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw their door open and their arranged-for
Santa waddle inside.
The next year, our
neighbors asked if our son, by then in first year of college, would do the
favor of being their Santa. “Last year didn’t go too well,” they said. Apparently,
they had no other friends who would volunteer.
I asked DS, and he
said he’d do it. It would be like a fun acting gig. The day after, our
neighbors told me they had never had such a great Santa. Apparently, DS prepared
Norwegian sentences to utter in an altered “Ho-Ho-Ho” voice, and his whole act
was so hilariously memorable that as far as they were concerned he has the volunteer
job for life. This Jewish Santa was the real deal.
And he did indeed
materialized the spirit of Santa Claus for the next few years. The year he
went to graduate school in Paris, the neighbors were bereft that he would not
be there for their yearly tradition. By the time he returned from France, the
twins no longer needed this concretization of holiday spirit. Santa now came in
their own gift giving and receiving, no red hat and white cotton wool beard needed.
But I can attest
at least one Santa was Jewish. I have the picture to prove it.
Please, no humbugs,
folks. May the joy of gift giving and receiving be with you the whole yearlong.
Generosity and blessings
for the
This week is “Happy
Holidays” greeting time. Everywhere I go, this is part of casual exchanges.
Regardless of which holidays, these words cover all. But do
they?
Seems like an obligation to be happy. With such an obligation,
comes guilt if we can’t.
There are lots of
reasons to encourage gratefulness, wish better health, and let others know you
value them. I’m less sure about happiness; that thing we so casually spew out
as a wish or even half a command. I’m actually not sure what it is.
My mulling is much
less about whether it’s okay to say Merry Christmas to people who may not be
Christians (its fine with me, but this is no longer a universally accepted notion)
than about feeling I wish I had something else I could put out to casual
passersby.
There is the “stay
safe” I’ve had my fill of hearing. One friend replaced that with “stay sane,”
which I like much more. I almost want to substitute STAY SANE for the happy
holidays utterances, except...
...except that
doing so with strangers will likely be taken as a sign of insanity.
But you here know what I mean. Stay sane, everybody. Happiness is a blessing but not an obligation.
Christmas lights all around.
I have two close
friends who, like me, are Jewish. Unlike me, they feel “excluded” at the sights
and sounds of Christmas.
We’re the kind of Jews
who don’t do “Hanukkah Bushes.” I’ve been guilty in the past of overdoing Hanukkah
presents for my kids instead of Hanukkah Gelt, the traditional giving of money
without fancy wrapping.
I now relish the
modesty and wistfulness of our holiday of winter lights with a single Hanukah
menorah and something fried.
My two friends
grew up in a Christmas majority culture. I had the advantage of having grown up
where Hanukkah was at home as well as on the streets, and Christmas was
something you had to seek if you wanted to spot any of it in certain quarters.
Hanukkah was
commonplace; Christmas was exotic.
For me, It still is, . I’m delighted looking at this celebration of lights, plethora of glistening
wrappings under trees, music that mixes old beauty with some sappiness, and
lots of people trying hard to look cheerful in colorful sweaters.
Unlike my two
friends, I’m very comfortable being an outsider looking in. Christmas is
exotic, still.
No need to say
Happy Holidays to me. Your Merry Christmas is welcome. I’ll say it right back
to you, and mean it.
Celebrate!
Thanksgiving, after all
This Thanksgiving,
rather than think turkey, (i.e. a mass-slaughter time for animal lovers) pumpkin,
(why can’t it be Apple or chocolate, say the real dessert fiends) family, (for
better and worse, as a plethora of articles on depression have come to flood
the media starting holiday season) or national commemoration (as revisionist historians
remind us, this day commemorates colonizing) I would like to cast off the
darkness for once, and focus on gratitude.
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
— Voltaire
© From THERE’S A TURKEY AT THE DOOR by Mirka Breen/Illustrated by Sonia Hallett
Giving thanks, that’s all. The rest is noise.
I recall early July of 1974, when I arrived in the United
States.
