Celebrations and Affirmations...

     It has been a few months since my last post but I knew as I came to the Yarzeit ( end of the mourning period) of my mother's passing last year that February was going to be hard.  Here we are the weekend before the start of Passover, the first of four new year celebrations in the Jewish calendar and it is time for renewal. As I make my seder plans and choose my recipes I want to take a moment to put in perspective where I am in my life right now, as we all should once in a while.  Many people think there are too many rules to follow in life whether you believe in religion or not.  Staying healthy, spiritually and physically, has rules too.  So, I would like to take a moment here and use the Bible, an already defined set of rules, to help me sort out the mishagos going on in my world and maybe in yours too.

Here is a quick review of the four new years for Jews.

      The 1st of Nisan is the first month in the Hebrew calendar. It falls around April and signals the first New Year according to the Bible.  Its purpose is to mark the date from which the years of the Kings were counted and we associate it with the holiday of Passover. In this holiday we clean out our pantries, literally, and throw out or "sell" the bread in our cupboards.  For dieters this is a great starting point to reset your eating habits as you do not eat any leavened products for one week.  Take that Atkins and everyone else who decided bread was a bad idea.

      The second new year according to the Bible is the 1st of Elul, the sixth month of the Hebrew calendar, and we could think of it as Biblical Tax Day.  This is the time of year where in the Ancient Days all the Tribes would bring a tithe of wine , animals, grain to Jerusalem and donate to the Priests.  This served at least two purposes that still make sense today.  First, it allowed the Priests to have an accounting of heads and treasure throughout the land and to speak with the heads of the households to gain information of what gains or losses that were happening at that time.  Second, since the Priests technically never left the holy Temple and did not farm or grow wine this was the method of how they were fed and as thanks the Tribes were blessed for another year.  Today this new year is forgotten in its original purpose but we use it as a marker to get ready for Rosh Hashanah. However, for health purposes our lesson is to be accountable to each other and say a blessing now and then to give thanks for the life we were given.
    
     The third New Year is the 1st of Tishrei, actually the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar and is associated with the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the "Head of the New Year" where the actual count of time in years takes place as in 2013 is 5773.  Spiritually, we could use this time to meditate and think back over what went right and things we might do differently in the coming year.

     The fourth new year according to the Biblical calendar is the 15th of Shvat and is known as the New Year of the Trees.  Today, as in the ancient times, it is the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shvat where its purpose was to count the age of the trees.  It is springtime in Israel at this time of year and almond trees begin to flower, so marking this time is important, as agriculture was and is very important to survival in this land.  As this holiday takes place in January which begins "diet season", a reminder to eat fruits, vegetables and nuts, offers a spiritual purpose to what most Americans are already doing.

     My children are really adults now and this year trying to host seders of their own.  This is an exciting milestone in my life as I say goodbye to the seders of my past. Now, I share with them recipes and stories of what happened at the seders of my youth and with their help, create new memories that they can tell their children.

Chag Sameah
Happy Passover

Emotional Eating...What Is It?

Emotional Eating...What Is It?

Shhh....Quieting the mind...New Year.... New Me

One of my favorite stories is the one where the family comes to the old Rabbi in town who hears and judges all the woes of the townspeople. The head of the family says"Rabbi our house is too small...we have to move away"  the Rabbi says "before you go try this...take all the animals in the farm and put them inside your house...then take all the outdoor farm tools and equiptment and put them inside the house as well"  the head of the house says "ok" and goes home and puts all the farm equiptment and tools inside the house along with all the farm animals.  He goes back to the Rabbi and says "Rabbi...my house was too small before but now it is really too small!".  The Rabbi says "Good... now take out all the farm equiptment and take out all the farm animals and let me know what happens".  So the head of the family goes home and takes out all the farm animals and all the farm equiptment and suddenly they have all the room they need!  The head of the family comes back to the Rabbi and tells him how happy they are now in their big new house!

