Talmud of America
My recent posts..."Talmud of America" Pardes Institute, a non-denominational study center based in Jerusalem, offers immersive Jewish learning around the world. One project is “Talmud of America,” which aims to illuminate and interpret, through Jewish eyes, some...
Twilight Zone
My recent posts...Twilight Zone בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת Bein hashemashot, literally, between the suns. בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת A twilight zone of time, or rather, out of time, between one day and the next. Our sages of old used this concept to explain certain miraculous...
When to Pray Yizkor
My recent posts...My edited comments from this past final day of Pesach. Ellie’s mom, Julia Helfman, died on her 95th birthday, December 24, 2025. This was the first Yizkor service Ellie feels obligated to attend. She said, “I’m now a member of a club I was not eager...
Timing
It had become a Kremer household Pesach tradition, or rather, a pre-Pesach tradition. Somewhere within a couple of days prior the first seder and noon on erev Pesach, something would go awry in the kitchen.
Bayside Bash
I could swear it’s a conspiracy.
Months before her installation as Shirat Hayam’s new president, Karen Pollock started planning a community block party at our shul. The Bayside Bash, an outdoor festival, is meant to promote our vitality and our location, to introduce ourselves to those who don’t yet know us and to give everyone a fun afternoon.
(All are welcome to attend on Sunday, August 8…parking and admission are free!)
Among the Bash activities is “Synagogue Tours” to be led by clergy. A tour means showing what matters in the building. Including my office. Which is a mess.
What a brilliant way to give me a deadline to straighten up! Could be a conspiracy, but I appreciate it. My office IS a mess.
Why? I am resistant to putting things away, lest I forget about them. I truly mean to get back to weed through: the stacks of music CDs collected over years, the papers that I know I’ll need to reference soon, the books I intend to start reading any day now, the sketches of art projects that need to progress….
Even before the deadline of the Bash presented itself, I was feeling the weight of my mess. And it was getting in my way. It’s surprising, the things we let get in our way, especially those things that irk us when others do them.
This week’s Torah reading includes the itinerary of the Israelites from Egypt to the cusp of the Promised Land. They had to schlep everything with them, so we’d like to think that they’d packed light and didn’t pick up anything unnecessary. (Yet they had all kinds of esoteric materials with which to construct the mishkan, the portable sanctuary that accompanied them. Hoarders?)
At the Bash, visitors will be shown our spaces and, therefore, the things in them. I’m sure the silver Torah ornaments will be polished, floors vacuumed, ledges dusted, etc. And my office will reflect, at least for that day, my aspiration to a more orderly environment.
The next challenge will be maintaining that relative equilibrium! (Even if it is a conspiracy.)
Shabbat shalom! שבת שלום