Our Stories

[Cherie]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1324462059' post='2355000']
Thanks. Hanukah is really a minor holiday--it's importance has been exaggerated in the US in order to be a Jewish "antidote" to Christmas [it is very hard for Jewish children to have listen to all their Christian comrades bragging about their presents]. However, since we are commanded to "advertise" the miracle of Hanukah, here in Israel it is really very lovely to walk about and see hanukiot [the Hanukah candlelabrum] in the windows of just about every house. Gift giving is not really a part of the holiday, but we eat jam doughnuts and potato pancakes [cooked in oil, you see], and generally, before the 8 days of the holiday are over, copious amounts of Alka Seltzer It is also usual to give children a small amount of spending money, called Hanukah gelt in Yiddish, or a bag of gold-foil wrapped chocolate "coins".
[/quote]

I love Jewish food

[beatitude]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1324462059' post='2355000']
Thanks. Hanukah is really a minor holiday--it's importance has been exaggerated in the US in order to be a Jewish "antidote" to Christmas [it is very hard for Jewish children to have listen to all their Christian comrades bragging about their presents]. However, since we are commanded to "advertise" the miracle of Hanukah, here in Israel it is really very lovely to walk about and see hanukiot [the Hanukah candlelabrum] in the windows of just about every house. Gift giving is not really a part of the holiday, but we eat jam doughnuts and potato pancakes [cooked in oil, you see], and generally, before the 8 days of the holiday are over, copious amounts of Alka Seltzer It is also usual to give children a small amount of spending money, called Hanukah gelt in Yiddish, or a bag of gold-foil wrapped chocolate "coins".[/quote]

I live in Bethlehem, but I have many friends on the Israeli side of the Green Line and at this time of year there are always more excuses to visit, otherwise known as sufganiyot! (Un)fortunately I'm out of temptation's way this year - I'm in the UK to complete my MA. I will be paying a short visit in January, but Hannukah will be over by then. Oh well. At least it won't necessitate the purchase of new jeans.

[quote]I happen to have a rather special hanukiah I inherited from my mother, who ran a small Judaica shop for some years. A Holocaust survivor made it from railroad spikes -- 6 inch nails -- which he split lengthwise and soldered together. He only made 36* per year, and no two are exactly alike.[/quote]

That sounds really beautiful - a living piece of history for your home.

P.S. Don't worry about the pilgrims in the rain. I was waiting outside the Church of the Nativity in a thunderstorm one year, and it only added to the experience!

Edited December 21, 2011 by beatitude

[brandelynmarie]

Jam doughnuts (Sufganiot?) & latkes....om nom nom nom

[savvy]

I have never had jam doughnuts, not cooked in oil at least.

[beatitude]

I think sufganiyot were originally made with jam, but now you can get all sorts of exotic fillings. I remember last year one of the newspapers taste-tested sufganiyot from various bakeries and rated each one, and some of the combinations they found were really delicious-sounding! My favourite kind has got chocolate in the middle with a hint of cinnamon. I like them best when they've just come out of the oven - mm...

[Antigonos]

[quote name='beatitude' timestamp='1324482338' post='2355100']
I think sufganiyot were originally made with jam, but now you can get all sorts of exotic fillings. I remember last year one of the newspapers taste-tested sufganiyot from various bakeries and rated each one, and some of the combinations they found were really delicious-sounding! My favourite kind has got chocolate in the middle with a hint of cinnamon. I like them best when they've just come out of the oven - mm...
[/quote]

This year the bakeries have really gone berserk, with doughnuts with incredible toppings and even little syringe-like thingies full of various liqueurs to squirt into your sufganiyah. The prices have gone berserk, too.

Doughnuts, savvy, are generally yeast doughs which are fried instead of baked. Some are ring shaped, some are round. You've never really had a jelly doughnut?

If you live in Bethlehem you are only a few minutes apart from time wasted at border checkpoints, from me. I'm in the Katamon Vav section of Jerusalem. I'd love to invite you to visit me for a coffee. I could pick you up at the checkpoint or at Rachel's Tomb; I won't cross into PA territory. Write me a PM if you want to set up a date.

