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Marlene Adler Marks

Marlene Adler Marks

Confused and Tangled Times

My favorite words of Torah are the very first: \”In the beginning.\” They beg us to ask, what was there before the Creation that made God want to do more? And the answer provided in the text is especially fitting for our own warring time: tohu va\’vohu, which Rabbi Samson Hirsch, the sensitive linguist, translates as: \”confused and tangled, and darkness was over the turmoil,\” just as we are now.

Despair vs. Joy

That\’s what it means these days, to be a Jew in post-Sept. 11 America. We must live in two worlds at once, the personal and the communal: shepping nachas over the achievements of our children and our parents, and joining with our nation in collective grief.

“We” Judaism

NOW THAT THE HIGH HOLY days are over, we can begin to appreciate how the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington may alter American Jewish life.

17 Years Ago: Echoes of History

Ecclesiastes was right: Even in a world clouded by international terrorism, there\’s nothing new under the sun.

Fuzz

A day before I left for a vacation cruise to Alaska, I looked in the mirror and spied, atop my clean, bald head — Hair! There wasn\’t much of it, standing less than one-sixteenth of an inch tall. But when I ran my hand over my crown, I felt the delicious tickle of stubble.

\”It\’s back!\” I cried to my friend Susan, who was lending me a gown for the cruise\’s formal night. We jumped up and down the way we did in high school when the latest \”he\” called. I\’ve been a cue ball since Day 12 of my first round of chemo. All my hair is gone, including eyebrows and lashes. The only really bad part, aside from looking like a Conehead, is the way drafts of cold air make my forehead feel glacial. In Alaska, I spent time looking for bald eagles, seeking to join their minyan.

And Many More

There\’s nothing like completing chemotherapy to spice up a birthday party. Last weekend, 40 of my dearest friends performed a commemorative Havdalah ceremony to mark a really great CT scan and year 53. My \”re-birthday\” celebration was just the ticket, restorative not only for me but also for the extended community that has seen me through my struggle with lung cancer.

Survivor

It\’s seven months since my lung cancer diagnosis. Am I a survivor yet?

Beyond Stem Cells

Were you queasy last week, when U.S. senators quoted the Bible in their effort to stop potentially life-saving stem cell research?

The Strongest Link

No matter how well things go in chemotherapy, the truth is, cancer always makes new demands on you. You can\’t afford to be a k\’nocker, pretending you know what you\’re doing or what you\’re ready for. It\’s not as if you are in charge.

The Mosk Seat

Does Stanley Mosk\’s California Supreme Court seat naturally go to a Jew? In the political jockeying left by the death at 88 of California\’s longest-serving justice, the debate begins again: Is there a special \”Jewish seat\” that deserves to be enshrined on the high court?

In filling the seat Mosk occupied for 37 years, here are some names being mentioned: former L.A. City Attorney Burt Pines and former Rep. Lynn Schenk, both close aides to Gov. Gray Davis; Arthur Gilbert, presiding justice of the Court of Appeal in Ventura (and a jazz pianist); Appellate Justice Norman Epstein and U.S. District Judge Nora Manella. Personally I\’m for Pines (though I hear he eschews it). The Manella name has a certain poetic impact; her father\’s firm, Irell & Manella, was among the early \”Jewish firms\” in Los Angeles, responding to discrimination against Jews among old-line law offices.

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