Actress Sharon Fauster emcee'd a Tu B'av fashion show in Jerusalem

Tu B’av – the 15th day of the Jewish month of Av – is the closest Israelis have to a Valentine’s Day: just substitute a bit of ribald wisdom from the rabbis of the Talmud for a martyred Roman saint and a lot of cuddly Cupids. Tu B’av is the number one day for weddings in the Holy Land. It’s also a time for more general frivolity.

This week, the City of Jerusalem pulled out all the stops with a jam-packed evening of joyful Tu B’av events at the German Colony’s Beit Yehudit community and cultural center.

The evening featured a marathon of movies with “love” as a theme; a festive world music dance party put on by the Boogie organization; a provocative lecture entitled “Forbidden Love in the Talmud” by Dr. Micha Friedman; and a special concert of “love songs” by former Friends of Natasha co-founder and front man Micha Shitrit hosted by rocker Erez Lev-Ari.

The most popular event of the evening was the concert. An only-in-Jerusalem mix of secular and religious young adults (my wife Jody joked that we brought the average age of the crowd up by several percent) packed the grass to cheer on Lev-Ari who deftly blends spiritual and physical longing in his atmospheric compositions.

But before the show started, TV star Sharon Fauster, who plays the lovelorn Re’ut in the popular series Srugim about religious singles (in the very neighborhood where the event was taking place), took to the stage to introduce a Tu B’av-inspired “white” fashion show.

According to tradition (and Wikipedia), on Tu B’av, “unmarried girls would dress in simple white clothing (so that rich could not be distinguished from poor) and go out to sing and dance in the vineyards surrounding Jerusalem.” Young men who had not yet married would “go to watch and choose among them wives for themselves.”

Onto an improvised catwalk paraded four models in skimpy miniskirt and strapless ensembles. They preened and strutted, blowing kisses to the crowd and tossing back their heads of ample (and mostly blond) hair.

The audience was less sanguine. Many shifted uncomfortably. You could see some of the religious men (not the women, mind you) look around, avert their eyes and even get up to step out until the show was over. Others lapped it all up – Jerusalem doesn’t see a lot of long legged, high-heeled models strolling the Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall (they’d probably get stoned, and not in a Tel Aviv kind of way).

Then a strange thing happened: about half way through, the models started wearing scarves and jackets. The cleavage, which had been so abundant just moments before, was now obscured (although tastefully and still in white, in keeping with the evening’s Tu B’av theme).

Jody and I couldn’t figure it out. Was this part of the show? Or did someone run backstage brandishing fashionable cover-ups? Was this subtle religious coercion, along the lines of the Bridge of Strings debacle, where a pre-teen dance troop was forced to wear sweaters while going through their routines in order not to offend local sensibilities? Or was the point to demonstrate that Jerusalemites could be both sexy and modest at the same time?

Indeed, the scarves and jackets didn’t seem alien – in most cases, they served as nicely matching accessories rather than some hastily improvised capitulation.

We may never know (I’m not on a first name basis with Fauster…yet – I did try to friend her Facebook). So I can only report what I saw from first hand observation – and, oh yes, I stayed firmly in my seat, eyes forward.

I first blogged about this event over at Israelity.

The book of Eicha is traditionally read on Tisha B'av

Every year on Tisha B’av, there are pundits who write in the local newspapers that we should stop fasting and start celebrating.

Tisha B’av – the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av (which always falls somewhere in super-heated July or August) – commemorates various tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people, first and foremost the destructions of the first and second temples in Jerusalem and their subsequent exiles.

In order to properly mourn, traditional Jews refrain from eating from sundown to sundown on Tisha B’av.

But why, if the Jewish people have returned from exile to re-establish a sovereign Jewish state and even have control over Jerusalem itself, should we continue to fast? Anshel Pfeffer, writing in Haaretz, is the latest in an annual stream of columnists calling for an end to all the pseudo-sackcloth and ashes. As usual, he makes some good points.

“Tisha B’Av was never supposed to be an eternal day of mourning,” Pfeffer writes. “The prophet Zechariah, who according to tradition lived 2,500 years ago, at the time of the first return to Zion and the building of the Second Temple, quoted the Lord of Hosts promising that ‘the fasts of the fourth month, and of the fifth, seventh and tenth months will become festivals of joy and happiness for the House of Judah.’”

