Moon on the 14th of the Jewish month of Av (almost full)
By the light, of the silvery moon,
I want to spoon,
To my honey I’ll croon love’s tune.
Honey moon, keep a-shinin’ in June.
Your silv’ry beams will bring love’s dreams,
We’ll be cuddlin’ soon,
By the silvery moon.
Somehow I remember a line in the song that goes “not to fork but to spoon.” The Wikipedia page has some variations of this 1909 song.
So there we (we = husband, daughter and I) are in East Brunswick, New Jersey at the Middlesex County Fair, and I notice the moon is almost full. I think, it’s almost the middle of the month! (The Jewish month is a lunar calendar, so the full moon signifies the 15th of the month.) Why, it’s almost Tu B’Av, the Jewish answer to Sadie Hawkins Day or the Israeli equivalent of Valentine’s Day.
To learn more about this holiday where the young unmarried women used to dance in white dresses in the fields, please visit:
Lobelia Cardinalis, Purple Cardinal Flower, photographed July 2009
You can compare these photos with my photos of the purple lobelia last summer. Those were taken with my Canon Power Shot; these new ones are taken with my Canon Rebel xTi.
Lobelia Cardinalis, centered in the photo, with grey fence behindMystery Flower, no longer there (maybe eaten by the groundhog?)
Update: Sara Rall (on her first visit to this blog, welcome) thinks this may be a moth mullein.
This is my son’s idea of a grande ole time – the setting is Hurricane Harbor, Jackson, New Jersey. We traveled to this (outrageously expensive) waterpark two weeks ago for his entertainment – his sort of thing.
Would you go down this green slide? I’m not showing you the whole thing, but believe me when I say it’s tall, tall, tall. The red arrow shows my son patiently waiting (a half hour? an hour) to go down this green giant.
Here’s my daughter in the pirate section – I daresay she’s Captain of the Ship.
I had fun photographing these birds, who look like they own the place.
Loss necessarily creates a vacuum in our lives whereas consolation is the process of reordering our focus in view of emerging new needs. Consolation allows us to displace some of the importance once attributed to what we’ve lost onto a new locus. So when Yitzchak marries Rivka, we are told (Bereishit 24:67) that he is finally consoled for his mother. He finally finds a new locus for his appreciation of feminine compassion and care that was embodied by his mother.
And then he continues with saying in the Jewish month of Av, which is always in the summer, we enjoy nature. The month of Elul comes right before Rosh Hashana, we concentrate on prayer. “The various rituals of Av and Elul allow us to be more prepared for Rosh Hashanah without a Beit haMikdash. ”
How do you find comfort? What do you do when something or someone in your life, community or in world news causes you pain? How do you get in touch with the pain and also find new ways of self-comfort?
When my children were babies, I remember learning that it was important that they learn to self-comfort. If every time a child cries, a parent or guardian rushes to the child’s side, how will the child learn to cope on his or her own? My boys, I remember, each had a blanket that was precious in the going to sleep process.
One of my friends, when times are hard, reads from the Book of Psalms (Tehilim) when she is in distress. I feel she is fortunate that she can find comfort in that manner.
Today is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day when the Beit HaMikdash, the holy temple that was in Jerusalem, was destroyed. Other tragic events happened on this date as well. In two days we read the haftorah from the Book of Isaiah, in which he proclaims (Isaiah 40:1-2) –
Comfort, comfort my people, so says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
“Double from sins”? – Is this referring to then or now? It seems the pain continues to this day; the warfare does not seem at an end.
And later Isaiah says (Isaiah 40:7-8) –
Indeed man is but grass: Grass withers, flowers fade – but the Word of our God is always fulfilled!
We can read all of Isaiah (especially the part from Chapter 40 and on), and some of us may find some comfort in the words. For many of us, struggling to understand the words of the ancient prophet is as far as we can get. Perhaps we are meant to know that even if we don’t understand the Big Picture, God does.
So getting back to comfort, here’s a short list from me, perhaps I can get your creative juices running, too:
Write a blog post.
Talk to a friend.
Paint. Draw. Putter in the garden. Find a creative outlet.
More on comfort and Isaiah: Comfort, Comfort (2005) by Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, chair of the department that I do work for at Rutgers, the Jewish Studies Department
My daughter asked, how come you haven’t made this since last year? Because I finally have enough basil to make a pesto! She had no idea that some dishes are seasonal.
Ingredients:
40 – 50 leaves of fresh basil
1/3 cup of olive oil, cold pressed extra virgin
1/3 cup of walnuts (or whatever nuts you choose)
1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
1 box of rotini noodles
(or substitute steamed cauliflower if you are on a low or no carb diet or gluten-free diet)
Boil water for the pasta. When the pasta is almost done, put the nuts, olive oil, basil leaves and salt in the food processor. Blend it all until you have a thick, green paste. You can taste it, if you want to be careful about the amount of salt (or just because it is absolutely yummy!). Drain the water from the pasta, put the pasta in serving bowl, and mix in the basil pesto paste. You can either eat this right away or refrigerate it and serve cold the next day.
Optional: the traditional way to make pesto is with parmesan cheese, so you can also had 1/3 cup grated parmesan to your pesto. In addition to experimenting with different nuts, pesto can also be made from sage or parsley. If you have any variations you want to share, please do so.
Every Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the summer and early fall there is a farmers market in Highland Park. I buy organic parsley, lettuce, beets and kale (what I buy varies each week) from a particular organic food stand at the market. Sometimes I buy the flowers for someone else as a gift.
My favorite produce that grows in New Jersey are the peaches. I buy a lot; my eldest son loves peaches, and so do I.
In fact, the peaches are one of the best parts of living in New Jersey. In the photo you can also see sugar plums, another tasty treat.
For more photos with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
Lilies are in bloom in front of my home (along with dianthus, rudbeckia, sedum and coreopsis). My basil plants have done well enough that I was able to make a basil pesto with noodles on Friday – recipe to be posted later this week.
Coreopsis come back year after year, as long as they get full sun and are not crowded out by some more aggressive plant.
I photographed this tall pink perennial in my friend’s backyard in June; anyone know what it is? My friend said the previous owner was an avid gardener, and her family reaps the benefits. Valkyrien seems to think these are Lathyrus odoratus (sweet pea), in which case I should plan to grow some of these beauties in my yard in the future.
Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They don’t judge the orphan, neither does the cause of the widow come to them.
SuperRaizy wrote a post called Too Nauseated to Blog on Friday (lots of bad news in the Jewish community). I didn’t really know what to say to Raizy or about Raizy’s post, but Isaiah, the prophet of over 2000 years ago, says it well. I’m hoping to write a post called “Seeking Comfort” later this week. More words of wisdom from Isaiah.
On a related or not so related note, Jientje alerted me to a Positive Day in the Blogosphere. Did the creator of this have any idea that this is the day after Tisha B’Av, the most mourning-full day of the Jewish calendar and right before Shabbat Nahamu, the Sabbath of Comfort? Just a coincidence, I am sure.
Sometimes I think it must be easier to be non-Jewish (Jientje is not, and she is always so upbeat). But maybe we just have to be “Happy with our lot.”
Anyway, to Raizy, you wrote well in your post. May with the wisdom of Isaiah we find a way to move forward.
Update: if you are interested in discussing the details of the current New Jersey/New York scandal and Dwek, Rafi has a post: Dweck Entrapped Them? (Note: it seems that his name is spelled “Dwek,” and Rafi misspelled it in his post).
