Tag: There’s a God in My Soup

Religious experience, or at least the experience of religion.

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…

Feel The Fear

When Ann and I joined the small synagogue in our Northern California town back in 1998, it was with the understanding that we would get involved. Neither of us had been, when we were younger. But especially since 2000, when…

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……

Strange Connectors

After covering the fire training Sunday, I came home and showered before writing out the sermon/message I was asked to deliver at that afternoon’s annual interfaith Service of Remembrance, sponsored by one of the local hospices. They do a lot…

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…