Not only is the exile over, but those Jews who remain living outside of Israel are not being prevented from emigrating but rather are doing so out of choice, Pfeffer says. “Praying to God that all these millions of Jews will up themselves and make aliyah is hypocritical.”

Now, there are those who say we must continue to mourn until a third temple is built. Pfeffer has an answer for that as well. When Israel captured the Old City in 1967, it was Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who assured Muslim Wakf officials they would have full control of the Temple Mount area. “The only reason that the third temple has not been built is that a majority of Israelis simply are not interested,” Pfeffer writes.

When I presented Pfeffer’s point to some friends, though, I was quickly reminded that the temples were destroyed by what the rabbis deemed “baseless hatred.” And we are far from overcoming such feelings today. Indeed, a Ynet-Gesher poll asked Israelis “What, in your opinion, is the worst source of tension in Israeli society?” 42 percent indicated religious vs. secular issues (there’s lots more in the poll – worth checking out).

So, said my friends, we continue to mourn – not for the destruction of the temples but for the continued brokenness of our fragile society.

That’s also what our rabbi said in a preface to reading the book of Eicha (Lamentations) in the garden of the Jerusalem Nature Museum last night. But as we sat outside, listening to the mournful tunes being chanted under the stars, the silence was repeatedly broken by the sound of a helicopter circling directly above us. I timed it – it came around regularly every 5-6 minutes. The copter must have made at least 10 very noisy flyovers during the reading.

None of us knew what the helicopter was doing. Was it police or army? Had their been a tip-off that a terror attack was immiment? Or was this area – close to the Knesset – always patrolled and we just normally never stop to listen?

Regardless of the reason, the symbolism seemed clear: exile must truly be over – we have our own security forces with our own helicopters that can protect the Jewish people from future disasters.

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe the reason we need the helicopters is that we still have enemies who are bent on our destruction. Only once we have true peace in the region can we start eating again on Tisha B’av.

Food for thought…well at least for after the fast.

A slightly different version of this article was published on Erev Tisha B’av on Israelity.

With another ship of questionable humanitarian aid and activists on its way to Gaza this week, I thought I’d take a look back at what my wife Jody and I did during the original “Free Gaza flotilla” and near lynching of Israeli troops six weeks ago: we went to a concert.

Not just any concert, but the 25^th anniversary of one of the most popular rock acts ever in Israel – Mashina – in an over-the-top performance at Jerusalem’s Sultan’s Pool.

Now, I don’t in any way mean to diminish the gravity of what happened in the sea off the Gaza coast. And our attendance at the show was not really linked to that morning’s events – we’d bought our tickets beforehand. But the juxtaposition of repeated condemnation with the continuation of “normal life” has been something Israelis have been doing for years.

I remember in 2006, as the Second Lebanon War was raging and the world was accusing Israel of war crimes, going with Jody (and a couple thousand other Israelis, mind you) to the annual Wine Festival at the Israel Museum. And all during the Second Intifada, when we were portrayed as both victim and oppressor, we didn’t stop patronizing cafes or shopping at the mall.

So cheering on Mashina might, in some ways, be seen as an act of pure patriotism – an odd but effective, ironically appropriate means towards demonstrating that there is much more to Israel than the one-sided depiction of conflict that makes headlines.

As for the concert itself, the band pulled out all the stops. The stage included 7 screens, laser pyrotechnics, two sets of fireworks and a catwalk into the audience that allowed the band to get more intimate with those paying the $75 for orchestra seats. Band members were all wirelessly mic’d so that even the guitarist and sax players could stroll about the crowd.

Mashina played mostly hits from their 13 albums plus a few lesser-known tracks from the latest release. For me, it was a concert for which I’d been literally waiting 24 years – in 1986, I camped out on the hill facing the same Sultan’s Pool with Jody and our friends David and Shelley, listening to the sound reverberate and bounce off the Old City walls but never seeing the band itself.

Mashina’s closing number was Ein Makom Acher – “No Other Place.” While the lyrics are oblique – is lead singer Yuval Banai singing about love or maybe the shortness of our time on earth? – I’d like to imagine he was also speaking about Israel – that we have “no other place” and that it’s incumbent on us to make good on the great experiment of creating a flourishing Jewish homeland – with competent politics and inspired music – and to put both sides forward to an increasingly hostile world.

I published this story originally shortly after the first Gaza flotilla in June on the Israelity blog.

Mugrabi Cinema in its Heyday

When I was hired to record a series of conversations to accompany a course on teaching Hebrew to English speakers, I didn’t know I’d be getting a lesson in Tel Aviv nostalgia.

