I'm reading a "good book"

Last night, after a wonderful Shabbat dinner, my husband and I put the baby to bed and then sat on our couch in the living room and talked. I love nights like that. We just talk and talk and talk about life, religion, jobs, the baby, our family, our joys, our problems, money, the future, our dreams, our dreads...and everything in between. It's fabulous. It's the reason I got married.

Anyway our conversation veered, as it often does, toward the fact that I am a relatively religious person who has almost no religious education background. I go through the motions (religious ritual, rules, laws) often without knowledge of the history behind them. And I'm not comfortable or content with that, but I know how much work it's going to take to change that. Sometimes it's paralyzing just to think about educating myself on this matter. But it should be, because I genuinely enjoy learning about the Jewish religion and Jewish history.

I can't remember what exactly was said in that part of our conversation, but there was a point at which I realized that I didn't know the details of the story of Joseph (the one with the coat). I knew some of the basics, but even those were foggy. At one point, I found myself humming some tunes from the Broadway play "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" in an effort to try and 'remember' some of the other details. Oy. What an embarrassment!

I decided right then and there that I needed to learn more. I need to know more. I WANT to know more. I've been recently inspired by some of the things I've read on the blogs of some Christian SAHMs. The way that religious Christians know the Bible, the way they read it, the way they memorize portions and apply it to their everyday lives is really quite something. And yet here I am, leading a religious life...and I've never read the Bible! It's something I need to fix.

So last night, after our chat, I started reading the Bible. And I'm loving it. I'm loving it a lot. And I'm learning a lot too!
Did you know that the term "to babble" (as in, to speak without purpose or direction) is from the Bible? Yeah, that's right. It's from the story of the Tower of Babel, in which the people decided to build a tower that would reach the heavens. What hubris!
God punished the people by dispersing them in the lands and giving them different languages so that they wouldn't be able to understand one another. Hence the term "to babble" (taken from "Babel"), which means to speak in such a way as to not make oneself understood.

So this is one of my new missions...to read the Bible. Cover to cover. It might take me a while because I'm reading it with the commentaries, which are longer than the actual text. But I'll read it. And it'll probably show up from time to time on my blog.
Hope y'all don't mind!