Those Who Know, Chuckle.
… can’t really be named, only experienced.
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 rather than more.
And yet, I do have something to say.
Continue reading “Shock Absorber”
(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” – into something smaller and more digestible. When someone told the early first-century sage Hillel, “Teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot,” Hillel famously replied, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others. […] The rest is commentary. Now go study.” Put another way: “‘Don’t be a jerk.’ Everything else is explanation; now, go figure it out.”
The prophet Micah lived six hundred years before Hillel. He explained Torah thus: “You have been told what is good […] and what Adonai seeks from you: To do justice, love chesed, and walk humbly with your G?d.” All three instances of the word “you” or “your” are in the second-person singular. These instructions are aimed at the Jewish nation’s individual members – at you, and you, and you, and me.
So. Let’s take a closer look at what we’re getting into. Continue reading “Torah, Nutshelled”
WHEN YOU’RE TALKING WITH SOMEONE, ask yourself: “How can I meet this person’s needs right now?“
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
THERE ARE TWO TELESCOPES IN my living room, a third in a backpack in my bedroom closet, and a pair of astronomical binoculars on the bookcase near the front door.
“Why so many?” you may ask.
Easy answer: I am … obsessed. Continue reading “Confessions of a Sidewalk Astronomer”
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 grand-scale social upheaval and the very real threat of nuclear war. Thus, many of us, instead of making plans for the future (“what future?!” we chorused with youthful cynicism), opted to revel in an increasingly tentative present. That checkered and lazy lifestyle provided a certain spice, and “no point in tomorrow” slid me into various endeavors — some pointless, others rewarding, all instructive.
But that sort of thing can only take you so far, and having arrived largely intact (save a handful of scars and surgeries) at this particular 2024 moment is to me something of a major miracle.
Regrets? A few, mostly of the self-sabotaging variety.
Joys? Many. Many and multiform.
Plans for what’s left of my future? To become, and to continue to become, more. I like to think I’m getting the hang of it.
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
0. READ CAREFULLY — THERE WILL BE a test later on.
1. In the book of Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that G?d wants to enter into a contract with them. With one voice, and without knowing the details, the people reply, “Na’aseh v’nishma” — literally, “We will do, and we will hear/understand!”
2. Many people may argue that the formulation is backwards. How can you do something unless you first hear and/or understand it? But the Torah is imparting a great truth: that one can understand certain things only by doing them. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.”
We’re all just raindrops on a windshield.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, to Michael Richards in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”
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) I was being selfish to the ones I most love by robbing them of my alert and unaltered presence, and 2) I just didn’t like feeling stupid all the time anymore.
Looking back, I realize that cannabis had structured my existence in some scary ways. I planned my life around it, spent my money on it, self-sabotaged with it, and turned into a raving jerk when I was deprived of it. What I didn’t know at the time was that these behaviors are all symptomatic of addiction. Continue reading “Let’s Get Real”
Fear of death is worse than death.”
— R. Yehudah de Modena
HE COULDN’T TELL WHETHER HE
loved beauty or women more
until the day he called his mom and said
“Guess what? I’m marrying a sunset.”
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