Say her name – Adar Bat Daniella

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It is hard to believe that only two short weeks ago, families were sitting around their Shabbat tables eating with their family, getting ready to bring in the holiday of Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah is time of joy, Jewish pride and unity. It is the completion of the annual reading of the Torah and the symbolic start of the new year of prayer.

We all know what happen in the early morning of October 7, 2023. A day that will forever be known as the single most loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. It was also a day where almost 200 Jewish men, women and children were taken hostage. We do not know the current fate of our captive brothers and sisters, but we can only imagine in our minds, the terror and horror they are (or have) faced.

Working in a Jewish organization is a unique experience on a personal and professional level. I have a lot to say on both of these headlines and I think they all deserve their own space. I am using this post today to share an experiece we had this week with our Rabbi, and senior fellow of Jewish Enrichment.

In a town hall meeting this week, he discussed amongst all the amazing work that is being done by the community, but the one area that is hard to provide support to is for those who have been taken captive. I know we all want to believe in a miracle for their safe return. He offered an opporunity for us to pray for these souls indivually, and provided a sign up sheet with more than 150 names of our brothers and sisters being held captive.

Adar is her name. Adar Bat Daniella. Adar daughter of Daniella. She is who I will be praying for individually tonight as I light my candles and each day moving forward. Our Rabbi provide three prayers for us to say and I will share them here. If you would like to add Adar to your prayers, please join me in praying for a miracle for her and all those being held.

Tehillim 121:

A song for ascents. I turn my eyes to the mountains; from
where will my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot give way; your guardian
will not slumber;
See, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps!
The LORD is your guardian, the LORD is your protection at
your right hand.
By day the sun will not strike you, nor the moon by night.
The LORD will guard you from all harm; He will guard
your life.
The LORD will guard your going and coming now
and forever

Acheinu:

As for our brothers, the whole house of Israel, who are in
distress or captivity, on sea or land, may the All-present have
compassion on them and lead them from distress to relief,
from darkness to light, and from oppression to freedom,
now, swiftly and soon—and let us say: Amen

Prayer for Captives:

May the One who blessed Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon bless, watch and guard
all our Jewish brothers and sisters who are held in distress
and captivity. On account of us praying for them, may God,
blessed be He, grant mercy upon them, take them out from
darkness and gloom, break their chains, redeem them from
their ordeals and return them quickly to the comfort of their
families and let us say Amen.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to share this post with your friends and family.

Shabbat Shalom,

Am Israel Chai

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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The most wonderful time of the year will be different to who you ask. It could mean back to school, back to schedules and no more nagging about being bored or what is there to eat. It could mean pumpkin spice season, or for a tv lover, it could mean the start of the fall tv season. I fall into the latter category.

Over the years I have developed quite a following from my social community as I post all of the shows and their start dates. I will preface this with the statement that these are the shows I watch, they may not be your tastes or what you watch. I do not watch The Bachelor/ette so do not ask me when that is starting.

After a pandemic affected season in 2020 and a limited season in 2021, it appears that all shows are back to regular scheduled programming.

My condo just switched from Rogers to Bell so in the next week or so, I will have to make a list of all the channels to find all my shows on as the Bell Channels make ZERO sense in my world. (I digress).

Dick Wolf and Wolf Entertainment will continue to fill my PVR schedule with three nights of shows each week. Of course I will continue to subscribe to Shondaland even though Grey’s should end already, but 17 years in, I can’t stop now.

If you have discussed TV with me (many of you have) you know that if I start a new show, I give it a two episode chance. The show Pivoting from last year didn’t even get 15 minutes of the 30 minute sitcom. That being said, out of the new shows I have seen previews for, the only one I “may” consider is Monarch, as it stars Susan Sarandon and Trace Adkins.

This is the list I have compiled based on what I watched last season. Do not judge me. I don’t have netflix or prime, or apple tv. I have regular good ‘ole fashion network television (which I record so I can fast forward through commercials). I may need to subscribe to Peacock TV in the future as Bell does not have Slice in my package which means I cannot enjoy the Housewives train wrecks of Beverly Hills and New York.