The project was to edit a 500-page curriculum originally developed to prepare U.S. diplomats posted to Israel. Along with the written text, there were about 200 short snippets of dialogue – ranging from “how are you today?” to “the fish was delicious, may I please have the recipe.”

I brought in nine Israeli men and women to record the voices. That alone was a big part of the overall experience. In my line of work, I don’t meet a lot of native-born young people. Indeed, all of my current clients are Anglos and when I write an article for a publication like Israel 21c, I usually conduct the interview over the phone. So, it was refreshing to get to know the world outside our insular Jerusalem Anglo bubble.

My main voice talent was a genial twenty-something named Dov, recently out of university and unfortunately out of a job, having been downsized when the economy went south. With a deep, rich baritone and superb diction, he was considering a career change to radio.

Our team also included Hallel, a playwriting student with a mostly shaved head whose father once served as the security guard at our son’s kindergarten; a musician named Daniel who heads up a band called Moshe and the Refugees that sounds a little like a mashup between the Doors and Leonard Cohen; Maya, who’s pursuing an M.A. in criminology at Bar Ilan University; Rachel, a professional translator, Hebrew/English editor and hazanit (a female cantor); and Avital who is active in the Gush Etzion “Raise Your Spirits” musical theater ensemble that performs exclusively for women.

Even more fun: the curriculum took us on a trip down memory lane (or perhaps a stroll on our parent’s alleyway of antiquities).

At a key point in the course, Mr. Williams, a U.S. diplomat, is looking for the government tourist office. He is told to head in the direction of the Mugrabi Cinema. None of us had ever heard of the Mugrabi and, despite our all being Jerusalemites, we were pretty sure there was no such theater with that name in Tel Aviv today.

Thank goodness for Google. A quick search and we discovered that the Mugrabi was in fact a key cultural icon. Built in the 1920s, the building served as the home for the Palestine Folk Opera in the 1940s and later became the cinema for which it was most famed. It was designed in a classic Bauhaus style. If you wanted to locate yourself in Tel Aviv, it was always in relation to the Mugrabi.

The theater was, sadly, bulldozed to put up a parking lot in the 1980s (Israeli shades of the Joni Mitchell classic).

There was another reference in the dialogues that was less well known. Adjacent to the Mugrabi was a restaurant called the “Brooklyn Bar” which, according to the text, served banana splits “just like in America.”

I’m sure that – if the course saw fit to put what sounded like a glorified ice cream parlor in the same conversation as its more famous street-mate – it must have been popular with the locals at some point in the recent past. We found one short mention of the Brooklyn Bar online but, unfortunately, no pictures.

Banana splits have been replaced these days by immigrants from Brooklyn as Israel’s main import. But for a few minutes, it was a trip to indulge in this nostalgic blast from the past.

Let’s just hope our Mr. Williams arrived at his destination safely. And that the ice cream lived up to its cross-culturally elevated reputation.

A version of this story originally appeared earlier this year on the Israelity blog.

MK David Rotem

New regulations from the Chief Rabbinate have non-Orthodox Israelis in a tizzy. According to the rules, anyone can have their Jewishness called into question at any time. But legislators in the Knesset aren’t taken the changes lying down with MK David Rotem vowing to fight.

The new rules appear to be part of an ever-tightening noose around the conversion status of Russian immigrants to Israel who the rabbinic establishment fears may not be Jewish according to a strict interpretation of Jewish Law. But they also apply to immigrants from any country – including the two hundred thousand or so Anglos in Israel.

The issue was brought to the forefront a few years back when a rabbinic judge retroactively annulled an immigrant’s conversion status because she told the court, while seeking a divorce, that she did not observe Shabbat or family purity laws.

The controversial ruling was then applied to thousands of other conversions that were considered to have been conducted improperly, in part because the converts were not living ultra-Orthodox lifestyles.

The new regulations announced in the last month require city rabbis and marriage registrars to send every convert and (this is new) every person whose parents were married abroad to the court for a determination of whether or not she or he’s a Jew.

While the main targets of the ruling are converts, the implications for Anglo immigrants are nevertheless astounding. Even though my wife Jody and I were both born Jewish, we were married in the U.S. And not by a rabbi who is on the official list of Diaspora rabbis recognized by the Chief Rabbinate. Accordingly, our children – if they decide to get married in Israel – will have to prove their own Jewishness in a court of law. And, astonishingly, they will have to pay for their own hearing.

