January is often a time we reflect on what and how much we eat (following the holidays, time off) and our ‘New Year’ resolutions( that heath clubs thrive on) to workout.

We have two events coming up about our relationship with food:

Tomorrow, January 6th as part of our Kabbalah Live Series, Denver Post food critic, Tucker Shaw will share with us his life-long metaphor of how food defines him.

On Wednesday, January 19th with Hebrew Educational Alliance and Temple Sinai we will celebrate the New Year festival of trees, named after the date on the Hebrew calendar—Tu B’Shevat (the 15th—full moon- of the month of Shevat) .

The Kabbalists of Tzfat (and Tzfat is quite cold in January) innovated a ritual seder (based on the Passover seder) in which we eat fruits, nuts and drink grape juice/wine. It s always wonderful to get together and have a party but as you can imagine, the Kabbalaists were not simply celebrating in the dead of winter—they were celebrating and signing up for a spiritual workout.

So we will gather to hear Tucker Shaw, a food critic and then we will gather in two weeks to learn how food critiques us. Hope you join us for these spiritual workouts.

David Sanders