Perhaps the quintessential weekend convergence  is Shabbat Hukkat, Fourth of July weekend  and a birthday.  Between the fireworks (in the sky, and otherwise) and the family time (quality and quantity) it is…a lot. My weekend brightened and reverberated with fireworks the lessons of Moshe Rabbenu, family, strangers, and a venerable downtown bar in the East Village called, “the Bitter End.”

Growing up with the Fifth of July as a birthday, one learns to share and try not to expect too much on birthdays. Mine always meant school was out, and no one was around. Adjacent to Independence Day, my birthday was tacked-on to the pageantry of our nation.  I especially remember a messy pie-eating contest I watched at the age of six in Tenafly, N.J. during the Bi-Centennial,  and an absolutely amazing video my family made for me when I turned 50 during the height of the COVID -19 pandemic.

This year, we were fortunate to enjoy the  pageantry of the full-on fireworks display with generations of family and machetonim. We never take family or country for granted, especially this year, with two Americans still held hostage by Hamas terrorists.  Our families fled from Iran to the United States and Israel to escape........

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