The episode of Bilaam and his talking donkey is considered one of the more humorous tales in Tanach, our Hebrew bible. (The scroll of Esther is also in the top ten.)

My recent posts...Sanctity of the Camp This week’s Torah portion, Naso, includes an injunction to send those who are ritually impure “out of the contamination range” (Etz Hayim) of the mishkan, the portable sanctuary at the center of the Israelite’s encampment. The...

My recent posts...Letters…  To the Editor: …about assault weapons, have I been missing something? Such as accounts of civilians bearing AK-47s who thwarted criminal activity, prevented home invasions, chased away drug dealers, and the like. For mass murderers,...

My recent posts...(Prologue to a program held in our sanctuary, during which a nun and a cantor spoke about their experiences with Ukrainian refugees in, respectively, Poland and Barcelona.) There is a war raging, a war that is irrational in its origins, devastating...

Nowadays, the stench of fear is particularly pungent, and it can be paralyzing: Ukraine with the seemingly deliberate killing of civilians and the prospect of more heinous actions, homegrown terror of gun violence, Israel grappling with politically or religiously motivated murders, inflation, world-wide food crises, Covid, and so much more.

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.”