Jewish Musings Monday April 24, 2017

[hollygail]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Angelika
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting — you are welcome to do that but you are also welcome to chime in (and I'm curious about why people click on the title of this thread and then leave without posting anything...).

[hollygail]

I must admit to being surprised when I read your responses. Not one of you has been to a Rosh Chodesh gathering, and here I am having been a regular attendee at one while living in Tucson, and since moving to San Diego County, 6 different groups. Right now it's after 10:30 Sunday night, and I've been on the go since 6 this morning, so I'll come back tomorrow (Monday) to give you an idea of some of the experiences I've enjoyed with women in Rosh Chodesh groups.

[gazelle18]

Sorry to have been MIA yesterday....lots going on here....

I also have never been to a rosh chosdesh gathering and would love to hear about one.

[hollygail]

I don't have enough time to go into the feelings I have about Rosh Chodesh groups... Suffice it to say that camaraderie among women is special. When a group of Jewish women gets together to delve into something Jewish, and there's a feeling of equality in the room, it's transformative... I'm taking my laptop with me; if I have time between tutoring sessions today, I'll tell you about a session I led before Chanukah to give you only one idea of what might happen.

[hollygail]

Sorry, ladies. I didn't get a chance to be back until just now (and it's close to 8:30 pm).

Some Rosh Chodesh groups have a ritual they begin with or a ritual they end with, and some don't. I'll try to describe a Rosh Chodesh gathering I led last Kislev (the month in which Chanukah falls).

In advance, each woman was invited to bring a chanukiah, and many did (many didn't) as well as a nosh (which most women did bring... I'm sure it's no surprise that we eat...). We set the chanukiot sort of next to each other (end to end) along the dining room table, and they went all the way around four sides. Each woman was asked to light her shamash from the shamash of the previous woman, and to light one candle on the chanukiah in front of her and to tell us about a woman who "brought light" into her life. It was completely participatory; that is, even the few women who didn't have a chanukiah to light (the hostess had several, and a few people brought more than one) told us about someone in her life too. By the time the last woman spoke, everyone was smiling and the feeling in the air was one of great warmth.

Here's the introduction I brought (and handed to someone to read to everyone):
[exerpted from Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year, Penina V. Adelman, Biblio Press, New York, second edition, 1990]

Women of Light

Women of light appear often in Jewish lore. There was the light of the candles which Sarah lit at the beginning of the Sabbath. By a miracle, the light remained throughout the entire week, glowing in the tent of Abraham and Isaac. When Sarah died, the task of lighting these sacred candles passed into the hands of Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. Because Rebecca was as worthy as Sarah, she caused the light to remain throughout the entire week as had Sarah.

Ginzburg, Louis. Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 7 vols, 1909–38; vol. 1, 297

Then I talked about "Women who bring Light" and here are my notes:
"We’ll talk about several women this evening, all of whom brought or bring light. We just heard about our matriarch, Sarah. Let’s talk a little about Judith.
The stories about Judith are not included in Tanakh, our bible, Torah (the Five Books of Moses), N’vi-im (Prophets), and K’tuvim (the Writings). However, there’s something else call the Apocrypha, and that’s where we find the Book of Judith."

And when someone wanted to know what the Apocrypha is, the rebbitsin (sp?) (who doesn't always come, in case you're wondering) described it. (If you don't know either, here's a brief quote from Wikipedia: "includes texts written in the Jewish religious tradition either in the Intertestamental period or in the early Christian era, but outside the Christian tradition. It does not include books in the canonical Hebrew Bible...")

Then I had a "plot summary" (also from Wikipedia) of the Judith story:
"The story revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes [the stress is on the third syllable, ho-lo-FER-neez], with whom she slowly ingratiates herself, promising him information on the Israelites. Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night as he lies in a drunken stupor. She decapitates him, then takes his head back to her fearful countrymen. The Assyrians, having lost their leader, disperse, and Israel is saved. Though she is courted by many, Judith remains unmarried for the rest of her life."

I also passed around something from the Jewish Women's Archive (http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/judith-apocrypha), asking each woman in turn (we were sitting around the living room) to read a paragraph or two about the Judith story.

There was also information about Deborah (chapters 4 and 5 from the Book of Judges found in Prophets/Nevi-im), another "woman of light" and an original midrash about her (Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year, Penina V. Adelman, Biblio Press, New York, second edition, 1990). There are two characters and a narrator and I asked for three volunteers each to read one. (Can you tell I'm into participatory gatherings?)

(I had also brought with me some resource information for anyone who was interested in more information about Judith and/or Deborah; I don't remember that more than one or two women asked to see it at the end of the evening.)

But I also brought with me an article "11 Surprising Jewish Women Who Made History" (http://www.kveller.com/11-surprising-jewish-women-who-made-history/?utm_source=Kveller+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7d47a218d2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_eece40deea-7d47a218d2-27388577) and I don't remember whether we did or didn't have time to go through all 11 names...

I led a fairly brief guided meditation, pausing after each line:
"Close your eyes.
Think of a dark time in your own life.
What was the light that brought you through this period?
What inspired you to leave the darkness behind?"

And more women than I expected wanted to share what they had experienced during the meditation!

And the last thing was I brought the words to a song (tune of "Oh Chanukah Oh Chanukah" that I'm sure you are all
familiar with) about Mrs. Maccabeus (Latke Ditties [Each Hanukah We Glorify] / Words: Ben Aronin, Music: Folk melody “Oy Chanukah, Oy Chanukah”), so that we ended the evening on a high point.

And of course not everyone is me, so when someone else leads, she does what she chooses. Like one month, someone showed the video "Gefilte Fish" (about three generations of women, grandmother, mother, adult daughter who make their own gefilte fish) plus a video she had just come across that week while she was searching for the "Gefilte Fish" video; the second one was in Hebrew with English subtitles and I laughed myself silly! (Sorry, no recollection of the title.) And this coming Thursday evening, we're going to make challah. So every month is different.

I asked one woman (whose presentations I love!) if she wanted to co-lead next month's with me; it's Sivan, the month in which comes Shavuot, and one custom for Shavuot is to read the Book of Ruth. I like the idea of talking about the relationship between Naomi and Ruth (or perhaps the relationship among Naomi, Ruth and Orpah). I'll let you know when Lili answers me whether she wants to co-lead, and if so, what we decide to present.