Thursday, June 22, 2006
Brotherhood Synagogue celebrates Judi Golden Day, and a report from the Pueblo country
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Shut down your e-mails, turn off your cells, throw out your I-pods, remove your Dells, don’t eat the hors d’oeuvres, put back the cork, our Judi Golden is leaving New York.
She greets all the members, each name she remembers, all birthdays she knows, and what everyone owes. Diets on cream cheese and lox, matches undies and socks. There is no stat she forgets of the shul or the Mets, her heart so big, her touch so sure, gets a blue and orange manicure.
Now the Tar Heels in Raleigh will soon munch on challie, the natives of Durham will all observe Purim. In Charlotte and Ashville they’ll read the Megill(a) and feel hipper and hipper to fast on Yom Kippur. Although it sounds foolish she’ll make North Carolina Jewish, and you can bet any wager
the N.C. Bulls will make major. So it’s Shalom to Judi, but never goodby, our wonderful Judi – with an I.
Thus the Friday night service of the Brotherhood Synagogue on June 16 turned into a celebration, of laughter, applause and an occasional tear, as the congregation bid goodbye to its office manager of 13 years, Judi Golden, who is leaving her beloved New York and the Mets to join her children in North Carolina. The poem to Judi (with a bow to W. H. Auden), is by her office mate and our poet laureate, Peggy Keilus, whose occasional verse and stories appear both in the Synagogue bulletin and the New York Times Metropolitan Diary columns.
Everyone has a favorite Judi story, as did the Rabbi, Daniel Alder, Synagogue president Arthur Abbey and vice-president Rich Shapiro, and its executive director Phil Rothman overcame his Yankee feelings enough to decorate the Brotherhood’s community hall in the colors of the Mets, blue and orange, for the occasion. Cantor Shiya Ribowsky added to the celebratory tone by leading the congregation into the concluding anthem, Adon Olam – Master of the World – to the tune of Take Me Out To The Ballgame.
The celebrant herself, who received enough hugs and kisses and good words to last a lifetime of memories, will not have much of a chance of a rest in the sunny South. Her son, who has a sports radio program in the Triangle area, Charlotte-Raleigh-Durham, passed the word of his Mother’s coming to North Carolina, and she has already received job offers from three temples in the area. Best of luck, Judi, we will miss you so much!
To add my family’s personal thanks, in the past several years, as our personal activities in coordinating the synagogue’s winter Homeless Shelter Program diminished, Judi took over and was the manager of the day-to-day activities, attracting and motivating volunteers in droves.
Speaking of the sunny South, we can report to you from the Four Corners (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) that, while New York has been blessed with rain and cool weather, the southern parts have suffered a draught. We were there to visit the Anasazi pueblos, the stone and adobe dwellings of the early American Indians, that have survived a thousand years of exposure to winds, storms and humanity in the deserts to offer their mysteries for our interpretation. How did the Puebloans, not known to have an alphabet or a calendar or a sophisticated system of numbers, align their stone structures with solar and lunar solstices and equinoxes that require decades of observations, record-keeping and calculations? Were some of the pueblos, aligned in the shape of a giant serpent, built to be dedicated to religious observations? Was there cannibalism, native or imported variety? Were there as many as 100 million natives in the Americas, before the white men came and inadvertently exposed them to the diseases and plagues of Europe? There is a recent book, 1491 by Charles C. Mann, that deals with the latter.
For the Anasazi mysteries, check the website www.dobelis.net; three clicks on the underlined text and you will be in the Looking Ahead blog, with a long June 2006 article describing our trip to Albuquerque, the crossing of the desert with its arroyos, scrub vegetation, Indian reservations, pueblos and gambling casinos en route to Santa Fe, the cultural center of the Southwest, learning to breathe at 6,000’ height.
Our archeologist-led excursions from there took us to the giant Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a miracle of survival, with its structures in the caverns of the mountain. How did the Publicans feed themselves before they decided to descend to the valley and better pastures? Next day, the Hovenweep Ruins in Utah, the strange turreted settlement with hints of the Quetzalcoatl cult in the surviving structures. The green Canyon de Chelly ((pronounced Chay) desert in the huge Arizona Navajo reservation was a gorgeous oasis, and a place to buy Navajo jewelry from the artists. Returning to New Mexico, the Salmon Ruins, a 150-room pueblo and a museum of recreated Indian nomadic gear, the Aztec Ruins with its giant kava (sanctuary), and Chaco Canyon, with its dozen pueblos from various periods ranging over 500 years of history, capped the trip. We rested up in Santa Fe, with its museums and Central Plaza and adobe structures dating back to 1610, chatting with the squatting Indian vendors of jewelry spread out on blankets around the Governors Palace. Go for it if you’re tempted, our host was Elderhostel.
