Seeing Both Sides of the Holy Land – Forward.com.
This is a great article in-depth on our success in creating a new for profit way to generate peace and prosperity, especially for our peace partners and honest businesses committed to equality of Israelis and Palestinians.
A group drives up to the Mount of Olives and takes in the vista below: the Old City of Jerusalem; the Dome of the Rock in the near distance; the modern city a bit farther off.
An Israeli tour guide begins to explain the importance of this spot to the Jewish people. “King David,” he might say, “walked here.” He will explain where Jews could go, and where they could not,
…
I remember sitting very peacefully in the synagogue on Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, just five days after my disastrous Yom Kippur fast day, which fortunately I completed despite serious exhaustion. Fasts, as anyone who does them knows, are deeply personal affairs, struggles that pull you right into yourself and away from global concerns. But following the rhythms of life, Sukkot takes you right back from the exalted and highly personal inner reality of Yom Kippur. Sukkot pulls you into reality, into identity, human identity and Jewish identity, and the tension between them.
In the ancient world, Jerusalem was apparently a place where people of many nationalities gathered around the holiday of Sukkot, and it seems…
This is a poem that I wrote in honor of my daughter Lexi’s Bat Mitsvah. Many who heard me recite it at the Bat Mitsvah wanted me to make it available. Here it is.
SWEPT BY VISION
August 31, 2011
Wrapped in blankets,
And swept by vision,
Her eyes on fire with dramas unseen,
She told a tale,
Like ancient bards and mystics.
She breathed in her words,
And her eyes spoke of places
Far away and never conjured before,
Her massive shock of little curls
Dramatizing the contours of her serious face.
She was four.
She was in the middle of telling a story
To me in her bunk bed,
At darkened bed-time.
Without warning she…
I grew up in a world of blessings and curses, and I mean a world of radically elaborate blessings and curses. I speak of course of the Yiddish world, the world of Jews from Eastern Europe. It surrounded me and was in the air all the time. The incredible creativity in describing problematic people attests to the chief complaints about women and men. The sheer number of names for a useless person, a shlemiel, a shlemazel, a shmendrik, a pisk malocheh, and much worse, all very colorful. Jews never held anything back in their criticism of each other, which naturally psychologists might see as internalized persecution.
Some people I knew had a very hard life with bitter…
Coming soon on this site: Marc’s second blog, which will be called Compassionate Judaism and be about exactly that. Check back!
