Who will say Kaddish for my sweet Aunt Sylvia? Not the husband or brother she had outlived, when she passed…
Month: September 2013
Shall We Pray?
Occasionally, a book about Jewish prayer will tell you that Judaism discourages spontaneous prayer. That magic of Jewish prayer, the…
Tale of the 13 Attributes
When faced with a particularly weighty problem, the Baal Shem Tov would go to a particular place in the woods,…
We Are As Clay
Ki Hiney Kachomer: We Are As Clay. A beloved piyyut, Hebrew liturgical poem, from the Yom Kippur service. A poem inviting us…
Fourteen Prayers for Peace
In 2009, President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, with a simple, moving speech. He spoke of the challenge of…
The Simple Judge
So I’m driving along Commercial Drive, and I’ve stopped at a pedestrian-controlled crosswalk. A young man starts to cross the…