[Totus Tuus]

I would like to echo the warning to be careful what we say online, since it's public. There was a poster on here at one point, brendan something, who was a pathological liar and possibly a psychopath. A very dangerous person. After my experience with that person, I've grown more careful.

When I joined PM in 2004, I was discerning religious life. I knew I had a religious vocation from the age of 7 when my mom read me a book about St. Therese as she was coming into the faith after a lifetime as a somewhat non-practicing cradle Catholic. I was blessed with a strong personal faith from a very young age, so I absorbed all the Catholic education she was able to give me from that time on.

I contacted orders from a young age to see who would let me come visit them as young as possible. There were no religious in my area at the local parishes or schools, so traveling to see a community was the only way I could learn about religious life. Finally, the Daughters of St. Paul said I could come up to Boston (a very long trip from where I lived in TX) to visit them for their high school summer program. I started going to that when I was 13, the summer I finished 8th grade. I continued to visit them for 1-2 weeks every summer for four years, until I graduated from high school. I strongly considered joining. I loved the sisters, but I could not figure out why I had uncertainty about their charism. I decided not to join their community after finding some theologically unsound books for sale, but that wasn't my main reason for not joining. It was as follows.

The same summer as my last visit to the DOSP, I went to visit a family friend at EWTN in Alabama. We had both lived in TX at one point, and we visited them periodically after they moved up to Alabama. During the visit, she drove me to the then-new Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament/Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, where Mother Angelica's community of PCPA nuns lived. I had seen them before when they lived at EWTN as a kid, but I remembered being confused about how they lived a cloistered life at the network. Later I learned that they had been under kind of an exception to live that way until the network got on its own two feet and they could move out to a more secluded area more condusive to true cloistered life.

I fell in love with the community in Hancevill from the moment we drove up that morning, and there wasn't a doubt in my mind that that was where I was meant to be from that day when I was 17. I immediately set up a visit, and after a few visits and meetings with the community, I applied to join. I was able to do an aspirancy in 2005 which was kind of an exception since that community doesn't normally have aspirancies. They had an extern who was going out of town for a while, so they asked me to come and take her place since there is always need of externs there, and I had learned how to do a lot of what would be required of me as an extern in my visits already.

I joined as an extern a couple months later on December 8, 2005. There are a lot of beautiful things that happened and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. There's no doubt in my mind that being there that year was my calling, but God had another plan and in retrospect it became clear that my time in religious life was to serve as training for other things God had in store for me. There are reasons I would tell someone to think hard before joining that particular community before a lot of things are worked out, but all in all it is a beautiful place and my time there will be treasured forever.

I'm now married

[Guest hermanita]

"I joined as an extern a couple months later on December 8, 2005. There are a lot of beautiful things that happened and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. There's no doubt in my mind that being there that year was my calling, but God had another plan and in retrospect it became clear that my time in religious life was to serve as training for other things God had in store for me. There are reasons I would tell someone to think hard before joining that particular community before a lot of things are worked out, but all in all it is a beautiful place and my time there will be treasured forever. I'm now married."


Thank you.

Edited December 21, 2011 by hermanita

[savvy]

[quote]You've never really had a jelly doughnut?[/quote]

I have. I just thought you meant something specific like Israeli doughnuts.

[savvy]

[quote]I contacted orders from a young age to see who would let me come visit them as young as possible. There were no religious in my area at the local parishes or schools, so traveling to see a community was the only way I could learn about religious life. Finally, the Daughters of St. Paul said I could come up to Boston (a very long trip from where I lived in TX) to visit them for their high school summer program. I started going to that when I was 13, the summer I finished 8th grade. I continued to visit them for 1-2 weeks every summer for four years, until I graduated from high school. I strongly considered joining. I loved the sisters, but I could not figure out why I had uncertainty about their charism. I decided not to join their community after finding some theologically unsound books for sale, but that wasn't my main reason for not joining. It was as follows.[/quote]

I did discern with the Daughter's of St. Paul, but they told me I was not being called to their community. Since, their apostolate is with media, they have books that are non-theology related. It does not mean they are promoting heresy.

I am friends with Sr. Marie Curie in Canada, who is also into screenwriting like me.