Jewish Musings, Wednesday, May 15

[louise]

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!

[louise]

This past shabbat the parsha was Kedoshim and we are exhorted to be holy because our God is Holy. The ways that are listed for us to be holy are essentially what it is to be a good person. In some things, well I guess ritual things, we separate “kodesh” and “chol” – sacred from secular. The prime example is shabbat compared to the other 6 days. In how we behave though, being a good person – being honest, fair, considerate, observant, kind to animals, respectful to others are all ways we make ourselves holy – and in this case that’s an everyday thing, it’s who we are. The list is a code for living. We find the golden rule here stated as “Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord”. That last one I sometimes find tricky in that many of us have the tendency to treat others better than we treat ourselves. I guess at junctions like that we need to remember to treat ourselves as well as we treat others! Being holy is not just a spiritual quest, it’s being respectful of your body as well. Or maybe another way of putting that would be that taking care of your body is an essential part of any spiritual journey. Our bodies are sacred.

Maybe this is all obvious but in case it stirs things around a little for you, please share your thoughts.

Oddly, today I underate, especially given strength training this morning and 14,000 steps. I need to remember that too. I don’t want to eat any more this evening because it is important to me to respect my fasting time but I don’t think it would be good for me in the long run any more than over eating is!

I'm heasrng Aretha Franklin in my head: R E S P E C T

[lee058]

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

Re today's topic: I don't keep shabbat but try to be a good person. I'll try to write more later after I think about this for awhile.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[hollygail]

I copied Israel's Declaration of Independence from sefaria.org and used it to teach my Tuesday afternoon class. We read the entire thing (other than reading each signature, although I pointed out Golda Meir's which has her last name as Myerson although I didn't check the spelling). The kids were pretty quiet. I'm not sure whether it was learning about the history of how the modern State of Israel came to be (the Declaration of Independence, if you haven't read it, includes the history from the late 1800s up to the 1940s) or just because they were pooped from coming to class on Zoom after having spent a full day at their daytime school...

As for Kedoshim, it's my birth parashah and my bat mitzvah portion. I've volunteered almost every year since my bat mitzvah to chant it at Shabbat morning services at whichever congregation I was planning to attend that Saturday morning. Often some kid is becoming b.mitzvah that weekend, so I rarely get to chant it any more, but I have chanted either an aliyah (I chanted the opening of the portion last week on Monday from the Torah scroll) or the haftarah many times since my b.mitzvah. I've taught Torah many times and each time I teach Kedoshim I learn more about it.

And I think Aretha Franklin had a lot to teach us!

[gazelle18]

I TRY (don’t always succeed) to think of exercise as doing good to/for my body, and respecting it.

I think the people who are happiest are those who think of doing good for others as one way of enriching their own lives. It would be great if more people thought that way!

[peachymom1]

Kedoshim is also my favorite parashah. It's chock-full of good stuff. And for me, learning that I am included in those that should be treated with respect has been a critical aspect of my life as a Jew. I have also found that when I'm feeling angry at life or frustrated with people or just negative for whatever reason, it ALWAYS helps me to get off my tuchus and do something for someone else, even if all I can manage is something small. It works every single time. I'm not better than anyone else, but I'm just as good as anyone else, and we all deserve respect and consideration. When I shift my attention away from myself and think of others, it's a lot easier to find acts of kindness I can do, and then I'm not the only one who benefits.

It started raining when I walked out of the gym this morning -- that was a nice surprise! It's very unusual for Los Angeles in May. I haven't seen any jacarandas blooming yet, so hopefully the rain will encourage them.