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.

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 […]

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 […]

מזל טוב

queen city of the west

When Deb­bie and I decided to con­tinue our rab­binic stud­ies at the Cincin­nati, Ohio cam­pus of HUC-JIR rather than at the New York cam­pus, a num­ber of our friends made fun of us. They joked that we’d spend all our time in rock­ing chairs on the porch of our apart­ment. We actually […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Faye Avrunin Hurvitz ז

…from the archives (with minor updating), reposted on what would be her 4th Yahrtzeit

Faye Hurvitz cel­e­brates her 90th birth­day a bit early with her fam­ily gath­ered, August 2003

21st of Tevet 5674 — 8th of Tam­muz 5765
Decem­ber 20 1913 (the win­ter sol­stice) — July 14, 2005

Our mother, Faye Hurvitz, died July 14, 2005 (8th of Tammuz 5765).

Three months […]

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 […]