Sweet Home Alabama

We are having a very nice ("sweeet") time in Alabama. First, we visited Dothan and our dear friends, Lynne and Rob. About 10 years, ago, Lynne chose being a Rabbi as a second career. She studied Hebrew intensively to pass the entrance exam, spent a year in Israel away from her husband and, after five years of study in rabbinic school, Lynne was ordainedas a rabbi. Her first synagogue is a 55 family congregation...oh yes, and we are the 55th family! We want to maintain membership in a synagogue while we're traveling so we decided that this way we can really have Rabbi Lynne (as her congregation calls her) as OUR rabbi.

It was a very special Shabbat at Lynne's synaogue as they had a Holocaust survivor, Anne Rosenheck, as the speaker. Anne was 13 years old when her family was transported to Aushweitz and that was the last she saw of her family. However, she survived and you could hear a pin drop as she retold her story of survival with several very close calls. Here's an article about the community event she also spoke at. http://www.dothaneagle.com/dea/lifestyles/local/article/holocaust_survivor_to_share_story/68820/ On Sat evening, we had a lovely dinner at Lynne's and Rob's home with Anne and her friend, John Stembridge, also at the dinner. John had incredible stories in his own right having once been Mayor of North Miami, Florida and quite involved in all sorts of different global experiences.

That didn't finish our experience with Lynne's synagogue - yesterday, we joined about 30 congregants to attend a AA baseball team, the Montgomery Biscuits. It was great fun - of course, I got some biscuits and gravy at the park! Afterward, we joined the group at Jason's Deli. The only downer of the day was that the Biscuits lost the game. We're returning to Dothan on Wed. to help with the synagogue's Deli Day fundraiser (they're selling 800 corned beef lunches) with plans to stay for another erev Shabbat.

And now we're camped at Gunter Hill COE campground. The COE is US Core of Engineers and that means that we're camped on land that's adjacent to a COE resevoir - well, actually, it is a beautiful lake. We have a wonderful view of the lake out our back windows and we had a really nice kayak outing late this afternoon. We were supposed to be touring the Civil Rights sights in Montgomery today but, somehow, got sidetracked and ended up just hanging around the lovely campground today...it was good to have a down day and we'll resume our sightseeing tomorrow. I'm sure that will give a lot to add to a future post.