We Stand With Israel in a Quest for Peace

When my recent blog mentioned worshipping at a High Holiday service at a North Shore congregation at the onset of the Yom Kippur War, I could not foresee or imagine that three weeks later I would be standing in the parking lot of the same synagogue, rallying with my fellow Chicago Jews after the heinous terrorist attack in Israel.

But there we convened, Jews of every branch of our faith, standing together to demonstrate our support for Eretz Yisroel, the Land of Israel, our Jewish homeland. We are not always united. A week ago many of our viewpoints on the direction of the Israeli government clashed. While many have friends and family living there, for some the only connection might be the Birthright trip our children had been on. A few of us may have thought of Israel only as an afterthought in our busy lives.

But the deadly Hamas attack on civilians — men, women, and children — on October 7th, has changed all that. Together we waved Israeli flags as we listened to addresses from Governor JB Pritzker, Congressman Brad Schneider, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, and others. We sang two national anthems, The Star-Spangled Banner and The Hatikvah, with Israeli and American flags waving together.

What brings us all together is the unshakeable conviction that Israel has a right to exist and a right to exist in peace. It is peace we all seek, and though there must and will be retribution for the violence of the last several days, peace and coexistence is the ultimate goal.

We came to a rally in a temple parking lot to express our support, our unity, and our strength. We pledge those things to Israel and the world.

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Bagesl, Bagels, Bagels. Memories Go Round and Round.

“Should we stop for bagels?” I asked Barb on Sunday night as we closed in on the Touhy exit on the Edens Expressway. It was late, we were coming home from watching “The Lehman Trilogy” a three-hour play at Water Tower Place, and I was tired, so I stayed in my lane and sped past the exit ramp.

The store we bypassed was the New York Bagel & Bialy shop. We passed it this week, but for many years it was a regular Sunday night stop for us. That was family night, as we packed the kids into the minivan and visited my parents and aunt in Rogers Park.

Some nights my mother would cook–her Weiner Schnitzel is still one of my all-time favorite meals — most weeks we would visit a local restaurant. Bones in Lincolnwood was a consistent favorite, and it continued to be one after it was rechristened L. Woods. Or we might venture to Hi Howe for a Chinese feast (something my dad would never have consented to when I was growing up.) And no one ever complained if we drove to Wilmette to enjoy breakfast-for-dinner at the original Walker Brothers location.

Once the seniors were settled back in their apartments, we turned west on Touhy and headed for home. But nine weeks out of ten, just before we reached the Edens entrance I would pull into the narrow parking lot in front of New York Bagel & Bialy.

In those days the store was open 24 hours a day. I’d walk into a steamy miasma, the odor of baking bread filling the air. The same counter woman always took care of me, whether she recognized me I could never tell. I would ask her for a dozen bagels, balancing plain, sesame seed, and poppyseed varieties. And there was always a 13th bagel, the baker’s dozen bonus, for us to split up and enjoy on the rest of the car ride home.

I know my health is better off for my not stopping to grab a dozen bagels last week. And I am pretty sure that the taste just wouldn’t be the same as the melt in the mouth goodness I remembered from 30 years ago. But next time I am driving onTouhy or flying down the Edens I think I’ll make that bagel stop one more time.

Make that bonus bagel a sesame seed, hot out of the oven.

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Shouldering Up

“He will order an MRI, recommend PT, and then set you up for surgery.”

That was Barb’s prediction when I finally succumbed to chronic shoulder pain and scheduled a visit with the orthopedic surgeon that my internist had recommended. A few months of retirement with its excessive tennis, pickleball, bowling, golf, and biking had done what 45 years of twiddling a microscope fine focus knob had not and sent me off to a specialist.

I was barely able to raise my right arm without pain — I could forget about trying to serve a tennis ball. During our Germany journey, it was rough getting our carry-on bags into the overhead compartments on our many flights. And Cooper’s tugging at his leash during our long walks sent shock waves through my right arm.

