Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays? Coming into December, for many, it is a month with special holidays. December is brimming with holidays and things to celebrate. I am thinking of Hanukkah 🕎, Sint Nicholas (saint Nicholas), Bodhi Day for the Buddhist friends, Festival of Yule, Christmas, Boxing Day, [...]
Thought and prayer for Rosh Hashanah
You could say that based upon obedience or disobedience to the mitzvot we can be blessed or cursed. In any case, they are a guide to lead us to the land provided and promised by God.
A Jew would be hard-pressed to try to answer the question “what is God’s law” in a single morning’s service, but it is clear that we only may have One God above all gods, to Him, the God of Abraham belongs all worship.
With the recent death of my mother I have been reviewing memories of her and lessons she taught us. In this context I have been thinking a lot about …Peace and Pride: Another Look at Pinchas
Through the corona crisis internet became introduced by many of our members, giving them the possibility to still join and feel connected with fellow believers.
° In Jewish life, actions transmit more than words. Lighting Hanukkah candles; blotting out Haman’s name; cleaning out the hametz; tashlikh; fasting; dancing with the Torah. Yes, all of those things come with a story. And there’s so much more background and history and ideas and textual sources that go along with the story. But [...]
A fun medley about a small but nice get-together
As we gain new experiences and learn every day so does the confrontation of reading the Torah every year again from beginning to end, which makes us discover each time some new things, making us grow in our Bible knowledge.
A last day of Sukkot, a seven-day festival ending with an eight day. Finishing and beginning again of Torah reading
Going up to Simchat Torah, the Rejoicing of the Torah, remembering how everything we have is a gift from Hashem, Who has given His Word to guide us through our life.
You don’t need a religion to do soul management, but having a sacred calendar certainly helps. Far from being an endless list of tasks, the Torah itself is a blueprint for management.Judaism, and especially Leviticus, wants us to build a civilization that prioritizes the parts of us that make us most human – our fragility, [...]
One of the main reasons why Jeshuaists, of which there are also several of Ashkenazi or Germanic origin (from West and Central Europe plus some from Scandinavia), are allowed to marry someone of non-Ashkenazi Jewish descent or even non-Jewish descent is simply to ensure that there is no ‘inbreeding‘ and the family can be kept healthy.
Jeshuaists namely believe the Elohim has made us His people, but we have to protect ourselves that people also, by taking care that no genetic disease can come into existence by ourselves mixing with our own blood.
We do believe that from a genetic point of view, it’s good if a person reproduces with someone from a different group, and as such can create a stronger being than by weakening the group staying in the same family. Our kehillot or Jewish communities do not have enough people to make a healthy connection with others. Our ties (and genes) are too much connected, and therefore we should allow our kids to have relationships with non-Jews or non-Jeshuaists.
Neurologists are inherently interested in psychosis, not least because too much dopamine in the form of L-DOPA can trigger it. I’ve always found it remarkable that dopamine blocking agents (phenothiazines, and most antipsychotics) can attack psychotic thought itself. This is much more impressive to me than the ability of other drugs (alcohol, coffee, marijuana, cocaine) to affect mood.
So it’s always worthwhile to read another paper about the genetics of schizophrenia, a very hereditary disease. All the risk factors we’ve found by GWAS (Genome Wide Association Studies) account for at most of 1/3 of genetic risk in schizophrenia. For details please see https://luysii.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/tolstoy-rides-again-schizophrenia/.
So I was interested in another crack at finding more genetic causes of schizophrenia [ Neuron 109, 1465–1478, May 5, 2021 ]. As often happens, the most interesting thing in the paper was something totally tangential to my original interest in it.
Here it is — ”…
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In Corona time many people got time to think about which way to go with their faith. Now more people feel the need to go back to the shul after all the lockdowns.
41 You are to observe it as a feast to Adonai seven days in the year; it is a permanent regulation, generation after generation; keep it in the seventh month.
42 You are to live in sukkot for seven days; every citizen of Isra’el is to live in a sukkah, 43 so that generation after generation of you will know that I made the people of Isra’el live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am Adonai your God.’”
{Leviticus 23:41-43 CJB}
Today is the 14th day of the (revised) Hebrew calendar and the day I set up the sukkah for the Feast of Tabernacles/ Sukkot here in Tennessee. I say “revised” because, a few days ago I realized (finally) that we have been a month late all year, even missing Yom Kippur/ Day of Atonement 😥; the most crucial day of Yah’s calendar. But we are back on track.
You may have seen photos of sukkahs in Israel, or perhaps even seen them in person, but sukkahs in Tennessee are a bit different. You see, often in Tennessee during Sukkot it will rain as it has been today and an open topped sukkah would hardly do. Tent camping is a necessity. Tent camping for seven great days!
Technically…
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Immanuel Verbondskind - עמנואל קאָווענאַנט קינד 