December, 27, 2014
The email arrived late Friday: “The President and Mrs. Obama request the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah reception at the White House on Wednesday, December 17, 2014.” I read it again, and again. It was exciting, but why had I received this? As It happened, I was about to fly to New York for a week and could easily take the train to Washington. But what would I wear? The invite said, “business or holiday attire.” In Boulder, where I’ve lived the past 12 years, business attire means a clean shirt […]
Read MoreNovember, 24, 2014
One day after the Jerusalem synagogue attack last week, Ari Shavit, author of My Promised Land, proposed a Plan B—an alternative peace process that is gradual and informal, and offers a “horizon of hope.” When I spoke with him in Denver on Wednesday, Shavit said that formal talks to attain an all-inclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty have always failed, creating a vacuum that has led to accelerating violence. “It’s on the brink now of spiraling out of control.” What happened in Jerusalem is perilous, he said, “first because you see the influence of ISIS. […]
Read MoreAugust, 22, 2014
My son, Andrew, entered the Ironman race in Boulder a few weeks ago, startling himself and me by completing it—just 20 minutes short of the cut-off time of 17 hours. At the start, he’d given himself a 50-50 chance of finishing: swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, then running a full marathon of 26.2 miles, in 90 degree heat, at altitude of 5500 feet. He’d never swum that long, biked that far, or run a marathon, let alone done all three in a row. Halfway through the bike course, his face and body […]
Read MoreJuly, 4, 2014
His leaving was as unconventional as his teaching and his life. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi wanted no casket, no plain pine box. For his funeral, held on the fourth of July, he wanted to be clothed in his white kittel (prayer robe), enfolded in his father’s tallis (prayer shawl), sprinkled with ashes brought from Auschwitz, then shrouded in white linen and lowered directly into the earth near his home in Boulder, CO. He wanted the ashes buried with him in honor of his uncle, cousins, and the millions who’d died without receiving “a holy […]
Read MoreJuly, 3, 2014
I am grieving the loss of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who died at his home in Boulder, CO on July 3, 2014. He’d been sick and hospitalized for many weeks, but was recovering and hopeful he would make it through this year’s High Holidays. A great celebration of his 90th birthday had been planned for August. But around 8:40 a.m., his breathing stopped. I’m grateful for the time we spent together, and that he was able to complete with me what he considered his final teaching. He’d told me repeatedly that he was at […]
Read MoreJune, 1, 2014
Has “summer vacation”—two of the loveliest words in our language—gone the way of “free time?” Does anyone take a real vacation anymore, and what, I’m wondering, qualifies as a vacation these days? A trip with young children is not a vacation. A family reunion is not necessarily a vacation. Staying home and “catching up” is not a vacation. As defined by dictionary.com, vacation is “a period of suspension of work or study,” used for rest or recreation. The Italians call it “il bel far niente,” the beautiful doing nothing. Good luck. At a […]
Read MoreApril, 30, 2014
No one smiles at you in Mea Shearim—the ultra orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. Signs on the buildings warn: “Jewish women—dress modestly!” I’d been warned that girls who entered the quarter wearing t-shirts or short skirts had been stoned. It was my first visit to Jerusalem at age 35, and I hadn’t been in a synagogue for 15 years. I couldn’t wait to flee the Reform temple in Los Angeles that my family had attended, (but only on high holidays) where services were boring and Sunday school was an ordeal. Yet I was a […]
Read MoreMarch, 19, 2014
There was a story Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi told me that I wasn’t able to include in The December Project. It’s about Maimonides, the venerated rabbi, physician, astronomer and philosopher of the 13th century who’s considered one of the key Torah scholars in Jewish history. Reb Zalman first learned about Maimonides at 14, when he’d just escaped from the Nazis with his family, stealing over the border to Belgium. After the horrors he’d witnessed, he thought that the God he’d been taught to believe in at his yeshiva had “finked out.” Zalman could no […]
Read MoreNovember, 11, 2009
This is the first in a series about a peace mission to Afghanistan. There was no stopping us, even though the State Department issued a warning against travel to Afghanistan because of “an ongoing threat to kidnap and assassinate Americans.” We were a group of eight women and one man organized by Code Pink, Women for Peace, and we arrived in Kabul believing the U.S. should withdraw its troops and spend more money on development. After eight days, our presumptions were turned upside down, splitting us into camps with conflicting opinions. Some still […]
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