The orthopod and his Physician’s Assistant followed Barb’s prediction to a tee. After they completed a quick examination and asked me a few questions, they told me I had some rotator cuff damage. Their prescription: get an MRI, get some physical therapy, and then get back to us for future plans.

As expected, the MRI showed a bit of structural wear and tear in my shoulder, but nothing excessively dramatic. So off I went to a small private physical therapy office recommended by a friend, located across the street from my internist.

I have spent the last month going to PT twice a week. The first visit consisted of lots of assessment of arm movements and levels of pain. Since then, therapy has consisted of lots of shoulder and neck massage, strengthening exercises, and a home workout regimen.

And none of it was working. My shoulder didn’t feel any better, and my neck and arm started to feel worse. I was about to tell the therapist that I was not going to schedule any further sessions when out of the blue, he said “Let’s try a few things we haven’t done yet.” It was “Hail, Mary” time.

He began with a technique called scraping, running a dull-edged blade against my upper shoulder. It was pleasant but didn’t feel therapeutic. My shoulder felt the same. But then came the coup de grâce–dry needling. While I quaked in my shoes, my PT inserted a needle into the tender points in my shoulder twiddling it around, looking for muscle twitches.

He found them. As he repeated the needle insertion in three different spots, I could feel my muscles jerking, sometimes painfully. My right hand began trembling uncontrollably. And when it was done, I felt…better.

That was three days ago. I feel some soreness as a result of the needling. I have a bit of residual tightness, which a remarkable device called the Thera Cane is helping resolve. But my shoulder is almost pain-free and I can literally reach for the sky.

I will schedule follow-ups with the PT and the orthopedic surgeon. But right now the sun is shining and it is a beautiful day.

Tennis, anyone?

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Are These Jeopardy! Players Winners Or Losers?

Last week I discovered that Jeopardy!, the TV game show, has a losers tournament. Of course, they don’t call it that. The official name is the Second Chance Tournament, but I am not pulling any punches–these are losers! I know. I have been there, I have done that.

As host Ken Jennings explains on each episode of the SCT, the show has contacted players who have previously appeared on Jeopardy! and finished second in their first and only game. These lucky losers are being invited to chance to play again, matched against two other “non-winners.”

We are now in the middle of a complex tournament schedule, which eventually will yield a grand champion. Give me a break. The winner of this tournament will be a champion as much as Suzette Charles was Miss America in 1984. You all remember Miss Charles, don’t you? She was the runner-up who was elevated to the Miss America Crown when the true winner, Vanessa Williams, was relieved of her duties after some mildly scandalous pictures appeared in Penthouse Magazine. Not quite the same for MIss Charles as having Bert Parks sing her down the aisle.

Are these second-chance players any good? Who can tell? The answers for which the contestants must provide the questions are softballs. In the real Tournament of Champions, a contestant might need to know what year Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was first performed. In this tournament, all that the players might need to know about Herr Beethoven is his first name.

Do I sound a bit hostile, a tad bitter? Certainly, I do! I finished second in my one appearance on Jeopardy! too! And no one is inviting me back to take another shot at it. I will admit that in my game I was a rather distant second, thousands of dollars behind the winner, while these SCT invitees were narrowly defeated in their original contests. But perhaps that means they choked the first time around, playing like a quarterback throwing a last-minute pick-six interception instead of driving his team to the game-winning touchdown.

Hard feelings aside Sony Productions, if you ever throw a second chance tournament for former players who are now seniors, have slowed reflexes, and can’t quite see the game board, I’d appreciate a call. Just keep the questions easy. And don’t worry, I’ve kept my pictures out of Penthouse, scandalous or not.

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Memories and Generations at the Start of a New Year

For most, Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is a time to look ahead, to the upcoming good and sweet year, ushered in with prayer, apples, and honey. But as I davened in temple this year, I found my mind drifting, envisioning the many ages of my life and the assorted Chicago-area locales where I have listened to the blowing of the Shofer on this ancient holy day.

