Jewish Musings Monday, August 28

[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:
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting — you are welcome to, but you are also welcome to chime in. Don’t be shy!

[hollygail]

One of the main points brought out in this week's Torah portion is this:

To be Jewish means to locate yourself within the larger Jewish story. In many ways, wherever Jews go and whatever Jews do, the past walks with us. For that reason, the text of the vidui bikkurim (the verbal expression of the farmer’s gratitude to God which accompanies the farmer's offering of first fruits of his/her crops each year, starting after the third year of its having been planted [the first three years that a plant bears fruit are not fit to eat]) forms the central part of the Passover haggadah. It is the story of a people who have been liberated from slavery and allowed to celebrate in freedom. To quote the Jewish poet A. M. Klein: “generations look through our eyes.”

Question for today: We no longer bring offerings to a centralized location in Judaism, but we keep alive the information about what they were. If you know any stories about your ancestors (at least two generations ago, your grandparents or farther back than that), what have you learned from those stories?

My DF was very open about certain things about his own parents. One that stands out is this one. His father was a traveling salesman, and (apparently) didn't keep kosher on the road. One time, he brought home some shrimp. He and the kids (my dad and his siblings) sat on the floor in the kitchen with open sheets of newspaper spread under them and a trash can in the middle to eat the shrimp. My DGM wouldn't allow them to use her dishes for treif. Although my own parents didn't keep kosher during my lifetime, and we ate pork and shellfish, and I drank milk at dinner regardless of whether the main course included beef, I understood the importance for many Jews of the Jewish dietary laws (namely, of keeping kosher). When I became an adult, I didn't keep kosher either, and didn't grow up saying blessings before eating, but my DS reminded me some years ago that whenever I made lobster, I'd lift the lobster from its package and as I plunged it into boiling water, I'd say, "baruch ata adonai ... treif!"

[gazelle18]

I forgot to post yesterday re: blessings. As you all know, I love acronyms, where you use the first letter of each word to form its own term. (E.g., GOAT means “greatest of all time.”)

In the medical world, when there are SO many , e.g. , white blood cells in a sample that they are not easily given a number, my DH (and others of course) use the acronym “TNTC,” which means, “too numerous to count.”

My blessings are so numerous, they are TNTC

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well and SAFE!

Re today's topic: One thing I remember well is my grandma Goldie (dad's mom) cooking Thanksgiving dinner. We always had a crowd, and it was wonderful. She lived in an apartment building in Manhattan, and had three big folding tables that she had the maintenance man bring upstairs for holidays. I was lucky to get to know her as a kid and a young adult!!

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[gazelle18]

Re: today’s question, my grandmother’s family was Jewish, with the emphasis on “ish.” They ignored ALMOST all of the Jewish traditions. But my great grandmother wouldn’t eat what I call “high treyfe.” That included pork and shellfish. Her one exception was when she would be taken out to the seafood shacks by Lake Pontchartrain and she would eat crabs in the parking lot. Apparently, this was her guilty pleasure.

[brgmsn]

My dad's mother kept kosher. She was from the old country--Lithuania--and had a kosher home. She read the Yiddish paper and spoke broken English. However, she would go out for Chinese food and loved it. We told her the won tons in the soup had chicken in them. Those were her favorite. lol
I also had the only Jewish grandmothers who could not cook. My dad's mother made wonderful soup but actually served the boiled chicken as an entree. BLECH. My mom's mother cooked everything till it was charred beyond recognition.

[happysavta]

Shalom, chaverot,

Kind of a rough day today. Had an MRI of breast in the morning and a CT of lung in the afternoon. The CT was easy, but the MRI was a hard position to maintain for 30 minutes. (flat on your stomach, head down, arms extended over your head, hard to breath, no moving).

I have one more MRI to do on Wednesday, and then a repeat mammogram and ultrasound plus a separate procedure to insert a Savi Scout Clip in the breast to guide surgery. I am doing more than my share to keep the medical establishment in business!