My husband, Larry, and I had been training, or so I thought, for the Avon Breast Cancer Three-Day, a 60-mile walk in from Santa Barbara to Malibu last October.
But now I realize that we were really training for a grave new world — for when an act of God, or more likely an act of godlessness, blindsides Los Angeles, shutting down our streets and transportation systems.
Nes Gadol Hayah Sham.
We all agree that the letters on the sides of the dreidel stand for \”A Great Miracle Happened There.\” (In Israel, of course, the letters stand for Nes Gadol Hayah Po — \”A Great Miracle Happened Here.\”)
But — and this is why there\’s a book titled \”Two Jews, Three Opinions\” — what miracle are we talking about?
This Thanksgiving, following the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, we are already a patriotic and unified country. But, we are also a frightened and anxious country, in need of the comfort that tradition brings.
My husband Larry and I could be creating a retirement portfolio, renting a vacation villa in Tuscany or buying badly needed furniture.
My son Zack, 17, is celebrating Shabbat dinner tonight at the Bohema Restaurant in Krakow, Poland.
In fact, not only is he celebrating Shabbat, but he and his group — 15 students from Milken Community High School in Los Angeles and 140 students from Tichon Chadash High School in Tel Aviv, plus teachers and parent chaperones (including my husband, Larry) — are practically doubling Krakow\’s Jewish population, estimated at 200. It is a population that, at its height in the late 1930s, numbered more than 60,000.
These teens, who are defying the media stereotype of apathetic and self-absorbed, indulged and entitled, are spending their days cleaning up spilled yogurt and apple juice, reading stories, and providing encouragement and empathy to youngsters each proprietarily calls \”my kids.\”
We are attempting to figure out how to transport our collective 30 children, entering grades kindergarten through eight in September, from the 91436 zip code in Encino to the corner of White Oak and Devonshire in Northridge.
According to Robert Putnam, author of \”Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,\” family dinners occur 33 percent less frequently today than in 1970.
Why are we the People of the Book? Why aren\’t we the People of the Question?
After all, before Moses receives the Torah on Mt. Sinai, like Abraham earlier, he answers God\’s call to service with a question. In Exodus 3:11, he says, \”Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?\”
\”Fish is meat,\” announces Danny, my 9-year-old vegetarian son.
\”Fish is fish,\” responds Larry, my 50-something pescetarian husband.
Judaism backs up Larry, classifying fish as pareve, neither dairy nor meat, and telling us that fish first appeared almost 6,000 years ago, on the fifth day of creation, when God commanded, \”Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures\” (Genesis 1:20). God later elaborated, \”anything in water, whether in the seas or in the streams, that has fins and scales — these you may eat\” (Leviticus 11:9).
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