More Than Four Sides

Category: Judaism

  • Who is a Jew?

    At the end of this month, we will bring our boys to the mikveh, meet with the Bet Din, and, assuming all goes as planned, each boy will go into the mikveh (with my dear husband, who will be immersing for the first time himself), emerging from their immersion as Jews. This act will complete…

  • Singing in many languages

    I sing in a choir; I’ve sung in choirs since I was 11years old, almost continuously, with only a break for medical school and residency training. The choir I sing in now, Zemer Chai, just performed our spring concert, and it was amazing! Titled “I Am Determined To Walk In Freedom”, our concert included a…

  • Timelessness

    I came across the following entry on the On Being Blog: http://blog.onbeing.org/post/5763399528/wishing-for-less-time and it was timely in that i had the following experience recently, on a shabbat (sabbath)  morning.  just as an introduction, before we got the kids, we were fairly observant of the Jewish sabbath/shabbat, always home for dinner (trying to start before sundown,…

  • A Jewish Friend in Kenya

    Last week, I was sent on a very brief trip to Nairobi, Kenya, to meet with a variety of health professionals to discuss reviewing, revising, and updating the HIV-specific curriculum for educating health care providers at all levels of health-care facilities throughout Kenya. As it happened, just a couple of weeks before, I had been…

  • Catching up on Comparative Religious Education…

    I’ve been concurrently reading the following three books (links will take you to Amazon): Karen Armstrong’s History of God Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God and it’s been interesting to read them in conjunction – the first and the last are very complementary, especially since Wright cites Armstrong frequently.  Of…

  • Song is Universal

    So, my hope to start posting on a more regular basis is slightly thwarted at this point by the upcoming concert of Zemer Chai (“living song”), the choral group that I am honored to be part of for the past 2 years.But, in thinking about singing, I realize that song is a connection to language…

  • My friend, Wanjiku Ngugyi

    Wanjiku Ngugyi is an extraordinary woman, whom I met at the Nairobi Synagogue. I had known about her, when I visited the Abayudaya Community in Mbale, Uganda (I’ll post some photos, and describe my wonderful visit to this community in another posting). I met three children in Uganda who were Kenyan orphans, whom Wanjiku had…