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?”).

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.

3 pavements

Three pave­ments poured next to each other (con­tigu­ous), but not at a prop­erty line.

#blogelul : counting

the num­bers’ game
[Note: not all of the but­tons used to illus­trated this game rep­re­sent the con­cept expressed in the num­bers; some are used because they dis­play that number.]

The chil­dren played by the shore, allow­ing the ball to bounce lightly on their fin­ger tips before they popped it over to the other side of the line. Now […]

time for pruning

the days grow short, the moon fills and begins to wane.

The date clus­ters hang ready.
Come with me to the oasis.
The late sum­mer har­vest has begun.
I sort the fruit of my past year’s labor.

The fruit is full and sweet.
I look back on my year’s efforts with satisfaction.

The time for prun­ing has come.
Much dross weighs down my life.
Our lives are […]

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 Pales­tin­ian people […]

& 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. Then, most of the time, I add a backslash […]

remembering pearls of music

this week Daniel Pearl would turn 46

Daniel Pearl was born on Shab­bat Noah: Octo­ber 10, 1964 = 4 Cheshvan 5725.

If, metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, all those ani­mals (car­ni­vores and her­bi­vores) were able to coex­ist on the Ark why can’t we? And this week, when we learn that a new lan­guage has been found among a tiny group of peo­ple in the Himalayas, […]

Hiroshima 広島市 Day Again (may we have many)

Last year at this time I wrote about the “MAD“ness of nuclear arma­ments. In essence:

There does not seem to be much value in hav­ing nuclear weapons.

They may exist for a MAD (Mutu­ally Assured Destruc­tion) pur­pose. And yet, many peo­ple tell me that Israel’s ene­mies don’t care about MAD, because they (as well as dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist Chris­tians) believe that […]

on following orders

you decide how to go

Last year (2009) at this time of Yom haShoah I wrote that I believe that all Jew­ish teenagers (at least) should expe­ri­ence a week of sho’a nightmares.

I was in my early 20s when I tried to imag­ine the life of the boy with his hands raised being led from the Ghetto. I spent months with him, I kept […]

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) […]

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 […]

Shake a Biblical Bouquet

[…from the archives (with minor updat­ing)]:
The cool blan­kets act like a cloud of dew in the heat of har­vest [Isaiah 18:4]

Dur­ing which we share a Bib­li­cal Bouquet:

Our rab­bis tell us this bou­quet is like our people:

Some with many good deeds,
oth­ers with much learn­ing;
Some with nei­ther…
Some with both.

The Four Species Table

Fra­grance

is like good deeds.

Taste

is like learning.

The willow’s long leaves have […]