Where did it go?
There was mail I really-really wanted to read.
Where did it go?
Will it come back?
Tch!
Ah well. Started another 8-week JLI course (Jewish Learning Institute) tonight. It's really geared toward couples, but I figured even as a singleton, there would be something for me to learn. And sure enough I was right. G-d created Adam both male and female. Then after he breathed a soul into the creation, he split the androgynous body into male and female. Thus, we say, in marriage, two bodies one soul. Man or woman is not considered a complete person without a spouse.
So where's the other half of my soul?
Judaism seems like a male-oriented religion, male domination, but isn't quite so. I'll quote a paragraph here that gives a lie to that notion:
"Before marrying my grandmother, Rebbetzin Chava Hecht, my grandfather, Rabbi Jacob J. Hecht, o.b.m., told her, 'I being a "Yanky," an old-fashioned American boy, will marry you only under the following condition: I must be the head [italicized]of the house.' My grandmother responded, 'You can be the head, but I will be the neck [italicized], and wherever the neck turns, the head has to follow."
Sorry I can't make italics or underscores here, so I have to use [ ] to point out the original emphasis. And o.b.m. is abbreviation for "of blessed memory."
That wasn't part of the text, but there are always several pages of additional reading, and that's where this little item was.
Well, the butler just announced that Madam has mail, so I better go look before it, too, disappears.
Shalom