Sept 8

The Good Fight (final Season)

Sept 19

NCIS Hawaii (opening night have to watch NCIS as they are crossover episodes)

911 (not Lone Star that comes later in the season)

Sept 20

The Resident

New Amsterdam (final season)

FBI trifecta (FBI OG/Most Wanted and International) – all three crossover

Sep 21

One Chicago trifecta (Chicago Med/Fire/PD) all three crossover

Amazing Race

The Conners/The Goldbergs/Home Economics (may drop Goldbergs this year, they jumped the shark when they had to CGI the dad in after he was terminated mid way through the season last year)

Sept 22

Law and Order trifecta (SVU/Law and Order OG/Organized Crime) – all three crossover

Sept 25

Celebrity Jeopardy

Sept 27

La Brea (it passed the two episode test last year)

Sept 29

CSI: Vegas (I don’t like reboots, but this one was good)

Call Me Kat

Oct 3

The Good Doctor

Oct 5

The Real Love Boat (will give this a try)

Oct 6

Grey’s Anatomy

Station 19

Oct 9

NCIS Los Angeles

Dare I say, I those are enough shows to keep me busy for a while. Let me know what you will be watching and if you have a recommendation that is not on my list, I would consider it (for at least the two episode test).

Happy viewing,

Lisa

Baby and Johnny Live Happily Ever After

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On this day in 1987 the movie Dirty Dancing premiered. It is funny to look back now being 16 when this movie came out. I was working at a summer day camp and remember vividly seeing this with my friends at Promenade Mall. My 16 year old niece is the same age that I was at that time, working at summer camp for the first time this year. She was also a bus captain, just like I was back in 1987.

In July I went to a cottage resort with my friends. We booked the cottage back in January. We had no idea at that time that we would have been in a stay at home, provincial lock down for the most of the next five months. Thankfully the provincial guidelines allowed us to keep our booked time away from the city.

On the way home from a restful cottage stay we were driving and listening to the radio when the theme song from Dirty Dancing came on, “I’ve had the time of my life”. My friend sitting in the front sit alongside me says to me, “I wonder if Baby and Johnny are still maried?” I stopped singing and looked at him and said, “Baby and Johnny got married?” It is one of my all time favourite movies and I can recite parts of the movie by heart, but I thought I missed something somewhere along the way.

I asked him, “What makes you think they get marrried?” He replied that he likes to think about what happens to the characters at the end of a movie or book that he reads. That got me thinking and the conversation continued. I started to think about the all characters in the movie and what happened after that summer in 1963.

Baby – Did she go home from the Catskills, ditch the name Baby and start calling herself Frances, since she was no longer in the corner and no longer a baby but a woman? Did she join the Peace Corps and change the world?

Johnny – Did he go home after losing his job, but getting the final dance with Baby and the apology from her father to join the local 179 House painters and Plasters union? My friend’s suggestion was that he became a choregrapher for the Radio City Rockettes.

Did they get together after the summer was over or was it a summer fling? I am thinking probably not. I wonder if Baby’s father could come around and accept Johnny as a worthy suiter of his daughter.

Let’s say they did stay together and get married. They would have had their honeymoon in Kellerman’s and maybe started a new tradition bringing their kids there each summer. Maybe Max’s nephew takes over and realizes that no one in the mid 60’s is interested in dancing the Pachanga afterall.

Rabbit. I jumped into the rabbit hole and then I thought about Penny. Was she able to have children after what happened to her in that back alley clinic? I know, now I have you thinking about what happened to them after spending the summer in the Borscht Belt. (google that if you don’t know what it is).

Later on after I dropped my friends off another song came on the radio, “Don’t you forget about me” which of course had me thinking about the characters after they left detention that fateful Saturday in the Breakfast Club.

John Bender (Rebel) – Claire asked if he would say hi to Brian in the hall on Monday when he was with his stoner friends? How about Clarie, would she acknowledge him in the hall while walking with her preppy friends?

Would Andrew (Jock) recognize and acknowledge Allison in the hall when he is walking to the football field with the jocks? Was Allison really as weird as she led us to believe or did she just wanted to be accepted for who she was, just like all of us who feel like an outsider in life.

And Brian? Would he go back to his books and A+ studies or would he realize that he can live life on the adventurous side without carrying a flare gun to school.

And there you have it folks. Writing this has left me with more questions than answers to some of my favourite movies. I may need to circle back to this with some other what happened to….

Like the ubran legend of the movie Grease that Sandy really dies in at the beach when Danny couldn’t save her and the rest of the movie is her dream sequence? Have you heard that one?

What movie(s) have you thinking about their happily ever afters?