How is human rights a Jewish concept? Is it even possible or appropriate to shoehorn an apparently secular construct into a specific religious or cultural context? Two thoughts arise first: The concept of an internationally-recognized corpus of human rights, and its attendant institutions, arose immediately following the Second World War, and the recognition of the horrors […]
Our household is enjoying a second season of pandemic gardening. Last summer, like many others with the blessing of a yard, we dug up a modest rectangle and planted a vegetable garden. This summer’s crop is almost at an end, but the bounty of tomatoes is dotting my diet with red, orange and green deliciousness. […]
When the Torah begins, it seems as if there was nothing, and then there was something. At the start, when elohim created the celestial and earthly realms, on earth was utter nothingness, with blank darkness hovering over the depths… and then, everything emerges from it. It’s a strange, haunting vision, provoking many ways of understanding it – scientific, […]
There was a time when we all gathered around a single screen to watch a live event during the school day. Some of those times occurred at history-making moments, not all of them bearing the same weight. The first one I can recall involved a hockey game, sometime in the early 1970, but I don’t […]
Last year at this time, it made perfect sense that I would write about time and counting. Then, as now, we were in the Omer period, the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the eve of Shavuot, which celebrates the gift of Torah. Then, as now, we were grappling with the impact of the […]
Dear OrH Family, It’s only a few days before Passover, so I won’t take up too much of your time with a long missive. In the spirit of the four questions and the four cups, I did however, want to share with you four letters, including this one, which I hope you will make time […]
Spring and Passover. The entire Jewish calendar hinges on the confluence of season with festival. Though we experience what feel like inconsistent shifts in our holiday dates from year to year (when is Passover this year??), it’s the anchoring of pesah in aviv/spring that keeps everything else in the year cycle in its season. What a gift it is, to have the opportunity to […]
It’s been a minute. This rather quirky contemporary expression means its opposite. When you [used to] run into someone on the sidewalk, if it had been a while since you’d seen each other, it’s what one of you might say to the other. Really. It’s been a minute. Time, many of us are experiencing, is […]
When I was a child, I had a favourite book of Jewish folk tales and stories, which I would love to read aloud to company. Apparently, my parents didn’t curb this propensity, which may have laid the groundwork for some of my current professional activities [insert winking rabbi emoji]. My all-time favourite section of the […]
Nes gadol hayah sham. A great miracle happened there. Where? In Great Britain, of course. A vaccine developed to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is now being offered to British citizens, beginning with a widely publicized first injection on December 8. That it is happening this week in the month of December […]