Rogers Park in the late 1960s. Standing with friends on Pratt Avenue after youth services at B’nai Zion Synagogue. In my mind, those services were interspersed with ones on the bleachers of Loyola Park, a small mimeographed cardboard rectangle being the ticket to admission. All leading up to the one astonishing moment when the youth leader carrying the Torah past the young congregants tripped (or was tripped,) almost dropping the sacred scroll to the ground. A stern warning to all followed; had the Torah dropped to the floor, we would all be fasting for 40 days!

in 1970, as a high school junior, I was called upon to prepare and lead a Rosh Hashana teen service. Along with my collaborator, we culled news stories and ancient fables to choose readings that would be relevant to our fellow teenagers. Fitting for those violent times, our readings related to the war in Vietnam and the tragic shootings at Kent State a few months earlier.

A few years later a college friend invited me to join her at High Holiday services at a lovely synagogue on the shore of Lake Michigan. The setting was inspiring. But this was the year 1973. Ten days after Rosh Hashana, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel to initiate the Yom Kippur War.

Twenty years later Barb and I were a married couple with young children. The family worshipped on Rosh Hashana in the old auditorium at Stevenson High School. In a bit of karma, the Rabbi was the same Rabbi who had officiated at my Bar Mitzvah decades earlier, when he was an itinerant Rabbi who had only recently moved to Chicago. In more karma, sitting in the auditorium foreshadowed my upcoming long association with Stevenson High School.

As the kids grew, so did the need for Hebrew School and Bar Mitzvah lessons. To minimize carpool time, we joined a congregation near our home. High Holiday services were scripted, lengthy, and maintained every ritual. They were everything but inspirational, and when the Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s were over, so was our synagogue membership.

A few years later, Stevenson High School beckoned once more, this time with services in the Performing Arts Center. The setting was livelier and so was the spiritual leader, a young cantor training to be a Rabbi. Accompanied by a professional choir he gave life and breath to the services. In his sermons he challenged the congregants with questions, his assistants roaming the auditorium with microphones seeking out answers. We enjoyed those Rosh Hashana services for many years until COVID silenced them.

Today, post-COVID we pray once again, this year at our son’s congregation along with his wife and our granddaughters. My favorite Hebrew saying has always been “L’dor vdor”–“From Generation to Generation.” The circle of life continues.

May all the days of your life be good ones. L’shana Tovah.

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Doin’ The Laundry, The Old Rogers Park Way

1967. The tiny commercial laundry was tucked under the Lunt end of the Morse-Lunt L stop in Rogers Park. Next door was the small variety store where the neighborhood kids would buy gleaming white rubber balls with raised stitching, the kind we would use to play fastpitch with in the schoolyard down the block.

My family’s apartment on Farwell east of Sheridan had plenty of advantages–it was close to the beach, the pier, the tennis courts, and the notorious Farwell Park bubbler — but the building was old and lacked a clothes washer and dryer, even in the musty basement.

On Monday mornings my mother would load our laundry cart, the upright type on two wheels, and pull it the 4 or 5 blocks along Lunt to the laundry. My Tuesday afternoon chore? I was to stop at the laundry on my way home from school, pay the $2.00 charge, and pull our cart, now full of clean, neatly folded clothes back to Farwell and up the three flights of stairs to our apartment.

The proprietor of the laundry was a middle-aged man, though he seemed very old to me. He spoke with an accent I wasn’t worldly enough to place. I recognized that he was foreign, just as my parents were. We would speak a few words as I carefully pulled a pair of wrinkled one-dollar bills out of my pocket and handed them to him. In the summer the heat in the laundry was nauseating, but on cold winter days I would luxuriate in the steamy warmth as I waited for him to retrieve our cart.

