Welcome to another Monday Mitzvah! If you’re not hip to things eth(n)ospiritual, feel free to skip this post. Today: Rest on Shabbat. For most of the past 166,400-odd weeks, Jews have celebrated Shabbat as part of the fabric of Creation.…
Tag: moments
All that we ever really have.
It Started With Fingerprinting
Actually, it started two weeks ago, when I was interviewed by two Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplains who asked me why I wanted to become one of them. "To tell you the truth," I said, "the whole idea terrifies me.…
There’s WATER on ‘ing MARS.
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks…
And so, to work.
It was four-and-a-half months since I was laid off from the sasonal office-manager position at a local nursery, and longer still since I worked in my official profession, when I picked up the phone to call Sonoma Valley’s newest newspaper.…
Thump, Flutter, Gak
I looked up from the computer, wondering about the “thump.” Then I saw the robin on the patio — fluttering wings outspread, struggling to get up. Outside, through the gate, into the side-yard. “Are you okay?” I asked reflexively. She…
Exploring Mind
WHAT DIFFERENTIATES THE EXPLORER FROM other humans is his answer to the following question: “If you could experience something that no one else ever had, but the cost was your own life, would it be worth it?”
Pithyism #0
The future is an open hand; the past is a closed hand. What’s in between?
Focus: Israel
As the situation in Israel continues to develop, many are turning to the “local papers” for better coverage than that offered by CNN or (grf) the BBC. The following offer in-depth reportage and up-to-the-minute English-language breaking news:– Haaretz (left-leaning)– Arutz…
Omer’s Where The Art Is
“Meanwhile, we dig.” — Big X (Richard Attenborough), The Great Escape Pesach is over, the last of the matza crumbs have been vacuumed up, and our stomachs have finally returned to normal (or soon will). Now what? When we were…
Thanksgiving v. Thanks Giving
During the course of an online discussion of Jewish practice in the United States, someone asked the resident rabbi if it was “kosher” for Jews to celebrate Thanksgiving. His terse but memorable reply: “Sure — but we do that every…
eulogy
This is what I said about Jim at his funeral: When studying to be a rabbi, I learned a tradition that says one should begin every public discourse with a jest. So here?s Jim?s and my very favorite shared joke…
Two Towers, Two Tasks
FOR SOME REASON, THREE SIGNIFICANT dates fell out fairly close together recently: Sonoma’s first (?) 9/11 commemoration, Simchat Torah and the autumnal equinox. The first marks the end of American innocence; the second, the annual restarting of the synagogic Torah…