Between the holiday of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, there are exactly seven weeks. It is a fact we count every year for 49 days. It is exactly seven weeks from the feasting days of eggs, potatoes and meat (a total of at least eight festive meals) to the holiday best known for cheesecake. A foodies delight, a dieters nightmare.
A few weeks before Passover, my youngest child turned two. I can no longer attribute my extra cushioning to him. (He's even thinning out from his yummy baby purge.) On Passover, I therefore tried to be proactive. I challenged my mother that whn we saw each other next, in seven weeks, we would each have shed ten pounds.
Seven weeks in basically two months...no problem. After all, every dieter knows the first ten are usually the easiest.
But the seven weeks from seder to Shavuot are really six weeks between holidays, because the first week is still Passover and we were traveling, and, limited in our food choices, and guests in other people's homes...
And how can anyone diet that first week after Passover? We didn't make our house kosher for Passover, but I also stopped buying food a few weeks before the holiday to use up as much chametz as possible. We were still disorganized and thus "forced" to eat pizza and pasta.
I now face a five week deadline to shed ten pounds. But my eldest child's birthday is in a week, and thus there a celebrations with all different parts of our family, which means cake, cake and more cake.
Reflecting on my great rationalizations skill, I am struck by a real lesson within the mitzvah of counting the omer. Shavuot, the end of the country, is how we mark receiving the Torah from Hashem. The pinnacle of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. But how do I reach my own personal pinnacle.
Just as with my dieting practices, when I look at my spiritual goals, it is easy to find excuses. "I meant to." "I want to." "I'm going to."
But days, and then weeks, and then months, pass quickly. Before I know it, I've been making the same promise of change for years without putting it into effect.
I am certain that I am not alone. The omer reminds us that when we set a time period, the we face a deadline even by which point we must either consider ourselves successful...or not.
This morning, I declared to my family that I was ready to get serious on my diet. There will be no left-over pancakes for me when I return from my Sunday morning French class, where I now sit eating rice cakes and applesauce (on our break). And I almost wrote here one of my secret spiritual goals that has spent years as an empty promises...I almost declared that I would accomplish this too, before Shavuot. But I guess my hesitation proves my point, for already I worry that I will not succeed and therefore rationalize that it is better to avoid sharing it and not embarrassing myself.
And so I bid you "au revoir"... But if you see me between now and Shavuot, please don't offer me any cake, I may find a reason to eat it.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Ani Maamin, Never Again
Tonight is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and since I have started a blog, it seems most appropriate to write on this topic.
Twenty years ago today, I was in Poland on the March of the Living. It was an incredible experience, a statement that will be upheld by every past participant. In my own life, this was a life altering experience, for in many ways it set me on the path to Orthodoxy.
Walking through the streets of Warsaw, I remember staring at every silver haired head and thinking, "Where were you? What did you do while my unknown relatives were murdered?" (Thankfully, all of my grandparents were either born in, or had arrived in, America before the Second World War.) I still remember the anger I felt at these living artifacts of nationalism gone terribly wrong. And then the organizers of the March privileged us with meeting a righteous gentile. He told us his story, how he had been taken to the concentration camps for helping Jews, and I was able to hope for the good in the elders we passed.
From that point on, I was better able to dwell on those who died rather than those who murdered them. When I thought about those who died, I began to contemplate what their deaths meant for me. These men, women and children went to their deaths because they were Jews, and they were Jews because, for hundreds of generations, their ancestors had remained faithful to our traditions. I was raised in a family that was not religious. My parents had not been taught about Judaism, but practiced Judaism as their parents before them had...observing the vestiges of a rich heritage diluted in the great "melting pot." But what had all these Jews died for other than that their should still be Jews.
When I returned home, I started eating what I would now call "kosher style." I cared. I wanted to do something to honor those victims. I wanted to thumb my nose at Hitler. And I did.
Twenty years later, I have four beautiful Jewish children who walk around the house singing Jewish songs. (Even my two year old sings Ashrei.)
My eldest child will soon be eight. He has seen, in passing, my photo album from the March of the Living. I have just called him in to ask him if he knows what the Holocaust was, and he told me only that he has heard the word and knows that it is something very bad. When he asked me why, I sent him to bed, telling him that it was, indeed, something very bad and not to be spoken of right before bed.
I try to think back to how I learned about the Holocaust, and, oddly for one who had no direct relatives who survived or perished, it feels like something that I always knew. I do, however, remember when the educational children's program "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" came to town. I remember being deeply moved by it, and understanding, without fully understanding, how tragic it truly was. I can still hear the opening and closing of the title poem, which was written in Terezin by Paval Freedman, a young man who was later killed in Auschwitz ("The last, the very last,/So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow./Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing/against a white stone. . . . Only I never saw another butterfly./That butterfly was the last one./Butterflies don't live in here,/in the ghetto.")
