The book of Leviticus, in Hebrew Vayikra begins, as you might imagine, with the word: Vayikra. “God called to Moses…” You’ll notice in the picture above that the final letter of Vayikra, the aleph is written smaller than all the other letters. In noticing this you’ll join every Jew, bible scholar, and person that has ever studied the Hebrew Bible. […]
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The Automatic Self
I’m starting to think that February is a month that brings with it a certain amount of unavoidable stress. There are a couple of contributing factors. First, we’re all sick of winter. Next, though February isn’t particularly busy, the spring ushers in a time of busy-ness for just about all of us. So we […]
My cup overflows
For most of my life I’ve considered myself a “cup’s 1/2 full” sort of person. That’s because I’ve long believed (and told anyone that cared to listen) that optimism IS realism. The world is just too darn fabulous to allow for any other correlation. But I’m not a “cup’s 1/2 full” sort of person anymore. […]
In praise of the regular
Pictured above are my kids, walking arm in arm, on our way to the park. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The park is just close enough for a walk. It’s not the first time and it’s not the last time. For me, this picture illustrates one of my core beliefs– that the stuff of […]
Music for Peace, Music for Justice
Here’s a song I wrote called, “Seek Peace,” based on the same passage from Psalms as the photo above. It’s a good one to listen to while reading this post. I think about music a lot. One of the things I think about when I think about music is the idea that music is […]
Altars and Altars
This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1-38:20) and Haftarah (II Kings 11:17-12:17) present an interesting contrast that has to do with altars. Basically, there are some altars that we should build and some that we should tear down. On the one hand, altars are complicated. They’re built a specific way, serve multiple purposes, and at […]