Coming Home

nyone who knows me for even a short time knows that I’m religious. As a result, friends have been known to pass on the names of friends or family members in need of prayer. Some of my friends swear by my prayers and say that Hashem really listens to me.

If you were to look at my prayer book, the first thing you would notice is that one slim section of the white pages that comprise the small fat book is tinged off-white when the closed volume is viewed from the side. That would be the section of my prayer book that contains the Mincha prayer: the short afternoon prayer. It is my long-standing habit to pray the Mincha service.

I made up a WORD document with the names of people who want me to pray for them. The list has headings such as Conception, Refuah (healing), Shalom Bayis (marital harmony), Parnasa (financial well-being), and Shidduch (finding a match), with names under every heading. I even have some esoteric categories such as “Desire Life” and “Simcha” (happiness), according to friends’ requests. I keep this document updated as much as possible. I print out and snip the list into neat columns of paper to insert in my prayer book, in the appropriate sections of the Amida, the silent prayer Jews say three times daily.

I have been known to say my prayers during the long ride to Jerusalem, even though it is preferable to say the Amida while standing. I have said the prayer in a slim hallway at a health clinic, on the bus, backstage during an RYS rehearsal, in the Central Bus Station, in Jerusalem, Hevron, and in Efrat. It seems I am always grabbing my prayer book to say the Mincha prayers at the last possible moment before sundown.

A year ago, I cut out of a parent teacher meeting to daven Mincha when I saw the sun starting to hunker down for the day. But there were people around, parents, and it felt a bit exhibitionist. In an apologetic tone, I explained to another mother that I had a kind of pact with a friend to say Mincha and I had neglected to say it until the last moment, but that she shouldn’t think I was some kind of religious freak. This was the truth: a good friend and I had decided to do our best to pray for each other every day, as a true mark of friendship. We thought that there could be no better expression of our friendship than to pray for each other each day.

Instead of mumbling some vague platitude, the mother at that meeting told me something very cool about Mincha. She couldn’t remember the source for this word of Torah, but she had heard a rabbi say that Hashem loves the Mincha prayer best. It’s only natural to wake up in the morning, see the sunlight, and realize that it’s time to pray the morning prayer. It’s normal to see the sky darken and know that it’s time to say the evening prayer. But there are no markers to tell us that it’s time to daven Mincha. It takes a special kind of dedication to say the afternoon prayer and so Hashem loves this prayer best of all.

At this point in this mother’s recitation, I had to interrupt and explain that the reason I liked to say Mincha best is that it is the shortest in length of the three daily prayer services! I protested that I am no saint. Not by a long shot. Still, I liked that word she told me and I do feel that Hashem really listens to me when I crack open the prayer book.

It doesn’t come easily to me, the knack of prayer. I’m not a Chassid or a touchy-feely emotional kind of gal. I’m of Lithuanian Jewish stock and we are notorious for having dry, cold personalities. But the truth is that I am very moved by my own prayers. Maybe that is why I prefer to pray in a private corner of my home whenever possible. I don’t really like other people to see me in the thrall of my quiet and modest little ecstasies. But I do like my kids to see me like that. I think it’s good for them to see me stop what I’m doing and take the time to pray and acknowledge Hashem.

Alas, as much as all this makes me out, in spite of my protestations, to be some kind of religious freak or saint, I am above all human and filled with the frailty entailed by the human condition. Here’s where the confession comes in: I lost my job and had to move to a new apartment. And just when I should have been praying harder than ever, I lost the habit of praying Mincha.

I didn’t forget about Mincha or prayer. I just couldn’t bring myself back to my former state of commitment. Whenever I’d think about taking up the prayer book, I’d push the vague thought away. I was in the synagogue for the High Holidays, of course. I even davened the sunrise service, one of the first female parishioners to show up for services. But I’d lost my Mincha habit and it nagged at me in a whisper and didn’t leave me alone.

