Ripple in Still Water

          It never seems to fail. I greet each holiday, each Chag with anticipation. Well, maybe I don't enjoy all the preparation and all the work and all the chaos in my home, However when my wife and daughters light the candles that correspond to the commencement of one of the Shalosh Regalim (Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot), my son and I finish praying Maariv, the evening service, and we finally sit down to the first of what will be numerous festival meals; I am full of happiness and excitement.  By the end of the Chag? OY! I can't wait to return to my ordinary routine. Needless to say, I was counting down the minutes when my wife, kids and I could begin returning our kitchen back to Chametz. when Pesach was put away, and we were back to Chol, just an ordinary weekday moment. Yet when I woke up this morning, there it was Erev Shabbos. Our kids used to sing a song they learned in school, "Shabbos is coming, we're so happy...." Well, it feels more like "Shabbos ...

          Under normal circumstances, at the conclusion of Shabbat, I turn on my phone to check the scores of my favorite teams.  These are not normal times. Our family finished Havdalah and there were no sports, no favorite teams, no scores to check. In fact, I dreaded turning on my phone and the television. I knew that the first thing I was going to check, was the increasing number of infected, and the increased number of deaths from this plague. I looked in Toronto, and then New York and California. The number only seems to go up and go up faster.  After spending 15 minutes catching up on the news, not much of it too good,  I turned to my evening project. With Pesach beginning on Wednesday, my first task was Family Shlepper. It is my job to bring all the Pesach boxes from the basement up to the kitchen so my wife can begin the monumental task of making our kitchen kosher for Pesach as well as begin cooking. However, my task is the first task of...

          Like any High School-age children, ours take math and are studying Trigonometry, you remember sine (SIN) and cosine (COS), cotangent (COT) and triangles, lots of triangles. By the way, that is about all that I remember about trigonometry except for the Trigonometry matchbook that had all four-digit numerical values for these various sins because the Math Textbooks were written before scientific calculators. In any case, as I was looking over our son's math homework and vaguely recalling all these terms and images.  The images of Sine and Cosine became most evident when projections of the COVID -19 modeling was shown at the President's press conference from the day before. On a graph,  the Sine curve  "0" it slopes upward reaches an apex and then slopes downward back to "0" and then begins to curve upward again. Those are like the "waves' we see in radio waves etc. The Cosine curve does not begin at "0" on the graph but rather on ...

          Our living room windows face the street and so we can see cars go by and people walk along the sidewalk as well as people walking up to our driveway.  Yesterday, while reading my book, I saw people. It was so exciting. A family of four walked up our driveway and they knocked. We all heard the door and collectively, we were so excited to have guests. No, we did not invite the family inside. The visiting family walked to the end of our driveway and we all came outside and stay 6 ft/ 2 meters apart.  There we were, two families, friends for many years purposefully standing apart. Yet there we were, despite standing 6 feet apart, we were talking about our children, our lives, our parents and how we are all dealing with this pandemic. We stood outside like this for little more than an hour. For a brief moment, something had lifted. We were talking to people, not through phone, nor through a computer application. Instead, we were speaking with live...

          Well, today we all prepare for our second Shabbat living a life of Shelter in Place.  It is also the first day of the Month of Nisan. In terms of time, the week is drawing to a conclusion and culminating in Shabbat.  Among the rituals that occur at our Shabbat Dinner table includes blessing the children. With our eldest in Boston, my Bracha for her usually occurs by sending a WhatsApp message right before Shabbat, blessing her and reminding her how proud I am of her. For the children who are home with us,  I offer them a blessing, kiss them and then they walk over to Mom who kisses them as well. At the conclusion of the ritual, we ask our children to reflect upon the week that passed and share an example of something good that they experienced or something they are proud of.  We instituted this little ritual as a way of getting our children to reflect on the past and to "count their blessing".  However today is also Rosh Chodes...

            As I watched the sunrise this morning, clear, crisp,  with the sky changing from a dark blue to a magnificent sky blue (or as my mother who grew up in North Carolina would say "Carolina Blue" in reference to her the University of North Carolina Tar Heels), I thought about what had transpired last night and what I was about to do this morning.  Last night, when Shabbat ended, one of our teenagers prepared for the Havdalah service. She poured a cup of wine, took out a special multi wicked candle, and a spice box filled with cloves and cinnamon. I looked outside into the night sky and saw the requisite three stars we began. The final blessing of the that very short yet incredibly spiritual service concludes with the Bracha: Baruh Atah Adoshem Elokeinu Melech Ha'Olam, Hamavdil Bein Kodesh L'Chol, Bein Or L'CHoshech Bein Yisroel L'Amim Bein Yom HaShvii L'Sheshet Yemei HaMaaseh. Baruch Atah Adoshem HaMavdil Bein Kodesh L'Chol - Praise are yo...

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...