Rivkah Lubitch, a rabbinic “pleader” who works for the Center for Women’s Justice in Jerusalem, wrote in Ynet that even if you present a marriage certificate of a “first degree relative on their mother’s side” (for example, your sister) “who had in the past received a judgment of the rabbinic court that she is a Jew,” the Marriage Registrar can still send you back to court, and if it determines “that you’re not a Jew, your sister’s Jewishness can be retroactively revoked.

Lubitch claims that a rabbinic court can summon anyone, at any time, even if that person didn’t register for marriage, and conduct a hearing about their Jewishness “and revoke it if they so will.

This is born out in a letter accompanying the directive that states that marriage registrars are “permitted” to refer even those who meet the noted conditions to such an inquiry.

I had always thought that Israel was compelled to register any marriage conducted abroad, regardless of who performed it. Does this new ruling provide a loophole to get around what has been the status quo since the establishment of the state?

My kids have plenty to be worried about. I’ve been an outspoken critic of certain aspects of religious life and one of my websites, SiddurWiki, presents some decidedly non-Orthodox positions. Combine that with the fact that we were married by a halachically-observant but officially – gasp – Reform rabbi in the U.S., and there are some big question marks hanging over my children’s futures.

To be cynical (like I haven’t been already), this all seems like a ploy to increase the staffing levels at the Chief Rabbi’s office, providing more jobs to cronies at the taxpayer’s expense, although as I wrote earlier, the financial burden of the inquiries will be borne by the person being investigated. Talk about chutzpah!

Ultimately, this new ruling, if it’s not overturned, will serve as further fodder to the increasingly strident attacks against the official rabbinic establishment – just see the passions ignited by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai’s recent comments.

When I shared this article with my teenage daughter, she couldn’t understand what the Rabbinate was trying to achieve. Neither can I, other than to create a blatant wedge between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry.

The ruling has plenty of detractors, including Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, the American Jewish Committee’s Dr. Ed Rettig who called it “a power grab of breathtaking scale,” and Anat Hoffman, head of the Israel Religious Action Center who has demanded that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein cancel the new procedures “on the grounds that they were not issued by the justice minister and approved by the Knesset Law Committee, as the law demands on matters of marriage and divorce,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

David Rotem, an Orthodox member of the Knesset from the Israel Beitenu party and chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, has also joined the opposition, saying he’s ready to go all the way to the Supreme Court to fight the politicization of “our beautiful halacha.” Adds Rotem, “These scandalous guidelines manifest the attempt to oversee every aspect of everything that happens in the country.” Ironically, Rotem is behind a bill that would change the way conversions are recognized that has also been derided by non-Orthodox critics as being overly stringent.

Maybe this new ruling can serve as a wake up call. One of the main reasons we chose to live in the revitalized Jewish state was to be able to have a say over our own destiny. When you don’t like something, you can take action – demonstrate, vote, write letters to your parliamentary representatives. That’s both a challenge and an opportunity. I for one welcome the coming battle.

This article appeared on the Israelity blog last week.

Must-have knafe

I’ve never eaten it, but I’ve just got to have it. Kanafeh, that is. It’s an Arab pastry somewhat like baklava, but with the addition of soft goats cheese, an orange coating and sprinkled pistachio nuts.

I first learned about kanafeh from a friend who was guiding us through East Jerusalem. He pointed out a bakery near Damascus Gate called Eiffel that he says serves the best kanafeh in town. We were on a tight timetable and weren’t able to stop, but since then I’ve been hankering for a taste.

Our next opportunity came as we were heading up north from Jerusalem for a hike in the Carmel Mountains (see this post on Israelity that I wrote about that tiyul). Our route took us through the Druze village of Daliat el-Carmel and there, on the right side of the street, was a restaurant advertising fresh kanafeh, My taste buds fired up.

But this was a Friday and, unbeknownst to us, that’s prime shopping time and the traffic at noon in Daliat el-Carmel was bumper to bumper. There was no way to pull over, let alone anywhere to park. As we nudged forward, my kanafeh receded sadly into the background.

My search for kanafeh reminded me of another dessert obsessively sought. Back at the height of the mid-2000s donut craze in the U.S., I was traveling on the East Coast with the family. My goal: to find a Krispy Kreme store with the red “hot now” light on, indicating that original glazed donuts were rolling fresh out of the oven.

