Community Magazine April 2019

28 Community Magazine Home&Stone FIXTURES FAUCETS HARDWARE ACCESSORIES 1663 Coney Island Ave Brooklyn NY 11230 Valet Parking Appointments Welcome 718.787.1000 homeandstone.com @homeandstone and the whole Pesah experience. We have vivid pictures of our parents and grandparents making hagalah in the kitchen, bringing Pesah pots up from the basement, and eating in the kitchen because the dining room was already kosher for Pesah. We recall our fathers coming home from work on the night of bedikat hames and how we would hide ten pieces of bread, and then following him, as he went around with his candle and bowl, saying “hot or cold?” All these rituals left an indelible impression. We all remember looking forward to the biggest attraction - burning the hames the next morning. I bet we even remember the special menu our mothers made for lunch on Ereb Pesah , when you couldn’t have either hames or massa. Who can forget the grand seder table, set for royalty, with all the family together with the haggadot , excited to be together and share divreh Torah ? These are our most treasured memories. Therefore, we have an obligation to make sure that we bequeath our children cherished memories of our own family during Pesah preparations and the seder night. We must afford our children the same enjoyment. However, unfortunately, our Pesah experience has become modernized. Today, Pesah is about reservations, flights, and vacation attractions. Even if we do go away, we must remember it is first and foremost a holiday, not a vacation. We must ensure that our children don’t remember Pesah as tennis and swimming. Those can be done any time of year. It is the customs and rituals that make the holiday truly special, and these memories never fade. Interestingly, I find that this emphasis on children and family continues after the holiday as well. During the period of the Omer, there is a waning of social obligations, as we do not hold weddings and other semahot. I often find a special pleasure in the relative quiet of these evenings to spend more time with my children. In our community one can go to three weddings a week, not counting a brit and other functions during the day. This often leads to a situation where we have less time for our children, and they end up being taken care of by nannies and babysitters. We don’t have the time to even do homework with them. These semahot take their toll on our children. They feel most happy, secure, and confident when their parents are at home. Even if we don’t actively spend time with them, the father merely being in the living room and the mother upstairs gives them a sense of well-being. Semahot and dinner parties are not our first obligation; our children are our first obligation. We brought them into this world; they didn’t ask to come here. We brought them here against their will. That’s why the seder night means order. It refocuses us on our parenting priority and makes us recognize that we should not be parents by proxy. לעילוי נשמתם של משה בן עליזה, יצחק הלל בן עליזה, והנרייט לאה בת עליזה, דוד בן גילה, רבקה בת גילה, יהושע בן גילה, משה בן גילה, שרה בת גילה, יעקב בן גילה, ואליאנה בת גילה. ולרפואה שלמה ליוסף בן אהובה מסעודה, שילת אהובה בת עליזה, ודניאל בן עליזה.