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'Velveteen Rabbi' Tag
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This weeks portion: labor
January 7, 2010LABOR (SHEMOT) [T]he Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth. (Exodus 1:19) Shifrah and Puah, sent to strangle any Hebrew boys who survived the dangerous passage through the narrowest of straits cupped basins to catch vomit and counted breaths between [...]
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This week's portion: labor
January 7, 2010LABOR (SHEMOT) [T]he Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth. (Exodus 1:19) Shifrah and Puah, sent to strangle any Hebrew boys who survived the dangerous passage through the narrowest of straits cupped basins to catch vomit and counted breaths between [...]
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Top ten posts of 2009
December 28, 2009Each year I like to post a round-up of my top ten posts from the (Gregorian) year now ending. (Here’s the list I posted at the end of 2008; here’s the one from 2007; and here from 2006; and here from 2005. I didn’t yet have this practice in 2003 or 2004.) This isn’t a [...]
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The Interfaith Amigos, ecumenism, and Christmas blessings
December 25, 2009Yesterday morning I caught part of On Point with Tom Ashbrook, featuring The Interfaith Amigos — Rabbi Ted Falcon, pastor Don MacKenzie, and sheikh Jamal Rahman. (Later in the day, I listened to the whole show online, because I wanted to hear the whole hour.) Early in the show, Tom Ashbrook asks, what does interfaith [...]
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Read Write Prompt #106: repeat after me
December 24, 2009NEWBORN SESTINA I’m mesmerized by his form even when he rouses me in the dark. Nurse, burp, time for a change then nurse again: it’s all new, this rhythm, his needs. And for now, I’m his all: source of milk, familiar sounds, all the comforts of home. He forms cries reedy and grizzled, need which [...]
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Read Write Prompt #105: borrowed words
December 17, 2009NIGHT FEEDING Three in the morning: you’re curled on my shoulder like a hermit crab out of its shell, warm as a blanket out of the dryer when I lift you down from your perch your dark eyes are wide open as a hind longs for water my soul longs for sleep but I pace [...]
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Chanukah poem published
December 17, 2009The kind editors at Scribblers on the Roof have published a second one of my poems! This isn’t one of my Torah poems; this time it’s a Chanukah poem, which was previously published at Zeek, a Jewish journal of thought and culture (where I am now a contributing editor.) The poem is called Sufganiyot. Enjoy!
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Chanukah poem for Drew
December 11, 2009On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, after services were over, two of my friends threw a Blessingway for me. That afternoon I received letters, blessings, beads, stories, and poems from friends. (All of the blessings for me, and for Ethan, are preserved in the Blessingway section of Drew’s website.) One such poem came from [...]
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El Shaddai (Nursing Poem)
December 10, 2009EL SHADDAI (NURSING POEM) Was God overwhelmed when Her milk first came in roused by our thin cries for compassion? She’d birthed creation from amoebas to galaxies but did she expect to see her own changeability mirrored behind our eyes? Nothing could have prepared Her for the shift from singularity to multiplicity. And the blank-faced [...]
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On naming our son
December 7, 2009This past Saturday was Drew’s eighth day outside the womb, which meant it was time for us to officially welcome him into the world. We held a two-part ceremony: a bris (brit milah) which was attended by nuclear family, and a babynaming/welcoming ceremony which was attended by members of our extended community of family and [...]
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Introducing…
November 28, 2009Ethan and I are delighted to announce the arrival of our son into the world! Andrew Wynn Zuckerman Born November 28, 2009 / 11 Kislev 5770 He is named after our maternal grandmothers, Alice Fried Epstein and Winifred Mootrey Campbell. His Hebrew name, Yitzchak, is after my maternal grandfather Isaac Epstein. And he has a [...]
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Gratitude
November 26, 2009When I first went to Elat Chayyim in 2002, back at the old venue in the Catskills, and first experienced the discipline of heartfelt daily prayer as an adult, I was struck by the modah ani prayer for gratitude with which we began our morning worship. It was one of the first prayer practices I [...]
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This weeks portion: hatch
November 25, 2009HATCH (VAYETZEI) The question no one asked: what did I want to bring with me from the old hacienda, every rock and bush familiar as my own palm? What talismans of my childhood could I sequester in the saddlebags and sit on like a mother hen brooding over her speckled eggs? Even my husband doesn’t [...]
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Another Torah poem published
November 25, 2009This seems to be a good week for me and poetry! The editors at Scribblers on the Roof have kindly published one of my Torah poems (the second one to see print this week, go figure) — this time the poem in question is Instead of Sons (Vayechi). I originally wrote this poem as part [...]