The Fractured Shofar

 Thoughts on The High Holy Days 2024

      On Wednesday, October 2 at sundown, Jews around the world will observe Rosh HaShannah, the Jewish New Year.  This is not streamers and party hats, this is self reflection, prayer, and usually a delicious meal or two with family (given or chosen).  

  Our year is 5785 - and as the old joke goes - we will be writing 5784 at least until Cheshvan. 

  But this year, along with the savory brisket, the sweet round challah and the familiar sound of the shofar, many of us have broken hearts.  We are coming to the one year anniversary of the deadly Hamas attack on in Israel on October 7, and nearly one year of constant fighting in Israel.  We have also witnessed unprecedented antisemitism here at home.  I know that I am not alone when I share with you that I have been entirely miserable, angry, scared and deeply sad. 

  I became a grandmother about a year and a half ago.  This joy represents the complete opposite end of the emotional continuum - my jubilation when I learned I would be a grandmother, meeting my babies for the first time, holding them, now playing with them, watching them as they take their first tentative steps and start to say words - this joy is filling a place in my heart that is hard to describe. Love, brilliance, laughing at nothing, pure positivity.  

  Is it possible to feel both divine joy and utter sadness at the same time?  If I do not compartmentalize this sadness, and, at the same time tamp down the need to call the kids and facetime with those babies, how is work to be done? How is a lesson to be written? A child to be taught?  Laundry to get washed? 

  In a very timely book entitled "Not a Mahzor: High Holiday Reader 5785" Rabbi Jeremy Markiz wrote an essay that addresses exactly this.  His conclusion (I urge you to buy the book, link below) is that our hearts are actually big enough to hold all these feelings.  This really resonates with me.

 When I first became a parent, I felt my love for my first child so intensely, so emotionally that I didn't think it was possible.  We knew we wanted a bigger family, but as I was expecting my second baby, I worried - how could I love this next baby the way I loved the first?  When she was born it was obvious.  My capacity for love just increased.  (And again with my third child.  Just imagine it now with two grandchildren!) 

  We are stronger than we think and we can be simultaneously worried, hurt, angry, in love, joyful, proud and determined to overcome adversity. Will we ever be truly joyful with no restraints again on Simchat Torah (the Hebrew calendar's anniversary of 10/7) - I don't think this generation can. There are still 101 hostages in the caves tunnels of Gaza.  In synagogues we set an empty chair for them. At home we still light an extra Shabbat candle for them.  This nightmare may fade, but the scar will last for my lifetime.  I can find fun in music, in family, in my students' ah hah moments, in a favorite movie.  And at the same time I hold deep sorrow and anger. 

  I asked ChatGPT to create the image for this blog post.  A fractured Shofar. We are fractured but we are still here.  Rabbi Markiz also says in his essay that we don't need to go it alone (I'm paraphrasing). It's hard to find community but now's when we need it the most. I urge you to find your community, your Kehillah and connect or reconnect. I'll try to follow my own advice as well.

 L'Shannah Tovah U'Metukah 

Not A Mahzor: High Holiday Reader 5785

Letting Go

This essay, appeared in the Jewish Journal on July 27, 2017, but was written about a month before that.  Thank you to Editor Steven Rosenberg for publishing it and for his help in keeping the story short and (bitter) sweet. 

JULY 27, 2017 – Scrolling through social media yesterday I stopped to “like” my friend’s post. Actually, these days you can “love” a photo, and as I held the like button down to get to the word “love,” I felt tears welling up.

The picture was his 9-year old daughter, getting on the bus to go to sleep-away camp for the first time. There she was, this little girl, in her denim shorts with the white lace cut-outs, a hot pink baseball cap and a back-pack that looked like it held absolutely nothing, looking back over her shoulder, waving a final goodbye to her daddy.

Thirteen years ago, right around now, I was packing up my youngest child, a skinny 10-year-old boy, for sleep-away camp in the Berkshires. He had slept soundly the night before. I had been up until some ungodly hour, labeling every item of clothing, folding bedding and towels, cramming sports equipment into a huge duffel bag, and writing our address and stamping envelopes he’d never use.

Jacob loved camp so much he called it his home away from home. His camp friends became his best friends. He went back summer after summer and although he always continued with his Jewish studies through our synagogues, he will credit camp with the most vital of his Jewish learning, growth, and identity.

