Kiddush

Bat-Mitzvah kiddush today at Shira Hadasha. Tova Hartman's daughter, Shira. Tova is one of the founders of Shira Hadasha, a staunch feminist who teaches women's studies at Hebrew University. Anyway, what's a good kiddush after services? A real hodgepodge by my catering standards but interesting nonetheless; cakes and cookies, various crunchy stuff like bissli and bamba, chips and pretzels, herring and pickled salmon, mini quiches that were not that great and little muffin sized Jerusalem kugelettes that were good just not crispy. For the uninitiated, Jerusalem kugel is a noodle pudding with a carmelized sugar base. What makes the whole thing great is that one adds a judicious amount of ground pepper to the mix before baking and the result is dark, nasty and sweet/spicy and noodely (sp?). There was fruit and various drinks and the most exciting part, cherry ices on a stick - arteeks, which both kids and adults loved.
The kiddush was fine but shul was tough. Ira was off doing the Saturday shul gig with my parents. The boys and I got out late and Akiva felt unhappy at shul. It was crowded, we were late - seating is tight there when you're late. We got there in time for the talk - it was Tova's father, David Hartman, who is a known and acknowledged big kahuna here in the Jewish educational world so one had to be quiet. Akiva had to sit outside with the boys during the talk and he was highly offended not to get right inside when he arrived. Sometimes I really wish that he could just run around like a wild beast outside during services just like all of the other kids. But, Jess came and sat down next to us after the talk and between the two of us, we read some books and I managed a bit of prayer before it was all over.
The weather has broken. It was quite hot for a solid 3 days - 35 or 36 yesterday. We didn't go to the pool in the pm bec it was just too hot to be outside. Jess and Ira and I did manage a late day jaunt to pick up the paper, return deposit bottles and eat a sandwich and drink coffee at Aroma which was mercifully well air conditioned.