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.
Countup to Torah
Many of us have been counting the days, sometimes the hours and minutes, from when our social and work lives changed. (It’s been close to 365 days, 8,760 hours, over half-a-million minutes.)
We can feel that in every aspect of our coronavirus lives we have been counting up to an end that sometimes appears to be within reach, then eludes us; three steps forward, one back, two forward, three back…a macabre dance.
Yet we persevere; what else should we do? We mourn lives cut short; we question how responses to danger can be so varied; we celebrate medical advances that preserve life; we yearn for touch, for smiles. We get creative, we get despondent.
And we count. We count the ways we’ll celebrate our liberation from isolation. We count on one another.
No longer strangers to counting, we count on our tradition to help ground us, and so it is that we will count omer. Click here for a handy omer counting assistant.
Shabbat shalom !שבת שלום
Click on the image below for a printable pdf
