fbpx

Resource Category: Jewish Holidays

Resource Category Filter - Holidays
Join the Blue Dove Team for May Mental Health Awareness Month, as we cultivate mental wellness and imbue our entrance into Shabbat with a sense of relaxation, peace of mind, and mental health, reminding ourselves that we are more than enough using affirmations.
By Rabbi Steven Gotlib | Beginning on the second night of Passover and extending until Shavuot, many Jews count the Omer. For 49 days, Judaism maintains a special awareness of time — even for a religion that, as Abraham Joshua Heschel described, constructs a sanctuary of time each week in marking the Sabbath. But what exactly makes these 49 days between Passover and Shavuot so special?
Jewish rituals surrounding food can be a fantastic tool for developing mindful eating practices and strengthening our ability to eat intuitively. According to Jewish tradition, before and after eating any food, a blessing should be said. However, the blessing recited before eating is not a generalized prayer of gratitude. Rather, each blessing is specific to the kind of food you are eating.
We know staff mental health needs are important, and we hope this resource offers an opportunity to better support the staff’s mental health over the summer. The Blue Dove Foundation is proud to partner with BeWell, an initiative of Jewish Federations of North America, and Foundation for Jewish Camp in the creation of this meaningful resource.
Leaving Egypt is not just about our story and journey on the road to freedom. It is a foundational roadmap to liberation, both for a community and individuals and offers us a story of recovery. Each year, we retell it as a reminder to leave behind constrictions and slavery, and instead choose freedom and sovereignty. Jewish tradition commands us, as we are telling the story, to see ourselves as if we have left Egypt. Egypt is not just a country, an ancient place, or a space. It is not just the setting of the enslavement that we’ve endured. It is also an edict about how we leave Egypt internally.
Telling stories of people living with mental illness helps de-stigmatize conversations about mental illness and helps others feel less alone in their mental health journeys. This Haggadah is an attempt at creating an experience that helps participants feel a sense of freedom from their own challenges or at least helps them start to talk about them and #QuietTheSilence surrounding mental illness.
Chametz is also symbolic of other things like the yetzer harah (the ego, the self, mental clutter, negativity) that live within us and distract us from our true goals. We are tasked with cleansing ourselves of that kind of "chametz" as well, which allows us to focus on what matters in our lives. In a way, this is a mental cleanse as much as it is a physical cleanse. Try this fun mental cleanse resource to make space in your mind for freedom.