The dreadful ‘D’ words
Divorce, dissolution, divestment: These are words that spell the end of a relationship and of what might have been — through time and patience — a meaningful and inspiring marriage.
Divorce, dissolution, divestment: These are words that spell the end of a relationship and of what might have been — through time and patience — a meaningful and inspiring marriage.
It\’s too bad, but I didn\’t know from Pesach until rabbinic school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.
We have been having a conversation in the Jewish community about gender for more than three decades. During that time there have been some remarkable changes: the ordination of women rabbis, the proliferation of egalitarian prayer services and bat mitzvah as a rite of passage.So why do we still need to talk about gender? Because in a critical aspect, the gender gap still persists in the Jewish community.
We all wanted to give my nephew the bar mitzvah party to not just match but surpass all of the one\’s he\’d been invited to during the year. Yet the family\’s fortunes were not equal to the task. All we could scrimp together was $3,000. It could only have been divine inspiration that led us to the conclusion that this actually made the job of putting together a bar mitzvah to remember a lot easier than it seemed.
The reasons why milifers and seniors have gravitated to adult b\’nai mitzvah programs since the trend first took off in the 1970s are numerous, including the fact that most women didn\’t have such ceremonies until the 1980s (the first bat mitzvah was held in 1922). One perennial influence is a child or grandchild reaching b\’nai mitzvah age, and the divergent issues brought about by intermarriage can sometimes compel one or more adults in a family to take on b\’nai mitzvah study to serve as a role model.
AUDIO: Iranian American Jews — Dennis Prager and Shmuley Boteach praise local community
Being a parent is a heroic act. Being a parent of a teenager sometimes makes us feel less than heroic. Indeed, we, as parents, often become an embarrassment. Congratulations to those of us parents who \”embarrass\” our kids in a manner that shows how much we love them.
As soon as they put him on my belly, I knew. I looked at his eyes, and they were a bit puffy, as is normal after a regular delivery, but I knew.
My husband, Mark, said he looked perfect, with all fingers and toes accounted for. I kept asking if he was all right; he was our second child, after all, and I knew he wasn\’t, because a mother knows.
Mark kept believing everything was OK until he followed the nurses down to the nursery, and they asked for pediatricians to come in. Nurses attended to our first born, Jason — not doctors.
Joy Horowitz\’s \”Parts Per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School\” (Viking) is a dense 350-page book detailing a four-year fight between 1,000 litigants who claimed oil wells at the school caused diseases, such as cancer, and defendants — including the oil companies, the city of Beverly Hills and school officials — who said there had been no harmful effects from the (profitable) derricks.
\”I have the great good fortune to have an ear to the ground and a great many wonderful colleagues,\” Kahane said of his network of music-world sources, mostly fellow musicians with whom the conductor has formed strong bonds.