Life Lists

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Sunday, September 9, 2007

1. Visit Israel.
2. Bake a challah from scratch.
3. Speak Hebrew well enough to hold an informal conversation.
4. Read Martin Bubers “I and Thou.”
5. Put together my family’s history for four generations.
6. Chant from the Torah on a Shabbat or Holiday.
7. Visit the concentration camps in Europe.
8. Have a Jewish friend born outside the United States.
9. Understand enough Yiddish to get the jokes.
10. Be in Jerusalem on one of the pilgrimage holidays.
11. Attend an Orthodox service.
12. Make a seder at my own home.
13. Read the entire Tanach – from Genesis to the end of 2nd Chronicles.
14. Make my grandmother’s brisket, stuffed cabbage, gefilte fish…
15. Sit as a shomer for someone who has died.
16. Visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.
17. Eat a Kosher pickle in New York’s lower east side.
18. Give $100,000 in Tzedakah (not necessarily in one year).
19. Spend one 25 hour Shabbat completely at rest.
20. Live in Israel for a year (or at least a couple of months).
21. Attend a service in the Sephardi tradition.
22. Get screened for Tay Sachs.
23. Participate in a Jewish film festival.
24. Be able to answer questions about Judaism poised by non-Jewish friends and acquaintances.
25. Find one’s own philosophy of kashrut.