Tonight I get to go to sleep in my own bed, next to my wife, my only concern being how soon one of my children will wake up and need some attention (at worst, we’re talking a couple of times overnight, none of which are likely to kill me).

Meanwhile, at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Grammy Phyllis lays in a hospital bed, her body ravaged by a ruthless disease and bombarded by the medications the world’s greatest medical minds have devised to fight that disease.

I have a long post in my head about how I came to share my lifeblood with Grammy and her family, but I still need to flesh it out. For now, a bit over 24 hours before my stem cells are infused into her body, I’ll ask that you pray for her health (or, if prayers aren’t your thing [I'm looking at you, Jon], send healing thoughts and vibes her way). Take your inspiration from this epic piece of artwork which I commissioned from the oh-so-talented Ethan Nicolle. That’s me on the left, joining forces with Axe Cop (background, Episode 1) to rid humanity of the Big C once and for all. Wish us (and Grammy Phyllis) luck.

Original, 1-of-a-kind commissioned piece of art featuring me and Axe Cop

I didn’t know Marla Bennett personally, but I’ve gotten to know her mother Linda quite well over my years in San Diego. When the Gilad Shalit deal unfolded, and the “mastermind” of the Hebrew U bombing that killed Marla was said to be included in the list of prisoners to be released, I felt a compulsion to talk to Linda. Here is my brief writeup of our conversation:
http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2011/10/18/linda-bennett-mother-of-bombing-victim-marla-bennett-expresses-relief-over-shalit/

This is not an exhaustive list, but I’m immersing myself in old and new material (מקומי and otherwise) in preparation for tonight’s live show at Porter’s Pub at UCSD (link to Facebook event page; go there or ping me directly for ticket info – $20 for non-students).

1. Crowd-sourced video for BaSalon shel Salomon (In Salomon’s Living Room – בסלון של סלומון):

2. Creative video for Shir Nehama (Consolation Song – שיר נחמה) featuring the beautiful Middle Eastern steel guitar work of Yehuda Keisar:

3. Brutally hard-hitting video for Od Ach Echad (One More Brother – עוד אח אחד). Visually this will really only hit hard if you’re Israeli, but the lyrical sentiment is powerful no matter where you’re from.

4. Great live performance of Halifot (Suits – חליפות) featuring the wonderful backing vocals of the very pregnant Liora Yitzhak, whose child (now a toddler if I have the recording date right) will grow up to either be this band’s biggest fan or will hate them passionately, but may never understand why.

5. Another of their huge social commentary hits with an added layer of irony added visually – Shirat haSticker (The Sticker Song – שירת הסטיקר). The lyrics were written/compiled by David Grossman, a prominent Israeli author and peace activist, from political and social bumper stickers found in Israel:

6. Misparim (Numbers – מספרים) is a now somewhat out-of-date song about some significant statistics in Israeli society (and Sha’anan Street’s personal life) that still beautifully illustrates the band’s style. It’s out of date only in terms of some of the real numbers reported (e.g., unemployment rate and monthly salaries of executives), not in terms of how unjust and significant the gaps still are. This is a fan-made video; I couldn’t find an official one. TRIGGER WARNING (TW): Brief still images of terrorist attacks, including WTC.

7. There is no number 7. Come down and enjoy the show with me tonight!

My mom recently found my bar-mitzvah speech, written and delivered by my 13-year-old self, Oct. 17, 1982. I’m transcribing it here exactly the way it appears on the yellowed copy I used on the bimah:

HONORED RABBIS, GUESTS, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS.

