Friends of Itamar

Leah’s Blog – Parashat Bahaltocha 2021

Leah’s Blog-  Bahalotcha     May 26 2021

I was thinking, as a woman I need to address that aspect of my being into my blog more. The penny dropped for me when I realized how much cancel culture destroyed our intimacy with ourselves and our body images as we’ve been fed a whole doctrine about the requirement to be slim, flat and half starved. For too long we have not been comfortable being ourselves. Now, if you are a slim and flat woman- embrace that- that is beautiful but soft and round is beautiful too. We’ve been instructed a cruel criterion for self- image and self- regard squeezing our way into skinny jeans, a too tight outfit we think reshapes us, not to mention alterations done under the knife. Now that we are up and about again as corona has thankfully been put into the past and we step out (probably heavier after a year of noshing at home) we need to gather ourselves to ourselves and accept our relationship to our bodies and not fight against. Yes, we must do healthy things like exercise, eat right but even more than that in this summer season- we need to love our bodies. We need to love ourselves, all of ourselves. In order to shatter the myths that society has engrained in the ostracism of the plump, we need to first accept the beautiful creations we are as we are. Hashem created small, short, tall, thin, heavy, hard, soft and the list is long of all types of womanly shapes. A birch tree can never be a pine and a rose will never be a violet. We women are round and like the moon, we change with every day, every week. We go through things! Free us of this ridiculous Vogue culture that has castrated us. Free us to be who we truly are.

On that note, its uncanny how this topic relates to current events and attitudes to personal and historical identities. With the swing of a hand, the totalitarianism that costumes as liberalism has not only canceled culture, it has delegitimized who we really are. Distorting the meaning of the word liberalism which entitles all people to have a right to exist, cancel culture is selective to only one side; It completely erases the identity of the other. Thomas Freidman and Bernie Sanders can shout and scream and jump up and down like Rumpelstiltskin proclaiming their Jewishness but we know better. To question the legitimacy of the only real liberal place in the entire middle east and demand to cut it, make it shrink, make it vanish, is a direct outcome of a society that cancels personal identity. They want to cancel the true identity of Israel and themselves.

 It was our Matriarch Sarah who regained her monthly cycle at a very old age, the paradigm for ISRAEL an ancient Land that sprouts forth with new life now after all these years. She had a romantic relationship with the true essence of Israel; she had ONEG (pleasure). Her identity as a help meet to Avraham in every scenario, through thick and thin in every trial and test that came their way, was of fresh awareness of her mission. Sarah had the last word as Hashem told Abraham to listen to her because she had woman’s intuition and she had the last word. Today Israel is pregnant too, a brand-new foundation is being formed in the cradle of all civilizations.  There are many tests and trials but we feel ONEG as we behold the beauty of its fruitfulness. Cancel culture would like to alter us and make it thinner than any country in the world, no, they would like to cancel us altogether. Sound the trumpets! Coming to your nearest theater – it is coming to you. Whatever happens here happens there and happens everywhere. It’s asking you – where ever you may be- who are you! Are you a part of Israel? Are you doing your mission now? As the Dwelling place Below comes into major focus now, this is the clarifying moment -if you love it, you have to love all of it, it’s mountains, it’s hills, it’s fullness. See how it is built up and beautiful. Free yourself to walk in it, take pride in it as it morphs into the Promised Land. We cannot and will not cancel history. We go through things… Every day, every year, for thousands of years. We cannot and will not cancel the future. We cannot and will not cancel ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom, Leah