Thoughts Archives - Page 2 of 7 - Vegetating with Leslie

Eternal Life

On: August 7, 2018August 12, 2018 By: Leslie Cook

Five years ago when I started my blog, I wrote: “As we journey through our lives, we both eat and nourish, destroy and enrich. The great gift we have as human beings is that we can make conscious decisions about the balance

On: July 20, 2018July 21, 2018 By: Leslie Cook

I watched Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale over the last couple of weeks. Visually, it is beautiful. Emotionally, it is searing, sobering and thought-provoking. The book was written in 1985, and the Hulu series began in 2017. I hadn’t read the book or

On: June 7, 2018June 7, 2018 By: Leslie Cook

I’m reading a wonderful book recommended by a friend for soul restoration in these times, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein. After I picked up the book, I realized he is also the author of Sacred

On: January 21, 2018 By: Leslie Cook

I’ve been taking another religion class online through Harvard recently (an excellent — and free — program, btw). In addition to an NPR segment I heard the other day, this class caused me to think more about the abortion issue. I wondered

On: December 12, 2017December 12, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

One of the things I have noticed and commented about as I have read the Torah story about animals is that they progressively lose stature in relation to human beings: “Gone are the days in the Garden when animals, as much as

On: November 10, 2017November 13, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

I watched a video this morning that amplified my growing understanding of how much that we do is shaped by our evolutionary history. That, in turn, is shaped by the drive to survive: http://www.ynharari.com/role-scientists-debate-animal-welfare/ Evolution is a topic that first interested me tangentially,

On: September 29, 2017October 16, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

Jewish tradition teaches that G-d can only forgive transgressions bein Adam l’Makom, those transgressions we commit against G-d. G-d cannot forgive transgressions bein Adam l’havero, between us and our fellow human beings. Therefore, before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we apologize for ways in

On: September 28, 2017October 16, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

In “A Starting Thought” for this blog, I said: “This thought occurs to me about meals: as we gather raw ingredients, prepare food and eat, we embrace the central moral paradox of human existence, that it requires taking life to sustain life. How

On: August 26, 2017September 12, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

“Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my students.” – Rav Hanina ( Talmud: Taanit, 7a) I finished teaching a class at McHenry County Community College this past week called “Conscious Choices: Thinking About Food.”

On: July 30, 2017August 21, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

This morning, as so often happens, I was alerted by @JewishVeg, to an excellent book by Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian and a tenured professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The book is Sapiens: A Brief History