This is the season of counting. We count how many more days of school, how many days until camp, how many more shabbat celebrations in our child’s current classroom, and how many more days we need to bundle our children in jackets before Spring emerges for good. It is also the season of counting in […]
Yom HaAtzmaut, 5772
A variety of important/inspiring/challenging things have made it through across my screen for Yom Ha’Atzmaut. I’d like to share some with you. A truly inspiring figure and one of the great rabbis in Orthodox America, R. Yosef Blau – the “Spiritual Guide” or Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical seminary – spoke a year ago of […]
How Do We Mark Yom HaShoah?
Another Yom HaShoah has come and gone, now 67 years since the end of World War II. Not that in all those years we’ve gotten it just right when it comes to marking these most overwhelming events in all the 4,000 years of the Jewish people. I think about this a lot, as a synagogue […]
Metzora Limerick
When studying parshat Metzora You learn to never ignore… a peculiar emission Or painful condition That’s explained in detail in the torah
Tazria Limerick
If your skin is scaly and sore And is oozing with grossness and gore You’ll be labeled “unclean” Till the priest intervenes And dunks you in water that’s pure
You Get What You Get…?
Welcome back to school. I hope that everyone had a restful vacation and a meaningful Passover holiday. I appreciated the time off and my own Passover celebration. I was particularly moved this year by the ways in which my own children have become increasingly engaged in this holiday and the multiple ways that their involvement […]
Shemini Limerick
This week we read about the final dedication of the Mishkan. Aaron offers up the priestly sacrifce and it is accepted. Then his two sons, Nadav and Abihu offer up an addition al sacrifice that wasn’t in the game plan. The text says that they used: “Aish Zarah” – strange or foreign fire and were punished […]
Reaching Kitah Gimel: Personalizing Prayer
During a recent class, my Kitah Gimel students received a gift from the religious school, a gift that would have been unthinkable, even shocking, decades ago when I was in the 6th grade of a classical Reform “Sunday School.” Each Kitah Gimel student received a copy of the Journal Edition of the Reform siddur, Mishkan […]
Level vs Flat: The Revenge- Continuing Adventures in Home Improvement
You’ve probably seen the commercial. A pretty young woman wakes up in her young person’s cheaply-decorated apartment bedroom. She smiles, stretches and leaps from the edge of the bed and in one effortless motion she pulls off an unsightly lighting fixture from the ceiling and reveals the stylish ceiling fan hidden underneath. She returns to the room, dressed as a bride, carried over the threshold by a handsome groom. She spins out of his arms, peeling off all the ugly old wallpaper and revealing the attractive yellow paint job underneath. In a graceful cascade of never-ending movement, they flash through their lives- dad lifts the young kids off a dingy, toy-strewn rug, mom pulls up the rug and, with the help of her now-teenage boys, rolls out a new carpet and serves them lemonade without missing a beat. Her gracefully aging husband comes down the stairs and joyfully dances as he pushes the kitchen wall back, opening up the space and revealing French doors. The scene shifts and the much older couple are hosting a family gathering on the patio. The husband asks the wife to dance, evoking the courtship of their youth, and as they tenderly move around each other, their two grown sons dance around the perfect green lawn with wives and children of their own. The camera pulls back and the sun begins to set on a perfect American day as the Lowe’s logo appears on the screen along with the slogan “Never Stop Improving.”. Throughout it all, that song keeps playing- you know the one cause it sticks in your head like gum under a theatre seat (trust me, I’m an expert): “Don’t stop doing what you do”
It’s a great commercial, right? Brilliant and inspiring and a total crock of shit.
Seriously, the guy who made this commercial should fucking die. He should be beaten to death with his Clios or forced to eat them all, so that his stomach explodes and he dies really painfully and then gets eaten cock first by a gluttonous gangster and, by the way, if you haven’t seen The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover then do yourself a favor and DON’T. It’s soooo not worth seeing just to get that reference. Wikipedia if you must or just pretend I made a Hunger Games reference or something else current and that I’m not just some weird aging freakazoid who’s pop-culture reference points are still stuck in the 90’s (“Hunger Games” that’s a thing, right? I can’t keep up with all these new-fangled “books” you kids are reading today. Back in my day we didn’t bother with any of that “reading” nonsense. We just watched Ren and Stimpy on VHS in our dorm rooms and we liked it!)
Reaching Kitah Gimel: A Seder to Remember
Inspired by a Torah Aura Productions webinar* on experiential Jewish education, I prepared a “condensed” Seder** for Kitah Gimel. In our 60 minutes together, students blessed, told, sang, questioned, answered, dipped, and ate. Desks pushed end to end and covered with white cloths formed the Seder table – the children’s table , to be exact! […]
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