My dear readers.
I am about to call upon all your goodwill, patience and readerly fortitude. And I will be standing upon my reputation as a person who doesn't make stuff up out of thin air.... [with a few notable exceptions having to do with duck feathers and so forth] to persuade you that the story I am about to tell is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Last week I hied me off to my local synagogue to bake some challah for the kiddush lunch to be held the next day. As we all know, baking bread entails quite a lot of 'down time' while waiting for dough to rise, bake, cool and so forth. Ergo I brought my knitting kit with me as I was trying to finish up one more bag for the craft fair.
So after I got the dough on the rise, I sat down in the library to knit. All the while I had been mixing dough, a parade of people had come in and out of the kitchen.
A pre-school class with attending teacher in tow, our Rabbi, and a visiting Rabbi who was there while his children attended class, and a young man who is working at our shul (synagogue) this year. He is also a Rabbi.
So this young man came in and saw me knitting. He sat down and said he always wanted to learn to knit and could I teach him in five minutes? That last part was a joke....
I said no, not in five minutes, but I could teach him to knit. But why did he want to learn?
Turns out he wants to make a scarf.
Who was I to stand in his way?
I pulled out a spare pair of needles and some yarn and we set to.
He turned out to be an extremely capable student. I'm putting it down to his Rabbinic training.
He listened carefully and did just as I explained, and within three or four rows had gotten the basics down. He was turning out perfectly recognizable stitches.
I told him knitting was something you could do anywhere, that is what I really liked about it. I never had to sit around doing nothing. I said, You could even knit in the airport.
Now how would that look? He wanted to know, with a smile. A Rabbi knitting?
I've done a lot of whacky things in my day. But teaching a Rabbi how to knit ranks WAY up there on the Whack-O-Meter.
It was a magical moment.
I will always cherish it.
Oh yes, I taught him to knit the 'right' way. Now that I have become aware of my unorthodox knitting style, I don't mean to pass it on to anyone else. So we stuck to the tried and true.
It seemed only fitting for an Orthodox Chabad Rabbi to stick to 'Tradition' !
Don't let anyone ever tell you that God doesn't have a sense of humor.
He was bustin' a gut over at our library last Friday.
I am about to call upon all your goodwill, patience and readerly fortitude. And I will be standing upon my reputation as a person who doesn't make stuff up out of thin air.... [with a few notable exceptions having to do with duck feathers and so forth] to persuade you that the story I am about to tell is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Last week I hied me off to my local synagogue to bake some challah for the kiddush lunch to be held the next day. As we all know, baking bread entails quite a lot of 'down time' while waiting for dough to rise, bake, cool and so forth. Ergo I brought my knitting kit with me as I was trying to finish up one more bag for the craft fair.
So after I got the dough on the rise, I sat down in the library to knit. All the while I had been mixing dough, a parade of people had come in and out of the kitchen.
A pre-school class with attending teacher in tow, our Rabbi, and a visiting Rabbi who was there while his children attended class, and a young man who is working at our shul (synagogue) this year. He is also a Rabbi.
So this young man came in and saw me knitting. He sat down and said he always wanted to learn to knit and could I teach him in five minutes? That last part was a joke....
I said no, not in five minutes, but I could teach him to knit. But why did he want to learn?
Turns out he wants to make a scarf.
Who was I to stand in his way?
I pulled out a spare pair of needles and some yarn and we set to.
He turned out to be an extremely capable student. I'm putting it down to his Rabbinic training.
He listened carefully and did just as I explained, and within three or four rows had gotten the basics down. He was turning out perfectly recognizable stitches.
I told him knitting was something you could do anywhere, that is what I really liked about it. I never had to sit around doing nothing. I said, You could even knit in the airport.
Now how would that look? He wanted to know, with a smile. A Rabbi knitting?
I've done a lot of whacky things in my day. But teaching a Rabbi how to knit ranks WAY up there on the Whack-O-Meter.
It was a magical moment.
I will always cherish it.
Oh yes, I taught him to knit the 'right' way. Now that I have become aware of my unorthodox knitting style, I don't mean to pass it on to anyone else. So we stuck to the tried and true.
It seemed only fitting for an Orthodox Chabad Rabbi to stick to 'Tradition' !
Don't let anyone ever tell you that God doesn't have a sense of humor.
He was bustin' a gut over at our library last Friday.