Healthcanc

The Kotel, Western Wall It was a fast day yesterday, meaning no food or water from sunrise to sunset (we have 25-hour fasts, but this one, the 17th of Tammuz is considered a "minor" fast, less intense). FD and I woke up at 3:45 am to get in some breakfast before sunrise. This helps tremendously, a pancake or two, a cup of coffee, a couple of preventive Advil. But when you're fasting until 9:15 pm on a summer day, you get more than a little thirsty.  I traditionally tease my children with a text, a reminder of the joke about the old Jewish guy on a train in Europe. He continuously bemoans aloud, "I'm so toisty ," until someone finally listens to him. (There are variations , all with the same punchline.). It is my final text of the long day. Anyway by 9:00 that day I'm at work, where people are often talking about food, and their diets, how cutting out certain foods, white flour or sugar especially, helps them lose a couple of pounds and improves their sta...

There is a how-to. Genetics aren't everything. Book burning, Nazi Germany, 1933                I have to preface this by saying that I can only speak from then lens of my own culture, not teach (well) about anyone else’s. Although I would like to say that I could write from the perspective of someone who lived in Japan, or France, or Iraq, it would be warmed over, the experience of another.  So here’s what you get when you read from the perspective of a Jew.                When some of us mention Hitler we add the words, y’mach sh’mo (sounds-like, rhymes-with y’locked-sh’go ), meaning, His name should be obliterated from the face of the earth.  On Tuesday some of your Jewish friends or co-workers might have looked ashen and tired, fasting (yet going to work, which isn't encouraged but necessary sometimes) the fast of T’isha B’Av (sounds-l...