This may be the first year my friends and I didn’t spend a part of the evening discussing the holiday.  Even though most of the group is not interested in religion, the hostess always prepares a speech.  But this year even the speech was irrelevant.  We were all distracted by the death or degeneration of some of our usual participants, friends for decades.  And the war may start up again any minute.  And the constant rockets in the north.  Hard to remember the beauty of the first fruits.  hard to think of David’s grandmother.