Here in Highland Park, New Jersey

My daughter wanted a picture of her standing in front of our favorite toy store in Highland Park: Over the Moon Toys. She told me not to put up the one with her squinting (which may have been a better shot of the store).

Do you have an old-fashioned, mom-and-pop style toy store in your area? Or just chain stores? We like Over the Moon Toys because it’s friendly(the store is owned by two sisters, and varying family members are behind the register), they have a nice selection of toys, and they wrap presents beautifully–yellow and pink tissue paper, blue and green tissue paper, multi-colored ribbons, colorful dotted paper, your choice. If your child walks into the store when you need to buy a gift for a friend and says:”I want this and that and this and that”, they have a gift registry. So you then tell your child to put the items she wants on the registry, so when it’s time for her party, she can tell her friends to check the registry.

My daughter is standing in front of the store with her brand-new Webkinz that she bought with the money her saba (grandfather) gave her before Pesach. Webkinz are a big craze among kids in America; you buy the little stuffed animal, then you go online to take care of it. What’s really funny is when my daughter plays on the computer at our house with the little boy across the street who’s on his computer at his house, and they go into the same room in the Webkinz game and make their Webkinzes jump and down together on a trampoline.

Do you like left-brain right-brain studies? Do you like essays that explore both our right-brain and left-brain characteristics?

Any idea what Moshe (Moses) and David have to do with the title of this post?

In Rejoice in your Festivals, a book of sermons by the late Rabbi Zvi Dov Kanotopsky, z”l, there is an essay originally given on Shavuot of June 5, 1946 called Truth and Beauty. I calculated that he was 23 years old when he gave this talk. What were you doing when you were 23?

Here’s how the sermon begins:

Two primary currents seem to flow parallel in the description of the essence of a Torah life: truth and beauty, the mind and the heart, halakhic and aggadic.

Later, he explains the connection to Shavuot and to Moshe and David:

These two elements that are to be found, which should be found in each and every mitzvah of the Torah, are symbolized also by the two heroes of the festival of Shavuot. Shavuot is the festival of matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, and Moses is obviously the hero of that drama of revelation. But Shavuot is also dedicated to honor King David whose yahrzeit (anniversary of his death), according to tradition, occurs on this Yom Tov (holiday). We also read Megillat Ruth, which recounts the ancestry of David. These two heroes, Moshe and David, symbolize in their lives and in their legacy the two fundamentals of the mitzvot of our faith.

Moshe represents halakha; Moshe represents truth; Moshe represents the mind. David is described as נְעִים זְמִרוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל (from Samuel II 23:1, the sweet singer of Israel). David is the one who left us a heritage of music and poetry, the zemirot ve-tishbahot that must supplement the halakha of Moshe. Each and every mitzvah of the Torah is composed of these two elements. Each mitzvah demands its complete fulfillment in the halakhic sense. And from each mitzvah there must emanate a spiritual beauty and spiritual pleasure.

Then Rabbi Kanotopsky talks about the dangers of being scrupulous in following the law but missing its beauty. He also feels that “much more dangerous and destructive, no doubt is the perpetual search for beauty in Torah at the expense of its strict observance. Among a vast majority of our Jews the search for the aesthetic has been overdeveloped! [snip] Shabbat has many beautiful aspects: the warm glow of the candles, the family dinner, the melodious kiddush. But to choose only this in Shabbat and to disregard the demanding halakhot of Shabbat means, ultimately, to destroy Shabbat. The continued search for the aesthetic at the expense of the halakhic will, Heaven forbid, destroy Torah.”

At the end:

God blessed Shabbat by offering a double portion of manna on Friday, that Israel may refrain from work on the Sabbath, and he sanctified the Sabbath by the Light of the Countenance (see Psalms 4:7) of the Jew! Shabbat is beautiful, but Shabbat also sets forth the prohibition of carrying the manna! Shabbat means issur of hoza’ah (prohibition of carrying). We cannot and dare not accept David while ignoring Moshe.

The ideal approach is a judicious blending of the Law and the Song, of Moshe and David, of the mind and the heart, of truth and beauty.

For more posts on Shavuot, see:

• Ruth: Famine, Infertility and Ploni Almoni
• Ilana-Davita: Megillat Ruth
• Ilana-Davita: Getting Ready for Shavuot?

Shabbat Shalom.

Do you like zoos?

My husband wanted to go somewhere. My daughter wanted to go: first to the beach. Then to an amusement park. Then to a zoo. I liked the beach idea; I started thinking about Ocean Grove. Well, somehow we ended up at the zoo. Turtle Back Zoo in Essex County. I did suggest Popcorn Zoo, which saves animals. At least at that zoo there is a reason for the animals being behind cages. But my husband argued that it’s a longer drive. And Turtle Back does have the train and carousel.

Do you have mixed feelings about gawking at a bunch of animals in a cage?

First, we have to wait in line. So then my husband thinks out loud about how if we had gone to Popcorn Zoo, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait in line?

