(1) Several years ago, Edie made a chicken and vegetable dish that looked so good that I took a picture.

Then I sent that picture to a company that turns photos into 500 piece jigsaw puzzles. The puzzle arrived a few weeks later and I set the box aside, not being ready to put the puzzle together. I just let the box sit there…..until Friday.

Friday, with help of Hannah and with one spot missing we put together the perimeter of the puzzle.

Yesterday, I set the pieces on the table next to the puzzle, not yet assorting them in any way.

We are now at the stage where the puzzle clearly looks unmanageable.

We may never get beyond this stage.

(2) I had another memorable dream last night. I was a lawyer on a business trip with two clients. We were in New York City, staying an adjoining two floor suites in a midtown hotel. My suite had shabby furniture. My clients’ was the height of luxury. We had killed someone. I don’t know what we did with the body, but there were yellow stains on a throw rug (why yellow, I am not sure) that we were afraid would give us away. We rolled the rug up and hid it behind the refrigerator, hoping it would never be found. Then, we went out and had a nice dinner.

(3) SPOILER ALERT. We finished Season 6 of Homeland. That means we have watched 72 episodes, with 24 to go. The United States now has its first woman president, Elizabeth Keane, and things are getting nasty. The premise is simple. The plot is complicated.

The United States and Iran are several years into a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear bomb research, and whether Iran is cheating is a big question. The new president won on a campaign promise to open up friendlier relations with Iran. The CIA is filled with people who are 100% against her policy and determined to undermine it and to undermine her.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, however, is a controlled American asset, blackmailed into his position by the CIA’s Saul Berenson. It turns out that he was also a Mossad asset, not through blackmail, but through a $45 million payment. You can’t serve two masters, as he will rudely find out.

CIA operatives, along with a popular media figure who looks and acts like Steve Bannon, try to assassinate Keane, and discredit her, before her inauguration. She survives, has a closed door inauguration ceremony, and starts her revenge. When Series 6 aired in 2016, it all still seemed like fantasy. Today…..

(4) After yesterday’s kiddush at Adas Israel, Rabbi Alexander led an interesting session on how the Orthdox Jewish establishment in Berlin coped with modernity in the pre-war German Empire, when Jews were no longer an insular community, but part of mainstream Berlin life. He discussed decisions relating to intermarriage, conversion, and identifying who was, and who was not considered Jewish, and compared them to decisions American rabbis must make today. His focus was on the writings of Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, a respected source during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I had never heard of him. Interesting. Had nothing to do with Nazis or the Holocaust.