Succot March of the Nations

 On Thursday October 4th the annual March of the Nations was held in Jerusalem. My wife and I went a few years ago and enjoyed it so much we went again this year.

The march is part of an annual effort by the Christian embassy in Jerusalem to bring supporters of Israel from around the world to Jerusalem each year on Succot. This idea is based on the haftorah read on the first day of Succot which declares that in the future after the final wars have been fought between Israel and the nations, those nations that remain will come up to Jerusalem every year on Succot. This year more than ten thousand people from sixty countries participated. Many of the marchers were dressed in their native attire and thousand waved colorful flags, blew shofars and proclaimed their love and support of Israel.

Sometimes the media portrays Israel as being alone and isolated in the world and there is some truth to this. Yet we should not forget that there are lovers of Israel in countries around the world who are prepared to go to great lengths to show that support. 

So enjoy these pictures which show the exuberance and excitement of the March.

Sweet Recipes for a Sweet New Year!

Rebbetzin Rachel's [Sweet] Recipes...

In line with a “Sweeten All the Judgments” theme for all my Rosh Hashanah cooking I start the meal with a slightly honeyed version of standard dips for challah. Using the traditional round challah with raisins, “what goes around comes around…” we turn the feast into a prayer form asking, begging Hashem with every bite to please make it a sweet year for the whole world.


Sweet Techina

Mix 1 C sesame paste with ½ C water add 3 T honey, 2T lemon juice, ½ t ground cumin, ¼ t salt. Mix thorougly adding water if needed to get a smooth sour cream like consistency.






Sweet Guacamole
It almost sounds oxymoronic to have sweet guacamole, but try this it really works!
Scoop out the pulp of 3 ripe avocados, add 2 T lemon juice & 2 T honey & a pinch of salt.
That’s the base for each dip. Now you can get playful by adding chopped dates, or apricots, red grapes, nectarines etc., limited only by your imagination. This year I’ll probably add pomegranate seeds because we have a bumper crop of that jewel - like seven species specialty of Israel on our trees.
The chunks of fruit will make it bumpy and lumpy, like the spicy standard guacamole eaten with corn chips while cheering for a favorite football team, like my favorites the Denver Broncos. They lost the super bowl several times but never gave up! Their fans painted the streets of the “Mile High City” bright orange. They came back again and again until they won.

As Shlomo Hamelech says in Proverbs “Seven times the righteous fall and still get up.”
Let me know which combo is your winner.

Last leg of our teaching tour!

This will be the last blog post from our amazing month-long teaching tour. Last post I left off in Vancouver. It was our first time visiting this beautiful city surrounded by water everywhere and majestic mountains. After our wonderful program with Chabad we were invited back the next night to the home of Rabbi and Rebbetzin Bitton for dinner. During that visit he shared how he had been a good friend and learning partner of Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg who was murdered along with his pregnant wife Rivki in Mumbai India 4 years ago. His center had recently dedicated a sefer Torah to their memory. He told how the shock had reverberated throughout the world of Chabad, especially the young shlichim around the globe and how it took a long time to integrate the events. Last week I wrote of my great esteem for the work Chabad does all over the world, sometimes at great cost - but this evening raised my esteem to a whole new level.

We left Vancouver for Chicago and the next day drove to South Bend, Indiana with my sister and brother-in-laws. Their daughter, (our niece) lives there with her husband and baby daughter. We did a full shabbaton with Carlebach davening, communal meals, divrei Torah, classes, discussions and singing. Saturday night we were invited to an impromptu music jam and played late into the night. Sunday morning I spoke and played music at a brunch, where the topic was once again The Mystical Power of Music. All in all everyone was very receptive and welcoming, a perfect way to end our teaching on this tour.

Next stop - home and a new year!!! May we all be blessed with the best one yet.

Beautiful Northwest Country

Continuing escapades as the Trugmans roam through the beautiful northwest country. We spent a beautiful Shabbat at sea. Somehow among 3,000 people aboard us 150 Yidden were able to pull off a peaceful, calm Shabbat. Davening was replete with singing, dancing, learning and of course kosher feasting... We disembarked in Victoria, British Columbia on Saturday night and bid farewell to a whole group of new friends whom with we shared the beauty of Alaska and God's handiwork. In Victoria we were hosted by a wonderful family who directed us towards the highlights of this absolutely charming city on Vancouver Island. We saw deer roaming freely in the city, went to the world famous Butchard Gardens where we marveled at the most gorgeous gardens, and visited the oldest China Town in Canada. But most important was our teaching at Chabad where people were wide open to hearing about the Mystical Power of Music. Many people who rarely come to synagogue filled the Chabad center.

