Sorry.

Sorry, bitches.

I'm in like with a boy.

I'm moving.

I'm busy.

And work has been hell.

As my friend "D' put it, "Who do you think you are, not updating -- me?!"

I'm watching Josh Bernstein with his dorky show on the History Channel... and he keeps talking about a city in Israel called "Elah." When he says this (because he's a Jew) I hear a portion of a word that's familiar to me, and, as I pound my last quarter of a bottle of wine (per night, that's how I deal with life now...) I think to myself, "Hmm. Elah. That sounds like "Ha'Elah." (Ha-Aeh-lah) Ha'Elah was the last word in my Torah Portion from my Bar Mitzvah. I wonder if that's on line..."

(It is.)

Here she is, bitches! (The weirdest thing is that two of you (no, one -- just you, Laura?) were actually THERE to hear me say these words back on November 20, 1993...)

Here's the link to the part I started with: Here. For you non-Jews out there, if you look on the bottom paragraph, it's the last word on the first line, from there starts the chant I thought I would never forget (but have): Vai-hei ka'a'asher ra'ah ya'a'kov, et-Rachael, bat Lavan, achi emo.."

And it continues and people drink from wells and Rachael and Rivkah and blah blah through here and I say the words "Ha-Eleh." and I'm DONE reading from the Torah, and I'm a man (who will subsequently eat Tortillas on the first night of Passover...) who will subsequently, thirteen years and almost four months later, go back and see if he remembers all of his Torah portion... And he won't. Except for parts of it. He remembers the beginning... and he remembers the end sentence: ben-achoto vayarots likrato vayechabek-lo vayenashek-lo vayevi'ehu el-beyto vayesaper le-Lavan et kol-hadevarim ha'eleh.

But... That might not have been where it ended. I'm not sure. I've looked "forward" and I can't tell whether I read to that point....

I was pretty sure that I read all the way through the point where Jacob falls in love with Rachael and is then duped into marrying Leah. But I'm not sure. And for some reason, "et kol hadvarim ha'elah," has some sort of "racing down hill and passing the finish line" feeling to it.

I'll have to watch the tapes. Oh god, that'll be painful.

Anyone going to be home May 20? We can watch them together! My lil' Bro graduates College, and we can pull out the Bar-Mitzvah tapes!

It's funny... your Bar Mitzvah is just "going through the motions" (but then again, isn't that a marvelous lesson... as most of life is just "going through the motions...") that Mrs. Dahlia Feldman taught us (Lord, if you are a just and Merciful God, you will grant Dahlia Feldman a long, happy and healthy life, because she just may be a living saint, even though she didn't remember me the last time she saw me in Schul, but I blame that on her being about 110 years old now...) but some of those motions and some snippets of that experience stay with us...

Like how I could hear the word "Elah" (in Hebrew) on T.V., and instantly be transported to that Saturday morning in 1993 when I was racing with my Yad V'Shem over the Temple Isaiah Torah towards certain Victory, and about to complete my very first (and probably last?) Aliyah!

Kain v'hi rat'zon!

Is Mrs. Feldman still alive?

I hope so.

And if she's not, she has hundreds, if not thousands of Grandchildren who love her...