Needless to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve written. The fall months have swirled up and overhead, dried leaves rushing away from me, ungraspable. These months have been a whirlwind of academic rigor in my doctorate program, while the real conquest has been unspoken for. These months my mother has slipped quietly into [...]
(First of all. Last night.
Okay.)
Last year I left school for a semester to be a nanny for the baby of very close family friends. I moved in when she was four and a half months old, and fell deeply in love.
There were a lot of experiences I had there that I felt I shouldn’t [...]
Well.
I triple-checked the non-profit guidelines section of the IRS website, so it is without fear that I am endangering anyone here that I say: OH MY GOSH, WE WON WE WON WE WON*.
That’s a pretty nice feeling. And an unbelievable fit with this week’s parsha of Lech L’cha. Going to a new and unexplored land [...]
Today I was surrounded by eight ferocious dogs and saved by the power of Torah.
I was jogging, as I often do, near Ramat Rachel, a kibbutz hotel near the southern part of Jerusalem that overlooks Bethlehem and the Judeaen hills. Usually when I run that route, I go no further than the giant statue [...]
Google’s newish ‘suggested search’ function can be irritating, but it also gives you a feel for what’s on the mind of The Public. Like when you search “Hillary Clinton secretary of state” and see that nearly a 000 000 and a half other folks have done the same, you get that nice cozy feeling of [...]
Last Tuesday, as I flipped between channels, I was endlessly enthused by the number of people over 65 giving live interviews on television, and the number of people of all ages invoking their parents and grandparents.
Seeing older people acting as crucial sources of perspective in an election year, not as cute and endearing characters led [...]
The whole “same-sex marriage” thing has been on my mind a lot since the election, mostly because that’s where we lost. The succor of those magic words, “President-elect Obama,” has been an balm for me, but, to mangle a metaphor or two, the bloom is about to be off the rose and people still can’t [...]
One of the obvious implications of multiple sexual partners is the increased chances of sexually transmitted diseases, and recent news that the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination, designed to protect against ‘the commonest causes of cervical cancer,’ will soon be available to 12 and 13 year olds has confused religious parents.
[...]
So, yeah, the fate of our nation will be decided in about 50 hours from now, but let’s not talk about that, okay? Oh, I know there’s plenty of other stuff to talk about—I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week checking and rechecking such inanities as the technical definition of a graduated [...]
If it is desirable to eat and sleep in a sukkah, should one also use the treadmill in a sukkah?
It’s chol hamoed, I’m at the gym and judging by the number of men and women sweating off those extra kugel calories, it’s clear that Jews are not obligated to exercise inside a sukkah.
The housewives’ preferred [...]