First, I want to give a big thank you to the Babysitter for giving me a blog award.. I am a big fan of her other blog, the Jewish Side, especially her parsha posts. I’ll have to think about whom to send this next.
Sky Watch Friday is a photo meme with photos of sunrises, sunsets, blue skies, gray skies, pink skies, dark skies and any other kind of sky posted by bloggers all over the planet.
It was early in the morning last week, and she was supposed to be getting ready for school. But when she quipped, “look a sunset,” (she’s only 6) it was hard to resist running to get the camera and taking some photos.
Then my visually observant child noticed the pink on the other side of the house as well, so I took this photo out of her other window. She eventually did get dressed and get to school (sometimes a major struggle in our household).
First, a link to what I wrote last year about Parshat Vayigash (yippee! first time I can do that, link to an old parsha post): Why Didn’t Yosef Send a Letter to Yaakov
From this parsha onward, there are not a lot of women in the Torah. We have Moshe’s female relatives (mom Yocheved, sister Miriam, wife Tzipora). And there is a woman who is mentioned only three times in the Torah: Serah Bat Asher. Actually, in this week’s parsha her name is affiliated with her brothers, not her father:
And the sons of Asher: Imnah, and Ishvah, and Ishvi, and Beriah, and Serah their sister
Commentators suggest that perhaps she is the adopted daughter of Asher, and her mother is his wife but she is from a different father.
When I was younger and I heard a midrash, they would sound silly or fake to me. The text would make sense, but then why the fantastic midrash? Midrashim came about because of questions in the text, and now as an adult I have more appreciation for them. Indeed, all we know in detail about Serah is because of midrashim, and because a big question regarding Serah in the text is: why mention her at all? She must be there for a reason.
In Torah of the Mothers (see previous posts about Devorah and Daughters of Tzelafchad), Rachel Adelman writes a whole essay about Serah Bat Asher. In this post I will just quote one midrash, the one where we learn how she brings “life” back into Jacob as she tells him his son Yosef is alive:
[The brothers said:] If we tell him right away, “Joseph is alive!” perhaps he will have a stroke [lit., his soul will fly away]. What did they do? They said to Serah, daughter of Asher, “Tell our father Jacob that Joseph is alive and he is Egypt.” What did she do? She waited till he was standing in prayer and then said in a tone of wonder, “Joseph is in Egypt/ There have been born on his knees/ Menasseh and Ephraim” [three rhyming lines: Yosef beMizrayim/Yuldu lo al birkayim/ Menasheh ve’Ephrayim]. His heart failed, while he was standing in prayer. When he finished his prayer, he saw the wagons: immediately the spirit of Jacob came back to life.
(This quote is from Midrash HaGadol 45:26, translated by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg in Genesis: The Beginning of Desire).
This paragraph does not say anything about a harp, although my daughter, who is sitting next to me as I write this post, clearly told me she learned that Serah plays a harp as she gently gives the good news to Jacob. With midrashim there is frequently more than one version. However it was that she broke the news to Jacob, with a musical harp or poetry or both, we can learn from her about how to relate shocking news to an older person, with gentleness and caring.
Girls do ballet, December 2008When my flash went off while taking this photo, I thought: a good candidate for Sepia Scenes. I had to neutralize those red eyes anyway, so while I was in Photoshop, I made the photo sepia (or maybe you could call this brown?).
Girls do ballet, December 2008 in colorI then added a bit of color back in by deleting the parts from one layer that I wanted colored. The colored layer underneath then showed.
Here’s the original, yucky, red-eyed shot. I took out the door at left by using the clone stamp.
Just came back from a child-friendly New Year’s party… we toasted 2009 at Greenwich Time, which I now know is 7 pm our time, EST. Do you think my daughter (she’s 6) will go to bed at a reasonable hour?
A view from Galil Mountain Winery, delicious world-class wine, June 2008
A photo I took this summer while on our trip in Israel. But the photo needs some explanation.
Unlike in the U.S. where we have friendly Canada to the north and Mexico in the south, Israel is surrounded by unfriendly neighbors. The Jordanian border on the east is the quietest, and some Israelis have even been traveling there. But what you see here is a Hizbullah flag (circled in purple), very close to an Israeli guard station (circled in orange). Just two years ago the North was the scene of an ugly war. My friend who lives in Ma’alot lived in a bomb shelter for a while, but then she and the younger members of her family went down to Beit Shemesh in the center of the country for the remainder of the war.
Now the war is in the South… Hamas, which was elected by the people of Gaza, has chosen to spend the millions it receives in aid to stock weapons and attack southern Israel. While Hizbullah was created by Iran, Hamas now receives much of its weaponry and funding from Iran.
This isn’t supposed to be a political blog, so I won’t be telling who to vote for in the next election. But as I can’t seem to concentrate on what I was thinking of writing about (I thought about writing about how to get my daughter to pick her jacket up from the floor, see what a contrast?).
So I leave you with some links:
War written by the Sandman, an anesthesiologist in Israel
Israeli News Ricki’s mom strays from her usual topic of her daughter Ricki, a spunky 14-year-old with Down Syndrome.
Conflict In Gaza: Primary Sources (Daniel Saunders quotes the Hamas Covenant, which makes it clear Hamas is against Jews, as opposed to saying ‘Zionists’)
Jack is continuing with his Gaza Round Up: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (many, many more links…)
This is how Donaldson Park, a large county park on the edge of Highland Park, looked on December 23.
Here’s a similar view taken on December 17.
This is what I saw back on December 12.
Here we are on December 23 again. The park is empty now, except for those birds and an occasionally jogger or walker. But during the warmer months it is alive with ball players, kids in the playground, tennis players, picnickers, people admiring ducks and dogs (there is a little caged dog park). In the past year much construction has been going on in the park so only parts of it are usable. I previously photographed the edge of the park that borders on the river; in that photo, the foliage is at its peak.
Sky Watch Sneakers
I suspect people throw them up there to annoy others. I’ve never seen anyone actually do this. They’ve been there for ages, kind of a part of our block.
Thursday Challenge: Sidewalk (a photo of a pink carnation I threw on the icy sidewalk because I crave color in winter)
First, I want to give a big thank you to the Babysitter for giving me a blog award.. I am a big fan of her other blog, the Jewish Side, especially her parsha posts. I’ll have to think about whom to send this next.
From this parsha onward, there are not a lot of women in the Torah. We have Moshe’s female relatives (mom Yocheved, sister Miriam, wife Tzipora). And there is a woman who is mentioned only three times in the Torah: Serah Bat Asher. Actually, in this week’s parsha her name is affiliated with her brothers, not her father:
