Jewels 2011

This past winter, I paid a visit to my elderly aunt–my late father’s younger sister–with whom I am very close.  I have learned some of my greatest life lessons from her.  Shirley lives in a stately home on a tree-lined street in Brookline, Massachusetts, where the phone never stops ringing.  She is a mother of four, grandmother of sixteen, great-grandmother of forty-five and counting.  Recently widowed, she had just put her home on the market when, during a visit to a daughter in Chicago, a pipe burst, flooding several floors full of antiques and artwork.  A significant part of that

When my daughter was just shy of her first birthday, we joined a toddler class.  Every week, a dozen or so parents and the instructor would quietly observe the children, in an effort to raise “authentic” and “competent” human beings, with a minimum of intervention. One afternoon, a little boy toppled off a slide and began to cry.  His startled father hugged the child and said in a comforting tone, “You’re all right.”  A moment passed.  Then the instructor said, “Children don’t cry when they’re all right.”   It seemed harsh at the time.  But I soon realized that it wasn’t

Our sages tell us that the first time Adam saw the sun go down, he was terrified. He had seen day, but had never experienced the night.God took pity on him and gave him two stones to rub together in order to create fire. The name of one stone was afelah, darkness, and the other maveth, death. As the spark emerged, Adam said, “Blessed be the Creator of light.” Out of darkness and death, the first human being realized that we can create light. On the High Holidays we think back over the difficulties and even the tragedies that have

Welcome to the seventh volume of Jewels of Elul. In just a few days you and tens of thousands of people around the world will begin receiving daily inspirations for the upcoming Holy Days.  Here is my introduction.   In recent times scientists have acknowledged the importance of light, even naming a new syndrome, Seasonal Affective Disorder, to describe the ways in which people suffer from lack of light during winter months. Our tradition recognized the significance of light thousands of years earlier, commanding us to welcome the Sabbath and Holy days with the lighting of lights.   The writer Gabriel García Márquez