I packed and unpacked all the boxes for the move. I made the new place a home. I sent my resume out wherever I could and tried to keep positive. But I didn’t daven Mincha. I can’t explain why this should have been the case when I should have been praying HARD for a good start in a new home, and praying even harder for a new job.

All I know is that today, I at last managed to get a grip on myself. The time came and I said, “That’s it. I have to start davening Mincha again,” and I dug the book out of the hall bookcase and did my thing. It felt GOOD.

It felt like coming home.

Ten Worst Facebook Status Updates Ever

en Worst Facebook Status Updates Ever





1) Hard to believe I showered just two hours ago.

2) Bobby loves corn but I hate changing his diaper afterward.

3) How do you know when fish is bad?

4) It’s not so much the sound that gets to me when DH blows his nose; it’s the spatter art.

5) What else works besides prunes?

6) Little Timmy meant well, but drying Spot in the microwave was a bad idea. Someone said boiling lemons in there might help?

7) If you see Granny at the supermarket, see if you can git her car keys. She’s been at the crème de menthe again.

8) Gawd I’m so itchy down there, does anyone else ever get this?

9) I didn’t know a cat’s stomach could hold so much.

10) If you ate the burgers and you feel queasy, you’d best call me quick.

Tom is Worried

In Thomas L. Friedman’s latest screed against the Jewish State, Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone, he begins: “I’ve never been more worried about Israel’s future.”

Now that’s an interesting idea. Thomas L. Friedman is a known Israel-basher. His columns lambaste Israel with regularity and without factual substance. Israel is an unpopular little country and Israel-haters around the world vie for material to use to slander her further. Friedman’s Israel columns are devoured long before the virtual ink has had a chance to dry. The only possible reason for Friedman to worry about Israel’s future is that without Israel, he will no longer have the topic du jour to scream about. He might even—yikes—lose his reading audience or dare I say it? His career.

Friedman’s next sentence must be analyzed in small bits of data because it is packed to the brim with untruths: “The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.”

The key pillar of Israel’s security has always been the will of the Israeli people to preserve their state in spite of unbelievable odds, with Israel surrounded as it is by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, who have all taken turns attacking the little sliver of Jewish land throughout its short history as a modern state. Israel has given too many of its fine men and women in its existential efforts to cling to statehood. This will to survive in combination with the Israeli army for its defense are the twin pillars, nay the ONLY pillars of Israel’s security. 11,125 IDF soldiers have been killed during defensive wars with the very same nations Friedman calls its “key pillars” of security.

The peace with Egypt has been a sham. The peace is a cold peace and Jew-hatred is rampant in Egypt. Witness the anti-Jewish graffiti during the Egyptian uprising and the fact that Egyptians called Lara Logan “Jew” as they sexually assaulted and gang-raped her again and again.

As for “stable” Syria, it was Syrian-supported Hezbollah terrorists who killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more during a cross-border raid into Israel, one of the events that triggered Israel's defensive war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, also known as the Second Lebanon War. During that war, Hezbollah fired Iran-supplied Katyusha rockets, received via Syria, into Israel. Syria has long been the puppeteer in charge of Lebanon, making sure the country would be taken over by Hezbollah terrorists with weapons aplenty with which to attack Israel.

The friendship with Turkey is hard to see when looking through the lens of actual events. Turkish politicians have used anti-Jewish sentiment as electoral platforms in recent times. Researchers at the Tel Aviv University found that the Islamic Welfare Party was a major source of anti-Jewish feeling in Turkey as late as 1997. This bountiful font of Jew-hatred extends to former Prime Minister Erbakan who displayed a very negative attitude towards Israel, and peppered his speech with anti-Jewish expressions. In February 1997, the Turkish Embassy in Washington protested against anti-Jewish statements made by Turkish officials to the media, in particular those statements contained within an article published by the Welfare Party's organ, Milli Gazete. The article stated, "... a snake was created to express its poison, just as a Jew was created to make mischief." Some friendship, Tom. Not much worse than your own, however!