In the beginning of the year my mother asked me if I wanted to have a bar-mitzvah. I immediately blabbed out “yes” without even thinking, because at that particular moment as they say, I didn’t know what I was in for. Well, this started some research into what a bar-mitzvah really is, meaning the ceremony and the name we use for a jewish thirteen-year-old having his bar-mitzvah. Initially, most of my information was taken out of books. I say most because for the other part of my knowledge in this case I have to thank my parents. It was through them that I got involved with people that helped me get through the hardships of becoming a bar-mitzvah. One of these problems was-what am I going to write in my drash? Well, yeah, I was gonna thank everybody for coming, etc, etc, but what else should I write? How about this-my bar-mitzvah! okay, now, what does a bar-mitzvah mean to me? For me it means that on that day I get to put on tefillin, go up to the Ark, and read from the Torah in front of many people. It also means that from that day on I will be more responsible for my actions and deeds. Or maybe I’ll write about this: my Torah reading. And since my Torah reading is about animal sacrifices- what kind of animals when- so I said let’s go for it, so here it is. If all this partying was going on in the Biblical era, what a party we would have! You heard me reading it- we’d be sacrificing at least two bulls, one ram, and, get this- seven yearling lambs! Now if you ask me that is total cruelty to animals, right? Right! By the way, since we’re talking about sacrifices here, I was thinking (and I’m not saying this because I want everybody to pity me). Anyway, I was thinking about what I had to do to sacrifice until now to get my bar-mitzvah “chores” done, and what I’ll have to sacrifice from now on. Of course, these things are’nt exactly going to be rams, bulls, or lambs, but things like time. Time with my friends, time of having just plain ol’ fun, time for watching television, and so on and on… Instead of all these activities I’ll be spending my time thinking of how to fit in the community and society.
Which reminds me. I’m about to switch to another language. A language which has been very hard for me to keep alive in our household, I mean for myself. A language that after four-and-a-half years in America it’s also a hard task to keep going when you came here at age eight-and-a-half like I did. By now I’m sure you’ve all realized this language is Latin. No, seriously, it’s obviously Hebrew, so here I go.

[TRANSLATION OF HEBREW]
Like I said in English, these four-and-a-half years in America were hard. Not only in the beginning when we arrived when it was hard for me to get used to the language, to a new school, and to friends who a) were new to me, and b) spoke only English. I got used to those things within a few months- I started speaking English, and I learned all the time. It wasn’t just because of that. It was hard for me also because all this time I also needed to speak Hebrew at home and somehow not lose my mother tongue. I did this by reading, writing (both writing letters to family in Israel and just writing in Hebrew), and of course talking. Like I said, it was hard. For instance, a few times I needed to ask my parents how to write a certain word, or even how to say a word, but with all these things, and the fact that I very quickly began to think in English, I held on to the Hebrew and even this drash is part of that. Now all this maybe sounds like I’m looking for pity from all of you. And you’re right! Please, I don’t want it to sound like that. But I do want it to sound like I did something. Because I really feel like I succeeded in doing something I’m proud of. I also hope that in the future I’ll continue to hold on to important things like my language. To conclude I will of course say thank you to everyone for coming, and I hope you enjoy!
[END TRANSLATION]

Hi, I’m back! I want to thank everybody for coming, and I hope you enjoy yourselves.
***
Couple of comments:

• I was careful to transcribe this exactly as it appears on the paper I used, so the “are’nt” and the repeated horrible use of dashes and other writing mistakes are preserved. There are a thousand other little things that make me cringe today, but all in all, I don’t think it’s so awful, considering who I was back then.
• I had apparently not discovered the wonderful invention of paragraphs yet. Ah, the foibles of youth!
• Way to not mention the name of the Torah portion you’re talking about there. Amateur. It was, in fact, Numbers 28, the reading for Rosh Chodesh. My bar-mitzvah was observed on a Sunday, Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, because at least one important guest (my bar-mitzvah tutor) was shomer Shabbat and couldn’t have attended the ceremony otherwise.
• My recollection of this speech includes the memory of getting a big laugh at “Hi, I’m back!” (immediately following the Hebrew interlude), which I don’t think I expected, and which completely sold me on the power of public speaking and my self-perceived talent for it.
• The original copy is typewritten. Like, from a typewriter.

My beautiful, talented daughter had some time to create original art on Sunday. While I was doing something (monumentally important, I’m sure) she brought me this picture of “Ima’s house when she was little.” Lovely, right? We’ve been to that neighborhood, and this ain’t a bad representation, actually, not that she was trying for realism.

I asked H if she’d draw my house from when I was a kid, and she was only too happy to oblige (this may have been her first commissioned work):

I asked about the green figure with the glasses (as if I didn’t know) and got confirmation that it is, indeed, me. Then I asked,
“Did anyone else live with me when I was little?”
H: “Your parents, but they’re inside the house!”

The “Well, duh” remained unspoken, but I’m sure she was thinking it.

Can you imagine every radio station in the country going silent for 24 hours? It’s hard, huh? But that is exactly what’s going on in Israel right now, on Yom Kippur. Every frequency, every format, every transmitter – silent. I believe TV is off, too. Really lends itself to making it a meaningfully introspective day, with or without the fast.

This is something you CAN try at home: turn all those things off, spend time with your own thoughts, your family, your self.

