This has been resounding in my head since we heard the news from Virginia yesterday:

... securing peace in a time of global conflict, sustaining hope in this winter of anxiety and fear. More than any time in recent history America's destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedoms and our way of ( Read more... )

Yesterday, we learned of the death of Moshe Cohen-Skali, most familiar to local folks as the owner of Beacon Kosher, the newer (though it's been around for about 15 years) of the kosher grocery stores in Boston. I knew Moshe. In fact, I knew him quite well -- before he was proprietor of Beacon Kosher, he was my Hebrew language teacher for six ( Read more... )

Michael's mother, Eleanor Mae Cohen Burstein, died this morning.

mabfan and I will be going to New York tomorrow morning; the funeral will be in New York on Sunday.

On Sunday, I heard from my parents that our friend Arie Gamliel (Larry Ginsberg) had died suddenly, at home, from a massive MI. It's taken me a couple of days to wrap my brain around the whole idea of Arie being gone. He and his wife feature prominently in a number of my fondest childhood memories, and I got the pleasure in 1989-90, when I was in ( Read more... )

I lost a friend last night. Actually, that's not completely true, as he died on Friday. I just didn't find out until last night. And, anyway, I hadn't been in direct touch with him in over 10 years. But finding out that he had died really hit me. He's the first of my contemporaries to die, I believe ( Read more... )