• Pekar & Waldman: Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me

    Updated: 2012-06-29 12:22:43
    Harvey Pekar was an American underground comix legend. A lot of people know him for American Splendor, a series of autobiographical comic books. He was a giant, in his own way. He died in 2010, survived by his wife Joyce...

  • We are responsible for one another (VR in the HuffPo)

    Updated: 2012-06-29 01:45:56
    It's a dreadful story. A house of worship burned; hateful graffiti scrawled on the walls; worshipers feeling spiritually homeless, the place to which they would ordinarily turn for consolation now smudged with ash and tinged with hate. If this had...

  • New toddler house poem

    Updated: 2012-06-28 12:00:00
    THE TODDLER ATTENDS A FESTIVAL You greet the giant dragon walking high upon his stilts. Run up to a stranger and engulf her in a hug. Spend long giggly minutes cresting a speedbump on foot. After the red dancers whirl...

  • This week's portion: Moshe, the overtired parent

    Updated: 2012-06-27 12:00:00
    In this week's Torah portion, Chukat, Miriam dies and the Israelites are without water in the desert. Midrashic tradition connects Miriam with a well, often understood as a wellspring of Torah and insight in addition to water; when she dies,...

  • Walking meditation

    Updated: 2012-06-22 14:26:04
    Had there been a small plane taking off from the tiny North Adams airport this morning, the pilot would have seen half a dozen people walking very slowly in meandering loops around the mown grass behind the synagogue. We moved...

  • Teacups and Torah

    Updated: 2012-06-20 12:00:00
    Ceramic teacup by Chris Warren. Back in the days when Ethan and I studied Isshin-Ryu with Sensei Steve Buschman, we learned the parable of Nan-in and the teacup. (I heard it again at some point during my hashpa'ah training.) Here's...

  • Summer solstice and Rosh Chodesh Tamuz

    Updated: 2012-06-19 12:00:00
    Tonight at sundown we'll enter into the new lunar month of Tamuz. In a day or two, we'll reach the solstice -- in the northern hemisphere where I live, this is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year...

  • For our teachers and our students

    Updated: 2012-06-17 13:19:27
    This past weekend we had two celebrations of bat mitzvah at my small shul: one at Shabbat morning services, and one at a mincha/maariv/havdalah service. At both services, many of those in the kahal were not Jewish and had never...

  • With whatever is best

    Updated: 2012-06-15 15:19:12
    The Holy Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) teaches us that our every intention and acton changes the whole world, either driving us away from God or bringing us closer, either healing the world or harming it. So writes my teacher Rabbi...

  • Review of two books by Reb Zalman

    Updated: 2012-06-14 12:00:00
    If you read the Forward, you may already have seen this; but I wanted to share it here just in case! I recently had the lovely experience of getting to review two books by my teacher Reb Zalman (Rabbi Zalman...

  • Weekend in the Toddler House

    Updated: 2012-06-12 15:19:37
    Today you oscillated between Pocoyo and Kai Lan, roared like a dinosaur, insisted I swing alongside when I looked away for an instant you tried to shuck your shorts to play in the sprinklers we whirled between blocks and trains...

  • The new Koren Talmud Bavli

    Updated: 2012-06-07 21:40:51
    I just got my copy of the first volume of the new Koren Talmud, Volume א: Berakhot. One of my bat mitzvah students was in my office this afternoon and caught sight of it on my desk. "What is that?"...

  • A rabbi and a nun walk into a bar

    Updated: 2012-06-06 13:38:27
    It ought to be -- it probably is! -- the opening line of a joke: a rabbi and a nun walk into a bar... Okay, it isn't a bar; it's a restaurant, though I do have a beer. (Who could...

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