Loving Aunt Ruth: Recipes for a Life Well-Lived offers one woman’s ingredients for living a life of caring, authenticity, and love along with great recipes, humor, and Aunt Ruth’s thoughts on Jewish traditions. The blog introduces the lessons and photographs found in our book which is a collaboration of words and photographs that feature life lessons mixing faith, selflessness, and humor, with its core being about love. The combination of illustrations and narrative reminds us that we all have the capacity for love.
With her husband and children gone, I asked Aunt Ruth how she stayed determined in the face of so much loss, and her response is the anchor to our book and this blog. She said:
I accept that life isn’t easy. I have my faith….but I have a will to live, and that will comes from loving people.
Aunt Ruth was 87 when I picked up my camera. Like many women of the Greatest Generation, her most significant relationships were with her family, but her reach extended to friends, her temple, and activities that resonated with her sense of civic pride. During the war, Aunt Ruth drove every type of army vehicle for the Red Cross while her husband, my Uncle Bob, served overseas. She was President of her temple, the temple Sisterhood, and founded the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ohio Bar Association.
An ordinary Jewish woman from a small town shows us how easy it is to appreciate everything, to love unconditionally, and to make great food! Aunt Ruth approaches every aspect of life through her lens of love. She understands how important it is to listen, to refrain from judgment, to embrace difference, and that freedom comes from unconditionally loving.
In this last year, both of my sisters have died. Aunt Ruth’s life lessons sustain me.
I hope you join us on the blog for “Auth Ruthisms!”
