Zev News – September 2007

In September, school started, soccer started, Hebrew school started, and religious school started.  We went from a relaxed. leisurely life to one packed with activities. seemingly overnight.  And before we could settle into a regular schedule, the Jewish holidays hit: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah.  But after a month of having to call each day to figure out where the kids needed to be and who was doing drop-off and who was doing pickup, things finally settled into a regular routine. 

This year, for the first time ever, we had tickets for the adult services at our Temple rather then the family service.  We skipped erev Rosh Hashanah services in favor of dinner with Jackie's folks.  This year, the Temple tried something new on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mornings.  They had a service they called the "alternative service." On Rosh Hashanah morning, we decided to try it and thought it was wonderful. So the first traditional adult high holiday service we attended at TAS was erev Yom Kippur.  After the Rosh Hashanah alternative service, the traditional service was a definite disappointment.  Benjamin said that his favorite part of the traditional service was “when Rabbi Lutz spoke" (i.e., the sermon.)  There was another alternative service for Yom Kippur morning which was just as good as the one for Rosh Hashanah morning.  We were very grateful for those alternative services!  This year, we also went to the first afternoon service on Yom Kippur, which we had never done before.  The Temple honored us at this service by asking us to lift and redress the Torah.  This is not why we went!  Jackie had planned on going anyway.  Then, we had break-the-fast at Blanche's, which was, as always, delicious.

For Sukkot, we built a succah again, an event which is becoming an annual event at our house.  However, between Hebrew school, soccer practice, piano lessons, robotics, and dinner at Jackie's mom's, we were only able to have friends join us for dinner in the succah on one of the nights of Sukkot.  Marc made up for it by making a dinner so delicious the memory lasted for eight days

Jackie has been on the religious school board at our temple for a couple of years (as secretary figuring this would get her out of anything hard).  This year, she volunteered to chair the Avodah program.  The Avodah program provides Temple kids (grades 7-12) with a way of volunteering for the Temple.  They can help out in classrooms or in the resource room, babysit for Friday night services, or help out at various events such as the Chanuka boutique or Purim carnival.  The number of hours each child puts in is tracked and those who put enough hours can receive scholarships to Jewish activities.  At first, this stressed her out a lot.  The Temple wants to  have an Avodah teenager available to provide babysitting every Friday night, and the Avodah kids were not volunteering for babysitting very frequently.  Past Avodah chairs have handled this situation by calling Avodah kids until she found one willing to babysit, but Jackie’s schedule made this problematic.  She certainly did not want to do it every week!  Fortunately, in the end Jonathan came to her rescue and said that he would babysit on weekends when noone else signed up. 

Jonathan's Robotics class attended the fall classic.  Where last year's robots competed against each other again. Jonathan had a really good time, despite the fact that the team didn't score very well.  He got to drive the robot which he enjoyed.