Jewish Musings, Tuesday 9/24

[lee058]

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!

[lee058]

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

Today's topic: Risk-taking and safety.

What is something you've done that in hindsight was dangerous? How did you protect yourself? How do you feel about it now?

For me, the most dangerous thing I've done was to hitchhike around the USA after college. In hindsight, I was very, very foolish, and lucky to not have terrible things happen to me. Sometimes I travelled alone and sometimes I went with another person (much safer). Looking back, I'm glad I saw so many wonderful, beautiful places, and met so many nice people. However, I get the shakes thinking about what could have happened!!

Other risks I've taken: walking in unsafe places and/or late at night, especially alone. I would never do that now, even if I were physically able.

As I wrote yesterday, I used to go to demonstrations, often about health issues, women's issues, political issues, etc. I actually don't remember feeling unsafe most of the time. Now it would be a different story, especially if the protest were about Israel.

How about you? What are some of the wild things you have done, and maybe still are doing?

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[gazelle18]

Onetime, when I was very young (but old enough to go to bars with girlfriends), I let myself get drunk. My friends, similarly inebriated, and I were talked into getting into a speedboat owned by a male acquaintance, who proceeded to motor said boat at very high speeds around Lake Pontchartrain. I’m certain he’d been drinking as well. Looking back on it, I cannot believe I was that dumb.

[louise]

I guess for me it was going to Israel last January. I never actually felt that I was in danger but I know the potential was there. We didn't acually go into active war zones and our guide was armed. In my coming of age time I did some experimenting with certain substances that some may find shocking and I participated in various marches that had elements of danger. I didn't get arrested! I don't give it a thought to take a bus or train home after a show at night in NYC.

[peachymom1]

As a teenager and young adult, I walked alone at night when I shouldn't have, and I waited for the bus in the dark when I shouldn't have. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but it easily could have.

I've never attended a political rally or demonstration because I'm scared of potential violence. When I was in college, there were plenty of opportunities to get involved in stuff like that, but I was too darn busy studying and working, so I never faced that fear.

[hollygail]

Risk-taking and safety... Another good question, Lee. I did plenty of things that in hindsight may have been somewhat risky but didn't feel that way at the time; instead, they felt "normal."

I cannot count how many times I demonstrated (with many, many other people) for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam when I was as young as 11 and well into my 20s.

When I turned 30, I sent my 2-year-old DS to live with his father (I'd been living in L.A. and his father was living in Vancouver, BC, Canada), sold or gave away or put into storage everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. I was relatively fluent in French, Spanish and Italian; knew zero Dutch or German (a very little Yiddish) and knew no one at all living there. I was a young woman traveling alone in a foreign country. Was that risky? But I wasn't afraid at all. I looked at it like an adventure. I was in a country with high unemployment, a housing shortage and probably the largest gay population in the world. And within two weeks of arrival, I had a straight boyfriend, a job and a place to live. I lived there for about 15 months (including traveling to Greece, stopping at a lot of places along the way in several other countries including what was at the time Yugoslavia, dodging Soviet soldiers a couple of times (mostly by driving along a different street). It turned out to be the best "year" of my life.