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Reminder of the past…
Today, we went to my cousin’s home to attend a ceremony in honor of her husband, who passed away much too early, several years ago. She is my second cousin on my father’s side, and we met about a dozen years ago or more, after having lived within 3 miles of one another for several…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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Another fascinating SOF podcast series
Those who know me, know that I spend a good deal of time on the road commuting, and I have grown very fond of several podcasts (mostly from NPR), one of which is Speaking of Faith (SOF). Today, I listened to three short pieces from very different individuals, relating their personal experience of Ramadan. I…