During the last week of July, I never read a newspaper, never heard the radio, never turned on the TV. I recommend an annual respite from our 24/7 broadcast of whatever the editors and pundits think is worth noting, if only to experience the useful instruction that comes when we tune back in and find …
\The Self-Made Man\, a new film by my friend Susan Stern, will have its television premiere on the PBS series “P.O.V.” this coming week (and while I’m boasting about my friends, let me say that “P.O.V.” was created by another friend of mine, the prodigiously talented Marc Weiss). Most stations will air it on July …
Tonight, the Hebrew calendar marks the beginning of Shavuot, a holiday that has its roots in ancient offerings from the barley harvest, and has come to mark the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai: the holiday of revelation. Like every milestone in the liturgical calendar, Shavuot invites us to examine our own lives and …
This month marks the first anniversary of Arlene’s blog. In one of my first posts, I wrote about a consulting project I was doing with Global Kids’ Newz Crew Project, which involves high school-age kids in online dialogues about global issues. As I am a certifiable fogey, this project also gives me a chance to …
This just in: it really ticks people off when you mess with whatever they perceive as holy. I’ve been reading about the demonstrations around the world against U.S. use of the Koran as an interrogation prop at Guantanamo. Newsweek published an article on May 9 charging that interrogators tried to psych out Muslim prisoners by …
My husband has a cold, which creates tremendous respiratory sound effects in the wee small hours, giving me lots of opportunity for uninterrupted night thoughts (though we’re both looking forward to the return of his good health and uninterrupted sleep). I find myself drawn again to the questions of compassion I wrote about last time. …
A good friend visited last night from New York. He’s thoughtful and well-informed, so I always enjoy talking about social issues with him. As in so many political conversations these days, it wasn’t long before we got around to blowing each other’s minds with the surrealism of everyday public life. Starting with the baffling case …
It is said that the Passover seder is based on the type of Greek banquet-symposium described in Plato’s writing: dining at leisure, dinner companions explore ideas, rhyming philosophical and physical appetites and satisfactions. Each conversation is different, owing to the participants, yet all focus on the same epic of slavery and liberation. At our second …
In my last blog, I wrote about spiritual preparation for the Passover holiday, how the deep metaphor of purging our diets of chametz — leavening — also relates to locating and clearing out whatever puffs up our egos or clogs our ability to remain present and compassionate. The other wonderful metaphor of the holiday has …
Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) starts Saturday night. I love it that the central metaphor of Jewish spirituality is liberation from slavery, and that the holiday that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt turns on symbolic re-enactment of that liberation. For me, the greatest opportunity for growth lies in the elimination of chametz from one’s life during …