I was always careful to make sure no one saw me duck into the laundry. I would hope none of my friends were buying baseball cards or a candy bar at the store next door as I stepped outside to begin the trudge home. I don’t know why I found it so embarrassing, I was just doing a necessary chore, but as adolescents, don’t we find many things embarrassing?

I rarely get to Rogers Park these days. Maybe I will pack the grandkids in the car and give them a tour of the neighborhood I grew up in. I will show them the schools, the restaurants, the synagogues, and the location where my apartment building once stood. If the kids aren’t too bored I’ll include the spot under the L. And hope the fragrant steamy aroma of drying laundry still fills the air.

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Note: Further research indicates that the top photo MAY not be the Morse L station. My apologies for the error and any inconvenience.

This Line Makes a Difference

The United States created the Missouri Compromise to try to separate slave states from free ones. France built the Maginot Line to protect itself from Germany. The Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone was established in 1954 to divide North Vietnam from the South. But none of those lines of demarcation were as successful as the Kitten-Cooper-Kitchen line in our home.

Phoebe our kitten is a diminutive thing. She is almost 13 years old, but still far more petite than any of the myriad of cats we have previously owned. She loves to shadow Barb, sleep in the sun, and do her roly-poly twists on our bed each night.

Phoebe even liked our previous puppy, Milo, a rat-terrier mix. She enjoyed grooming him and seemed saddened when he left us. But then came Cooper.

Cooper has energy. Now that he is almost three, we had hopes that he would mature and outgrow his puppy exuberance. But as we watch him bound through the backyard, maturity does not seem to be in his, or our, near future.

Cooper intimidates Phoebe. He will wrap his body around the kitten, unfazed by her yelps of terror as she flees in panic. To keep the contacts to a minimum, during waking hours Cooper is restricted to two rooms in the house. He joins Barb and me as we spend most evenings behind closed doors in the home office. Most other times he is confined to the kitchen.

With our open floor plan, the kitchen is wide open to much of the house, but a portable invisible fence* keeps Cooper in the kitchen area. We mark the Kitten-Cooper-Kitchen demarcation line with small flags. When Cooper sees the flags, he knows that he is not to cross over that line.

And Phoebe knows it too. She will spread on the floor just beyond the line, keeping her eye on us, but just outside of Cooper’s reach. When we send Cooper out to do his business, Phoebe will tentatively enter the kitchen, knowing that she can always make a quick retreat back to her side of the line when Cooper reappears. She need not fret, knowing that she is safe.

The Missouri Compromise didn’t avert the Civil War. The Maginot line didn’t succeed in keeping Germany from over-running France. The DMZ didn’t prevent the horrific Vietnam conflict. But sometimes a line can do the trick!

*Cooper respects the invisible fence even though it is never actually turned on and he is at no risk of electric shock

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SWAN SONG

Swan Song: a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement.

No, I’m not giving up the blog! This swan song is less metaphorical, and sadly, more literal.

Barb received a text from our neighbor Renee last evening. “We are looking at the pond and we are worried that something is wrong with the swan. It looks funny and hasn’t moved for a while.”

I slipped into my sneakers and met Renee and her guests on the high grass bordering the sidewalk. We passed through the grass until we were overlooking the edge of the pond. The swan was 50 feet to our right, lying at an odd angle on the surface of the water. Its feathers, normally pristine white, looked rumpled and grey.

We tossed a few small stones in the vicinity of the great bird. Tiny waves rippled around it rocking it gently, but the swan did not stir. Little doubt remained, the pond’s largest resident had perished.

I took some photos and reported back to Barb. She notified the owner of the company that provides our subdivision’s swans, and he was on the scene this morning, confirming what we all knew.

As background, our subdivision of 300 homes includes three ponds of varying sizes. Each is stocked through the spring and summer with two swans from a company in southern Wisconsin. The swans add to the area’s serenity while keeping Canadian Geese from forgoing migration and making our subdivision their summer home.

