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Overview
The Creator of the World commanded us to choose life. Choosing life means choosing health, physical and spiritual. Batya Shemesh writes fascinating explanations to Bible passages from the perspective of an alternative healer.
Choose Life fuses Biblical wisdom, science and Chinese Medicine to form basic principles that can be easily followed. She also shares many ideas for practical uses of herbal remedies, vitamins and other natural supplements that have worked for her own patients for decades.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781524579517 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Xlibris US |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 462 |
| File size: | 423 KB |
About the Author
When she was sixteen years old, Batya moved to Israel with her family. She attended and graduated from an Orthodox Jewish seminary with a teaching degree in Hebrew and Bible Studies. She subsequently went on to study alternative medicine for six years. When Batya began working with Chinese Medicine, Herbal Medicine and other methods of Alternative Healing, she had tremendous success. Thousands of people came to her for advice and natural treatments for whatever ailed them. With great love for her patients and for God's pharmacy, she was successful in changing the lives of her patients for the better.
After 25 years of experience Batya began teaching others her system of healing. Her students, who are healers themselves, use the wisdom that they have learned from her to help their own patients and families to choose life.
Read an Excerpt
Choose Life
A Practical Guide to Health and Nutrition
By Batya Shemesh
Xlibris
Copyright © 2017 Batya ShemeshAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5245-7950-0
CHAPTER 1
A Healthy Start
I was born in New York City and reared in an orthodox Jewish home that kept all the laws of the Bible implicitly. In 1972, my family was living in a Jewish religious neighborhood in Brooklyn. I was very close to my mother. She taught me how to clean, cook, sew and do all kinds of needlework and crafts. After I started the seventh grade, my mother became very weak. She couldn't keep her job. She used to work as a secretary from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., but suddenly she lost all her strength and enthusiasm. Mommy remained exhausted in bed all day except for supervising my brother and me in the kitchen and laying down on the couch in the afternoon. All the housework fell on me. I attended to all the dishes, the laundry, and the vacuuming. I also cooked most of the meals with my mother's guidance.
In the spring of 1973 when I was thirteen years old, I worked in preparation for the Passover holiday, known as Pesach in Hebrew. I cleaned and changed over all the dishes and scrubbed the kitchen appliances according to the laws of the eight-day festival. After the holiday, I had to pack up all the Passover dishes in one night. My mother was too tired, so I did it all by myself. I worked until midnight and then I came to my parents' bedroom to inform them that I had finished. My father was very pleased and proud of me. He went back to his bedroom, returned and offered me ten dollars. Ten dollars was a lot of money in those days. I used to baby-sit at that time and made a dollar an hour. I told my father that I didn't agree to lose out on the reward of my mitzvah (Hebrew for good deed) for ten dollars. I said, "It's not worth it. I worked too hard to sell this mitzvah for just ten dollars!" My father was shocked but impressed. He went into his bedroom and told my mother. Until this day I am not sure if they appreciated the extent of my unique sense of religious commitment.
Mitzvah means a commandment from God in the Torah. It also refers to a moral deed or act of kindness as in the above example.
Today I know that there is nothing wrong with getting paid for doing a good deed. You don't lose out on Hashem's reward because of monetary compensation even if the mitzvah is part of your job like a teacher or a nurse. However, I do want my readers to understand how even as a young child I was very spiritual and devout.
Devotion to Hashem
As I matured I continued to grow in my level of faith and devotion. To fulfill the commandment to "Honor Your Father and Mother," I respected my parents, no matter what they did. I started praying from the prayer book, with deep concentration, attending to every single word. I also took my schoolwork very seriously and excelled in Bible studies.
I worked on myself to develop a love for God. We learned in school that if you say to Hashem, "I love You, Hashem" you would start feeling love for Him. I already learned from the first grade that it is a mitzvah to love Hashem. We say every day in the prayer book that you should "Love Hashem with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5). My faith gave me the strength and perseverance to excel in my studies and in my household chores.
