Jerusalem Sunrise: Veracious Celebrations

© KJ Hannah Greenberg, 2015

Jerusalem Sunrise:Veracious Celebrations
with Rivka Gross
Imago Press. USA.
July 2015. Buy it here

No matter the virtue that we possess, it remains true that even the most empowered among us can benefit from greater attachment to The Boss and from greater appreciation of Creation. One dimension of Creation is time and one dimension of time is the exacting portions, which we call months, weeks, and days.

Among those divisions are holidays and Shabbot. Our seasons cycle accordingly.

Those cycles, in turn, have the power to loosen us from harmful paradigms and to nudge us along the road of righteous living.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, Pesach, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Tish B’Av and Shabbot, all, in their unique ways, potentially move us toward higher levels of connection to Hashem and of connection to each other.

Jerusalem Sunrise: Veracious Celebrations marks that influence. This book’s sixty essays offer a textual recapitulation of the main musics of those aforementioned portions of time, whether it’s the cleaning of our souls that takes place alongside of our chasing away dust bunnies and bread crumbs, before Pesach, or whether it’s the cleaning of our hearts that takes place during Elul, before the Yomim Noraim.

Such melodies, it is hoped, enhance our existent perspectives on faith and hope, and allow us to enact our Avodas Hashem joyfully. In the least, these snippets of celestial awareness, caught modestly in the form of motherly musings, honor the sanctity of the Jewish holidays.

 

Preface: Shimmering our Way to the Next Chapter
Introduction: In Between the Spaces; Holiday Reflections (with Rivka Gross)

1 Yomim Noraim
1.1 Elul is for Sifting
1.2 Judging Favorably
1.3 Choosing Joy
1.4 Proper Living as Action
1.5 Holiday Civility
1.6 Sma'achot and Hagim: Ideal versus Real
1.7 More of the Imagined versus the Purported
1.8 A Semblance of Serenity
1.9 Messengers
1.10 Normative Theory Applied to the Use of Facial Tissues on the Yomim Noraim
1.11 Rosh Hashanah and Recipes
1.12 Forgiveness

2 Sukkot
2.1 Sukkot Music
2.2 Sukkot Visitors
2.3 Our Heimishe Sukkah
2.4 Sukkah Perspective
2.5 Among the Mothers’ Generations
2.6 A Rhetoric of Meaning: Hakafot Photos
2.7 Mo’ed Medleys
2.8 Post Mo’ed Laundry
3. Chanukah

3.1 The Festival of Lights
3.2 Oh Hanukkah!
3.3 Basket Making Beats Drugs
3.4 Chanukah Lights
3.5 Contemporary Giants
3.6 Short Story: Open my Heart

4. Purim
4.1 When Valentines Went out and Mishloach Manot Baskets Came in
4.2 Happy Israeli Purim
4.3 Post Purim
4.4 Ten Ingredients for Holiday Cooking (with Rivka Gross)
4.5 Purim-Styled Responses to Questions from a Semantics Final
4.6 Short Story: Benji’s Mask

5. Pesach
5.1 Pesach (with Rivka Gross)
5.2 Discoveries Made While Pesach Cleaning
5.3 More Pesach Cleaning
5.4 Yet More Pesach Cleaning
5.5 Shopping for Pesach
5.6 The Stars Remain Fixed in Place
5.7 Abundance (with Rivka Gross)
5.8 Lotsa Matzah
5.9 Seven Weeks for Gratitude

6. Holidays of Eretz Yisrael
6.1 Laws, Rules and Shmittah
6.2 Friends Silver and Gold (with Rivka Gross)
6.3 Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut (with Rivka Gross)
6.4 Scenes from a 60^th Birthday

7. Tish B’Av
7.1 The Heat of the Three Weeks
7.2 Incommensurability and Hashkafot in Jerusalem
7.3 Dropouts
7.4 Tish B’Av Thoughts
7.5 Our Need to Rebuild (with Rivka Gross)
7.6 A Return to the Kotel

8. Shabbot
8.1 To Beeswax or Not to Beeswax
8.2 If it’s Thursday, It’s Almost Shabbot
8.3 Shabbot Always
8.4 Shabbot Guests and Life’s Other Pleasures
8.5 Through the Eyes of Shabbot
8.6 The Art of the Shabbat Nap
8.7 Sweet Shabbot (with Rivka Gross)
8.8 A Different Vista