Itzik's Blog - Irwin Keller

Listen to Audio Tonight, in the second week of our annual Torah cycle, we read the portion called Noah.

Watch Video on YouTube Did we cover courage last week?

Watch Video on YouTube Listen to "Strong Heart" (Shanbaum/Gold) Rosh Hashanah 5787 Shabbat Shalom and Good Yontiff.

My friend Cybele, something precious in the palms of her hands.

When someone aggravated him, my grandfather (birthday today) would say, Er zol khapn a kalte vane – “he should take a cold bath.”

Listen to Audio Take comfort, take comfort, people.

Click to Listen to Audio When I was 15, the US Bicentennial was in full swing.

We Two Boys An offering for Pride Season.

Click to see Video on YouTube Welcome to Pride Shabbat at Ner Shalom.

Or Click to Listen to Audio The Torah portion that is read this week in the Jewish Diaspora contains a number of disparate bits and bobs.

The Book of Ruth, which is our companion for the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, can be read many ways.

The piyyut begins below the line on the right page and continues below the line on the left page.

Click for Audio [Scroll Down for a New Song] This Shabbat is Shabbat Hagadol – translating roughly as the Great Sabbath.

Listen to Live Audio It’s been 5 days now, but I still feel freshly back from Philadelphia, where Susan and Shari and I made holy pilgrimage to the Reconstructing Judaism Convention.

Listen to Audio I had lunch today with the other members of Ner Shalom’s LGBTQ+ organizing committee, and somehow we found our way into telling some of our old, hard stories.

Reading the newspaper yesterday, I found myself recalling a line from The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Lily Tomlin’s 1985 one-woman stage show.

Listen to Audio If you have had the good fortune to have been to Rome and you visited the Villa Borghese, you have undoubtedly seen Bernini’s famous sculpture of Daphne, pursued by Apollo, at the moment of her transformation into a tree.

Listen to Audio This is the week in Torah where, year after year, we have to suffer seeing 17-year old Joseph thrown into a pit.

Click to Watch Video This week I was asked to spend a half hour with the cast of Transcendence Theater Company of Sonoma.

Click to Listen to Audio I don’t often talk about my mother from the bimah anymore, although if you’ve read my book you know she continues to loom large.

A mystery arrived at my doorstep – information encrypted within a quote over the door of a tiny German synagogue my ancestors helped build and lead in the 1820s.