Health Food
My mother's illness was diagnosed as a thyroid problem. The medication that was prescribed to her didn't help her recuperate her strength. A few months after Passover, my mother finally visited a private doctor. He was a pioneer in a new field called megavitamin therapy. He instructed us to remove all the white flour, white sugar and white rice from the house.
My father meticulously threw out all the unhealthy products from the house. He bought large sacks of whole-wheat flour and brown rice plus a large jar of honey. I was fourteen years old at the time but very precocious. I learned to make breads and cakes. I practiced altering recipes from white flour to whole wheat and from white sugar to honey. My parents also bought books and magazines about nourishment which I relished. Adele Davis was my favorite author. Today I know she made mistakes. Nevertheless, I respect her for her many breakthroughs in the field of nutrition and vitamins. The doctor that treated my mother prescribed vitamins in large doses for both her and my younger brother, who was very hyperactive. My mother completely followed this new doctor's regimen and she regained her health after a year of illness. She returned to work with even more energy than before. I was thrilled and became encouraged to learn more about nutrition, vitamins and minerals.
I came to school with whole-wheat crackers, an unpeeled carrot and a cucumber. In those days, it was unheard of not to peel vegetables. I learned that most of the vitamins are in the peels, so why discard the best part?
At first, the girls made fun of me. Even though I was usually very shy, when talking about health food I was proud and confident. I would open a box of whole-wheat crackers in the late afternoon and distribute them to everyone. They were thrilled because everyone was already hungry by the end of the day. By the end of the year, one of the most popular girls in my class brought unpeeled carrots, cucumbers and whole wheat crackers to school.
A Teacher's Advice
When I was in the tenth grade I had a private talk with my Bible teacher and told her that I wanted to improve my level of religious observance. She advised me to write a diary and specify in each day what I did right or wrong. She said that just writing would make me grow. The diary really did help me advance emotionally and spiritually. When I browse through it today, I can find stories that I have no memory of at all. It is fascinating to learn about myself from my own words of the past.
At the time, we were living in a neighborhood of young Jewish families. There were lots of children on my block and I started working as a baby-sitter in the evenings. The dollar an hour I earned was enough to pay for my own carfare, clothing, a new tape recorder, and even to have enough left over to save a little in my own bank account.
Thus, I blossomed into a little lady at age fifteen. I began to exude a bit more self-confidence concerning my new ventures into the world of health food and into earning my own allowance. Slowly I became more socially outgoing and began making more friends.
I have never stopped learning about natural medicine, vitamins, and herbs. When I was first married and was waiting to have children, we didn't have money to purchase books. A friend bought me the book called Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey. My sister in law bought me another book called Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss. I also found a few health food cookbooks in my parents' house and started experimenting with them in the kitchen. I loved Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe. These and others books kept me busy, well versed in the basics of nutrition, vitamins and herbal healing and further provided a springboard into my future knowledge and expertise.
Life in Israel
My father was a Turkish Jew. He never felt at home in America. He taught us about our homeland and the Jewish connection to Israel. After years of trying to make the move to Israel, he finally did and found a job there as a social worker for the elderly.
My sister and I went to Israel ahead of my parents and younger brother in order to start the school year on time. I was sixteen years old and my sister was fourteen. We were so happy on that plane flight; I will never forget it. We were laughing and playing for the whole eleven-hour flight. We didn't sleep a wink.
After we landed in Israel, my sister and I were escorted from the plane to an old vehicle it's called a tender. It was something between a truck and a bus. We were driven right to our new school. The girls who had started school just a few days earlier were very excited to greet us. In Israel, an American girl was a real novelty in those days. The year was 1976 and Israel was not as modern as America. My grandmother, that is my father's mother, was living in Israel. She was very happy to have my sister and me visit. We had fun in her place during our stays for our Sabbath vacations, that happened once in three weeks.
The dormitory was in a fairly new campus and the food was simple. The main staples of the diet were dark bread sold without packaging and leben, a cultured milk product like yogurt sold in plastic containers. We had delicious oranges! The school was right next to an orchard and three crates of oranges were brought into the dining room every day. They were a real treat; no one ever got tired of them. Each girl could take three oranges to her room if she liked. For breakfast, they served bread with a soft white cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, jam and leben. No cereal and milk like in America.
