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Resource Category: Jewish Holidays

The month of February is set aside as Eating Disorders and Body Image Awareness Month. It is a time when we call attention to people who are struggling with all kinds of eating and body image-related challenges and a time to celebrate people of all shapes and forms. Tu B’Shvat and body positivity are surprisingly related within Jewish tradition.
Hanukkah occurs at the darkest point of the year. The seasons are changing, the air is cold, the days are short and the nights are long. These are times when we need light most, and that is why we are tasked with bringing that hope in the form of light into our homes. Bring some light into your home with our new Hanukkah guided meditation.
A handy, beautifully designed downloadable card with the text of the Menorah blessings in hebrew and english, along with a short message of mental health to ponder as you light.
The midrash in Kohelet Rabbah teaches: “When God created the first man he took him and showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him, ‘See my works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. And everything that I created, I created it for you. Be careful not to spoil or destroy my world–for if you do, there will be nobody after you to repair it.'” Trees, in this text, are the tool used to teach the first human beings to feel gratitude for the world around them.
Over the summer I read a wonderful book. It’s called Undelivered: the Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History. The speeches are divided into categories. The first group were speeches that went undelivered because they were thankfully unnecessary. General Dwight Eisenhower prepared a speech apologizing for the failure of D-day: Thank God, it was never delivered. Richard Nixon’s aide drafted a speech swearing he would never, ever resign from the presidency: that too was unnecessary. I then tried looking through the book for an unnecessary Jewish speech: But all I came across were the words of historian Simon Schama. There are no Jewish unnecessary speeches. He writes, “Jews essentially communicate through agreed mutual interruption.”