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

Add to Technorati Favorites

twitter / rebmark

Bookmark and Share

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.

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 […]

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 […]

esther’s song

purim in november

On Thurs­day night, Novem­ber 19, 2009, Deb­bie and I went to see the opera Esther at the New York City Opera in Lin­coln Cen­ter.
The opera, the last one by com­poser Hugo Weis­gall is based on the bib­li­cal Book of Esther. It uses the basic sto­ry­line (with some mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the sequence […]

steve’s song

jews and judaism in amer­i­can elite culture .01

On Sun­day evening, Novem­ber 8, 2009 I attended “Steve Reich Talks about his Jew­ish Music at JMF”. I was a bit sur­prised (after being told to reserve my free tick­ets in advance) that there were per­haps fifty peo­ple in the hall wait­ing to hear the words of […]

Hidden in plain sight

At the far east end of 47th Street in Man­hat­tan, between 2nd and 1st Avenues a broad lovely park leads up to the United Nations com­plex of build­ings on the East River. A farmer’s mar­ket is set up every Wednes­day through­out the year.

a mar­ket and plaza to rally against genocide

This broad space is known as Katharine […]

hidden in plain sight (continued)

con­tin­ued from hid­den in plain sight

what are we hiding (from)?

As of this writ­ing, the phrase “hid­den in plain sight” appears in a Google search 142,000 times. It must refer to a wide vari­ety of con­cepts and sit­u­a­tions. How many things to we encounter and pass by that are as though they are hid­den from us in plain […]

19th Century Jewish Cultural Hero

I col­lect (Amer­i­can) Judaic lapel but­tons.
I have approx­i­mately 3000 unique items. Each one rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent moment in the Amer­i­can Jew­ish expe­ri­ence.
Peri­od­i­cally I share them here.

My uncle was named after Mendele Mocher Sforim (the “Grand­fa­ther of Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture”). His older brother, my father was always called Nathan or Nate, though he was named Nechemia. I’ve not […]

20th Century Jewish Cultural Hero

I col­lect (Amer­i­can) Judaic lapel but­tons.
I have approx­i­mately 3000 unique items. Each one rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent moment in the Amer­i­can Jew­ish expe­ri­ence.
Peri­od­i­cally I share them here.

As the “Che fran­chise” con­tin­ues to grow, few other cul­ture heroes (meant metaphor­i­cally) seem able to com­pete for pub­lic atten­tion. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s it was not […]

Why Wine?

[cross posted at the Jew and the Carrot].

At Pesach we drink a lot of wine. Why is it called the sym­bol of our joy?

In an arid envi­ron­ment, wine can be seen a method of preser­va­tion. If you do not live or work near a well or a spring or some other source of fresh […]