This year the swans and our rocking decoy dogs have done an outstanding job of keeping the geese away. Unfortunately, a different predator may be ending the reign of the swans.

The coyotes in our neighborhood are plentiful and bold. Mr. Knox the Swan Guy concurred that yesterday’s incident was a coyote attack, the third attack on our subdivision’s swans this summer. Two of the attacks have been fatal.

Mr. Knox is not sure that he will want to bring us swans any longer. The losses are too painful. And as homeowners, we do not want to see this cycle repeat. The subdivision may decide to end our subdivision’s 25 years of summer swans. We may need to find a new way to help the decoy dogs keep the geese away. If so, we will miss watching the beautiful white birds glide across our still ponds. We will need a new way of achieving serenity now.

It will be a sad swan song.

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My Favorite Game Show Hosts. Did Bob Barker Make The List?

The passing of Bob Barker has put game show hosts in the national conversation and got me thinking. Who were my favorite game show hosts? Would Bob Barker have made my TopTen?

I’m not a game show addict, but I have seen enough through the years to have my personal choices. How would my list compare to yours?

10 – Ed Grennan. Who? Mr. Grennan was a Chicagoan who hosted the high school quiz bowl show “It’s Academic.” How could I fail to list the man who hosted my television debut?
9 – Gene Rayburn. The original host of “The Match Game.” Before it got silly.
8. – Alex Trebek. I know it is heresy to say this but during my appearance on “Jeopardy!” I found Mr. Trebek cold and unfriendly. I wonder if the same could be said about my choice at Number 7.
7. – Art Fleming, the original “Jeopardy!” host, from the pre-electronic board day. On TV, he seemed like a nice guy, the type who wouldn’t try to prove he was smarter than you were.
6. – Vanna White. Not exactly the host of “Wheel of Fortune” but the woman who brought joy to the life of our son Michael, who as a one-year-old toddler would zoom up to the TV whenever he heard Vanna’s voice.
5. – Richard Dawson. No one could kiss the ladies like he could. Had he still been host, maybe my family would have been selected for “Family Feud.” We came close!
4. – John Charles Daly. Never was there a more sophisticated host than Mr. Daly, Sunday evenings on “What’s My Line?”
3. – Regis Philbin. I tried so hard to be a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” I just wanted to hear Regis say to me ‘Is that your final answer?”
2. – Allen Ludden. “College Bowl” and “Password.” A double-threat, even before he hooked up with Betty White.
1. – Hugh Downs. I learned how to solve puzzles by watching “Concentration.” Maybe my fascination with him was that he looked so much like my dad.

That’s my list and I’ll stand by it. Who would you add or delete?

Putin Shows Us Why Trump Must Not Be Re-Elected

You start an insurrection in the USA, and you may find yourself standing trial, facing prison sentences, or having a crimp put in your campaign for the highest office in the land. Start an insurrection in Russia, like Yevgeny Prigozhin, and you find yourself dead.

Donald Trump calls the many investigations into his “activities” witchhunts. He verbally attacks prosecutors, judges, the press, and anyone who will not fall into line with his mad pronouncements on the 2020 presidential election. But we are not Russia. Because enough people in this country accept and protect the values that our republic aspires to, Donald Trump is able to live among us as a walking, breathing citizen, awaiting trial, safely flying wherever he chooses to go,

We are not perfect. I understand that we have not always lived up to the most noble values, and perhaps never totally will. And I think I understand why a person like Donald Trump will always admire a ruthless dictator like Vladimir Putin. Yevgeny Prigozhin leads an apparent attempted coup in June, in August a plane he is flying in crashes from the sky.

As I write this, there is no confirmatory evidence that Putin or his henchman were behind the plane crash. There is just conjecture and coincidence in a country where one man’s word is the word of law.

Our nation must never drift that way. We must never again elect a president who seeks that type of power. We don’t want or need to shoot him from the sky, just try him, convict him, and elect a man better than him as our president.