As his sister had done, he took advantage of the camp’s trip to Israel when he was 15 and the bonds with his friends became deeper. As his brother had done, he went to Israel for his junior semester abroad, and like his parents, attended Tel Aviv University.

I really wanted to visit him there and I knew he was wary about the whole family descending on him while he was studying abroad.  Looking back on my own experiences, I was a bit hesitant when my parents visited me at age 20, living in the dorms at Tel Aviv University. When I got on the plane in Newark that December, I was already quite self-confident, but I had never really had the experiences that would form the core of whom I was to become.

I did things in Israel I would never have done here in the US. Camping in the Sinai, no tent, just a sleeping bag under the stars, watching the sun come up over the Red Sea. Having nothing more critical to do than go snorkeling and trade for eggs and pita with the local Bedouin kids.

Hitchhiking on a day off from classes to get to the beach with a few American friends, realizing I had spent the whole day speaking only Hebrew. Going on a date with an Israeli guy and finding out that, due to the fact certain words were not yet in my vocabulary, I had agreed to going to a live sex show! Afterward, of course we went out for a snack, and as I learned, he knew the best place for hummus.

After all I had been through, I wasn’t so sure I was ready to be “parented” yet. I had also changed physically, my once straightened hair now long, slightly bleached by the sun, and curly. But when my parents arrived, after they got over the shock of my sundress, Israeli sandals, and wild hair, we had a fine time, and they wined and dined me, even setting me up on a blind date.

Believing I had my own son all figured out, we booked the trip anyway and planned to tread lightly on his schedule and plans. We took my older son and daughter, and thought we had a wonderful time.

After Jacob had been home for quite a while, more than a year, he referred to that time as less than stellar. I felt I had done so well in mastering the fine line between family time and giving him space. We fed him well, and then left him alone. But I guess that was not how he best wanted to spend those days. I then realized not only is he not a junior me, he is also not his siblings.

When Jacob graduated college last spring and announced that he won a fellowship to teach in Israel, I felt conflicted. Everything indicated parenting gone right, right? Then why did it feel so wrong? It would be a 10-month job. Apartment, car, money for food; a mother’s dream for her child. Except that I was no longer a part of that dream.

And, he asked us not to visit.

How sheepish I feel when speaking to people about how proud I am of the work he’s doing in one breath, and in the next answering the obvious question: “Well, no, I didn’t get to see him there this time.”  I just can’t bring myself to say “because he didn’t want us to come.” I told my husband recently I wonder if I will look back on this and regret it, or if I did the right thing, respecting his autonomy.

This Israel-loving, independent child is now a 23-year-old young man who is living a life that I barely get to see. There have been some posts on Facebook, short messages via WhatsApp, and a few phone conversations. Just enough to know that he’s fine.

And recently, sadly, when my mother-in-law passed away, Jacob was on a plane and with our family as we grieved. There was no conversation about whether he should come home, just the logistics.  He was fully present and there when it mattered.

He is due to come home at the end of next month. Texts about jobs and plane tickets go unanswered. I look forward to seeing him, and hopefully, having my choices validated. As surely as I returned from Tel Aviv a changed person, I am considering that this is what will happen with my son. But his way.

For now, I have had to settle for scrolling through all of my friends’ photos of camper’s smiles, with the hope that I will see my son’s smile somewhere in my news feed.

Jacob and me at a Tel Aviv Beach during his Junior year. 

Juliet Barr is married, and the mother of three. She is a Jewish educator and has worked in congregations and Jewish federations in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington. 

Sorry for My Loss

August, 2010 on the steps of our beach rental in Maine.

"Sorry for your loss."

How many times have you heard that?

On Facebook.

Or on Instagram.

On TV.

(I'm hearing it now, in my head on the show Blue  Bloods, which my husband still mistakenly calls NYPD Blue.  One of the Reagans and his partner walk in to the widow's apartment and blurt out "Sorry for your loss," before they interrogate her and surreptitiously snoop around the pantry and breakfront for clues.)


It's been quite a long time since I've heard it "in real life."

Sorry.  For your loss.  My loss this time.