The “friendship” with Jordan has also been a cold peace with very little in return for Israel’s largesse regarding the sharing of water (Israel gives Jordan an annual 50,000,000 cubic meters (1.8×109 cu ft) of water and allowed Jordan to own 75% of water derived from the Yarmouk River. In return? Wannabe Israeli tourists have been stopped at the Jordanian border on not a few occasions because their luggage contained religious items such as phylacteries.

Now let’s turn our attention to Friedman’s statement that the current Israeli government is the most “diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history.”

Since March of 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu became the first Likud Prime Minister to openly accept the concept of a “two-state solution.” He implemented a 10-month settlement freeze in Judea and Samaria, a freeze which continues de facto until today and includes East Jerusalem. Netanyahu has continually insisted that he will be happy to meet with Abu Mazen at any time or place with no preconditions (Abu Mazen has refused). Netanyahu appears ready to accept a negotiating framework in which Israel would return to the 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations during his speech to Congress. These facts do not support the idea of an inept diplomat and certainly not “most diplomatically inept of any Israeli government.” There is just no truth to that statement. It’s a total Friedman fabrication/fantasy.

Next Thomas says, “This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.”

Oh yes. This is definitely, for the first time in this article, an instance in which Tom tells the truth. Minus the ineptitude part, that is. The U.S. government is well and truly fed up with Israel’s Prime Minister. POTUS is rumored to have repeated in agitation, “What the f**k! What the f**k!” \ during Netanyahu’s speech to Congress when Netanyahu made reference to Israel’s refusal to return to the indefensible lines of 1967, something that Obama tried to shove down Israel’s throat since Abu Mazen just won’t come to the table otherwise. How dare Netanyahu try to keep defensible lines; keep his state and his people safe while Abu Mazen wants that land Judenrein? The utter impertinence of Bibi: that seasoned politician and player in Middle East politics. Bibi’s cooperation and efforts toward peace stand in direct contradistinction to the bumbling attempts of President Obama to stabilize the Middle East which have generated only failure.

The only reason Obama will defend Israel at the U.N. is for the sake of holding onto his significant Jewish electorate, who no longer believes he is the champion of Israel (took them long enough).

As for Israel not pursuing policies in its own interest or America’s there is some truth buried within this little journalistic nugget, for many of Israel’s citizens are appalled at the idea of the failed two-state solution or offering more land for peace. Israel threw 8000 of its own citizens out of their homes with very little compensation and gave that land, Gaza, to the Arabs. In return, Gaza has been used as a launching pad from which missiles rain down on Israel’s civilian populations on a daily basis. Certainly many Israelis believe that offering further concessions is not only not in its interests but deadly. Furthermore, by offering concessions to terrorist entities, we offer them a toehold on one of America’s staunchest allies, the only democracy in the Middle East.

It bears consideration to analyze the way that Islamists receive such compromises. They see each small concession as a victory for Islam. They see those who concede or urge concessions as weak. How could pursuing a two-state solution or offering more land for peace then, be in America’s interest?

Next up: “Israel is not responsible for the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or for the uprising in Syria or for Turkey’s decision to seek regional leadership by cynically trashing Israel or for the fracturing of the Palestinian national movement between the West Bank and Gaza.”

Ya think? Well. Here we thought Old Thomas held Israel responsible for everything bad that happened to the world since 1948. But then he has to go and ruin it: “What Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is responsible for is failing to put forth a strategy to respond to all of these in a way that protects Israel’s long-term interests.”

Friedman goes on to say what Netanyahu did not do in light of the crises, but fails to say what he might have done that could have any positive impact on the goings on that spread throughout the Middle East like wildfire. Personally, I can’t think of a single thing that Bibi might have done that could have helped calm down or assist our neighbors during the great upheaval. But if Tom says he could have done something, let him specify what that something might be, especially considering the virulent anti-Jewish sentiment expressed wholesale by these nations during their lovely Arab Spring. All Tom can do is quote his partner in Jewish self-hating journalism, Aluf Benn of the radical left-wing Israeli newspaper HaAretz, “Netanyahu demonstrated utter passivity in the face of the dramatic changes in the region, and allowed his rivals to seize the initiative and set the agenda.”

