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.

can an aipac supporter explain this one?

aipac gives koch a pass for flout­ing iran sanctions

I know that Emer­son said: “A fool­ish con­sis­tency is the hob­gob­lin of lit­tle minds, adored by lit­tle states­men and philoso­phers and divines.” But, I don’t this is an issue of fool­ish con­sis­tency. I’d like some­one to explain if they feel differently.

alex seitz-wald, news report:

Ear­lier this month, Bloomberg […]

time for pruning

the days grow short, the moon fills and begins to wane.

The date clus­ters hang ready.
Come with me to the oasis.
The late sum­mer har­vest has begun.
I sort the fruit of my past year’s labor.

The fruit is full and sweet.
I look back on my year’s efforts with satisfaction.

The time for prun­ing has come.
Much dross weighs down my life.
Our […]

what would dad think?

polity not piety™

Yes, that’s a “trade­mark” sym­bol there. Why not? I con­tinue to tell peo­ple that I came to the rab­binate out of “polity” not “piety”. My involve­ment was as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer. A quick check on Google indi­cates that I’m nearly the only per­son to have used it… and, at that, sig­nif­i­cantly more frequently.

nathan hurvitz

Our […]

& bring them close 2 #Torah">love humanity, & bring them close 2 #Torah

study­ing pirkei avot dur­ing the omer

Dur­ing the period of the Omer I have been study­ing Pirkei Avot. This is a tra­di­tional activ­ity for the period, but I have been doing it in a non-traditional man­ner. I take each Mish­nah and break it down into as few words as I can, yet still express a mean­ing­ful thought. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

i love my gay rabbis

con­grat­u­la­tions!

Plain­tiffs have demon­strated by over­whelm­ing evi­dence that Propo­si­tion 8 vio­lates their due process and equal pro­tec­tion rights and that they will con­tinue to suf­fer these con­sti­tu­tional vio­la­tions until state offi­cials cease enforce­ment of Propo­si­tion 8. Cal­i­for­nia is able to issue mar­riage licenses to same-sex cou­ples, as it has already issued 18,000 mar­riage licenses to same-sex […]

giving and taking

giv­ing

On May Day, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle about how to deter­mine how much money you should donate, sug­gest­ing that “God Knows”. The arti­cle states that “Amer­i­cans gave away 2.2 per­cent of their per­sonal dis­pos­able income to non­profit groups of var­i­ous sorts in 2008″. It reviewed the usual amounts sug­gested by var­i­ous “Western” […]

do candles have feelings?

Sun­day night, Decem­ber 13, with the staff of Hazon, I had the plea­sure of expe­ri­enc­ing (and meet­ing) Yis­rael Camp­bell. He has a one-man show (performance/stand-up rou­tine) now play­ing at the Bleecker Street The­ater (near HUC-JIR).

The New York Times gave it a pos­i­tive review.

You can watch a vari­ety of videos of Yis­rael on YouTube and even […]