I attended a multi-cultural infusion workshop today at work. It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I usually have a hard time sitting through hour long meetings let alone a meeting from 9-2.
Anyway, the purpose of this training was to make the employees of my work aware of the multi-cultural aspect of and the world at large so that we can make the appropriate accomodations or act in the most appropriate way and have an inclusive model for the people we work with or come across in our every day lives. We discussed age, race, religion, sexual-orientation, gender, nationality, disabilities and other multi-cultural areas.
The good news is they served lunch to the participants. The bad news was there wasn't any kosher food. Ironic? I think so.
My cousin, Moshe Zev's Pathology reports finally came back today and there was good news. The tumor was benign. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for my family.
Please continue to daven for him: Moshe Zev ben Chana Miriam in hopes that he makes a FULL RECOVERY. He seems to be doing very well right now. He is responding well to physical and occupational therapy and follow up CT Scans showed that the tumor was completely removed. Thanks again.
Well folks, I know you have all been waiting for it. Even if you don't know you've been waiting for it, you have been. Trust me. Would I lie to you?
Please update your bookmarks, tell your friends, and alert the media, 'cuz the H@rry Potter Prognostications have begun anew, this time in podcast form. That's right folks, Greg (my husband and the originator of H@rry Potter prognostications blog and I have started a H@rry Potter Prognostications Podcast! (try saying that 5 times really fast, I bet you can't do it!)
How did we decide to do this? Well, Greg and I have had millions and I mean millions of H@rry Potter related discussions. We have literally dissected the books, movies, and CDs (that is the audio version read by the amazing Jim Dale ) many many times. Anyway, I started listening to various H@rry Potter Podcasts (which I will not link to, not because they aren't good, or because I have anything against them, I just don't want you to waste time listening to those podcasts when you can listen to ours!) and I realized that Greg and I could do this just as well as all the others. We hope to offer a high brow (really that is Greg, I think I provide a bit more comic relief) commentary on the different aspects of the HP world.
When you get a chance, mosey on over to the newly reclaimed www.hpprogs.com, and take a look; we've even got a brand-spanking new prog up already!
My grandfather, Jerome Fishman, was a shul Rabbi for most of his professional career. In the later years of his life, before he retired, he was a social worker (when he was alive, he would joke that he and Rabbi Weinreb took opposite career paths). He was a loving husband, father and grandfather. For the last three years of my grandmother’s life, after she had a stroke, he became her sole caregiver. Somehow, even though he was extraordinarily busy throughout his life, between professional and familial obligations, my grandfather also took time out to bake and cook. My grandmother was sick most of her life and certain every day tasks fell onto my grandfather. Luckily, when he was single, he spent his summers working in the kitchens of hotels in the Catskills and he learned to cook and bake then.
If I had to choose something that my grandfather baked that I loved, it was his honey spice cake. In my memory, we never spent Rosh Hashana with my grandparents growing up but I guess one time my grandfather made this cake and I loved it. After that, he taught me how to make it. I have vivid memories of the two of us standing in his two-by nothing kitchen in Kew Gardens Hills, NY baking honey spice cakes. My grandfather would make it whenever I came to see him. He even made me honey spice muffins and sent them to me in camp when he was living in Boston taking care of my very sick grandmother. To this day, I have a hard time eating honey spice cake without thinking of my grandfather, of blessed memory.
Like most kids, I never appreciated my grandparents while they were still alive. I lost 3 out of 4 of them by the time I was 16. I will always carry around certain guilty feelings about the way I treated those grandparents while they were living. To this day, I feel guilty that while I was staying with my grandparents in New York for a few days when my parents went on vacation, they were nice enough to buy me honey nut cheerios because they knew I liked that cereal. Yet on an excursion to Waldbaums, I noticed for the first time that Cocoa Puffs were newly kosher so I asked them to buy them instead of the Honey Nut Cheerios. I know that isn’t a majorly guilt inducing scenario, but to the nine year old that I was, the guilt wracked me for a while. I feel guilty that I used to avoid my other grandfather when he tried to hug and kiss me in shul. I feel guilty that I didn’t take advantage of the infinite wisdom that my grandmother had, even after she had a stroke and had difficulty speaking. I feel guilty that I still have one living grandmother (yibadel l’chaim) who I don’t speak to nearly often enough and whom my children think of simply as the woman who gives them Gushers.
One thing I don’t feel guilty about though is the honey spice cake. I have taken that legacy from my grandfather and I fully intend to pass it on to my children and grandchildren. For some reason, every year around this time, I go to the store and without thinking I buy the jars of honey. I have taken it upon myself to keep making the honey spice cake every Rosh Hashana. I make it for my parents and my sister. They know if I don’t make it, no one else will, because it was my special thing with my grandfather (oh and also the fact that I was my grandmother’s favorite grandchild which he told me right before he died…but that is neither here nor there, just something I like to get in). I may not have the love for learning my grandfather had, or the interest in all things “The Rav” related. I may not be the advisor or friend that he was to literally thousands of people, I am helping to pass on the legacy that was my grandfather though. I do this by making his cake.
So without further ado, I offer you the family recipe of Zadie Yirm Fishman’s Honey Spice Cake:
Ingredients:
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
½ cup oil
½ cup honey
¾ cups instant, already made coffee
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
ground cloves
nutmeg
allspice
cinammon
vanilla
Instructions:
Pre heat the oven to 350
Process the sugar and the eggs in a food processor for two minutes
Add the coffee, flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices to taste.
Mix all the ingredients together and bake for 40 minutes. Test for readiness with a toothpick. ENJOY!!!
Thank you to those who said tehillim.
Ayelet Tehilla's surgery was postponed and I will update you on the new date.
Moshe Zev had surgery today. He had surgery this afternoon to remove it and
we are currently awaiting the pathology report which will shed more
light on the situation. He needs all the tefillos possible. Thank you.
Let's hear some good news.
Please say tehillim for two little children in our community.
First, Ayelet Tehilla Bas Shoshana Ita is my close friend's 2 year old daughter who is having kidney surgery tommorow (September 6) morning.
Second is Moshe Zev Ben Chana Miriam who is my first cousin's two year old son was just daignosed with a small brain tumor and will be having surgery within the next few days.
May our tefillos help bring a speedy recovery to both these children as well as all the sick people in K'lal Yisroel. Please keep the families in your thoughts as well.