Tucked away on the top shelf in our closet is a box filled with writings. There are 5 journals from high school through college, assorted poems, and musings from over the years, a few drawings, and a couple of envelopes stuffed with letters sent by Steve from the summer before we got married. I was at home having knee surgery and he was working at camp. The only way to describe them is to call them what they are: love letters. I haven’t opened the box except perhaps when we moved a little over 2 years ago for a cursory … Continue reading Good Morning 4-28-24

We don’t like to admit it, but we are slaves–to our jobs, to social approval, to our addictions to media, substances, programming, and our ever-growing appetites, to our desire for validation from others, to our own oversized egos. As the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, we too are slaves in our own little Egypt. Our slavery lasts a long time. Most of us don’t even realize we are enslaved. There is a story of the rich businessman who took off to a small Mexican village on the Gulf coast to relax. While walking the beach, he came upon a man … Continue reading Good Morning 4-26-24

Yesterday I was shocked and heartbroken at the news out of some of our most prestigious universities. Students at Columbia and Yale and others have decided to make their own Jewish classmates bear responsibility for what the Israeli government is doing. How do they make them responsible? How does that even make sense? They refuse to allow them to even walk on campus. Large crowds surround them, chanting litanies like “Get the Zionists out!” “Don’t let the Zionist move!” They link arms and move in ever-tightening circles around the unfortunate student identified as Jewish by their dress or reputation. Columbia … Continue reading Good Morning 4-25-24

Last night at our home Seder we had the ever-adorable neighbor girls here to participate. As I read the story, they came to the flannel board with their figure of Pharaoh or Moses and donned the masks as we went through the ten plagues. Their mom took pictures and everyone was happy. All three girls are excellent readers for their ages, but I was particularly impressed with 8-year old Aria who carefully sounded out each word–even hard ones like “intelligent”–and spoke with great inflection. Then we got to the part in the Haggadah where the children are to ask the … Continue reading Good Morning 4-24-24

Can we all agree that antisemitism is a scourge on the Jewish people? Do we not see signs of it rearing its ugly head nearly every time we turn around? The recent uprising at Columbia University against Israel and Jews in general strikes at our very hearts. The protestors actually closed the campus to Jewish students with hateful chants and the physical blocking of entry. Elsewhere there was the horrific attack on Sahar Tartak, an Orthodox Jewish student at Yale, a few days ago. She dared to attempt to film a pro-Hamas protest for the Yale Free Press–an oddly incongruent … Continue reading Good Morning 4-23-24

The weekend before this last one, we got played by Mother Nature. Warm temps well into the 70’s had the kids out in force. Jackets were shunned in favor of shirtsleeves and mowers got revved up. We bought our 4th raised garden bed frame and started to get things squared away in the yard. My sister in Sioux Falls was so excited she confidently bought pepper, tomato, and flower plants that she set out on her deck. My other sister told of a couple who had moved to Sioux Falls from Atlanta and they put in their entire garden with … Continue reading Good Morning 4-22-24

We are about to embark on perhaps the most important and beloved week on the Jewish calendar: Pesach. Most people know that the holiday is rooted in the story of the Exodus when Moses led the Israelite slaves out of Egypt. They know that the tenth plague was the killing of the firstborn in every household in Egypt “from the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of the cattle.” (Exodus 12:29). The word Pesach means to “pass over,” for the LORD told the … Continue reading Good Morning 4-21-24

Some people live what seem to be charmed lives. They are happy and successful, they have strong marriages, beautiful children who are respectful and a joy to be around. They live in lovely homes and fulfilling jobs. They seem to not have a care in the world. They are fully cognizant of how blessed they are and respond with gratitude for what they’ve been given. They even share generously with others that they might join in their good fortune. Then there are those whose lives are not so easy. Their children are not always so well-mannered, or perhaps they have … Continue reading Good Morning 4-19-24

You have only to look at the headlines to know how quickly things can change in the world. The geopolitical status of a people or a country turns on a dime according to events that we couldn’t have imagined even a day before. Whether we are talking about wars or economies, elections or natural disasters, the entire world can be affected overnight. We all have to think of what the world was like just four years ago. Within days of the announcement of an outbreak of a novel virus, the world shut down. Businesses and schools closed. People sheltered in … Continue reading Good Morning 4-18-24

My Intro to Business class just completed a chapter on Business Ethics. It’s been a great opportunity to get them to think about what it means to be an ethical person and to be inquisitive about businesses or governments who claim to be ethical but whose behavior says otherwise. As part of the lesson, I reminded them that their personal ethics are important as well and, as members of society, as future employees and employers, they need to develop their own guidelines for behavior. The famed Greek philosopher and teacher, Aristotle, spoke long and often about ethical issues. He was … Continue reading Good Morning 4-17-24