Wishing you all a year of health, prosperity, hope, common sense, emotional well-being, tolerance except in cases of the intolerable, happiness except in cases where one needs to grieve, wisdom, understanding, and have fun, too.

This is a post for all of those who have a difficult time on the holidays.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 16:11 —

וְשָׂמַחְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אַתָּה וּבִנְךָ וּבִתֶּךָ וְעַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתֶךָ, וְהַלֵּוִי אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ, וְהַגֵּר וְהַיָּתוֹם וְהָאַלְמָנָה אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבֶּךָ–בַּמָּקוֹם, אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ, שָׁם.

And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your man-servant, and your maid-servant, and the Levite that is within your gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are in the midst of you, in the place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there.

It is one thing to go through the motions of the holiday. It is another to feel like one must experience joy.

This is a song that one often sings on Sukkot or Simchat Torah: Vesamachta Behagecha

This means “You should be happy on your holidays.” You can find a version of this song here.

So, what does one do with this requirement to be joyful? What if one has difficulty with family, and the holidays bring this up? What if one is trying to have children, and one sees everyone else’s children preparing for the holidays and then celebrating? What if one has difficulty connecting with others, and the idea of close friends seems distant, never mind marriage? What if one is distant from loved ones? What if one has just lost employment, again, and the holidays bring feelings of “how can I support my family?” What if everything is going well for you (externally), but some emotional trigger has kicked off inside of you and all you feel is doom and gloom?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but I did find some nice drashot (speeches? words of wisdom? attempts at words of caring?) on related topics:

• The Rebbetzin’s Husband: Dealing with Depression – in others
• “How Are You Today?” (from the Rebbetzin’s Husband’s post)
• Rabbi Riskin on joy and Yom Kippur

Baila had an introspective post, about her parents.

I want to quote one piece of the Rebbetzin’s Husband’s drasha:

We don’t tell people to snap out of it; we listen to them. Yosef didn’t tell the butler and baker to get over their problems, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to trust in Gd the way that he did. Rather, Yosef asked them to tell him what was wrong, and – when they were willing to talk – he listened carefully.

Many times all one can do is listen. Advice isn’t necessary; actually, it is often confusing and missing the point. Sometimes the reason it is hard to listen to someone else is because then we have to get in touch with our own pain. And, “ouch”, who wants to feel that?

Wishing you a happy, healthy, productive, emotionally-in-tune New Year. I have one more apple photo that I want to post some time today. I always like to have a photo on the top of the blog, when it’s going to lie dormant for a few days.

These globe thistle flowers were growing all over the hillsides when we visited Banias in the Golan Heights, Israel last June.

They give the hills a pretty purplish look.

The Golan is a beautiful place to visit, with many places to hike and mountains to view.

Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for featuring flower followers who share photos in a fun fashion.

This is where I was for about two hours this morning, at the Friends of the Highland Park Library Book Sale. I volunteered for a little over an hour taking the money from the sales, and then I came back with my daughter to buy some books. Despite the pouring rain, patrons were coming in and buying books. Those running the sale told me that the sale has been a success (they have made over $3000). In the middle of the photo is Mort, who spent a lot of his time this past week putting together the sale, and on the right is George, another sale organizer.

So, what did we buy? I bought a biography of the Rema, the story of Rabbi Moshe Isserles. It says in the introduction that certain liberties where made with re-creating his life, but I think I will get a feel for what life was like in 16th century Cracow. My daughter selected a Mother Goose book (we already own one, but this one has different illustrations), a Berenstains Bears book, and Meet Samantha, an American Girl book. I also threw in a copy of the Princess and the Goblin, thinking at some point my daughter will enjoy this classic.

I’m currently reading Mary Poppins, the original book by P.L. Travers. It is delightful, and one can see how it inspired the producers of the more famous movie. I hope to post excerpts from the book in the next week. But now I need to get back to my holiday preparations.

Lorri writes a beautiful blog called Jew Wishes. Her posts are heart-felt, as well as being well-written. She reviews books, films, cookbooks and gives general information and insights on Jewish topics. I particularly liked her post on repentance (with two film recommendations), where she writes:

Pent up anger and other emotions lead to an unhealthy state of mind, external presence, and physical being, and it distorts our lives. To forgive is also to repent, and to repent includes forgiveness. Repenting for our unhealthy attitude towards another person must include forgiveness for what we feel that person has done in order to hurt us.

As this doesn’t sound like a classical interpretation of teshuva (repentance), I would love to do more research on teshuva and emotions to find out if I can reconcile the traditional approaches with this more emotional approach. Hopefully, more on this topic soon.

It was a nice surprise to wake up this morning to find she had awarded me a blog award! As I have just given out this award to five of my favorite mommy bloggers (attention: ALN, SuperRaizy, JugglingFrogs, Baila, and Hadassah), I’m going to wait until after the holidays before I do anything with this one. But Lorri did have the rules on her post, which I neglected to include, so I’m going to include them here, in case my mommy bloggers feel so inclined to send the award onward ho to some other deserving bloggists:

Here are the rules:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3) Nominate at least 5 other blogs (I changed this to five)

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs!

FYI, comments are NOT closed. If you ever see that, it is a mistake. I don’t know how that happens! Please let me know if you see comments are closed on a post.

I took some photos of my oak leaf hydrangea on Friday.

I bought this plant several years ago. At the time I really had in mind the type of hydrangea that has the blue or pink clusters of flowers. But the plant nursery did not have any of those, and the man recommended this one. The truth is, I find the flowers, which show up in the spring, not as exciting as the ones on the other types of hydrangea. The real beauty of this plant is the leaves. And now with autumn they are exhibiting lovely shades of red.