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.

the electronic leaflet

from prayer­book to leaflet

I have been involved in writ­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing leaflets at least since 1966 when our fam­ily com­posed a leaflet [text] we dis­trib­uted in front of our congregation’s Yom Kip­pur obser­vance call­ing atten­tion to the war in Vietnam.

The Hurvitz Family’s Yom Kip­pur Leaflet call­ing for an end to the war in Vietnam (1966)

Dur­ing the […]

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 (inter­spersed with some commercials) […]

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 of […]

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 […]

How did the על חטא (al ḥet) begin?

I don’t know.How­ever, I imag­ine it some­thing like this

[…from the archives (with minor updat­ing)]:
Bethami knew the way down the nar­row windswept alley­ways of Tiberias blindfolded

The lap­ping of the tiny waves of Galilee offered a con­stant guide. She had walked this path many times, since her ear­li­est years, when she went with her mother to visit the rabbi. The […]

Unifying my life as I trim my garden

As I wrote the other day, while I pre­pare dur­ing the month of Elul for Rosh haShan­nah, I think about what is periph­eral to my life, and what I should toss.

Aside from blow­ing sho­far each day dur­ing Elul, another prac­tice has taken on the nature of a daily rit­ual: the read­ing of Psalm 27.

Psalm 27

Accord­ing to Rabbi Ben­jamin J. […]

&#9829’s and my &#9829 is mine אלול">I am my &#9829’s and my &#9829 is mine אלול

wel­come to אלול

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

blow­ing shofar

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 is mine.

The phrase is meant to sug­gest a lov­ing rela­tion­ship between the Cre­ator and […]

Hiroshima 広島市 Day ☮

The first nuclear weapon “Lit­tle Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Mon­day, August 6, 1945.

nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment lapel button

call­ing for nuclear disarmament then

I have a clear mem­ory from long ago, some­time around 1959: walk­ing with my fam­ily down Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard, some­where near Vine. We were part of a demon­stra­tion call­ing for nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment, prob­a­bly organized […]

Neapolitan

Over the years I have been asked:

What kind of a rabbi are you?

To which I answer with­out hesitation:

A good rabbi!

And then my inter­locu­tor stam­mers a bit and says:

No, no, what… oh, ah…. Are you…?

At which point I gen­tly inter­rupt and say:

Neapoli­tan