Hi family!
It's been a busy few weeks!
We've had happy times and sad times.
March 1,2015 we celebrated the bat-mitzva of my grandaughter Shira Friedman, daughter of Shalom and Elisheva. She is their eldest daughter. The party was in the community hall of their settlement, Yitzhar. The girls mixed natural skin cream and put it in little jars as party favors. There was music & dancing and of course, words of Torah. It was an all-girl event (her little brothers were there, & daddy, Shalom).
The next day was the wedding of a different Elisheva: our good friend Yehudit Yazersky and her ex-husband Shimon Yazersky's eldest daughter, Elisheva Yazersky got married. The husband's name is Arieh. Sorry, I can't remember his last name which is Slavic and long. The wedding was beautiful. They are such a good couple!
Then it was Purim! Always merry!
Then I started in with Pesach cleaning. Yehoshua & I are doing it solo for the first time in decades, since all our kids are married and working on their own houses. We also had to find out who would be here, or maybe even, if we would go to one of the kids. Well, it's finally been decided, based on OTHER events... including a preganancy, Elisheva's...
Her due date: Pesach! The plan: they'll go to Elisheva's mother, Rachel Leibman, in Jerusalem. (Her late father, Rabbi Menachem Liebman, passed away in 2005) Going to grandma Rachel was a reasonable "game plan" which would ensure easy access to a hospital and a someone to mind the other 7 kids. Good! Out of 8 of our adult "children" at least one had a straight & simple answer, early. Well, Mazal Tov! Elisheva gave birth this Wednesday, March 25, 2015, to a girl! Now they will still be going to Rachel Leibman for Pesach, but coming to us this Shabbat.
We spent a Shabbat at our second son Binyamin. His wife Zofit made us very welcome in their home in Jerusalem.
We spent another Shabbat at our third son, Nachshon. His wife Sara, welcomed us at their home in Tapuach. I spent most of Shabbat catching up with Sara's mother, Debbie Niskin. Debbie lives in Florida, and remembers my parents well. She often comes between Purim and Pesach to help Sara get ready for Pesach. Then she goes back to Florida to make a seder for her other kids, three grown-up "boys". What a great mommy she is!
(My Mom told me that, in the eyes of a mother, they are always "children"; and I guess she was right!)
Last week, we had a tragedy: Zofit's (Binyamin's wife) father, Ezra Chabra, passed away at the age of 67! He had had a heart attack a while back, but nobody expected him to die so young. Zofit got up from the shiva this morning. They will make the Pesach seder at the home of Zofit's widowed mother, Mazal Chabra. Zofit's siblings and their families will also be there. It is a Yemenite custom that the children should come to the surviving parent for Shabbat for the first 4 Sabbaths after a death. Ezra was an awesome man, full of warmth and optimism! His branch of their family had remained most faithful to their Jewish traditions, even as they became quite "modern" in other ways. Ezra had lived through important milestones in Israeli history. His mother, who is still alive (she's in her 80's), told me an AMAZING story at Binyamin & Zofit's engagement party 15 years ago: She came to Israel in the 1950s as the young mother of Ezra. A VERY young mother! Would y'all believe, about 14? Yup! They married young in Yemen, in order to avoid getting kidnapped by the local gentiles. They lived in extended families, and continued to obey their parents (or their in-laws); but they were married, fair & square, and had kids to show for it! So she settles in Israel, and discovers, to her surprise, that here in Israel, girls go to school. Girls also learn to read, not just boys! Girls not much younger than herself were going to school! She wanted to go to school, too! Her elders laughed at such a silly idea; "You have a baby to take care of! Housework to do! You don't need no SCHOOL! Waddya gonna do, sit there with the 6 year olds?! They probably won't let you come, holding a baby..." Well, they let her come! The teacher let her sit on a desktop in the back of the room, and she promised to keep Ezra quiet. She learned to read. Guess what?! When the family got official mail, they brought the letters to her to figure out what they were about. (Yes, all the men knew how to read Biblical Hebrew; but that doesn't help much when you get a letter from, say, the electric company!)
In the 1970's when Ezra & Mazal had their first son, Eran, Ezra was working in the Sinai on the gas pipeline. In those days before cellphones, it took several days to inform him that mazal tov! It's a boy!
Oh Ezra! You will be sorely missed!
The final rundown on our Pesach plans: We are DEFINATELY home! We ARE making a seder here! Attending will be: our son Nachson and his family; our daughter Ayala and her family; Yehudit Yazersky (almost like family); and Adrian Sacks and his family. Adrian Sacks is my husband Yehoshua's second cousin. They just made aliya about 4 months ago, and live in ...... ( I forgot where, and Yehoshua went to sleep so he can't remind me! It's on the coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa) His wife had a baby girl last Wednesday!
Happy Pesach, folks!
