Hannukah!!

Here it is, the 6th night of Hannukah, and I'm just writing my blog about the holiday.  I'm not sure why I'm feeling uninspired about this year's Hannukah, why I haven't written yet.  Maybe I've just been too tired and need to bring more light into my life during this dark time of year.

Hannukah is a holiday about light-- the main symbol of course being the Hannukah menorah, the hannukiyah.  Growing up, I always called it the menorah, not the hannukiyah-- in fact, I never heard that specific term until I got to cantorial school!  Lena came home from her two's program talking about the hannukiyah and the shamash, pronounced in the proper Hebrew instead of how I always called it, the SHAmesh.  It was funny that she came home from school learning things that I obviously hadn't taught her!  I know this will happen often in the years to come but it was my first experience with my own 2.5-year-old kid.  Go Beth El Beginning Years!  (Lena goes to preschool at the synagogue in Chappaqua where my husband Josh is the rabbi)

During this dark time of year, and I think often in my brief experience as a parent, I wonder how I will make it to the end of the day, to the end of the week, until Grandma's next visit.  It's like I have only enough gas to last me one more mile-- but I know it has to last for a lot longer than that!  The miracle of Hannukah was that when they reconsecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, the Maccabees had oil enough only for one day -- but somehow that oil lasted for the 8 days it took to get oil from the nearest town.  The eternal flame burned and burned, without a break in its radiance until more oil could be brought.  I'm amazed that my love, energy, and commitment to being a parent blazes on even though I may feel like I'm on empty, that the flame is about to go out.  This I think is one of the great miracles of parenthood!  But I also know that I do have to find more oil, to keep refreshing the supply so that it never can go out.  So I'm looking forward to the next time that I have babysitting and don't have to go to work, or do much of anything else except relax.  And in the meanwhile I'm savoring the look in Lena's eyes as she sees the candles burning on our Hannukah Menorot, proclaiming the miracle for all to see.

Snow!

Saturday afternoon the snow began to fall!  As Lena said with her 2 1/2-year-old cute diction: "It's smowing outside!  I have to wear my smow-boots and my smow-pants and go pway in the smow!"  I had a concert event at WRT that evening so the playing had to wait for the morning.  Speaking of the concert, I was thrilled to sing again with my fabulously talented colleagues and spouses for our second Broadway music fundraiser evening.  I sang "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, among other things.  I was slightly amused to be singing "something has changed within me" and  "defying gravity" in my high heels with pregnant belly...  :)

So the next day was our "smow-day."  My back was killing me from the night before (oh, those high heels...) but we went out and played anyway, stomping around and exploring how the neighborhood looked blanketed in 2 inches of snow.  Lena made her first "smow-angels" and had a fabulous time kicking snow, throwing snow, seeing how the snow covered everything, even remarking on how it "matched" the snow in other places.  Last year it freaked her out and she wouldn't go outside to play in the snow much, but this year I guess she was feeling more adventurous. 

Lena LOVES things like snow.  And she hasn't even been sledding yet!!  It's amazing how much fun she has from the wonder of a couple inches on the ground.  I pointed out to her when we were driving around how the snow clung to the branches of the trees and made them look soooo pretty.  I'm not sure if I would have appreciated the beauty as much, though, if she wasn't in the car.  She told me there was snow on the red mailbox, on the black mailbox, on the grass, on the houses, on the cars, on the walls... you name it, it had snow on it, and she noticed!!  Nothing like a small child I guess to make you take a step back and admire what we may take for granted.

Thanksgiving reflections

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  It's not exactly Jewish-- but not exactly NOT Jewish either.  I mean, what could be more Jewish about a holiday where we celebrate a difficult time that we survived, followed by a huge meal where we say thank you for all that we have?  I know the story of Thanksgiving is about Pilgrims and Native Americans and may not be quite as idyllic as the children's legend goes.  But I did read this year that the Pilgrims based their celebration of Thanksgiving on Sukkot, Judaism's own Fall Harvest holiday.

This year we were with my in-laws for the holiday.  I definitely missed my parents and extended family down in the DC-area, but felt thankful and moved by how this year I really did feel like my husband's family was with MY family too. We're very lucky to have that relationship.  My daughter Lena was more interested in playing with her grandparents than her parents (lucky us!) so I got to take naps and even read a book.  Thank you Nana and Papa!!  I also felt thankful just for the down time spent with my husband and daughter.

We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey and sweet potatoes (though no marshmallows on the sweet potatoes, isn't that the best part????). The chocolate cake that my mother-in-law picked out with me in mind made up for the missing marshmallows though.  :)

We began the meal with the Jewish prayer called the Shehecheyanu, a prayer you say when you are just thankful for being where you are and for what life and God have brought you.  It translates basically like this:

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, 

For giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this season.

I love this prayer.  We say it at the big, "wow" moments in life, like when we get married, or when a baby is born, or at the beginning of holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Hannukah.  In my family, we also say this blessing to appreciate the smaller moments, like when our whole family is together again for dinner, when we see a beautiful rainbow (though there's another, specific blessing for that too), or any time we're particularly moved by something happening to us and want to pause and say thank you to God for enabling us to be in that place and time.  Sometimes when I'm singing to Lena during that sooooo sweet time at night before bed, I'll sing this blessing to Debbie Friedman's Havdalah melody (try it, it works!) and she joins me on the "lai-lai" section.

So much to say thank you for... this Thanksgiving and at all seasons.

First post

Hi there, this is my first post on my blog!  I'm still figuring out the layout and a new graphic should be coming soon.  But I thought I'd go ahead and write something and get started!

So, a little bit about me.  I'm a cantor-- invested by HUC in NYC in 2007 at around the same time I became a mom to my daughter Lena.  I've been working part-time at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NY since my last year in Cantorial School.  The rest of my time I spend with Lena, my wonderful husband, and our extended family of parents, siblings, and friends.

I've found being a working mom, particularly a clergy-mom, to be more challenging than I anticipated pre-Mama/Cantor!  I began to both roles at the same time, as I wrote above, so my identity as "Ima-(Cantor)Mia" is pretty interwoven for me.

I'm hoping to blog about the small moments of raising a young child-- and to use some Jewish humor and wisdom to make sense of them.  At times my writing may be scattered because of my "pregnancy brain" (expecting again in April!).  But hopefully you'll find reading this to be amusing at the least and community-building at the best.

Have to go to our staff meeting!  I'll write more soon.