Shut down your e-mails, turn off your cells, throw out your I-pods, remove your Dells, don’t eat the hors d’oeuvres, put back the cork, our Judi Golden is leaving New York.
She greets all the members, each name she remembers, all birthdays she knows, and what everyone owes. Diets on cream cheese and lox, matches undies and socks. There is no stat she forgets of the shul or the Mets, her heart so big, her touch so sure, gets a blue and orange manicure.
Now the Tar Heels in Raleigh will soon munch on challie, the natives of Durham will all observe Purim. In Charlotte and Ashville they’ll read the Megill(a) and feel hipper and hipper to fast on Yom Kippur. Although it sounds foolish she’ll make North Carolina Jewish, and you can bet any wager
the N.C. Bulls will make major. So it’s Shalom to Judi, but never goodby, our wonderful Judi – with an I.
Thus the Friday night service of the Brotherhood Synagogue on June 16 turned into a celebration, of laughter, applause and an occasional tear, as the congregation bid goodbye to its office manager of 13 years, Judi Golden, who is leaving her beloved New York and the Mets to join her children in North Carolina. The poem to Judi (with a bow to W. H. Auden), is by her office mate and our poet laureate, Peggy Keilus, whose occasional verse and stories appear both in the Synagogue bulletin and the New York Times Metropolitan Diary columns.
Everyone has a favorite Judi story, as did the Rabbi, Daniel Alder, Synagogue president Arthur Abbey and vice-president Rich Shapiro, and its executive director Phil Rothman overcame his Yankee feelings enough to decorate the Brotherhood’s community hall in the colors of the Mets, blue and orange, for the occasion. Cantor Shiya Ribowsky added to the celebratory tone by leading the congregation into the concluding anthem, Adon Olam – Master of the World – to the tune of Take Me Out To The Ballgame.
The celebrant herself, who received enough hugs and kisses and good words to last a lifetime of memories, will not have much of a chance of a rest in the sunny South. Her son, who has a sports radio program in the Triangle area, Charlotte-Raleigh-Durham, passed the word of his Mother’s coming to North Carolina, and she has already received job offers from three temples in the area. Best of luck, Judi, we will miss you so much!
To add my family’s personal thanks, in the past several years, as our personal activities in coordinating the synagogue’s winter Homeless Shelter Program diminished, Judi took over and was the manager of the day-to-day activities, attracting and motivating volunteers in droves.
Speaking of the sunny South, we can report to you from the Four Corners (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) that, while New York has been blessed with rain and cool weather, the southern parts have suffered a draught. We were there to visit the Anasazi pueblos, the stone and adobe dwellings of the early American Indians, that have survived a thousand years of exposure to winds, storms and humanity in the deserts to offer their mysteries for our interpretation. How did the Puebloans, not known to have an alphabet or a calendar or a sophisticated system of numbers, align their stone structures with solar and lunar solstices and equinoxes that require decades of observations, record-keeping and calculations? Were some of the pueblos, aligned in the shape of a giant serpent, built to be dedicated to religious observations? Was there cannibalism, native or imported variety? Were there as many as 100 million natives in the Americas, before the white men came and inadvertently exposed them to the diseases and plagues of Europe? There is a recent book, 1491 by Charles C. Mann, that deals with the latter.
For the Anasazi mysteries, check the website www.dobelis.net; three clicks on the underlined text and you will be in the Looking Ahead blog, with a long June 2006 article describing our trip to Albuquerque, the crossing of the desert with its arroyos, scrub vegetation, Indian reservations, pueblos and gambling casinos en route to Santa Fe, the cultural center of the Southwest, learning to breathe at 6,000’ height.
Our archeologist-led excursions from there took us to the giant Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a miracle of survival, with its structures in the caverns of the mountain. How did the Publicans feed themselves before they decided to descend to the valley and better pastures? Next day, the Hovenweep Ruins in Utah, the strange turreted settlement with hints of the Quetzalcoatl cult in the surviving structures. The green Canyon de Chelly ((pronounced Chay) desert in the huge Arizona Navajo reservation was a gorgeous oasis, and a place to buy Navajo jewelry from the artists. Returning to New Mexico, the Salmon Ruins, a 150-room pueblo and a museum of recreated Indian nomadic gear, the Aztec Ruins with its giant kava (sanctuary), and Chaco Canyon, with its dozen pueblos from various periods ranging over 500 years of history, capped the trip. We rested up in Santa Fe, with its museums and Central Plaza and adobe structures dating back to 1610, chatting with the squatting Indian vendors of jewelry spread out on blankets around the Governors Palace. Go for it if you’re tempted, our host was Elderhostel.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:30 PM 
