Ilana-Davita has started a new blog, Pierre Ramus in South River’s Weblog, together with a South River, New Jersey high school French teacher. The students in the two countries have written blog posts introducing themselves. If you can write well in French, please comment on the students’ posts that are in French (the American students who are studying French). If not, I assume you can read English because you are reading this post, so please comment on the posts that are in English (the French students who are studying English).
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.
My friend Jientje of Heaven in Belgium loves awards. It is fun to live vicariously through other people’s photos; recently, she traveled to Portugal, and anyone who visited her blog got to go along. One of my favorite of her recent posts was her poppy photos; she found them in every nook and cranny in Provence! One of the photos she took was a of a fish head; since I need a fish head for a post on Rosh Hashana, she said I could use it (and I will be sure to link back to her!). Somehow a fish head from Portugal seems authentic, like one that might have been used back in the 15th century by the Jews of Portugal. Jientje is not Jewish, so she probably wasn’t looking for traces of the Jewish community on her trip, but I did get interested in exploring Portugese Jewish history.
This wasn’t the first time she gave me an award. I’ve already given blog awards to some of my daily favorites (including Ilana-Davita, Gail (I just linked to one of my favorite songs), Mom in Israel (who’s in your neighborhood?), Daniel Saunders, Robin (bougainvillea alert), Batya (she’s got my garden!), Michelle (a Paul McCartney tidbit here)).
I’m going to give this award to a category I’m going to call the late-night mommy bloggers. This are women who write late night posts amidst their busy lives:
I’ll Call Baila – I did call her, when I was in Israel, but we didn’t manage to meet. I had fun working on this post of her town with her. She recently started working full-time again. And she wants you to send funds so she can see Paul McCartney (or did that happen already? Oh, well).
SuperRaizy – Her latest has been to draw attention to those protecting child molesters instead of exposing them. Yes, it is outrageous. She also would like to see Paul in concert, but for her, you’ll have to pay for the airfare, too, as she’s in New York. Unless Paul is playing in New York soon?
HaddasahBo – Her latest post really touched me. An excerpt:
Of course when I got home I had a complete and total meltdown. What was I thinking? That I could manage to work and run the house and be a good mom and have some me-time? Hardee-har-har! … But I managed. My nap energized me. I woke up, the kids got home, we cooked supper, we did homework, we ate together, laundry got done, I even cut the boys’ hair, I managed to get them all showered and pajamaed and bedded – and ended off the evening with a lovely conversation with a new friend (that’s me-time right?) .
A Living Nadneyda – Always striving to keep the balance. She’s got some great posts on therapy that I am planning to read carefully, after I finish this post.
Juggling Frogs – Yup, the blog name says it all. I loved her post about worm boxes. She brings lots of enthusiasm to all her posts. And to her twitterings, too. Did I mention she was the very first person to comment on my blog?
So, thanks, Jientje, for another opportunity for hakarat hatov (recognition of good).
News Flash for Our Family: My daughter will also be exhibiting at the Highland Park Public Library in September, in addition to my paintings and my middle son’s and many more of Jill’s students work. And some of Jill’s too. I’ll post her ballerina painting on this blog soon. See a few of the paintings that will be exhibited.
Received a treasured thank you note in response to the card I sent.
Here’s a quote from the card (Habakuk 2:4):
“The righteous shall live through his faith”
צַדִּיק, בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ יִחְיֶה
On Community
I am thankful that I belong to a wonderful community here in Highland Park, both the Jewish community and my little borough as a whole. I am glad Batya, Jack, SoccerDad (good philosophy joke here) and Jameel believe there is a Jewish community online, because I value it very much, as I express myself better on my keyboard than I do verbally. And I love all the wonderful bloggers I have met, of many backgrounds and from a multitude of countries.
Community is especially important at a time of loss. This morning, a blogger Twittered that she had lost a favorite aunt. I expressed my sadness to her in a responding Tweet. (If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm leoraw). Online community can be special; it can be a way of saying, hey, I'm having a hard time here. Does anyone else get this? And hopefully, someone does.
The “object” of the gratitude should be a person, or more than one person. Not an object, not an animal, and not an idea or fictional character. (Although, it’s within the rules to address the author/creator of ideas and/or characters.) The person can be living or dead.
I’m going to be hosting the Kosher Cooking Carnival in August, so please submit here: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_208.html
Recipes, restaurant reviews, cooking, food: as long as it’s kosher!
Both mention Soccer Dad, a fine blogger indeed, though he writes so much I only read some of what he posts! (update: and Soccer Dad responds with Meme Thanks).
There are other bloggers I read that haven’t gotten mentioned yet, so that will have to be a separate post. This one has too many links already. And I love SO many of the new photo bloggers that I’ve started “reading” (more looking than reading) that the task of posting a few would be impossible.
Regarding the photo, we went there yesterday. I took pictures, and we (my husband, my daughter and I) got to act in a play. If I can think of a good angle for a post, maybe I’ll write more later.
Lorri writes a beautiful blog called 
