Jon E. from the Class of 2001 now works as an attorney in the Governor’s Office and came for our last Cozy-Shabbat before the students returned. We haven’t seen Jon since he graduated in 2001, later attending Law School in Texas, and later working in NYC. We found his Shabbos House class picture (and those years surrounding it) in our “Sweet Beginnings” booklet from the new building dedication in 2009. Wow, so many memories surfaced, we spoke about people he remembered and events dating back to his undergraduate days. So much to catch up, and the new house was truly new to him, what a shock it is for those “old timers” who remember only the old house, to see the new Shabbos House for the first time.
Also new at Cozy-Shabbat was Jacob L. another NYS Legislative intern, who searched online for a Shabbat meal, and found us! We had quite a bit of NYS representation on Friday Night: Jacob and Andrew (interns in NYS Assembly and Senate), Sam J. who is working as an accountant for NYS Civil Service, Jon E. who works for the Governor’s Office…
As is our Cozy-Shabbat tradition, we went around the table, each person sharing a highlight or experience from the past week. Rabbi Mendel shared an epiphany about two old Chassidic stories, Jacob shared a “Me, too!” comment that uplifted him, Jon E. told the story of how a vigorous game of soccer helped him sweat out an illness, Anna spoke of her efforts to master additional Cyrillic alphabets, Moshe spoke of some interesting discoveries he and his classmates made this week in the school basement, Rachel K. spoke of an inspiring winter break to her sister in college in California and witnessing her accomplishments first-hand, Raizy spoke about the joys of doing a deep-clean upstairs with Mendel…
A bunch of Rubin kids were away this weekend. Mushky is of course away studying in Israel. Chani and her classmates were attending a major inter-school high school convention in Crown Heights, Sara was visiting a friend in Kingston NY for the weekend and Bassie was spending Shabbos with her cousin in Saratoga Springs. Being a quiet Shabbos Mendel had some time quality time to learn with Moshe which was nice. Morah Aviva was here for Shabbos and she was really good to Bassie and Bluma.
Being that we had no Minyan on Shabbos Day we learned the Torah portion together out of a Chumash. At Shabbos Lunch we also had Steve S. a 2013 graduate who works locally and Rafael C. who recently returned from a 10-day vacation trip out west. Bluma asked her Parsha Questions, and as she progresses in first grade at Maimonides, she is now reading more and more of the questions on her own!