My Mother-in-law, Lois Barr, passed away on Friday, Feb. 3, just a few weeks before her birthday. which, not coincidentally, is today.  She died in her home, surrounded by her four sons, her husband, her cat, and me.  At that moment, two health care workers were also there, providing wonderful attentive care, for which we were all grateful.

I have known her for 39 years, having been an official part of the family since I married her third son Michael in '84.   Since at least 83, if not earlier, we have spent a glorious week at beach together in a rented cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine (which I've written about here).


Lois worked hard all her lifetime, and left a legacy of helping others, building a family, and being the communicator, the glue and the strength of the family.  She enjoyed life to the fullest, tried new things and took risks. Even when her health began to fail, she took pleasure in the lives and pursuits of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Until the very end, she still made her famous brisket and chopped liver for her boys, and coffee chiffon pie if you were very lucky.

 Lois was famous for another thing - and that was her dark brown beehive hairdo. When she was near the end, and bedridden, her dear friend and hairdresser Reina made sure that the every hair in the hive stayed neatly in place.  On the day Lois died, she still had less gray hair than I do.

You might wonder, how did this elegant coiffure stand up to long days at the beach?  I don't really know.  In fact, once, when her wonderful friend Dotty was commenting on my own mass of un-comb-able salt-air-infused curls in our summer beach rental, Lois was heard to reply, "Yes, well, she likes it that way," in a  somewhat less than complimentary tone.

I thought that I'd honor her memory today by sharing a story that makes us smile whenever we think of it.

It was during an event-filled trip to Israel that really put the hair-do to the test.  Come to think of it, that trip put a lot of things to the test: our nerves, our stomachs, and our tolerance (or lack thereof) to the heat.  The year was 2000.  Our son Zachary had become a Bar Mitzvah in May, and he requested to have small luncheon following the service, and celebrate with a trip to Israel in the summer after the school year was over.

We invited anyone among our friends and family who wanted to come, and once we knew who was joining us, my mom and I sat together and made an outline of the type of trip we thought would work.  My own mother was a pro - she had spent many years organizing trips of this type for our local JCC, and knew everything from secret spots to the perfect guides.  We matched that with the people who said yes, and by July, we had ourselves a perfect itinerary.

Our Group: Back Row, L - R Yossi (Greatest tour guide ever), Michael, Me, Dotty, Lois, Ben, aka Bunny, Cat, Geof, Henry, Dana, Paula, Bill.
Front Row L - R Zachary (13), Madeleine (10) Jacob (winking, 7), Talia (3) Ben (7)

One of the most special aspects of this trip was taking my in-laws to Israel for their first, and as it turned out, only time. How powerful to stand side by side with my father in law, as he saw Jerusalem for the first time, and sat in silence at the Holocaust memorial, knowing that he was a World War II veteran and liberator of Buchenwald.

Lois held onto her Judaism through childhood  and even kept Kosher, until that was no longer possible (Zack wrote about that here) and she raised a Jewish family in Maine, making sure that all four of her sons  had a Jewish education along with their secular education.  All four boys became B'nai Mitzvah.  (I actually attended the last one as Michael's date!)

So this was a very special trip.  We planted trees, coated ourselves with mud and swam in the Dead Sea, we ate great food, we celebrated Zack's Bar Mitzvah on our friends roof top with a fabulous dinner with a lot of wine, and sang into the night.  We rode donkeys and made pita over an outdoor fire.  And we went white water rafting on the Jordan River.  All of us.

Lois helps Jacob off the donkey.

The two moms, dressed up for the special night.

The Bar Mitzvah Boy!

This was my second experience white-water rafting, the first having been on the rapids of the American River in Northern California back in the 80's.  So I was pretty confident that this would be very tame.  I took the aft of our raft, with my daughter Maddie (then age 10) in the middle, and Lois in the front.  I don't recall much about who was with whom in the other boats.  I remember that the first thing that happened was that Michael fell out of his raft, into the shallow, and slow moving Jordan River.  This was a humorous way to begin.

The flotilla moved its way down the river, which was really anything but rapid.  At times there were a few rocks, but basically it was a very easy, gentle ride.  Except that our raft kept going into the sides of the river, where willows and other branches overhung the water.

I'm not an expert, but I understand basic paddling (I did learn how to canoe in camp, and it is pretty intuitive) and I could not understand why we kept going into the sides of the river.  We also were going very slowly and sometimes getting turned around.  Finally our guide Yossi came over to "help us" and by help us I mean scold us and make us feel worse.

