Today we co-sponsored the kiddush at shul, in honor of Calebs birthday. (Translation we, along with another family, paid for the food spread at synagogue today). Doing something around his birthday was the Rabbis idea, when we were talking about what to do about his yartzeit (Hebrew anniversary of his death), which gets a little hairy since he died mere hours before Rosh HaShanah. So for the yartzeit we did have a special minyan and Banjo and I did have the honor of calling out the words when the Rabbi blew the shofar, but we saved the kiddush for his birthday time. That in and of itself was great - both because it gives recognition twice, spreading out the CALEB-love, but also because it recognizes his birthday specifically... And as someone said to me at the kiddush, it is honoring his *life.*. That also matched up really well with a lot of what the rabbi said today in her Dvar Torah (words of Torah, sermon)... Partly something she said in reference to Jacob (who, this week in Torah is preparing for his own death - is part of what he was trying to say that he wanted to be remembered and seen for how he lived?) but also even when discussing different words in the Torah portion which would both be translated as lived but mean it in different ways - the portion itself is referred to as Vayechi - and he lived - from Chai - Chai meaning life, like Caleb is Chaim, like Caleb truly truly lived and embraced life with such passion. We also were called up to the Torah for the seventh aliyah and though as a 9 year old of course Banjo was, officially speaking, just supposed to be there with us - but what can I say the kid joined in on parts of the blessings. When it was time to go downstairs, the rabbi warned everyone to just take a sip after the blessings because I was going to be making a toast. I said that its really easy to toast CALEB, for two reasons.... One, because since his name is Chaim, people are toasting him all over the world all the time and dont even realize it! And secondly, I told of how on his last shabbat with us he took a line from Fantastic Mr Fox and made it his own, toasting to Caleb - long may he live.... And with that I toasted LChaim Mazal - To CALEB, long may he live in our hearts. It was nice to have a whole room full of people to share the toast with, you know? We also put pictures of CALEB on the table. We brought Calebs kindergarten school pic (the earth one), and banjo and i made a collage with pics of CALEB at shul, as I already posted... Afterwards Steve Elworth asked me when Im due, and when I said in seven weeks, he said so well be doing this again in 8 weeks! He had to spell it out for me that hes already gearing up for the plums bris/naming....whoa Nellie, slow down! :)
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:34:51 +0000
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