Remembering...

 לעילוי נשמתם

Li'ilui Nishmatam

Raising their souls... remembering...

Some of my relatives, on my mother's side... all have passes away, if I'm not mistaken

According to the Jewish Calendar, today and tomorrow are yartzeits for two of my aunts, two of my mother's sisters. May their memories be blessed. 

Even many of my cousins have passed away already, some at rather young ages, all from illnesses, even the bride in this picture, who died recently at the age of 82. That's old for my maternal family. On the same day another cousin born in the same year, also died. 

Some families consider 90+ normal and almost take that age for granted, not my mother's family. My mother lived to an older age than any of her siblings, 88, two decades more than her parents. 

My father, like my mother, lived to an older age than his parents and siblings...

Nothing's guaranteed... 

I have a theory that our genes predict many things in our general health. Think of it as Gd giving us a hand of cards, some better and some worse. Of course, just like when playing cards you can play badly and lose even if you start with a great hand, and it's even possible to make the best of a bad hand-- though that's much harder. Obviously I don't believe any of the the hypes claiming that certain foods or lifestyles will guarantee you a long healthy life... and that's not even taking in account that an accident, criminal or terrorist can destroy the life of a potentially long-living healthy person. 

What's most important is to take care of ourselves, as best as we can, thank Gd and treasure every minute and certainly our family and friends... Anger and hatred destroy the gifts of life... 

Five Years

Shirley Shankman Spiegelman
1925-2013

Today was five years since my mother passed away.

I was away last night and not sure I'd be able to light a candle for her, so I asked my husband to do it at home for me. But later I did light one and drank a l'chaim to her life.

She was beautiful, charming and intelligent. Acting and dancing were among her hobbies. She loved Broadway musicals, band we had many of the albums and listened to them enough for me to still be able to sing some of the great songs from shows like South Pacific, Oklahoma!, The King and I and Mary Martin's Peter Pan.

My mother was lots more than a wannabe actress. Since my father supported the family, she didn't need to work for a living. Besides taking care of us, she was an active member of lots of local organizations, PTA, synagogue Sisterhood and others. She almost always ended up as chairman or president. It was rare for her to have a lesser position. One of her final voluntary positions was chairman of the local PNAI chapter. She even allowed my father's name to be put in for treasurer, even though it meant, considering his condition at the time, that she'd have to do the work for that role, too.

My mother's parents both emigrated from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. They were both widowed with a total of five children when they married and had another four together. My mother was the second to youngest. My parents built a successful life together. In many ways I've always considered them to be a generation of mythical giants.

Those "24 Hour" Candles, Warning

In pretty much all traditional and fully Torah observant Jewish homes, you're bound to find "24 Hour" Candles, which are needed on certain holidays and when observing Yartzeits, anniversaries of deaths. When I was growing up these 24 hour candles were in glasses, which were always washed out well after the candle burnt out. And those became our drinking glasses. Nowadays, at least in Israel, the 24 hour candles are in metal cups.

For a number of years already, many people I know have been noticing that instead of the 25 hours or more they used to stay lit and be needed, nowadays, they don't last even twenty-four 24 hours.

To be honest, twenty-four 24 hours are not enough for some purposes. They really need to stay lit for twenty-five 25 hours. That's because if you have it lit on Rosh Hashanah in order to light the second night, that's twenty-five 25 hours after being lit. If there's no light/fire, one can't light the Holy Day candles. In my neighborhood, we've all come to each other's house in a panic looking for a light/fire to light from. And then we have to very carefully go from house to house with the lit candle to be used to light another. Sometimes, because we were too young to think of having Yartzeit candles in our homes, and the logistics of getting everything ready we'd forget, but more often, we lit, but the candle didn't stay lit long enough.

The candle needs to be still going strong after twenty-five hours for Yom Kippur, too, since it's traditional to light the Havdalah candle from a burning flame, lit before the fast/holiday.

For years already, I've been using candles that say 48 or 72 hours because of this problem. Before the Yom Kippur fast began, just seconds before lighting the holiday candles, like for Shabbat, I lit two different  Yartzeit candles. One was one of those 24 hour ones, and the other a 48 (actually 50 according to the label) hour one. I'm sure you're not surprised that only one of them was still lit when we came home from shul. And in case you don't know, our shul is just behind the house, so we didn't need to travel or take a long walk.

A neighbor had asked to come for  Havdala, since her candle had gone out pretty early. She said that many others had complained to the company and never received replies. So after we ate, I decided to blog about the issue and the suggesting that people do what I do and get longer-lasting candles. To do this I took some photos of the candles. And what do you think I discovered?

Not only don't the candle manufacturers attempt to give you enough wax for the needed 25 hours, which was once the norm, they now protect themselves by writing on the can in Hebrew and English:

"Burns About 24 Hours"

Next time you're buying, check to see what it is. They sure don't make 'em like they used to...