Finally, we are in the zoo. After looking at a little fountain, finding the restrooms, buying my daughter a Chex mix snack in a vending machine, we then look at some animals.

Here’s one. I think it’s a bison:

We stop looking at animals for a bit, because we’ve come upon: the CAROUSEL! Much more fun to ride on a large plastic leopard that goes up and down:

As my husband and daughter examine a few more animals behind bars, I examine people:

Here are two Central New Jersey moms:

I spot a cute guy. He deserves his own photo:

Here’s how my daughter lets us know that she’s had enough looking at bears from the Ural Mountains and chickens and would like to go on the train:

We find the area for the train, and what do we need to do but wait. I people watch:

Finally, we are on the train. My husband figures if we had to pay for the train, like we did for the carousel (the carousel costs $2/ride), the line would have been shorter. The train takes us on a short ride through the woods, and we see: A lake. Some trees.

After our train ride we gawk at some orange fish:

After examining some endangered amphibians of New Jersey and enjoying the company of some otters, I spot a zoo person holding 2 dead rabbits. “Ew,” I say, “what are those for?” They’re going to feed them to the alligator, my husband tells me. And sure enough, there are all these people standing around the alligator cage watching the alligator chomping away. My husband and I agree this is a bit of a tacky activity.

At left is the baby alligator we saw moments later.

My daughter agreed to go on a pony ride, so that was the next activity. We also saw a cage that supposedly held a groundhog. I couldn’t see the groundhog, but the hole under the little hut in the cage looked suspiciously like the hole under our garage.

Oh, by the way, our neighbors down the block have now caught 11 groundhogs (some were babies) and let them go in Johnson Park.

The zoo has sculptures all around, mostly of animals, but this one is of a boy and a girl:

My daughter took that photo herself. Aren’t digital cameras great for teaching kids?

The best part was photographing the bear.

And this is by far the longest photo essay I’ve ever written.

Found this article Eating Nuts Greatly Reduces Your Risk of Heart Attack and Cancer so I thought, good time to talk nuts! (more on thyme and nuts under the photo).

According to the article, nuts won’t make you fat:

Nuts contain lots of fat, and many people are still operating under the food industry induced belief that fat makes you fat, so nuts are often shunned. But research does not support this conclusion. In the Nurses’ Health Study, the frequent nut consumers were actually a little thinner on average than those who almost never consumed nuts, and daily supplements of almonds or peanuts for six months resulted in little or no increase in body weight. Nuts apparently satisfy hunger and provide a wealth of nutrients, creating a feeling of satiety and comfort. This results in an overall lessening of food consumption.

I eat raw almonds as a snack throughout the day. I leave them in my refrigerator and just grab a few when I am rushing to get my kids or to an appointment, especially when I’ve forgotten to eat a decent lunch.

One topic the article mentions is soaking nuts before eating them. I’ve never heard of this, so I did a little more research. I couldn’t find any evidence of an actual study that said one needs to soak nuts. To me, I like nuts as a fast food, so the soaking would be really annoying, if it were a requirement. Do you think all the people in the nut studies quoted in the Natural News article soaked their nuts? I found one source that said the soaking isn’t necessary. But I have no idea what her background is that she is able to make this claim.

Enough for now on trying to weed out useful information on the internet.

Above are my raw almonds, which I decided to photograph in a bed of my thyme. I grow thyme in front of the house. It makes a great grass substitute. The thyme spreads itself all over (sometimes it needs a haircut) and produces pretty little lavender flowers for a few weeks in the summer.

Mason Resnick has his Memorial Day Parade (Highland Park and New Brunswick march down Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey) photos online.

Check them out and say hello to Mason!

In between working on intriguing posts for your enjoyment and taking care of my family, I do website work for a number of Central New Jersey businesses and organizations. Sometimes it takes a while before my work becomes public, but recently I edited a number of web pages that I can share with you:

• Yesterday, I put the Rutgers Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life’s
  Fall 2008 Public Events. Note that in December Dara Horn, author of The World to Come, a book recommended by Mother in Israel, will be speaking at Rutgers.
• The Highland Park Public Library has a bug poster to advertise summer programming for children. The bug poster, by children’s book illustrator Harry Bliss, is part of a national program called Collaborative Summer Library Program, so you may see a similar one on another library site. I just added some text to make it unique to our library.
• New Jersey School of Dental Assisting had me add their newest schedule, information about tuition and financing, and a new field on their contact form.
• I did some edits for Wilkin & Guttenplan, an accounting firm in East Brunswick, New Jersey, including an animated gif of Best Places to Work award logos that you can see on the bottom right of the Careers page.

I will soon be working on a new online course for the Rutgers Bildner Center. The courses are free; so if you have some time to do a course, go to the Jewish Studies Online Studies page to take the Bible & History or the Israeli Political System. Also, I’ve been working a site for a local firm that is not yet public.