Jewish Holidays and Culture

Memorial for Walter Blum – Pitchu Li

May 5, 2010

(תהילים קי”×—, ×™”ט) This is the second in a series of posts from the memorial for my father, Walter Blum, who passed away last year. The event mixed music and humanistic interpretations of Jewish texts to try to share what my father was like and what he was passionate about. ——————————— The words for the […]

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Memorial for Walter Blum

April 27, 2010

Walter Blum, 2008 My father, Walter Blum, died a year ago on March 22 of lymphoma. At the time, I wrote on this blog about my difficulties saying the traditional Kaddish prayer and how I planned to formulate a series of alternative “events” to honor my father in a manner that I hope he would […]

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Tzemah Yoreh’s Atheist Siddur

April 16, 2010

I was quoted in last week’s Jerusalem Post in an article profiling Tzemah Yoreh who has created a new “atheist and feminist siddur” (it’s at ReligiousAtheist.com) My quote referred to how I’ve found inspiration in Yoreh’s work for my own humanistic siddur project – SiddurWiki. If you haven’t visited, I encourage you to take a […]

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No Place for Old Folks

March 9, 2010

During last week’s Purim celebrations, I began to feel my age. Not the Megillah reading – you can appreciate that no matter how old you are (especially if you’re hard of hearing…helps drown out the din of the groggers). No, it was the party afterward. Every year, my wife Jody and I go dancing at […]

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eBooks and Sex

January 26, 2010

I’ve written in the past both about eBooks and sex, two of my favorite subjects. My stated position on eBooks is that they will supplant printed books entirely within 20 years, probably less; newspapers and magazines will be entirely digital as early as 5 years from now. My recent article on sex explored how premarital […]

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Cliff’s Air Conditioner, Climate Change, and the Jewish People

January 19, 2010

My friend Cliff called this week to say he was getting rid of an old air conditioning unit and would I want to take it off his hands…at no charge? Cliff knew that I had spent much of the summer sweltering in my top floor home office. I have an air conditioner already but, at […]

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Introducing SiddurWiki

November 18, 2009

When my father died in March, I posted an article on how it has been difficult for me to say Kaddish on a regular basis. Instead, I proposed to sponsor a series of events that over the course of the 12 months of mourning would serve the goal of “ilu’i nishmato” – to “elevate the […]

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Oud v’Rikoud

November 12, 2009

The annual Jerusalem International Oud Festival has become the leading event of its kind on the ethnic music calendar. Now in its tenth year, the festival, which kicks off tonight, lasts for 16 days and includes shows in both Jerusalem and Nazareth. But those of us fortunate to have attended last week’s “Boogie Nights” dance […]

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A Mohel in Jerusalem

November 4, 2009

Last week our mohel, Rabbi Chanan Feld, passed away in Berkeley. I say “our” mohel – he presided over our now 18-year-old son Amir’s brit mila (ritual circumcision) in 1991 – but he really belonged to the entire northern half of California where he touched the lives of literally thousands of new parents and their […]

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Sexuality and Orthodoxy

October 13, 2009

Sex sells. And in Jerusalem, with its large religious population, a session on if Orthodoxy can come to terms with sexual activity – both in and out of marriage – drew an overflow crowd at the recent Gateways Festival of Jewish Learning and Culture. The festival is a remarkable event: two days of pluralistic learning […]

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