POPES, POLITICAL PARTIES AND PESACH

A new Pope has been elected, a new Israeli government has been formed (I think – but you never know there could be another crisis along the road paved with so many poor intentions!)… there are changes afoot in the world at large …



and I’m in my kitchen making Pesach.
This is the time of year when no matter what…Pesach has to come first.


The house is spring-cleaned- thanks to my wonderful daughters who left their husbands and babies and came to rescue me after I dislocated my shoulder … wot you forgot about that!!
And now we’re down to the real nitty-gritty a.k.a. chametz in the kitchen.
My husband still keeps hoping that I’ll find a packet of lamb-chops hidden away in the back of the freezer like we did once, about 15 years ago.


It was a small pack that my late mother had brought us  from England with just a few chops in – definitely not enough for all of our seven wonderful  children. And in any case, they wouldn’t have appreciated them… or so we kept telling ourselves.
So we gave them money to go out to the pizza shop and pamper themselves with pizza, ice cream, drinks and goodies …..and I cooked the lamb chops for our supper.

We did enjoy them – and the kids had the best supper of their lives.

So what terrible parenting sins do you  have to admit to – so many are committed during the week before Pesach

SHOULDERS ARE IMPORTANT

Yes they really are.
And believe me I didn’t realize just how important until I dislocated my left one over two months ago.

Fortunately  when I fell down the stairs my natural survival instincts took over and I shot out my arm to break my fall, thus saving my head.

At TEREM( that wonderful Israeli invention for emergency medical care) after giving me a quick shot of morphine, two big, strong doctors pulled and twisted my arm …until CLUNK:THUD  it slipped back ‘soundlessly’ into place.

That would have been fine had it stayed there…but when I raised my arm, it slipped out again…and we had to go back and have an ‘action replay’ of the whole thing.
After that my upper arm was strapped tightly to my body with strict instructions not to be moved for three weeks.

If you’ve never experienced anything like it then you won’t realize how frustrating it is not to be able to do so many things without help- from getting dressed to preparing a simple meal.
I did manage to maneuver my keyboard into a position that I could work at the computer.

I innocently  thought that after three weeks I‘d throw off the bandages and get on with my life…but it doesn’t work like that.
My upper arm had forgotten how to move…and it’s taking it a long while  to relearn. Physiotherapy’s helping a great deal but it’s still an unbearably slow business.



I’m getting lots of sympathy – and help…which is just as well with Pesach round the corner.
In fact there are some less-than-sympathetic souls who think I did it to get out cleaning for Pesach – like last year when I got double pneumonia between Purim and Pesach.

BUT IT’S  NOT TRUE – REALLY.


So that’s what I’ve been up to over the last few months.
What have you been doing?

WRITING UNDER FIRE - ISRAEL v GAZA

Some people can write their way through missile attacks, writing blog post after blog post full of what’s happening now, how it might continue, what should be done and informing the world about our situation.

I can’t.

I found myself paralyzed, as the missiles fell in their hundreds over southern Israel, then further north to Tel Aviv and eventually right near home in Jerusalem. The deaths the terrorists  were responsible for, and the massive destruction and havoc they caused to millions of people’s lives were well documented by hundreds if not thousands of bloggers in Israel.
photo credit Dror Einav

I’m not sure why I couldn’t put finger to keyboard.

I think it was because I was scared that my comments, predictions and thoughts  might come back to haunt me as  events unfolded. 

Now we have a cease-fire - for the time being . A cease-fire forced on us by outside pressure even as we know that although the IDF managed to make an enormous dent in Hamas’s arsenal of missiles, it still has plenty which can reach the heart of our country. And we know that Hamas will use the time to rearm with the help of Hezbollah and Iran.

So, as always, all we can do is to pray the The One Who is really in charge that He will continue to take care of us as He has done for the last thousands of years.

SITTING IN JERUSALEM–THINKING BOUT ‘SANDY’

This is a situation we’re just not used to.

Usually we in Israel are the ones who cause  worries for our friends and family around the world.

