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Ever since my doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure, he’s been telling me to remove stress from my life. 

Now that the Yomim Noraim have snuck up on us (as much as one can sneak up on someone while stopping after every step to blow a ram’s horn), we should really start thinking about what we can do to help our shuls out financially.

I bet you’re anxious to learn the results of my blood-pressure test.

Calm down.

From time to time, I run a yom tov article that is really not written for you, apparently – it’s just a way of recording my family’s apparent minhagim.  Minhagim are treasured traditions, handed down from generation to generation as a way of keeping our mesorah alive, but the problem is that for the most part, handing things down in this way is like playing a game of telephone, where, over the years, some customs get added, muddled, or taken out. 

Welcome back to “How Should I Know?” – the column that most rabbis say you shouldn’t read for six hours after eating fleishigs.  Or milchigs.

So we have two parakeets. 

Mind you, we don’t own the parakeets.  We’re hosting them for yom tov.  We have parakeets the same way we’re having my in-laws.  They make noise, hog the newspaper, and I have to keep putting out food.