I had long planned to reread Silvia Townsend Warner’s "Mr. Fortune’s Maggot " for ideas applicable to the portion of Terumah with its plans for the construction of the Tabernacle. (If ever you want to join me envying geniuses who can read a book and...
...or, Why A Plan Is So Important ‘Yehoiada then made a covenant between God and the king and people that they would be God’s people. He also made a covenant between the king and the people. All the people of the land went to the temple of...
Suppose a Man was carried asleep out of a plain Country amongst the Alps and left there upon the Top of one of the highest Mountains, when he wak’d and look’d about him, he would think himself in an inchanted Country, or carried into another...
“How small Sinai appears when Moses stands upon it (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions).” ****** ‘Why do you lurk, you lofty mountains, for the mountain that God desired for His dwelling?” (Tehillim 68:17) R’ Yosi haGalili and R’ Akiva: R’ Yosi haGalili explained the verse as referring to the mountains. At...
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. The hint half guessed, the...
...or, more honestly, my justification for sending so many emails and texts: “AND THERE ISRAEL ENCAMPED as one man and with one mind (Rashi, 19:2).” I never really understood what it means when it says it they spoke as one person with one heart. Is it conceivable?...
[caption id="attachment_30372" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Dance of The Mountains[/caption] The Psalmist reports that as we stood at Sinai: “The sea saw them and fled, Jordan ran backward, mountains skipped like rams, hills like sheep (114:3-4).” I’ve seen mountains dancing in Disney cartoons,...
After my first stroke I had to learn how to walk again. First I had to learn how to go downstairs. Then I had to learn how to walk onto our porch. Then I had to go down the stairs to our sidewalk. Each one...
J. Accused me of always bagging his books as soon as he had begun to read them. I said, "it's like fishing. I see you've got a bite. I want your line. I want to pull it in." Katherine Mansfield January 30, 1921 ‘Moses came and summoned...
Clov (Hamm’s servant): Do you believe in the life to come? Hamm (Blind and lame): Mine was always that. Samuel Beckett, “Endgame” ‘On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. Having...
The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I...
How easily a life can become a litany of guilt and regret, a song that keeps echoing with the same chorus, with the inability to forgive ourselves. How easily the life we didn't live becomes the only life we prize. How easily we are seduced by the fantasy that...
I’ve been waiting for more the two years to write about Jessica Lee’s, Turning: A Memoir, and this week’s Parsha, Beshalach. INFINITE SPACE: I imagined the Children of Israel crossing the Sea and, to describe the experience, using Ms Lee’s epigraph, ‘Around us the illusion of infinite...
By the time I turned the first page of Esmé Weijun Wang’s compelling, “The Collected Schizophrenia’s,” I knew I had to share my initial Biblical DSMII diagnosis of Pharaoh, the purpose of his illness, and my concern over his heightened vulnerability to Covid and the...
It seems that far more people prefer a short Loom recording to one of these essays. I understand. So, I had to rethink my writing, something I love although not one of my better skills. I remembered once reading of M.F.K. Fisher saying to Ruth Reichl,...
There would be nothing more obvious, More tangible, than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. Milan Kundera ****** “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the...
How ironic that listening to my (much) older sisters speak about Aviva a”h as we marked the completion of the 30 days since she left this world would connect me to some of the happiest moments of my childhood! The last time I actually saw Aviva,...
Please accept my apologies for rushing out of “The Archeologist’s Seder,” but immediately the tense situation of, “Uh oh! I have to put away my Secret Spy Journal; some guy just asked me why I write in Hieroglyphics rather than Hebrew...
There’s a scene in Sarah Moss’ “Ghost Wall,” that has me considering using my daughter Anna’s training as an archeologist to take an entirely new approach to the Pesach Seder. A group of college students and their professor allow Silvie and her parents to live with...
I concluded “A Banquet of Consequences,” with the following questions: Why the dark parts? 1. ‘And it is this that has stood for our ancestors and for us; since it is not [only] one [person or nation] that has stood [against] us to destroy us, but rather...
“Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.” (Robert Louis Stevenson) I find that phrase a perfect description of the Pesach Seder! Some of the “consequences” are more obvious than others: Searching for and then ridding our homes of Chametz is intended to identify...
While everyone was so busy preparing their Offering for our final night in Egypt, I looked up and noticed Bertrand Russell rushing toward Moshe’s house. I certainly never expected the great author of, “In Praise of Idleness,” to rush anywhere, certainly not to the home...
“There is a certain dull uniformity in human destiny. The course of our lives follows ancient and immutable laws, with an ancient, changeless rhythm. Dreams never come true, and the instant they are shattered, we realize how the greatest joys of our life lie beyond...
We concluded, The Plan: What’s Next with ‘God demonstrates this very lesson to the magicians themselves. “You may be able to play with nature and secret powers, but you must begin by mastering yourselves or you will collapse.” The people of Egypt understand this, as does Moshe, as...
In, “The Plan: Introduction To Exodus,” we asked, Why were Ten Plagues necessary to free the Children of Israel from Egypt? Why did Pharaoh need to be so thoroughly manipulated? Why did the magicians play such an important role? Why did the average Egyptian citizen have to suffer? Why were...
