Jewish Musings Wednesday, Sept. 18, day 347 since Oct. 7

[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]

Near the end of this week's Torah portion comes a most difficult passage. Moses tells the Israelites exactly what will happen if they fail to live by the covenant with God. The punishments include exile, pestilence, illness, starvation, blight, mildew, a lack of rain, defeat by Israel’s enemies, total despair, and madness. Yuck. (28:15–68)

One takeaway could be that societies that ignore ethics will inevitably fall apart. I am very aware that in today's world (as well as a constant theme in the Torah) things are falling apart all over the place. Back then, Noah’s generation did evil; it was punished with the Flood. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah did evil; they were punished by destruction. And so it would be for the People of Israel as well — failure to observe the rules of the Torah, according to this week's portion, would result in the destruction of their nation. In fact, the catastrophic things that are described in this Torah portion actually did happen to the Jewish people during the Assyrian exile (721 BCE) and the Babylonian exile (586 BCE). Many scholars, therefore, believe that these passages might have been written in the wake of that latter disaster, and represent an attempt on the part of the Jewish people to give reasons for the tragedy. If such a terrible thing happened, it must have been our fault, so let’s clear up our act. One of my biggest fears is that the world will not clean up our current situation.

Not only has antisemitism spread its ugly head from out of the depths into the light in the US but in the entire world. Not only are there wars all over the place, but people have abandoned manners, good behavior, you name it. During the debate (was it really only a week ago?) the male said that the female "put out" as a way of rising to the top. I screamed when I heard him say that. Never mind that during the 2016 campaign he himself bragged about being able to go up to women and grab them by their (and I couldn't believe he'd say this word in this context) pussy. Never mind that he's been accused by many many women of, may I say inappropriate sexual conduct? And has been found guilty in US courts of law on so very many counts of wrongdoing... Where is the US headed if not downward?

I'm not okay about any of this. In my Tuesday afternoon class yesterday I chose derech eretz (literally, the "way" of the "world" but really laying out rules of good behavior, manners, doing the right thing in specific types of circumstances, etc.) because of how I've been feeling about where the world is headed. I'm not sure whether my students understood my position but that's not the point. I successfully taught them about rules of civil conduct and made sure they "got" that it's a Jewish value.

Your views of the state of today's world?

[lee058]

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

Re today's topic: Too many things are awful, yet I still have hope they will improve. Maybe I am naive, but I WANT to believe that people are capable of better behavior. I would like to see an end to the ills that plague humanity. As I said yesterday, I do think that every little bit done to make this a better world helps. It is definitely a Jewish value to repair the world; we are a people who actively works on this.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[brgmsn]

hollygail, call it what it is. Rape. He was accused of and convicted of rape. He is a convicted rapist. And that is not OK that our daughters and granddaughters are submitted to that kind of evil and people thinking it's OK (clearly none of us do but way too many in the public are). No wonder women are afraid to come forward. Look at Harvey Weinstein. My daughter was saying how she's going to teach Jo to defend herself. I said we need to teach the boys about respect, permission, and consent.
Sorry, these behaviors just get my blood boiling at how we've come to just accept it as the norm, based on what the norm has become in the last decade. Thank you for teaching them civility hollygail,

[peachymom1]

There is no question in my mind that the world is in a terrible state. It was not created to be perfect, and neither were we. We were given a yetzer tov and a yestzer ra, i.e., a good inclination and an evil inclination. Each one of us as individuals has to decide constantly which one will govern us. Same goes for our society, our culture, our country, and the entire world. I think the Torah is trying to remind us of this.

We have the capacity to do better, as individuals and as a collective. It is our duty as Jews and as world inhabitants to keep trying to improve the world. It's very bad right now, yes. But we must never give up hope. We can't ever give up on ourselves or each other.

[louise]

Wow, big stuff. I'm sorry to say that I can't focus on this. Extremely challenging day at work and I need to pack - leaving for FLA early in the AM.