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Dwelling in our Sukkah
Sukkot – Festival of Booths, or Feast of Tabernacles, or Festival of Ingathering – is a Jewish holiday that R and I didn’t know about, or observe, until relatively recently (I’m old enough now that recent includes 10 years ago). We certainly started constructing and eating in a Sukkah the last few years that we…
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Missing Shabbat
It’s Saturday, which means its Shabbat (the Hebrew word meaning “sabbath”), and I’m using a computer. My husband and I started becoming more “Shabbat observant” a few years ago. It had been a slow evolution from originally just lighting candles on Friday night, reciting “Baruch ata HaShem, Elokeinu melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen” (Blessed are…
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So much going on!
As often happens, I find weeks go by and I slack off on contributions here. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to write about – to the contrary, I’ve been writing blog posts in my head, but had no time to type them here. A few notable updates: – J is finally pretty confidently and…
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What blessing do you say, Mommy?
That was the question posed to me this morning by J, our new Pre-K student at the Broadman-Kaplan Early Childhood Center. It was asked in the context of my grabbing my lunch bag to take out to the car, as I was leaving for work. So, I asked him, what blessing do you mean? And…
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Mishpacha & Me
I spent an hour today at J’s preschool, attending their annual program, “Mishpacha & Me”. Mishpacha means family in Hebrew, and my first connection to the word was from a Harry Belafonte album, “Belafonte at Carnegie Hall”, when he includes the word in the song “Mama Looka Boo Boo Day” (and he does a lovely…
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Meredith Monk
I regularly listen to the APM program On Being hosted by Krista Tippett, and I often listen to both the produced/edited podcast, as well as the uncut interview. This program was fascinating, but I actually enjoyed the unedited interview more than the produced show – I have to admit that I had the same reaction…
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OMG They’re HOLDING HANDS!
From my friend, who posts at Kol Rash Gadol: OMG They’re HOLDING HANDS!. It is interesting the reactions that come up from seeing the intertwining of two women’s fingers…I think my first reaction was that the article must be about lesbian jews (full disclosure – i’ve only read the blog post, not the original article,…
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Chanukah – 2011, Day 1
Having a holiday start on a Tuesday night is less than ideal in our home. My clinic is on Tuesday afternoons, and, this particular month, December, I happen to always be “on-service” on the inpatient ward, which has two consequences – a full morning, and the possibility of going back to the wards after clinic,…
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Passion – a negative or a positive?
My meditation group (with some reluctance, I claim it as mine) met this morning, and we began to use the weekly parashah as our reference point for our meditation focus. This morning was our third meeting at this new time, Sunday morning at 8am, and the first two sessions were of a more introductory nature…
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Bringing our kids to the mikveh…
No matter how much I know…I can still get blind-sided! Approximately 20 years ago, I went to the mikveh, after a year-long course of study with Rabbi Sheldon Lewis, of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, CA. I had no idea what to expect, and I was totally unaware of the tradition of turning a convert “away” before…