Nu Benn, what would YOU have had Bibi do? Waiting in watchfulness and military preparedness does not passivity make, Mr. Benn. You should know that better than anyone. And you do. But it doesn’t make good copy.

Friedman says, “What could Israel have done? The Palestinian Authority, which has made concrete strides in the past five years at building the institutions and security forces of a state in the West Bank — making life there quieter than ever for Israel — finally said to itself: “Our state-building has not prompted Israel to halt settlements or engage in steps to separate, so all we’re doing is sustaining Israel’s occupation. Let’s go to the U.N., get recognized as a state within the 1967 borders and fight Israel that way.” Once this was clear, Israel should have either put out its own peace plan or tried to shape the U.N. diplomacy with its own resolution that reaffirmed the right of both the Palestinian and the Jewish people to a state in historic Palestine and reignited negotiations.”

To use an old Yiddish saying, “What does all this have to do with the price of eggs in China?” Though President Obama has tried to create a linkage between the Arab Spring and the Middle East Peace Process to deflect blame on his own bumbling initiatives, the link remains nonexistent. The only possible link that exists between all these events is an unyielding Arab delight in violence. Violence toward its own repressive regimes, violence toward Jews, violence toward blond reporters…

There is nothing that Israel can do about the very violent nature of its surrounding Arab population but it doesn’t help that the American president and Europe look the other way when violence is perpetrated on a daily basis toward the civilian populace of Sderot.

Tom continues: “Now the U.S. is scrambling to defuse the crisis, so the U.S. does not have to cast a U.N. veto on a Palestinian state, which could be disastrous in an Arab world increasingly moving toward more popular self-rule. “

Ha! Are you kidding? Obama loves the idea of vetoing the Palestinian state which saves his electable butt from having to commute Pollard’s sentence to time served. He can wing the Jewish vote on this veto alone. How serendipitous.

Meantime, he can continue to state that Israel must stop being so stubborn about accepting Auschwitz borders while lauding Abu Mazen’s willingness to negotiate if only Bibi will stop being so insistent on staying alive, staying alive, to paraphrase the eponymous BeeGees’ song. (Bibi and the Beegees—an alliterative match made in heaven).

But Tom is not yet finished spewing his obvious and not so obvious lies. “On Turkey, the Obama team and Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers worked tirelessly these last two months to resolve the crisis stemming from the killing by Israeli commandos of Turkish civilians in the May 2010 Turkish aid flotilla that recklessly tried to land in Gaza. Turkey was demanding an apology.”

If Tom were playing cricket, the phrasing here would have been utterly different. He would have written, “On Turkey, the Obama team and Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers worked tirelessly these last two months to resolve the crisis stemming from the deaths of Turkish civilians who attacked Israeli naval commandos in May 2010. The commandos attempted to board the ship after a Turkish flotilla refused orders to desist from its illegal efforts to break the maritime blockade of Gaza.”

Turkey permitted its civilians to attempt to break the legal under international law maritime blockade of Gaza. Many of the Israeli commandos were gravely wounded during the incident and yet Israel, the victim, is called on the carpet to apologize to Turkey.

Did Tom see the videotape of the actual events as played out on the flotilla? Would it not be his journalistic responsibility to view those videos and review international law as regards maritime blockades? But no. Tom is not interested in the truth. He is interested in generating a wide readership. What better way to do so than to spread hatred for the Jews and Israel and then all can say, “Even Thomas L. Friedman says so, and he is a JEW so it must be true.”

Tom continues, “According to an exhaustive article about the talks by the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, the two sides agreed that Israel would apologize only for “operational mistakes” and the Turks would agree to not raise legal claims. Bibi then undercut his own lawyers and rejected the deal, out of national pride and fear that Mr. Lieberman would use it against him. So Turkey threw out the Israeli ambassador.”

