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.

now is the time for change

the month of elul אלול has begun.

Bradley Burston writes:

in Israel, the future can come down to just one night

Actu­ally, every­where in the world our future is deter­mined by the actions at each of the moments we live them. Nonethe­less, tonight (Sep­tem­ber 3, 2011) after Shab­bat in Israel: ה אלול תשע”א, peo­ple all over the coun­try are expected […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Elul Homework 1

now the real work begins

Talk about “trim­ming” or “uni­fy­ing” is easy. The dif­fi­cult task lies ahead. I need to seek out the peo­ple I have wronged, approach them and express to them my regret along with a clear plan as to how I will change my behav­ior in the future.

At this time every year I […]

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 […]

&#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 […]