I recently spent a beautiful Shabbat with the students and faculty of The American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, NC. It was a wonderful experience for me and I am so grateful to have had a chance to meet the people there and offer a few teachings along the way. I learned a lot during […]
Life Lessons
What’s it like to be a rabbi?
I have a cherished colleague. Her name is Dr. M. Cathy Harmon-Christian. She teaches in the theology department at Marist. Among other things, she and I have a chavruta, a study-based friendship. It’s a lot of fun. An offshoot of that chavruta is that every so often she’ll send along a question asked by her students. “What’s […]
We’ve gotta keep the world big.
During the opening “rant” of Episode 830 of his bi-weekly WTF Podcast, Marc Maron said something that resonated with me. He said, “We’ve gotta keep the world big.” I like that. I like it because, for at least a little while, it seems like lots of people have been trying to make the world […]
Death (Day 3)
Everyone else in the hotel has their plans for the day and we have ours. People look at you a little funny and with a tinge of pity when they see you dressed in funerary garb. The limo arrives at the house. We check to see if it has lathes for car seats. We head […]
Death (Day 2)
All of a sudden it’s a new day. I guess it’s obvious but you only have one date of death. Quickly time starts to accumulate. Today my daughter got a napkin and wiped tears from my wife’s eyes. Then she sat in my father in law’s oversized arm chair and said it felt like he […]
Death
My wife was out running the Peachtree Rod Race. And making good time. My phone rang. It was my mother in law. She rarely calls me directly. I answered the phone and she told me through her tears that Jim, her husband, had died. I called Loren, still recovering at the finish line. I have […]