Tag: It.

… can’t really be named, only experienced.

Shock Absorber

THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 6, 2024 gave me the biggest and most horrific shock of my sixty-two years. I won’t go into why, because half the country already knows why, and those processing the same emotions could use fewer words…

Torah, Nutshelled

(A recent Yom Kippur sermon.) הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהֹוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃ – Micah 6:8 MANY SMART PEOPLE HAVE TRIED to distill the Torah and its 613 mitzvot – “commandments,” or “connections”…

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.”
— Albert Camus

Why Am I Still Here?

BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, I will celebrate my 62nd birthday tomorrow. Leading me to ask: “How did THAT happen?” As a child of the 1970s and very early ’80s, my gentle nihilism is understandable. It was a period marked by…

I’m not here. I’m an event. I’m an improbable coalescence of stardust enjoying one fleeting, glorious dance through the cosmos before … poof.”
— Adrian Bliss

We’re all just raindrops on a windshield.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, to Michael Richards in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”

Let’s Get Real

ON THIS DAY EIGHT YEARS ago, I stepped out from under the shadow of a decades-long cannabis addiction. And I haven’t been the same man since. Thank God. What brought me to that point was twofold: I decided that 1)…

Fear of death is worse than death.”
— R. Yehudah de Modena