Today is the 20th of May. Sit in an enormous chair and eat lots of chocolate.

The holiday of Shavuot starts tonight. We have been counting the Omer since the second night of Pesach (Passover), seven weeks ago.

There's a concept in Judaism of Gematria, which involves the assigning of numerical values to letters of the Hebrew alphabet. A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the 33rd day of the Omer, known as Lag B'Omer because ( Read more... )

Yesterday we hosted for Shabbat lunch. I made the following:
-- Roasted turkey
-- Herbed stuffing
-- Mashed potatoes
-- Roasted squash

(mabfan is quite fond of Thanksgiving food, and we have a tradition of Shushan Thanksgiving/Thanksgiving Sheini/Sfeika d'Yoma) in our household ( Read more... )

I have been offline since, basically, Friday morning. Sukkot, the festival of booths, started on Sunday night, and we got to have three out of the four yom tov meals in the sukkah. Lunch yesterday was rained out (well, our shul's new rabbi, who was a guest at the same home we were a guest at, asked the question "If this much rain was coming into ( Read more... )

Rosh haShannah was, for the most part, good, except for mabfan getting sick second day morning. First-day lunch and second-night dinner went well. Davening at Kadimah broke new speed records (this is not a complaint); done by 1:20 first day, and rumor has it 1:05 second day (I missed shul due to aforementioned ill husband). The rabbi came by our house in ( Read more... )

...and the period of falling behind on LJ. I will be offline from tonight until Tuesday night. Shannah tovah to those celebrating.

::points to icon::

Today is the thirty-third day of the Omer. Thus, I bring the following:

-- Counting the Omer

-- Lag B'Omer (today)

-- ( Matt B'Omer )

Scene: On Saturday night, mabfan and gnomi are at the seder with lcmlc and Abba-with-no-LJ. gnomi has just broken the Afikoman for distribution.

gnomi: There are pieces of varying size.

mabfan: Pieces of Varying Size? I don't believe they exist.

This subsequently sparked a conversation about "The Princess Bride," the fact that lcmlc has never read the book, and whether Goldman ( Read more... )

Chinese food, new Doctor Who (no movie watching, though we had a Bursteinflix pickup by new members), and sleeping Muffin and Squeaker. This was all following a lovely afternoon with my parents in honor of Chanukah. Tomorrow and Tuesday I will be making latkes to share with visiting friends. And what minimal snow we got didn't stick.

In this week's The Brookline Parent, I discuss how Muffin and Squeaker celebrate Chanukah all year round. Click to read Not Even Eight is Enough.