Rosh Hashanah

Call me a lunatic…or call me for help! Part I

Feb 25, 2013 By Natasha Rosenstock in Food, Jewish Community, Writers No Comments Tags: Diabetes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Neil Barnard, Food, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Rosh Hashanah, Sustainable Food, T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, Vegan

IT’S FOOD TIME HERE AT HEALTHY FAMILY HEALTHY YOU!

I admit that sometimes I know I sound like a crazy person. Who says dairy products are unhealthy for kids or unnecessary for someone with osteoporosis? Who says (in front of their friend the butcher) that lean turkey is unhealthy? Well…I do! The question is why. Enough people have asked me that I thought I would explain. Not because you should care about what I think, but because I do want to spread healthy nutrition information around and share my resources with others. And, again…because you keep asking!

I’m flattered, that even though people are puzzled by my conclusions, they still ask me for resources and advice for making healthy meals for their families.

First, some nutritional information and resources…

My belief in a vegan diet began with reading Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman and then solidified by The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II. The latter will also answer the common questions I get about why the government would tell us to eat food that isn’t good for us.

Then I moved on to Eat for Health and Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right by Dr. Fuhrman. Dr. Fuhrman’s website has a number of resources, like daily recipes and articles about various ailments and how they can be helped with a superior diet. I haven’t yet read his new books, Super Immunity and The End of Diabetes. Thank goodness I only need the immunity book!

Speaking of diabetes, I recently gave a friend Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven Recipe for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs. I’m also currently involved in a Migraine study at Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (of which Dr. Neil Barnard is the head) and I was so pleased to bring my friend to an educational night there. Right now I’m in the first portion of the study where we receive a supplement. In the next portion, starting June 12, I’ll be 100% vegan, instead of the 75% or so I currently am. I can’t wait. Nothing like making a promise to someone else to succeed in the commitment you’re trying to make to yourself!

They encourage participants to bring friends and family who are interested to the vegan classes. Judging by the interest so far, we may need to caravan!

As I said, my vegan portion of the study begins June 12. More importantly, it ends the first or second week of October. That includes all the fall holidays! For Rosh Hashanah I will be eating eating vegan. For break fast (usually a very dairy-filled meal) I will be eating vegan. For Succot, I will be eating vegan. And I thought it was a challenge to go through the holidays vegetarian!

That’s okay, if I have to I’ll just bring my own food everywhere! Or offer to make a one pot dish that I can also eat. And I have already perfected a few vegan desserts that have passed the test of some serious meat eaters! (Not that they usually have meat in their desserts, but you know what I mean…) So I will be happy to bring those too, everywhere I go. And if I have you over, I promise to provide you with the animal products you find necessary to celebrate a holiday. I’m sure many vegetarians/vegans would not agree with that approach. However, I do recognize that many Jews legitimately believe that eating meat and fish is necessary to celebrate a holiday and I don’t feel like it’s my place to refuse that request (especially because I can always just purchase the meat and don’t have to cook it myself!).

Stay tuned for plenty of healthy (and probably vegan) recipes and resources!

Check out my “On Faith” blog, a project of Newsweek and www.washingtonpost.com

Sep 18, 2009 By Natasha Rosenstock in Baby, Jewish Community, Life, Pregnancy, Writers Tags: Baby, Rosh Hashanah

See my Rosh Hashanah personal essay for the On Faith blog, a joint project of Newsweek and www.washingtonpost.com.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/09/a_mothers_holiday_vow.html?referrer=emaillink
And here’s the pdf…

A New Mother’s Holiday Vow
By Natasha Rosenstock
In my single days I would attend multiple classes designed to help me figure out my character flaws and work to make myself a kinder, more charitable person for weeks before I showed up to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. I would show up early and leave late, relishing the chance to desert my multi-tasking ways for a few days a year when I only have one call to return, to God.

Two years ago I spent the majority of my Rosh Hashanah praying that I wouldn’t be there the next year. I promised God all the charitable giving and performance of commandments possible, if only I could be too occupied with having or caring for a baby to be in synagogue the next year. I spent that Yom Kippur delirious with an ill-timed fever and fasting, only making it to synagogue for the last few hours of the day – the marathon of intense prayer before the Book of Life closes for the coming year, having had the barest of warm ups at home. Still, when the last Shofar blast vibrated in my ears, my heart and my toes, I knew I could not have prayed harder for what I wanted and all the service I was willing to do to get it.

I spent Elul last year preparing for the birth of my daughter, not knowing if it was a son or daughter and when she would arrive, before or after the New Year.
In the current climate of planned C-sections, I prayed that my vision of a natural birth, supported by midwives, with the old fashioned wonder of when it will be and what it will be, would be possible for me. I had no idea where I would be on Rosh Hashanah. My future was a blank slate and for once I trusted that if I couldn’t be in synagogue to pray that day, I would be busy with a different holy endeavor. And I was. I gave birth, in the way that I’d planned, on a Thursday and then came home from the hospital on Saturday night. We named Avital Rachel in the synagogue Monday morning. Rosh Hashanah started Monday evening. I spent the next two days as I had wished the year before, in deep concentration, at home, caring for Avital. Once in a while we would snuggle up and I would read to her from the Rosh Hashanah prayer book, praying as a team.

Yom Kippur was spent in bed, fasting, while my mother scolded me for hurting my milk supply with my silliness. I separated myself from the baby long enough to make it to synagogue for the last few hours, only prepared to pray that I was doing an adequate job as a new mother, and confident that I would be needed here on earth for that important job in the coming year.

This year, I have spent Elul, yes, planning charitable contributions, but not examining my soul in any fashion. There is no longer time for that. My main planning for Rosh Hashanah involved an hour of planning menus and babysitting. Having a child turns some people into big planners, making them try to control every circumstance in order to raise their child with exacting nutritional and educational makeup. I’m already an obsessive planner and list maker. Being with my daughter is a relief from all that. I’m here to respond to her needs as they come. That job, along with my day job, leave me with only enough energy to take things as they come.

This year, as I try to find five minutes to clear my head and mentally prepare for the holidays, I know I want to thank G-d for my healthy child and family. As a mother, filled with the typical guilt that I’m not doing enough at work or at home, it is much easier to find inadequacies than when I was living life only for myself. I’m going to let the ancient poems of the High Holiday prayers speak to me. The ways in which I might improve the intentions of my soul and my actions towards God and others will surely come.
Natasha Rosenstock is a DC-area freelance writer. She regularly writes about the Jewish community, food and environmental issues.