Lunch was a vegetable soup, baked chicken, rice or pasta and some string beans or carrots. Supper was just a little bit of tuna made spicy with tomato sauce, tomatoes, salad, tahini and bread. Tahini is a paste made from sesame seeds. I lost a lot of weight those first few months because I had a hard time getting used to the Israeli diet.
I came to Israel thinking that I knew Hebrew. I was in for a big surprise! I excelled in Hebrew class in my American high school, but book smart didn't work in the big arena. The girls were talking a mile a minute and I had no idea what they were saying. When they addressed me, they slowed down. Then I got a chance to look things up in my pocket dictionary. I was very insistent; I wanted to know everything. I asked the girls what every item in our room was called in Hebrew. No one knew any English; I had to sink or swim. I chose to swim. Apparently, my sister also chose to succeed. Although she initially knew less Hebrew than I did, within a few months she was totally acclimated to the language.
The dormitory was mostly populated with girls from different parts of the country. Some of them who were not born in Israel came from the Soviet Union. Many girls were born in Israel while their parents were born in Morocco or Yemen. They had a very heavy accent in their Hebrew and they enunciated every syllable and consonant, including the guttural letters that modern Israelis didn't pronounce. Hebrew is a phonetic language so when I learned a new word I immediately knew how to spell it. No spelling mistakes!
Then it came to grammar class. I didn't do well at all. I did OK in Math. This was not an easy task because all the definitions in geometry were in Hebrew! I had a friend named Ilana who helped me with my homework. We studied for tests together and I started to really comprehend. She had tremendous patience. Ilana even took me to her house on a moshav, a village of farmers, to stay for the holidays. Like a kibbutz, a moshav is also a cooperative settlement but it is composed of small individual farms where each farmer earns for himself rather than for the collective.
Ilana's house was on a beautiful countryside farm in the valley of Jezreel, in the lower Galilee region in Israel. As a child, she heard that the world was round. She thought that the perfectly rounded valley with hills around it was the whole world! Staying on a moshav the first time in my life was fascinating. It gave me a glimpse of Israeli farm and family life.
There was no thought of telephoning anyone who lived out of the country. Ilana's family didn't even own a phone. The only contact that I had with my parents was through letters.
One day I got a message from my parents. "We're coming to Israel!" They sold the house and would come on Aliya (Hebrew for immigrating to Israel) as they had planned. I was so excited! My sister and I were in Israel for four months. By the time my parents arrived, we had learned enough Hebrew to show off our knowledge of the Holy language. The best part of Hebrew fluency was the ability to learn the Bible and its commentaries so much more easily. Instead of being a burden, studying Bible became fun. We studied The Holy Scriptures for about two hours a day and we were able to learn at least five time faster and more in depth than in any classes in which we had studied in the Diaspora.
In the morning, before we started the school lessons, we prayed in our classrooms for about a half hour and then went for breakfast. I prayed very slowly.
I sensed a strong sense of holiness in the Promised Land and feeling that way, I took time expressing myself to Hashem. I was very devoted to observing every word of the Bible. I even refused to gossip about other girls because it is forbidden by Torah law.
Leviticus 19:16, "A gossiper should not walk amongst your nation."
We studied Jewish law and Jewish history followed by a few hours of secular subjects such as math, English and science. We finished school about two o'clock in the afternoon. In New York, I came from a school in the city that ended at 4:30 every day; now I felt like we were on vacation. We had all afternoon to take walks in the fields, go to town, do homework or just goof off and have fun. Once we were given a task to collect the remaining peanuts from a neighboring field that had been already harvested by machine. Before plowing their fields to prepare for planting sunflowers, the owners encouraged us to gather as many peanuts as we could for free. We collected sacks of them; they were so delicious!