On highways from Toronto to Cleveland and Chicago, past rest stops and strip malls, the Krispy Kreme proved elusive until the last day of our road trip. Unlike with the kanafeh, my love for Mr. Krispy was ultimately requited. And it was worth it.

On the way out of the Carmel, we skipped the Daliat traffic, but also our opportunity to pick up some kanafeh for the ride home. Still, it’s only a matter of time before I find the time to head back to the Old City. I just hope that after all the anticipation, I actually like it!

My search for knafeh in print began on the Israelity blog.

(מן התפילה)

This is the eighth and final post in the series from the memorial for my father, Walter Blum, who passed away last year. The event mixed music and humanistic interpretations of Jewish texts to try to share what my father was like and what he was passionate about.

The verses to this final song are the conclusion to the Kaddish prayer. When we were planning this evening, I shared with Yoel and Daphna my difficulty saying Kaddish, but how I love the music during prayer. I asked them if they could write a new tune specifically for Kaddish.

Yoel started to strum and within 5 minutes they’d created a beautiful melody for the last line of Kaddish. Perhaps this will be the way that I can say Kaddish – either in shul or privately – singing quietly to myself. Maybe this tune will even be adopted as a way to end the Kaddish in the service itself (since this writing, Nava Tehila has adopted Oseh Shalom as the conclusion to Ma’ariv). I invite you now to sing with me as we end the evening.

To view the entire memorial evening on a single page, please click here.

Map to the festival. Take the green route

Run, no sprint to the Light in Jerusalem festival, which is closing tonight – in just a few hours! – after a successful seven day run. The event consists of tens of creative, playful and often awe inspiring light installations from internationally renowned “light artists,” displayed and often tightly integrated into the fabric of Jerusalem Old City – walls, windows sometimes entire sides of synagogues.

Last year, some 250,000 visitors from all over Israel attended, as did our family. While there were small klatches of overseas tourists, most of the participants wandering the Old City this week seemed to be part of large boisterous tour guide-led groups of Hebrew-speakers for whom, by the looks on their faces, this was their first time in the Old City perhaps since childhood.

Indeed, the winding alleyways of the Old City seemed even more packed than last year. Particularly in the Jewish Quarter, you often had to queue up just to pass through a particularly narrow arch.

We got a tip from a friend on Facebook – thanks Arlene! – which I want to pass on to you here. Avoid the crowds and take the green route which starts Kikar Zahal (the intersection of the Old City and Jaffa Street) and meanders into East Jerusalem. There are far fewer visitors and the installations are truly fabulous.

Two in particular stood out. In “What do trees do at night?” by artist Joseph Meir Jimmy, a large oak tree set against the Old City walls comes to life via clever projections of images, animation and an accompanying soundtrack. The tree, with wonderfully expressive cartoon eyes, was beset upon by birds, children and scorpions, while transitioning through rain and snow. When the lights went off, it was hard to believe we were looking at just a plain tree and a wall.

Zedekiah’s Cave (Solomon’s Quarry) is an enormous underground cavern, where rocks were mined to build the First Temple. For the festival, it was turned into a aquarium-like environment created by Eran Klein and Eli Kochavi. Phosphorescent blue lights lit the way through the cave towards a light installation simulating fish swimming through water while soothing new age music played. It was truly magical.

What was particularly unique was the fact that many of the light shows were built specifically for the locations. The images projected on Damascus Gate, for example, used the shapes and turrets of the gate to weave its tale. It wouldn’t have worked anywhere else.

There’s lots more to see – tall illuminated rods depciting green grass at Jaffa Gate; a history of the Old City projected onto the newly reconstructed Hurva Synagogue.

The festival runs tonight from sunset until midnight. There’s inexpensive parking in the City Hall (Kikar Safra) parking lot (that’s the closest to the green route). as well as the Mamilla and Karta lots with free buses from the farther flung Ammunition Hill and Old Train Station parking locations. Or take the bus. Just don’t miss it.  More information from the festival’s website.

This review of the show appeared earlier in the day on the Israelity website.

Lee Vatkin, z'l

The text message came in early Tuesday morning: “There are no words to express our thoughts and feelings at this time. Our darling daughter Lee Gabriella’s funeral will be at 11:15 PM tonight.”

By this time, of course, we already knew – half of Anglo Jerusalem did, whether by email, phone calls, or Facebook status updates. Our friend Fiona Kantor’s 16-year-old daughter, Lee Vatkin, along with her 21-year-old boyfriend, had died of a drug overdose some hours before.

