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'Velveteen Rabbi' Tag
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Another mother poem: ode to a changing table
August 4, 2010THRONE OF GLORY O changing table! Your terrycloth breast rises and dips like the gentle swell of the hills. Underneath, Pampers, stacked like stones in a falling-down wall beside a box filled with damp tufts of cloud. Above, the bright elephant hovering in the sky, its mirrored belly reflecting emptiness. Someday you will [...]
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A shameful blow to interreligious coexistence in New York
August 2, 2010I’m deeply disappointed that the Anti-Defamation League has chosen to oppose the building of Cordoba House, an Islamic cultural center slated to be constructed in the shadow of the absent Twin Towers. Writing at the Daily Beast (“The Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to building a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attacks betrays its own [...]
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Another mother poem: a few of your favorite things
July 30, 2010THESE ARE A FEW Sitting up beats lying down like a lotion rubdown beats a dose of vitamins like peach yogurt beats spinach puree. Mylar balloons filled with helium: even better than a stream of water that splashes past your grabby hands. My palm stroking your head, your arms around my neck. In the morning, [...]
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The height of summer
July 27, 2010We’re in the height of summer. The days may be growing shorter, but it’s not perceptible yet. I brought home the first stunning red tomato from Caretaker Farm this week and ate it one day for lunch, diced into pieces and sprinkled with fresh-ground pepper and a few flakes of sea salt. The wisteria which [...]
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A mother poem for Shabbat Nachamu: Comforter
July 23, 2010COMFORTER you wake in your crib’s embrace from the dream of a distant heartbeat a voice says cry out! and you cry out bewailing the tragedy of separation until I gather you to my breast glowing numbers shift silently and your desperation eases someday you’ll learn to fumble soft stars into their places to nuzzle [...]
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Tisha bAv and sounds of sorrow
July 19, 2010The fallen stones date to the destruction of the second temple. Tisha b’Av begins tonight at sundown. At the end of last year’s post about the day — Three scenes from Tisha b’Av — I touched on the teaching from Talmud (tractate Yoma) that the second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam / senseless [...]
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Another mother poem: messages
July 16, 2010MESSAGES in the curve of your head, its whorls of soft hair in your grasping hands and your dolphin trills some of your signals are plain as speech – your staccato kicking, a fist pressed to your eyes – but no one can decipher your most secret heart This week’s prompt at Big Tent Poetry [...]
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Joel Hoffman on the perils of Bible translation
July 15, 2010I went to Congregation Beth Israel last night to hear Dr. Joel Hoffman speak. His lecture was excellent. Joel is author most recently of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, which I haven’t yet read but am really looking forward to (especially now that I’ve heard him speak!) As a quick [...]
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Joel Hoffman is coming to town
July 13, 2010Joel Hoffman is a Biblical scholar and translator. His latest book is And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning. As you might imagine, it sounds right up my alley. (I’ve been meaning to read it for a while now, but somehow life has been too busy to permit much leisure reading. Go [...]
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6 tastes of Ruach ha-Aretz
July 12, 20101. Pearlstone retreat center, home to this year’s Ruach ha-Aretz East. It is the evening of the fourth of July and the sun is beginning to cast low long shafts of light across the grass. A friend calls my name and I veer off the path back to the room, heading instead to a circle [...]
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Another mother psalm: bringing the baby to morning prayer
July 8, 2010MOTHER PSALM 7 Don’t chew on your mama’s tefillin I say, dislodging the leather from your damp and eager grasp. We play peekaboo beneath my tallit, hiding your face and revealing it the way God is sometimes present sometimes not. You like the drums, the fiddle and clarinet. You bang your rattle on the floor. [...]
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My last smicha students week
July 4, 2010With friends on Friday evening. My last smicha students’ week as an ALEPH rabbinic student has ended. There were some amazing moments. Sweetest of all has been seeing my friends and teachers again; I missed them all desperately in January, and it’s been a long year since we were together last! It was also incredible [...]
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Another mother psalm: song for the sixth day
July 2, 2010SONG FOR THE SIXTH DAY On the sixth day I labored to birth a world. To make room for you I contracted myself, touched the place where I disappear. And for you, the journey from my endless embrace into the world of separation… But when my work was completed I gazed into your bottomless eyes [...]
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Supporting ALEPH
July 1, 2010If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time, you know that I’ve wanted to become a rabbi for a long time, and I’ve been formally studying to become a rabbi since fall of 2005. I’ll be ordained, inshallah, in January of 2011. The ALEPH rabbinic program has been an amazing experience for [...]
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Off we go!
June 27, 2010Having enjoyed Ghana’s victory in the World Cup yesterday (sorry, US fans), we’re off to Pearlstone for my final rabbinic school residency. Think kindly of us today; the seven-hour drive with the baby is likely to be challenging! And, of course, once we get to where we’re going, I’ve got two intense weeks of school [...]