The Holiday Meal - A Generational Story

For thirteen years we have hosted Rosh HaShanah dinner. It feels like a lifetime ago the family gathered for the first time at our house on Summerlin. Rosh HaShanah had been Grandma Bernice's and Granddad Milton's holiday. As we married and found a home they slowly passed the gathering l'dor vador (hebrew: from generation to generation) to us. We "shared" the holiday. For thirteen years, like any tradition things from the outside seemed generally the same. In the first year we decided our main dish would be cranberry chicken. For the twelve subsequent years we have had cranberry chicken. I'm not even sure how many members of the family like cranberry chicken but annually we have cranberry chicken. We serve matzo ball soup. I am pretty confident that the family has been having matzo ball soup at Rosh HaShanah dinner since at least my wife was a child and possibly since my mother-in-law was a child. I'll have to remember to ask tonight. We will conclude with a variety of desserts including a Portillo's Chocolate Cake just like the one my Aunt Marsha brought thirteen years ago.

It would seem that this was the same meal done in the same way with essentially the same people present would be the same. Just like teaching how to calculate the specific heat  (Q {Heat of Fusion} = M {Mass}* Cp {Specific Heat} * Delta T {Change in Temperature}), a lesson I taught 20 times as a teacher. The reality is that neither the lesson nor the meal has ever been the same. Whether it is hour by hour in class our year after year at the Rosh HaShanah table, numerous factors cause what should be a regular straight forward process to be different. At our first Rosh HaShanah meal there was Aunt Bea and Grandma Naomi who had reportedly bickered in the back of the car all the way from Arlington Heights to Aurora both of whom are no longer with us. Cousin David was the youngest child. Friends joined us who have grown apart as they have raised families of their own. The bickering in the back of the car will be our children as we return from the store. We will be thinking of Aunt Marsha as she relaxes with Uncle Steve and their dog Sooki by the pool in Arizona. The meal has grown to include brisket and assorted side dishes. Some traditional some that will wander in. My memory doesn't go back far enough to know if our friends Beth and Steve were at the first Rosh HaShanah. They lived across street at the time and have attended many but not all of the meals. As their family has grown, so too has grown our table.

When teaching specific heat the lesson at first was formulaic. We discussed the concept. We checked out the graphs. We played with our thermometers, Bunsen burners, and labs. We calculated. Overtime the learning experience changed. The children each added their though process and struggles. They helped each other providing explanations. They modified the lab experience to fit the questions they had. At one point I remember the students painting on the wall of my classroom at Lee M. Thurston High School the formula using an anvil for mass and eyes looking at the inside of the toilet to "see pee" as a cue for the calculation. Twenty times I taught specific heat. Each one different. Each child walking a way with a different level of competency and mastery. The more I worked to keep it the same the more different it was. Just like Rosh HaShanah, our learning experiences are always the same and always different. L'Dor Vador... From generation to generation.

You Cut the Turkey