I like food, plant food, that is — I like to plant, grow and eat it. I like to serve it to others and recycle it to contribute to next year’s harvest. I like working and being outdoors, walking and hiking. I like to study Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, especially the first five books, the Torah. Most of all, I like to think about all these things and what they have to say about the meaning of life. I started my blog when I decided to explore veganism, and it has led not just to recipes and farming but to a reexamination of the biblical text from a different perspective and to thoughts about ethics, ecology, evolution, animal rights, the human place in creation and more. I explore and refresh my own spirituality through these projects.
From the perspective of structure, this section begins with the purification of the Levites in 8:5, paralleling the story of Miriam’s leprosy and purification beginning in 12:1. Within that envelope are four complaints and outcomes. THE COMPLAINTS OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL For
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Naso wraps up the numbering sequence that introduced us to the Book of Numbers and concludes with genealogies and the numbers of gifts and animals for sacrifice brought by the princes of Israel for the dedication of the desert Tabernacle. The numbering
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It was Shavuot today, the Feast of Weeks. Shavuot marked the height of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest in ancient Israel. Today is also the day I heard the first announcement that Trump decided to pull out of the
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Sometimes when I study Torah these days I get a little lost in the details of animal sacrifice and numbering and valuing people and animals. My original purpose in this study was to try to understand what the Torah says comprehensively, pervasively,
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After 45 years as an off-and-on vegetarian (20 of them strictly vegetarian) including 7 years of owning and operating a vegetarian cafe, I decided four years ago to explore an entirely plant-based diet. This makes Farmer Bob’s CSA “Meal Boxes” (as I like
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Maybe you’ve heard about “meal kits.” These are packaged and shipped individual meals to make up fresh at home with recipes and pre-measured ingredients. Meal kits are quite an advance over TV dinners with their fresh whole foods and recipes that often
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We will soon enjoy lots of spring greens in our boxes, and that’s great, because I LOVE greens and missed Bob’s beautiful assortment over the winter. Here’s what I do with them (other than the salad I make first thing when I
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Today a book I’ve been excited to read came in the mail: Barbara J. King’s Personalities on the Plate: The Lives & Minds of Animals We Eat. I learned of it from Facebook, which everyone loves to hate but where I learn
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Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) is most often translated “law.” Strong’s points out that the word “derives from yârâh (Strong’s #3384) meaning ‘to shoot out the hand as pointing, to show, indicate’, ‘to teach, instruct’, ‘to lay foundations’,
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I’m teaching a short four session class on Bible. So far my focus has been on the first chapters of Genesis and the middle section of Leviticus, especially chapter 16, the Yom Kippur ritual. In our last week, we will examine the 10 Things
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