גמר חתימה טובה May you be sealed in the book of life for a year of health, prosperity, joy, and peace.

In a wonderful confluence of happy coincidences, today I discovered that I was born in the Year of the Chopped Liver. What, you didn’t know there’s a Jewish Zodiac? Well, let me tell you: there is. And it’s awesome.

Let’s set the Wayback Machine all the way back to this morning, when I glanced at Metafilter and saw this post pointing to this excellent blog post by Michael Doret. Now, I grew up in LA and have been to Canter’s a few times, but it occupies a place in my consciousness (and, I suspect, that of many other Angelenos from the last 50+ years) that is far beyond the frequency with which I’ve visited. So when I saw the lede of the MeFi post, I was basically bound by my history to click through and read the story. I was not disappointed, and neither will you be; it’s a great story.

I wrote Michael a note (pointing out a couple of minor typos and telling him how much I enjoyed the tale), and he and I exchanged a few emails throughout the day, including one in which he very astutely surmised that I might enjoy this other thing that he designed, The Jewish Zodiac. As his page clearly states, the Zodiac concept was created and written by Seth Front, and after I told Michael how much I liked THAT project, he forwarded my comments on to Seth, with whom I exchanged a few more emails. (Honestly, I really did get a lot of work done today, too. Really.)

It was on my second, more attentive viewing of the JewZo that I noticed that there were years attached to each sign just like in the Chinese Zodiac restaurant placemats Michael mentioned in his intro. And then I quickly found that I was born in the Year of the Chopped Liver, which explains a lot about me (not the least being why I love liver so much and, not coincidentally, why I have to watch my cholesterol).

Want to know what your Jewish Zodiac sign is? Of course you do! Go to JewZo.com, choose your birth year right there at the top under “What’s my sign?” and buy a placemat (their most popular item, of course, and worth it for the border taglines alone) or a t-shirt or mug or something. Maybe you have a little knish baking or fresh out of the oven? JewZo’s got you covered. And mazal tov!

I delivered the d’var Torah this past Shabbat at Ohr Shalom. I had volunteered to do this months ago, but had completely forgotten about it, so when the rabbi emailed me on Thursday night to remind me, I emailed back with a “no problem” message that, thanks to the emotionless nature of the medium, completely masked my anxiety about figuring out what to say less than 48 hours later about a parasha I hadn’t read yet (this year).

But, as as happened before, the texts along with the particular circumstances of my life (or God’s guiding hand, whichever you prefer) provided me with inspiration and I delivered this relatively succinct message:
***
While reading this week’s parasha, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Rabbi Meltzer about a week ago, toward the end of shiva for his grandfather, Poppa Harvey. It was a mundane conversation about corrective lenses – how long we’ve worn glasses or contact lenses, that sort of thing. In particular, there’s a passage in chapter 17, verses 18-20, that really jumped out at me:

“When [a Jewish monarch] is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel.”

I was struck by the implication of this passage about the centrality of the Torah – how consistent and constant a presence it must be, no matter our station in life. Throughout the generations, though, as our circumstances have changed for better or for worse – and let’s be honest, we’re Jews, so it’s mostly been for worse, right? – our perspective has changed. To put it another way, our vision has been impaired. Distance, in time and space, does that. So we’ve needed corrective lenses to view our central text – in the form of rabbinic commentary, midrash, aggadah, etc. – to help us see some things more clearly. So, for instance, the rabbis made certain that the rules for sentencing someone to death, laid out in this week’s parasha, earlier in chapter 17, were so strictly interpreted and adhered to as to make carrying out capital punishment virtually impossible; there is truly no recompense for errors in such cases.

Some lenses, though, don’t just correct, they OVERcorrect – they distort. I daresay there are interpretations of the Torah – lenses worn by some readers – that themselves make a to’eva (an abomination) of the sacred texts we work so hard to make relevant and accessible in our everyday lives.

Thus there have been numerous violations of chapter 20, verse 19,

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees…”

The violations have occurred at the hands of settlers, and, to my great shame, at the hands of Tzahal, our Israeli Defense Force, when they have uprooted, destroyed or stolen Palestinian olive trees from land that is occupied – that is, arguably, under siege.

