WORDS THAT BREATHE

A mantra that I repeated again and again when I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that my father had in fact died.

A spoken word poem about a rabbi who realizes that after all the pastoral support for people whose loved ones have died, he never really knew what it felt like. Until his own father died.

Happy (belated) Father's Day! My day began like many others.  I woke up before everyone else, and read the paper on the internet. I watched with a chuckle as the kids woke, groggily gave me a kiss, turned on their computers, read on ESPN website that it was father's day, and then smiled sheepishly to wish me a happy one. Five great cards (one from each child; two from my wife) with heartfelt messages. I read on my new Kindle, the Father's Day present that - with my wife's per

So the Pope revoked the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. So the Jewish defense world was up in arms. Wall to wall criticism, as JTA's Telegraph blog puts it. It is easy to get worked up about this. Holocaust denial is one of those hot buttons that necessarily must evoke a response. But does the Pope's action require such a stern response? As the Telegraph reports, in On Holocaust-denying bishop, a voice of dissent , Rabbi Irwin Kula has produced a dissent

It made the Top Ten : Kibud Av v'Eim - Honor Your Father and Mother (coming in at #5, between the commandments about our relationship with God and spirituality, and those about how we treat other people). It made it into the Holiness Code : You shall revere your mother and father (appearing right after God tells Moses to tell us to be holy, kedoshim tehiyu ). The way we treat our parents tells us more about about the character of a person than the words he speaks or the gift