But this time we’re sitting in our warm homes, the sun is shining outside and we have running fresh, clean water and electricity.  And we’re worried sick about our friends and family in the USA. since hurricane Sandy smashed her way into their lives just  a week ago.

image courtesy of creative commons.
It’s been a sobering lesson to all of us.

No matter where you think you are on the social/financial scale, when the forces of nature hit, the damage is indiscriminate,  flattening the homes of the  rich and poor,  CEOs and street cleaners,  the religiously devout and  atheists.

You can prepare just so much, but then you have to sit and wait it out or flee and leave your home to the ravages of the hurricane.

You’re forced  to realize what Is important in life – and what can be replaced or rebuilt.

When I heard about people who refused to evacuate their coastal homes or even went to them specifically before the hurricane arrived, maybe believing they could keep the waves away with their forceful presence,  I began to think again about Jews who refused to leave Nazi Germany because they just didn’t believe anything would happen to them.

In one day the liveliest city in the world was reduced to a flooded, sightless wreck, a black soaking shell.

A week later life is starting to return to normal. But as these acts of nature become more and more frequent people are beginning to realize just how vulnerable we all are and how little we can really control in our own lives.

FOLLOW UP TO RICHARD III AND NAZI POTTERY

My last blog post got a lot of attention and was passed from friend to acquaintance to elderly relatives in an attempt to discover the answer to the mystery of the Nazi pottery that was discovered in the fields of the farm in Thaxted England.


We seem to have solved the riddle with this reply.

Asher Cailingold forwarded your email to me, as I might be able to shed a little more light on explaining the swastika emblem on some pottery found in a field in Thaxted Lodge.
I was on Bachad Hachsharah in England for many years, including 10 years (1944-54) at the Bachad farm in Thaxted, including four years (1950-54) as its manager.
There are two possible explanations:
1. When we took over the farm in 1944 - WW2 was still raging - we found a large hole in one of the fields. We were told that a plane had crashed there earlier in the war, but no one knew its identity. Thus it is possible that this was a German aircraft, which could explain the presence of some cup or other gadget on this plane.
2. During 1944/45, when we needed a larger number of workers, the Essex War Agricultural Committee supplied us occasionally with groups of German POWs, so this could be the source of this piece of pottery.
It was certainly not an item belonging to any of the German origin Chaverim.(members)
I hope this will satisfy your curiosity to some extent.
Well that seems a logical answer, even if it was less exciting than the version  my imagination conjured up.
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The identity of the remains that were excavated in Leicester are still a mystery.
We won’t know if it really is  King Richard III for another six to eight weeks as DNA testing can’t be rushed.

But that hasn’t stopped the authorities in Leicester from starting to cash in on the possibility that this really is the king and all that it would mean for the fame and fortune of this relatively quiet town.

Great plans for coping with the possible upsurge in tourism are already in the making as you will see from this report from the BBC.

Marketing this, possibly much maligned, king could be big business.

TWO ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS: RICHARD III and NAZI POTTERY.

I’ve always been fascinated with archaeology. I love finding tangible connections to our past, whether far distant or more recent.
Two findings this month really excited me – one of them hit international headlines as it is from over 500 years ago, with regal connections. The other was quieter, probably known only by a few people and from far more recent history.
The  first one was the recent discovery, in my hometown of Leicester, in the U.K., of what is almost definitely the body of King Richard III . He was an arch  villain of the British monarchy, believed to have murdered his two nephews to protect his position on the throne of England, and whose burial place was always unknown.

