Happy HNT

I'm exhausted after spending about two hours at a very hot park with my daughter and then spending the rest of the day running errands. It was hot as a Cajun kitchen all day long and humid as well. I'd intended to meet a local homeschooling Mommy group at the park, but either they left before we arrived or they canceled the meet up. Either way, my daughter still had fun running under the sprinkler and playing with the other kids and I managed to eke out some intelligent conversation with a couple of other adults. After playtime we stopped at Miami Subs for lunch and who did I run into but the Rabbi from the temple I was frequenting for a time. I conversed with him for a bit about the school they have at the temple and I asked him what he thought about homeschooling and about the local Jewish school. I left the restaurant with a feeling of "maybe that was meant to be today-maybe I wasn't supposed to meet those girls and maybe I was meant to run into the Rabbi". Had I met the other Moms I might have left the park earlier and not been at the sub place, or I might have had lunch someplace else. The Rabbi was reading a book on Jewish spirituality, and I felt a twinge of envy that some people just "believe" with no problems attached. My faith has been so badly shaken in my previous path; I've been reading books that talk about archeological discoveries, etc. , which seem to disprove many of the Biblical events that both Judaism and Christianity are based on. In addition to this, there are so many mythologies in Pagan religions, Hinduism, etc. which sort of paved the way for the later stories. For example, the birth, death rebirth of a God shtick wasn't a new thing when Jesus hit the scene. This occurs in Hinduism and also in the Egyptian religion, with Osiris. Should it matter whether these things are absolute truths? Are there really ANY absolute truths? There probably are not. I feel very comfortable in a Celtic, earth based spiritual path, but I miss Judaism. Tisha B'Av came and went, and I felt sad for not honoring it with a period of fasting like I did last year. Last year I also fasted in recognition of the pain I felt at a school in Iraq being bombed and many innocent young children being killed. It was an inner protest at the violence taking place in the world today. In Judaism, Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem; as well, other things happened in Jewish history on this date which caused great sorrow for the Jewish people : 1. The sin of the spies caused Hashem to decree that the Children of Israel who left Egypt would not be permitted to enter the land of Israel; 2. The first Temple was destroyed; 3. The second Temple was destroyed; 4. Betar, the last fortress to hold out against the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt in the year 135, fell, sealing the fate of the Jewish people. 5. One year after the fall of Betar, the Temple area was plowed. 6. In 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain issued the expulsion decree, setting Tisha B'Av as the final date by which not a single Jew would be allowed to walk on Spanish soil. 7. World War I – which began the downward slide to the Holocaust – began on Tisha B’av. (see

http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/tishabav/)

Anyway, I have to go make dinner. This not quite Catholic born, not quite Jewish born, Jewish convert, Celtic Witch doesn't have any more time for speculation this evening. Things will just have to be what they are for the next many hours! Happy HNT!