Barnea, in seeming cahoots with all the other Jew-hating Jews, (Tom, Benn, et al ) has exhausted himself by doing nothing but trash Netanyahu. Of course, there are never any facts to support these creative writing exercises. In an article he entitled, “Smell of Fear,” Barnea writes of his own Prime Minister, "What does this man want, people in every world capital are asking at this time. Does he even want something, aside from returning every evening to the PM's official residence, surrounded by an army of bodyguards?"

So take his supposition that Bibi is afraid of Lieberman with a very LARGE grain of salt. Netanyahu currently enjoys wide support from Israelis who tend to be divided when it comes to these things. Netanyahu is nobody’s puppet and certainly not Lieberman’s who is a marginal force in Israeli politics, at best. Netanyahu did not offer an apology to Turkey because the people of Israel cried out against this travesty of justice. Netanyahu held firm in spite of America’s insistence that the victim apologize.

Not only is Israel the victim of the misguided attempt to break its legal maritime blockade, but as Friedman would have it, Israel is to blame for the subsequent removal of its ambassador from Turkish soil as a consequence of Israel’s defense of its men against a foreign criminal element. Those Israeli commandos landed on the flotilla armed with PAINTBALLS. How would America have handled a similar situation in which someone attempted to break its legal maritime blockade? It would have fired on the flotilla without further ado. And America would certainly not have apologized.

Tom goes on, “As for Egypt, stability has left the building there and any new Egyptian government is going to be subjected to more populist pressures on Israel. Some of this is unavoidable, but why not have a strategy to minimize it by Israel putting a real peace map on the table?”

See some of Egyptian hatred toward Israel is “unavoidable.” Is that so, Tom? Does Israel really deserve such hatred? Israel has extended the hand of peace to Egypt and Jordan, removed 8000 of its own people from Gaza after which it gave the land to the Arabs, accepted the proposition of a two-state solution and more. Why should these facts make Israel an object of Egyptian hatred?

Furthermore, why is it Israel’s responsibility to offer more than has already been offered? In fact, if Israel offers any more, there will be no more Israel.

And maybe that’s the whole point that ties this in neatly with the beginning of this blog: without Israel, where will Tom be? Without Israel, his journalism career will do a belly-smacker into the toilet.

Tom writes, “I have great sympathy for Israel’s strategic dilemma and no illusions about its enemies. But Israel today is giving its friends — and President Obama’s one of them — nothing to defend it with. Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation.”

Oh so twisted, Tom. Your sympathy for Israel is so great that you want it to agree with Obama and go back to its indefensible 1967 Auschwitz borders. Because Obama has no other way to defend Israel except during the highly-anticipated eulogy of the Jewish state: a postmortem defense.

Israel is not fighting WITH anyone, Tom. Israel is fighting for its life, in self-defense. I would like to prove this to Mr. Friedman by having him spend a week in Sderot. Hell, I’ll even throw in room and board; transportation, too! The “serious” peace overture to which Friedman refers is the entirety of Israel, free of Jews. And then there will be no more isolation. For there will be no more Israel.

In the final act, Tom delivers a coups de gras to his nemesis—his great embarrassment—a leader who defends Tom’s own people and land, “Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and drags America along with it.”

To paraphrase: too bad Bibi won’t throw Israel under the bus. Let’s hope the Israeli people will stop with this ridiculous existential fight and vote in someone more tractable like Livni or Barak. Otherwise, Europe will just hate the U.S. Not to mention alienating all those oil interests. And that just can’t be countenanced. Bad Bibi. Bad.

Getting Up With Fleas

There's an old saying: "Lay down with dogs. Get up with fleas."

That's pretty much the way I feel about Glenn Beck as a spokesman for Israel and the Jews. If we go to bed with him, we'll wake up with fleas.

I don't really care if he talks the talk and walks the walk. Our best friend for life? I don't give a flying Ferguson and I'll tell you why: Public perception of Glenn Beck is that he is a nut case.

