Jewish Musings Tuesday 9/27

[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

[hollygail]

The fourth aliyah follows.

- - -
Chapter 30
1 When all these things befall you — the blessing and the curse that I have set before you — and you take them to heart amidst the various nations to which the Lord your God has banished you, 2 and you return to the Lord your God, and you and your children heed His command with all your heart and soul, just as I enjoin upon you this day, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. 5 And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers.
6 Then the Lord your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.
- - -

[hollygail]

Rewards for doing what you know to be the right thing(s)… This is the season of t’shuvah, turning back to who you were before you did whatever it is you did that you know to have been wrong, and the promised “reward” (although that’s not the word used in our liturgy) is you’re “cleansed” of your “sin” and can be sealed in the Book of Life before the “gates close” on Yom Kippur…

In San Diego, there’s a pilot program going on. Once a month, there’s a Weight Watchers meeting for Lifetimers (whether at goal or not). It’s held in two locations not far from where I live, and I went to the one closer to my house the first two times I attended, but it was at lunchtime and the center was mobbed. Then I tried the location where I find myself much more often (the location I attend my weekly meetings) at 5:30 in the evening, and it’s much cozier (read: fewer people — sometimes we even have empty chairs!). Anyway, it was Monday (yesterday as you read this, but earlier today for me as it’s 11pm here). One topic was about the “cushion” between one’s goal weight and one’s actual weight; it seems several (ahem) people weigh up to 10 pounds below their stated goal, so we have a “cushion” for those “just in case” times… I’m one of those people. Do I view it as my “reward”? Or do I view eating one extra helping of chocolate my “reward” for weighing several pounds below my stated goal weight? Or what?

But when it comes to the High Holy Days, boy, I take them so much more seriously than I do my weight. I used to stress as much as Louise tells us she does, but I one year delegated one job in particular to a woman who volunteered for it (she has since died), then another task to someone else a year or two later, and repeated the delegating one task at a time a couple of years after that… so that while once I was the equivalent of the “stage manager” (I did pretty much everything that the rabbi and cantor didn’t, like offer honors, send out the letters to people offering the honors, lining up Torah and haftarah chanters, making sure the room was set up with the chairs facing the way the rabbi wanted them, arranging for a dessert reception akin to an oneg Shabbat after erev RH services and for a break-the-fast after the end of YK, and on and on and on)…

Now? I line up the chanters for Torah and haftarah readings; I print the verses for any of my readers who need a copy; I give recordings of the aliyot to whichever reader asks for one. That’s it.

Other people deal with other tasks. I cannot tell you how liberated I feel.

When DH and I started living together, he figured things out after the very first HHD we were together; from then on, there was always additional chocolate in the house beginning before RH — cookies, ice cream — and only brands he knew I really liked. We haven’t gone down that road in years! Delegating worked for me.

What’s your story?

[lee058]

Good morning everybody! Thanks to everyone for your comments about my DS and work. Today we are going to get him his ID, after which he can go in any gate and shop where he works. Yay! It should take a couple of hours, as the ID office is apparently always crowded. After that, he and I will stop over at Wegmans to pick up some things.

Re rewards for doing the right thing: Chocolate is up on the list for me too, but my main reward that I look for is praise. If I don't hear it from other people, I tell myself! I am much better at this than I used to be.

I'll be back later. Have a peaceful day, Lee

[savtele]

Boker Tov All! Lee - it's frustrating, I know. But eventually, hopefully, this works into something more regular. And of course, there are the winter holidays - times when many of his co-workers, who have time accrued, no doubt take vacations.....

Some things are their own reward. I brought all the houseplants in - there is possibility of frost some nights coming up - and cleaned off the tables on the porch where they all sat all summer. My reward is, when I look out my windows, that area of the porch looks so nice and clean! And the plants are all "smiling" back at me from their regular homes in the house.

Of course, sometimes chocolate is a coping skill, not a reward! All in the perspective.

This year, right after HHD, we will begin planning mom's birthday party in earnest. She'll be 90 in December. It's not a surprise party, so some of the reward will be finding out what she would like to have done/how she sees herself marking this milestone!

I need to get a move on. Work-out, then shopping.
Have a good day ladies!