       I laugh every time I hear this story because, of course, the size of the house never changes just the point of view of the family.  Rabbis are so wise... people forget point of view changes by the hour and the circumstance.  Perspective is hard to maintain, particularly, when we are under stressful situations. How we feel right now is not a true indication of how we will always feel.  Yet hurt feelings and words spoken in fear or anger may change relationships with the ones we love for a very long time.

       Situations change and people change and what may lie ahead for us might not be in our control. Acknowledging this and being okay with it will help lower stress.  Stress is an emotion, but it is also a physical assault on the body.  Inflammation is a direct response to stress.  We can view inflammation by site when we see a cut on our skin and the redness that results.  If the cut goes untreated we feel soreness and perhaps infection.  These symptoms happen inside the body as well.  We feel pain and could have infection in areas of our bodies that are affected with stress if left untreated.  Medical science is linking many diseases such as Diabetes, Heart Disease and Alzheimers to inflammation as a source.  To reduce the inflammation, research is finding is to reduce the stress, and that requires some form of quieting of the mind.  Meditation and yoga or exercise everyday for even just ten minutes can help center your spirit and lower your stress.  Try it what can you lose?

"A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes..."

     In the Spring of 1976 I sang in my high school choir. It was my senior year and I performed a duet from the Disney Song Catalog that year.  We sang the opening lines to "A Dream is a Wish" (1950) Cinderella.  My duet partner sang the opening line and I sang the following line..."in dreams you will lose your heartache..." then the chorus followed up with "no matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing" ....I could not have predicted how true or relevant that song would become in my life until later.

      Today,  I am ending the year of saying the Mourners Kaddish for the death of my mother next month in January.  During this year I have been expressing my mourning as real pain in my back.  I have suffered back pain as I have never suffered it in the past and have tried many treatments for it with some success.  I do not go to sleep in pain but through the process of vivid dreaming I wake up in pain.  I believe the pain, my mother's death and my dreams are connected.  I have not figured out why aside from the obvious that I am angry and stressed that she has left me and this stress is doing physical damage to my body, specifically my back.

     Last night again, I was up in the middle of the night with pain and rather than taking a pain reliever, I decided to ignore the pain and try to shift position and go back to sleep.  Again I had a vivid dream only this time my mother came to me in my dream.  She gave me a big hug and I told her that I loved her and I knew that she loved me too.  At that moment I realized my pain was gone and I fell back to sleep.  Was this real?  Who knows but it really doesn't matter.  I still have pain. The phsyical damage does not magically go away completely, but it suggests that if I ever need to contact my mother I know I can always find her in my dreams and for now that is enough for me.

     This experience brings me back to the only solo I had when I was in high school.  I did not understand the true meaning of the words to that song until now as a mid-life adult.  I think perhaps the writers of that lyric understood, too, a second meaning.  Maybe they weren't speaking of a parent but you can feel loss in the words to that song very powerful and very cleverly disguised in a children tale.  The end of the song is not sad and neither is the end of a grieving period.  One purpose of mourning is that the mind, through our dreams, cleanses the spirit of grief as we move back to a happy life.  Jewish tradition says that the departed soul must move on  and that the Mourners Kaddish prayer daily recited must eventually stop so that family members will move on too.

Finally Ready to Write

 

I looked for and enrolled in a non-fiction writing class hoping to get inspired and receive guidance for writing a book on my favorite subject nutrition and spirituality.  What I got was what I call jokingly my “Story Hour for Seventy Year Olds”, a group of mostly senior citizens that have met together for many years.  They are pleasant and I do love hearing the stories they tell of their youth, particularly when they include known historical events.  Some classmates have shared life of grandparents in the early 20^th Century and others have shared a world that does not exist anymore of the 1960’s.   Sort of real life “Mad Men” that I find that interesting, especially, when it involves iconic local establishments that do not exist anymore.

