The Temple Sinai Writing Circle invites writers of all varieties to join us.

4:00 – 5:30 pm, usually on the first Saturday of each month

We call it our “circle” because it’s not a class: no lessons, no homework, no tests. A group of us meets to write together, share our writing, and learn from each other. This is a guided writing group only in the sense that one or two prompts are offered, the writers in the group respond (or not, if they so choose) in any way they want. Then we share our work, any of us who so choose. The atmosphere is non- threatening, casual and fun. Please join us.

Contact Mimi Botkin, mimi.botkin@gmail.com

Here are some works that were shared by members of the writing circle in the January/February 2011 issue of Doorways.

I Looked for G-d

Ruth Stock Zober

I looked for G-d in old books written in a language I barely comprehended
I looked for G-d in the crevices of ancient walls where the Temple once stood.
I looked for G-d in song and psalm
I looked for G-d in the names of my ancestors engraved in stone
I looked for G-d in the voices of the homeless and ill
I looked for G-d in gatherings of men and women united in prayer
When I wasn’t looking, I found Him in a pair of baby blue eyes

The Candle Sticks

Arlene Chodock Adelman

My paternal grandparents, Louis and Ethel, lived in Russia, losing two daughters and a son within a two-week period. Some disease had rendered its poison throughout the Shtetl.

Soon after, they decided to come to America, walking from one end of the earth to the other with a boat ride in between, coming to Pittsburgh in 1910. My twenty-seven-year-old pregnant maternal grandmother, Raisa, after her husband, Avrum Leib, was killed by the Bolsheviks, started the same trek with her three children, her niece, and her brother and his family twelve years later.

How many possessions could my paternal grandparents carry? A shirt, a dress, shoes. What meant so much to them? Yes. The Shabbat candle sticks. Relating to the time of family, love of G-d and togetherness on Shabbat and holidays.

The brass candle sticks are a little over twelve inches in height. Each sits on a five-inch square base with three sections looking like rounded umbrellas with two sections divided by a vase-like shape. And each side is embossed with floral designs. These candle sticks were a continuing testament of faith in G-d in good times and sad times. A combination of memories never to be forgotten.

After my grandparents arrived in Pittsburgh, they subsequently had four sons, Israel, Joseph, Hyman, and Phillip. My father, Joe, was the second. Somehow he was the eventual keeper of the Shabbat candle sticks. I think it had to do with my mother, Leah, and her strong belief in family, the Sabbath, and keeping her family’s relationship together spiritually and with a strong love for each other.

The vision of the woman, eyes closed, head covered by a handkerchief, saying the prayers to welcome the Sabbath. The flames, each candle reaching different heights, would send a glow, a feeling of change or new beginning to the week starting with Shabbat Eve.

Over sixty years ago, a policeman, who worked with my father, melted silver dollars over the brass candle sticks. They now stand upright on my dining room table. The third generation in over one hundred and five years of happy times, sad times, and faith in G-d.

The Night Sky

Monica Cellio

For the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations, modim anachnu lach. – (Mishkan T’filah, adapted from Eugene Pickett)

On a dark night far from civilization I gaze up at the heavens — flickering stars beyond counting, the fuzzy smear of the Milky Way, one or a few distant globes that must be planets — and this is just what I can see with my near-naked eye. God spoke to Avraham of stars in the sky and grains of sand on the ground; looking at the former I can only feel like one of the latter. There is so much out there, and I will only ever see a small portion of it. Maybe future generations will see it all more clearly, even walk on some of these anonymous globes.

The bible teachings of my youth assured me that all of this was made for us alone. The scientist clamoring to get out screamed “no”, we could not be the only ones. The torah of my adulthood leaves the question open.

It doesn’t need to be all about us. Somewhere out there on a distant globe I imagine another sentient being gazing up at the night sky, wondering if he or she or it is all there is. What about that distant blue-green globe — could anything of worth be there? Wouldn’t it be grand if, some day, that being and I could meet? He could show me how he relates to the Creator and I could do the same for him. Somewhere in the vastness of that night sky, there must be another grain of sand with dreams and aspirations.

Mustn’t there?