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The Raw and The Cooked

Simple Meals + Honest Book Reviews + Practical Living

Numbers 8:1 – 12:16 | Beha’alotcha | “When You Raise”

Hello, hello! It was another great week over here. I got to spend the morning with my two youngest at our absolute favorite outdoor playground this week (see photo above), with iced coffee, snacks -always snacks- a good friend, and her children. Summer vibes, strong! Though we still have a solid two weeks of school left for my older two children.

This weeks Parsha deals with two large themes that we’re all familiar with: complaining and jealousy. It’s interesting to me that both of these topics are thrown together, back to back. So let’s get into them both!

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Numbers 4:21 – 7:89 | Naso | “Lift / Count” 

I hope everyone had a fabulous Shavuot and Memorial Day Weekend. It’s hard to believe we’re already in summer mode, weren’t we just buried in snow and ice? We spent the weekends with friends at the lake, and this was the morning coffee view. Impossible not to marvel at God’s beauty and generosity. He didn’t have to endow us with the gift of sight, and yet, He did. I’m also still riding the high of a Shavuot program with had with our local Jewish community. We had three fantastic speakers – and a delicious bagel lunch – talking about the importance of Shavuot, which, I’ve decided, I’m going to share a bit here. Because why not?

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Why I’m Finally Slowing Down My Reading Life 📚

Every year, I set a reading goal. Sometimes it’s 50 books, if it’s a postpartum year. Sometimes 75. A few ambitious years, even 100. For a long time, those goals felt motivating. They gave structure to my reading life and made me feel productive, disciplined, like I was “keeping up.” But this year, after nearly two decades of tracking books and chasing numbers, I found myself asking a different question:

What exactly am I rushing toward?

And honestly… who cares how many books I read in a year? There is no version of life where we get through every bestseller, every hidden gem, every recommendation, every “must-read” list. Our time is limited. And maybe accepting that is actually freeing.

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Numbers 1:1 – 4:20 | Bamidbar | “In the Wilderness”

When I first got my copy of The Rational Bible by Dennis Prager, I remember feeling genuinely elated. This ancient, often dense and difficult text was finally opened up in a way I could understand—clear, thoughtful, and deeply engaging. And, maybe just as meaningful to me, it was written by a Jewish author.

A lot of the accessible, lay-friendly Bible commentaries I’ve found come from Christian writers—which can be wonderful (if you’ve been following along, you know I’m a big fan of John Mark Comer). But there’s something uniquely grounding about learning from someone who shares your foundational perspective. It adds a different kind of clarity. So when I realized that Prager’s Rational Bible series skips Leviticus (for now), I had to shift gears a bit. I leaned on Sefaria to get through that stretch—grateful for it, but it just wasn’t the same as sitting down with a physical book and a highlighter in hand.

Now, I’m back. Highlighter ready. Pages turning. Welcome to Numbers—Bamidbar.

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The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Today I’m sharing a book review that I’ve been really excited to sit with and talk through. I recently received The Correspondent in the mail from a good friend of mine—someone from what feels like another lifetime ago—and I’m genuinely glad she sent it. We tend to overlap in reading taste, but I’ll admit I was skeptical going in. This novel is written entirely in letters, and that’s a format I usually avoid.

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Leviticus 25:1 – 27:34 | Behar + Bechukotai | “On the Mountain” + “In My Statutes” 

You guys. We did it. This is the last parsha of the book of Leviticus. I can’t even pretend that I’m not thrilled to move on, because I am, I am thrilled. Like most people, I find Leviticus very tedious, cumbersome, repetitive, and simply difficult to get through. But we did. We came through it, this is our final week on the Book of Leviticus, before next week, when we pick up in the wildness narrative, and move onto the Book of Numbers.

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