Growing up, I learned a beautiful and haunting version of Ani Maamin... "I believe, with complete faith, in the coming of the messiah." I was taught that this tune had been heart-wrenchingly sung by some Jews as they were led to the gas chamber. It is a song that has always haunted me.
My children believe with a faith far more perfect and complete than mine. When I teach them about the Holocaust, whether I do so tomorrow or in two years time, I know that they will have emuna shelaima, complete faith, that the Holocaust was part of the greater plan God has for our people - a horrible, terrible part of the plan, certainly - but part of the greater whole nevertheless. And every morning, when the 31 little girls in my daughter's class recite this same Ani Maamin (with a far happier tune), we claim our victory over Hitler.
Never again!
Twenty years ago today, I was in Poland on the March of the Living. It was an incredible experience, a statement that will be upheld by every past participant. In my own life, this was a life altering experience, for in many ways it set me on the path to Orthodoxy.
Walking through the streets of Warsaw, I remember staring at every silver haired head and thinking, "Where were you? What did you do while my unknown relatives were murdered?" (Thankfully, all of my grandparents were either born in, or had arrived in, America before the Second World War.) I still remember the anger I felt at these living artifacts of nationalism gone terribly wrong. And then the organizers of the March privileged us with meeting a righteous gentile. He told us his story, how he had been taken to the concentration camps for helping Jews, and I was able to hope for the good in the elders we passed.
From that point on, I was better able to dwell on those who died rather than those who murdered them. When I thought about those who died, I began to contemplate what their deaths meant for me. These men, women and children went to their deaths because they were Jews, and they were Jews because, for hundreds of generations, their ancestors had remained faithful to our traditions. I was raised in a family that was not religious. My parents had not been taught about Judaism, but practiced Judaism as their parents before them had...observing the vestiges of a rich heritage diluted in the great "melting pot." But what had all these Jews died for other than that their should still be Jews.
When I returned home, I started eating what I would now call "kosher style." I cared. I wanted to do something to honor those victims. I wanted to thumb my nose at Hitler. And I did.
Twenty years later, I have four beautiful Jewish children who walk around the house singing Jewish songs. (Even my two year old sings Ashrei.)
My eldest child will soon be eight. He has seen, in passing, my photo album from the March of the Living. I have just called him in to ask him if he knows what the Holocaust was, and he told me only that he has heard the word and knows that it is something very bad. When he asked me why, I sent him to bed, telling him that it was, indeed, something very bad and not to be spoken of right before bed.
I try to think back to how I learned about the Holocaust, and, oddly for one who had no direct relatives who survived or perished, it feels like something that I always knew. I do, however, remember when the educational children's program "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" came to town. I remember being deeply moved by it, and understanding, without fully understanding, how tragic it truly was. I can still hear the opening and closing of the title poem, which was written in Terezin by Paval Freedman, a young man who was later killed in Auschwitz ("The last, the very last,/So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow./Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing/against a white stone. . . . Only I never saw another butterfly./That butterfly was the last one./Butterflies don't live in here,/in the ghetto.")
Growing up, I learned a beautiful and haunting version of Ani Maamin... "I believe, with complete faith, in the coming of the messiah." I was taught that this tune had been heart-wrenchingly sung by some Jews as they were led to the gas chamber. It is a song that has always haunted me.
My children believe with a faith far more perfect and complete than mine. When I teach them about the Holocaust, whether I do so tomorrow or in two years time, I know that they will have emuna shelaima, complete faith, that the Holocaust was part of the greater plan God has for our people - a horrible, terrible part of the plan, certainly - but part of the greater whole nevertheless. And every morning, when the 31 little girls in my daughter's class recite this same Ani Maamin (with a far happier tune), we claim our victory over Hitler.
Never again!
Monday, April 16, 2012
Lessons From My Daughter
Every baal teshuva gets asked the question, "Why did you become religious?" Depending on my audience, I have different answers (all of which are true). One of my primary answers is children. I wanted my children to have a stronger, more natural, emuna and bitachon (strength and trust in God).
Twenty years and four children later, I can honestly say that I believe I have laid the foundations. Two stories from this Pesach involving my six year old daughter confirm that I am heading in the right direction.
During the first days of the holiday, which we spent with my family, my mother took a walk with three of her grandchildren. During their walk, they played "build-a-story," a game in which each person adds a piece to the story. At the end of their creative tale, my mother asked each child for a conclusion. According to her, my six year old decided that the protagonist (my word, not hers) prayed to Hashem that his problems would be taken care of and the next day was able to solve all his problems. My mother was very impressed, not just with the answer, but with her sincerity.
