The Raw and The Cooked

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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A few weeks back, I mentioned we wrapped up the heavy lifting for our kitchen refresh. We installed new flooring, lighting, emerald green backsplash, and wooden accent shelving for our kitchen, a space that I love dearly, even with its white formica counters. And this week, the final piece of the puzzle was put in place: the pantry. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. I mean, anything would have been better than builder-grade white wire shelving (though we did leave the behind the door wire shelves, as noted in the photo), I am over the moon with the completion of the kitchen.

Speaking of the kitchen… the timing is quite neat here, because the parsha this week, Re’eh, opens with another decree from Moses, and discusses many more laws. For this particular parsha, the laws concern kashrut (kosher) foods, debt, tithing, and holidays. I find it really interesting that Moses begins with laws of what we can and cannot eat, laws of kashrut (kosher), items that God finds abhorrent for human consumption. It has been speculated, that laws of kashrut are giving first, because it is the physical act we participate in the most — think about how many times a day we eat a meal, have a snack, compared to anything else we do in this physical world. I genuinely believe God wants us to enjoy this physical world, if anything, we were given taste buds to really enjoy our food and beverages. It’s a gift. We did not have to be endowed the gifts of smell and taste. And yet, here we are. Creating the most delicious and elaborate meals, with so many wonderful and complimentary flavors. Take for example my favorite summer salad, a strawberry-cucumber-pecan-feta salad, paired with a balsamic dressing. Bursting with summer flavors, and the amount of joy it brings to assemble and consume is quite high. Anyway, just one small example.

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