I grew up in
Israel, a dual citizen of both countries. I had no memory of my ten-month visit
to the USA when I was two years old, and so for me this was a get-acquainted-with-America
summer.
One of the first
things that struck me was a billboard that stated—ready for this?
July is National
Pickle Month
I asked the
American with whom my friend and I stayed what made it “national.” Was this a
joke?
“Congress decreed
it so,” she said.
Really? Like, they
have nothing better to do?
I remember
realizing something about my other county: it was playful, whimsical, and a wee
bit silly. Having grown up in a country where the government’s work is serious existential
business, the United States seemed downright Disneyland-goofy.
Yes, there were ongoing
hearings that culminated for the first time in U.S. history in a president resigning
only a month later. There were protests and divisions over the pain of a war
the nation had just lost, (despite calling the end of our involvement in
Vietnam a “peace agreement”) and so on.
But congress still
had the energy to declare a National Pickle Month.
Something about
this still sums America for me.
So, in addition to celebrating this pickle before it ends, I thought I’d list a few more such garnishes below. Let’s celebrate while we still have the energy to jitterbug in those parties:
January 4: National Spaghetti Day🍝
February 5: Shower with a Friend Day😳
March 1: National Pig Day 🐖(hey, it’s also my birthday)
A comprehensive list
can be glimpsed here.
But to me, National
Pickle Month reigns supreme.
How are this year’s holidays different for you?
Nearing the end of
a calendar year, the inevitable lists come out: best movies of 2020, most memorable
images of 2020, most memorable people of 2020, and so on.
What is certain is
that this year had such momentous events, those who survived them can attest
that the year
twenty-twenty was different.
I am recalling a
certain week at the end of August, where a record heat combined with freak dry lightning
caused fifteen hundred wild fires in northern California alone. The air was
seriously unhealthy, in addition to the masks we wore for a pandemic that had
kept us sheltering in place for over five months. Between the pandemic and the
fires, family members lost their homes and jobs.
Then, in just one
week (that same end of August) both Facebook, Blogger and my website host— decided
they were done with their old formats and forced a conversion to a new one. The
latter seems so trivial compare the existential challenges all around. But the
confluence of the *all of it* nearly
broke this camel’s back. It’s hard to try to build a website and adjust to new
screens (when most of life has moved to screens) as you literally can’t take a
deep breath.
And just then, I
had one of those illuminations: I realized I and most around me were more alive
than we’d been. As the mounting challenges pressed, we were awakened. From then
on, days felt blessed rather than cursed.
I hope the coming
holidays are the same for you. When listing the year’s personal highlights, may
you see how very blessed the year twenty-twenty has been.
©Silent Night
by Shelagh Duffett
(Passed away
June 24th 2020)
The point (or excuse) of filling the house with the smell of frying is the miracle of OIL. It was only enough for one day but lasted for eight when the Maccabees liberated the defiled temple and the eternal light at its center was re-lit with special sacred oil.
It’s about OIL. It’s
a downright greasy-fatty-oily festival.
So while latkes
are potatoes fried in oil, and Israelis gobble sweet dough fried in oil (sort
of strawberry jam filled yeast donuts), lets focus on the oil here.
This means the
classic latkes can be made with any vegetable, so long as you fry them in oil.
So I take the
classic potato latkes recipe and...
INGREDIENTS
·
1 1/2 pounds baking potatoes (3 to 4
potatoes)
·
1/2 medium yellow onion, peeled and
quartered
·
1 large egg
·
2 tablespoons matzo meal or unseasoned
dry breadcrumbs
·
1 teaspoon kosher salt
·
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black
pepper
·
1 cup oil
·
Applesauce and sour cream, for serving
Instead of the potatoes, you can grate zucchini, carrots, parsnip,
yams, or chopped asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, or the king of all oil
gobblers, the thirsty eggplant.
{You’ll have to adjust the amount of binder, i.e. breadcrumbs, to
the moisture of the vegetable you use, likely increasing it a bit}
Happy oleaginous eating
to us!