 Lately, the stories shared by writers of my class have to do with loss of family.  I did not realize that today’s seventy year olds are probably losing their siblings.  Any loss in a family is tragic, whether a parent, spouse or god forbid a child, but a sibling is the only member of your family that spans the years at the same rate you do, thus, it is particularly sad because you not only have lost your future memories but also your past.  One class session, every story read by a classmate contained the tragic death of a loved one.  People died all kinds of ways.  I wanted to laugh by the time we reached the end of the reader list.  I started counting pages in my mind of the papers people were reading from and extrapolating my agony.  I tried to close my eyes while the stories were being read so that I could concentrate on the interesting parts, but eventually the tragic death presented itself in the story.  I tried not to laugh as I heard the frustration of the reader, in trying to find reason, the whys of how another person lead their life.  I kept thinking to myself that this was not really a non-fiction writing class, but a psychologist session, and that people have some screwed up lives.  I hoped that would justify my skipping a few classes, which I tried to do.  After feeling guilty about doing that I returned to class only to have the really nice people say how much I was missed…damn it. 

 I  have tried not to write about the recent loss of my mother in a descriptive, memoir-like way, so I read one of my nutrition articles that I write monthly for the website www.examiner.com.  The article, I felt, was was uplifting at the end, and I did offer suggestions about what to do when things do not go your way.  I did mention the loss of my mother in the article, after all.  Well, you would have thought someone won the lottery, the way the room lit up with seniors begging to give me advice and share their words of wisdom.  I was definitely overwhelmed and not appreciating the unsolicited advice.  I was also a little insulted that they missed the entire point of the article.  I wasn’t looking for help I was offering help to others.  They were not interested to hear what I had to say, but used my article as another avenue to share their distress, a verbal measuring stick of sorts, to see how far they have overcome their own personal bereavement. Everyone in the class had lost a mother (they were in their seventies), but my article managed to reignite those feelings of loss of a parent.  Or maybe just knowing I had recently lost a parent restarted those memories.  I do not know which is true, but it was not helping me in the least. 

 I came home and at dinner told my husband what happened in class.  He told me to stop going to class.  As the youngest child in my family I have learned to watch and listen to other family members and evaluate whether I agree or not with their life choices.  Sometimes it is easy to choose; particularly when they do something I view as stupid.  Other times it is more difficult because I am still angry that I even have to make a choice.  My husband is frustrated with me when I reevaluate past decisions regarding my mother and her health care, as she was in decline, before her death.  I made the best decisions I could at the time and had to give in to her opinion on many decisions.  In other words, I might have liked to do something one way, but for whatever reason she was not going to go along with me, or, that it was in her or my best interest not to do so. My husband wants me to stop rehashing things that cannot be undone.  I agree with him when I am calm and logical.   I also believe each individual has the right to their own opinion, even when I do not agree, the difference is perspective.  As a child and a teen I did not like it when my father smoked, when my parents fought over money, or when they wouldn’t let me go places or drive the car.  When I was first married I was not happy when my brothers did things I did not agree with, but it was their choice, even today as an adult sibling I don’t agree with some of their lifestyle choices.  As an adult I know there is nothing I can do about that and I will have to remember that when the  time comes.  

 Listening to the sibling stories in class I know my classmates logically understood the choices their siblings made, but when the stories were read aloud, you could still hear the anguish from childhood calling out “why?” in the voice of the writer.
 My children are old enough now I know I have to step aside my opinions even though I do not like it.  I know that if I do not they will never learn to think for themselves.  My hope is there is room for middle ground.  I want to have the discussion about big things and receive the respect from others for having an opinion about ideas even when it is not popular, reasonable or logical to others. 

The Bible is full of sibling stories of great tragedy and great promise but we only have to look at our own lives to find the comfort we seek. 

Wishing everyone a L'Shanah Tovah...a very happy and healthy new year 5772!

