The Raw and The Cooked

This week was an unusually full week for us, all good things though. Just very full. I can already feel the shift from a relaxed, easy-breezy summer schedule kicking into the high gear of fall, and all that entails. Almost like the flip of the switch, and now BOOM! Fall Frenzy is here. Especially with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot back to back to back. And while I’m so grateful God gives us this period of reflection, joy, and wiping our slates clean, it still entails a lot of preparation on the back end to ensure the holiday can be filled with joy. Does that make any sense?

Instead of getting completely overwhelmed and crushed by my to-do list that gets longer by the minute, I’m taking a moment to stop, and say thank you to God for each and every blessing that said to-do list represents. Thank you God, for gifting me the talent to bake round-homemade challah for our family’s table, using eggs from our very own chickens. Thank you God, that we have the financial resources to shop at the gourmet grocery stores for the upcoming holiday meals. Thank you God, for the talent to cook and bake from scratch to fill the bellies of our loved ones. Thank you God, for a beautifully set table, one which I can already envision: my grandmothers table cloth, my parents challah board, Alex’s fathers kiddish cup, the smells of a home-cooked gourmet meal, my children’s Rosh Hashanah school projects decorating the table, in addition to the beautiful candles burning, and the beautiful bouquet of flowers I’m going to splurge on. Thank you God, for each and every soul that will gather around our dining room table on Friday night, and ring in the New Year with us. This will be my mantra this week, as I methodically plow through my to-do list.

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This was a very exciting week for us… two of our four chickens began laying their first eggs. We adopted our girls (two Cinnamon Queens + two Easter Eggers) when they were one day old chicks back in early April, and have been looking forward to this moment ever since. And it’s finally here. And yes, it has been an incredible source of joy and wonder for the children. Lots of excitement as we’ve been screaming “SALLY LAID AN EGG!” and “THERE’S ANOTHER EGG IN THE NESTING BOX!” all week long. Speaking of happiness and joy….

Ki Tavo is filled with a multitude of curses and blessings for either walking with God, or choosing wickedness. It’s pretty simple, are you going to chose a life of obedience or disobedience? And while this deserves a deep dive from someone way more qualified than myself, what I actually want to focus on is what stuck out to me the most reading Ki Tavo: HAPPINESS 😃

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Our youngest child also turned two this past week. We celebrated with an Elephant and Piggie theme, as she has somewhat of a cult following to the Mo Willems series. It’s impossible that she’s only been with us for two years, it feels like she’s always been part of our family, like she’s been with us, here, the whole time. We held a family Shabbat dinner with a grilled peach & feta salad for eleven, with a massive 2-layer 8″ chocolate cake for dessert. We spent the morning at The Magic House, and it was a great celebration.

A huge takeaway for me, as we slowly wrap up this project, is that there are so many rules and laws that God is begging us to follow, rules that show us how to act compassionately, justly, and morally. The do’s and also the don’t’s to live a moral and just life. A life filled with order and purpose. That’s mainly what struck me when we opened up Ki Teitzei — laws on capturing a woman during wartime, dividing up your property to your sons, even if your firstborn son is from the wife you don’t love, dealing with disloyal and defiant children (don’t murder them, Lindsay Clancy!), and even, burying a corpse that was put to death for capital offense. No other culture or society or religion has us act in such a civilized way. The Torah was revolutionary at the time, and I find it so frustrating that we’ve let so much of it go.

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This was our final week of summer vacation. All in all, I think Camp Mommy was a success. Other than the anchor points of swim lessons 3x per week, we built in a ton of wide open free-time, and found ourselves thriving in last minute land. We had so much flexibility, so much rest. That was all I really wanted for the children, and myself. A really restful summer. I can’t even begin to count the number of summer days, where everyone stayed in PJ’s through lunch, and just… slept in, played, read, ate, napped, made forts in the living room, 9am lemonade popsicles, spent time outside with the hose. And yet, we still managed to fill in our time with playgrounds, playdates, museums, indoor play-places, and a handful of baseball games. I’m already nostalgic for this past summer, it was really great.

As for this week’s parsha, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. This week was all about law and order, and all of the nuances of specific steps to take in the event of a homicide, accidental or not. I really love the particular details God lays out in the various events of homicide. And I do wonder, where our country has gone so wrong. Did you know only 27 states have the death penalty? The Torah takes killing incredibly seriously, but it also distinguishes between intentional murder and accidental death and builds an entire system around that distinction.

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