Ripple in Still Water

          With Pesach preparations in full gear, we are very aware that Pesach this year will be very different. We will be missing our eldest daughter who remains in Boston in her own "shelter in place". This year will be different since there will be no grandparents at the Seder. I have always experienced a certain kind of Joy, as I sat a seder table that was multigenerational, a table where grandparents and sometimes great grandparents would be able to transmit to grandchildren and great-grandchildren their wisdom and their experiences. With its focus on telling a story, with its focus upon those four sons (children); the Seder is geared toward children and the transmission of wisdom, experience, and information to children. The message is clear. Children symbolize the future, they symbolize hope, they symbolize the purity and innocence of the previous generations who have had to compromise, who have, perhaps, grown cynical, or just a little less optimistic a...

          I woke up this morning, Oy, am I sore!  For some reason, I am acutely aware of how sore I am while I say the morning blessing: Baruch Atah Adoshem Elokeinu Melech Ha'Olam Zokeif Kefufim. Blessed Are You Lord Our God, King of the Universe Who straightens the bent . While I am sure there is a spiritual component to this praise of God; right now my legs and my back are sore and straighten out is currently an adventure. No, I haven't started bringing up the Pesach dishes, pots and pans. Yesterday, the weather was far too nice. It seems that everyone was out walking, staying away from each other but walking. Our son, who hasn't really been outside at all, even asked to go outside. He asked me to move the cars off the driveway so that we could shoot baskets.  I happily agreed. Well, shooting baskets quickly became a game of 1 on 1 game up to 7. Well, I made him work for every basket, there was nothing easy. but 15-year-old legs jump a little highe...

It's early Friday morning. It is still dark out. For now, the house is quiet. Coffee is brewing and I have a quiet moment to spiritually breathe. It has been a long time since I have looked forward to Shabbat as much as I have this week.  It has been a trying, difficult week for the world. For me, I have conducted 9 funerals over the past 11 days. 9 different lives, 9 different narratives, 9 families grieving for the loss of a loved one. My wife, sensing that I needed to see or experience something happy, hopeful and life-affirming showed me a very unique wedding that happened "down south" on the Lawrence& Bathurst section of Toronto. A wedding, in this environment? Yet there it was. With neighbors standing on their porches, and cars lined up in the streets, there were perhaps 15 people outside, practicing social distancing  and parents walked their daughter down the sidewalk on to their driveway, there was a chuppa and there was a Chata. They stood there and a weddin...