Jewish Musings, Wednesday, March 20, 2024

[peachymom1]

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 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!

[peachymom1]

Good morning everyone! This month is Women’s History Month, so I’d like to kvell about some amazing women.

I’m sure you all heard about Ruth Gottesman, who recently donated ONE BILLION DOLLARS to make medical school tuition-free at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. I am so proud that a Jewish woman has done such a spectacular act of tzedakah, in addition to her own impressive career. If you haven’t heard about this, here’s a link:

www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-789032

I also found this about her personal life:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Gottesman#Personal_life

What other women (Jewish or not) do you think should be celebrated, famous or otherwise? Who do you think are role models for women these days? I’m not very much up on celebrities these days, but I do know that Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift are wonderful philanthropists, and I hope they, along with Ruth Gottesman, will serve as inspiration to others to do the same. I also recently attended a work webinar for Women's History Month, and a number of the presenters cited their own mothers, sisters, aunts, and yes, even one mother-in-law as their inspiration. I found it interesting and refreshing.

[lee058]

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

Re today's topic: I think most women are amazing. I'll try and be back later with more specifics.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[hollygail]

Each day I receive a "Fun And Knowledge" page from fprintablestoday.com which includes a very brief biography of someone notable. Either yesterday or the day before I read about a woman I'd never heard of and now I wished I had downloaded it to give you not only her name but some information about her... She was born and died during the 1900s... and that's the extent of what's coming back at not even 5:30am... If I can remember more, I'll BBL with some specifics. The blurb never indicates the person's religion (although it's not at all unusual to indicate whether the person was of color...) but this woman yesterday I'm pretty sure wasn't Jewish. (They did feature Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the past.)

Once upon a decade, I was a member of an organization that no longer exists. It was mostly in North America and there was a chapter in Israel. One year, they asked for nominations for some Jewish heroes (although I'm not sure "hero" was the word used). I nominated my mother (as did some other members). She was honored at the convention along with all the other nominees. (The chosen winner was a Reconstructionist Rabbi in South Africa; I had never heard of Reconstructionism and went to the local Tucson rabbi who supported my chapter to ask and he gave me a seminal book by Mordechai Kaplan called Judaism as a Civilization and I was astounded to learn that my parents had raised me according to so many of the things he said! That's when I discovered I was a Reconstructionist Jew!)

Back to my mother. She modeled a few things for me. One was to stand up for what you believe in, which I too have always done. Another was not to let creeps and/or nogoodniks get you down; another trait of mine. I became a political activist, knowing that my parents would back me (which they did, in spades!). She modeled how to be a strong Jewish woman and I owe her a lot. (She did not, however, know how to be a mother; and from that both DS and I learned to be a much better mother than she was.)

[gazelle18]

As I often say here, I could write a BOOK. There are so many cool and admirable women out there that it’s hard to pick even just a few. So, I’ll just go with one. I’d like to highlight Liz Cheney. I do not agree with her politics, of course. She is a very conservative Republican. However, the determination she showed in opposing Trump , despite the fact that it cost her a seat in congress, was quite amazing.
She defied Republican congressional leadership, and spoke eloquently (and often) about the disaster that is Donald Trump.

[peachymom1]

I also heard on the news this morning that MacKenzie Scott has given over 16 billion dollars to more than 1900 nonprofit groups since her divorce from Jeff Bezos. That's got to be an amazing feeling of accomplishment, and she plans to keep right on going. Wonderful!