First, I’d like to give you a little background about how I learned to leyn as an adult, more than 20 years ago. Avrom and I moved to North Carolina, and not knowing anyone, we started going to Beth El, a small Conservative congregation, figuring it was a good way to meet other people. It […]
I can remember the taste of a cherry Popscicle, mingled with chlorine from the pool water that dripped from my hair to my lips. It was the taste of summer, and it was delicious. Summer was flavored with more than the synthetic fruit of the icy treat, of course. Summer meant no school, blinding hot […]
Rabbis, community react to new hours Beginning Friday, April 1, JCC Rockland will be open for the first time ever past sundown and the beginning of Shabbat. That change, along with the addition of Saturday hours, was passed overwhelmingly by the organization’s board of directors in early March. It marks a new chapter for the […]
This September, on the second day of Sukkot, JCC Rockland did something it had never done before. It opened for business. The way in which it did business was qualitatively different than a normal weekday. No money changed hands. The Fit Café was closed. The vending machines didn’t operate. There were no art programs, classes […]
In the first weeks of saying kaddish for my father, the sun still hung below the horizon when I’d wake to go to minyan. I’m just now out of sheloshim, the first thirty days of mourning proscribed by Jewish law, and now, instead, the morning sky is the cold milky white of late winter. Watching […]
