Counting the Omer can feel a bit like erratic time travel: We ricochet from Biblical antiquity (the counting itself, Pesach Sheni) to turn of the Common Era (Lag ba’Omer) to mid-20th century (Yom Hashoa, Israel Independence, Jerusalem Reunification) and back.

May you turn even the dreaded cleaning and cooking for Pesach into occasions of joy!

My recent posts...THE PURIM PRESS “You know, the ball room was big for us at IKEA,” said Sven Kasgaard, a retired welcome officer at IKEA in Long-port, New Jersey. “Parents would drop their kids in the ball room and shop. The longer they were in the store the more...

In 1976, I went on a mission to contact refuseniks in the Soviet Union. One stop was Kiev (Kyiv) where I visited Babi (Babyn) Yar, an unexceptional site — should I have expected otherwise? — where some 34,000 Jews were shot to death in two days just before Yom Kippur in 1941.

Tickles and giggles and snuggles and wiggles. Noise and ‘tude, depending on the mood. Games and books, imagination, frustration. Parents, plans, hopes and dreams.

It’s good to be away. It’s hard to be away.

Here we sit, sharpened #2 pencils at hand, ready, thinking, “How will we know if we pass the test?”Then the proctor announces, “This is a timed test. Once you begin, you are to complete it in one lifetime.”

Dr King’s battles — America’s battles — remain to be won.

We’ve been living two years, so far, of relative darkness. Two years of distance from family or friends. Two years of being or feeling housebound, unwilling or unable to budge from our places.

Everything we do has consequences; let’s choose to do what’s right. We can believe that Adonai is indeed on our side, but we must do our part. As we are taught in the Talmud, we can’t rely on miracles.

My recent posts...“Jewish Pastoral Care,” edited by Rabbi Dayle Friedman, is an anthology of essays on a broad range of issues of pastoral care from a Jewish perspective. In the book, Rabbi Stephen Roberts, a founder of Disaster Chaplaincy Services, Inc., writes about...

Hanukka is all about the miracles: Jews’ victory over the many forces of Hellenism, reclaiming and rededicating the Temple, the oil.