Just when things are warming up nicely on the blog front, I now have to take a leave of absence for a week or so.
If the phone company fix my line at home (dull/frustrating story) then I may be able to post a bit, but if not, then you will see me back here on 8th September. Older and hopefully wiser! And maybe looking to get WiFi!
Please don’t abandon me – I promise to post in detail on my return.
And in advance – Shabbat Shalom!
Which I am pleased to say I do!!
If you haven’t read it already, then do so now – David Bogner’s post on Treppenwitz describing his flight to the US from israel to attend the Jewish Bloggers’ Convention. Click here for the link and enjoy the journey!
Typing out that title has made me think ‘Oh!’ and catch my breath a little. Not so long ago, I’d have written that and not really put much thought into it. But now, I’m thinking, well, maybe they have!
It’s only a small thing, to the uninitiated. I’ve been worrying that as we approach Rosh Hashanah, I have not a proper clue as to what I should be doing. And in fact, that does also ring true for the rest of the Jewish year. I’ve experienced Tishah B’Av for the first time, I’ve been attending synagogue (with a break for family visits – never again!), but I really want to get a feel for the cycle and order of things, so that it really sinks in what happens when - and of course, why.
Anyway, so I popped over to Jew Wishes blog today and lo and behold, she has put together a list of useful books that are just the kind of thing I need – click here for the link!
I have ordered The Book of Customs and Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days. I can’t wait to get them and continue my learning. Hopefully I’ll begin to sort out the spaghetti of information I have in my brain right now.
So, as I said up above – my parayers have been answered. And this time, I mean it.
——
To change the subject somewhat – I have just seen that the Dalai Lama has been admitted to hospital.
Mi-sheberakh avoteinu v’imoteinu, Avraham v’Sarah, Yitzhak v’Rivkah, Ya’akov, Rachel v’Leah hu y’varekh et Dalai Lama v’yavi aleihem refuat hanefesh u’refuat haguf yachad im kol cholei amo Yisrael. Barukh atah Hashem, rofeh ha’cholim.
May the One who was a source of blessing for our ancestors, bring blessings of healing upon the Dalai Lama, a healing of body and a healing of spirit. May those in whose care they are entrusted be gifted with wisdom and skill, and those who surround them be gifted with love and trust, openness and support in their care. And may they be healed along with all those who are in need. Blessed are You, Source of healing.
(Every little helps).
I appreciate that this post just may be a little alienating to my small but perfectly-formed readership, who are, in their entirety, American. (BTW, where are the British, Jewish bloggers? I know I’m not the only one out there…). But stick with me, as my hook is Jerry Springer.
Here in the UK, we have a BBC series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, which features a different celebrity tracing their ancestry each week. Many of the celebrities have been UK specific (last week it was the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson), but last night featured Jerry Springer.
It was so moving. Here is a man who’s face is known across the world due to the magic of TV, but who had no idea of the exact fate of even his grandparents. Of course, I shouldn’t imagine that it would spoil it for you if I said that they were victims of the Shoah/Holocaust/השואה. But all of a sudden, whilst I was watching it, he became a fragile human instead of the celebrity face that we all know and love or hate or are ambivalent about. Most of the people featured want to search their family back through generations - but he focussed on finding out the fate of his grandmothers and searched only as far back as his great-grandfather. Mind you, there was more than enough incident in that relatively short timescale, not least for Jerry himself. The journey takes us to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic and we find out how lucky his parents were to escape to England before it was too late.
I would urge you to watch it, if you can. It’s available on BBC iPlayer on the website, to watch again, until next Wednesday. I think you can download it too, to watch over the next month. Click here for the link. And if you are at all emotional, a box of tissues might be a good idea.
Something Chaviva wrote on her blog here yesterday has got me thinking. Her life is changing as she embarks on a masters degree at UConn and she wrote right at the end about needing to stay up later than 10pm now that she’s studying once more. (She also wrote about a stomach ache due to nerves and stress, but I hope that will ease off soon!).
I used to be a 10pm girl. I used to feel so tired by this time that I would find it a real struggle to be up much later than that. But on the flip side, I was waking up way before my alarm clock the next day, lying in bed, fretting about anything my brain could possibly fret about.
However, since moving to a different part of the country, away from London to the south coast, having a longer distance to travel, getting involved in the synagogue, learning Hebrew, setting up a new home, going out more, going to the gym properly etc etc etc, I am staying up later and getting up earlier and NOT lying in bed fretting about random things before the alarm clock goes off.
