L'Shana Tova! Happy Jewish New Year

Luckily I stopped at my mom's just now. She told me tonite was Rosh Hashonah. L'Shana Tova is what Jews say to one another to welcome in our Jewish New Year.

At 8:15 pm, I decided I am Jewish and proud of it. I wanna attend services. On the Internet, I found live streaming of services at Jewish Community. org.

Jewish Year 5772: sunset September 28, 2011, from the Internet.

Holidays are celebrated at sunset, after we come home to our tents from a grueling day in the desert carrying water jugs on our heads, picking dates, and minding the flocks of sheep.

I, personally, as Ruth, daughter of Naomi, have an eye on her handsome son, Boaz, a widower. But I'm a Moabite, not a Jewess. Things are looking good, though, in the days before Internet dating.

Why celebrate holidays at sunset? I put the question to my friend Bob who replied:

In the modern world, as explained by one of my Hebrew School teachers, we have timepieces that accurately measure the passage of time, but without a timepiece you can't see when it's midnight, which is when the day of the week changes to the next.

In ancient times, the easiest way to mark a change from one day to the next was by observing the sun. The sun is up, or it's set.

So why does the Jewish calendar use Sunset rather than Sunrise?

Let's go to The Torah, where it states in Genesis:

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Genesis 1:3-5

Evening, THEN Morning = a complete Day. (All six Days of Creation described in the Torah use that same order)

So each Jewish day starts in the evening, at sunset.

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While at mom's, she gave me two things: an electric piano for Larry Kirschner to play at the Bonfire this Sunday and a photo of me.

Which one am I?

See below.

Hint, since we lived in Cleveland, I would've been wearing a Cleveland Browns jersey, No. 32. Jim Brown was one of the greatest running backs ever. Brown was a tremendous athlete who excelled in many sports including basketball, baseball, track and lacrosse.

In 2002, Sporting News named him the greatest athlete of all-time! Brown is now 75 and helps gang members and ghetto youth in both LA and Cleveland ("the best location in the nation") learn to manage life skills thru an organization he founded: Amer-i-Can.

Brown grew up in one of the nearly all-black Georgia Sea Islands where there was little racism. He graduated from Manhassat, NY, high school where he was a star athlete. After graduating from Syracuse University, he was drafted in Round One by the Cleveland Browns.

A real record-setter, he only played for 7 years from 1957 to 1965. My dad had no interest in televised sports, so Uncle Donny taught me the basics of football.



Driving to mom's house up Byberry Road, there was flooding so I followed the Detour signs. The traffic was horrific.

Coming home I went a different way, past the Bryn Athyn post office and got home in a jiffy. While driving home I had one of those precious moments you wish would last forever.

A great song was on the radio....a long introduction to what sounded like a Steve Miller song....turned out to be Fly Like an Eagle but very modern.....my windows were open and the breeze was caressing my hair.

Ecstasy! Watch for those moments. It's all we have.