BBT/SerandEz Shabbaton Recap

Whew! I knew I could count on Mark Frankel of BeyondBT, who has written a recap already, saving me the effort. (And many of you know how much I love saving effort.) My biggest surprise of the weekend may have been Mark's own surprise at how many of us have at least one parent who is a ba'al teshuva, something I found to be incredibly common throughout my life.

We owe a huge thank you to Mark, David Linn, and their wives and kids. While the Shabbaton was named for both of us, they are the ones who did all the work, from the logistics to the catering to actually doing all the serving, cleaning... everything was taken care of. All we had to do was show up. I also have to give a huge thanks to Serach, who put up with hosting five young women in our little 2-bedroom apartment - which can be hard, even when you like all of them - and setting two young men up at a friend across the street.

Finally, a big thank you to the Apple, RaggedyMom (not just for dealing with Princess D'Tiara, also known as the living spit up cloth), Special Ed, and Jameel of the Muqata who were brave enough and kind enough to speak at the Shabbaton. While all of them are pretty busy these days - the Apple and Special Ed were working over the summer, the Raggedies headed yesterday to visit family in Europe for a couple of weeks, and packing was a nightmare, as the closest kosher store is not close, and Jameel was trying to take care of a million and one things even as he takes part in the NBN trip and conference - they each took out the time to try and come up with something to speak about. More importantly, they all spoke really well. Also a thanks to Jameel, Kasamba, and T&DE for making special (long) trips to come join us for the Melave Malka. We really appreciated it.

We hope everyone enjoyed as much as we did, and we are sure we'll see y'all again soon!!