Jewish Musings, Wednesday 9/25

[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: Safety and Judaism.

How does this topic make you feel, and what does it make you think?

Do you feel safe being Jewish? Not just our current political situation, but religiously. How do you feel/think about our safety as a people?

For me, I generally feel safe being Jewish because of where I live, and also how I think/feel about being Jewish. As you know, I'm in Northern VA, a liberal area. I probably could wear Jewish-themed necklaces and maybe even have a bumper sticker on my car that made it clear that I was Jewish. I'm nervous about the bumper sticker issue though, so I don't have any. There are unfortunately too many nuts around, and I would worry about my car's safety. As I mentioned the other day, I do have religiously-themed necklaces that I would feel safe wearing. I generally don't wear jewelry, but I could start doing it to make a statement.

If God is looking out for us, why doesn't God do more to protect us?? This is a question that a lot of people get stuck on when thinking about our religion. What do you think/feel?

I am so worried about Israel, but I am also worried about Jews around the world. It's just not safe in too many places.

As for positive thoughts about safety and Judaism, I feel that we have a special role to repair the world, and although no one knows exactly what will happen after we die, I feel that we will have a special place. There's something about Judaism that I find difficult to put into words. I want to believe we will be rewarded. Are our rewards just on Earth? I don't know. I ask God a fair number of questions, and sometimes I wonder what happens after we die. I believe in God; I believe that there is a conscious consciousness that is all-encompassing. I just wish that Jews on Earth had an easier time of it.

Anyway, it's too early in the morning to be philosophical. Hopefully later, I will have more coherent thoughts.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[hollygail]

I got here early yesterday morning and didn't see the thread yet and never got back. So this morning, I answered yesterday's thread.

As for today's topic, I find it a little more complicated than yesterday's question. I grew up in New York City and felt 100% safe being Jewish. I lived in a neighborhood that was approximately half Jewish and half Italian Catholic; there were very few Protestants (my next door neighbor was Episcopalian and one family around the corner was some other Protestant denomination; there was also one Greek Orthodox family). In my classrooms, there were additional Protestant kids too. And it was always safe to be Jewish in New York. I left NY after college and moved to Buffalo, NY where there weren't anywhere near as many Jews. I didn't tell people there I was Jewish. Most of the rest of the places I've lived didn't have a large Jewish population either (other than Los Angeles, where I lived for about five or so years in the early 1970s and I felt safer there than anywhere else since leaving NY). When I lived in Amsterdam, I worked for a company owned by an American Jewish man and the manager was another American Jewish man; those two men and two other women and I were Jewish (also all three of us were American). Approximately half of the people employed there were Jewish (mostly American) and the other half were everything else (mostly Christian and European). When I returned to the US, again I lived in places where Jews were a small minority. And I haven't felt as safe.

Since October 7, I have felt less safe than at any other time in my life. I spend most of my time in the Jewish community (going to many synagogues, meeting mostly Jewish people). I live in a condo complex of 100 townhomes; when we were looking for this house, I wanted to know whether we were going to be the only Jews. The real estate woman asked one of the workmen (landscapers?) who said he'd seen a man (and gestured to one particular section of homes relatively close to the unit we bought) who wore a small cap on his head, so we figured okay, there's at least one other house of Jews... It turned out we never saw that man, but there's another man who showed up a few times at my congregation during High Holy Days, plus I saw one chanukiah in another house's window one year so there were at least three of us. However, I don't publicize that I'm Jewish. The people next door to us on one side know I train kids to become bar and bat mitzvah, and across the way from us is a widow living alone (older than we are) who put 2 and 2 together and gave us a Chanukah card last winter. But people a few houses away from us have no idea even what our first names are, let alone DH's last name (which is a fairly typical Jewish last name).

Since October 7, I stopped wearing my amethyst pendant and started wearing my grandmother's Jewish star which I haven't taken off since I first put it on.

[louise]

I am somewhat sheltered as I have not lived anywhere where anti-smitism was pronounced. Yet we are all afraid. The potential of danger is there. I am amazed at how much my synagogue has spent and continues to spend on security. We just got a hugh grant that will only patially cover the cost of "hardening" our front door - a project that is compunded by our being a historic landmark so whatever we do we cannot change the outside "look" of our wood and stained glass doors.