The late hour of her burial – funerals usually take place the same day as the death in Israel – was to allow an autopsy which according to news reports, indicated the two had taken methadone that was either “dirty” or possibly laced (intentionally or accidentally – it’s not sure) with poison.

The world of English-speaking liberal/religious southern Jerusalem consists of multiple overlapping circles. Lee’s mother, Fiona, is at the center of many of them – a go-getter who had, among many activities in a vivacious career, organized Anglo support for Nir Barkat’s mayoral campaign (she was persuasive enough to get me to volunteer).

I didn’t know Lee, but our daughter Merav, also 16, did – she had gone to elementary school with her and even attended Lee’s bat mitzvah – although they had fallen out of touch since then. The Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahronot – which devoted a full two-page spread to the tragedy (unfortunately intended less to report than titillate and spur sales) – provided some additional details into Lee’s life.

Lee was a smart and talented kid: she had attended the prestigious L’yada high school in Jerusalem but later moved to the Ankori school which specializes in preparing young people for their matriculation exams. She also began hanging out in a tough neighborhood near Zion Square downtown that attracts teens and young adults who don’t fit into “the system.”

The story in Yediot focused on the “great love” between Lee and her Russian-born boyfriend, an only child from a troubled background who was being raised by his father and grandmother (his mother stayed back in Russia). The boyfriend, apparently, had an extensive criminal record.

While Lee’s family rightly refused to be interviewed for the article, Yediot nevertheless provided scandalous details about how the couple had been found lying together on a mattress in the apartment they shared in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood. The paramedics pronounced them dead on the spot.

If you go looking for Lee’s Facebook profile, you won’t find it – it was taken down after her death (by who – how does that work?) In its place is a memorial page with just under 700 members as of this writing.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral despite the late hour. The combined communities couldn’t have been more diverse. There were Lee’s modern religious parents and their friends, mixed with Lee’s hevrah of the downtown distraught, many pierced in multiple places, some with hair dyed in surreal shades of phosphorescent purple and orange.

I have been to many funerals in this Jerusalem hall, but I had never seen crying like this. When Fiona, Lee’s mother, spoke, in a shudderingly broken voice, she hinted that she knew something was coming – that she “was losing her daughter.” She just didn’t know it would be this, she said.

It’s been several days now,  but I’m still shaking – every parent was, thinking about their own beloved teenagers and what dangers might yet be lurking. What causes a good girl from a family living in a “quality” neighborhood (as the Yediot article intoned) to drop so far down?

None of us at the funeral knew. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Fiona articulated it best in the final words of her eulogy. “Hold onto your kids,” she said. “They’re the most precious thing you have.”

Hold on. Hold on tight.

————————

This story appeared earlier this week on the Israelity blog.

(תהילים צ”ב, ו)

This is the seventh in a series of posts from the memorial for my father, Walter Blum, who passed away last year. The event mixed music and humanistic interpretations of Jewish texts to try to share what my father was like and what he was passionate about. Next week I’ll post the eighth and final video.

——————————————

“Ma Gadlu Ma’asecha Adonai. Maod Amku Machshevotecha” – How great are your works O Lord, Your thoughts are very deep. The words here reflect one of my father’s greatest gifts to his children – the ability to think, to discuss, to debate on a wide range of subjects. My brother describes my father as a true “Renaissance Man.”

My father worked for more than 30 years as a feature writer for the San Francisco Examiner’s Sunday magazine. He arrived home from the paper at exactly 5:25 PM. Dinner was served precisely at 5:30 PM. We ate together nearly every night where we discussed politics, philosophy, science, history, religion. My brother and I were expected to participate. I credit my father’s love for intellectual pursuits as having given me my own abilities to pontificate at the Shabbat table.

Every night, after dinner, my father would retire to his den where he would work for 2 hours writing his book. He wrote many books over the years and unfortunately none of them ever sold. But he kept at it – another example of his ability to persevere in the face of adversity.

The words of this next song should, I think, speak for themselves. “Maod Amku Machshevotecha” – My father’s thoughts were very deep indeed. “Ma Gadlu Ma’asecha” – And his works were very great – his years of writing, both published and not.

What about your works and thoughts? Are they as deep as you can make them? Can you do more to achieve your full potential? Let’s meditate on that while we sing the next song.

To view the entire memorial evening on a single page, please click here.