I Really Didn’t Want to Make My Rosh Hashana Shopping List
In last week’s Mishpacha, instead of the regular Kichel cartoon, there was a quiz instead titled: “Tell us How You Prep: We’ll Tell You Your Type” (see below).
Anyway, I discovered I’m a D through and through. I prepare simple food, no fuss, during the 24 hours before Rosh Hashana.
But even us skip-the-recipe-section Ds have to start thinking about food for Rosh Hashana at one point or another. And I realized this morning, that if I want to send my son shopping for Shabbat and Rosh Hashana this afternoon, he needs a shopping list…
But making a shopping list is, I realized, more complicated than it sounds.
First, I had to make a menu for meals to feed my husband, my kids, our guests, and me for 3 days. And then I had to make a shopping list. But then I realized it was (even for a simple-meals D) way too long to give to my son to bring home in our shuk cart.
So I did an online order. And all in all, this whole project took up 2.5 hours of my morning. During which I had hoped to be doing other things–like exercise, and finish writing up my Elul goals, and reading something inspirational about Rosh Hashana, and writing something to post for you JewishMOMs.
And I tried to be a happy camper. But I really wasn’t. This WAS NOT how I wanted to be spending my morning. This was just a pain!
And then I remembered something beautiful I read in Rabbanit Dana Slae’s new book “The Soul You Placed Within Me.”* And it helped.
She wrote that we women have different roles. Sometimes I’m just me, doing what I need or want to do. Sometimes I’m a wife, a helpmate to my husband. Sometimes I’m a mom, caring for my children in the multitude of ways we JewishMOMs do that.
And over the course of our days, each of us passes back and forth between these 3 roles.
And the most important thing, she says, is to be fully in each role when you are performing it. Not sneaking a peek at your WhatsApp from work when you are talking with your husband. When you’re a wife, be a wife! When you’re a mom, be a mom! When you’re just you, be just you! No guilt, no regrets.
Rabbanit Dana, quoting Rav Kook, explains: “When you are busy with a particular mitzvah, you should focus on it and make an effort to especially “be” there. To turn your thoughts and intentions to that mitzvah, to be fully present within it. The Divine Presence rests not in the many other mitzvot that await you, but rather with the mitzvah that you have chosen to perform at that very moment.”
In other words, JewishMOMs, As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Es alike: ready, set, cook! Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sameach, and Shana tova!
*Looking for a way to honor the memory of a loved one? Rabbanit Dana Slae is currently seeking sponsors for the English translation of The Soul You Placed Within Me. Please contact her at dana@harova.org
GREAT!