Jerusalem Life
As much as I loved the school, the language and the new culture, the dormitory life was too close-knit and cliquey for me. I needed my independence. When I returned to the dormitory after the summer vacation, I realized that I was not cut out for that group living. I left the dorm and lived with my parents in Jerusalem, the Holy City. I applied to continue studies in an all-girls religious high school in Jerusalem that was a branch of the village school. They gladly accepted me for the senior year. I was already fluent in Hebrew but I needed help in literature and grammar classes. I made friends who invited me to their homes and helped me with my studies. The atmosphere in the school was very friendly. They weren't so strict about rules and regulations. It was a very orthodox school, but not more religious than I was accustomed and desired.
My parents were totally committed to life in the Holy Land. They were willing to suffer the lack of basics they had in New York, like owning a car. They lived on a much less range of food, just in order to adapt. Nowadays, an enormous variety and plentitude of food is available in Israel, but in the 1970's, most people ate bread, soft white cheese, fruits, vegetables, eggs and once a week chicken in honor of the Sabbath.
Jerusalem city life was fun. I went to the shuk, (open market) to buy fruits and vegetables for my family. I cooked and cleaned at home and still had time to swim in a public pool once or twice a week. I enjoyed studying in the public library where I could better concentrate without the television in the background at home. The television at the time had only one station and it was government owned, but my parents wanted to watch all day long in order to learn the language. The school provided a tutor for me to finish my Hebrew grammar exams. I did quite well for a new immigrant.
Israel doesn't have a cold winter. I kept on expecting winter to arrive but after the rainy season it was summer again. There is no rain in the summer. Our school took us on trips all year around. We traveled north to the Lake of Galilee and south to the Negev. These trips gave us a taste of the beauty of the Holy Land in class and in the field. They taught us about the special holiness of our country and I felt a love and devotion for the Promised Land.
My parents were also happier in Israel. There was a period of peace in our home. I felt free and easy. I was elated and appreciative of the opportunity to live in the Holy Land and even more so in Jerusalem, the Holiest City in the world. Jerusalem is even more special on Shabbat. The streets are quiet; there is no public transportation and the atmosphere changes from a bustling city to a place of peace and tranquility.
My whole family visited the Western Wall to pray very often. Sometimes we got ambitious and took a two-hour stroll to get there on the Sabbath. We had to walk through the Damascus gate of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Arab market, but it was worth it. Nowadays it is too dangerous to trek through the Damascus gate unarmed, but in those days before the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt there was peace in Jerusalem.
My father loved visiting the Kotel (Hebrew nickname for the Western Wall of the Holy Temple Mount in the Old City). I never felt an attachment to the Wall per se but I did feel closer to Hashem when I prayed by the ancient site. I asked Hashem to let that sense remain with me even after I left the Kotel. "You are everywhere. Please give me the feeling of nearness that I have now when I am home. Let me take the holy atmosphere home with me." And He did, for a few days after a visit to the Western Wall, I could still feel its holiness. I'm not sure if the sanctity is from the site itself, the proximity to the Holy Temple Mount, or the energies of the millions of prayers and tears that were shed there for thousands of years. I can tell you this; the feeling is powerful.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Choose Life by Batya Shemesh. Copyright © 2017 Batya Shemesh. Excerpted by permission of Xlibris.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements, xiii,Disclaimer, xv,
Introduction, xvii,
Chapter 1. A Healthy Start, 1,
Chapter 2. God's View on Nutrition, 19,
Chapter 3. Keeping Kosher, 107,
Chapter 4. Don't Cook a Kid in Its Mother's Milk, 148,
Chapter 5. Healthy Cooking, 165,
Chapter 6. Choosing Life on a Budget, 176,
Chapter 7. The Acid/Alkaline Ratio, 192,
Chapter 8. Yin and Yang and In Between, 210,
Chapter 9. God's View on Alternative Medicine, 245,
Chapter 10. God's Pharmacy, 260,
Chapter 11. Uncommon Remedies to Common Maladies, 285,
Chapter 12. Life, Death and Longevity, 338,
Chapter 13. Anatomy of a Soul, 369,
Glossary, 419,
Index, 427,