THE WEISS CHRONICLES

Interesting Speaker at Synagogue today

Our synagogue had a speaker for the Sabbath after Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The speaker was Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger. The first image shows what he looked like today.

Bernd is the son of a Wehrmacht Colonel (the uniformed officer is that man) who remained loyal to Hitler even after 1945.

Bernd eventually converted to Judaism in 1987 (the image of the guy holding the Torah is Bernd after converting) and is an Israeli citizen who served in the IDF. He is currently living in Miami, Fl.

But there is more to the story. Much more. In the 50s and 60s, Bernd's family lived in the same building as the family of Claus Von Stauffenberg who was also a Wehrmacht Colonel and a leader in the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Both families had large portraits of the officer in uniform on their wall. Bernd's family referred to the late Stauffenberg as a traitor. Bernd's father never renounced his service to the Nazis however, he was recalled to the Bundeswehr (sort of reconstituted Wehrmacht) as a reservist in the mid 1960s and assigned to help train Israelis in the use of certain Armored vehicles that were secretly sent to Israel from Germany.

He discussed his thoughts during the massacre at the 1972 Olympics (he mentioned that documents from the files of East Germany indicate that the Stasi were instrumental in getting the terrorists into position to carry out the massacre).

Bernd has a blog by the way.

posted by Martin Weiss # 10:06 PM

Friday, April 28, 2017

Azaleas in the Hood

The azalea blooms are pretty nice this year.

The first two images are in our yard. The white azalea came out nice even though it gets very little direct sun.

Those images also show the metal peacock I have (from slightly different angles).

The last image shows a number of azaleas in a yard near us where the azaleas have gotten a lot of direct sunlight.

posted by Martin Weiss # 1:18 PM

Saturday, April 22, 2017

A 10 minute downpour

On Friday 21 April about 5pm, we had a 10 minute downpour that resulted in so much runoff that much of the backyard was either a pond or a river.

The three airports had less than one half inch.

A fellow named Mike Wish who lives in Kensington took the image on the left from the top of his apartment building.

He tweeted it and the capital weather gang posted it on their site.

A woman named Rose Collins of Alexandria got the double rainbow at the end of the rain event and got it to the same web site as Mike Wish did.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:05 PM

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Beth's Visit for Passover 5777

Beth had a nice two week visit with us this year (which according to some people is a Jubilee year).

She arrived the evening of April 5 on American Airlines.

The flights went fine but the shuttle service at BWI refused to sell her a shared ride limo for the trip from the airport to our house.

She had to buy an exclusive limo for about thrice the price (as of this writing, we are still communicating with the company - I'll update).

The image (all the images expand when you click on them) with the Kosher Pastry Oven in the background (the second of which was a close up taken by Irwin) were taken April 9 in Wheaton where Irwin and Cheryl joined us.

The image with the cherry tree arch in the background was taken by John Hunger, a friend of Beth who was visiting us during Passover.

The images with a house in the background were taken by myself and George with my camera.

The house belongs to the Cymrot family who are friends of ours. I thought it made a good picture because they had cherry trees, a dogwood tree and azaleas all in concurrent bloom.

The cherry trees and the dogwood tree are only distinguishable if you click on the image twice so it enlarges - even then you have to look closely and remember that dogwood leaves have their unique way of spreading in layers.

Also, as a bonus, they had a plum maple (near the azalea on the right) which has red leaves but no bloom.

Beth left on April 19 (also via a shuttle but with a better price).

posted by Martin Weiss # 10:59 AM

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Three Dreams in One Night

I probably slept too long last night.

I had three dreams that I remembered.

In one dream, I was the commander of Austrian troops in either WWI or the battle of Austerlitz and my side was losing.

In another dream, I was invited to speak at some University in Washington State (I don't remember the subject of the speech).

I got off the plane (I think it was at the Seattle airport) and took a cab to the campus and everyone was crying and lying on the ground screaming because they had lost a football game earlier that day.

In the final dream, I was going to the Pentagon to pick up George who was undergoing some sort of test (I don't remember what kind of testing).

I had trouble finding a parking place because of a demonstration and ended up parking real close to the building (perhaps in the space reserved for the Secretary of Defense). I got in and was waiting for George to return from the testing and I looked out the window. My car was about to be towed so I left the room and started running for the exit. Then I woke up.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:10 AM

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Forgot the Egg for the Sedar Plate

This year I forgot to place an egg on the Sedar Plate.

Nobody noticed.

The reason for nobody noticing is that the egg doesn't play a part in any of the Sedar activities or blessings or narrative.

Apparently we don't know exactly when the egg became part of the sedar. It is discussed in the commentary of Moses Isserles (16th Century Poland) in detail and in less detail in Joseph Karo's writings a decade or so before.

The Babylonian Talmud (folio page 114b of Pasachim) contains a dispute as to whether a cooked egg counts for the purpose of having two cooked foods at the sedar. Maimonides takes the position that eggs do not count. So somewhere in the two hundred years or so before Joseph Karo the egg got to the sedar plate.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:04 PM