What Goes Down, Comes Up

Tamar, Tamar, Tamar. I keep thinking about this woman, this mother of royalty, throughout the week.

Why?

Because it’s my precious Frida Tamar’s birthday, her bat mitzvah, her parsha, this week.

I look and I think about Tamar and I want to write about her, in honor of this special day and special week.

Tamar, mother of royalty.

I kneed and mix the batter of Tamar, the mother of royalty. Mixing, stirring, pouring, chopping. Cakes and cookies and yummy things to eat. In honor of my daughter’s bat mitzvah, a Jewish girl, a daughter of royalty, who will, God willing, one day be a mother of royalty, a mother of queens and kings.

I put the ingredients into the bowl to make my homemade rolls.

I put my love into those rolls.

I whisper a little prayer that they should taste good and that she’ll appreciate them even if they are spelt or whole wheat 😊.

I wait as the batter rises, whether in the bowl or in the oven’s heat and I think.

Who are the kings? Or who will be the kings?

I think about life and the women that I have spoken to throughout the week. Such brave women with so many challenges, aches, and hardship, daughters of the King.

The batter rises. I punch it down. It rises once again.

I read the parsha and do you know what words keeps calling out to me? “Down”!!!

Wow, life is up and it’s down. Up and down. Why isn’t there a straight line? Why isn’t anything stable?

Yosef is thrown (down) into a pit, he’s pulled up. He’s goes down to Egypt, sold as a slave. He rises in the home of his master. Yehudah goes “down” in the eyes of his brothers.

Tamar is looked “down” upon in the eyes of Yehudah. An act of humbleness and humility on both of their parts, with the revelation of emes (truth) she and he ascend and give birth to twin sons. One of these sons is the father of royalty.

The story goes back to Yosef who is thrown down into jail. He rises within the depths of darkness-even in the dungeons goes up in status. But his hopes at being freed fail and he’s stuck down once again. And then the parsha ends and we will have to see what happens next week….

I punch the dough down again and shape them into rolls. I put them in the oven, in the heat. They rise. They look and smell delicious, rolls fit for a festive occasion, to celebrate that my daughter is the daughter of the King.

Up and down and we have rolls. A straight line? God-forbid a heartbeat without a beat. A dough that never rose.

So what is the message to my bat mitzvah girl? Life is up and down. With the punch we rise and so too with the heat. We fall, we descend. Yes, it’s painful, but with the descent follows an ascent. The potential for greatness, for royalty.

May the downs of life be quickly followed by accents and revealed salvations.

Mazel tov! Shabbat Shalom!

Elana