Sunday, January 18, 2015

Daughter Tali gave birth to twins!!

Our daughter Tali Magal delivered twin baby girls on Thursday morning January 15, 2015. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth date.  Auspicious!  I am so delighted, proud, happy, relieved.. many emotions all at once.  I got the news while I was at Ohalah, an annual conference for Renewal Rabbis, Cantors, and Chaplains who gather together in Boulder, Colorado to reconnect with colleagues and mentors, share innovative prayers, music, teachings, and refill spiritually!


       Tali Magal with Amalia Belle and Gabriella Roux Fleishman


I was walking up a hill with about 25 people for Minchah, afternoon prayers, on Tuesday afternoon, January 13, when I got a text from Tali that she was going into labor.  I began to weep, and as I turned off the phone and joined the circle, I heard each prayer in a new way, relevant to giving birth, feeling gratitude for life, being connected with the Creator and all the many generations since ancient times.  At the end of the brief service I called out to all those friends present, "My daughter is about to go into labor with twins!!"  and they closed the circle around me; offered blessings for the health and safety of mother and twin babies about to be born. There happened to be four or five doulas in the group (!) who offered me Jewish birthing and nursing prayers. Can you imagine that??!! The rest of the conference I kept running into people who told me they were a twin, and asserted what fun they had growing up.  After the conference, I stayed for Shabbat at the home of my close friend Eve Ilsen, whose husband, Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, had passed away in July, and who had been a mentor for me and all the other Renewal clergy who gathered at the conference to tell stories about his influence on them.  Eve and I went to services at the local Conservative shul, and the Gabbai, volunteer helper to the rabbi who offers honors to members and guests participating in the service, approached me to ask me to take an honor during the Torah service.  Her name was one of the names considered by my daughter and her husband Craig for one of the twins: Gabriella!  I took that as a sign.  Everything was a sign about twins, birthing, and blessings for new mothers.  After the long labor, Tali and Craig now need some time to heal, bring the babies home, get into a routine with the help of a baby nurse, and then they'll be ready for visitors.  So my husband Itzhak and I are planning to go to New York City in a few days to visit in person and hold those little babies, and get to know them.

What will we be called?  Savta and Saba, Granmother and Grandfather in Hebrew!
  




You might want to view my mother Nika Fleissig's blog as well: 
http://www.lifebeginsat90.blogspot.com/