L’shanah tovah tikatevi v’taihatemi

By Carrien Bluefamily, life with short people

Or happy Jewish New Year to all of my Jewish friends out there, and others who keep the feast. We are almost ready, here is a short preview of our Rosh Hashana celebration.
1

The Boy and Girl decided to make name cards for everyone after setting the table. They love to set the table on holidays, just so they can handle the pretty things and it adds to the excitement. I didn’t register for a china pattern or anything when we married. At the time I thought I was going to move to Thailand, and I wanted my mother’s set which you see here. She told me when she gave ti to me that she wasn’t sure why I wanted it, it’s old and chipped and missing several pieces, but I wanted special dishes that my children could use, not that sat in a cupboard gathering dust, and I remember thinking they were beautiful when I was a child. Guess what, my kids think the same way. The Boy went around and photographed everyone’s place setting, I smiled when I saw his photos, but I won’ show you them, I am still trying to preserve some anonymity here.


I just finished making the bread, isn’t it pretty.

And of course the honey cake which has been stared at with longing since early this morning when I poured the icing over it. I so enjoy watching them get excited over things like this, except when that turns into whining, which it hasn’t today.

If you want to know more about why a Christian would be keeping a Jewish holiday, besides the obvious uh duh, Jesus was a Jew not a Christian, you may find this site interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, mainly because I think it’s a somewhat egregious theological error to use the new testament to inform our understanding of Torah and not the other way around…but it may be helpful to some.

all content © Carrien Blue

5 thoughts on “L’shanah tovah tikatevi v’taihatemi”

  2. What beautiful place settings!

    I’d rather have an old set, chipped and worn, than something new. It is so much more thrilling. I can see why your kids like them and why you did when you were little too — the plates have a mysterious glamour. So pretty!

    And what a fun celebration — we should all have more holidays.

  3. “Uh duh”?

    By such a standard, the NT authors and the early Christians committed “somewhat egregious theological error[s]” by the bucketful. Practically everything St Paul wrote offered a reading of Jewish tradition in the light of Christ — Romans in particular — and it’s the entire point of whoever wrote Hebrews. St Paul could never have arrived at the conclusions he did on circumcision if he’d accepted the “uh duh” principle..

    It is a gorgeous rite in itself, though, quirky motivation aside.

  4. Dear anonymous,

    I think we’ll both agree that Paul had quite a thorough understanding of the OT and Jewish tradition before he wrote Romans, as did the writer of Hebrews. And that while the image of the Father revealed in Christ illuminated and expanded upon his understanding of the OT, he already had a solid understanding of scripture from a traditional Jewish perspective and especially int he case of Roman’s and Hebrews, were writing to people who also had a solid Jewish understanding of scripture and this was the foundation on which those arguments were laid. How can we think we understand it equally well if we don’t also understand it from a Jewish perspective?

    (And I did not say in Light of Christ I said in light of the New Testament.)

    Thus thoroughly understanding the books of the OT from a Jewish perspective they were able to see how Yeshua was the fulfillment of and continuation of the themes of the Old Testament. (For example, the Gospel of Mark goes to great lengths to illustrate how the Exodus of Israel is carried out and fulfilled in the person of Yeshua)

    I think it’s quite silly to read the OT from an ethnocentric, western evangelical Christian perspective and assume we understand it because of the few bits in the NT that are explained in light of the new covenant. It’s backwards and we miss so much and are in danger of arrogance. It was that kind of thinking that allowed Christians to murder Jews throughout the middle ages, embark upon the crusades and abandon the much of the law and way of life that are God’s gifts to his people. The law’s concerning justice and property and a nation where poverty could not become intractable because property reverted back to the original owners every few generations and indentured servants went free, where the foreigner was treated with kindness, where time was taken for worship and family, why would the church have ever thought it could dispense with these?

    The Old Testament and the history of Isreal are the context by which and into which the coming of the Messiah occurs. The New Testament is not the context for the old Testament which stands on it’s own as a political, historical, and mythological document.

    Does that clarify things?

Comments are closed.