I wrote a bit for our May synagogue bulletin that engendered a large amount of correspondence from members of the congregation. I said:May is Mental Health Awareness Month, on top of Jewish American Heritage Month and a raft of others. I am not reluctant to talk about my struggles with mental health. After military experiences,
I don’t know what my point is with this post, so bear with me. Last night, one of my amazing peers in my rabbinical seminary cohort did a great presentation on the ethics of the Reform movement during our Ethics course. It prompted me to do my own reflection on family history and how we’ve
This is a very difficult thing for me to write, because I don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t want to be a pulpit rabbi. I don’t want to be a congregational rabbi. I would happily pinch hit for others who are. I can come by and read Torah or haftarah, lead a
Maybe our blog is turning into a code blog? Nah. All of my creative writing is bent towards rabbinical school these days, is all, and I absolutely don’t want to write about politics or everything since October 7th. For the longest time, I’ve been using FluentValidation as my go-to for complex validation on objects. Somehow,
For talent acquisition and maintainability reasons, I’m moving off of React and on to Blazor Web Assembly for one of my Software as a Service (SaaS) projects. It’s taking off faster than I expected, but my plate is always full, and it’s faster for me to code natively in C# as much as possible in
All signs point to “feh.” A few friends on social media have been reminiscing about their experiences working for McGovern or participating in student protests during the Vietnam War. Most of the folks I know who were in the anti-war movement, and this included in some capacity my parents, grew out of radical activism, if
During World War II, the New York Times reported on the surrender of German paratroopers to the assistant division commander of the US 8th Infantry Division. Their general was the equivalent of our lieutenant general. Incredulous that he should be surrendering to someone of lesser rank, he demanded Brigadier General Canham’s credentials. Canham gestured to
One of the reasons why I struggle with deep participation in various veterans groups is that the previous generation typically wants to talk at the current generation about their experiences. I honor and respect previous generations, do not get me wrong. It’s merely the penchant of veterans to talk about what they have done. It’s
So, a week or two ago, I wrote an opinion piece for the Bangor Daily News. To make a long story short, there’s a white supremacist, former Marine, and general goober, who when he’s not busy pressing cider for an AirBnB, dreams of opening a training camp for some imaginary race war. As I said
I asked friends on social media what their favorite midrash is. Mine remains Abraham smashing the idols in his father’s shop. He smashed all but one, and handed the stick to the biggest one. He told his father that they fought for a woman’s offering, and that one prevailed. Terah, his father, said, “but they’re
Writer, President of Bangor's Congregation Beth Israel, retired soldier, programmer, father, musician, Heeb, living in the woods of Maine with three ladies and a dog. Brian is also a rabbinical student with the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary.
Director of Education for Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor, Maine, runs joint religious school with our sister congregation, special educator and former school board member, mother to Avi and Nezzie.
