Jewish Musings, Thursday, July 4, 2024 Independence Day

[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! DS33 and his wife drove up from San Diego for the holiday weekend and are staying with us, hooray! It is a joy to have them here, and our bffs are looking forward to seeing them when they host us all for Shabbat dinner tomorrow night. DDIL is going to make a strawberry upside-down cake, which I’ve never heard of, to take to Shabbat dinner – one of our bffs’ birthday is Sunday, and we always have birthday cake at the preceding Shabbat dinner. He especially loves strawberries and is very excited about DDIL’s cake! (I am too!)

DS33 and DDIL, as well as my other DS33, are all going to a barbecue today at the home of a friend they’ve known since high school, so DH and I will have a good chunk of the day alone together. We’re going to grill some lean burgers for ourselves and probably go swimming, which will most likely necessitate taking a nice little holiday nap in the afternoon. We’ll play board games in the evening, and the kids will probably go to a fireworks display somewhere. I’m not interested enough in fireworks to deal with the heat and crowds, so I’m fine staying home.

How about you? How are you celebrating 4th of July this year?

[lee058]

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

Re today's topic: For Independence Day, we will talk about American ideals, including Jewish participation. We'll also have good food and watch "A Capitol Fourth" and fireworks on TV.

I read in today's Washington Post that British Jews are returning to the Labour Party, now that party leaders have finally condemned their previous leaders' anti-Semitism. The Democratic Party here needs to do more about condemning anti-Semitism too.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[louise]

Not clear yet whether it will be raining this dvening which is the major factor about where I view the fireworks from. If all looks good will trudge down the palisade to the river where I will meet up with a friend, eat sandwiches, and wait for the fun to start. I need to run out and do some shopping (I think supermarket closes early today) and pick up some stuff for kiddush on Saturday. I am also making a strawberry cake. I made this cake for my office yesterday and it was completely raw in the cener (I cut around that part and it was still good - certainly didn't stop me from overreating it). I kept adding 5 more minutes but this time I will add maybe 20 minutes to the baking time (and that's why you don't bring first time recipes to an event!).

[hollygail]

DH and I are catching up on movies we've recorded. That's about it for during the day. As for fireworks, they start around 9pm (I'm usually in bed by then). If I'm still up, we can walk to the other side of the condo complex where we live. It's higher on a hill than our side is, and we can see the fireworks from the lake (maybe a mile away) plus several places that offer fireworks displays either at the beach or at least closer to the Pacific coast than we are (we're about 10 to 15 miles inland, as the crow flies).

No tutoring today! I offered; no one took me up on it. So I can do whatever I want... DH went out to run some errands after I got home from morning minyan (which meets at 8:30am on Federal holidays instead of the usual 7:30am).

[gazelle18]

DH and I just dropped some company off at the airport and we are going to be quiet for the rest of the day. Yay!