Tikkun Olam

It's a big jump from posting every day (NaBloPoMo style) even when you can't think of anything to write about, to posting once in a blue moon... even when you can't think of anything to write about! I would say that this is the latter, although I do have something, albeit small, to write about: My Birthday (remember? It's just like the composition you wrote in fourth grade, "My Summer Vacation." ) My English birthday--to be technical, my Gregorian calendar birthday--was this past Wednesday.  Yes, yes, I always wake up to the dulcet tones of "this was the Day of Infamy," about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Not a great way to start one's day, but there it is.  By the way, I am not that old, having been born...sometime after Pearl Harbor--in case you're wondering.  Old is a relative concept, anyway.  My little students in the Preschool where I teach, all of 3-51/2 years old, think I'm very old.  One sweet little 4 year old (the ...

This is the time of year when I ruminate about my kids, grandkids and birthdays: winter and Chanukah time are special for us, and here is why: The months of November through March are of personal importance to me.  Our family birthdays are comcentrated in those months, children and grandchildren alike.  I'm a December baby (14th of the Hebrew month of Kislev), as is my sister.  Strangely, our first three children were born, respectively, in January, February and March.  The last two were back to January and December. Our grandchildren by our eldest started in December (the oldest will be turning twelve this month), then January, then December again.  For years we had one married child, and three grandchildren.  Then one day, many snows hence, the next two younger  kids married and started their families.  The first grandchildren by my third born (who married in 2007) followed the pattern--guess we just love winter--except that this t...

What to write about? It’s not as if there is nothing; au contraire, we live in interesting times, as they say, for better and for worse (and often it seems as if it’s mainly for worse). So instead of writing about the economy (what there is of it) and resultant increase in Aliyah to Israel, or the global increase in anti-Semitism and almost universal blame on Israel for… everything , or the potential suicide bomber thwarted by a vigilant (thank G-d) IDF army and security guards in Qalandiyah (my son perhaps one of them, as that is his territory), or Bibi’s capitulation to Washington by implementing the building freeze in Judea and Samaria (the so-called“settlements” in the “West Bank”)—instead, I’ll write about… my birthday ! Yes, I just had a birthday (good Lord, not another one), two, in fact: my Hebrew date is Yud-Dalet, the 14 th of the month of Kislev (for those clueless, it is Kislev right now: the Chanukah month), and my secular birthday is December 7 th , a day th...