Mother Nature
Sukkot in Israel is a hiker and camper's festival. God wasn’t kidding when he asked people to walk to Jerusalem in Temple times on this holiday. I'm not sure if He cared about the ten young bulls, two rams, and 12 lambs (well-done). But I'm pretty sure He wanted people to walk the land in what constitutes autumn here, which is this: moderation (as opposed to colorful.)
He made a damn fine Holy Land, too, and I'm guessing He wanted people to enjoy [...]
The Other Mother’s Day
This past Friday was another kind of Mother's Day: The flip side, the dark side, the impossible side, the side that haunts every mother's quiet moments until she chases the demons away. Friday was the "yahrzeit," or anniversary of death, of Koby Mandell. You may remember Koby from the news, because the story is a hard one to forget. Koby was the 8th grader who, along with his friend, had cut school one beautiful day in May, 2001, as the second Intifada was heating up, to g[...]
Dust. Wind. Dude.
There is a familiar pit in my stomach that tells me I must put something down on paper. So to speak.
It's a pit that reminds me of other pits, that makes me 16 again, and 26, all the years joined by a common physiological sense of being carried by an idea or a feeling, literally hungry for something to write. Medical science will tell you that the pit is the work of the vagus nerve in my abdomen, which has[...]
On Memory
.......Is a memory something you have or something you've lost? – Woody Allen
Today we think of who we do not have and why, and then what that lack demands of us.
Tomorrow, about how we celebrate being alive to meet those demands.
Today is Memorial Day in Israel, honoring fallen soldiers and victims of terror, observed here a day before Independence Day. The connection is essential since it is widely recognized that without the [...]
On Work and Freedom: For Holocaust Remembrance Day and Durban II
My amazing grandmother, Esther Klein, is turning 91 next month. She was in her mid-twenties when she was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross from an aimless, endless transport, after having spent several nearly lethal winter weeks in Ravensbrueck. Before that, she'd "worked" for several months in Auschwitz, after having lived for a very short time, along with her elderly parent[...]
The Social Well
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