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.
Good for the Heart
I wish this kind of joy for all of us!
More than a year and a half since we were able to hug and kiss our grandchildren. Until today!
Playing basketball and baseball (both sort of, with constantly changing rules), reading aloud “the WHOLE BOOK, Sabba” with a stuffed monkey and blanket on my lap while Ellie gets a tour to reacquaint her with (unchanged) kids’ bedroom.
In person, the kids are taller, bigger, clearer, cuter, louder, smarter, funnier…more delicious than ever!
And the pleasure of hugging their parents and seeing the modest changes in their abode.
Looking forward to the calm of Shabbat (an unrealistic aspiration in a house with four kids 9.5 to 4) and more time playing house, cards, chess, ball, and whatever else they want!
But wait — there’s more! On Sunday we get to be with the other crew of three (and their parents). And, later in the summer, our daughter in Israel is coming in for a visit!
Through the pandemic, we have kept up via phone and computer, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the squeezing, tousling, holding, whispering, teasing, laughing with a real live child.
I’m grateful for the vaccinations that enabled this relative freedom, I’m grateful that those in our family who contracted COVID emerged with (only) manageable long-term effects, and I’m happy to read “the WHOLE BOOK” again and again, to mess up the ball game rules and to lose, to play house, watch, listen and kvell.
I wish this kind of joy for all of us! It’s good for the heart.
Shabbat shalom! שבת שלום