The end of the week was just too crazy, Friday was one of those days where I had to run around the city and do 12 million things, as well as my usual cooking and preparation for Shabbat. So my blog post for End didn’t get written.

Now the last Shabbat before Rosh HaShanah is over, we’ve had our Slichot service, and now I’m ready to begin a new week, so here comes a post about Begin. It seems appropriate, somehow.

So many preparations, still. Practising my Torah reading, my davvening (I will be leading Musaf on both days of Rosh HaShanah), making sure everything is in order.

I’ve got guests for dinner Wednesday night, so there’s shopping and cooking and making the eruv tavshilin on Wednesday. That’s a legal fiction to allow me to cook for Shabbat on Friday even though on Yom Tov we are only allowed to cook for the day itself. Jewish life is full of interesting little legalities like that, when different rules clash. As the rabbis said, we are meant to live by the Torah, not die by it, so they found ways to make things work.

I’ve got to collect children’s drawings from the day school which we are very kindly being lent to decorate the walls of the dingy auditorium where our services will take place, and hang them up.

So many things will begin this week. My Jewish calendar ends with September, so in order to figure out my appointments for October, I need my new calendar. The lu’ach, which tells me which Torah readings to do and how to run services, also ends this week and I must get a new one.

I have some volunteer commitments that need to being this month as well. I’m the coordinator for my kids’ school high school hot lunch, and if I want it to begin in October, I need to get my revised menus up (kosher meat has gone up!) and get an email out to the parents so we can get going on the process. Do I have all my volunteers?

So many things ending and beginning. What is your life like this week?