#BlogElul: Learn

It is late and I'm tired, but here are a few things I learned in 5774:

1. I enjoy studying Nechama Leibowitz as a text commentator more than I enjoy studying Rashi.  Just as a good sit-com ties up all the loose ends in 26 minutes, so, too, do all the loose ends come together into a nice, neat package in her commentaries.  As for Rashi, too many seemingly irrelevant things bother him...
2. Posting #tbt photos is a lot of fun!
3. There's always room for new friends...especially when they feel like longtime friends from the get-go.
4. Shabbos socks can be quite the social media sensation!  
5. I love being on the BRCA-awareness soapbox, but there has to be some balance, too, and it can't necessarily be all BRCA all the time.  It's exhausting.

Here are a few things that I haven't quite mastered and on which I'd like to get a better handle in the coming year:

1. It's not necessary to always put the needs of others ahead of my own.
2. Meeting my bashert.   
3. Visiting Chicago.
4. It's OK to relax and do nothing...and not feel guilty about it.
5. Flexibility and "going with the flow" are key components in managing life's ups and downs.

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-olam for giving us continued opportunities to learn, to grow, and to shape ourselves into better people and our world into a better place.  Amen.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year. 

#BlogElul: Remembering

As a wrote for last year's #BlogElul "Remember" prompt, we Jews are a remembering people. Among other events and people, we regularly remember Shabbat, the Exodus, what the Amalekites did to us, the victims of the Holocaust, and Israel's soldiers who died in battle.  

Within our own families, we remember our loved ones each year on their yahrzeits and at this season of return. For me, the "remembering list" includes a number of people I knew personally -- my grandparents, two of my grandmother's sisters, two of my grandfather's brothers, cousins of my parents, family friends and, of course, my mom.  It also includes individuals who, in one way or another, have, more recently, come into my circle of remembering, but whom I did not know personally: Chaim Glasberg, Tante Mina, and saddest of all, a friend's son, Sam.  

In the new year, even as sweet memories help to sustain us following loss -- whether recent or not -- may we, our loved ones, and our friends know no more sorrow.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year.

#BlogElul: Please Forgive Me

Please forgive me if I wonder how much NBC-Universal's full-page tribute to Joan Rivers cost in today's New York Times.  More to the point, please forgive me if I wonder how many hungry kids that money could feed.

Please forgive me if I don't respond instantaneously to your email or text.  I might be talking (on my landline) to my dad, to my Aunt Claire, or to my sister.

Please forgive me if I screen my calls.  I might be trying to take some much-needed quiet time to read, to inhale and exhale slowly, or just to get off the non-stop merry-go-round for a few minutes.  Leave me a message and I'll do my best to get back to you.

Please forgive me if I can't answer all your questions, and I just send you a link to read instead.

Mazel gov on your wedding, but please forgive me if I wonder what is a Universal Life minister.

Please forgive me if I get mad at you when you wait for a bus for 10 minutes, but only start to look for your MetroCard once you're standing in front of the fare box.

Please forgive me, but if you took your backpack off before you got on the subway train, three more people could get in behind you...and you wouldn't keep bumping into me with every lurch of the train.

Please forgive me if something slips through the cracks. Even though I am a yekke, I'm overloaded at the moment and, despite my best efforts, a few things do slip off my very full plate from time to time.

Please forgive me if I don't participate in Monday morning quarterback conversations at the water cooler.  The first time I heard a sports commentator mention "Gang Green," I wondered how an entire football team could contract such a potentially deadly infection.

Please forgive me if I say "no."  It's not a popular word in my vocabulary, but I think I need to start learning how to use it -- even if it's just once in a while.  I think it might help me uncomplicate my life.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year. 

#BlogElul: I Trust That is Not the Case

Baruch atah, Adonai
Eloheinu, Melech haolam,
asher yatzar et haadam b'chochmah
uvara vo n'kavim, n'kavim,
chalulim, chalulim.
Galui v'yadua lifnei chisei ch'vodecha
she-im yipatei-ach echad meihem,
o yisateim echad meihem,
i efshar l'hitkayeim
v'laamod l'fanecha.
Baruch atah, Adonai,
rofei chol basar umafli laasot.