[gazelle18]

There's a great reward in getting on the scale after I have been on plan, and actually seeing the number on the scale go down. I haven't had that feeling in a couple of months. Last couple of days have been somewhat better.

[hollygail]

Okay, all. A quick post and run. Got an email from my rabbi this morning that a friend (former adult student of mine) had a stroke and is in a hospital about 10 minutes from my house (it's closer to my house than the Trader Joe's I go to). I went to morning minyan, added her name to the mi sh'beirach list, came home for a few minutes, and went to the hospital, where I seem to be the "in lieu" rabbi (since my own rabbi cannot get to the hospital yet; BTW, this woman is no longer a member of my shul since she moved from San Diego to Los Angeles to go to school, most recently full scholarship to grad school at UCLA, so my rabbi is not contractually bound to go). Her mother is a mess. My original intent was to go for ME, but once I got there and saw what the mother was going through, I've been there for her... Had a really good chat with the chaplain on duty who went to see the mother after we talked in the hallway for about 20 or 30 minutes, mostly with my filling him in on family stuff. I've been on the phone and texting not only with my rabbi but also with my former rabbi who not only "sponsored" this 45-year old woman for conversion, but became even closer friends with her than I did (former rabbi is now somewhere in the Northeast, herself having gone into chaplaincy work). I need chocolate. Good thing there isn't any in the house... I stopped home for lunch and am leaving in a couple of minutes to go back to the hospital. If I can, I'll check in later.

[louise]

I get tremendous satisfaction out of a lot of what I do for the HHD. Right now I'm feeling like I'm behind in my studying - I reviewed ma'ariv last night (I do 2nd night) and it wasn't bad. Have been working on my torah readings for a week or so already and will start reviewing my haftarah maybe tomorrow. If I do everything at least once a day between now and then should be okay - not doing anything new this year. Am always high as a kite when I get off the bima.

My big reward, once I get myself in hand, will hopefully be less pain.

Made some honey cakes this morning to bring to people. New recipe that calls for spices, orange and lemon zest, and silan (Israeli date honey). They look pretty ordinary but I'm hoping the taste will be something different.

[lee058]

Hi again everybody. Today was another good day, also busy but with time for fun too. DS and I ran our errands, had a super lunch out, and are currently enjoying just relaxing. Tomorrow and Thursday will hopefully be our last early early mornings that we need to get up for awhile. Saturday evening, he starts working the evening shift (5-9 PM). It's all doable, thank goodness.

We go often to the place where we had lunch, so the staff knows us. Everyone was really, really nice to DS about his getting his job. It was a pleasure, as his mom, to hear everyone congratulating him!

I have to admit that we bought a small box of rainbow cookies at Wegmans, perhaps as a small reward for all our hard work. At any rate, they were very good, but I don't think I'll indulge in them again for awhile. We also bought red pears to try; I hope we like them.

I'll check back before I go to bed. Have a peaceful rest of the day, Lee

[hollygail]

Turns out it may not have been a stroke, but the rest is pretty much as I thought. I spent almost the entire day there, sometimes crying, sometimes comforting someone else who was crying, and talking with the nurses and the chaplain, mostly filling him in on some family background so he could speak with the mother. I so very much admire chaplains, at least this one and at least one or two others I've met. He spent, I don't know, 15, 20, 30 minutes? with the mother and was able to get an answer out of her that really came from her being "in the present." I and other close family friends who'd been there since 6 in the morning weren't able to get her to be in the moment. She kept blaming herself (seems she took the dogs out for a walk and talked on the phone with her sister before checking on her daughter; she found her on the floor in her room and called the paramedics who took her to the hospital where the mother found out her brain had been deprived of oxygen for 30 to 45 minutes. I kept hearing "if only I hadn't taken the dogs out for a walk" and "if only I hadn't talked on the phone with my sister" kinds of things; she said if she had checked on her daughter earlier, she'd have been able to call the paramedics before all the brain damage had occurred, and maybe early enough that her daughter wouldn't be in the state she was in... And she was in denial about just how bad off her daughter was. Yet this chaplain who never met any of us before was able to bring her to a place where she was able to understand the actual situation without recriminations (etc.) and she was able to offer alternatives she'd be willing to face if and when the time came... Wow.