Sisterhood Scoop – April 13, 2024
Volume 7 Number 14 • 5 Nissan 5784• April 13, 2024
Book Club News!
We thank Joyce Hochberg for graciously offering her home to host the March 25th Book Club, and we thank Sharon Summers for expertly leading the discussion of “Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City,” by Andrew Lawler.
The next meeting of the Book Club will be Monday, May 20, 7:15-8:45PM, at the home of Sallie Volotzky in Creve Coeur.
The book is: “An Unorthodox Match” – a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance – by award- winning novelist, journalist, and playwright, Naomi Ragen.
Mark your calendars for future Book Club Meetings:
July 22: Night Angels: A Novel, by Weina Dai Randel
September 23: Gates of November, by Chaim Potok
November 18: TBA
For more information, contact Fran Alper at 314-993-4024, fran.alper@outlook.com or sisterhood@nhbz.org All women are welcome to join us!
TAZRIA: The Power of the Seed
Except for a farmer, a gardener, and those who keep to a holistic diet, seeds seem to have very little importance in our lives. We try avoid them when we eat oranges or watermelons – especially if we have diverticulitis! But if anyone asks me about where you see life’s greatest mysteries, I talk to them about a seed. They are probably the most fascinating part of our world that exists, even more than the unexplored brain.
Think about it. This little, tiny seed is basically a treasure-chest of DNA, prepared to (in the right circumstances) give birth to any of a variety of beings.
Look around you. Probably the chair you are in came from a seed, the clothes you are wearing, the walls or paneling of the house you live in, almost all the food you eat, and last but not least—you and another 6 billion people (including all of their brains), all came from a seed. But what does this have to do with life’s mysteries?
Well, let’s start by looking at a computer chip. Considering that it has so much information, it stands on its own as quite an accomplishment, the result of hundreds of brilliant patents.
It can be as small as the tip of a needle but contains within it the programming data for controlling very technical and complicated bits of knowledge. It took many years of science to design it to function properly, and it can perform many functions simultaneously in fulfilling its purpose of carrying the information needed for the proper functioning of your computer.
Now let’s take an orange seed. It contains within it all the DNA info that exists about growing a tree, with all the complications: photosynthesis, establishing roots, transferring water and minerals to its body parts, sprouting in season— all this while creating oranges and seeds that will propagate future generations of oranges. However, even though the orange seed is much larger than a computer chip, it has one incredible quality that a computer chip does not have.
It is programmed to transform itself into the very object about which it contains information.
This would be comparable to creating a computer chip that is programmed to convert itself into an iPhone, or a golf ball, or another seed. Modern computer technology is just beginning to talk about the possibility of having chips that can become something besides the chip itself.
If that doesn’t pique your interest, add to this the fact that an animal or human seed is much more complicated than an orange seed, and a small fraction of the size of the smallest computer chip, and it grows to be something much more complicated than an orange tree. It has the ability to impregnate an egg and merge its data immediately with it to be able to create a completely new type of living being (with unique features unlike any other). Put together all of this, and so much more information that we know about seeds, and we begin to realize that we are dealing with a biological creation that is truly beyond amazing in its scope, and complicated far beyond its small size.
The seed is one part of our universe that gives us a small glimpse into the infinite intelligence behind the creation and the functioning of our world.
So next time you spit out a watermelon seed, do it with respect for what that seed is. After all, you came from one.
– Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, www.chabad.org
For information or to join Sisterhood, call the NHBZ office at 314-991-2100, ext. 3, or email: sisterhood@nhbz.org
