Sukkot in Vermont

My family was never very up on Jewish customs. We celebrated only Rosh Hashanah with a special meal the night before and on Yom Kippur we fasted - well as best we could. My dad usually just slept the whole day and got up when the fast was over and had dinner! He actually worked very hard all the time and this was a good holiday for him. He had not got along too well with his own father as he told it and seemed to hold it against Judaism for that and for a difficult life altogether. He never had his Bar Mitzvah and seemed to resent that too. Nevertheless, we had a very happy homelife, but we grew up in a vacuum of Jewish tradition. This changed when my mom died and my father followed her a few years later. It was sad in our house where it had been happy and I didn't want to stay there with my brother. Israel was in the news as they defeated the Arabs that surrounded them. It was David and Goliath and the world celebrated their victory with them. I felt proud for them and I decided to take a break from the sadness at home and visit Israel with my brother for a  while. It turned out to be four years! Meanwhile, I had married an Israeli girl and my son was born. He now has three children who were also born there in Israel. As a result, I have a very different view of what Judaism is and what the holidays mean.

I can relate to the Sinai desert now, having lived very close to it. I can understand what it was to wander forty years there before finding  the much better living conditions further north. People take water and vegetation for granted when it is all around them as it is in most of the temperate areas of our world. When you live on the desert, you see things differently. You thank heaven for a few drops of water and for any kind of food. The roots of the Jewish people are way back there in the desert of Sinai. A new slant on a  "wandering people"  eh?  Perhaps restarting then on this this "learn as you go" version of an ancient yet totally new and unique religiion, keeping its records and carefully marking oases and divine pheneomena so that their grandchildren and their grandchildren might have it a bit easier!
Well, I didn't build a special structure, I used a shed I had put up for sheltering tools and machinery against the winter snows. I did, though, say my candle prayer for the holiday, which was a first for me and I ate a donut instead of dipping "challah" in honey, but it worked for me. Reaching back thousands of years, with the help of memories of a Bedouin tent we'd sat in many years ago, I could just about see the early Israelites celebrating their good fortune in the midst of all that sand for enough water and perhaps some fruit and a small shelter to protect them against the cold of the desert night.
"The palm tree will provide for you!"

Smarty Jones and The Belmont Stakes

      The Belmont Stakes

     This one goes back a few years and is taken from a web-page I kept up for my science classes at Philadelphia Regional High School. If your interested, it still runs at: http://members.tripod.com/mrgoldsteinpa

I did a couple of cute stories for the students under "The Adventures of Wooples the Cat", about my cat Wooples who learned things very quickly and totally surprised me one day with his command of the English language!!

Anyway, here goes;

It was a terrible day in Philadelphia. It was raining fairly heavily and kind

of cold too.  I had been watching the running of the Belmont Stakes with Wooples, my cat. Wooples rarely watched television but he would keep me company if I was interested in watching a program. He preferred watching the birds on the front lawn. He'd jump up on the back of the chair by the front window and peer out between the vertical blinds with an intensity that reminded me of documentaries of hunched lions peering at prey through high grasses.  But today was different. We were going to watch Smarty Jones win the triple crown of horse racing and have a Smarty Party.  I had been caught up in the Smarty Jones excitement that had  swept through Philadelphia. Smarty was going to win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia was going to be famous and the whole world would be happy.

     I had explained all this to Wooples during a commercial about Visa credit cards. Wooples assured me that he would help me root for Smarty and that he felt confident that Smarty would win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia would be famous  and the whole world would be happy.  

      The rest is history. As Smarty got nosed out toward the finish, I turned the TV off. I couldnt bear to see or hear any more. I was thrown back to 1960 when the Phillies lost the national league pennant.  We were ten games ahead toward the end of the season. All we had to do was win one game, one game in ten. We lost them all! Goodbye world series. Goodbye famous Philadelphia. Goodbye happy world. It just wasnt in the cards.

     Wooples was lying on the floor with his chin on the carpet, his eyes nearly closed. He turned and looked up at me. "He ran as fast as he could" he said, and shut his eyes. He shuts his eyes whenever hes sad or sympathetic. Sometimes he shuts his eyes when you scratch his back or pet him but then he purrs too.

"I dont know what happened Wooples"  - I offered, lost for an explanation. "He was supposed to win. Everyone said he was going to win. The odds were 1-5!! for heavens sake."

     We let it go for several hours. Wooples was still brooding. He broods when he doesnt understand something. "He tried as hard as he could" he said. "He ran with all his heart Smarty probably feels real bad now."

     I felt bad too. I imagined a large number of people in Philadelphia who had to cancel their Smarty Parties felt bad as well. No triple crown. No famousPhiladelphia. No happy world. No champagne. Just a big let down. "Sometimes you lose Wooples. When you lose, youre supposed to feel bad." "OK", he said, and we brooded together.