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I had no idea that everybody in my life is so keen to take up running, but since starting this appeal, people can't keep their running shoes off. So, Sam Jacobs is still running his 500 miles; and now these two have joined in...
And of course, last Sunday, braving the torrential rain, it was Nina and co.
Ha, ha, very not funny, Nina is saying as she sees this. Anyhow, here is the brave crew:
l-r Tamar, Nina, Talya, Adina
(thanks to the Mullishes for the better pictures!)
First, sorry for intermittent posting - still exhausted. Loads to post though - photos of the very rain-soaked Nina and friends running for the CTRT appeal, amongst other stuff.
And this.
We live in our house – whisper it who dares! – religious and non-religious all together. What’s it like, you’ll be wondering? Like having a prime minister and a prime minister-in-waiting all in the same room, perhaps. Rife with tensions, backward glances, niggling remarks to each other, sources of dispute and confrontation.Well, no, actually – all the frustrations are purely of a domestic nature in our home. Who does the least housework is a fertile area for argument. But religion? Hasn’t been a problem at all. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing transitional about it – it’s not that we’re on the crux of change, any of us developing or changing: we are where we are and what we are – Jews who practise or choose not to practise in different ways.
When I remarried it was to a man from a very committed Jewish background in terms of involvement with communal charities and relentless support and campaigning for Israel, but with very little Orthodox practice or belief at all. His (then) four children came from a similar background. My (then) three children and I are Orthodox.
When I took Anthony with me to meet an older friend I had visited for many years, her first reaction was surprise. “My,” she said, “you seem very similar. I had the impression you would be so very different from each other!” “Why?” I said, puzzled. “Oh you know,” she said, “the Jewish orthodox versus non-orthodox thing…” And I was surprised that this woman had absorbed some prejudice that somehow I, the rabbi’s daughter, have not; that there are unbridgeable divides between Jews.
In our house the way we do it is that we keep everything according to Orthodox practice within the home. But the youngest of us, for example, the child that Anthony and I had together, and who is himself being brought up Orthodox, knows very well – and what’s more suffers no sense of divisiveness or conflict over it – that some of his closest relatives don’t, for large chunks of their lives, keep the same practices he does. “Hmm,” our little boy said one evening, looking through his father’s family album, “don’t see many kippot in here.”
Other people do it other ways. One family I know where the father isn’t Orthodox has his office at the top of the house and he goes up there on Shabbat and types away on his computer while the rest of the family are all strictly Shabbat – observant.
For my husband, from his warm and loving Jewish background, that option – so much easier for a man in his forties changing a lifestyle – is not an option. We want a home that feels at one with itself, and we have achieved that.
So Anthony practises most things now – again not easy, particularly in the context of remarriage, and when you don’t want your children to feel that divorce means a separation from one’s own children. And also not easy in our small Jewish community where everybody is looking to label everybody else, and don’t quite know how to label this case. But he doesn’t do it out of belief (before we married a Dayan said to him that forty is too late to develop faith – Rabbi Akiva notwithstanding, this Shavuot period) – or at least not a belief in God, but a belief in that other Jewish concept: shalom bayit.
And we have it, we have this peace in our house. Well, you know, beneath the uproar of daily squabbling over who does what, who’s woken up whom, who has the remote control and who exercises supremacy over the computer.
The children ask questions. Daddy why do you do this? Mummy, how are we supposed to manage when your husband doesn’t wear a kippa? And we tell them that they are having a chance to see different ways – though you know, we are all Jews – and that’s of value in itself. And I talk about the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash because of “sinat chinam” : people hating each other for no reason, a Jewish problem of old.
I’d like to think it’s urban myth but too many people have told me recently that one of the London Jewish schools is now sending out questionnaires asking questions like: “do you eat abroad as you do at home?” and “when do you wear a kippa?” and most invasive of all, “whom do you ask for advice on issues of family purity; to which rabbi do you go?”
Like those who go into JFS not to teach but to insist, to say, “ first you must take on the practices, then you will learn” there is an unpleasant tendency afloat in this community. When did Jews become judges of each other, rather than people who practise?
Ok, bloggees, I have scored on your behalf, and here it is, the closely-guarded, secret unto this day, cheesecake recipe.
Ingredients:The filling
1 lb curd cheese
1/4 lb cream cheese
5 oz caster sugar
3 eggs
4 oz Tomor/other hard margarine
1 1/2 oz cornflourThe base
8 digestive biscuits crushed finely
2oz Tomor/marg/butter
Melt marg and mix thoroughly with biscuit crumbs. Press down firmly into 8 1/2 ins. round by 4 ins. deep cake tin and put in the fridge to set while you prepare the mixtureCream the fat and the sugar until you cannot feel the sugar between your fingers. Combine the curd and cream cheese into the creamed sugar mix.
Set aside, and now, whisk the 3 eggs in a separate bowl until they are thick and creamy.
Slowly, add the egg mixture to the cheese together with the cornflour and pour into the tin.
Bake on 190/ centigrade/6 gas for 10-12 minutes then turn down the heat to 180 centigrade/5 gas for 10-12 minutes.
Put into the fridge immediately to cool over night.
You can put any topping on such as chocolate or fruit. You can also put a third of the cheesecak mix into the base and then put tinned black cherries ( without juice) and cover with the rest of the mix.
Love Myrna
This is the absolutely last sliver (as in people saying, "just the tiniest sliver for me, just a morsel") of Myrna's cheesecake, which took some hiding, I can tell you, in order to get this photograph to you, faithful readers, but I did it! It's on a plate made by Marganit, from the days when we still had a local clay cafe.
and this...
is a picture of the famous stent (not the vertebrae bits, Dr Ostler, I did know that, despite not knowing how many ribs a human being has) - the curvy, plastic shaft of light thing you can see alongside the vertebrae...which, after two days of cheese-cake eating (not because of the cheesecake, Myrna, I promise you!) has apparently, or maybe has apparently, stopped working, even thought the picture shows it is clearly still there. so I am off back to hospital tomorrow. Chase Farm this time, another one of my "locals". And, to cut a long story short, as we all know by now, you can get wireless on choo-choo trains, but no way can you get an internet connection in a hospital. Not if you're a patient anyhow.
It's Shavuot tomorrow and Thursday, so just to let you know that I will, of course, be posting Myrna's cheese cake recipe on here, as soon as I get it. I'd post a photo of it too, but usually it's eaten too fast to get even a snapshot; some other time maybe. Anyow, it's divine.
I used to use the cheesecake recipe from Nora Ephron's Heartburn - fastest and easiest, but obviously not as good as Myrna's.
Chag Sameach!
This is me! done by Anthony's daughter Chloe (mid-exams, mid driving theory test) for a get well card...
and this is not me, but also kids get well card...
If you click on the pictures, you get them in their full glory.
When the drugs do their kafkaesque thing I used to find I could only watch certain tv programmes - cos your sensitivities are all very on edge. Now, I find it's extended to books too. So last week I was so glad for "Kafka was the Rage" by Anatole Broyard. Bizarre, given the title I know, but trust me, it's engrossing and not demanding.
For some reason it was the only book I could stay with - I think the short chapters help, and you don't really need to read it in sequence, so I could just flick through and pick a chapter that appealed. It has a sad, inevitable cancer, chapter, but even that was ok, so I pass it on for what it's worth, cos I couldn't even read Jane Austen last week! It's not a heavy duty read at all - just very New York back in the forties (I think reading about a far away time helps too) and plenty of relationship stuff and so on. As always, thank you Kasia!
