Go to Bed in One City, Wake Up in Another...

So there's a very important person who's instrumental in making sure this trip really could happen in spite of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. As fore mentioned one of my high school buddies, Nancy, which Facebook was instrumental in reconnecting us, extended an invite to visit her and her hometown of Seattle. Through a collaboration with her good friends  our holiday attendance was made possible at a conservative Synagogue.

So when we disembarked our cruise ship there Nancy was with guest tickets to schlep us to services across the waterway to Mercer Island's Herzl-Ner Tamid, the largest and oldest conservative synagogue in Seattle. This congregation has a membership of about 800 families. That's  ginormous for us since we have maybe 40 in the La Crosse area. :)

A nature trail sits in the front property of Herzl Ner Tamid

Once again the cosmic forces had us sitting next to the right person and I learned all about this woman's congregation, family, grandchildren and life in this Seattle congregation once she found out we were visiting. Her  40 yr old daughter would be reading from the Torah this service. This Mom beamed as she shared this news. I asked how her daughter had become so learned and she attributed it to the schooling and camps they sent her. Once again a connection made our services all the more bearable even being hungry on this fasting day.

I had time to explore a bit while Natureman sat through the memorial service.  Behind the Sanctuary area there was a School wing in
addition to a lovely playground and small amphi theater seating along their 'waterfront' property. This was the perfect ending of sitting in services to be able to contemplate sitting on a bench with a water view.

 A couple fishermen were dropping their lines close to shore. They didn't seem concerned that they didn't have any bites. Maybe there were Jewish fish and they were fasting too...

Mid afternoon had us heading home with Nancy. Once again she picked us up and realizing our lethargic being knew we needed to lay low until we went to break our fast. It didn't take long until we were snoozing. The week of traveling had caught up with us.

Nancy had gotten the 3 of us invited to her friends, Marjorie and Richard's home for Break the Fast. It was a very incredible invite as it was a smorgasbord of Richard's homemade bagels, bialys and the fixings.

Can you imagine how great it smelled walking into a home where baking bread had been going on all day long?

homemade bagels and bialys

TERRIFIC!  Dessert cinnamon rolls with a very special orange liqueur on top  baked while we gobbled up as many bagels as we could sample. YUM. We were even sent home with bagels which we continued enjoying for our remaining Seattle breakfasts.

We feel so fortunate to have spent our Day of Atonement in the Seattle area.
Thank you so much Nancy, Richard and Marjorie!

More Seattle time coming in this week's blog...