But through it all, we kept our spirits up.  Well, let me rephrase that.  Maddie and I did.  Because, for the first and only time ever, Lois was cursing her head off.  Words that would make a gangster blush.  Maddie heard words she had never heard before in her life, and maybe not since.  Each time we grazed the side of the river, my hair got tangled up in the overhang of the bramble, and I guess so did Lois' perfectly coiffed 'do, which had been covered with a silk scarf.  I cannot reprint the words she used, but imagine the ones your grandmother would NEVER use, and add some adjectives to make them more colorful.

Finally we made it to the end of the run.  Someone helped Lois out of the raft, and Maddie and I jumped in the water for a swim.  As I mentioned, it was not really rushing anywhere, though it was pretty cold.

I was teased for a long time of my lack of paddling ability.  It wasn't until I unearthed this photo and found out why I couldn't keep us on track.  My mother in law kept putting her paddle on the wrong side of the raft!

This is the way we will remember my mother-in-law.  72 years old and having the hutzpah to try something new and maybe a little dangerous, cursing her head off down the Jordan River.  Wearing stylish white shorts, oversized sunglasses and a Jordan Marsh scarf keeping her hair perfectly in place.  I guess she liked it that way.

Lois and Benjamin Barr Summer of 2015

Her memory will be a blessing.

Teach them Diligently Unto your Children

I woke up this morning like I do most mornings.  About 3 hours after my husband to a friendly lick on the knuckle by my dog Scout.

It was 8:30 am and he was right, time to get up.  If I chose to ignore this gentle wake up and "hit the snooze" (that is, roll over and ignore him) then the more insidious, double-dog bark alarm would go off in about 14 minutes which is a terrible way to start the day.

I reached for my phone... come on... you all do it don't you?... and oh... yes... right.  My beloved Israel, being defended on Facebook by all my friends and bashed in the real world by pretty much everyone else. Another day of trying to stay away from, but being drawn into the conflict that consumes my heart, my faith and my people.  And trying not to take personally the vitriol, the negativity, the biases that I am reading.

And then it hit me.  I mean it really hit me.

I was meant to come back to being a religious school director at this time for this reason.  To continue the path of peace.

I have always taught peace in my schools, and urged my teachers to do so as well, no matter how we may have felt in our hearts.  Every generation MUST be taught peace, and the faith-based classroom is the perfect place to do it.  You may think that their parents are teaching their children this lesson at home, but I will challenge you with this: if that is the case, then why are we still seeing kids bully other kids for looking different? For being gay? For praying in a different building? Parents continue to teach their own biases, sometimes deliberately, and sometimes not.  It's only with mindful parenting that the cycle stops with the next generations.

But we can challenge it in the classroom.  We can send those kids home with a simple question and maybe, just maybe change the conversation at the dinner table.  Or at least the language.

It's time for me, and the brilliant teachers and Rabbis I will have by my side, to teach peace while we teach everything else we do.  Even if sometimes we feel like we want to have a different discussion.  Because that's where peace will really start.

With our children, and then, with theirs.

Not just in Israel, but in the Ukraine. (Did you see the news today?)

And on the playgrounds in the USA.

And in all places where there are people who need this now.

Good-bye Dear Friend

A beloved friend, Aharon Bezalel, passed away about 3 weeks ago.  I have known him more than half my life, and have come to think of him more as family than as a friend.

I can't think when I first met him.

But I do know exactly when I last saw him.  My dad and I were spending a few days in Jerusalem this past January, and I could see that Aharon was not his usual self.  I didn't know this would be the last time I would see him.

Aharon was an Israeli, born in Afghanistan where the climate was not particularly friendly to Jews.  (Not like now!)  According to Bezalel legend, he was a little boy when he and his family walked to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) so they could live in freedom as Jews.

When I really got to know Aharon, his wife, and his three daughter, Butzit, Tali and Yael, I was living in Tel Aviv for my Junior Year of college.  They were the closest thing I had to family, and Aharon insisted that I join them on many weekends.  I can remember arriving just in time for a lively family meal, where I was included at the table and enjoyed great dinners and conversations that I could barely understand at first.  Saturday, Shabbat, I was left to my own devices as the sisters all went out on their own, and Aharon disappeared into his workshop in the morning and then he and his wife would spend the afternoon napping. I'm now quite a fan of the Shabbat nap!  But back then I'd take long walks and explore Jerusalem, or sit and read in their fantastic garden.  It was here that my Hebrew got better and better, I felt at home in Jerusalem, and in their house. By the end of my semester, they had become my Israeli family.   