 

 

 

 

The next day we took the ferry to Vancouver, a bustling city surrounded by water everywhere and majestic mountains. Once again we presented the Mystical Power of Music through Chabad. This time to a group of young professionals, including a nice number of Israelis. My appreciation and awe for Chabad has grown tremendously these last few years as we continue to work with Chabad literally all over the world. The absolute love, commitment and meseirut nefesh of the Chabad shluchim is a shining example of everything good and wholesome and genuine about Torah. We began the evening by blowing shofar and explored with them the powerful energy of music from the atom to the galaxies, from the mind to the heart.

Next stop Chicago and big Shabbaton in South Bend. Indiana!

How great are your works Hashem!

Every morning we recite the following - "How great are your works Hashem, You have crafted them all with wisdom." The last week during our cruise to Alaska these words took on added meaning as we were privileged to see the grandeur of Alaska and Canada. There were so many highlights I will mention just a few of them. We saw a good number of glaciers, many from very close. Of course we were seeing only the end tip of them, some which stretched for 1,500 miles. To our amazement they had a beautiful blue tint, were mammoth and are constantly moving. For the first time I learned how much of the earths present geological makeup was formed by glaciers cutting themselves through mountains and forming the valleys and lakes around the world. These ice monoliths were truly awe inspiring. The mountains were majestic everywhere we looked and hundreds were still full of snow.

We saw pods of wales, a brown bear catching salmon, salmon running up stream by the thousands, a bald eagle, a spotted owl, and sea otters. We heard personal accounts of people who lived in small Alaskan towns like 'Juno, Skagway and Katchakan and contemplated life in a very far away place. In all these places the sun rarely shines and constant mist, clouds and rain form their reality. I was so happy when the sun finally came out as we approached Victoria, British Columbia where we disembarked for our next series of teachings.

While on board we had 3 minyans a day, daily teaching and an overabundance of great glatt kosher food.I lead Carlebach davening on Shabbat and in a very short time we befriended a whole lot of very, very, nice people. Although there were over 2,000 people on this mammoth floating hotel we were able with the cooperation of the boat line to live a normal Jewish life.

There is so much more to tell but we will let the pictures tell their story.

We are now in Victoria and will send more blog posts on the last leg of our trip.

Rebbetzin Rachel's Alaska Cruise Blogging!

The trip so far is an amazing combination of viewing the wonders of the natural world and praising Hashem for the glorious creation and deep connections with the wonderful people who have been hosting and attending our teachings and Shabbat experience. Today as we were sailing at 25 knots out at sea after leaving Seattle we were in the lobby where they were playing a "name that tune game". We correctly identified Bob Dylan's - the answer my friend in blowin' in the wind" when I spotted a whale spout and then a fluke (whale tails) up in the air above the rippling silver ocean waves and then more spouts until there were 40-50 flukes dancing in the air. All the people in the lobby ran to the windows to ooh and aah, us included.
More to come soon!

Modern Times and the Crises in Relationships

In a recent discussion with my good friend George Gumbiner he pointed out a certain crises in relationships and self identity that seems to exist in society and in so many areas of our lives. This ambivalence manifests in many ways: in the growing confusion surrounding sexual identity, the weakening of family ties, the distrust in big government and organized religion and in the soaring divorce rates. In the Jewish world this is further seen in the high intermarriage rates and the disconnect that so many Jews have with their Jewish roots and their connection to the State and land of Israel.

Thinking of these ideas surrounding the present state of affairs seems very appropriate for this time of year as we are about to enter the month of Elul and the holidays of Tishrei - Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Succot and Simchat Torah. As is well known the acronym of the Hebrew words ani l'dodi v'dodi li (I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me) spell the word Elul. 

Although we are entering into a period of deep introspection and judgment we should always remember that it is the context of the love relationship between man and God. In other words the key to Elul is a yearly review of our own relationships: to God, to family and friends, to our commitment to Jewish life and Israel as well as our relationship to the earth on which we live and the greater society that surrounds us. On a deeper level this review demands of us to probe the relationship of our inner selves and our outer persona, and the correspondence between our dreams and goals and the reality of our lives.

It seems to me that the crises in relationships are directly connected on some level to the amazing technological advances of the last hundred years. Although these advances have brought great progress and blessing to mankind they have also brought ecological disaster and exaggerated expectations of what society owes us and the place of the individual in the bigger scheme of things. Now-a-days if we have to wait an extra second for a computer response, a fax to be sent, a phone call to go through, or an extra minute for an international flight to arrive we are up in arms. We all have hundreds of friends on Facebook but no one to really talk to when the chips are down. So many people are connected to the whole world in cyber space but feel more distance between themselves and others than ever. Our idea of relationships is too often what is in it for me and not the true give and take involved in a real relationship. More and more people are putting off marriage to build a career and see the world and then, when they are finally ready to make a commitment, they find they might have missed the boat.

So here comes Elul and a new opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror, to examine our direction in life and where we are coming from and even more important, where we are going. A new year is coming and we all have opportunity to work on our relationships in all their manifold expressions and to renew ourselves once again.