The Program Setting Medford, Massachusetts, late fall 1991. My senior year. We forty residential advisors have been thirded from the lecture hall into the two nice and one not-so-nice of Tilden Hall’s classrooms for our monthly RA development program. My buddy Brian, Tufts’ Catholic society’s equivalent to me, and I pair up as impromptu, jovial group leaders in the large […]
Talmud. Enraged and Loved. Didn’t see it coming I’m three classes from the end of my tenure as the substitute rabbi for a local, weekly Talmud class. I’m at the kitchen table preparing for tomorrow and excited to see that this tractate (chapter) of Berakhot (blessings) includes reference to one of my spiritual
Talmud. Enraged and Loved. Read More »
Biking with Annie On this, our second day of Camp Spend-the-Morning-with-Dad-Thanks-to-Covid-19, Emmett peels off to bike around the park to complete his exercise commitment. Now it’s just Annie and me pedaling down residential NE Hancock on our way to pick up my Father’s Day gift of new silicone baking mats from the kitchen store
Anti-Racist in-training Read More »
The Scorpion and the Frog In the 1955 film, Confidential Report, Orson Wells, in the role as the mysterious tycoon Gregory Arkadin, introduces to the world the following story: “And now I’m going to tell you about a scorpion. This scorpion wanted to cross a river, so he asked the frog to carry him.
Mess. With intent to douse her brother with water, my 11-year-old Annie tugged on the backyard garden hose. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” I shouted. She didn’t see that the hose, tangled on a garden stake, would damage a portion of the garden if she pulled any further. She pulled and I received another mess—yet another I
Black Lives Matter Read More »
It was wrong We had decided to stain the diminutive cedar fence Minwax 203 — Early American. Two months into Covid-19. We conscript the kiddos into “family time backyard improvement project.” We parents have, at the very least, a different opinion as to the right way projects should be done, if only in the
The side-of-the-road experience We are engaged, not yet married. Her white Honda civic climbs the pass between the Angeles National and San Bernardino National Forests. Making our way to a weekend in Las Vegas. And then. Something feels wrong. “It’s stopping, the car, stopping.” “What?” “I can’t use the gas. I have no gas.” “OK, I’ll push,”
Freedom My virtual coffee-chat friend says, “I’m not in charge of the universe.” As she and I can’t meet in person, we are having an old-fashioned phone call, not a Zoom. An outside-the-box rabbi and a brilliant, retired, Episcopal priest. I continue the Sisyphean task of sorting papers on my desk as she continues: “To
Control or Freedom Read More »
“How are you?” “It’s complicated.” It’s my third year of teaching math full time. I’m early enough to get my favorite parking spot. I make my way to the copy-room slash teacher-break room on the second floor of the converted group home turned school. Phil, a Teach for America first-year teacher, enters. We exchange
Hope Hope It’s Thursday, late afternoon. I sit in my basement home office working on writing this newsletter. I’ve decided that I’m ok with the style of this newsletter being a little disjointed. I’m getting more comfortable with the genre of “pen-pal rabbi.” Through my door, I hear Emmett’s 13-year-old voice repeating phrases into his gaming headset.
Hope. What we mean by hope. Read More »