At the recent Special Person’s Day at my twins’ Solomon Schechter school, my mother-in-law and aunt sat down with the kids to work with them on the project of the morning: drafting the “10 Commandments” of our family. Based on their understanding that the 10 Commandments provided a rule book – a behavioral code of conduct – 11 year old Jacob and Sophie got to work:
God bless the inventors of Benadryl. My goodness – allergy season is in full gear, and you can see its wear and tear on the people around you. Swollen eyes, runny noses, and sluggish speech – these are the marks of those who suffer from seasonal allergies. So, what do you do if you are affected? You stay away from the outdoors, you keep your air conditioner on, and you take your medicine.
This week I was honored to deliver the Cape Town, South Africa, community-wide keynote address for Yom Yerushalayim. Hundreds gathered together in a powerful celebration of the liberation of Jerusalem 45 years ago (28th of Iyar 1967). I was reminded of the power of Jerusalem to unite the Jewish people.
The first Yom Yerushalayim was a military victory.
On June 7, 1967 (Iyar 28 on the Hebrew calendar), a Wednesday, Israeli soldiers captured the Old City of Jerusalem, reuniting the capital that had been divided, under Jordanian control since the 1948 War of Independence.
Jerusalem Day was born, observed, by order of the country’s Chief Rabbinate, with prayers of thanks.
The first ever, Old/New Shabbaton, hosted by high profile NYC real estate developer Michael Bolla, in cooperation with the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy and the Jewish International Council, NY will take place on June 8 - 9 at various venues on the Lower East Side.
One thing that often turns people off from art is that they can’t figure out what it means. The lack of fixed meaning frustrates them. The more abstract the art form — poetry, for instance, but even more so with dance, music and fine art — the more serious this problem becomes. But the cultural critic Charles Rosen makes an important point about art’s essential ambiguity — its inherent lack of fixed meaning — in his astute new collection of essays, “Freedom and the Arts.”