No matter how sterling his words and deeds as they relate to Israel and the Jews, by pledging our troth to him, Israel and the Jews can only tarnish their image. And if you take the time to research the guy, you will find that his words and deeds are NOT sterling. Not in the least.

Take a look for instance at the following clip in which he repeats the old canard that the Jews killed Jesus (even though we all know it was the Romans). Pay close attention to the hatred in his face at 6:45.


Then there are the racial slurs for which Beck is well known. Wish I had a clip of him insulting Asians on the radio. Luckily, a clip does exist of Beck telling really fat people they should just die.


Or how about his lack of sympathy for survivors of 911? Did you think they were sacrosanct? Beyond censure? Not to Beck.


Not that it matters. Because public perception of Glenn Beck is that he is a certified nut job. That's my perception of him as well. As I watch and listen to him my "nut-job antennae" begin to go, "Bleep, bleep, bleep," as they pick up signals of at least mild lunacy. That's aside from the actual content of what he says: a gut-level reading.

But again, it doesn't matter what I think or what you think. It only matters that to the public, Beck is a nut job. You've all heard of guilt by association? It works with other social ills and traits. If you associate with Farakhan or say, "They don't make 'em like Father Coughlin anymore," that's going to brand you with a certain label because these are people who stand for certain (repugnant) ideas. That would apply in equal parts to (ahem) people who have a history of long association with Reverend Wright.

Not long ago, I was assigned an article on the topic of metamathematics, which is the application of mathematical theories to non-mathematical problems: If Glenn Beck is offensive and strange, and Glenn Beck likes the Jews and Israel, ergo, the Jews and Israel are offensive and strange. Simple as that.

If Glenn Beck really cared about the Jews and Israel, he'd stop aligning himself with them, because all he can do is harm their cause. Which proves his motives are less than pure, IMHO. Can you spell "Rapture?"

I think the Jews and Israel DO need a spokesperson. But that person must be squeaky clean. Beyond reproach. No skeletons in the closet. Israel's spokesperson has to be respected by Democrats and Republicans alike and Europe has to like him/her, too. And oh, yeah: it can't be someone Jewish.

I can't think of anyone who fits the bill. For awhile I thought that maybe Ileana Ros-Lehtinen might be that knight in shining armor. But no. She's got Jewish roots. She is supportive of Scientology. *sigh*

The upshot is that maybe the Jews are just going to have to rely on themselves for now. As Hillel the Elder said, "Im ein ani li, mi li?" (If I am not for myself, who will be for me?) If every Jew will consider that he is an ambassador for his people, that would be an excellent start. Of course, part of that ambassadorship involves being worthy to inherit the land on a daily basis.

April Fool's Day

Yesterday, I was quaffing my first morning cup of coffee in a desperate attempt to wake up and face my usual Thursday marathon. It's a killer--I bake challohs and cakes and still have to generate food for my brood and slug through the laundry. That would be fine except that I also work for a living. I try to churn out at least 3 articles a day.

So there I was dosing myself with caffeine and going through my inbox when I came upon a digest from one of my yahoo groups: the Israel-food list. It is rare for me to weigh in on threads there or pose questions. It's just not my focus these days and I've been thinking about setting this group to "no mail."

But I made a quick scan of this particular digest and something truly weird caught my eye: a thread that began with Mirj Weiss' request for recipes to trick her husband on April Fool's Day.

The suggestions were DISGUSTING and I found myself rolling my eyes. Meatloaf with a hotdog in the center so that each slice came out with a neat little round of frankfurter in the middle. Meatloaf "cupcakes" with mashed potato icing. FEH. I was SO grossed out.

At any rate, I finally moved my duff out of my office chair and into the kitchen to put up my challoh dough. I was slugging through my cooking tasks (when will I ever be able to just take my time cooking and really enjoy it instead of rushing through things and feeling pressured to get to something else??) and got to the point where I was grating garlic cloves on my microplane for our lunchtime meal of chicken fajitas when I grated my thumb.

