8.24.2007
8.22.2007
8.21.2007
Guest Posts at Jewcy.com
My first guest post is up over on Jewcy. A little ditty about being authentic, which you can read right here. Naturally, I titled the post after a Simpsons quote. My favorite Simpsons quote, I might add.
8.16.2007
Yartzeit
Ahem. You are aware that it's Elvis' yartzeit today, right? Just making sure.
A friend recently asked me why death is remembered in Judaism when, as she put it, life is worth remembering, when death is something to be forgotten.
And, it was hard for me to explain that I felt like they went hand in hand, life and death. And, it was even harder to explain when death wasn't really something I felt like should be dressed up and forgotten. I finally told her it was like baseball. Nobody remembers the announcer or the at-bat music as the player approaches the plate, but everyone remembers the end of the dazzling game.
The Talmud likens this to a ship, and makes up see how backwards it seems, really, to celebrate a bon voyage when the ship sets sail, but how we forget when it arrives. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Shouldn't we really aim to focus more on the date the ship arrived, and the stories the passengers can share of their adventures while sailing.
Sure, a birthday is celebration worthy, but that day really commemorates the potential we have the moment we're born, and the potential we have from this birthday forward, whereas the day we die, our worth is measured by the life we have lived.
A friend recently asked me why death is remembered in Judaism when, as she put it, life is worth remembering, when death is something to be forgotten.
And, it was hard for me to explain that I felt like they went hand in hand, life and death. And, it was even harder to explain when death wasn't really something I felt like should be dressed up and forgotten. I finally told her it was like baseball. Nobody remembers the announcer or the at-bat music as the player approaches the plate, but everyone remembers the end of the dazzling game.
The Talmud likens this to a ship, and makes up see how backwards it seems, really, to celebrate a bon voyage when the ship sets sail, but how we forget when it arrives. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Shouldn't we really aim to focus more on the date the ship arrived, and the stories the passengers can share of their adventures while sailing.
Sure, a birthday is celebration worthy, but that day really commemorates the potential we have the moment we're born, and the potential we have from this birthday forward, whereas the day we die, our worth is measured by the life we have lived.
