The Death of Aaron, c. 1896-1902, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (French, 1836-1902) or a follower I’m delighted to have contributed this week’s teaching to Bayit’s Builders Blog series that explores Torah through a lens of building and civic responsibility. Reading this week’s Torah portion, I found myself captivated by Numbers, Chapter 20. In my … Read more
Yesterday at 1:15 PM, students, teachers and alumni from the Jewish Theological Seminary gathered in New York City and on Zoom to observe the 5th yahrzeit (anniversary of the death) of Rabbi Neil Gillman, may his memory be a blessing. I was teaching at The Weber School in Atlanta, and when class ended at 1:30 … Read more
“We live for seventy years, or eighty, if we are strong. Teach us how short our time is; let us know it in the depths of our souls.” I first met Eugene 32 years ago, when David and I were dating and I had completed 2 years of rabbinical school. I still remember him telling … Read more
We rescued Luna in December 2013, about 8 weeks after our first dog died. Jenna, a Chocolate Lab we rescued in 2003, had slowed down in the late summer. She was 13 years old, and her decline was swift. When it was time to let her go, we knew it was time. We agreed to … Read more
“Our life is a walk in the night, we know not how great the distance to the dawn that awaits us. And the path is strewn with stumbling blocks and our bodies are grown tyrannous with weeping yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet.” —Rachel Kadish in The Weight of Ink, p. 51 … Read more