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.

promise of dawn

dark morn­ings

As the north­ern hemi­sphere moves deeper into win­ter with less light for each day, our morn­ings begin near dawn. This is a beau­ti­ful time of begin­nings and promise. While the sounds we hear each morn­ing are not those of birds chirp­ing and chil­dren learn­ing, but the clank­ing of men at work, even these call […]

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 […]

what's the difference between 48 and 11?

back then

I under­stand that dur­ing the first half of the 20th cen­tury not even the major­ity of world Jewry sup­ported a nation­al­ist solu­tion to Jew­ish exis­tence. Jew­ish work­ing class move­ments were gen­er­ally non-Zionist and many of the “lead­ers” of world Jewry were inter­na­tion­al­ists, look­ing for inter­na­tional solu­tions. Why, then, should I be sur­prised that the […]

a cold peace

where is this place מצרים? Is it the Egypt we know?

I ask these ques­tions in my Hag­gadah. And I answer:

Yes, though only the name of the place is the same, the peo­ple have changed. In fact we are at peace and allied with the Egypt of today.
The Egypt of the Hag­gadah is more than a place, […]

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 […]

which jews…?

I found this image on a crazy anti-Zionist site:

Which ‘Jews’ do you believe are the descen­dants of the bib­li­cal ‘Israelites’?

to which I answer:

All are Jews! I am not a racist.

The site may also be anti-Semitic, it sure feels that way, but I’ve not had a chance to study it thoroughly.

What is Zion­ism?
Zion­ism is […]

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 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, […]

how much is any life worth?

redeem­ing prisoners

The value of פדיון שבויים‎ (Pidyon Shvuyim, the redemp­tion of pris­on­ers) is very impor­tant in Jew­ish life. Mai­monides states that it takes prece­dence over sup­port­ing the poor or cloth­ing them… because the prob­lems of the cap­tive include those of the poor: being hun­gry, thirsty, unclothed, and they are in dan­ger of their lives.

an entire world?

Tal­mud […]

for multiple transgressions of…

The words of Amos, who was among the writ­ers of Tel Aviv, which he saw, con­cern­ing Israel in the days of Cas­tro, Sartre, Rus­sell and all the rest…

The fol­low­ing text appeared in the Octo­ber 1968 edi­tion of Mid­stream mag­a­zine. It was dis­trib­uted very widely as a long leaflet in the late 1960s. Jay tracked down a […]