Yes, that's me with the short hair, making matzah with Aharon in 1980.

  Over the next 20 years, we would see each other whenever we could.  Aharon's art was famous on an international level, and he frequently travelled to New York, among other places.  He was a guest at our Passover Seder on more than one occasion, and he loved it when I told the story of making matzah in his brother's garage when I celebrated Passover with his family in 1980.  I saw his daughters less often, but we tried to stay in touch, and finally with email and then with Facebook, we started to reconnect in ways that we could not have done before.  I remember conversations with Aharon in my parents' living room that showed how deeply he understood me, and the love he had for me and my family.  It was startling sometimes to see how much could be conveyed without and beyond words.

Perhaps the most moving, emotional and uplifting time we shared as a family was when my oldest son, Daniel, became a Bar Mitzvah in 2000.  It had been his dream, and ours as well, to celebrate in Israel.  But of course, we also knew that we wanted Daniel to be called to the Torah here in the US, so that we could share this simcha with the family here.  So that is what we did.  In May of that year, Daniel became a Bar Mitzvah at our synagogue in Suffern NY, and when school ended we took a family trip to Israel with Maya, who was 10, little Jack, who was 6.  Joining us were my parents, my in-laws, my brother's family, our best friends, and a dear friend of my mother-in-law.  My mother, who has spent more than half of her life dedicated to leading trips to Israel for our local Y, sat with me and helped me to plan the trip of a lifetime for this family group.  We'd get our own bus, and we'd have the most remarkable tour-guide.

But where should we have Daniel's Bar Mitzvah ceremony?  

Since Daniel had already become a Bar Mitzvah, I had been working with him to write a short, meaningful service, which could include a few different readers. We immediately eschewed the idea of the Western Wall, as we would not be at all comfortable with separating men and women for an event like this.  Another popular option for many tourists is on top of Masada, but this did not sit right either.  And because it was July, we were not sure everyone in our group would even make it to the top of that mountain in the desert.  

My mom was researching restaurants that be big enough to accommodate our whole group, as well as the ever-growing Bezalel family.  But there was no need for her to make the phone calls.   Aharon lived in a great place just above his sculpture studio.  He invited us to bring our party to his house! Although our group would never fit inside his house, we could dine on his rooftop.  

We were thrilled with the idea and when we got there it was overwhelmingly beautiful. He had ordered wonderful  food from a Lebanese restaurant in town and his daughters had decorated his rooftop with fresh flowers, candles, and tiny little lights strung from poles across the walls.  By now his three daughters were parents as well, and their children couldn't wait to meet their American "cousins" and try out their English.  Daniel led the short service, and they all ooh'd and ahh'd at his flawless, yet American-accented, Hebrew.  Then we ate,  drank, and sang songs, while the lights of Jerusalem danced in the distance.  After a while, the kids disappeared to play inside, and the grown-ups continued to eat and drink and sing some more.  Aharon sat contentedly at the head of the table, with a huge grin, knowing he had brought his family together.  Hebrew and English were co-mingling right there at the table, and it was a truly a celebration of much more than one young man's rite of passage.  It was the joy of two families sharing a real bond that transcended beyond age and  language.

Aharon, in the center of things, has made the crowd laugh.

I couldn't resist.  Young Daniel, at 13, leading us in prayer.

Since then we have been together many more times.  

When Daniel turned 20 and took his Junior Year in Israel, he spent many weekends at Aharon's house, and spent a Passover there that was unforgettable.  Although we missed him at our Seder table, at least we knew he was with his "other family."

Tali, Yael, Me, Butzit, January 2012

And this past January, my Dad and I took a trip there.  I was so glad that I spent time, meaningful time, with Yael, Butsit, and Tali, my Israeli family.  And I saw our beloved Aharon, this patriarch, for the last time. 

May his memory be a blessing to us all of us who knew him, and may his story inspire all those who are fortunate enough to be touched by it.