“Flowing upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, …I surface. My eyes open. I am awake.” So, begins a day in “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner. We awaken these days with anxiety that presses from multiple directions. Each day, too, we live with the hope of crossing to a safer place in our lives.
Todah rabah to the dedicated volunteers who delivered Purim simcha gift bags to more than 500 Jewish seniors in our community. Organized by Chabad House of Overland Park, simcha gifts are prepared by women from the community five times each year — for Rosh HaShanah, Chanukah, Purim, Passover, and Shavuot.
I was moved to read the article “'This is the dream’: Israeli Diaspora Minister praises HBHA as global model.” I attended Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and our two children are students there now, and one of the most cherished aspects of the school is how students of all levels of Jewish observance find a home there and learn in ways that resonate with their own families’ traditions.
I enjoyed reading about Jonathan Metzl’s new book, “Dying of Whiteness,” but he seems to have missed the point as to why those people who are “dying of whiteness” have decided to take that self-destructive path in their personal lives.
As we inch closer to our son Michael becoming a Bar Mitzvah, it is nothing like I ever imagined it would be. Looking forward to this Jewish milestone, I can’t help but look back to 1989, the year of my Bat Mitzvah.
While looking through a past copy of the Jerusalem Post on the internet, it saddened me when I happened upon an article about the death of Prairie Village resident, Esther Levens. I knew Esther quite well and actually helped her organize a group called “Voices United for Israel” – later to be renamed “Unity Coalition for Israel.” Here’s how my relationship with Esther began:
“Hashgatha Protis,” everything for a reason by God’s design. In recent discussion with my good friend Tim about the covenant between God and the Jewish people, I later reflected on the holiday of Purim whose intensely meaningful story/miracle had been decreed by God in the Torah to be recounted every year.
I agree with Sam Devinki, who writes in the Feb. 11 Chronicle that the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is not comparable to the Holocaust; nothing is. But some of the rebels at the Capitol admire the Holocaust. Their sign “Camp Auschwitz” inspired my letter of Jan. 21.
Freedom of speech is central to a free society and is constantly under attack. That being said, I must paraphrase something Winston Churchill once said, “that we are masters of our thoughts, but slave to our words and actions.”
