SHABBAT V'PURIM

We spent a wonderful Shabbat with Kirk, who is a fabulous host and a fantastic cook. We chatted and rested, but already by then we were totally exhausted. The week before was so demanding and I still had so much to do to try to ensure at least a reasonable crowd would attend Monday's event.

We spent Purim (Motze Shabbat) at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Vineland, New Jersey, where Rabbi Rapoport's 14 year old son read the Megilla.

Our plan was to drive the next day with Kirk back to New York city because we had been invited to a couple of Purim seudot. We were then expecting to stay in New York until after our event on Monday night and then either return late that night or the next morning. Unfortunately, at the last minute Kirk was unable to come and that left us in a pickle. Not only were we looking forward to being with Kirk in NYC, but we were also relying on the fact that we would have his car.

Luck was on our side in the shape of Rebbetzin Nechama Rapoport who very kindly lent us her car for the next couple of days. So, off we went into the cold (which was following us everywhere: "It hasn't snowed before in Vineland in the five years I have been here," said Kirk in response to our complaints about the snow and the cold during our stay with him...we were the embodiment of winter it seemed...).

OK, so we found our way to our first Purim party - Yosef Goodman's Seudat Purim in his apartment on the Upper West Side. Yosef is Basya's boyfriend, and the event brought together a collection of familiar faces - from a range of different, but now converging environments. NYC was suddenly started to become a small place! Amichai Lau Lavie (of Storahtelling fame) was there as was Rabbi David Almog, the rabbi of Columbia Hillel, who we met when David spoke to the Columbia Hillel Jewish Meditation Group.

Anyway, later that evening we drove to Brooklyn to attend the Chulent Purim Seudah. There were several hundred people at this party. Yitzchak Shonfeld was appropriately pissed and very funny. The rest of the crowd was in varying stages of dishevelment. There were many familiar faces and a collection of the usual annoyances. I put in a hard last minute promotional effort and must have spoken to everyone I could about our talk the next evening and handed out more than one hundred flyers...one says goodbye to dignity and sensitivities during these activities...