At the moment the results of the DNA check against a direct descendent are not yet in, but there are multiple physical signs on the exhumed remains that indicate that this is indeed the hated king immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play of the same name.
Which  English literature student doesn’t remember the famous words “ Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier in that real old movie of the 1950s,  and just before his demise, wandering around unprotected  on the battlefield ….” A horse, a horse. My kingdom for a horse”
But we’ll all still have to wait patiently for another number of weeks for the final DNA results.
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The 2nd discovery didn’t really involve archeology, it was found lying around in a field in Essex.
The field was in Thaxted, a small farming area where, in the 1940s, many Jewish children, refugees from Nazi Germany, were taken by “Bachad” the forerunners of today‘s religious youth  movement, Bnei Akivah, to live and receive basic agricultural training before going to live in Israel where they went on to be the founders of  several religious kibbutzim.
One of today’s Bnei Akivah youth was hiking in the area, and realizing he was close to the original farm site in Thaxted, decided to continue and walk through the fields which many of his predecessors had lived and worked, over 70 years ago .
Seeing something shining in the grass he bent down and picked up a piece of pottery.


What an amazing discovery. This must have been lying around in the field for  70 years.
What was it? Well a search online brought me to the site of the china manufacturers mentioned quite clearly on the shard……. and to this picture

The swastika, emblem of the Nazi party has clearly been deliberately blocked out. Are they ashamed of their past? Were they scared they would be prosecuted if they left it on the site? Was it just because it’s politically incorrect?
But this is definitely the same motif that is on the fragment that was found.
Why would a refugee from Germany have a piece of pottery with the hated swastika on it?
I have no idea.
I can only guess that maybe this was from an item the children  were given as they left  Germany on the kindertransport. Most  of these children would never to see their parents again. All they possessed were the things in their little suitcases.
Perhaps they were given a last drink to take with them on their journey to the unknown and this was the only glass / cup that was available. Did he/she keep it because it was one of the last things they received from their parents?
Did the owner maybe smash it and throw it away because of the hated symbol ?
I don’t know if we’ll ever know. There are some ‘kindertransport’ children still alive so maybe one of them will see the photo and recognize it.
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As one ancient mystery looks like being solved, another recent  mystery is uncovered.

SORTING OUT RECIPES….AND LIFE

Have you ever noticed that when you  organize one section of your life, it affects other aspects as well?
This morning I did something I’ve been meaning to do for ……..oh I can’t even remember how long….. probably years. You know what it is from the title of this post….I sorted out my zillions of recipes.

First I threw out all those I knew I’d never try because they are too complicated . I still go by  that oft-quoted dictum of Shirley Conran, who became famous with her book “Superwoman” in the 1970s   “Life’s too short to stuff a  mushroom” .
So any recipes that involves finding more than 7 items/ more than 3 stages / over  15 minutes of preparation were discarded.

Next went all the cookies/biscuits that had to be dipped in chocolate …….. I always make such a mess of myself.



Then, not only did I sort the rest out, but I also rewrote the illegible ones ( once I ‘d checked with my kids what I had originally written) and  those where the paper was translucent from grease…..(we seem to spill a lot of oil in our house).

I then stapled the recipes, whatever their size and wherever they had come from ( a notebook, torn from a magazine, a post-it note, napkin) onto sheets of A4 paper and slid them back to back  into see thru plastic  pockets with holes on one side so that each recipe  was  now visible and  inside a wipe-clean pocket and could be filed in a  ring-binder.

And I’m  ashamed to say I feel …..well, wonderful.

I am such a disorganized person, in my home life, that when I finally organize something it makes me feel on top of the world.

Now, you may be wondering, why did I do this specifically today. Well it probably has something to do with realizing that in one month’s time it will be Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year…and the start of a month of  eating  (and praying) and other Festivals and eating…...and  family and visitors...and eating.

Rosh Hashanah is a time when we try to do some spiritual soul-searching, checking how we behaved over the last year and where our report card says ‘could do better’ ( in most things as far as I’m concerned).

It’s a time for spiritual bookkeeping and new year resolutions. If on January 1st I resolve to lose weight ( as usual), then on Tishrei 1st I resolve to try to be a better person, kinder, more thoughtful, more sensitive and more generous.

And in case you’re wondering what that’s got to do with my recipes – it’s quite simple – I feel that if I can conquer my laziness, my procrastination, my disorderliness in one part of my life – maybe there’s hope for me in far more important aspects.
So in case we don’t meet again for a few weeks I wish  you all a very Happy New Year and you should all be inscribed in the Book of Life and good health.