Too hard for you to swallow? Too bad; it’s true. But I’m not here to make a political speech, so I’ll move on to something a bit closer to home:

There have also been countless violations of chapter 16, verse 20,

Justice justice shall you pursue צדק צדק תרדוף

when rabbis and other community leaders deny the personal rights of a segment of the population. Rather than concentrate, as many have, on the fact that some of that segment’s behavior is described as abhorrent in the Torah, more leaders should have actively and eagerly pursued justice for all, a clear mitzvah explicitly laid out in this week’s reading. I do applaud the recent spate of positive news in this regard, but we still have far to go.

As we approach the new year, I encourage all of you to shift your focus inward - get as nearsighted as you possibly can. Take a look at YOUR corrective lenses. We ALL wear them in one form or another:

• They may be frames that wrap around the sides of our faces;
• tiny specks that sit right on our eyeballs;
• or, the most common and insidious of all, those that are completely embedded inside our heads - our preconceptions, our stereotypes, our rushes to judgment, and so forth.

Take a good look at yourselves, and see if you can't wipe away some of the schmutz that's accumulated over the last year (or however long it's been; it's never too late to start).

Then crown yourselves monarchs - go on, you have my permission (the Rabbi's not here, it's OK) - and heed the call of the Torah:
As you sit on your royal throne, revisit our holy texts. Again. And Again. Look at them through your freshly polished lenses and reflect on the words, so that you do not become haughty toward your fellows, and so that you may continue to reign for many years to come.

Shabbat shalom.
***
A few days after delivering this drash, I received this Jewel of Elul, written by Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, which beautifully encapsulates the feelings he and I have as we prepare these sermons.

The blank screen that unfolds before each sermon is my darkness - formless and void. And then I begin to create. As I sit down to write, I am aware of this creation teaching, for it calls me to find the message needed for the moment.

I encourage you to sign up to receive Jewels of Elul via email, and browse the archive of previous Jewels. They are provocative, insightful, inspirational, and powerful.

May we all see more clearly in the coming year.

I had a profound, important conversation with my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Sunday evening.

We were visiting the home of a congregant from our synagogue for shiva minyan, the service held in a house of mourning. The friend (T), himself well past middle age, had just lost his mother (she was in her 90s). Since we had made plans to go to the service, we were able to tell H about it earlier in the day. We covered a few salient points, including the fact that we were going to T’s house because his mother had just passed away (Jenn’s choice of words)/died (mine) and he was sad, and one of the things you can say is, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Once we were there, H was terrific. She has attended Shabbat services with us essentially since she was born, so she’s very familiar with the basic liturgy, and she also had some friends there (the Rabbi’s kids) so she wasn’t bored.

The really interesting conversation began when she noticed a mirror completely covered with paper towels and asked me about it. I answered that it was a Jewish tradition to cover the mirrors in a house of mourning for a week after a person dies. When prompted, I repeated the explanation a couple of times, then she explained it to me with the brilliant circular logic pre-schoolers are so good at (something to the effect of “The mirrors are covered because they’re covered”).

She then asked, “Why do we say, ‘I’m sorry’?” Picking up on her confusion, I explained that we are not saying “sorry” as an apology (her frame of reference for that word) but as a way to show the person that we understand they’re sad because someone they love has died – that they’ve “lost” this person. She made a couple of comments about how our friend’s mother wasn’t sick any more (true enough), and then pulled out the crowning glory of the evening’s conversation, “Everybody dies, but some people are alive.”

I was a bit ferklempt at the end there.

Oh, by the way: this entire dialogue happened while she was sitting on the throne, going potty.

I just successfully upgraded my WordPress installation, which powers this blog, to the latest version (3.0, called Thelonius – see the complete list of major WP releases, all named for jazz musicians). I did this with nary a bump, very few changes in settings, and everything seems to be right.

My first activities with the new version was changing the theme of the site (the look & feel theme, not the content theme) to WP’s default for this version, called Twenty Ten, then changing the header image that appears on each page. While the default image is nice, I wanted 1) to test the waters and modify something and make sure it worked, and 2) to personalize the site imagery. To that end, you’re currently enjoying a (cropped) view of the Brandeis Bardin Institute, home of BCI, the summer camp for Jewish young adults that I attended as a camper (’95) then returned to as an advisor/counselor (’98). This small image hardly does the place justice, but it’s indicative and evocative of the campus’s beauty. I’ll write and talk more about this place another time.

For now, I’m going to call it a night. The plan for tomorrow is to begin documenting my participation with a good friend in The Jonah Project.

Edited on 6/23 to change post title. Because I can.