Jewish Musings Thursday, January 18

[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:

Frieda (hopefully)?
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you who 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]

Education is one of Judaism’s most important values. It guarantees that Judaism will be passed down through the generations. Asking questions, as we do at the Passover seder, may be the most important part of learning. And the business about the four sons or children (as at mine) teaches us to encourage questions from the less-informed and to answer them in ways that the inquirer will understand. I attempt to do this in the classes I teach; that is, to answer my students' questions in a way that they'll understand and learn.

In your life, do you ask / have you asked "good" questions? You know, the kind that gets to the crux of the situation rather than yes/no questions or "do you prefer X or Y" type questions... And when you're asked questions, do you attempt to respond according to the need of the inquirer to understand / learn? And please share outcomes, especially about your own questions and/or the answers you receive/received.

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well, warm and SAFE! Please pray for Israel.

Re today's topic: Since DS has Asperger's, my whole life with him has revolved around asking questions and receiving answers. I have had to work at phrasing things accurately and carefully, to the best of my ability.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[gazelle18]

Here is an example of a good question I asked. I once had a potential divorce client. She came in, complained bitterly about her husband, about the many ways he made her feel small and irrelevant, about the ways he emotionally abused her, and about the utter unhappiness she felt about being married to this man. I gave her advice, counseled her on how a divorce would look, and then she left, promising to think about it. I didn’t hear from her until five years later. She returned, voicing all of the same complaints she had voiced five years before. (I had taken copious notes, which I always kept.) When she finished complaining, I said, “I’m going to summarize my notes from our last meeting 5 years ago.” After I did that, I asked her one “good” question. “Tell me, what if anything has changed in the past five years?”After pondering a bit, she replied, “Nothing, except that I’m five years older.” That epiphany helped her decide to go through with the divorce.

[peachymom1]

Right now I am dealing with a finance person who keeps rejecting an expense report I've tried to submit for one of my execs. We have a new policy, and this finance person and I apparently have different interpretations of the new policy. Yesterday, we went back and forth a few times, and the last thing I asked her yesterday was to give me an example of how she thought I should submit the expense. This morning I got a response, basically telling me (again) that my interpretation is wrong, and if I have any further questions, I should ask HR. So I just emailed her and asked her, "How can I submit this expense so that you will not reject it?" Let's see if she actually gives me a useful response or just bats me back to HR (who cannot solve the problem).

Ugh!

[peachymom1]

I find myself asking this question a lot: "What do you mean by that?" I started this with my MIL years ago, because she would say the most ridiculous or ignorant things sometimes, and I honestly could not figure out what she was trying to say.

With the kids, we often ask, "How do you feel about that?" or "What do you think of that?" When they were growing up, they often just wanted a chance to speak their minds, and sometimes they were way off the mark, but it was important to us to hear where they were coming from, or what was scary about something, or what they were worried about. When they were teenagers, they usually had a lot more to say than we may have wanted to hear, but it was still insightful (if sometimes annoying).

I think it's important to know your audience. I would never ask a toddler what they wanted for breakfast. One of my VPs used to do that, and then she complained to us that her DD ended up having a little bit each of six different kinds of cereal every day, because she (the toddler) couldn't make up her mind which one she wanted. What the what? Tell her she can have Cheerios or Raisin Bran, and if she can't decide, then you choose for her. This VP was simply aghast that I would be so strict about "such a minor thing as cereal." Yep, that's me, the Mean Mommy (BAER)!