Tag: update

Update: Shabbat 2/11/2022, Judaica purchases

Published on by Gunther GlitterLeave a comment

This past Shabbat, I was unable to light candles since I’m currently at my parent’s house and since I wasn’t planning to spend Shabbat there, my candlesticks remained on my Judaica shelf at my apartment! Funnily enough, I bought new candles at a Judaica store local to my parents a few days prior, but lacking the candlesticks I wasn’t able to safely light the candles!

I’ve wanted to visit the local Judaica store for several weeks now, and am excited I was finally able to make it out there. In addition to the Shabbat candles, I also purchased a Havdalah candle, a necklace, and a book on prayerbook Hebrew. Other recent additions to my library include a weekday Siddur Sim Shalom and a Hebrew writing practice workbook that is by the same author who wrote the book on reading the Alef bet that I’ve mentioned previously. Converting to Judaism sure seems to involve having to purchase a lot of things!!

Luckily, I have challah-baking supplies stored here at my parent’s house so I was able to spend Shabbat afternoon baking away. Another perk to being at my parents for Shabbat was finally getting to bring a loaf over to my best friend to try (as she’s been tortured by seeing me enjoy fresh-baked bread when we game on Friday nights!). That loaf didn’t last very long at her house, and we finished up the two loaves I kept for here before Saturday hit! My challah-baking skills continue to improve, and I’ve got it almost to perfection at this point. Next up on the list of cooking things to try are making rosemary challah (I’m going to infuse the oil that goes into the dough with rosemary before adding it!) and chicken matzo ball soup. Those will have to wait until one of the days I’m back at my apartment! I’m also intending to bake a large batch of challah to freeze and keep on hand at my apartment and at my parents; with my health status, I often don’t have the energy to bake and I’d still like to be able to enjoy challah on Shabbat.

In other news, I’ve finalized what my Hebrew name is going to be once I convert! The story behind that will have to wait until after my official conversion, as I’m going to keep the names to myself for the most part until then, but the story of choosing the first name, in particular, is pretty amazing, and as my sponsoring Rabbi said, it’s bashert – “meant to be” in Yiddish.

Reading Update

What am I reading right now? I’m working on “The Observant Life”, “Jewish Literacy”, “Essential Talmud”, and “Choosing a Jewish Life”. Some of those are ones I’ve been reading for awhile but others (The Observant Life and Essential Talmud) are new over the last few weeks. I’ve also got the Prayerbook Hebrew book I got from the Judaica store, and the Alef bet writing workbook as well.

Update: Covid-19, Isolation, Book Reviews

Published on by Gunther GlitterLeave a comment

Hi everyone- I’m so sorry for the big gap since my last post! I can’t recall whether I mentioned it in a previous post, but beginning on the day of my last posts, I had a big covid scare happening. My sister is a barista and works with the public, and unfortunately, she tested positive on New Year’s Day. B”H, she is almost entirely recovered now and is back to her normal activities. This was very frightening for me, as I was having symptoms I didn’t know if were my normal ones from chronic illnesses or if I too was sick. I left for my apartment as soon as she tested positive, and isolated there for 10 days. Thankfully, my PCR test came back negative and I was able to return back to my parent’s house after the isolation period was over!

It was a hard 10 days, as I was in full isolation and very lonely. I had originally thought “oh, this will be a perfect opportunity for me to write a bunch of posts!”, but reality turned out a little bit different – with the first week of the winter quarter happening, the loneliness, and feeling so unwell, I spent most of the isolation in bed watching Youtube videos and perusing TikTok. I did manage to do some cleaning/organizing, and baked challah and a cake all for myself XD

Here we are now, nearly 3 weeks later, and things are starting to feel normal-ish once again! Shabbat services at my synagogue are currently all online, with the rising cases of Omicron everywhere, I’m grateful they’re being so careful (they actually haven’t stopped having a Zoom service that’s integrated into the in-person one, but it’s fully online for the foreseeable future). My sponsoring Rabbi wants to set up a recurring time for us to meet every 2 weeks, and he also invited me to a “Musical Midrash” program he runs which sounds super interesting.

I’m hoping the next few posts will be book reviews of some of the books I’ve read in my Jewish studies so far- I’m not sure how in-depth I’ll go with those, but I hope they will be helpful to people trying to figure out which books to read based on what they’re looking for!

I’ll see you soon with more posts!