More thoughts on Rosh Hashanah

Today I cut 100 calories from breakfast by eating my normal links and yogurt.  I ate the same lunch and dinner will also be the same, HUGE!  I did weight lifting, 30 minutes of walking, and 20 minutes of swimming.  I think it's working.  I weighed this morning and was up a pound, but I'm sure it was the sodium in the soup.  Tonight I'm back down that pound, the same as I was yesterday morning. If I can just maintain for these two days with this huge dinner, I'll be quite happy Wednesday morning. I'll still have a respectable loss for the week.
My little choir did an admirable job this morning and received many compliments.  They will do the same two songs tomorrow, and I'm sure they will be even better.  The service was enhanced by what they did. 

I wanted to copy and paste some thoughts on Rosh Hashanah today that I found interesting, but it turns out you can't copy and paste from Facebook!  This is something someone else was sharing from an internet site, so I guess that's why it's protected.  It's not long, so I'm just typing it over here for anyone to read.  Let me know if you find this interesting as well.

This is from a site called Positive Jewish Living, and our cantor at SOJC occasionally shares things from them.  This is the one he shared on Sunday.

"Both apples and honey are sweet foods. But where they differ is in their respective shelf lives. Even after a few minutes left exposed, a slice of apple will go brown and soft, and soon be inedible. Apples need to be eaten fresh. Not so with honey. Honey does not decompose--in fact, the ancients used it as a preservative. Honey never goes bad!

Apples represent modernity. It is fresh today, stale tomorrow. Honey, on the other hand, represents tradition, a force that is unchanging, constant, timeless and stable.

Jewish spirituality is a delicate marriage of these two forces. For our spiritual life to be dynamic and alive, it must change and keep up with the times.  And to have substance and meaning, it has to present a truth that is beyond change, that is timeless.

Dip your apple in the honey of our eternal tradition and it will be preserved forever"

When I read that on Sunday, I thought that it would make eating the apples and honey much more meaningful.  I was right, and now tonight I'm glad I have recopied it and read it through again.  I like the idea of putting the two things together. I always just thought that the apples and honey represented sweetness and the prayers that we should all have a sweet new year.  That's a nice thought, too, but this idea of combining the modern and changing with the timeless and constant has added a wonderful new level of meaning to the ritual for me.

Soon it is time to light the candles and have kiddush and dinner to usher in the second day of Rosh Hashanah.  Again, I wish everyone a sweet new year full of health and happiness.