Nothing new. I'm a klutz, pure and simple, and I'm always cutting and grating myself, sometimes to the point of needing stitches. I managed to bandage my thumb which was bleeding like a stuck pig, but we had these really low-quality bandaids (won't buy those again) and they kept falling off every time I washed my hands.

Now one cannot cook without washing hands. It won't work. And I really don't want to have rubber-glove flavored fajitas which would be the likely result were I to wear gloves to cover my bandaged thumb. Besides, I was in too much of a hurry to stop and put on a glove. I was cooking with grease by now, well-caffeinated and in the groove (if a very klutzy groove).

So I got up, put on a new bandaid, and went on to mixing the batter for my Peanut Buddy Bars, or as we call these chocolate-iced peanut butter brownies: Nutty Buddy Bars. I was adding the eggs and vanilla to the creamed margarine, peanut butter, and sugar mixture when I realized my thumb was no longer bandaged.

EEK! Did it fall into the batter?? I looked around. No sign of a bandage on the kitchen counter where I was working. Not on the floor. GAWD! It must be in the batter.

I looked in the bowl, but couldn't find anything that looked bandaid-like in the mass of bandaid-colored batter. I dug out a wooden spoon and moved the mixture around in an attempt to spot the bandaid and fish it out, but nothing doing: I couldn't find the darned thing.

Then I remembered the thread on the Israel-Food list and things went from bad to worse. You know those cartoons where the good conscience and the bad conscience whisper in the character's ears: "Do it, they'll never know, MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA!" and "Don't do it, Varda. Don't listen to him!"

I thought: "I'll just bake the batter anyway, as is, and when someone finds my bloody bandaid, I'll say, 'April Fool's!'"

I even imagined posting this to the Israel-Food list and the laughs this note would surely generate.

Then I shook my head. HARD. And came back to reality.

Taking a deep breath, I plunged my hand (not the bloody-thumbed one) into the batter and felt around until I found the darned thing. I waved it in the air for an invisible audience, thinking, "SUCCESS!"

Of course, someone else would have deemed the batter unsanitary by now, thrown out the batter, and begun again. But I'm not someone else.

April Fool's!


Chocolate Peanut Buddy Bars

1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 ¼ cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ t. salt
2 cups chocolate chips, divided

Preheat oven to 350.

In large mixer bowl, beat peanut butter and butter or margarine until smooth, about 1 minute.

Add sugar, eggs and vanilla extract; beat until creamy.

Blend in flour and salt.

Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips.

Spread into ungreased 13x9 inch baking pan.

Bake 25-30 minutes, or until edges begin to brown.

Immediately, sprinkle remaining chocolate chips over cookie layer.

Let stand 5 minutes until chips become shiny and soft.

Spread melted chips evenly over top. Cool completely. Cut into 1 ½ inch bars. Makes 48 bars.

Proving My Worth and Mettle

When I was a new bride, I owned a Kenwood Mixer. This sturdy stand-mixer came with shredding, grinding, kneading, juicing and egg-white whipping attachments. I ran that thing into the ground as I fed a family that grew by leaps and bounds. Dov tinkered with the Kenwood, failed to find a way to resuscitate my favorite kitchen toy, and finally brought it to a Jerusalem-based repairman.

The repairman LOST my Kenwood. That's right. He misplaced this largish kitchen appliance. Or so he said. Dov thinks the guy thought we weren't good for the money, so he fixed it and resold it to someone else at a bigger profit than he would have made from the repair, anyway.

Sue the guy? Yeah. Right. This is the Middle East. Just write it off.

After the loss of my Kenwood, I made do with a variety of hand-mixers that came with built-in obsolescence. They burned out with great regularity. And each time we bought a new one. A hand-mixer isn't built to mix a very thick or large amount of cake batter and I have a very large family (did I mention I have 12 kids?) with a serious sweet tooth.

