Reading Time: 5 minutes Aunt Gladys was ten years older than my mother. Mom looked up to her, idolized her, and at times tried to emulate her. This was not always easy. My mother was just a girl when Gladys was already out of the house and living the exciting and envious life of a flapper. That’s how my […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes There’s a place in heaven for wedding musicians. You just have to go through the kitchen to get there. An old saying. (I may have made it up.) I remember the first wedding I played. It all started innocently enough when one of my patients, Susan, discovered during our after-exam chat that I was a […]
Reading Time: 9 minutes For better or worse, there is only one person in the world who thinks of me as a baseball player. And it is not I. Joe Stephan was the ace winning pitcher on our little league team, the Wantagh Panthers. I was on that team for three years, but it was during the second year […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes One of the advantages of practicing optometry in downtown Berkeley, California was the opportunity to meet people from every conceivable place on the spectrum of humanity. One moment I could be chatting with a Pulitzer Prize winner and an hour later I’d be airing out the exam room after working with a homeless street person. […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Catherine deCuir and I will be reading excerpts from our book, “The Rabbi Finds Her Way,” this SUNDAY, July 21 at 3 p.m. at Afikomen Judaica, 3042 Claremont Ave., Berkeley. Hope to see you there! #therabbifindsherway #afikomenjudaica
Reading Time: < 1 minute Choral Director Rita Lilly (right) led the Lafayette Christian Church choir this morning in a wonderfully sensitive performance of my composition, “Sh’ma Koleinu” (Hear Our Voice). I was honored to be present for the service as Pastor Steve Borgard spoke of the tragic shooting in Pittsburgh, and Rabbi Jay Asher LeVine from Temple Isaiah delivered […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute This morning I looked at lifehacker.com as I do most mornings, and found a video episode of “How I Work,” which I particularly enjoyed. Scott Wiener operates scottspizzatours.com in NYC, and began his video with a reminiscence of how, as a boy, he’d bought his first lunch, a slice of pizza and a Coke, for […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Sharon and I are in the city of Fez for 3 days as part of our 2.5 week Overseas Adventure Travel trip to Morocco. Part of today was spent walking through the Jewish Quarter of Fez, which was a fascinating view of an ancient society. We visited one of the two remaining synagogues–Shabbat services are […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute I have one word for you: Plastic. Plastic waste has been a concern of mine for decades. (I wrote a term paper about it in 2002 when I was taking a class in California Politics and Public Policy at Calif. State University East Bay in 2002.) On my walk through California and Arizona in April […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes From sundown Friday to sundown on Saturday is Shabbat—the Sabbath. It’s actually 25 hours just so we don’t start late or end too early. Since I started thinking about such things, I realized that of the Ten Commandments, for me the Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, is one of the […]