Thoughts Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Vegetating with Leslie

Modesty

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

I happened to see a short segment on Asian Muslim women creating fanciful hijabs. I started to think about Jewish modesty, which requires married women to cover their hair and all females to dress modestly — skirts well below the knees and

On: June 26, 2017June 27, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

Today I turned off the news and social media to sit outside and watch the clouds drift overhead while I think and write. Once again, Pauline Dubkin Yearwood, עליה השלום, entered my thoughts as she has so often in recent months since she

On: May 31, 2017May 31, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

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,

Conscious choices…becoming more fully human

On: May 25, 2017May 26, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

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

Torah: Why I Don’t Like To Call It (Written) Law

On: May 23, 2017May 26, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

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’,

Cooking, Pulling Weeds And Resisting

On: May 18, 2017June 1, 2018 By: Leslie Cook

I never thought I’d hear myself say this: Trump gave me a huge gift when he was elected. It’s hard to imagine myself saying that because my inspiration usually comes from very different kinds of sources. Yet perhaps it’s just the mind-

Another Take On The Garden Of Eden

On: May 12, 2017May 17, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

I often say that translation is interpretation. There is a powerful example of this fact in the creation stories of Genesis. I can’t help but wonder how history would have played out had two words been translated differently. ADAM IN GENESIS 1-3

Explaining My Torah Ecology Project

On: May 4, 2017May 17, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

For those of you who follow my blog and who are puzzled with my Torah Ecology posts or find them unreadable…I would like to explain. In a few words, my blog is about religion and food and the intersection between them. This has

On: April 19, 2017May 2, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

What we eat shapes ethical consciousness. It is a key to social and environmental justice and to restoring harmony in our relationships with our world and with G-d. It has the power to dull our senses or stir our sense of joy and gratitude. What we

On: April 17, 2017April 17, 2017 By: Leslie Cook

For G-d so loved a pattern that s/he created the world with a dazzling array of them. We have only two real jobs in life: to appreciate the diversity of patterns and to nurture the garden.