Blitt-Feigelson Family News
Rosh Hashanah 5771 - 2010
Dear Friends and Family,
As has become our custom, we are writing at the Jewish new year share with you a bit of our lives over the last year. Jonah has become an avid baseball player, and he throws and hits well. His catching still needs some work, but he makes sure to take Josh to the park nearly every day to work on his game. He told us recently that he hopes to be a scientist during the off-season (he likes doing science experiments), and to be a major league pitcher the rest of the time. He also included that he would live near his home stadium, so he could walk to it on Shabbat. Or, he mentioned, he may decide when he is older that driving on Shabbat is okay. Such is the life of a child in a pluralistic Jewish day school.
Jonah & Micah Jonah turned 7 this year, and Micah turned 5. They continue to give us a great deal of joy, along with the expected (and a few of the unexpected) challenges of parenting. Jonah is entering the second grade this fall, continuing at our muchAt cousin Myk’s wedding (Aug.). beloved Chicago Jewish Day School. He is developing as a reader, and this year fell in love with the Harry Potter series. Jonah also became our first family member to spend time in a cast, when he broke his leg in April (see picture on next page).
Micah is still possessed of a stunning smile and one of the more expressive faces on the planet. He has grown a lot in the past year, particularly this w/ Harry Potter wands and glasses. summer when he and Jonah attended Ramah Day Camp and then spent a week at an Evanston chess camp. He enjoys playing
Like all first graders at CJDS, Jonah learned to read from the Torah this year, and read the first verse of the Torah portion of Noah in the fall. Jonah and Josh also began studying Mishnah (ancient Jewish law) together, and were able to complete the tractate of Shabbat in time for Passover.
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basketball, and follows his brother’s interest in Harry Potter too. He also says a beautiful kiddush at Shabbat dinner on Friday night.
comfort being outdoors. We went canoeing a couple of times this summer, and also spent a terrific vacation with Josh’s brothers and their families at a rented house near Muskegon, MI, which included campfires, rafting, and lots of good outdoor time with the cousins. The kids have also begun helping with composting and gardening at home, and they eagerly took to the idea of having set chores for which they were responsible around the house. All of which makes us feel very blessed (and wondering why we didn’t raise this idea with them last year).
One of the things we very intentionally worked on with the boys this year was developing their Jonah’s cast (April-June)
Completing Tractate Shabbat in shul (March).
Natalie Natalie completed another year working for the PJ Library, which saw a number of exciting successes. As she has over the last several years, she midwifed a good number of children’s books into existence. One of her authors, Michelle Edwards, even dedicated a book to her, calling her her “story fairy.” She continues to be beloved by authors, editors and publishers. And she is increasingly recognized for her unique vision and talents, as evidenced by her invitation to the selective event called “The Conversation,” to be held later this fall, which brings together Jewish
Reading to Jonah’s CJDS class.
Visiting Ann Arbor with cousins (August).
leaders from a wide array of organizations and communities.
liked them and started asking for them. At the same time, Natalie started playing with making things like purses, quilts, and banners to put up in the dining room during the holidays. Turns out she has an incredible talent for picking interesting and beautiful fabrics, and for making things people want. This fall she has been inundated with orders from friends and acquaintances for snack bags and Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot banners. So her free time (even as I write this) is spent at the sewing machine, creating new items and filling orders. We’re very grateful for her success.
Natalie’s creative bug is always looking for new outlets. Over the years these have included stained glass, ceramics, and knitting. This year she took up sewing. And, with apologies to the old Remington shaver commercials, she liked it so much, she made a company! Well, not exactly. But she made a store-online--called The Rumpled Pumpkin (www.rumpledpumpkin.com). It began when we wanted to stop using ziploc bags for our kids’ snacks at school, and Natalie sewed snack bags with velcro tops. People 2
Painting flower pots at Micah’s birthday party.
Bouncing with cousin Raizel at Fair Oaks dairy farm (May).
Family canoe outing in July.
Canoeing in Madison, WI (July).
Hannukah.
Josh Josh completed his fifth year as Campus Rabbi at Northwestern Hillel. The year was made a bit more complicated because Hillel didn’t have an executive director, and Josh and his colleagues therefore all had more work to do, with less supervision and direction. So that was taxing, and he is thoroughly enjoying the arrival of Michael Simon as the new exec at NU Hillel. The year saw some wonderful exciting developments, chief among them the design and launch of NU Hillel’s new website and blogging initiative. At Passover Josh got to actually lead a communal seder at Hillel for the first time (in the past we’ve always done small seders around campus, but the first seder was the night after spring break this year). He also collaborated with his colleague Dan Smokler on a very cool conference on Jewish educaiton for young adults in New York in June, and in August he had the great good fortune to serve on the faculty at the Wexner Heritage New Member Institute in Snowbird, Utah.
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Better still, Josh finished PhD course work this summer. A big question for us in the coming months is how to structure things to enable him to finish the doctorate. He has to take four intensive comprehensive exams, and write a dissertation. Josh’s area of interest, and what he hopes to be the focus of the dissertation, is how American universities have shaped the moral imagination of American Jews. In other words, how it has come to be, and more importantly what it means, that American Jews overwhelmingly go to universities. He has posted thoughts about his ideas, as well as divrei Torah, on his Jonah reading Torah at school (Oct.)
blog, www.rabbijosh.com, which continues to get a lot of hits.
5771 The coming year looks to be as challenging as the last, at least on the national and global levels. As we write this, Israel is sitting down to negotiate with the Palestinians in what looks at best like a very long shot venture. Iran is... well, Iran. The political situation in the U.S. is as poisonous as ever, and the messianic hopes that many people had two years ago have gone the way of past messianisms. Add to that the economy, the looming pension crisis here in Illinois, and our having just completed the hottest summer on record and, well, you’ll forgive us for being a little sober about the coming year. Blitt family bat mitzvah (Nov.).
All of which makes us feel even more blessed for the good we have in our lives as the year begins. We are very fortunate to live in a beautiful city, to do work that is meaningful, and to send our children to a school that inspires us. For any one of those things we would say dayeinu, it would be enough. To be able to say all three, as well as the countless other blessings that remain unsaid, is to be grateful beyond measure. As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to visit us in Evanston. We would love to see you and host you in our home. Wishing you a year of health, joy, and prosperity, Josh & Natalie
Visit our websites! www.RumpledPumpkin.com â?ƒ www.RabbiJosh.com
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