During the first days of the holiday, which we spent with my family, my mother took a walk with three of her grandchildren. During their walk, they played "build-a-story," a game in which each person adds a piece to the story. At the end of their creative tale, my mother asked each child for a conclusion. According to her, my six year old decided that the protagonist (my word, not hers) prayed to Hashem that his problems would be taken care of and the next day was able to solve all his problems. My mother was very impressed, not just with the answer, but with her sincerity.
The second story must be prefaced with the explanation that on Thursday of Chol Hamoed, my daughter tripped over a stump and landed on her face. Not only did she cut up her lip, but she knocked out her top front tooth, which had not yet even started to wiggle. On Friday morning, my poor princess did not want to leave the house because, as she put it, she looked like a duck. (Indeed, she was very swollen.) We convinced her that she was fine to go out in public. Later that day, after she struggled to eat properly through her bruises, my daughter quietly asked me, "If everything God does is for the good, what good was there in my losing my tooth?"
Our answer was fairly mundane...it was a serious enough incident to get the zoo to remove the stump. I was calm in my response, but inside my heart - or perhaps my soul - leaped for joy.
I have no doubt that this child often experiences profound thoughts. Sadly, I am often too busy with work, or laundry, or cooking, or her siblings, or etc., to sit down and have a chat. And the lack of that time was most poignantly pointed out to me by this very child when, her hand in mind, she held my hand (a few days before the accident) and told me that she loved long trips because we all spent time together.
When I went to sit down and write about my Pesach holiday, I thought about this last story and was going to wax poetic about the freedom I found this Passover. But I think that my daughter helped my get to the very heart of the entire freedom experience, which is allowing ourselves to have a beautiful and sincere relationship with Hashem.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
The Driven Word
Why did I start a new blog? It's a question I've been asked several times now, and it's a legitimate question. After all, I spend most my day writing for my job -creating Jewish Treats, composing pieces to post on Huffington Post, etc. I even branched out recently and did a freelance piece. When people ask me what I do in my spare time, I all too often answer that I like to work. When they look at me with pity, I firmly explain that I love writing, particularly about Judaism.
To put it in its simplest form, I love words!
It's always been this way with me. I remember asking my elementary school teachers - I want to say as early as third grade - to read my stories. By the time I finished high school, I had drafted two fantasy novels. (One definitely unpublishably bad, the other might be something with a lot of editing.)
When I was twenty, I started observing Shabbat. In addition to all the other changes this brought to my life, I noticed an odd occurrences. Each week on Shabbat I was filled with writing inspiration. All sorts of plot lines drifted through my head. If I was as religious as I one day hope to be (religious being a reference to having a deep spiritual connection), I might state that this was obviously my yetzer harah, my evil inclination, trying to lure me away from being shomer Shabbat. My more practical side might suggest that Shabbat was downtime for my brain from the everyday details of my life, although I can't imagine what was so pressing at that time in my life.
To put it in its simplest form, I love words!
It's always been this way with me. I remember asking my elementary school teachers - I want to say as early as third grade - to read my stories. By the time I finished high school, I had drafted two fantasy novels. (One definitely unpublishably bad, the other might be something with a lot of editing.)
When I was twenty, I started observing Shabbat. In addition to all the other changes this brought to my life, I noticed an odd occurrences. Each week on Shabbat I was filled with writing inspiration. All sorts of plot lines drifted through my head. If I was as religious as I one day hope to be (religious being a reference to having a deep spiritual connection), I might state that this was obviously my yetzer harah, my evil inclination, trying to lure me away from being shomer Shabbat. My more practical side might suggest that Shabbat was downtime for my brain from the everyday details of my life, although I can't imagine what was so pressing at that time in my life.
Several years after I completed university and even earned a Masters in secondary English education, I began working for the National Jewish Outreach Program. In time, my position became a dream job for me - writing about Judaism. I spend my days immersed in words, researching and writing, and I remain the voracious reader that I always have been.
While I no longer feel that overwhelming compulsion to write on Shabbat, I often feel it at other, shall we say, inappropriate times - like when I am suppossed to be spending time with my kids or cleaning the house.
And sometimes words, phrases, sentences...the whole writing process, seems to just perculate with in me.
Why did I start a blog? Because words keep me focused. Because being wrapped in words is the safest place for me because I know that here I can succeed. Because I am driven to write and a personal blog seems a beautiful place to unleash my unfettered voice.
And sometimes words, phrases, sentences...the whole writing process, seems to just perculate with in me.
Why did I start a blog? Because words keep me focused. Because being wrapped in words is the safest place for me because I know that here I can succeed. Because I am driven to write and a personal blog seems a beautiful place to unleash my unfettered voice.
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