This was my Tuesday

[mamadeb]

Usually, on days off, we sleep late.

Today we got up early so that we could be on the Upper West Side by 9:30, so that we could attend a Yom Iyun (a day (or, in this case, morning) of learning) at Lincoln Square Synagogue. This is something they do every year that Dec. 25 falls on a weekday, since it is a day off for a ot of people. We don't go every year, but this time it was about shmitta, the Sabbatical year, which this year happens to be.

Yes, the Sabbatical year is still observed, although Yovel, the "Jubilee", isn't. We have lost when that was supposed to happen. Anyway, there are all these laws and all this history, and all this meaning to it, and it's just inherently interesting. Not just to us - we saw people from our own synagogue there. In fact, they had an overflow crowd.

Then we visited Jonathan's parents, who were both getting over illnesses. Jonathan helped them install their new microwave.
And then we tried to recreate the magic of one of our first dates, when we spent a Dec. 25th roaming an empty Midtown - all fancy windows and closed stores. Except - nope. It was almost crowded, and many stores and restaurants were open - not just the kosher ones. In fact, most of the kosher ones were closed 19 years ago.

Nineteen. Wow.

So we had a late lunch in JII pizza, and went home to have pot roast from the crockpot much later.

And my husband has discovered he likes the series Bones, which I don't think he knew existed.

All in all, a lovely day. I hope everyone else's was the same, whether it was Christmas or Tuesday.

Comments

[karmenghia.livejournal.com]

Much of Los Angeles is open on Christmas day and New Years Day, too. Those are big movie going days, Christmas is No 1 moving going day, so if the theaters are open, the restaurants and some shops around them are open. IKEA is open on New Years Day. I totally approve, I like being able to do things like shop and go to the movies and dine out on those days.

I lived in a small town in Poland for a while and I'll never forget the first Christmas there because I nearly starved (okay, not starved, but the food supply got alarmingly low). Christmas day was on a Tuesday, so the last day to buy food was really Saturday morning (which I slept through), then Sunday nothing is open anyway, then Monday nothing was open for Christmas eve, then Tuesday was Christmas, then Boxing day on Wednesday the 26th and then finally I could buy food on Thursday the 27th. So it was four and a half days of a hermetically sealed town. I mean, I was rationing soda crackers, it was ridiculous. What little gloss Christmas used to have for me was worn clean off by that experience. Let me be in a big, diverse city where restaurants and markets are open on Christmas for the rest of my life, thank you very much.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

You should see my neighborhood during the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Every store is shuttered. There are a few non-Jewish owned businesses (such as supermarkets)that are open (for which I'm sure the non-Orthodox residents are grateful), but the streets are mostly empty and quiet.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Isn't yovel supposed to be the 50th year in the cycle, not the 7th shmittah year? And then the cycle starts over again with a first year after yovel? Which is to say, if this is so, then I don't understand how we can know that it's shmittah, since the cycles would go off a year every 50.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

This is, in fact, a real problem.

Shmittah is therefore only rabbinic now. (Which made me wonder why the rabbis yesterday talked about doraitah (from the Torah) violations.)

[kressel.livejournal.com]

A yom iyun about shmitta! Awesome!

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

It surely was.

And I was going to email you - we may be paying a shiva call next Sunday in Monsey. Would it be okay if we dropped by afterwards?

email me. Debra dot baker three at verizon dot net

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

18 years ago. 19 years ago you might have been there with Danny.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

no. My relationship with Danny began in June 1989 and ended in July 1989. We met in November 1989.