Category: Torah

The Text(s), the tribe, the learning, the being. (With a bit of random spirituality mixed in.)

Home Away

For me, there are five distinct stages involved in the building of our backyard sukkah: Denial: “Is it Sukkot again already?” Rage: “Where did I put the $#@! zip-screws?” Bargaining: “Please don’t make me go to the hardware store again…”…

Shema Echad, Shnei Regalim

Couple of random recent things: 1.) An amazing and unexpected side effect of daily prayer (which, last night in the shower, I have decided to call “Jewish text-guided meditation”) is the feeling of expansion and contraction. This occurred to me……

Yids With Lids

A recent poster to soc.culture.jewish.moderated was soliciting opinions from full-time kippa wearers for a paper she’s writing. I contacted her, and submitted the following responses to her questions: : Why do you wear a kippa? I began wearing a kippa…

Substitute Rav

While our chicken dinner is marinating in mmmm-good Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce, and before I pop it in the oven: Friday night services went pretty well, I think. As I am not yet proficient enough with the Reconstructionist siddur to lead…

Fringey Blue

from a pre-Blogger blog Tzitzit under blue jeans feel like nothing, and yet feel like everything. They feel like nothing because the four-cornered cotton garment to which they’re attached is extremely light. I forwent the type which snap or stitch…

Why We Teach

from a pre-Blogger blog Conversation with a 12-year-old bat mitzva candidate, who I’m tutoring by probing the meaning of the prayers: Okay, read me the first part of the Sh’ma in English. “Hear O Israel, the Eternal is G-d, the…

Rockin’ at the Beit Tefilah

from a pre-Blogger blog What happens when you turn back the clock 2,000 years to add creativity to Jewish worship? Erev at the Improv, that’s what — an experiment in structured liturgical spontaneity which, happily, was enthusiastically embraced by the…