Present Minute, Only Minute
My grandmother in her old age Sold barley and groats at a stall In the market place. She did not measure her cereal More carefully Than I must minutes. — The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff:…
Category: Jewish Tradition
He Knew His Books
Jesus’ education in the Hebrew Bible is so extraordinary that he is able to quote a wide variety of texts with ease—and to interpret them with great depth. His knowledge of Moses’ Torah in particular…
Fire/1
One should flee from a group of idle chatterers like from a fire. –Chofetz Chaim, A Lesson a Day: The Concepts and Laws of Proper Speech Arranged for Daily Study
A Question about a Film
The call commands us bear the burden of our neighbor and it elects us to shoulder our responsibilities for another, through the minute details of living everyday in the world.—Ira F. Stone, A Responsible Life:…
Inexpressible, Expressible
Whether culmination or aberration of history, the Holocaust transcends history. Everything about it inspires fear and leads to despair. The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of…
Some Sayings
Ben Bag Bag said, Turn it (the Torah) and turn it over again, for everything is in it, and contemplate it, and wax grey and old over it, and stir not from it, for thou…
From Lea Goldberg’s Diary
The greatest and only crime: spiritual laziness. And within that spiritual laziness, one doesn’t even acknowledge it, making it seven times worse. –Peter Cole, Hebrew Writers on Writing
Twenty-two Years Ago
The following is from Israeli novelist David Grossman’s Seven Days: A Diary, October 2001, in Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo MONDAYI keep reading hostile remarks about Israel in the…
Sooner or Later, We All Know Somebody Like This
“… and you know I’m not a father who goes around bragging about his kids–but on the subject of Beilke …” Tevye, in Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman, translated by Hillel Halkin
Oy Vey Iz Mir
“If it didn’t work out God mustn’t have wanted it to. You, Tsaytl, just weren’t meant to be a fine lady with a house full of grand things and two parents who could finally enjoy…