Praise to you, Adonai,
our God, Sovereign of the universe,
who formed the human body with skill
creating the body's many pathways and openings.
It is well known before Your throne of glory
that if one of them be wrongly opened or closed,
it would be impossible to endure and stand before You.
Blessed are You, Adonai, who heals all flesh, working wondrously.

If we trust God to heal all flesh, working wondrously, is it also true that in order to heal us, God must first make us sick?

I trust that is not the case.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year. 

#BlogElul: Counting Your True Friends

When I was young, someone told me that you're a lucky person if, by the time you die, you can count your true friends on the fingers of one hand.  

You know who are your true friends.  They're the ones you call when you need a ride to the ER in the wee hours, the ones who correctly finish your sentences, the ones who have given you the shirt off their back (sometimes more than once), and the ones who know you better than you know yourself.

As 5775 approaches, may we not only count our own true friends, but may we also know that others are counting on us to be among their true friends.


Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year. 

#BlogElul: Seeing the Glass as Half Full

Some days life is overwhelming. 

It's been that way this week. 

All the more reason to slow down, take a deep breath, and remember to see the glass as half full.

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-olam for giving us perspective and enabling us to see the goodness all around us.  


Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year. 

#BlogElul: Can You Hear Me? We Don't Back Down From Cancer

My sister and I spent a lot of time today listening to medical professionals. 

Here is what we heard:

1. Amy's small tumor is estrogen-receptor-positive (ER+) and progesterone-receptor positive (PR+), which means that the cells are trying to behave like normal breast tissue cells, but they're not quite hitting the mark. The good news is that this isn't our mother's triple negative breast cancer, and there are very effective chemotherapy drugs to which this type of tumor will respond.  It is totally treatable and curable.
2. The tumor also is positive for the protein human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2+), which means it is somewhat more aggressive than other types of breast cancer, but again, there are very effective drugs (Herceptin and Perjeta, among others) to which the tumor will respond.

Based on what we heard and the constraints of the business she runs singlehandedly, this is the strategy she and the doctors have mapped out for the next few months:

1. She's scheduled to have a lumpectomy (a same-day procedure) on Thursday, September 25, which is the first day of Rosh Hashana, and, I believe, a good omen.  Even as the world is being born, so, too, will she have an opportunity to begin again...healthy, strong, and whole.
2. In mid to late October, she'll begin chemotherapy, the specific "cocktail" to be determined based on information gleaned from the lumpectomy.  Its frequency likely will be once a week either every other week or every third week, depending on the specific drugs selected for her.  At the same time she'll also be treated with Herceptin or Perjeta.  The chemotherapy will last for about four months, the other drugs for 12 months.  She may lose her hair, but again, that depends on the specific mix of drugs that are selected for her.
3. Once she's finished with chemotherapy (probably sometime in February), she'll have a window of opportunity of about three weeks to decide about next steps after which she'll either have radiation or a mastectomy.  Not wanting a repeat of the last few weeks, she's leaning toward the latter and I can't say I blame her.  But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
4. In the meantime, she'll also schedule additional genetic counseling and testing (beyond what she and I both had in 2010) to rule out the possibility that this tumor was caused by hereditary factors.  Based on the information available at this point, neither the surgeon nor the medical oncologist believes that it was, but the testing will confirm their hunch (or not...).

We heard a lot today, and it was exhausting.  However, we're good listeners and we've got a pretty good handle on things.  Most of all, we're strong, we're a family, we're in this together, and we're buckling up for the ride.  

Can you hear me?  We don't back down from cancer.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this #BlogElul post is one in a series marking the days of the Hebrew month of Elul, which precedes the Jewish High Holidays and traditionally serves as a time of reflection and spiritual preparation for the new year.