     It is hard to believe that the High Holidays are here once again. This holiday, I am very fortunate to have all my daughters home along with a houseful of friends and family to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.  My favorite moment was lighting the holiday candles to start the evening off and then with many voices joined in singing the blessings over the bread and the wine. My husband then reminded us all that we must finish this portion of the evening by chanting a final blessing called the "Shehechyanu" prayer. We include this blessing tonight in honor of  Rosh Hashanah, the holiday that commemorates the start of a new year.

     In fact, this prayer is chanted frequently during a religious service. When and where it is said during a religious service, whether for daily prayer, Shabbat or holidays, offers clues to the importance the meaning of the words.  Jews say the "Shehechyanu" prayer, from the Talmud (Berachot 54a, Pesakhim 7b, Sukkah 46a, etc.), as part of a holy prayer set called the Kaddish. Kaddish is a form of the word Kadosh which is translated to mean "Holy".  Jews have been saying this prayer for over 2000 years.  When the "Shehechyanu" prayer is said at the end of a list of prayers it is considered the period to the end of a sentence.  Since prayer is a form of thanks, or an acknowledgement of a gift we've received, the "Shehechyanu" prayer expresses of our greatest thanks to G-d.

     There are many prayers available to thank G-d for creating the world, our being in this world and everything else that is connected, but when memory fails to recall the unique individual blessings to give thanks, there is always the "Shehechyanu" prayer to fill in the empty spaces.  Years ago a Cantor at my synagogue joked with me that this prayer was an all purpose prayer.  Anytime something new enters your life or if you feel blessed or rewarded and you feel grateful or happy this is the prayer to cover all bases.

     Here are the words in Hebrew, English and transliterated Hebrew.  It is easy enough to memorize and will make you feel good every time you say this prayer.



Hebrew[1]

English[2]

Transliteration[3]


בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ

Blessed are You, Lord

Baruch atta Adonai


אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם

our God, Ruler of the
Universe,

Eloheinu melekh ha'olam


שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ

who has granted us life, sustained us

she-ecḥeyanu ve'qi'eh'manu


וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה׃

and
enabled us to reach this occasion.

va'higiy'anu laz'man hazeh.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shehecheyanu

August 14, 2012 Pain, Pressure and Prayer

      It has been some time since the last post and for that I am sorry.  There has been quite a few changes happening to family and friends and without going into detail you can assume by the post title that it has caused quite a bit of stress.  It is a funny thing about stress, that I have discovered, a little stress can add excitement or pleasure, but too much stress can cause pain.  My emotional stress has connected itself to a physical pain that I am trying slowly to undo.  I look out into the world to find help in unexpected places.  Perhaps a song on the radio to change and lighten my mood or listening to  noisy political debates on television to distract.
      Another method of finding peace and positive energy is through prayer.  Formal prayer, as in a house of religious worship feels "official", and being surrounded by friends almost always makes me feel better.  Stories also transport me away from my troubles.  The best ones find the hero or heroine in worse circumstances than you and then you feel like your problems aren't so bad. Or sometimes you empathize as the character struggles with the same issues as you do and you wonder what solutions they came up with and would it work for you as well.
       One of my favorite stories in the Bible to illustrate the power of prayer is the story of Hannah (1Samuel 1:2).  She was unable to concieve a child and it caused her deep emotional pain.  Hannah braved her times and came to the Priest Eli to pray for a son.  Her prayer was not voiced aloud because women of the day were not allowed to pray aloud. Hannah came to Shiloh everyday and mouthed a whispered prayer.  Finally, her prayer for a son was answered, but the deal with God was to give this child, her son Samuel, back to God when he was weaned.  In the end Samuel became a prophet and God gave Hannah more children to raise for herself.  Of course there is much more to the story and online commentaries from many faiths are easily found on the internet or from personal discussions with your clergy, but for me, this story specifically illustrates how prayer was used as a method to relieve pain and stress.

     Today, Eli the Priest might have recommended a healthy diet and exercise to go along with that prayer, still a good idea, we can only guess...