The 8 days of Chanukah this year were busy for my family On the second night, my wife invited a family from the Hampden Library children’s story group. My wife made her exquisite latkes, and it marked the only night of the week we sang Maoz Tzur, with the Israeli-born grandmother of Nezzie’s little friend. For
The ice atop our wooden deck crackles as I venture out to the woodpile. The night is quiet, but the cracks are loud, intrusive, and it feels like a violation. I kneel down in the snow by the shed, lifting up the blue tarp and grabbing what remains of the wood left by the house’s previous
Is the order to pursue justice in Torah a collective or individual mandate? Does the mandate to take care of the stranger of the orphan imbue them with rights, or merely that we must meet our obligations to them under the Law? How does that gel with modern society? Should we necessarily be looking to
Dear G-d, I believe in You. You know I do. But you know, I get kind of tired of reading the news. If I try and fail at being human day after day, and if that’s happening with each and every person out there, if we’re all falling down, and that stuff escalates to the
I was not lonely when Portnoy’s Complaint came to mind, apparently. Out of fear of “The Goyim Know” set of anti-Semites, perhaps, we tend to back away to discussing our community’s problem with this, even amongst ourselves, and definitely not in public. I know when I’ve seen non-Jews express curiosity about the Jewish component of this,
On the week of her bat mitzvah, Amelia received an award for her first year of field hockey. She never held a stick before, but she got out on the field and put her all into blocking shots. At a game against Old Town last week, she had two stunning saves, the kind that look
Photo credit: Joe Angseesing, from the Internet Bird Collection The First Amendment is important to me. I think it’s important to most of us. As disconcerting as the now continuing marches in Charlottesville are, I prefer to think less about content and more about unrestrained exercise. When I think about the content, I realize that it
I awoke the other night, prior to Rosh Hashanah, to what sounded like the terrified scream of a teenage girl. I checked on Amelia immediately. She was snoring in her bed in the third floor loft. No, the sound was coming from outside. It wasn’t an owl. We have plenty of those and their noises don’t
Last night, serendipity caused a delightful convergence that reminds me the distance between Jews is largely arbitrary. Our shul had three people and our permanent non-Jewish guest (a displaced Southern gentleman with a heart of gold) turn out for selichot, so we crossed the street and joined a service led by our local Chabad shaliach. It
.אהוב את המלאכה, ושנא את הרבנות, ואל תתודע לרשות
Love work; despise public office; and do not be intimate with the ruling authorities.
Pirkei Avot 1:10
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.
