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.

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 couples […]

the boy and I

the boy with his hands raised

As I men­tioned here on April 10, when I was in my early 20s, I tried to imag­ine the life of the boy with his hands raised being led from the War­saw Ghetto. I spent months with him, I kept his image before me daily. I looked into his eyes, and I tried to look through his eyes.

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” […]

on following orders

you decide how to go

Last year (2009) at this time of Yom haShoah I wrote that I believe that all Jew­ish teenagers (at least) should expe­ri­ence a week of sho’a nightmares.

I was in my early 20s when I tried to imag­ine the life of the boy with his hands raised being led from the Ghetto. I spent months with him, I kept […]

Let My People Go (Отпусти народ мой) [that they may serve me]!

a grow­ing haggadah

A new edi­tion of A Grow­ing Hag­gadah (which is still avail­able in its 2005 HTML ver­sion) has been printed. 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 (for a multifaith […]

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 this very popular […]

swann song

jews and judaism in amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture .01
now, …with har­vey and sheila!

There was a time, it feels strange to write this… a gen­er­a­tion ago, when being Jew­ish was very “in”. The thing to be in Amer­ica. Amer­i­cans con­tinue to, even increas­ingly, con­vert to Judaism in the 2000s. How­ever, back in “The Six­ties” some forms of Jew­ish cul­ture were […]

Shake a Biblical Bouquet

[…from the archives (with minor updat­ing)]:
The cool blan­kets act like a cloud of dew in the heat of har­vest [Isaiah 18:4]

Dur­ing which we share a Bib­li­cal Bouquet:

Our rab­bis tell us this bou­quet is like our people:

Some with many good deeds,
oth­ers with much learn­ing;
Some with nei­ther…
Some with both.

The Four Species Table

Fra­grance

is like good deeds.

Taste

is like learning.

The willow’s long leaves have […]

The People of the…

We have been called a Peo­ple of the Book for nearly 1400 years. We did not invent the term. It was given to us (as well as to Chris­tians) by our cousins the Mus­lims. Nonethe­less, even as our tech­nolo­gies move us beyond the phys­i­cal book, the text remains. We return to the text that has served […]

Elul Homework 2 (I've done that too!)

con­fir­ma­tion and verification

Some­times we think that we are the only per­son who has done such ter­ri­ble things to oth­ers. It can be lib­er­at­ing and for­giv­ing for us, and those oth­ers like us, to learn that we are not alone. It also often feels good to have oth­ers “sign off” on rec­og­niz­ing that we may have […]