Torah Geek

This summer at camp there was a family of birds nesting in one of the trees right outside the dining hall. There were a few days early in the summer when we were told to keep our distance — the baby birds were learning to fly and the parents were not thrilled with humans standing next to their tree. One morning, one baby bird plummeted onto the table where we were having a meeting. After some adorable and awkward hopping and flapping the small bird wound up on the ground in the bushes and throughout the meeting we would look over to see if it was still OK. Was it stuck? Did it need help? Where were this bird’s parents? I was worried about the baby bird. You probably realized far sooner than I had what was really going on. In two days my oldest daughter, Mira, is starting college and leaving our nest. Many of you have been through this before; you know the combination of intense pride and happiness that comes along with a vague sense of loss. In the words of the Roman philosopher S

The first year we had a home of our own our oldest daughter was only a year old and we built a sukkah in our backyard. It started small and we added a bit to it every year. When our kids were little we used to read bedtime stories in the sukkah — taking out the air mattress and pillows and blankets and cuddling up together to read before carrying the kids upstairs to bed. As soon as the kids were old enough, we tried sleeping outside in the sukkah — and it was a huge hit with the kids. The dogs were confused; they could not figure out why we would all sleep outside when there was a perfectly good house right behind us, but they curled up with the kids and waited patiently for the humans to realize that we were supposed to sleep indoors. And so a family tradition began: every year at Sukkot we picked a weekend night to sleep outside in our Sukkah. We didn’t manage to do it every year, because some years it was just too windy and the sukkah could barely stand, and there was a year