49/KISS/V’zot Ha’Bracha

I ended Yom Kippur with a private kiss. Semi private. With my back to the congregation at the City Winery, our fantastic venue for the High Holiday services in Tribeca, at the back of the stage, I leaned in and kissed the top of the wooden wine barrel that served as our makeshift ark. I […]

Read more
48/ENTER

The ‘enter’ key on my laptop got stuck yesterday, just wouldn’t work and neither could I. Restarted the computer, wiped the keyboard, hoped, and prayed. Click. It ‘worked’. Once again I was able to enter the domain of words and communications, vital, urgent, in the midst of this busy season. For a moment I pondered […]

Read more
47/WITNESS

Two minutes before the ceremony started the rabbi tapped me on the shoulder: one of the witnesses hadn’t arrived, would I mind being the second one to sign Naomi and Glenn’s Ketuba – marriage contract? Clearly, not an offer one can refuse, under most circumstances, and definitely not when the groom is already making his […]

Read more
46/Translate/Ki Tavo

“Translating Hebrew into another language is like kissing a bride through a veil” – I thought of this quote, most often attributed to Bialik, one of the greatest Hebrew poets of the 20th century, during a recent wedding in the French speaking parts of Canada. As the speeches began during the wedding banquet, an older […]

Read more
45/BURY

The casket made its way down the central aisle of the Upper East Sides’ Sutton Place Synagogue towards the exit doors, the long black car, the cemetery in Queens, the eternal resting home inside the earth. It was followed by the slow, somber procession of mourners, among them several young women loudly sobbing. The sound […]

Read more