More Than Four Sides

Category: Judaism

  • Shopping kosher

    Today is the first shabbat after passover. We’ll enjoy challah again (although with a crazy week at work and at home, I didn’t manage to bake). When we started keeping strictly Kosher in our home, shopping got simplified, because there are whole areas of the store that one avoids (no pork products, no shellfish, and…

  • Reflections on Passover

    For Jews the world over, the 8-day celebration of Passover (seven days in Israel – long story, which I won’t go into here…if you’re curious, you can check it out here) was observed last week, and ended at sundown on Tuesday night. When my husband and I first started being more observant, a lifelong process,…

  • A month of Sabbaths

    Every Saturday of the last four weeks has been unique and given me ideas I have wanted to write about, but time slips by… So, before I forget… Four weeks ago – Dad was feeling under the weather, so I headed out with the boys. The weather prediction was for rain, but as we left…

  • A meaningful fast

    This past week was intense for me, in more ways that I can quite put together. Even though this post is likely to be too long, I don’t think I’ll be able to fully express why, but I’ll give it a go… We had a very busy weekend last weekend, which resulted in the unusual…

  • Peeking through the door

    If you’re “friends” with me on goodreads, you’ll know that I’m tearing through a book that I learned about through the podcast “On Being”. The book is Joy Ladin’s “Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders”. To start with the podcast, which aired June 20, and the program was titled “Gender and…

  • Tot shabbat II

    I mentioned in my last post that our most recent Tot Shabbat didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.  And I promised a followup post to explain. Here goes! So, the first mention I made of Tot Shabbat, I described how difficult it was because J got so clingy, and wanted my undivided attention.  I…

  • Tot Shabbat

    Our Friday nights and Saturdays follow a rhythm that varies rarely. Most Friday nights we try to be home before sunset (an almost impossible challenge for us in winter, but achievable in the summer months). We have a nice meal together, in our dining room rather than our kitchen table. The meal is structured with…

  • The mortality thing

    OK, so I promised, a couple of days ago, to fill in on the discussions around Death (yes, with a capital D) that have been a constant theme of the past month.  We have heard, time and time again, about how J had a mommy and a daddy who died, and how he didn’t come…

  • Morning minyan

    For several years, I was a regular weekday minyan participant. What’s a minyan, you may be asking? Per Wikipedia (as of today), the definition of minyan: (Hebrew: מִנְיָן lit. noun count, number; pl. מִניָנִים minyanim) in Judaism refers to the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. According to many non-Orthodox streams…

  • Resonating with the words of Heschel…

    OK, first order of business, my mother is doing better! My sister is doing a marvelous job of supporting her, as always, and she’s now safely back in the hospital, and no longer expressing active suicidal thoughts. And that’s a huge relief. It could easily be different tomorrow, but, one day at a time, right?…