Our Shabbat Guest’s Scary Question
This past Friday night we hosted a group of 28 students from a top Canadian university, Jews and non-Jews. It was beautiful, sweeter than honey, as usual. At one point, a non-Jewish student came to talk with me one-on-one in the kitchen. “I wanted to ask you…my friends warned me not to tag my social […]
Read MoreTonight at the Hippy Party
Today my daughter asked me to join her at a hippy dance/prayer party for Rosh Chodesh Elul: “Slichot and Hallel Combined.” Truth is, I didn’t want to go. We just got back from a 4-day family vacation, and I haven’t exercised since we left, and my kitchen looks like it was hit by a tornado. […]
Read More30 Years in Israel this Month!
We are on a family vacation up north this week, and today I visited Muchraka for the first time. This high peak in the Carmel Mountains next to the Druze village Dalit AL Carmel is traditionally identified as the place where Elijah staged his historic contest against the idol-worshipping prophets of the Baal, as the […]
Read MoreMy Daughter Saw Black, and then a Rainbow 🌈
Jewishly, I fit in everywhere and nowhere. Partially thanks to the serpentine route of my personal journey to (and through) Orthodoxy, and partially thanks to the tolerance and open-mindedness I imbibed with my mother’s milk, I feel as comfortable communicating with a secular Jew as I do with someone Chassidic, Litvish, Chardal, National Religious, Modern […]
Read MoreKinderlach, Go Home
Today I participated in Shevach’s amazing day trip to Gush Etzion. We visited a bunch of places (this photo was taken at the Herodian) but the place that made the deepest impression on me was Kefar Etzion and the story of the brutal 1948 massacre of 242 Gush-Etzion kibbutz members (among them 22 women as […]
Read MoreMy Me vs. Them Shabbat
All my kids were home this week for Shabbat lunch. We don’t all get together so often, and I had been looking forward to a nice chance for everyone to reconnect. But soon after the meal started, the conversation turned into an stormy debate over Judicial Reform. We Weisbergs are a colorful, diverse bunch, and […]
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