I bought a pomegranate a month ago for Rosh Hashana, and it was disappointing and too white inside, not quite ripe. The seeds were bitter. On a whim, I decided to try again on Friday and was pleased to find bright red pomegranate seeds inside the pomegranate.
Pomegranates have Vitamin C, anti-oxidants and are considered to be anti-inflammatory.
For more Ruby Tuesday red photos, visit:
And here’s my watercolor of a pomegranate.
A fence in our yard – one can see the mums in the front of our house in the distance. The burning bush is right above the fence. Today it snowed – who knows how this fence with mums scene will look tomorrow!
For more Shots Straight Out of the Camera:
Last week I saw this brown mourning dove wander about in my yard.
Soon after he noticed that I was following him (her?) around with my camera, he settled on this high phone wire in the back of my yard.
Oh, by the way, did you know that Noah sent out a dove: “And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground.” But before the dove, he sent out a raven. I didn’t have any ravens showing up in my back yard.
My neighbor’s burning bush is quite spectacular – bright red at this time of year. Ah, another Biblical reference, except the burning bush doesn’t show up in the weekly Torah reading until winter time.
Here’s the how the dry oak leaf hydrangea flower looks – this photo was taken the same day as the red hydrangea leaf photos.
Note that this post is not called The Diamond in the Window (book by Jane Langton). It’s a post about Noah, who was considered a righteous man in his generation.
So here’s the question: was Noah a righteous individual who might have not been so great in a different generation or was a shining light unto all the generations? And why is he looking at this diamond?
Or maybe he’s really looking out the window:
For the answer to these and other tantalizing questions, you will have to visit my friend’s Harry’s post Noach – Is righteousness relative?
The illustrations of Noah with diamond and window were executed by me (with some critical helpful feedback from my daughter) with pen, ink, and then a lot of playing in Photoshop. The aim was whimsical and playful.
What is beauty? Is it the Doryphorus, as the Greeks believed, the young man with the slender, slightly bent posture? According to Judaism, strangely enough, the elderly are considered beautiful, as it says in Kedoshim 19:32 –
“Rise in the presence of the aged and honor the face of the old man”
מִפְּנֵי שֵׂיבָה תָּקוּם, וְהָדַרְתָּ פְּנֵי זָקֵן
Honor the face of an old man could also be translated as “ascribe beauty to the elderly.” Who has knowledge like an elderly person? Who has overcome so much and come so far?
Note the word used here: hadar. Hadar is also used to describe the etrog. Unlike other fruits, the other “lives” for a long time on the tree and does not fall off on its own. The word in Hebrew is dar, similar to hadar. Does the etrog watercolor remind one of an older person? How?
(Credit for these ideas goes to Rabbi Bassous, for helping me remember parts of his speech to my husband, and for help with locating the pasuk to my middle son).
In honor of my father, my favorite elderly person, and in memory of my aunt, my father’s older sister who died earlier this year and who lived admirably as an older person (she was also an artist). In memory of my dear mother – her yahrzeit is next week. And in memory of Linda Greenberg, who tragically lost her battle with cancer this week and will never experience old age.