It helped that my mother in-law bought me a food processor as a gift after my fifth child, Elyahu's birth. That replaced all the wonderful Kenwood attachments (grater, grinder, and so forth), but couldn't stand in as a mixer for most cakes and cookies. So through the years, we've had a long parade of hand-mixers enter our home in a box and leave by way of the trash can.

Well, getting to the point of my story, my latest mixer incarnation died over Chanuka while mixing the icing for Yitzchak's birthday cake. Our lovely downstairs neighbor Dina allowed us to use her mixer to finish mixing the icing and then I took a prolonged break from baking until such time as I could replace the hand-mixer for the umpteenth time. Such a break is an unheard of luxury for me. I bake every single week, come rain or shine, every Thursday, so we'll have a home-baked Shabbos dessert.

Now, just a short time ago, friends and clients of Dov's opened a branch of the Marzipan bakery in the Old City of Jerusalem, and my son Natan was hired to work in the store. If you've never tasted Marzipan chocolate rugelach, you are missing out on a little piece of heaven. These are the gooiest, moistest, most chocolaty chocolate rugelach ever made, bar none. They DRIP with chocolate. They leak through the plastic lined box, so you have to keep the box inside a bag. Oh my God they're good. Fattening, true. But expensive.

Lucky for us, what with the owners being our friends, and our son their devoted worker, we got a discount. For several weeks running, we ordered two kilogram of these chocolate pastry treats to be delivered late Friday afternoon and not a crumb was left by Saturday night.

But this week something went wrong.

One of the co-owners of the store moved house this week and Dov helped him with various errands, including the delivery of the rugelach inside our town of Efrat. Once Dov had completed the deliveries, it turned out that there were none left for us--the order got screwed up. Dov was not a happy camper and he didn't want to talk about it. I was sick with a virus, and he felt like he was failing me.

Not to worry. Here comes SuperVard. With only 45 minutes left until candle-lighting time, when all work must cease, and we must harbor in the 26 hour Jewish Sabbath, I remembered a cake recipe I could probably turn out with just my whisk. Wacky Cake. I grabbed my Hershey's cookbook from the shelf and started pulling ingredients out of the pantry. I was a veritable whirlwind.

My husband and kids were looking at me like I was crazy. There was no way I could have a cake ready in time for Shabbos. But I kept going. I greased the pan, shook some cocoa around the bottom and sides, and began measuring flour, sugar, cocoa, and salt into a mixing bowl. Then...Horrors!! I saw I didn't have enough baking soda. I was short one teaspoon.

Even though my user-friendly neighbor Dina was recovering from gallbladder surgery, we had no choice but to send a kid down to get some baking soda--things had progressed too far in my mixing bowl to stop the cake momentum now. Dina coughed up a box of baking soda (Thanks, Dina!) and I threw a second teaspoon of baking soda into the bowl and got ready to mix.

The whisk couldn't really make it through that heavy cake batter, but undaunted, I grabbed a fork and kept going. My family was NOT going to go without a dessert on this or any other Shabbos.

Thirty-five minutes later, that cake came out of the oven with moments to spare, high and light and smelling of chocolate. I placed it on a rack to cool and raided my freezer for all the odds and ends of icing I've saved from various cake-decorating projects. By the time we were ready to eat, the cake had cooled enough to ice and after icing my creation, I sprinkled it with blue and white sprinkles.

My family thought I was a miracle maker. I'd show you a photo of the cake, but it didn't last long enough to get a photo. Dov couldn't get over it--how I pulled that off. The kids couldn't either. That pan was LICKED clean.

Another job for SuperVard.

Chicken Story

Dov went shopping at Rami Levy Thursday night and as he approached the meat counter, the solitary Jewish worker behind the counter, who always waits on Dov looked at him and said, "Judge."

Dov was flustered. He stuttered, "How did you know my wife is in Judge?"

One of the Arab workers walked over and shook his head, "Chicken," he said. "He's trying to say "chicken" in Arabic, but he's saying it wrong. It's Juszh!"