Jewish Learning

Lately, my daughter has been talking about “seeing” God.  She says that you can’t see God because God is love and you can’t see love.  To her 5-year old literal mind, seeing God means literally seeing an old man in a beard or an old woman in a crocheted shawl…

I think you *can* see God — yes, God is love - -but also beauty…  Here is when I see God…

• When my daughter smiles
• Seeing the sunset from my deck (I take time out every night to stand out on my deck each night, and breathe.  I consider it my daily prayer.
• When someone does something very nice to help someone else
• When I look at the flowers and the trees
• When sunlight shines through the clouds.

Of course, this list could go on forever… because God is everywhere, always creating things to delight our sprits…

To honor my first “official” Jewish high holidays… I decided to take up the challenge issued by Jewish Living Magazine and keep a journal during Elul-the weeks leading up to the high holidays.

To help me come up with topics — I’ve subscribed to a daily email called the Jewels of Elul.

The topic for today missive is dreams… Alan Dershowitz shares how his dream is to do good and do well by his family. Those have been my goals too. Depending upon where I am with my business– my goals lean more toward doing well or toward doing good.

But lately, I’ve decided to think bigger on the money front to leave a legacy for Suzanne.  Recently, I went to a convention for my side business.  I was amazed at people’s goals– they were easily 10 x my goals.  Then, I thought to myself — why not dream big.  There is no limit to how much to can shoot for and shooting for the BIG target will make you much more likely to hit the smaller targets along the way.

Today’s goal, got me to thinking about how I can also be thinking bigger on the Tikkun Olam front, on the community building front.  What can I start doing now that will leave a very strong legacy for Suzanne.  How can I be a “go to” person when something in my community needs to happen?   I guess it all starts with the dream…

One the things that I take for granted in my life is the ability to read. I am a chronic reader. I read cereal boxes, bulletin boards, informational brochures and even my husband’s civil engineering magazines. I was a French Literature major in college and read in French, German, Polish (sometimes) and English. I also read very fast. I don’t savor every letter, I speed through reading whole groups of sentences at one time…

Meet The Hebrew Horror

A group of friends from my synagogue and my daughter’s preschool has decided to do an adult bat mitzvah together. I was sort of planning to “lay low” and just get used to being Jewish, but I can’t resist the opportunity to learn with five of my favorite people in the whole world…and I can’t stand not being able to read the Hebrew during the services. And, yes, I know that I am not the only one there using transliteration but still it is vexing.

So, I’m practicing. I found some fun online flash cards with awesome phrases such as “if you will it, it is not a dream”. Yes, I see myself using that one often. The animals were fun because there are many Hebrew animal names that are the same as the English. I also bought the At Home With Hebrew digital tutorial which isn’t bad even though the technology is 10 years old. They even have the blessings in rap. Somehow I doubt that is an option for us — even though I can’t sing very well.

Slow Down, Speed Reader…

The thing that gets me the most is that unlike on most of my language learning adventures, I’m not very good at Hebrew “decoding” because I don’t pay close enough attention to what the letters are. I’m used to buzzing through not going slow. I suppose that this learning experience will be good for me Looking forward to actually starting with the tutor in June.