So, what have I made of this change in my life? Well, I think the point is, if you want to do something badly enough, you’ll find a way to do it. We wanted to move to our new home town years ago, but kept finding reasons not to do so. We kept on making excuses about not joining a gym. We kept on running our life at the behest of the TV schedule and not doing much of anything else. But we made the first change (moving house) and all the rest has followed.
Making changes is never easy. But making the effort can have unexpected and welcome consequences too. If we hadn’t moved, I wouldn’t have visited the synagogue and I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog. The bigger impact of my planned conversion remains to be seen, but I can’t wait to see what else will happen as a consequence of that.
I came across this – I’m not sure how. I’m hoping the blog is still live, as the posting is less frequent than some (but more than others).
I love this poem, which you can find here ‘StarbuckSS’ on the Rechosen blog.
It makes you think.
Just when I thought it would be a flat day on the thinking front (this happens to us all, yes?), something I have read elswewhere has made me think, quite a bit.
The title says it all, albeit a bit presumptively, since I haven’t yet converted. But it’s relevant and no doubt I will come back to it – again and again!
The thing is, I am planning on becoming a member of my local progressive synagogue, which is part of the Liberal Judaism movement here in the UK. There are several reasons why I am choosing this route, not least because of the equal status it provides for men and women, the choice of English and Hebrew for services, acceptance of all men and women irrespective of sexuality etc. However, you can see already that I have been reading Chabad.org (they’re on my list of links over there —->). I have been receiving their emails on the Parshah, reading a whole range of information from other denominations that are not Liberal and essentially combining all my reading material into some sort of inter-denominational soup.
Is this wrong? Is this right? Am I getting myself into a tizz about nothing? I have a sense that if I didn’t have to work for a living, could attend every single service under the sun, I would be more observant. But then I still would not be accepted by other denominations. I’m not prepared to go to a synagogue where I would have to sit behind a mechitzah and deny what I believe to be my full place in Jewish society. So, will I cause ructions if I turn out to be one of the more observant Jews in my congregation, or will they shrug their shoulders and say ‘No problem, we welcome all sorts?’
My common sense says ‘Hey, stop worrying!’ but my emotions are spinning in circles. What do you out there think?
Well, it’s been a long holiday weekend here in the UK – personally I’d like all weekends to be 3 days long, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen!
On the Sunday, we were browsing the local shops and decided to go into the Amnesty International bookshop to see what we could find. I picked up an old (1948) edition of ‘The Wisdom of Israel’ edited by Lewis Browne. It’s a review copy – I know this because it had a printed plate taped into the front, asking the reviewer not to issue any reviews at all prior to the publishing date! I haven’t started reading it yet, but it will be really interesting to see what the section on modern times reveals!
Today, I’ve been cheeky enough to post a comment on here, after being pointed in the direction of Muqata by Chaviva. Cheeky, because I’m a baby in the blogging world and also because I didn’t attend the Jewish Bloggers Convention. But hey, what’s a little chutzpah between friends!
This is very interesting – at least to me.
I have started a couple of other blogs before (they’re gone now, so you won’t be able to find them). They didn’t last, for various reasons, not least because I was having a tough time, didn’t have the energy or the ability to concentrate on what they were about. I also didn’t actually feel like it was ‘me’ writing, more a version of me. You can’t do that for too long, can you? This time, all is different. I am fulfilled, happy, excited, eager and living my life fully. It makes a difference.
Anyway, back to my topic for this final post before Shabbat. This blog has only been in existence since the early part of August/beginning of Av. Already, I have readers, visitors and people who are commenting. Believe me, I did not expect that at all. I thought I would be writing in a vacuum and would maybe get the odd visitor every now and again. How wrong I was (and glad to be so)!
Even more than that, though, people have offered advice, assistance and support, despite all of these people being strangers to me (although if you read a blog, you can start to feel that you know someone, can’t you?). I cannot say how much all of that thoughtfulness means to me, when I am here, right at the start of my Jewish journey.
So, thank you to all of you who have made the effort. A sheynem dank!
Shabbat Shalom to everyone.
This morning, I used my train journey to read my copy of Chabad.org’s summary of and commentary on this week’s Torah portion (or parshah), Eikev (‘Because’). This is the first time I’ve been organised enough to do this, so I was really pleased to find myself saying a mental ‘Of course!’ when I came across this little nugget:
When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God… and you say to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.’
In the commentary, I found this:
‘Asked Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov: The Torah repeatedly warns against pride and extols humility. Nevertheless, this precept is not counted as one of the 613 commandments. Why isn’t it a mitzvah to be humble?
Answered the Baal Shem Tov: If humility were a mitzvah, the ego of man would count it among its achievements.’
Wonderful. What perfect sense.
