Returning home

"The Jewish ideal is a sacred community.....A Talmudic adage urges, tafasta m'rubah lo tafasta. "If you reach too far, you capture nothing".

The successful beginning, then, is hardly a mission statement announcing the need to find God in an instant, or even a day, or a month or a year. Sacred community begins with a firm but modest commitment to the project of our generation: to transcend ethnicity and seek out the holy in such things as the ways we think, the blessings we say, the truths we discover, and the homes we have or seek to find. Jewish spirituality is not just real. It is reasonable and it is deep. And it beckons us now more than ever to return home to find it."

Lawrence A. Hoffman

p. 552 "Forms of Prayer" 2008

Finding my own path

I must remember how important it is that I find and follow my own way and path; I never again want to get to that 'I have to do/say 'whatever' or 'x/y/z' will happen' way, where it becomes something like superstition and nothing to do with the beauty I know exists in Judaism(because I have glimpsed it), whichever way my path follows.....

even if it is only in small things: small things I *can* do, done with good heart, mean more to me than a lot of things done 'because so and so said so' ....... so, do what I am drawn to, and do it with all my heart.....

"You're Jewish, you fool!"

Long time ago, round about 1969, there was a tv programme in Scotland called "Se Ur Beatha" (apologies to Gaelic speakers if that's the wrong spelling) and it was singing and songs in Gaelic.

A friend and I at school, aged about 12 or thirteen, used to take adolescent delight in seeing what we though the words they were singing sounded like: one was "You're Jewish, you fool!"

Anyway, back in October, when I had my - what do I call it? Revelation? Spiritual experience? Moment of clarity? I don't know....but what ever it was, it was life changing, as that was the moment(and I have the vision of where I was, and what I saw in my mind's eye, clear as ever) when I knew I had found what I had been looking for, and it had been there all the time, waiting for me. Still not easy to put into words, and perhaps that's as it should be.

Anyway..... a bit later, I remembered "You're Jewish, you fool!" and THAT was the perfect way of putting into words what I would say to myself. Makes me smile. Nice. Nice to remember the friend, too....she was brilliant at science, and is probably a quantum physicist somewhere now.... we also shared a love of Monty Python, which has nothing to do with this, but makes me feel good to remember, and I'm all for good memories.

first 'proper' Shabbat

yesterday and today, lighting candles, and saying what seemed right......doing my best to make a small start: such a long way to go, but it's a start.....

I love this....

"Your beginning shall be small, and your end shall flourish exceedingly" (Job 8:7)

Small and inauspicious beginnings are often crucial for the person to flourish exceedingly in the end.

(from the Baal ShemTov)

so much I want to say.....

....and I don't know where to begin.....

first post

arrival.......just over two months ago.....