FREE FALLING

BS"D


It was exhilarating to cut the eitz chayim (the roller) free from the qlaf, I must admit. I did that last night & then allowed it to flatten overnight so I would have an easier job of gluing & sewing today.

I spent the first 2 hours of work today just patching holes & tears in the last yeri'ah of Devarim/Deuteronomy. The gid (viscera) had torn through its holes & there was a slash right through a pasuq containing 2 of G@'s names, which I will have to re-write, so I had my work cut out for me, so to speak.

Cutting the qlaf to fit the window I made was a challenge, as there were some ascenders & descenders (letters which rise up above & hang down below the line) to take into account. & I had to keep trimming it by a hair's breadth so that it would fit just right. Too narrow & I would have to start all over again & re-write the words I was replacing on yet another piece of parchment, beginning the whole process anew.

On my lunch break I sat & ate leftovers (spaghetti with REAL met balls!) from last night's dinner while I perused "Great Jews on Stage & Screen". It was a cracking good read, except that the author left out CHARLIE CHAPLIN!

Of the famous Canadian Jews, listed were Sadie Marks (aka Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny's wife), Lorne Greene, William Shatner (that's right, Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Starship Enterprise is a Canuck - in fact, his niece is a neighbour & friend of ours), Norma Shearer, Joseph Wiseman, Lloyd Bochner, Oscar Brand, Monty Hall (yes, THE Monty Hall fo "Let's Make a Deal" fame), Lou Jacobi, Jack Kruschen, Mort Sahl, David Steinberg &, last but not least, Johnny Wayne & Frank Shuster. Wayne & Shuster were the only Canadian Jews who didn't sell out by going to the US & they STILL became internationally acclaimed entertainers. May they both rest in peace.

Lorne Michaels was also not in the book, but deserves mentioning here.

After I finished lunch & bentsched, I went back to check on the paste I had left to dry. It wasn't quire cured yet, so I rooted around in the aron, found that this congregation's Megilat Esther was torn & proceeded to patch & re-sew the first yeri'ah so that it could be easily taken out of its olive wood cylinder. I won't charge them for it. Just an extra :)