“Dear Debbie:

I truly hope you read this email today. A very good friend of mine is having a biopsy of her femur bone. She had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma 11 years ago and now either has a recurrence or new cancer. Either way, it’s not great and I just remembered that you wrote a Psalm for someone having a biopsy.

Take care & write back ASAP!”

Five years ago, in 1995, as in 2000, there was an extra Adar. Seven years after surgery to remove part of a lung, 17 years after cancer diagnosis and the intervening years of treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, I was again in the hospital. This time it was to investigate cardiac irregularities. One of the better known after effects of certain cancer medications is heart damage. I had received radiation to my chest twice. So the doctors were investigating my chest pain and shortness of breath.

This month, Adar 1, is a holding pattern. Added to the calendar every few years in an irregular way that I haven’t been able to figure out, this “leap month” makes the seasons and the holidays stay in sync. No Rosh Hashanah in August or Pesach in June. We are tied to the seasons and the calendar. We are part of the moon’s cycle that links us to the earth and the heavens. Purim, the reason we are told to “Be Happy! It’s Adar!” happens next month, in the “real” Adar. In the midst of midwinter’s grayness, we have an extra month to fill with thoughts of the Eternal.

A curious thing happened to me as we were preparing to come home from our two-week vacation on Sanibel Island in Florida at the beginning of the year: I was too ill to travel. Arriving at the airport for a noon flight to Chicago, Reid took yet another look at me, had the airline retrieve our suitcase, and called an ambulance.

Fifty years ago, Rabbi David Polish, z”L, and a small band of like thinkers, formed a new congregation. Inspired by the philosophy of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a pioneer of Reform Judaism, their synagogue also was based on the principle of freedom of expression by the Rabbi and members of the congregation. Beth Emet The Free Synagogue was born.

It’s COLD here in Chicago! There’s snow on the ground and slush in the streets. So I have o use my imagination to believe that anything is being planted outside at this time of year. But I know that in Israel, things are different. And that we can celebrate all the great variety of vegetation brought forth by the Creator. As my friend, Bonnie, wrote in the latest of her “Bubbe Books” for grandson ‘Tzally: “Tu - Tu - Tu B’Shevat! Let’s give thanks for all we’ve got!”

What do you make of Y2K? I can’t really figure out what to think, other than to acknowledge it. I’m interested in viewing the turn of the century more than the change of 1999 to 2000. Maybe I can only grasp the span of one hundred years. 1000 years is beyond me. As Jews, it isn’t our big date. But we are such a part of society here in the United States and in the world that I suppose we should pay attention. We can also view it as a special moment in time, just one more opportunity to reflect and to praise the Eternal.

Reid, E.G. and I have been spending the past week on Sanibel Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. We’ve been coming down here for 8 years over the school winter holidays. The best part, aside from the warm weather - escape from Chicago snow - is the people we have bonded with down here. One family are old friends: their oldest son and E.G. were in the same Hebrew School carpool. The mom, Sybil, likes to say that she watched E.G. grow up in her rear view mirror. We are joined by Sybil’s husband’s brother and his family, who also live in our neck of the woods, three families from New York, another couple from Chicago. With the various kids, parents, grandparents and friends, it is a big group that congregates around one of the pools each day and discusses who is going to dinner with whom and where.

The dark of the new moon, Tevet, descends as we light the last two candles of Hanukkah. I imagine God planned it that way, so that by our own hand, we could find a way to dispel the darkness and the cold. Of course, I write from a midwesterner’s perspective. I know that it isn’t even particularly cold here this year (Tevet is early and there is this strange warm weather happening) but still, we are preparing for the cold, we are looking for it, we are buying warm socks and new mittens and polar fleece vests. Maybe a little cold is a good thing. Maybe it keeps us from complacency and reminds us that it remains our duty to create warmth and light, to maintain our link to the Eternal.

Just a month old, my daughter sleeps in my arms as I hold the shammash and light the first candle of Hanukah, 1977. My husband, snapping the picture, smiles. It is December 5th. Four months later, our world will be turned inside out. On April 7, 1978, I learn I have cancer – advanced Hodgkins’ lymphoma. Cancer was not my address – not the home of a twenty-seven-year-old new mother with a newborn child. We became Maccabees.