Pro­duc­ing con­tent on the Web since 1995.


some say­ings of ר‘משבצונה“ל

For many years I have worked hard, and strug­gled with mas­ter­ing virtuous. Now, in addi­tion, I’m work­ing on becom­ing more virtual.
This is an expres­sion of that effort.
* * * * * * *

השיבנו ה‘ אליך ונשובה חדש ימינו
כעוד לא היו
* * * * * * *
ומביא גאלה…
לצאצאיהם

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All pho­tographs are by Mark Hurvitz unless they are obvi­ously not.

The pho­tos in the ban­ner at the top (only a shal­low sliver of a much larger photo) are either from our home or our trav­els and are offered for their beauty alone (though a brain-teaser for me: “Where was that?”).

davka flickr

st. paintings

At least three col­ors of painted mes­sages on the pave­ment. By the time there are three col­ors that fit within the photo, none can have any “mean­ing” what remains is the pattern.

davka flickr

3 pavements

Three pave­ments poured next to each other (con­tigu­ous), but not at a prop­erty line.

beyond the straits and narrow

a grow­ing haggadah

We printed a pri­vate new edi­tion of A Grow­ing Hag­gadah last year for per­sonal use. We will use it again this year. If you are inter­ested in hav­ing a PDF ver­sion of the text to print and use (in whole or in part) at your Seder you can down­load it here:

A Grow­ing Hag­gadah (for fam­ily use)
A Grow­ing Haggadah […]

first they came for the canary

what are the police doing in egypt?

At a cer­tain point dur­ing the recent (2011) Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion it was not always clear with which side the police iden­ti­fied. These Police are dif­fer­ent. They’re singing about canaries in coal mines. They offer a per­son­al­ized vari­ant of the old metaphor.

First to fall over when the atmos­phere is less than per­fect
Your […]

remembering pearls of music

this week Daniel Pearl would turn 46

Daniel Pearl was born on Shab­bat Noah: Octo­ber 10, 1964 = 4 Cheshvan 5725.

If, metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, all those ani­mals (car­ni­vores and her­bi­vores) were able to coex­ist on the Ark why can’t we? And this week, when we learn that a new lan­guage has been found among a tiny group of peo­ple in the Himalayas, […]

the new year; traveling for chocolate… and much more

Switzer­land was actu­ally “Plan B”

We had hoped to get to Fire Island (Long Island) at The Pines for Rosh haShan­nah to be with a col­league and at the beach. How­ever, because “the sea­son” at The Pines was still going strong, the two estab­lish­ments where we tried to book rooms could not com­mit, barely even return­ing our calls […]

let us make light

a can­dle light­ing kavanah in honor of shab­bat of bereishit
As our week ends, we focus on how our own lives mir­ror cos­mic events.

Shab­bat now begins.
We have com­pleted a full week of creation.

Now we focus inward for a short time;
of what has this week consisted?

We bring to con­scious­ness aspects of our week just passed:

Was there a project left […]

it's very clear

our love is here to stay

While prepar­ing a wed­ding drash for this past week I learned that Ira Gersh­win chan­neled Isa­iah 54:10 in this week’s haf­tarah portion.

Isa­iah:

For the moun­tains may move
And the hills be shaken,
But my loy­alty shall never move from you,
Nor My covenant of friend­ship be shaken

Gersh­win:

In time the Rock­ies may tum­ble,
Gibral­tar may crum­ble,
They’re only made of […]

pirkei imahot

I am not the first to use the phrase, but begin­ning on March 15, 2000 I began a file in which I col­lected our mother’s say­ings. I will peri­od­i­cally share them here. One of her pri­mary expressions was:

if you can’t say any­thing nice about some­one,
don’t say it

It’s that simple.

Our mother was not a learned per­son. Though she grad­u­ated near the top of […]

when?

…when­ever”

How often have we heard peo­ple respond in this way?

I’m always ready to go out and enjoy life. But, the daily alarm of the sho­far in Elul reminds us to mix those plea­sures, and that time is…

Lena Horne [from notes on the Idel­sohn Society’s blog, to which I can­not link directly] sang this song “Now!,” writ­ten for […]

elul comes every year

prepar­ing for my beloved

As we begin Elul, the month before Rosh haShan­nah, prepa­ra­tions for the new year start.

blow­ing shofar

As I wrote last year (August 20, 2009) at this time, the Hebrew word אלול is con­sid­ered an acronym for the phrase from the Song of Songs: 6:3a…

אני לדודי ודודי לי = I am my beloved’s, and my beloved […]

Hiroshima 広島市 Day Again (may we have many)

Last year at this time I wrote about the “MAD“ness of nuclear arma­ments. In essence:

There does not seem to be much value in hav­ing nuclear weapons.

They may exist for a MAD (Mutu­ally Assured Destruc­tion) pur­pose. And yet, many peo­ple tell me that Israel’s ene­mies don’t care about MAD, because they (as well as dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist Chris­tians) believe that […]