My missing earring & cheesecake

What does me losing my earring have to do with cheesecake?

Or more specifically, what does me losing my earring have to do with the Jewish cheesecake holiday called Shavuot?

Okay. So today Shavuot begins. And these are my reflections as I start baking cheesecakes:

Biblically the holiday Shavuot is when Jews celebrate the harvest. Which includes agriculture. Which means dairy. Which then has evolved into the annual cheesecake festival.

Genius!

On top of that, over the years rabbis have discussed (aka argued) the interpretation of the Bible, and those texts are called the Talmud. They're not the Bible. But important texts to some Jewish people. And according to the Talmud, Shavuot is when we celebrate God giving us the Ten Commandments through Moses. (Those big stone tablets that had things like, Though Shall Not Kill carved into them)

So.

What's all this got to do with me losing an earring yesterday?

Well. I believe that the feeling of losing an earring is universal. Whenever it happens to me (and it happens a lot 🤦🏼‍♀️) I instantly feel a connection to women across the globe and across the centuries. It's the same feeling I have when I sweep. "I'm no different to a Byzantine woman in 500AD sweeping her kitchen."

Anyways, that moment of noticing the absence of the earring is so visceral.

There should be something right here...
and it's MISSING!

And then that next moment of realising you have to begin the annoying backtrack. Attempting to retrace each step that led to this loss.

Obviously if it happens inside our home the exercise is much more contained.

And there's always this moment of, how much is this earring worth to me? Not monetarily. But how important is this earring to me? Is it worth "the search"?

So yesterday I noticed the absence of my earring while going for a walk at a park here in Melbourne.

Sigh.

Would I even bother????

Thing is. I love these earrings. They feel "part of me." I had to at least try.

So as I started the slow walk back, my eyes darting from side to side, hoping to see the familiar shape; I had this thought:

We have lost a core component of Judaism.

It's gone.

I don't know when it happened.

But it did.

Somewhere along the way, we lost it.

And we've walked around too long without noticing so it might not even be possible to find.

I had to take a few moments to identify what it is that we've lost. Because it's not as tangible as an earring. 

And what I landed with is:

We've lost our sense of sanctity of life.

It used to be core to "Jewishness". Or at least that's what I've been told.
But that's no longer true.

It can't be.

Because I'm surrounded by Jews who are completely okay to coexist with a mass slaughter.

And when I use the word gen0cide they predictably respond:

"tHeRe'S nO gEn0ciDe" or "wHaT gEn0ciDe?"

Normally followed by an information dump about Rwanda.

The indifference, the mocking, the willful ignorance,  the whataboutism, the smugness, the twisting of historical trivia and of course the Jewish supremacy makes me want to vomit.

I literally can't stomach it.

The only silver lining is that I believe it's not that long ago (relatively speaking) that we lost our care for ALL lives.

I have a strong sense that we lost it somewhere between 1948 and 1967.

That's only eight years before I was born...

And "Jewishness" has been around for longer than that.

So the walk back will be challenging...but not impossible.

And come to think of it, we've walked long treks before. In fact, those stone tablets were apparently handed to us during a frustratingly long journey.

Hopefully this time we can reach our destination much quicker, and find what we've lost...