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.

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 […]

…the real thing?

can you speak for 3 min­utes on any subject?

Early in our stud­ies at rab­binic school, one of our classes intended to make us bet­ter pub­lic speak­ers. Our instruc­tor was Hol­ly­wood actor Stan­ley Wax­man. He would often assign us the task of speak­ing extem­po­ra­ne­ously for three min­utes on any sub­ject he would present (usu­ally offer­ing one […]

& bring them close 2 #Torah">love humanity, & bring them close 2 #Torah

study­ing pirkei avot dur­ing the omer

Dur­ing the period of the Omer I have been study­ing Pirkei Avot. This is a tra­di­tional activ­ity for the period, but I have been doing it in a non-traditional man­ner. I take each Mish­nah and break it down into as few words as I can, yet still express a mean­ing­ful thought. […]

beyond the straits and narrow

a grow­ing haggadah

We printed a pri­vate new edi­tion of A Grow­ing Hag­gadah last year for per­sonal use. We will use it again this year. 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

be תורה

tweet #torah to the top as we gather @ sinai

I have been “on” (or using) Twit­ter since Jan­u­ary 2009. I don’t use it much socially, but rather edu­ca­tion­ally and polit­i­cally. I don’t share where I am, how I’m feel­ing and what I’m eat­ing. I share thoughts about #Torah, #Israel, #Pales­tine, #Gaza, #Iran, #Auschwitz, #Shoa, #Holo­caust, #Jewish, […]

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” […]