Coming Home from Georgia to Jerusalem
When I was in Georgia last week, Hadas and I tried to learn some Georgian words. But it wasn’t easy! Georgian shares no connection with any other language outside of Georgia and the words tend to be long and difficult to pronounce, with long uninterrupted strings of consonants with nary a vowel in sight. For […]
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I Love/Hate/Feel Guilty about Succot
I Love/Hate/Feel Guilty about Succot Reflections on holiday ambivalence from faraway Tbilisi, Georgia.
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A Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew Walk into a Bar
Well, it wasn’t a bar. But yesterday my daughter Hadas and I found ourselves sitting around a table enjoying the company of 2 headscarved Egyptian Muslims, an Indian Hindu Brahman, and a Filipino Christian man working as a nurse in Saudi Arabia. We had all signed up for the same group tour of Georgia’s wine […]
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Why the Soldier’s Face was Shining all Succot as told by Rabbi Fischel Schachter
When I heard this, it brought tears to my eyes cause it filled me with such yearning for the intensity of joy when I sit in my own Succah that that Czarist soldier felt so many years ago. It also makes me wonder about the experiences of my own great-great grandfather, Matvei, who was a […]
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Visiting My Uncle in the ICU by Adi Bitter
My uncle has been intubated and sedated in the ICU since last Friday. He does not have a wife or children, and my mother, his only sibling, lives in NY and isn’t able to be here now as she was diagnosed with COVID on Erev Rosh Hashana (and is B”H feeling good.) My brother and […]
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