Snakes and Angels: Shavuot Learning on Sderot and Gaza

May 24, 2007

It’s traditional to learn Torah on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which began this past Tuesday night. Nine-year-old Aviv’s class had a pre-Shavuot student-parent study session at school earlier in the week and my wife Jody and I went. But by the time we walked out, I found myself drawing political rather than religious conclusions. […]

Read the full article →

New Radio Station Hopes to Build Bridges Through Music

May 17, 2007

Issie Kirsh, a Jewish businessman who has been involved in efforts to build bridges between blacks and whites in post-Apartheid South Africa, has a vision for promoting peace in the Middle East: soft rock hits from the 80s and 90s. Kirsh’s latest project, an ambitious joint Israeli/Palestinian radio station broadcasting in English to Israel, the […]

Read the full article →

5 Star Camping

May 10, 2007

I don’t get what people like about camping. The tents are small and stuffy, the ground is hard and bumpy, and the sun rises too early, leading to sleep deprivation in most people I talk to. Everything gets dirty when you’re camping and if you’re near the beach, sticky too. There are inevitably mosquitoes and […]

Read the full article →

The Royal Mikve – Jpost Talkbacks

May 4, 2007

Last Friday the Jerusalem Post, as part of a new arrangement to reprint articles from This Normal Life, published my piece “The Royal Mikve,” Jody and my adventure searching for a mikve while on vacation at the Dead Sea. The story, which chronicles a less than modest encounter with the staff in charge of the […]

Read the full article →

Matisyahu: No Chasid Where There’s No Chesed

April 26, 2007

Nothing upsets me quite as much as when someone deliberately goes out of their way to harm one of my friends. That’s apparently what happened with Hasidic reggae superstar Matisyahu who I wrote about previously in this blog. I recently had a chance to catch up with pal Aaron Bisman, Matisyahu’s longtime manager and the […]

Read the full article →

Wandering Jews

April 19, 2007

Lately I’ve been using a new Web 2.0 Internet service called Geni. It’s deceptively simple and intensely addictive. The Geni website basically makes building a family tree fast and easy (“Geni” is short for “genealogy”). When you first come to the site, Geni asks you to enter your name, your parents and any siblings. You […]

Read the full article →

Son of a Beatle

April 12, 2007

I never got a chance to see the Beatles perform live. I was only five when the Fab Four first hit America where I grew up and my parents had raised me on a strict diet of classical music. I didn’t even get my first transistor radio until 1970, by which time the Beatles had […]

Read the full article →

“Not Fit for a Dog”

April 1, 2007

Following the successful conclusion of her first dog-sitting job, my 13-year-old daughter Merav has been looking for ways to expand her business, especially now that she has extra time due to the two and a half week Pesach vacation that began last week. An article last week in the Israeli daily newspaper Idiot Ahronot may […]

Read the full article →

The Winner by a Hair

March 23, 2007

The votes are in and the result is decidedly…inconclusive. On February 8, I posted two pictures of me – one with short and one with long hair and asked readers to vote on which I should keep. I pointed out that my daughter Merav favored the long look while my wife Jody felt I was […]

Read the full article →

The Marriage Witness

March 15, 2007

A couple of good friends of ours are getting married. In order to tie the knot, they needed two men to testify at the Jerusalem office of the Chief Rabbi that they are single and that therefore their upcoming marriage would not in fact be a case of forbidden adultery. They asked me to be […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →